She was hovering
She was hovering before the fatal window
She was hovering before the fatal window
She was hovering before the fatal window for the tenth time, cold with the approach of darkness and the lack of the furs which had had to be surrendered, when suddenly Sassoon appeared at her side from some current of the crowd. She felt him at her shoulder, silently studying her, striving to seize her secret thought, and she started as if he were an apparition of the devil himself.
"How long have you been here?" she asked hastily.
"Four minutes—five," he said, shaking hands elaborately. "Well, what do you want?"
"Everything in the window!" she replied angrily.
"May I send them to you?"
This made her angrier still. She shrugged her shoulders and glanced at her watch.
"Take me to tea somewhere!"
"A little run in the country?"
"I don't care!"
He put her into his automobile with an eagerness she did not notice, so delighted was she by the sense of escape from mediocrity which the elegance and ease of the car brought her. He considered a moment, and then, with a word to his chauffeur, followed her.
"Where are we going?"
"I thought it would be something different to run down a way toward Coney Island."
"I don't care."
"Blue?"
She nodded, her head turned to the flying shops, the cross streets, and the maze of traffic at her side. He put out his hand to take hers, but she stopped him with a warning finger.
"None of that, Mr. Sassoon!"
"I had no thought—"
"Yes, I know; but you know the conditions!"
"Why are you blue?" he asked, checking himself. "Getting near the tenth?"
"That's it!"
"And you haven't made up your mind yet?" he said slowly.
"How can I?" she said, with an irritable movement of her foot.
"Don't forget that I have something to say to you before you decide," he said quietly.
"It will do you no good!"
"Are you sure?"
"Quite!"
"Sure there is nothing I could offer you that would mean anything?"
"Quite!"
But, though she repeated the word with extra emphasis, she felt all at once the beginning of a dangerous curiosity. After all, was there nothing he could offer her, who had gone so long, tired of foot and discouraged of heart, that might not cause her to pause and at least experience a regret—for an enormous sum, something fantastic, which no man wouldoffer? Yet the idea entered into her imagination and stimulated it. How many women would hesitate before a sum so great that it made no difference what people said? From which she began to wonder what might be her price to this experienced connoisseur, who had estimated and bought so many of her sex: Yes, what was his estimate of her resistance? This awoke a zest which soon dominated the lassitude of the afternoon. She must learn this price: it would be more than exciting.
All at once they seemed lifted above the city, soaring upward past the last sinking roofs, cleaving into clear air. They were on the great Williamsburg Bridge, the river far below, strewn with dusky moving shapes setting out faint lamps against the darkening day. Across the river gusts of steam or belching smoke thickened the gray horizon. Factories, come down like animals to drink at the riverside, stood in naked profile against the sky, pointing their rigid towers toward the stars, sending occasional flaming blasts across reddening lines of window-panes. Below, like the magic of invisible sprites, the jeweled strands of Brooklyn Bridge were flinging a brilliant span across the gulf of the night. About them, deliriously below, were the thousand waking eyes of mysterious hours, starting from the regimented lamp-posts that cut the city into squares of black. All about them was that day of the city which is the creation of man, which he has created in the need of forgetfulness, of doubling the span of his few allotted years in a sort of Promethean revolt. The day often oppressed her—the night never. She sat up, smiling and alert, and as if for the first time taking notice of where she was and where she was going, asked:
"What time is it?"
"Half past five only."
But she began to feel a menace in this other bank which they were nearing, in these long stretches of human wilderness leading to the sound. Sassoon was entirely too docile, she did not know why, but she scented danger in the air.
"We will go back," she said suddenly. "Brooklyn is too dreary; besides, it's late for tea."
"I'm sorry," he said, stirring in his seat; "I'm afraid you don't trust me?"
"No, I don't—not too far!"
"Supposing I decided to go on?" he said quickly.
"I should open the window and scream," she said, handing him the tube.
He complied reluctantly, seeking an excuse.
"It'll only take us twenty minutes. I wanted you to get the effect of New York coming back; in another half-hour it'll be magnificent!"
"I'll enjoy it very much now," she answered, laughing.
"You quite misjudge me," he said, without further trace of irritation. "However, as you wish. I saw you were blue, and I had planned something to distract you. But it's no use."
"What had you planned?" she said maliciously.
"To take you to a very nice party."
"What?"
"A supper with some interesting people—Emma Fornez, Sada Quichy—"
"Where?" she said suspiciously.
"At the Café Loo."
"Where's that?"
"In Harlem."
She reflected. She had expected him to give the name of some inn in the country where she would not venture; but Harlem reassured her. Perhaps the party existed, and, if so, she was crazy to meet Emma Fornez, of the Metropolitan Opera. Besides, she felt in a reckless mood, within certain safe limitations.
"If you asked me very nicely," she said softly, "you might be surprised—"
An hour later they came to a stop before a restaurant flanked with plants and shining with the dazzle of reflecting mirrors. It was of new creation, on the order of the German Gardens, situated on one of the great thoroughfares, a publicity which quite reassured her. They went in by a private entrance, and up in an elevator to a suite on the third floor.
"We're ahead of time," said Sassoon. "Dressing-room to the left. Leave your things there."
The room into which they had entered from an ante-chamber was a salon in false Empire furniture against plum-yellow carpets and hangings. Through a curtained door to the right was a glimpse of a dining-room in the corner of the house. She took in the surroundings with a quick glance as she went into the boudoir. What she had suspected was true. The party was an invention. She was alone with Sassoon.
She was not the least afraid, nor, in fact, was she unprepared for the discovery. When Sassoon had tempted her with the prospects of a party, she was not altogether his dupe. Yet, under safe conditions, she was disposed, to-night, to grant him the intimacy of a tête-à-tête. She knew that he had never yet said to her what he wanted, and she had a great curiosity to know what he would hold before her eyes. The respectability of the crowd seen through the brilliant windows, the publicity of the position, all reassured her that there could be no trap beyond the powers of her ingenuity. She examined the dressing-room hastily. Besides the door that gave on to the salon, there were two others—one, which was locked, to a farther suite, and a second, opening into the ante-chamber.
She went to the window and looked down on the flattened crowd flowing like inky pools under the phosphorescent arc-lights; the scurrying roofs of automobiles, darting across the lighted trolleys, calculating the effect of a cry. Then she opened the door into the ante-chamber, hesitating. It would be the easiest thing in the world to leave now, without noise, while Sassoon was busy with the ordering. But curiosity was strong, and the need of a sensation—of a triumph over danger, which would give back that old audacity that had almost departed in these last bitter days. She bit her lip thoughtfully, hesitated a moment, and then, tiptoeing quietly to the outer door, removed the key, assuring herself that there were no bolts to fasten it. It might be the last escapade, perhaps the last time that she would baffle him. The tenth was only three days away and in the need of setting the stage for her final climax she felt the need, suddenly, of carrying this motive up to the brink—yes, even of calmly looking over.
She left her hat with her coat in the dressing-room, and came out confidently, her hands on her hips, which swayed slightly in the languorous movement of the Spanish indolence, mockery in her eyes.
"No one here yet?" she asked unconcernedly.
"Not seven," he replied, glancing at his watch.
"Artists are always late!"
He assented, watching her.
"This the dining-room?" she said, moving to the right.
"Wait!"
"Why?"
"I want to give you a surprise."
"I know it already!"
"What?"
"There's no party at all; we're dining together," she said, looking at him directly. "Don't lie. Besides, I knew it all the time!"
"What?" he said amazed.
"Naturally! Do you think I would be here if I didn't want to be? Well, to-night, then, is the big temptation? I hope you'll be very interesting!"
"So you knew!" he said, pursing his lips.
"You're disappointed because I'm not afraid!" she told him, laughing. "Well, I'm not! Besides, I have taken my precautions!"
"What do you mean?" he asked uneasily.
"There's a door from the dressing-room into the vestibule—you gave me plenty of time," she said quietly. "There happened to be a party I knew below when we came in, or we would not be here. They are to take me home—later."
"You went down—" he said slowly, at a loss whether to believe her or not. She nodded, and still incredulous, he went to the dressing-room, assuring himself that she had at least spoken the truth about the door.
"Well?" she said, folding her arms and laughing at him, but feeling every nerve and fiber alert with the sense of combat.
"Miss Baxter," he answered, standing by her and fastening his heavy oriental gaze on hers, "I have never, in all my life, wanted a woman as I want you!"
"I hope so!"
"Don't you know that?"
"It's the devil in me, then."
"The devil and the child," he said quietly.
She didn't like his look, so she motioned him away, saying:
"Something to eat first, please, and business later."
"With any other woman I would understand that," he said, without shifting his gaze.
"Perhaps I am simpler than you think?"
"Let's go in to dinner!" he said abruptly.
He went to the curtain and drew it aside deferentially. She went past him quickly, watching him from under her eyelashes, choosing that seat at the table which would give her quick retreat in case of need. The waiter, bald and correctly vacant of expression, arrived after a discreet knock, and with the swinging of the door came a sudden burst of laughter from an arriving party. She waved away the proffered cocktail.
"Nothing?" he asked.
"At such an important interview? Of course not!"
He raised his glass to her honor, and she nodded.
"You don't look so terrible, after all," she said, examining him with a critical smile; and to herself she said disdainfully, as she had said another time: "If this is a dangerous man, what is it makes him dangerous?"
But this query was not simply of amusement. The seriousness of life had so obtruded itself upon her, in the last preparatory weeks, that she wanted to know everything, to have before her in detail that existence which could depend on his soft hands and wearied eyes.
"So I puzzle you very much?"
"You know you do!" he said, with a slow smile, still resolved to continue the rôle ofbon enfant.
"Most women are simpler, then?"
"Much!"
"And how do you do?" she said, her elbows onthe table, leaning forward eagerly. "Just say flatly, 'How much?'"
He ran a lean finger through the mounting mustache, smiling.
"Usually, yes!"
"And they all have their price?"
"Not all, no; but all that I want," he answered frankly.
"That must be quite exciting—the estimating, I mean," she said, to draw him out. "Imagine looking at a woman and saying: 'This one will cost me a thousand, this one ten thousand, and this one will be very, very expensive.' It must be quite amusing to see if you guess right!"
"Very amusing—yes."
"Sassoon, what's my price?" she asked abruptly.
"I didn't say you had one."
"You said all women you wanted."
"Miss Baxter," he said slowly, "you began this conversation."
"Yes—and let's drop all pretenses; let's talk to each other, since we are here. Let me know you as you really are. I wish it!"
"Very well!" he said, pleased. He rested his elbows likewise on the table, scanning his left hand, turning the great emerald ring that adorned it. "I believe every woman has her price, under certain conditions: first, that you know the need of money, and, most important, that you are old enough to understand what things can be bought!"
"You think I am too young?"
"I am not sure! You are very romantic," he said, and as she laughed at this interpretation, he continued: "If you were thirty instead of twenty-two, you could not make a mistake!"
"That's a curious way to put it!"
"I am not speaking of ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars," he said quietly. "You are the exception. You are the sort of woman that would hold a man for years. Miss Baxter, do you remember what the Comte de Joncy told you?"
"Ah, yes; he liked my eyes," she said, laughing.
"He estimated them at a million each. He knew!"
"What nonsense you are talking!"
"I am talking of a career," he said quietly. "Consider it. It's worth considering!"
"Ah, now I understand! Well, go on!"
"Just a little glass?" he said, raising the champagne.
"Sounds like Bowery melodrama," she said mockingly. "The Wicked Millionaire. Please be serious! It's so nice to talk of millions!"
"If you knew what I know," he said, looking beyond her and shrugging his shoulders, "it would be easy to discuss! There's only one thing important in life, Miss Baxter. Money!"
"And love?"
"Love! You will love ten—twenty times! What do you know of such things?" he said rapidly. "You have a vague illusion before your eyes, and in reality, what is guiding you is the same principle of nature that governs all life. A woman in the stateyou are in now is really in a state of hysteria—an unnatural state, that causes you to do any number of illogical things, crazy things—"
"As, for instance, falling in love?"
"Falling in love with impossible people," he corrected. "What do you know of love, anyhow? I may know."
"You!" she said scornfully.
"Yes—now. I've seen the rest, and if I love, it's the young, the beautiful, the past. I won't explain: you must experience to comprehend! Another thing about yourself that you don't understand: to love and to be loved are two different things. A woman like you will always be loved. You won't love, really love, not for a long while—not until you begin to grow old! What stops you from using me? Family? You have none! Friends? Bah!"
"And the man?" she said coldly, beginning fiercely to resent the brutality of his philosophy, though she had determined to remain impersonal and amused.
"The man!" He laughed, throwing himself back in his chair, scowling a little at this direct personal allusion. "There you have it! With one question you have betrayed your whole morality—woman's morality! The man! If I were a young cub with a romantic strut, talking big, it would be different; it would not be a case of selling yourself—it would be an infatuation!"
"Perhaps it is our morality," she said indignantly, thinking of Massingale, and led insensibly into a defensive attitude. "Say it is! It's at least natural!"
"You mean, in my case, the thing that makes you recoil is myself?" he said abruptly. "More than any other consideration? Say it!"
"Quite true!"
"If I were asking you to marry me, if you had that opportunity, would that feeling stop you?"
She was silent, surprised.
"It's a money transaction in either case, isn't it?"
"What a terrible view of life you have!" she said, appalled. She had been prepared for danger of an overt character, not for the insidious subtle poisoning which he was distilling in her ears. She drew back, breathing quickly, fiercely resisting his ideas. "Money, money—that's all you see, because that's all you understand!"
"I only wish to make you see!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "that there is no difference in being what I offer you and in being—"
"Mrs. Sassoon!" she said curtly.
He did not like the reference, man-like, though he frowned and admitted the allusion with a wave of his fingers.
"As you wish!" Then he continued, with an unwonted energy for his tired attitude: "No, I don't say everything can be controlled by money, but that our world is. There are two sorts of human beings: those who work, and those who live for pleasure. It's the last we're talking about. What are you? You're a nervous, pretty little animal that has learned tolove luxury. You may know it, or you may not. You may have had the taste of it before you came here, but you've steeped yourself in it since. You couldn't help yourself! It's all about you; it's the corruption in every street; it's New York! Don't you think I know you? What were you thinking as you stood before that window to-night?"
"Yes, I love luxury!" she said abruptly, admitting it to shut him off.
"If you had never known New York, you might be different," he continued triumphantly. "You might marry and be satisfied with a commonplace routine existence. But, little girl, you're what you are! You covet everything: jewels—oh, I saw your eyes when you refused that necklace; clothes—you know your own worth and you've dreamed, you must have dreamed, of what you'd be if you could wear what other women wear; you want to go where others go, pay what others pay; you want to be watched, courted, admired. Do you think you'll ever love any man as you love yourself?"
"It isn't true!" she said furiously; yet his exposition had left her weakly terrified.
"It is true! You know it! Stand up; look in the mirror! See yourself as you can be, with jewels in your hair, against your neck, in dresses that are worth hundreds, in furs that are worth thousands! Do you think you could go in any assembly, theater or restaurant, but every one wouldn't turn in amazement?"
She felt troubled, struggling against a heavy lassitude, regretting that she had given him this opportunity; and instinctively, by a force beyond her control, she raised her eyes to the mirror at the end of the room, and saw a little girl in a simple dress, her hair in a confusion of golden curls, and behind her the triumphant woman he had conjured to her eyes.
"No coffee!" she said, nervously averting her eyes from his eager gaze. "It's hot, dreadfully hot, in here."
There came a moment's pause, a lull after the first skirmish, during which he lighted a cigar and waited, well content.
"It's all a question of opportunity," he began again, while her troubled eyes went past him to the mirror of the future. "You can do now what you can't do later! Do you want to end in a boarding-house, Miss Baxter?"
"Why do you—care for me?" she asked him abruptly.
"In the beginning, because you resisted me," he said, turning his cigar in his fingers. "Now, because you hate me!"
"And knowing that I hate you, you want me?"
"A thousand times more!" he said, and for the first time the greed and hunger rose in his eyes. But quickly he controlled himself.
"The moment I stopped resisting you, you would not care!" she said slowly.
"True; but you would always resist!" he said quickly. "Besides, that is what I like—what you must always do!"
He spoke now with eagerness, a restlessness in his voice, uneasiness in his eyes. Despite the tenseness of the situation, looking on him thus, a flash of pity and horror came to her as she felt, in her progress into the knowledge of life, the hidden tragedies that lurk in the reverse of a glittering medal.
"You overestimate what I can do!" she said at last.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked her, ignoring the remark. "The opinion of society?"
She did not answer.
"Go on with your career!" he said impatiently. "The world will close its eyes to what you do! If you haven't the courage, there's always a way. Marry and separate!"
She looked so surprised at this that a thin smile came over his lips.
"There are a dozen men I can call on who will do you that slight service!" he said grimly. "Listen! Let it be so! I will procure you a husband, a very convenient, manageable husband, who will appear and disappear. You'll become Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith, and after a few months you can divorce. You will then be, in the eyes of the world, perfectly qualified to do whatever you please, without danger of criticism. That's society for you!"
"So that's the way it is done!" she thought, quite excited. For a brief moment she let herself go into the rôle he had opened for her, wondering if it were possible—if, under any circumstance, even if Massingale should utterly fail her, she could succeed as he had prophesied. "Really," she said, amazed, "you have men who would sell themselves for that?"
"Do you wish to see?" he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "It can be done to-night!"
"To-night?"
"You don't believe me? I'll telephone now; I'll have your future husband here in half an hour. Would you like to see him?"
"Not to-night!" she said, laughing. Then, pushing back, she added: "Are you through?"
"Not quite."
He rose, took from his pocketbook two bills of a thousand dollars each, and laid them beside her plate.
"What's this for?" she asked, raising her eyes.
"For the pleasure you have given me, Miss Baxter, in permitting me to take dinner with you," he answered, smiling.
"Just for that?" she said ironically.
"Just for that!" he repeated. He drew back toward the window. "You see, it was not so dangerous, after all. If you will get your things now, we shall go!"
Her sense of the dramatic was struck.
"Ah, that's very clever of you!" she said, quite excited. Two thousand dollars just for the favor of dining with her! How subtly he proclaimed what she might expect in the future! The bills were horribly real, seeming to adhere to her fingers. She repeated, wildly stirred: "Very clever!"
He came closer to her, with veiled eagerness.
"Well, what is it to be?"
She left the money on the table, answering quietly:
"You know, don't you?"
"You will—"
"No!—of course!"
He frowned impatiently.
"Think it over!"
"There's no need!"
"How much do you want? Come, tell me!" he said roughly, with a brutality from which the mask had been withdrawn.
She laughed triumphantly at the reappearance of the true Sassoon.
"Ah, I would be very expensive!"
"I don't care!"
"You haven't enough!"
"What!" he cried angrily, trying to seize her wrist. "You are fool enough to refuse? You can have anything you want. I will make you anything!"
"Sassoon, it's the man!" she said scornfully.
He drew back, red with anger.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that everything you have said fills me with horror!" she cried, with a need of self-expostulation. "I wouldn't be you for all the millions in the world! Thank God, I can be a fool! I can love like a human being! I'd rather give up everything in the world to the man I adore—"
With an exclamation, he sprang toward her, rage and lust in his eyes; but, prepared, she flung a chairagainst his legs and escaped into the drawing-room, slamming the door in his face, and darting from the vestibule into the hall as he came blindly in pursuit. She did not stop until she had descended the flight of stairs. Below, she turned, and perceived his passion distorted face glowering down from the upper landing.
"Will you kindly bring my things down, Mr. Sassoon? I'm going now," she said, breathless, but exhilarated by the escape and the victory.
"Come and get them!" he said furiously, and he disappeared.
She frowned, not relishing the turn, calculating how to extricate herself. At length, reluctantly, she descended the second flight, resolved to send a boy up-stairs for her things. The vestibule in which she found herself was a large one with glass doors opening into the noisy restaurant, played over by an energetic Hungarian orchestra. As she hesitated, conscious of the strange figure she presented, the glass doors swung hastily and Harrigan Blood came out.
"Dodo! I thought I recognized you!" he cried, stopping short. "What in the name of the incredible—"
She went to him quickly, grasping his arm, actuated by a sudden brilliant plan of revenge.
"Mr. Blood—Harrigan!" she said quickly. "I was brought here by a gentleman who had told me it was to be a party of eight or ten. I have just escaped from the trap he laid for me! Will you give me your arm while I go and reclaim my things?"
"Will I? I'll throttle him!" he said angrily. "The contemptible cur! Who is he?"
"Sassoon!"
"My God!"
They went up-stairs, and pushed aside the half-open doors. At her entrance, Sassoon turned like a startled animal, his face almost unrecognizable with rage. In his fury he had caught his napkin and torn it into shreds. A couple of chairs were overturned, and the covering of the table pulled down. At the sight of Harrigan Blood striding in with menacing looks, Sassoon checked his first impetuous advance, halting abruptly, murder in his heart.
"I have come for my things, Mr. Sassoon, since you would not bring them to me," Doré said, "and I found agentlemanto accompany me."
"Is it true, what Miss Baxter says?" said Harrigan Blood, clearing the space that separated them. "Did you bring her here with a lie—to a trap?"
"Mind your own business!" cried Sassoon, with a scream of rage. "Who are you to preach morality to me? You're a fine one to reproach any one, you are!"
"I've done a lot of things in my life," said Blood, with rising wrath, "but I never took a woman with a lie—like a thief! Sassoon, you're a coward and a dirty cur!"
He caught him by the throat in his powerful grip,and slapped him twice across the face; then, as a dog with a rat, he shook him in the air and flung him in a heap against the foot of a chair, where he lay, stunned and gasping for breath. Dodo, with her hat and coat, came out hastily, very much frightened, awed at the sight of men in rage and combat.
"Oh, let's go—let's go!" she cried. "Oh, is he hurt? You've not—"
"Killed him? No, so much the worse!" Blood said scornfully. "Now get away quickly; there must be no scandal!"
Below, on the sidewalk, he placed her in a taxicab, but refused to enter with her.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm a very human person, Miss Baxter; I'm not going in the way of temptation, when I know there's no hope. It's good-by, young lady!"
"I do like you—I admire you, Mr. Blood," she said, retaining his hand. "Don't hate me!"
He looked at her for a moment, struggling with his emotion. At last he said quietly, watching her with his strange eyes, that had the glowing quality of the feline:
"Dodo, shall I come?"
She drew back as if wounded; then she closed the door, afraid.
"No!"
"You see? Good-by!"
"Don't hate me!" she said, suddenly leaning out of the window and seizing his arm convulsively. "You mustn't! I'm only a wild, crazy little thing."
"You're all that!" he said gravely. "Look here! After to-night I've a right to say this. Look out! You're going to get into trouble; mind what I say—the game's dangerous!"
He raised his hat, signaled the driver and turned to walk in the direction of the subway. She was immensely sorry to lose him. She wanted to call after him again not to hate her. For she had a feeling now that all men, all whom she had gathered about her, hated her or would come to hate her; that it was not love she inspired, but only an antagonism. She was not sure even of Massingale. How could he love her, when she brought nothing but unrest into his life—when she did nothing but make him miserable and unhappy from morning to night? Then, she felt it was the approach of the fatal tenth of March that was disorganizing her, horribly hypnotizing her, shattering all her nerves, and she said to herself that it could not go on; she must find peace somewhere; she would not wait. To-morrow there would be a decision between Massingale and herself. Either that, or she would go to Blainey, where she belonged, and enter the world of work. To-morrow, without further delay she would decide her life, before Lindaberry could return, or that haunting image of her former life.
And when, at length, she had passed from the taxicab up the stoop and into the dim-lit hall, Josh Nebbins was waiting for her in the gloom of the parlor, as she had known for days he would come out of those musty shadows which were like mists of the past.
Had Sassoon himself imagined the climax, he could have found nothing more terribly efficacious than this recrudescence from the past of Joshua Nebbins. She was at the hat-rack, eagerly running through the mail, when her hand stopped, as if paralyzed, at the sound of a soft whistle from the parlor, two low notes and a higher, followed by a chuckling laugh. She turned, knowing instantly who it was.
"Flossie! Bless your sparkling eyes!" cried a voice.
She entered hastily, fearing the publicity of the hall. He was advancing, radiant and confident, arms open. She put out her hands hastily to ward him off. He saw, and halted.
"Oh! That's the game, is it? All right! Shake! Miss Baxter, how do you do?"
"Hello, Josh!" she said coldly.
Now that the meeting had come, like an animal driven to bay, she was possessed of a desperate courage. This interview should be the last! There would be no mincing of words. She must be free!
They stood a moment looking at each other. He had scarcely changed. She even seemed to remember the coat he wore, a golden brown whip-cord, which she had once so admired! Yes, he was thesame as she remembered him: a red tie, a death's-head pin, the thin carmine edge of a silk handkerchief protruding from the breast pocket, a buckskin vest with glass buttons. Probably the same shoes, too, were there, concealed in the shadows, patent leather with chamois tops.
He was not in the least abashed by the formality of her reception. He had never been abashed in his life, and he was looking at her now with an impudent confidence in the upstarting nose, the wide grinning mouth, the Yankee sharpness of jaw and cheekbones, and the alert eyes, which would admit of no refusals.
"Prettier than ever!" he exclaimed, after a long admiring whistle. "That's a new trick with the hair, and, Floss, you certainly are the swell dresser! Well, Mrs. Nebbins, how are you?"
He plunged his hands into his pockets, slanted his head and gazed at her for all the world like a saucy sparrow. She knew that half measures would be vain, and she went directly to the issue.
"Josh, I have a good many things to say to you, a good many to make you understand," she said abruptly. "Wait here! I'll be down directly, and then we'll go out somewhere, where we can talk!"
"Are you married?" he said, chuckling.
"No! Why?" she said, surprised.
"That's the only thing I was afraid of!" he said, shooting his cuff with a jerk of his crooked thumb. "All right, kid! Run along! I can wait! Patience is my middle name!"
She went to her room, running up the steps, her anger increasing, no longer fearing him, but a prey to all the cruel impulses of scorn and contempt. This past was too ridiculous! It must end, at once and forever! There was a note from Lindaberry, which she placed hurriedly in the trunk, where were already his other unread letters. She searched for the money Winona had sent, and suddenly remembered that it had been in her pocket all the time. One thing she was coldly determined on—to pay him back the old debt that had set like a leaden weight on her conscience! That, at least, should no longer stand as a reproach! But, to accomplish this, it was necessary to accept what had at first filled her with horror. This caused her to recoil a moment; but she remembered what sums she had just refused, and she convinced herself that she had the right to use this little amount for such a worthy object. Besides, she would consider it only as a loan.
Then she went to the telephone and called up Judge Massingale, giving him a rendezvous at ten o'clock, for she was determined to take no more than an hour to end all relations with the past she had so longed to see buried and forgot. That out of the way, she would be free to deal with Massingale to-night. With him she would have done with fencing and acting. She would meet him in simple trust, in perfect faith. Everything should be on the big scale—nothing petty, nothing unworthy. Now to have done with the other!
They went to the café of one of the great apartment hotels off Madison Square, where she felt certain she would meet no one she knew, ensconcing themselves in a discreet corner.
"Don't mind my feeding?" he asked, in perfect good humor. "Couldn't stop for grub or anything else, when I had a chance to see you, Floss!"
He ordered roast beef hash with a poached egg, spareribs with boiled cauliflower, and two charlotte russes. The very sounds made her shiver. She glanced about uneasily; but the restaurant was deserted, except for a fat German in a far corner, languidly dipping his heavy mustache into a foaming stein of beer.
"Josh," she said suddenly, extending her hand where Lindaberry's ring shone, "I'm engaged!"
"Oh, that's all right!" he said, spreading his napkin, from the second button of his coat, and bisecting a loaf of bread.
"You don't understand!"
"Don't I? Of course I do! You're engaged? Well, I expected that! Not the first time, is it? It's a convenient sort of state to be in. That doesn't worry me!"
"If I'd known where to write you, I should have let you know!"
"Good reason why I kept quiet!"
"And," she said suddenly, producing the hundred-dollar bill. "I should have paid you this back long ago!"
He frowned and drew back in his chair, his knife in his fist, rather comic than terrible.
"Here! I don't like that! Not in the rules of the game!"
"It was a debt. I certainly am not going to accept money."
"Hold up!" With the point of his knife, disdainfully, he steered the bill from in front of him to a place of seclusion. "This ain't important, anyhow. It's your manner, kid. Rather uppish. Now, let's get a few things straight before we start. Do you remember one evening back in Cincinnati, in a howling dirty depot, when you wanted to give up everything and marry me? Do you?"
She looked at him, and she blushed. Great heavens! Was it possible?
"And what did I do? I was honest! I told you I was going to get a start first, to be sure I was the kind of a feller who could give you what you want. Didn't I?"
"You should have married me then!" she said quickly.
"Perhaps! But I didn't. Why? On your account! Just let's keep these things in mind. If I come back now, I'm to get as fair a chance as the next fellow! Now, Floss, don't come any airs over me! It won't go!"
The hash arrived, and he attacked it, all smiles. How was she to make him understand the difference between them now—the immense worldly distance that now separated them? She remembered Sassoon's analysis, and adopted it as an inspiration.
"My dear Josh," she said in a more conciliatorytone, "even if I were not engaged,—and engaged to a man I adore blindly,—there wouldn't be the slightest possibility for anything between us."
"We'll see!" he said, unruffled, his mouth half full.
"Your chance was in Cincinnati!" she said deliberately. "That was your mistake, or your good luck! I'm different now—so changed I don't recognize myself!"
"Rats!"
"True! I'm a vain, luxury-loving girl, who has got to live on excitement! I couldn't be happy a day away from all this! I adore New York! I've got to be on the go every minute! If I married a poor man, I'd ruin him in a month!"
"What?"
"In a month! I've got the taste, the habit of luxury; I just can't do without it! The man I marry has got to be able to give me everything I see other women have—dresses, jewels, automobiles,—or I should be miserable! You see, I don't spare myself; I tell you the truth. I've got to have money, and I've got to have New York!"
He reflected a moment, studying the spareribs, which had just arrived.
"Well, now, that might be arranged," he said thoughtfully. "I like this little burg myself."
"What's the use of beating around the bush?" she said suddenly. "Josh, this is the truth; I've grown away from you and from all that old life. I've gone into a new. I'm in love, madly, blindly, and there's no other man in the world for me! You won't understand! You force me to be cruel! It's ended between us, and I never wish it to be brought up again. And if you are a gentleman, you won't pursue me; you'll go away!"
"Gentleman's a stretchy word, kid!" he said, refusing to be angry. "But I'm here, and I'll stick! You can't ruffle me! I'm not here to get frothy at the mouth; I'm here to win you back!"
She tried every means to open his eyes. She left nothing unsaid. It had no more effect on him than the wind against a cliff. He answered all attacks good-naturedly, perfectly obstinate and perfectly resolved. When they returned over the short blocks to Miss Pim's, she said at last, desperately:
"I tell you frankly, I won't see you!"
"Oh, yes, you will!" he said.
"But since you know I'm going to be married?"
"Don't know anything of the kind!" he said gruffly. "Now, Floss, just put this away in your thinker. You can't get rid of me. You'll never get rid of me until you're married—and then I won't give you up till I go to the church and see you come down—not up,downthe aisle hitched to another man!"
"Another thing, Josh. If you don't take the money," she said, as they came in view of Miss Pim's and Massingale's automobile waiting, "I'll tear it up!"
"Hold up! I'll take it!" he said quickly. "Only this is the way you'll ask it: 'Mr. Nebbins, you were always square by me, and I'm grateful to you for it.Thank you for what you loaned me, and do me the favor to take it back!' Say that, or it can lie there!"
She had a horror of Massingale's coming in contact with this undisciplined savage. She would do anything to prevent that. So she swallowed her pride and repeated the phrase.
"Good, Flossie!" he exclaimed joyfully. "That's like old times, when you used to have your tantrums! Just remember, now, who knows you and who you can't fool! To-morrow?"
She stopped at the foot of the steps, holding out her hand.
"What's the game now?" he asked suspiciously. "Don't want me to come up? Oh, that's all right! Don't believe in mixing things myself! To-morrow for lunch?"
"Good-by!" she said emphatically, running up the steps.
"To-morrow!" he called after her.
When she entered, Massingale was in the parlor, and the bamboo curtains at the windows were still tinkling, where he had been posted in watch. Nebbins had filled her with such a fear of the old ascendency that, despite the publicity of the room, she flung her arms about his neck and lay against his shoulder like a frightened fluttering bird.
"Ah, now I am happy!" she said softly, running her fingers in a caress over the tip of his ear.
"You change quickly!" he said coldly, resisting.
"You were at the window?" she asked, comprehending instantly the cause of his mistrust.
"I was!"
"I couldn't help it! It was—"
"Don't invent!" he said roughly. "I'm not in the mood!"
"No, no, I won't!" she said, with a sudden resolve. "Only, let's get away from here first. I have so much to say to you to-night!"
As they went down the steps to his automobile, she glanced nervously up and down the dimly lighted avenue. Nebbins was there, as she had expected, leaning against a stoop, his hat on one side, waiting to see if she would come out. She sprang into the closed car, extinguishing the light.
"Where?"
"Anywhere out of this. Up-town!"
They had to pass him, still waiting and curious, half revealed under the pale region of a near lamp-post. She waited breathlessly, hoping that Massingale would not perceive him. Vain hope! He leaned forward abruptly, saying:
"Who is that man?"
"I'll tell you everything! Just a moment!"
She drew nearer to him, fastening her fingers, like a lonely child, in the collar of his coat; laying her head against his arm, very quiet; tired, with a longing for strength and petting. But, stiff and resentful, he did not put his arm about her. Suddenly he burst out:
"Dodo! I can't stand it! This is driving me crazy! What do I know of you? What do you want me to think? You go and come. You tell meone minute you love me, and the next, where are you? Where do you go? Whom do you see? What is your life? Who is this man who comes as far as your door, and then waits on the corner? Whom are you with until three o'clock in the morning? And Harrigan Blood, and Sassoon, and how many others? Dodo, I tell you, you are driving me wild. I suffer! If you knew what I've been going through these days, in every way!"
He stopped abruptly; he hardly recognized himself in this frantic complainant.
"Dodo, I tell you, I can't stand this any longer! You have disorganized everything in my life. I'm half mad!"
"Yes, I am very wicked, very cruel to you!" she said, with a lump in her throat, pressing his arm convulsively. "I know it! I know it! I've said it to myself a hundred times over. I can't help it! Why am I so? I don't know! Perhaps it were better if you went away, if you never saw me again. At least, you wouldn't hate me. Yes, go! You had better go! That's it. Go! Go!"
She stopped, and each was seized with the chill of this awful thought. He gave a deep sigh and put his arm around her. She crowded close to him, feeling so little, of such small consequence, staring out at the battling currents of brutal thoroughfares. The clamor of the city came roaring at their windows—immense glaring cars with strident bells, iron masses above shattering the air, even the earth below periodically shaken with the rumble of multitudes tearingthrough the bowels of the city. Confusion, riot multiplied, echoed and reechoed; masses of sky-cleaving prisons; millions of lights, blinding and bewildering; and everywhere the multitude, humanity in thousands on thousands, crowding their path, spying on every action, drowning out sigh and laughter! What peace or tranquillity was there? What fragile thing could endure against the buffeting? What mattered? By Massingale's side, shivering, clinging, she felt the weak tears suddenly rising, seized by a horror of this life which had to be lived, some way or other, in fear of what might follow.
"Be honest! Tell me all you've hidden! Let me know the truth, at least!" he said suddenly.
She sat up, drawing away from him, readjusting her hat. Yes, she would throw herself on his generosity; she would tell him the truth—perhaps not the truth in every detail, but all that was vital. For she could not bear that he should see Josh Nebbins as he really was. The vulgarity, the pettiness of it, she would keep from him, divining how his aristocratic temperament would revolt at the thought that such arms had once held her as his now encircled her.
"It is nothing bad!" she said. "There is nothing in my life that I am ashamed of. That is the truth! Only, I am upset, irritated, terribly irritated. I am passing through a most disagreeable experience. The man you saw I was engaged to three years ago, when I was an ignorant foolish girl. I regret it bitterly! We were totally unsuited. Now it is ridiculous, humiliating! I never expected to see him again!"
"Who is he?" he asked.
"Oh, there is nothing wrong with him!" she said instantly. "He was in the ministry, in settlement work—very honest, very good. Then he went on a paper. I don't know how it happened! I was very religious then; I wanted to devote my life—"
"But why didn't you break it off, Dodo?"
"I did! But you don't know him! He wouldn't marry me then until he'd saved some money, writing articles and all that sort of thing. Now he can't see how I've changed, how impossible it would be. And oh, it makes me shudder! It's such a narrow walled-in little life! So barren, so ugly!"
"Send him away!"
"If I could! He won't understand. And when I'm with him I feel as if I were being dragged back to all I hate! He's a terrible man! Sometimes I really am afraid he'll force me to marry him. Oh, I assure you, I am very, very unhappy!"
"And the ring, Dodo?" he said, with a sigh of relief, leaning over and touching her hand.
It was as if a sudden blast of cold air had been let in. She drew back.
"I can't tell you of that now," she said hastily. "When you have the right—and that depends on you—I will tell you, for it is something that I am very glad of!"
"Dodo, I must know. I can't go on like this! I simply can't."
"Neither can I!" she said, with a sudden lump in her throat. "Don't you see how I am going topieces? Don't you know why I do such wild crazy things? Oh, if I were only sure of you!"
"If I could be sure ofyou!" he retorted bitterly.
"What would you do?" she asked, grasping his arm eagerly. "Would you do as I wish? Would you dare?"
"Dodo, I wish to be divorced and to marry you!" he said abruptly.
She shrank from him with a cry of disappointment. She sought romance, uncalculated and overwhelming; she wished to hear him, driven beyond himself, crying tempestuous words in her ears, ready for any sacrifice; and instead, he was concerned with planning a conventional solution.
"No, no!" she cried, bitterly disillusioned. "Oh, you don't love me as I love you, if you can think only of that!"
"But why not, Dodo?"
"Oh, not marriage! I hate the very word!" she said indignantly. "That would spoil everything! I want to be Dodo! I don't want to change. And you want to make me! What would happen? After a while you would want me to be like your formal women, society women, and I should be bored, or you would get tired of me. And then my heart would break!"
"But, great God! child, haven't you any morality?" he exclaimed, beyond himself. "Have I always got to protect you against yourself?"
"Is it my morality," she said, opening her eyes, "orwhat society will think of you, that you are worried about?"
He was silent, without an answer.
"Listen!" she continued determinedly. "This must stop! I said I was going to decide everything on the tenth. I'm not! I can't stand it! To-morrow I'm going to settle everything. Do you love me enough to run away with me to-morrow?"
"Do you really, honestly, in the bottom of your crazy romantic heart, believe you would do such a thing?" he asked solemnly.
She was instantly a-tremble with an electric ardor.
"Would I? Would I sacrifice this for something real, something immense, for a perfect blinding love? Oh, how can you ask!"
"And if I come to-morrow and say 'Come!' you will leave everything and go with me, anywhere?"
She put her two hands in his with a gesture of a Siddons.
"Anywhere!"
He retained his doubts, but he did not discuss. Finally he said:
"Very well! To-morrow afternoon I will come and tell you my decision! You are right. This must end, one way or the other!"
"When?"
"At five o'clock!"
"At five, then. If not—"
"If not, what?"
"I shall have made another decision!"
They said little during the remainder of the trip back, the gravity of the crisis that had been imposed affecting them both. She had only faint belief that he would come, as she wished him to come; and her eyes resting on the sudden electric paraphernalia of the theaters, the gilded outward trappings, the billboards, and the displays on the sidewalk, she lost herself in reveries, feeling the mountain of drudgery she would have to move. Besides, another thing obtruded itself between them—the lie, slight as it had been, that she had told. She was vaguely aware of it, unable to return into the intimacy of her first clinging attitude. Arrived at the house, he mounted the steps with her, and said gravely:
"Very well, Dodo! I take you at your word. I don't know what it will be. What you ask from me is as great, probably a greater sacrifice than you would make. But I may do as you wish! To-morrow, in any case, I will come!"
He did not attempt to kiss her in the shadow of the vestibule, nor did she think of it. It was very serious, this parting. She felt the weight of the impending decision as she went slowly to her room, and she found herself halting, from time to time, in the dark ascent, a little frightened, a little strange, asking herself if it were possible, after all, if the incredible were to come, if he really was to put her to the test.
Sassoon came to see her the first thing in the morning, just as she was completing her toilet. For, though over the city was the heavy somnolence of Sunday, she could not sleep; in fact, she had scarcely closed her eyes all night. It was daylight, and yet it was unreal. She was asking herself, incredulously, if the moment of decision had come,—the hour she had contemplated, it seemed, all her life,—when Josephus brought his card. It gave her quite a shock, this return of the persistent hunter, whom she had left, groveling and stunned, at the foot of a disordered table. What did it mean? She glanced at the card again. Across it was written in minuscule letters:
"Please see me, just for a moment!"
She hesitated, tempted by the sudden and the inexplicable. Was it possible that he credited her with acting a part, that his passion could crowd out all sense of shame? And, finally, what could he say, after last night?
"I'll be down in a few minutes!" she said, with a nod. Then she recalled Josephus hastily, giving explicit orders that, if Nebbins came, he was to be told that she had gone on a visit, that she would not be back until the next noon; under no circumstances was he to be admitted. She glanced uneasily into the room where Snyder, curled up in a ball on the bed, was sleeping the heavy sleep of those who consume the night six days of the week. What would she say to Snyder, and how avoid her questioning glances, this day of days?
When, at length, she entered the stuffy parlor, she beheld Sassoon in the raw, no longer languid and heavy of eye, but uncontrollably aroused, pacing the floor in feverish impatience. The look he gave her was so like that of a maddened animal that she halted, afraid; and the fear that ran through her bones was not only of the present, but a sudden terrified comprehension of the past—of what she had risked and escaped. She remained standing, with the table interposed as a barrier between them.
"Sit down—please!" he said, looking at her eagerly, in his voice a note of hoarse avidity that gave it a strange hurried quality.
"What have you to say to me?" she said, without moving.
"Miss Baxter," he said abruptly, "make your own conditions!"
"What! You are not ashamed?"
"Make your own conditions! I will agree to anything!"
"There are no conditions!"
"Wait!" He drew from his pocket a document, his fingers trembling so he could hardly unbutton his coat, crumpled it in his emotion and resumed:
"First, I have arranged everything! You will marry—not a trainer or a secretary, but a gentleman, Captain Markett-Blount, an English gentleman whom I have bought. No—listen to me! Understand everything! I am not putting you into the demi-monde; I'm giving you a chance at everything. You will have a social position. You will go wherever I want you to go. You can remain married, or you can divorce, when you want. You will have a husband who will do as I wish! I give him fifty thousand for his name. I will give him the same to free you. You will marry the hour you say—to-night. You will dine at my house; you will visit me on the same footing as Mrs. Sassoon's friends. In a week you will join a party on my yacht, and go with us to cruise into the Mediterranean, to Egypt, anywhere! No one will say a word—no one will dare! You will be in exactly the same position as a hundred women in society—any one who would come at a whistle from me! As for you—"
"As for me?" she repeated, fascinated despite herself.
"I will give you now, simply on your word, anything you ask. Name any sum. More, I will do what I have never done. Here, look! Here is a contract in black and white. Have it examined by your own lawyer. Write down whatever sum you want. Make it for one year or ten—I'll sign it! You can hold it over me; you can blackmail me, if you wish! And that is nothing to what I'll give you—jewels, houses—"
"But you are mad!" she cried, horrified at the craving in his voice and the wildness in his eyes.
"Yes, mad, Dodo. You are right—completely mad! But profit by it! You can place yourself anywhere; you can have anything from me! I myself will tell you how to torture me, to rob me—"
"Never!"
"Yes, yes! You will! You can't refuse such things!" he cried. "You're not a fool! Ah, Iwillhave you!"
Suddenly, as she shuddered and closed her hands over her eyes with loathing, he glided around the table and caught her in his arms.
"Sassoon! Here! You are crazy!" she cried, struggling frantically.
"What do I care!"
"Let me go! I'll scream!"
"What do I care!" His arms inclosed her with the strength of steel, gripped her to him, struggling to bring her face to his, crying incoherent brutal words that left her sick with loathing, a cold hard pain penetrating into her breast, frightened, helpless, trying to beat away the acquiring lips with savage fingers. At the moment when, despairing, she was about to cry aloud, mercifully there came a ring at the front door. He paused, trembling and breathless; and the next she had torn herself away from him and escaped up-stairs, shaken in every muscle, sick with horror and enraged loathing. Snyder up, stared in amazement at her disordered figure. The soiling embrace seemed to cling to her arms, to her neck, to the very clothes she had on. She tore them from her with disgust, with sickening.
"Lord! Dodo, what's happened?" cried Snyder, starting up.
"Sassoon! Beast!" she gasped, choking with rage. She flung her dress in a corner, and plunged her arms and head into the wash-basin, scrubbing them with a towel as if they could not be cleansed—as if nothing could ever cleanse them again.
Then suddenly she fell into a fit of hysterical weeping. Snyder, frightened, camped at her side, pressing her to her breast, calling her childish names, implored her to be calm. When at last, from sheer fatigue, she had grown quiet, she refused all questions, unwilling to talk; all at once solemn, determined, as controlled and impassive as a moment before she had been disorganized and frantic. Snyder, amazed, watched her as if she were a statue.
"You're all right now?"
"All right!"
"You can't tell me? Nothing?"
"Nothing!"
At the end of a moment she turned thoughtfully. "Come to lunch, just in Lexington Avenue?"
"Sure, petty!"
"I have no money."
"Shut up! I have lots!"
"Good! Now, don't talk to me, Snyder! I don't want to talk!"
The woman nodded, uneasy and suspicious, moving about her way, but never losing sight of the girl.
Dodo went to the trunk, took out Lindaberry's letters, and returned to the window. Outside it wasraining by fits and starts, in swerving sheets, wind-driven, with the restlessness of March. Handfuls of drops flung against the panes with sudden rattling crescendo. She opened the last letter and read it without emotion, in a dull, listless, painless, concentration. It began, "Dodo, my good angel," and it announced the thing she had feared—his imminent return.
"He will get over it!" she said, staring down the avenue, where the rain-drops rebounded from the asphalt like myriads of shimmering insects, swarming hungrily. "He will get over it, and he will live his own life, and he will end by being grateful to me!"
She remained silent a long while, wondering, thinking of Massingale, of Blainey, watching the leaden clouds breaking and rolling above, feeling the spray that lashed the window, cooling her cheeks, fascinated by the rain-drops that swarmed, like myriad white insects, dancing below. There was so much to do—and she was unable to do anything.
At twelve she rose quietly, telephoned to Blainey for an afternoon appointment, signaled Snyder and led the way to luncheon.
She went to the theater by the subway on account of a famished pocketbook, and the depressing sensation of damp ankles and muddied skirts, which came to her as she clung to her umbrella and leaned against the wind, reinforced her determination to come to actualities.
"Hello! This is a surprise!" he said, when at lastshe had come, with dripping umbrella, into his office. "Must have got my dates mixed!"
"No! It's I who am tired of waiting!" she said abruptly.
She shed her rain-coat, shaking her skirts and glancing at her muddy shoes in delicate disgust. Then she advanced in a businesslike manner to the seat which Blainey, contrary to his customary bluff indifference, was presenting to her with extreme deference.
"Blainey, I've come to the end of my rope!" she said, folding her arms over her breast. "I'm through with playing and cutting up. I'm going to make up my mind to something serious now! I've got to talk to some one about it; that's why I've come to you!"
"Good eye!" he said, nodding and reaching for a cigar. "I, too, have got something to thrash out. Well, kid, what's annoyin' you?"
"Things have been getting mixed up, Blainey," she told him seriously. "I guess I'm not as clever as I thought!" She stopped, thinking of the legion that had fallen away: of Peavey, who had gone; of Massingale, who was still a mystery; and of Nebbins, a present menace. "Either that, or I'm getting tired of fooling!"
He nodded wisely, waiting for her to continue. She noted the rough sympathetic cut of visage,—the mouth, which had changed its grimness for a tolerant humor, the eyes, which were fixed on her with keen perception, softened by a homely adoration,—and she felt that she could talk to him as to no one else. Hewould understand everything, the good and the bad in her. He was nearer to her, to her kind, to an understanding of her longings and her temptations, than those other men who had never known the struggle of a self-made life.
"Blainey, it's awfully hard to decide," she said, leaning forward and clutching her knee. "I'm in a fix; I don't know what I'll do!"
"Well, first," he asked, with an encouraging nod, "how's the heart?"
She sat silent a moment, her hands locked, staring at the floor.
"I wish I knew!" she said slowly.
"Marriage?"
"No!"
"Sure of the man?" he said abruptly.