"That's it; I'm not sure of him!"
"And yourself?"
She tried conscientiously to see herself.
"Even of that—I don't know."
"Pretty hard hit, eh?"
She nodded.
"Go slow! Be sure!"
"I'm going to, Blainey!"
"What else? Marriage?"
She made a gesture of irritation.
"No; that's not for me!"
"You're wrong, kid," he said energetically. "You don't know the game!"
"What! You advise me to marry?" she exclaimed, in astonishment.
"You? Every time!" he said, straightening up. "However, we'll discuss that later!" He looked at her shrewdly and said abruptly: "How about Sassoon?"
A fantastic idea came into her head—to try to what extent his advice could be disinterested.
"Sassoon's the point," she said quietly. "What do you think he offered me this very morning?"
She detailed the terms, the proffered marriage and the contract, while Blainey, craning forward, listened with intense curiosity. When she had finished, he rose abruptly, eased the grip of his collar and moved heavily to the window. Then he made her repeat all that she had said, word for word.
"You're giving me a straight story?"
"Honest to God!"
He gave vent to a long whistle, drumming on the desk.
"Well, kid," he said at last, with an effort, "that's a pretty big proposition!" He shook his head solemnly. "I don't see how you can turn it down!"
"Well, Blainey, that's just what I've done!" she said evenly.
"Think it over! Better think it over carefully!" he advised anxiously. "Ten years from now you may get a different squint at life, and regret it!"
She laughed. She had an idea that what they were discussing was curiously immoral; but, strange as it was, she had a feeling that he was quite unselfish, and was grateful to him for it. In fact she felt nearer to him than ever before.
"No, no, Blainey," she said quickly. "Not for me! I'm not thirty-two—I'm twenty-two; and, thank heaven, I can be a little fool!"
He resumed his seat, unconvinced, half inclined to argue. All at once he looked up, with a snap in his gray eyes, at the girl who was watching him, amused.
"Speaking of marriage, why don't you marry me?"
She rose to her feet in amazement.
"Surprised?" he asked, grinning.
"Bowled over!"
"Rather expected another proposition?" he said bluntly.
"Yes, I did! Good heavens! Blainey, why do you want to marry me?"
"For about six hundred and fifty-two reasons!" he said solemnly. "First, because I'm fond of you. Second, because I'm lonely, kid! Third, because I'd like to work for you, make something big out of you, give you a career that would be a career. The rest don't count! You see, kid, I believe in you, and the contract I'm offering you," he added, with a sudden chuckling return to playfulness, "is the only contract I know that's worth a damn between manager and star. Of course, you've got to work!"
"Blainey, how much talent have I?" she asked passionately. "No compliments! Give me the truth! It may mean a lot!"
"I don't know!"
"And yet—"
"Talent be damned!" he said royally, as he said a dozen times a day. "Art be damned! It ain't talent, it's personality that counts—personality and advertising. Personality, kid, is the reason we build the stage three feet above the orchestra, to keep the bald heads from coming over. Do you think I'm in this God-forsaken business thirty-four years, and don't know the tricks? You'll be talking art to me next!"
"And I have personality?" she said doubtfully.
He smiled hugely.
"Would you be sitting here if you hadn't?"
"And you want to marry me, after all you know about me?" she asked solemnly. It was the one thing she did not like. Why was it impossible for her to go her way, free and irresponsible, as men went? Why was it that all sought this absolute control over her liberty? And yet, she was genuinely touched that Blainey, believing what he must, should have made the offer.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"My old dad ran a milk-wagon over in Brooklyn," he said. "I've pulled myself up by my boot-straps, and pretty much of everything has stuck to them on the way. I know what life is, kid. I stopped judging long ago! Leave that to a bunch of snobs in Fifth Avenue churches. Whatever you've done, you'd look like a white spot against me!"
"Blainey, I'll tell you something!" she said suddenly. "You've got me wrong! I'm as straight as they make 'em!"
"Don't lie, kid! It ain't necessary."
"Look at me! It's God's truth!" she exclaimed vehemently.
"Honest?" he said, opening his eyes.
"Honest!"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Blainey, you're an awfully good sort!" she said genuinely.
"Damned few would agree with you!" he said grimly.
"You've always been with me! Why?"
"'Cause I'm a sentimental nature!" he said, grinning. "Well, kid, how about it?"
"Well, Blainey, it may be yes! I shouldn't be surprised!"
He started up eagerly, with a look that somehow spoiled it all. She retreated instinctively, and perceiving it, he was clever enough to retain his seat, saying:
"When will you know?"
"To-night!"
"Telephone me here or at the hotel. Now, one thing more. This marriage means freedom to each—no spying and no interfering! It's a sentimental business contract for life. Savvy?"
She nodded.
"That's the best way!"
"You're free—I'm free!"
She nodded again, giving him her hand.
"Now I must go," she said hastily, with a glance at the clock. She went to the door, while he watched her without a word. Suddenly she turned. "If I decide, I want it over to-night! Do you understand?"
He nodded seriously. She smiled and went lightly out.
When she reached her room again she received a shock. Snyder informed her that Lindaberry had called twice, once while they were at luncheon, and again at three. Dodo was in a panic at the news, expected though it was. Josephus had informed her of Nebbins' insistent queries. All that she had planned dramatically, which now she wished to avoid, was rising up to confound her. She turned breathlessly on Snyder.
"You saw Mr. Lindaberry?"
"Yes!"
"He was here? Long?"
"About an hour!"
"Then you talked to him?" she persisted, suddenly suspicious.
"So-so," said Snyder evasively.
"What did you talk about? What did you say? What did you tell him about me? You didn't discuss—did he leave a message?"
"No, he left no message!" said Snyder obstinately.
"When is he coming back? You know!"
"No, I don't know!"
"Snyder!"
"I don't know!" she repeated, shrugging her shoulders and escaping into the other room, leaving Dodo in a torment of suspense, half inclined to flight.
She could explain whatever she intended doing to Blainey, to Massingale even, but not to Lindaberry. The thing was unthinkable. And she was afraid ofhis coming, for she was afraid to destroy the illusion, fragile and beautiful, which she had built of herself in his soul. To undeceive him, to let him see her as she believed she really was, brought her pain that she could not endure. And at that moment, as the town clock was methodically beating out the hour of five, she stopped abruptly, suddenly recalled to Massingale by the sound of his step on the stairs, torn between hope and fear, but inwardly steeling herself against the shock of disillusionment which she was certain awaited her with the opening of the door.
When a man has taken a step across those limits which society imposes on his conduct, he immediately begins, with a certain anxiety, to seek for the visible results in those events, ordinary or extraordinary, which affect his prosperity. From the time of Massingale's meeting with Dodo, everything had succeeded with him. He had had a period of unusual success in the stock market. Property which he had accepted in lieu of a debt had unexpectedly proved necessary to the approaches of a new bridge and had returned him ten times its value. His kennel had swept everything before it in the Dog Show, and in the daily sessions at the card table his run of luck had continued with extraordinary persistence. Finally, the newspapers, lately, had given him columns of publicity. Certain criticisms which he had passed on the haphazard conduct of justice had been taken up and had set in movement great machines of investigation, which threatened an overturn at the coming municipal elections. As a consequence, he had received proffers of advancement, and a political career seemed within his reach.
Whatever vague rumblings of conscience may have stirred within him, they were, in a measure, stilled by these evidences of the good favor in which he stoodwith Providence since Dodo's introduction into his life. He was resolved to see in her the explanation of all that was favorable, and he repeated, in daily self-justification, that if she brought him this good luck, there could be no great harm, else a moral Heaven certainly would not continue to shower him with blessings. He did not express the feeling in so many words, but it existed, half avowed, as often, when tendered a match, he would say to himself:
"If it remains lighted until it reaches me, it is a favorable sign!"
The first disagreeable shock had come in the form of a message from Harrigan Blood saying that he would oppose any attempt to raise Massingale to the Court of General Sessions. The message was delivered by a mutual friend with intimations that, on account of certain sides of his personal life, it would be better not to lay himself open to the attack of a vindictive antagonist. The truth was that Harrigan Blood, since the day when Dodo had been so unfortunately inspired as to bring them together, had conceived the idea that the luncheon had been arranged with the express purpose of making him ridiculous, and that Massingale had been a party to the plot. From the first he had felt the humiliation of the rôle he had been forced to play with Dodo. The quarrel with Sassoon had been costly; his sense of pride had been cruelly tried; on top of which the thought that she had paraded him for the delectation of a favored rival was unbearable to his sensitive vain nature. He took his revenge thus, from a need offeeling that at the end the ridicule would not rest on his side. Massingale knew the man too well to have any doubts as to his yielding. If the political campaign were to be entered, he saw now that it would mean a distressing facing of every indignity. It was the threat, perhaps, more than the deprivation, that annoyed him; for at the bottom he had now come to a full realization of the utter disorganization which the pursuit of Dodo must inevitably bring him.
The morality of a man of the world after forty is largely a question of what is, and what is not, done. Massingale, without being aware of it, possessed this code to an unusual degree. Petty political grafting was something of which he would have been simply incapable, from a pride of caste. There were certain vices that were associated with a lower order of human beings. Courage, in such surroundings, was as requisite to a gentleman as recklessness before the consequences of a five-foot leap in the hunting-field. So, with Doré, his moral code of good manners (which might be expressed as eligibility to club membership) could not permit what, to the eyes of the world, must appear as a deliberate seduction. Despite the depths of infatuation into which he had plunged, the genuine outcry of his whole nature, the intense and ceaseless longing with which he was consumed, he never for a moment contemplated anything but the permissible: divorce and remarriage.
This decisive step he had contemplated now for more than two months, approaching and retreating. At times he had been on the point of breaking intempestuously on his wife and delivering an ultimatum, and the next day he had thanked heaven for the accident that had prevented a crisis. He was afraid of Dodo. Never for a moment had he placed the slightest faith in her romantic dramatization of a lawless elopement. Beyond that, a future in which she should join him as his wife was illegible to his eyes. He was too profoundly sensible of the utter change she had effected in his life not to fear where he might follow. He found that she consumed his day; that only the moments spent with her were vital. His old associations bored him.
His club friends of his age seemed hopelessly and incomprehendingly old. In their presence he felt unaccountably young, eager for youth. The evenings when Dodo punished him by departing with mysterious others were intolerably long and heavy. And then he suffered! He came to know all the torments of jealousy, hatred and submission violently reacting.
A little thing had perhaps more influence on his decision at this moment than anything else—the ring which Lindaberry had given Dodo, and of which she would furnish no explanation. This ring haunted him, terrified him. He was a keen enough observer to perceive instinctively its threat—that back of it was a deep import, not a mere passing entanglement of a week. Something else there was in her life, of major importance, he felt, strong enough to threaten him. Finally, on the night he had taken Dodo in his car after her meeting with Nebbins, this feeling of jealousy and alarm had become so intensified that hehad suddenly flung the future to the winds, and determined to be rid of the pain, the frenzy and the miserable longing which his resistance brought him in daily torture.
When he returned to his home, he learned from the footman at the door that Mrs. Massingale had entered half an hour before. He went directly to her rooms, giving himself no time for hesitation or reflection.
"Who is it?" cried a startled voice at his knock.
"It's I; may I come in?"
"But I'm not dressed! Is it serious?"
"Yes! Put on a dressing-gown!"
A moment later he entered. His wife, a frail, neurasthenic, thinly pretty woman of forty, was standing with a peignoir hastily clutched about her, a towel in hand, hastily rubbing off the cream with which her maid had been industriously massaging her face. On the dressing-table was a heap of hair in disordered braids. The mellow shades on the electric candles flung frightened shadows on the sharp oval face and the penciled eyebrows, that took flight above the nervous eyes, now white with an exaggerated alarm.
"Send"—he did not even know the name of his wife's maid—"send her away!"
"Lucille,laissez-moi; je vous sonnerai plus tard!" Mrs. Massingale said directly, her eyes on her husband's face. She went to the door, closing it and came swiftly back.
"Harold, what is it?" she cried breathlessly. "Are we ruined?"
"No!" he said, with a touch of irony in his voice. "No; it is not money matters!"
She had seen the specter of bankruptcy before her eyes at his incomprehensible entrance. She shuddered and regained her self-control with a sigh, closing her wrapper more tightly over the disarray at her breast, as if suddenly aware of impropriety in the presence of this man who had entered her rooms after years.
"Sit down!" he said, straddling a chair and resting his arms on the back. "Clara, I am very—I am exceedingly unhappy!"
At the sound of his voice, more than from the authority in his manner, her alarm flashed up anew. She seated herself hesitatingly, scenting instinctively the approach of some formless danger. For a second she had a grotesque thought, caused by the sudden irruption on her cherished privacy, that he was going to ask her to surrender her own apartment and return to his.
"Well, well! What is it?" she asked, finally prepared to resist such brutality.
"Clara, I want my liberty!"
She relaxed a little. His liberty? She had never for a moment opposed that!
"This life I am leading is a ghastly mockery! I want it to end! I want to be able to lead my own life. I want a divorce!"
She rose in her seat, stretched out her hand and stammered:
"What?"
"I have come to tell you that I am resolved to divorce!"
"Divorce!"
All at once she fell back, limp and swooning, her head fallen forward on her breast. He rose, searched among the bottles, found smelling-salts, and methodically, not quite convinced, held them to her nostrils. Then, when she started, he placed the bottle on her lap and resumed his seat.
Her first emotion, on returning from the dizziness which had not been altogether assumed, was one of profound astonishment. After almost twenty years of married life, when she felt the completest security, when her life had run smoothest along the roads she herself had directed, all at once everything was threatened, without her being able to perceive at what point she had committed an error.
"You said—divorce?" she said weakly, staring at him.
"Yes! I have come to ask you to make no opposition, if I make whatever provision you desire for yourself."
Before the detail of his manner she could no longer cherish any doubt. She became suddenly the woman of astuteness and cunning that she really was, gathering every energy to ward off the blow.
"You are not serious! It is impossible that you can be serious!" she began. She rose quickly, and gliding to the door, assured herself that Lucille was not eavesdropping.
"I never was more serious in my life!"
"Then let me say right here—and I will never change," she said, returning defiantly,—"I am Mrs. Massingale. That is my name; that is my position in the world. I will never surrender it. I will never, never consent to a divorce, on any grounds whatsoever!"
"Let us discuss!" he said quietly, resolved to push the matter no further than the statement of intention, and, above all, to preserve his self-respect.
"Discuss? There is nothing to discuss!" she cried, with rising anger. "What have you to reproach me with? I have been a faithful wife all my married life. I have never made you ridiculous; I have never dishonored your name! Of how many women can you say the same in our world? I have run your house for you, and I have let you go your way, lead your life, do as you pleased, without complaint! And now, I am the one to be sacrificed? Never! You may have your idea of marriage. I have mine! I regard it as a holy sacrament that nothing can divide but death!"
"Clara, I warn you," he said quietly, "that the matter is too serious for scenes. I am fully resolved!"
"So am I!"
"May I ask you what our marriage has been?" he said, growing angry in spite of himself. "Yes, I believe in all you say, when marriage is a marriage! But when it is simply a convenient legal phrase to yoke together two human beings who have not the slightest interest in common in the world—"
"What?"
"My dear Clara," he said icily, "let me say a few plain words to you! We have lived twenty years together as you have wished it and as I have agreed. This house might be a hotel, and we passing guests, for all the marriage there has been to it! Let's go back! You married me for money and position!"
"Harold! I—"
"Don't lie!" he said, forced at last into the inevitable brutality of matrimonial discussion. "You never loved me! You loved what I had to give you! Come, you're not going to pretend, now, that there ever was a question of love in it? But then I thought so! You were very clever! More, you even made me believe—you, a young girl—that you loved me passionately, that you were capable of passion! You succeeded, as you intended, in carrying me off my feet!"
She looked at him, incapable of retort, overwhelmed with shame. She had never believed, in all these years, that he had comprehended this.
"Afterward I discovered the truth!" he continued. "I found I had united myself fatuously with a perfectly cold woman, to whom I was even repulsive!"
"Harold!"
"Physically speaking!" he added. "Who was cunningly intent on pushing me out of the way, and building up a hollow, conventionally brilliant, social life of her own. I ended by shrugging my shoulders and taking what I could out of the world in an amused, dilettante way. Every word I say is true! And now, when at forty-five I have the chance to live the life you denied me, you would stop me by any such mummery as the sacredness of this marriage! What? You would prevent me now when I come to you gently, quietly, and say to you: 'I love, I want to live, I want to be free from a bond that is nothing to you, to know what is real'—when I ask you to give me a chance to find in another what you scorn to give!"
"But you speak only of the physical!" she cried, aghast.
"No; I speak of the difference between the living and the dead!" he cried passionately. "I speak of a woman who, when she is in your arms, clings to you and cries out words of love, whose eyes shine with your coming, who listens for your step, who doesn't hide behind prudery, but adores you as a living, throbbing human being, who is not ashamed of her love, who is natural, whose lips have kisses and whose arms seize you to her, who has youth, fire, life!"
"But you are mad, infatuated! You don't know what you are saying!" she cried, recoiling in terror. "But then, you wish to marry again!"
"Again? No! I want a real marriage!" he cried.
There was a pause, during which he brought himself back to calm, and she rapidly ran over in her mind the possible woman in her own set who might have thus awakened him.
"Clara, do not let us lose our sense of dignity," he said solemnly. "I do not expect you to answer to-night."
"I will never consent!" she cried, flaring up.
"I don't expect your answer to-night," he repeated slowly. "I shall return here to-morrow afternoon atfour. By that time you will have reflected; you will perceive the monstrous iniquity of keeping me from a happiness that is perfectly indifferent to you. Moreover, I will make any settlement on you that you indicate. You will probably realize by that time that nothing in your mode of living need be changed; this house shall be yours; all that is sacrificed is a little vanity, the public recognition of a loss that has never meant anything to you!"
"Wait!" she said, with a rapid calculation. "Do I know the woman? Is it one of my friends?"
"It is not! It is some one, a young girl, from an entirely different world," he replied, and went out.
She remained embattled, and yet with the hovering sense of defeat, striving to explain the catastrophe.
"Ah, if I had had a child this never could have happened!" she cried all at once, striking her forehead.
Despite his assurance, the next day, after a night of horror, she called up a dozen friends, seeking fruitlessly to learn of the woman. She consulted three of her most particular confidantes as to what course she should adopt. All three agreed on absolute resistance. The first said to her:
"My dear, treat him as a friend. Be sympathetic! Find out who she is. Point out to him that she is intriguing for his money. Act, not as an enemy, but as an adviser!"
The second added:
"Pretend to consider the proposition; then ask him for a year's delay, for his sake and for yours, to be sure that it is not a passing infatuation. In a year, especially if there is no opposition, great changes can take place!"
The third agreed with the others, with this addition:
"In a year he will either grow tired of her, or she will have become his mistress, and he may become thoroughly satisfied with the arrangement. Whatever you do, delay!"
At four o'clock, as the last adviser was hurrying out, Massingale entered. She was instantly struck with the intensity of the emotion that consumed him, which laid the telltale shadows of its fatigue in the hollows about his eyes and the stern drawn lines of his mouth.
"Before we go any further," she said carefully, "since I am to be sacrificed, may I at least ask you a few questions?"
"That is fair!" he said, deceived by her tone into a bounding hope that she would consent.
"Are you perfectly sure of this young girl, Harold?"
"Absolutely!"
"Who is she?"
He hesitated a moment.
"She is twenty-two; she is from the Middle West; she has been a little on the stage."
"And you are sure that she is disinterested?"
"Absolutely!"
"You are at the age when men are victims of such infatuations!" she said, looking down. "Perhaps I myself have been to blame! If you will wait a year,be sure, positively sure"—she stopped, blushed red, and said rapidly—"I will try to be to you, Harold, all that you want."
Even in the tensity of the moment, the incongruity of this unexpected solution struck him as so sublimely ludicrous that he laughed aloud. Also he perceived her maneuver, at once undeceived. She drew herself up, stung to the soul, prey to an anger that swept aside all caution.
"Well, no! I will never consent! You shall never have a divorce so long as I can stop it! Go, live with your mistress."
"She is not my mistress!" he said, white with anger.
"A girl on the stage! You are ridiculous! You will make yourself the laughing-stock of New York, my dear fellow, with your little girl! And you think she loves you? Fool! don't you know what her game is?"
"Don't judge all women by yourself, Clara Bayne!" he said between his teeth, giving her her girlhood name. But instantly, digging his nails in his hands, he said in a different tone: "I beg your pardon! I am very irritated, in a very nervous state. I don't want to lose control of myself! Clara, you are too generous, too honest a woman, deliberately to force her to be my mistress!"
"I force her?" she cried furiously. "If she has taken the love of a married man, she is that already! Let her go on!"
"Do you mean this?" he said sternly.
"I certainly do!"
"You will not give the woman I love and respect the right to be my wife—to love me honestly before the world? Do you mean this?"
"I am your wife, and you shall never take that from me!"
"You have never been my wife!" he cried, beside himself. "You, a pure girl, deliberately set about to win me, as acocotedoes! Wife? You have taken my money to pay for your pleasures and your luxuries, and you have not even been my mistress! You a moral woman!"
"How dare you?" she cried, unrecognizable in her rage.
"A last time. Will you permit me to get a divorce?"
"No!" She uttered it as a shriek, fallen back against the wall.
"Then, madam, I will force you to do it!" he exclaimed, slamming his fist on a little table with such violence that it sent a shower of books clattering to the floor.
He left her clinging to the wall, choking with rage, descended to his car, and gave Dodo's address. The interview had left him in just that state of frenzy he needed to do the thing he would have hesitated long to do in his day of calm. The life that he had claimed from his wife rose up doubly precious to him for the proclaiming. He would cut off his wife without a cent; he would force her to sue him for abandonment, if not from shame, from positive necessity. Anyhow,the die was cast! He had cut away from all the old life! He would go with Dodo to-night, racing into the new, as she had wished. After a few months, a year, abroad, traveling in hidden countries, when his wife had come to her senses and procured a divorce, he would marry Dodo. They would not come back to New York, but the world was wide. Marriage exalted everything. He would not be the first so to do. Abroad, in Paris, London, Rome, such romances were understood. He jumped out and ran hastily up the stairs, knocked, and came tempestuously into the room.
He saw her with hands clasped over her breast, standing tremulously sweet, swaying with fear of his coming. He held out his arms, caught her violently to him, buried his head in the cool regions of her neck, caressed by the fragrant youth of her hair, uttering but one word:
"Come!"
She heard it, rather frightened, alarmed, too, at the personal disorder that shook him like a leaf, alarmed at the man who had at last come to where she had wished him. She said to herself, incredulously, that she was happy—wildly, deliriously happy; and she remained quiet, passing her hands soothingly over his bent head, alert, as if listening for some sound in the air.
"You will come?" he said suddenly, holding her from him.
"Yes!" she said in a whisper.
"Now—to-night—far off—with me?"
"Yes! How has it happened?" she said breathlessly. "Why now? Why are you willing, all at once?"
"Because I no longer care for anything else but you!" he cried—"friends, career, reputation. Because I can't live without you, Dodo! Because nothing else in life is life but you! Because I've come to hate it all—the rest! Dodo, I love you! I can't be without you!"
"At last!" she said mechanically, staring at him.
She did not draw away, though his lips sought hers. She longed for that oblivion which had first come to her in his arms, that quieting of the senses that drew the day from before her eyes and closed her ears to all but the faintest, far-off murmurings. She did not resist, but eagerly awaited this masculine mastery that once had awakened all the slumbering passionate fires within her. She wanted to forget again, to be overwhelmed, balanced in his arms, a weak contented thing, leaping hungrily to his contact, delirious and on fire. But no such oblivion arrived. She felt herself poignantly awake, curiously, critically conscious of a hundred questions against her brain, wondering at him, at his frenzy—feeling none herself, nor knowing why.
All at once from the other room the voice of Snyder startled them, singing raucously:
"Who are you with to-night, to-night?Oh, who are you with to-night?Will you tell your wife in the morningWho you are with to-night?"
He straightened up suddenly, recollecting himself.
"Ah, no! Don't go!" she cried, as she had on that first night when they had been swept together. He seemed so strange to her now! She wanted to have time to know him, this new Massingale!
"No, no!" he said hoarsely. "I don't dare—I can't—it's beyond me! Dodo, at seven o'clock can you be ready?"
"Two hours only!"
"Take only a valise. Let everything be new! Can you do it?"
"Yes!"
"I will go and arrange my affairs, make preparations and be back here at seven precisely. We'll dine, and then—the night express for the West, as you wished!"
"Yes!"
"I will telephone. You will come down. I will be at the corner, waiting, at seven!"
"Yes!"
He caught her again in his arms, lifting her off her feet, half mad with recklessness and impatience, and started toward the door. Suddenly he turned, came back, and catching her shoulders in his two hands, looked at her savagely.
"What is it?" she said faintly. Could this be what she had made of Massingale?
"I am throwing everything to the winds, Dodo!—giving up my whole life for you!" he said breathlessly. "You will come, Dodo?"
"I will—I must!" she said in wonder.
Massingale had come so tempestuously, had gone so like a roaring blast, that she had felt swept up and whirled about in a revolving, benumbing cycle. She followed him in a daze to the hall, leaning over the balusters, watching the slipping white of his hand descend and vanish. She crossed to the window, peering through the blurred dripping panes for a last sight of his skidding car. Then she returned, perceived the door left open, closed it and came incredulously back.
"So I am going! It's all decided. All!" she whispered.
It was no longer the fabric of dreams, but actuality, that confronted her. This was new, uncomprehended, despite all her dramatizations. This was a fact. She was to leave in two hours, vanish forever from the curious massive room, with its belfried clock over the roofs and its blank brick wall at the side, out into the gray restlessness of a March night. Whither? With whom? With a strange man—a Massingale she had wrought herself, and whom she now scarcely recognized.
"I love him. I said I would go! It's what I've wanted all along!" she repeated, struck by the idea. "Yes, that's true; it's what I've wanted!"
But now there was a difference. For the first time, it was not she who sought to incite him to misty romance, but the man himself who had come and asked. It was no longer a question of how he loved, where he would go at her beckoning, her will over him. All this had been miraculously achieved. It was now only a matter of what she would do, and she had said that she would go—in two short hours! She remained immovable and listening, and already it seemed to her that she felt the shaken iron rush of a flying train, hurrying her onward into the unknown.
"Snyder!"
Terrified, overwhelmed with loneliness, she had cried out, longing for a human soul to listen, ready to pour out her whole story in confidence. But no answer returned. She went hastily to the door and flung it open. The room was empty, filled only with the vague shadows in the same barren dusk that pervaded her own. She returned, lighted the feeble gas-jet by her bed, and going to the embrasure of the window, sat down, her hands weakly in her lap, her head thrown back, gazing inertly at the yellow clock-face rising through the rain flurries.
No! This Massingale was not the man who had held her in fascination by his quiet mastery, whom she had despaired ever to move! Yet she had wished to see him thus, uncontrolled, at her feet, wild and shaken! She had wished it; yet, at the bottom, had she ever really believed it possible? Now, the spectacle of his disorder rather terrified her, and this terror brought a certain liberation. She was satisfied; shecould wish for no completer victory over this man who, by a trick of fate, scarce five months ago had caught and tamed her. How the rôles were reversed! How abject was now his surrender! For her he was sacrificing everything—career, friends, family, all—to go out with her into dark ways. What had she wrought, a miracle or a crime?
"I must pack; I must make ready!" she said to herself. But she did not rise. No longer framing her thoughts, lost in indefiniteness, prey to a heavy mental stupor, her hands lay weakly in her lap, her head thrown back, staring. Later her fingers stopped upon the sharp facets of the ring which had been pledged as a troth. Garry! What should she say to him? How make him understand? She rose heavily, and going to the writing-desk, brought back pad and pencil. Slowly, seeing dimly the sheet on her lap, she began:
"Garry dear: I am going away—"
"Garry dear: I am going away—"
She stopped. She could not add another word. What could be added? The pencil slipped from her fingers, the pad slid finally to the floor. She returned again into the stupor, incapable of thought or action, waiting, seeing only the jerky advance of a minute-hand around the yellow surface, until an hour had gone by without a single preparation.
All at once a tear gathered in her eye and went slowly down her cheek—a tear of profound fatigue, of listlessness, rather than the touch of an aching thought. This tear, hot and unbidden, seemed to dissipate, all at once, the frigidity of her mind. She sat up hastily, with a frightened glance at the clock. It was already past six.
"What am I doing?" she thought, dismayed. "He's coming! I must hurry!"
She went to the closet and brought out a dress-suit-case, laid it open across a table and gazed helplessly about her. What next?
Ten minutes later, Snyder, coming hastily in, found her camped on the floor, sorting an enormous pile of stockings, which she rolled and unrolled without decision. Nothing had yet been placed in the open suit-case, though every drawer was ajar and every trunk-lid up.
"Dodo!" cried Snyder, with a rapid survey. "In the name of heaven, what are you up to?"
Snyder's arrival was like a ray of hope to Doré. She rose quickly, her strength of mind suddenly restored—at last some one to whom she could talk, to whom she could tell of the great romance that was sweeping her on!
"Snyder, I'm leaving now, at seven o'clock," she said firmly.
"Leaving, honey? For how long?"
"I guess forever, Snyder!" she answered, with a little shortness of breath.
Snyder, with a quick motion flung off her rain-coat, rolling it in a ball and hurling it through the open door into her room. Then she went rapidly to Dodo, grasping her arms, peering into her face, crying:
"Dodo! That Massingale?"
She nodded, answering aggressively:
"I adore him!"
The woman recoiled, wringing her hands, overcome with grief, crying:
"Oh, petty, petty! I knew it would come! O God of mercy!"
"But, Snyder, I am happy!" Doré said. Yet the words seemed to her heavy, there in the shadowy room, watching, amazed, the agony of affection and terror that shook the woman.
"Happy!" cried Snyder, with a mocking laugh. "God! Do you know what you are doing?"
"Yes, yes, I know!" Suddenly a thought struck her, and she added hastily: "Snyder, you are wrong! It isn't Massingale. It's I who have done it all!"
"That's what you think!"
"No, no; it's so!"
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know!"
"When?"
"To-night!"
"And after?"
"What?"
"And after?"
"I don't understand!"
"What's he going to do? Give up his wife? Divorce her?"
"No, no!"
"And after!—what's to become of you?"
Dodo was silent. All the fantastic scheme she had imagined—a year, and then each to return—seemedso inadequate an answer now. All at once Snyder, in a sudden rage, bounded to the table, and catching the suit-case, flung it scurrying across the room.
"No, petty! You shan't do it! I won't let him. I'll kill him first!"
"Snyder, Snyder, you don't understand!" she cried.
"Don't I? I know! Honey, I tell you, I know! You're the one who don't understand! Honey, I tell you, it ain't a fair world! No; it's a rotten unfair world! The chances ain't equal! A woman ain't a man! Think of your own security first, honey. You've got to, or God help you! I know!"
"What do you mean, Snyder?"
"I mean, you shan't do what I did!" said the woman, clutching her arm—"what I did blindly!"
"You weren't—"
"Married? Never! You didn't know it? I thought you guessed. The others did!"
"No, no! I thought, at times—but I didn't know!"
"Do you know where I had my child?" she said, folding her arms across her heart and flinging back her head as if to breast a storm. "I, nineteen years old, a girl? In a charity hospital, between a black woman and a raging shrieking dago with the fear of death in her! The story? Hell! Any one's story! What does that matter? Anyhow, I believed! I had ideas, like you: liberty, woman same as man. That suited him! It suits them all! What do they risk? Honey, if I told you what I went through those lastmonths, you'd never look at a man again! You think I'm bitter, hard? Yes, I am hard, through and through! And I believed in him. And proud? God! how proud I was!"
"Snyder! Snyder!" She put out her hands as if to ward off the picture that rose luridly to her eyes.
"You don't know—no woman knows what the hell of suffering is," she continued doggedly, "until they're caught, until they've got to bring into the world another soul, and you stand branded, with every tongue against you! God! What a world! You marry—you're safe! You can be a fiend incarnate, lower than the gutter. Nothing to say! But the other? To be a girl, to believe, to love, to bear a child, as God intended you to, in love—every one against you, your own family cursin' you, closing the doors on you, telling you to go and starve! Don't talk to me! I know! Marry, honey, marry! You've got to, in this world!"
She was weeping now, and the sight of these unwonted tears on the iron countenance of Snyder terrified Dodo more than all she had heard. She felt now very little, very weak, far from the volatile Dodo of dreams and fantasies.
"Oh, Snyder!" she cried brokenly, "why didn't you tell me before? I've misjudged you so!"
"Yes, you've done that!" said Snyder, flinging away the tears and coming back into the steeled attitude again. "You thought I didn't care for the kid—for Betty; didn't you?"
Dodo nodded dumbly, great lumps in her throat.
"Why, honey, I love the ground she walks on! Ilive for her! Every cent I can scrape together she's to have! She's to go to the finest school, to get an education. She's to marry, have a home!..."
"But then, Snyder, why put her away from you?"
"Why?" She stopped, drew a long breath, crossed her arms with a characteristic brutal motion and said, her face set in hardness: "That's the horror of it! Because, honey,—don't you see?—I'm training myself to do without her, training myself to go on without depending on others, doing for myself. You don't see? Supposin' I had her with me, bless her heart! Supposin' I got to tying up my life to hers, needing her, clinging to her? Then what would come? The day would come when she'd learn the truth, and turn against me. And—God! I couldn't stand anything more!"
"Oh, no, Snyder, she wouldn't!"
"Yes, she would! I know!" she said, shrugging her shoulders. "No. Better as it is! I'm getting used to myself. It's a rut, but it keeps me going!"
Dodo sank into a chair, shuddering and cold, burying her face in her hands.
"Snyder! Snyder! Why did you tell me?"
"Because I love you, honey! You know I love you! I couldn't see anything hard happen to you! It's not a fair world, petty! You've got to play the game. A woman's got to think of her security first, I tell you! For, when you get on the other side of the wall, it's hell! All your arguing about what ought to be don't change it! That's why I say to you, 'And after?' Supposin' you can believe him, suppose hedies in the next months, where'll you turn? It's a rotten world. They're millions and millions, and you're only just yourself!"
"Don't! Don't! No more!" she cried. "Oh, Snyder, what am I going to do?"
Yes, she felt this inequality now. Millions on millions against one, all her courage gone, dismayed, aghast before the ugliness of reality. Courage? She had none, not the slightest shred of daring left! She drew back against the wall, huddled and little, so weak, so tired, so unable to struggle any longer!
"Ah, what am I going to do?"
"I'll tell you, honey," said Snyder, starting toward her with outstretched arms. But, as she advanced, there came a knock, and answering Dodo's terrified gesture by one of assurance, she went to the door.
"No one—no one! I can see no one!" said Dodo, recoiling.
Snyder received the card from Josephus, said something unintelligible, and came back radiant. One glance at her face made Dodo suspect the truth. She sprang forward with a frightened cry:
"Who is it? Snyder, tell me!"
But the woman, struggling, refused the card.
"It's not Garry? Not he?" she said frantically. "Any one but him! I won't see him! I won't!"
And, as she was still struggling to see the card, the door opened and Garry came powerfully in. Dodo stopped short, caught her throat with an exclamation of terror, her head thrown back against the table,looking at the strong glowing figure with the light of resurrection in his eyes; and as she looked, all at once a beneficent calm seemed to fall about her, clothing her with peace. All the good she had accomplished was there. She looked at him, and she knew!
Snyder, gliding to him, said but three words:
"Now! At once!"
Then, drawing back, she remained by the door to her room, her whole being concentrated on the scene, her hands clasped as if in prayer.
He came directly to Doré, and lifted her up in his arms, clear of the floor, not rapaciously or uncontrolled, as the acquisition of the other men, but cradling her like a child, tender and strong, his lips on the lightest fluttering golden tress of her hair. She felt no passion, but a great thankfulness; and she closed her eyes.
"Ah, Dodo, how have I ever lived a day from you!" he said rapidly. "Child, how I love you! Poor, tired little child, with such a great strength! How have I ever existed a day away from you?"
Suddenly he set her down reverently, and said firmly:
"Now, put on your coat and hat!"
She looked up at him, too tearfully happy to comprehend.
"Your coat and hat, and come!" he said, smiling his strong adoring smile.
The next moment Snyder had stepped to her side,holding out her coat. She had one arm in, her eyes on him, when suddenly she started away, comprehending.
"What do you mean? Where?" she asked breathlessly.
"To end all this, Dodo! To marry me—to begin a real life—our life!" he said firmly.
She went from him, shaking her head, putting out her hands in her characteristic defensive gesture.
"No, no, Garry, I can't! It wouldn't be fair—it wouldn't be just to you!"
"What wouldn't be fair? Child, don't you realize that you love me?"
"No, I don't, Garry; I don't know!"
"I know!" he said triumphantly. "Every letter you've written me has breathed it! And now—Dodo, can you doubt?"
"Listen, Garry!" she said, tormented with the fear of harming him, fighting against her own happiness. "I do care for you! I always have! But how? That I don't know! Garry, I tell you, I don't know anything to-night, but that I'm a miserable weak creature! Wait! Wait until I can know! Until I can be sure!"
"Put on your coat now!" he said, with a confident laugh.
"No, no! Don't you see?" she cried, shrinking away. "Don't you realize that I wouldn't harm you for anything in the world? I won't come to you until I'm sure I love you—you, and only you!"
"You will come now with me, and end all this nonsense!"
"To-morrow!"
"No, to-night!"
"But if I don't love you?"
"If you don't now, you will love me!" he said immovably. "Come, this must be ended! You're almost crazy now! You can't think or act! I'll take all responsibilities!"
He strode up to her, the coat in his hands, holding it out as she still shrank away.
"Oh, Garry! It isn't right! I haven't any strength left. I don't know anything! I'm not myself—no, I'm not myself! Be generous!"
"What are you afraid of? Of not loving me?" he cried.
"Yes—yes! Of not—of not—" She caught her voice and cried: "Oh, Garry! I am not worthy of you! I'm a vain, foolish, wild creature! You don't know me—how wicked I am! But I won't harm you! I wouldn't be unjust! Please! Please!"
She was struggling now, with a yielding strength. He caught her arms and drew her coat over them.
"Dodo, dear, I know! Believe me, I know!"
"But to-morrow?"
"No, now! Come! I'll take all responsibility!"
Abruptly, stridently, the telephone rang, and with it the booming notes of seven o'clock.
She gave a cry, frantic, remembering Massingale.
"No, no! Never! Not to-night! I will not!"
He stepped between her and the still ringing telephone.
"You shan't answer! You shall come with me!"
"No! For your sake, Garry, for your sake, I tell you!" she cried, her extended hands shaking with the intensity of her pleading. Massingale and the self she could not trust terrified her. No; she could never come to him with this fear of what another man had awakened in her veins. The telephone ceased. She had torn off her coat. He came quietly to her, unflinching in his resolve.
"Dodo, did you understand me, dear?" he said gently. "I will take all responsibilities!"
"You don't know what that means!" she said hoarsely.
"I do know!"
At this moment she saw Snyder in the corner, kneeling, her hands clasped above her head. A sudden flood of tears came to her. He drew the coat once more about her, his voice, too, shaken:
"Your hat now!"
She obeyed, reaching out her hand, holding it.
"Garry, I haven't the right!" she said brokenly. "If—if I weren't so weak! If—if—"
"Put it on!" he said.
"Oh, Garry! What will happen?" she said heavily. "Promise, whatever happens—forgive—"
She could not finish; her voice became inarticulate. And blindly obeying the touch of his fingers, she put on her hat, grotesquely turned about. The next moment his arm was about her, seeming to lift her from the ground. At the door, again the telephone burst out. She shrank back, afraid to pass it, seeing an omen.
"Come!" he said obstinately.
His arm tightened about her body, not to be denied. Her head buried against his shoulder, her hands clutching his coat, they swept out of the room, down-stairs and bravely into the pattering gusty night. Up-stairs the telephone continued to ring a long time, clamoring and insistent. And for a long time the figure of Snyder remained kneeling and tense and motionless.
At ten o'clock Snyder started from her seat. Dodo had come into the room. She was against the door, her face tortured and white, her eyes very big.
"His wife!" she said solemnly. She held up her hand, on which a thin gold band was shining. "We leave to-night. He is waiting below. Tell me, did he come?"
"Yes!"
"You told him?"
"I told him!"
She caught at her throat, and made as if to ask further questions, but suddenly checked herself, went to the desk and drew out writing-paper. She wrote but a few words, though once she stopped and rested her forehead in her hands. Then she rose.
"For him—yourself!" she said with difficulty. "To-night. This too."
With a hurried movement she joined the bracelet to the letter, and suddenly seized the woman in a straining desperate grip.
"Snyder! Snyder! If you've ever prayed for me—pray now!"
She drew her veil hurriedly over her tortured white face, and went rapidly away into the night.
And what became of Dodo? Did she completely change—in a twinkling, and changing by the divine dispensation of being a woman, forget that other turbulent self? Only once again did she return into the hazardous life of old—a last flash of the dramatic impulse—and the adventure came close to a final tragedy. Six months after that rainy March night when she had gone weakly into the rain on Garry's imperious arm, she set foot in New York once more.
Perhaps it was the tragic splendor of these Towers of Babel aflame against the night, after all the grim months of victorious struggle and abnegation; perhaps it was something deeper within her that drove her to slip from the sober cloak of matrimony and once again try the perilous paths of the Salamander.
At three o'clock the next afternoon, she left her hotel, after procuring a promise from her husband that he would not attempt to follow her. Below Jock Lindaberry's automobile was waiting, a footman at the door. She gave the familiar number of Miss Pim's on lower Madison and sank against the cushioned back. A mirror caught her reflection and she gazed with a queer tugging sensation of the incongruities of time. It was Dodo and it was not Dodo atall. The figure was still fragile, the alert poised eagerness was still in the glance and the arch mischief in the smile, but that was all. The old rebellion, the recklessness, the nervous unrest were gone. She looked incredulously upon a woman of the world, soberly attired in blues and blacks, correctly bonneted and veiled, a woman at peace, pensive and settled, with a note of authority. She gazed long with memory haunted eyes, half inclined to laughter and half verging on tears. Now that she had set recklessly out in search of the past, she began to experience a little doubt. Familiar corners, a glimpse of a restaurant, ways by which she had so often returned, brought her a strange disturbance. Which was real, Dodo Baxter or the present Mrs. Lindaberry?
At the door she dismissed the automobile, aware of sudden eyes in windows above and climbed the brownstone steps. The emotion of familiarity was so instantaneous that absent-mindedly she found herself seeking in her purse for a departed latch-key. Not Josephus but another darky answered her ring. On the hat-rack was a disordered heap of letters which other girls tremulously would come to sort. In the musty parlor with its Sunday solemnity a couple were whispering, sinking their voices in sudden consciousness at her arrival. She groped her way into the obscurity of the stairs, thinking with a little melancholy of the girl and the man below, playing the old, old game. On the second landing, from the room that once was Ida's, another girl in hasty kimono was saying,
"You answer—tell him I went out with another man—make out I'm furious—"
She caught herself at Dodo's rustling coming, eying her curiously and then as though reassured ended, "If he responds with a bid for dinner, grab it!"
The whispering plotters recalled a hundred fragments of the old life, as though one cry had started echoes from every corner and cranny. She went on a little saddened by the sound of old accents in new mouths. So even she had not been different from the rest. Other Dodos would come and go as she had passed, as everything changed and gave way to the same renewals. Then she opened the door of her room and saw Snyder standing—gazing eagerly at her.
She did not cross immediately, waiting by the door, lost in familiar details of patched walls and carpets, noting changes, the absence of confusion, the new note of bare simplicity.
"It doesn't seem quite the same—without the trunks. You've moved the couch, too. Funny, queer old room!" she said solemnly.
For the trunks that had served so often as impromptu bureaus, were gone, all save one,—those trunks that were always gaping open, in such fine disorder. Then there were no flowers, sporting their gay extravagance from rickety table or smoky mantel and the great gilt mirror which had leaned in the corner had departed, too. Yet all the familiar old seemed incredibly distant: even that rapid figure her imagination conjured up, perched on a trunk beforethe dressing-table studying a disastrous hole in a golden stocking. Was that Dodo and if so where had been the present self all that tempestuous time? Suddenly she noted the figure of the woman waiting on her tensely. She raised her veil, crossed quickly, holding out her arms.
"How is he—how is Mr. Lindaberry?" said Snyder at once.
"Garry? Magnificent—every inch a man."
"And you?"
"And I?" she asked a little puzzled.
"You're happy, aren't you?" said Snyder breathlessly.
"Oh—very happy—" She added with careful emphasis, "Very, very happy!"
She slipped off her black fur jacket and was about to toss it on a chair when she stopped, folded it carefully and handed it to Snyder.
"I forgot. Seems like old times for us to be here and you waiting on me." She took off her gloves, rolled them in a ball and tossed them to Snyder who placed them beside the coat on the bed. She added, seeking to give the conversation a casual note: "You got my letter of course. It's all right? I can have the room for the afternoon—alone?"
"Sure."
"I don't need to explain, do I?" she said rapidly. "It's—"
"Shut up, honey," said Snyder in the old rough manner, "it's all yours."
"No one will come?"
"No one ever comes."
"And who's in that room—Winona's?" she asked, walking to the door and listening.
"She's gone from noon—teaching Fifth Avenue to walk like Hester Street. Don't know her. She's new."
She passed the dressing-table, still crowded with her knickknacks and mementoes.
"Snyder," she said surprised, "you've kept all those crazy things. Heavens, what didn't I used to do!" She sat down before the table, shaking her head at the strange reflection. "Is it possible!" Then turning quickly she said, "And you, Snyder? Tell me all about yourself."
"Me? Sliding to fame on greased rails," said Snyder pleased. "Two hundred dollars a week now. Fact. Betty? She'll marry a dook yet!"
Dodo rose and taking from her purse a pendant, a diamond cross with a pearl in the center, held it out.
"It's for Betty—the first thing we bought. It's to bring her everything in the world."
"My lord—" said Snyder aghast. "Look here—that ain't right—it must have cost—"
"Hush, you funny old thing," said Dodo, silencing her. "Don't you know it never—never could cost enough!"
But before another word could be exchanged Miss Pim burst effusively into the room, ruffling like a motherly fowl.
"Dodo! Land's sake what a swell you've become!"
She bore down, open-armed, for a convulsive hug but Dodo extending a formal hand checked her.
"How do you do—very glad to see you, I'm sure."
"Two men, Dodo! Chauffeur and footman!" exclaimed Miss Pim, blundering a little over the defensive handshake, but unabashed. "My, I think I should expire on the spot if I ever went up Fifth Avenue behind a chauffeuranda footman. You lucky, lucky girl—who'd have thought you'd make such a match—you such a fly-away! Well, you always were my favorite."
Again the door slapped enthusiastically against the wall and Anita Morgan bounded in, all eyes and exclamations.
"Dodo! The lord be praised! Won't Clarice be surprised? Heard about her? She's domesticated too—oddles of money—old gent in splendid state of ill health! My, won't she be crazy to see you! How well you look! Clever puss! Always said you were the slyest of us all!"
"Heavens, Anita, do be careful," said Dodo, disengaging herself from the reckless embrace, "you're tearing me to pieces!"
Anita, jumping on the table, rocking enthusiastically, rushed on:
"How's Garry—the darling!"
"Mr. Lindaberry's health is quite satisfactory," said Dodo coldly.
"Come off!" said Anita with a laugh. "Guess I played round with Garry before you ever did. I say, Do, I'm just dying for a good old bust! Lord, it'sbeen slow since you went. Gee, everything's broke up. Ida's a hundred years married—can't talk anything but the price of eggs and Brussel carpets. Thank the lord, Dodo, you and Garry are back to start something!"
Snyder by the mantelpiece was standing grimly prepared, watching for developments, while Miss Pim overawed was listening open-mouthed.
"My dear Anita," said Dodo quietly, "I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed again. We are going to be very quiet—much too quiet for you!"
Something in the cold decision of the tone opened Anita's eyes. She looked at Dodo with a new vision, with a flare-up of that fierce caste antagonism which Dodo once had felt so brutally, face to face with Mrs. Massingale.
"Dear me, as late as that!" she said, glancing at a wrist watch with extra nonchalance. "I must be rushing. So glad though to have had this glimpse." She shook hands airily. "You look quite shaken down, dear—quite matronly. I should never have thought it. Good-by. My love to poor old Garry."
She went out languidly, her head in the air. Miss Pim remained, shuffling from foot to foot, awed and embarrassed, wondering how to exit with dignity.
Dodo, quite at her ease and determined, came to her aid.
"My dear Miss Pim, there are certain things I must talk over with Snyder. If you will wait for me—down-stairs, I'll drop in as I go out—since I was always your favorite!"
"Down-stairs?" said Miss Pim, absolutely dazed by this easy air of patronage.
"Yes, that's it."
"Oh, down-stairs?" she repeated, open-mouthed.
She turned, gazed at Snyder, bumped against the table and sidled out of the room, staring at Dodo in consternation.
Snyder who had been silently enjoying the scene stepped forward, folding her arms abruptly.
"Right, honey—you've got your chance now. Cut away all the rest!"