CHAPTER SEVEN
Herrick was happier than he had been for a long time as he sat bareheaded on the upper deck and thought back over the day with Jean and of how she had looked as he kissed her. It excited him and made him tender to remember the look in her eyes, and the faint smile deepened as he wondered what she was thinking now. Her lips had not responded in the least, but she had seemed neither angry nor frightened. She had accepted it as she would have accepted a leaf falling from the acacia above. And yet he was sure that she had not often, if ever, been kissed by a man. In some ways she was strangely primitive and in others she seemed to have lived through and left behind in ages past the ordinary emotional reactions. Herrick's brain was on fire with expectation and curiosity. The memory of the kiss quickened his mind more than his body, and his own reaction thrilled him with a new sensation.
He was happy. So happy that he could not go quietly to bed. Nor could he walk alone in the empty streets. His nerves wanted the relaxation of companionship. The perfect day wanted a touch of contrast to finish its perfection. He needed to frame the memory of Jean's cool lips, possess it alone in another setting.
A few moments later he crossed the studio amid the shrieks and catcalls of The Bunch, straight to the couch where The Kitten was curled alone.
"So you thought you'd come and see whether we were alive. It's awfully good of you! But you know we're hard to kill. Skin's so thick the little stings and arrows don't get through, somehow."
The Kitten drawled between puffs of her cigarette and did not move to make room for Herrick.
He lifted her, deposited her farther back among the cushions and tried to take her hand. She was so furious and making such a ridiculous pretense, just as she used to, that Herrick's feel of youth and well-being increased. It was as if the memory of these old tricks, now powerless to hurt, gave him back three years of time. At thirty-three, Herrick wanted the past.
"But claws do, Kittycat."
"If we'd known you were going to honor us," persisted The Kitten, "we'd have ordered champagne. As it is, we only had the same old ink, and that's gone."
"A cigarette, a jug of ink and thou!"
"You—you——" Then, fearing she was going to cry, she stopped.
Across the room a tall girl with flat, red hair and small red-rimmed eyes like glowing embers in the white ash of her face, broke off a sentence in the middle.
"Who's that man over there, just come in, with The Kitten?"
Flop glared at this interest on the part of his newest inspiration.
"Franklin Herrick, alias Boy Blue. He used to be the real thing, but he hasn't been round for ages."
The girl still stared. "I'd like to model him," she said slowly. "He walks like a panther, has the forehead of a saint and the mouth of a gutter rat."
"Great! Why don't you tell him? He'd be furious inside and look as if he were going to kiss you."
"Maybe I will—if I get a chance."
"You won't. The Kitten's been sharpening her claws for months."
On the couch Herrick was holding The Kitten's hands, stroking them softly.
"Who's the other woman?"
Flop's laugh bellowed above the noise. "You female Conan Doyle." His voice dropped. "A serious impossibility—bromide to the limit—but she has a good skin."
"Brains?"
"Oh, don't ask me."
"What's he see in her?"
"What are you so interested for? How do I know what any man sees in a woman? You're all alike. I suppose when Herrick tries to kiss her she screams, and that'd be enough to interest him."
The girl smiled. When she smiled the corners of her lips turned up over small, uneven teeth. With a shrug of indifference she slipped her hand into Flop's and they turned toward an excited group at the other end. Here a slight man in a brown flannel shirt and red tie, with gestures preserved from his student days in Paris, was arguing a technical point in Verlaine. But as none of his listeners understood French, he was finding it hard to maintain the requisite heat. When he caught sight of the girl he appealed to her excitedly in a French whose studied correctness made her laugh. She answered in a flood of rapid patois incomprehensible to him. A smile ran round the group. Instantly the girl's mood changed.
"Listen. It is impossible to translate. But listen. You will hear his heart beating, throb, throb, in the French."
Her arms dropped to her sides. The heavy white lids lowered over the red eyes. For a moment she stood so, artificial and decadent. Then she began in a low, sweet voice that seemed to have nothing to do with her body.
Her voice flowed in waves across the great room and melted into the shadows. Flop listened with his hands before his face. The strutting of the man in the brown shirt ceased. The Kitten hid her face on Herrick's shoulder and his arms closed about her.
The girl went on, poem after poem. Herrick's eyes filled with tears and his hold tightened on The Kitten. She shivered, pressed her lips deeper into his neck, and kissed him with sudden, sharp kisses that bit like hot coals. For half an hour the voice continued. It burned away the memory of the day behind, of the sea, of the exacting faith in Jean's gray eyes. This was the reality, this passion that throbbed in the poet's words, the girl's voice, the scorching kisses of the small, quivering figure in his arms. To feel and feel and feel.
The voice stopped as suddenly as it had begun. With the shudder of a medium coming from a trance, the girl opened her eyes. Instantly the purity of the listening silence was spotted with exaggerated exclamations of delight. They crowded about her. Flop brought a glass of wine, and sitting on his knee she sipped it, while her eyes wandered to the corner where Herrick had sat and stroked The Kitten's hands. The corner was empty. She grinned, and at Flop's request kissed him lightly on the lips.
As they walked along, choosing the darker streets, neither The Kitten nor Herrick spoke. Her fingers locked tight on his and Herrick walked as if in a dream toward a fixed point. At the corner of the street where Vicky and The Kitten had a small flat, Herrick stopped.
"Is Vicky home?"
"No. He went to Tulare a month ago."
The room was dark except for a long, white bar across the floor from a street lamp outside. Beside the Morris chair Herrick knelt and put his arms about The Kitten.
All the miniature independence was gone. She clung to him sobbing:
"I can't stand it any more. I love you and you're cruel, terribly cruel."
There was all the old abandon, the absolute surrender in the figure trembling at his touch. Of all the women he had known The Kitten had loved most passionately, most recklessly, finding no flaw, asking no change, holding him to no path. She loved him absolutely, utterly, as he was. And it had bored him.
"I know, Boy, you only did it to hurt me. You don't love her. You know you don't. You can't. Boy Blue," she whispered, her lips against his cheek, "promise your Kittycat you'll never see her again. Then I'll forget all the hurt—every single teeny bit."
With his arms about her, Herrick looked into the dark and saw Jean as he had left her, only a short time before, under the acacia, part of the clean night. In the gray fog by the sea, made more vital by the immense sadness and beauty of it. The generous giving of her hands to the lonely little boy, such a small, pitiful and generous gift. Jean with her unshakable faith, her courage and her coldness. He felt suddenly old, and afraid of his own fear.
"Are you satisfied now, Boy Blue? You've hurt me enough—till I've made a fool of myself. But I don't care. Silly, silly Boy, he ran away, and then he came back. He will always come back, always."
Sure of him, she laughed while she held his shoulders and made pretense of shaking him.
"But it was funny sometimes, only very few sometimes, it was like a baby going out with a little spade against a granite cliff. That's what she's like, Boy, a cold, hard, granite cliff. Maybe he bruised his head a little bit against the nasty, bad cliff. Well, never mind, mummy will make it well."
The Kitten drew his head against her breast. "There, there. Now it's all better. Nobody could beat down the cliff, so he mustn't feel bad, but just come——"
The Kitten bent forward from the shadows and, full in the bar of light, smiled at him. The last four months had made deep lines about her scarlet mouth. In the bar of white light she was ugly, with the ugliness of the small and withering. Herrick stepped back.
"You're ranting, Kitten. You don't know what you're talking about."
She blinked stupidly. She was almost hideous in her hungry fear.
"You don't understand. You can't understand women like Jean."
The Kitten got slowly to her feet.
"But she doesn't love you.Youcouldn't make a woman like thatcare."
Herrick's face reddened.
"Love! Why, Kitten, you don't know what the word means. When women like that love, it's like a prairie fire. A white fire that sweeps everything clean."
"'A white fire that sweeps everything clean!' A white prairie fire," muttered The Kitten. "You fool! You poor, blind fool. Do you think I'm going to stand by and never say a word? Do you think 'the white prairie fire'—oh, Lord, what a figure!—would love you if she knew? Why, she wouldn't even kiss you if she thought you'd held another woman in your arms—the great pink-and-yellow baby! And Vicky knows. He has always known. They all know. Vicky will let me go. I am willing. I am not ashamed. I——" She felt blindly before her as if she were picking the words from air.
Herrick moved beyond reach. "Listen to me. There is no question of whether people know or don't know. You're talking like a lunatic. There never was a question of whether Vicky would free you or not. We loved each other once and now it's over. That's all there is to it."
Herrick was thankful for the fine wrinkles, for all the small dried ugliness that made it easy.
The Kitten swayed, steadied herself, and said quietly:
"You will have to marry her." She stated it as a simple fact that Herrick might have forgotten. The inference of its judgment infuriated him.
"From women like Jean one does not ask, does not want, anything less."
Long afterwards he envied The Kitten her moment's strength.
"Will you go?" she said.