IX
William Cartertook his wife to the inn for supper. He had appeared at the door of the Sunday-school hall with a taxi and abruptly bundled Fanchon into it. It was just after her performance on the stage and before the audience began to disperse. In fact, they heard the strains of some very churchy music coming from the orchestra, as if an effort was being made—delayed but strenuous—to soothe the startled spectators of Fanchon’s amazing dance.
William said nothing. He sat in the dark interior of the taxi with a face as white as paper, and Fanchon, watching him covertly, saw that the hand he laid on the window shook. She leaned back in her corner, twisting a strand of pearls around her throat—a strand that she had put on after the dance—and watching him; but she said nothing.
She had danced so wildly, indeed, that she was still panting and throbbing with excitement. She seemed to feel the thrill of the music even in her feet. It was intoxicating, it was what she loved—the glamour of the lights, the music, the motion.Her whole body vibrated, she could scarcely sit still, her feet still moved restlessly. She loved it!
Yet she felt that heavy silence of her husband, the stiffness of his body as he sat there, and she had caught a glimpse of his ghastly face. She bit her lips, staring out into the night, her bosom heaving passionately. She felt like a beautiful wild bird in a trap.
She stared, too, at the quiet street, with inveterate dislike of its quietness. She saw the group of loungers in front of the chemist’s, the belated pedestrians at the crossing. There was a glimpse of shadowing trees. Pendent branches swept and swayed before feebly lighted show-windows, where the shades were partly drawn down, and the infrequent street-lamps shot occasional lances of light across their dingy way. One such shaft struck on William’s profile and revealed his tightened lips.
Fanchon wondered. She had not been aware of Mr. Carter’s catapultic exit, and she did not know how much her husband knew. Some one must have telephoned him—whom, she could not conjecture. She shrank away from him a little, thinking, and Corwin’s face rose before her mind’s eye. She saw again the confidence of his smiling, mocking eyes, and she shuddered.
William seemed to feel it and gave her a quicklook, but said nothing. The taxi had stopped in front of an old-fashioned inn. It was a long, low building with a glassed-in dining-room, built to accommodate the stream of motorists who had begun to tour the mountains and scatter gold and gasoline in their wake.
Into the new dining-room—a plain, bare place with rows of white-covered tables and a few lean palms on pedestals—William conducted his wife. Half a dozen negro waiters came forward. He selected one he knew, chose a remote table, and gave his order for supper.
“I suppose you want wine?” he said shortly to Fanchon—almost the first words he had addressed to her.
She shrugged, slipping off her wraps and amazing the other diners with the marvels of her costume.
“Mais non,” she replied indifferently. “I’m heated; I never drink wine when I have danced.”
William, who was giving his order, stopped short a moment, his eyes down, and she saw him pant like a man short of breath. But in another moment he had despatched the waiter with his order and drained his glass of water.
“Mon Dieu!” said Fanchon, watching him with dark, mysterious, brooding eyes. “How can you? Iced water—it’s bad for your liver!”
“Drat my liver!” said William hoarsely. Then he leaned across the table, his eyes raised to hers at last and spoke in a low, even voice for her ears alone. “What have you been doing, Fanchon?”
She had never seen that look in his eyes before, and the blood rushed back to her heart. She could not answer for a moment; her lips moved without words.
“Do you hear?” he repeated sternly. “What have you been doing to-night?”
“I sang, you know I sang,” she replied at last, but her eyes quivered and shrank away from his, and there was something about her like a child expecting a blow.
But William did not heed it; he was still white with passion.
“You did more than sing,” he rejoined coldly. “You danced me into an insult!”
Her eyes dilated.
“An insult—you?”
“Yes, an insult. Father saw you. He came home and told me what he thought of you, and of me for letting you do it!”
Fanchon put her hand to her throat. She felt choked again, but her beautiful, wild, fawn-like eyes clung to his face.
“You danced,” he went on bitterly. “What did you dance? One of those—those fandangoes?”
Her face changed; a glimmer of light, of mischief, shot across it, and she let her jeweled hands drop in her lap.
“Oui, I danced!Mais que voulez vous?Am I not a dancer? You—it is you who are ashamed,mon ami!” she added bitterly. “Why you marry me, then?”
He threw himself back in his chair, his clenched hand falling on the table with a gesture as poignant as it was desperate.
“You’ve let the cat out of the bag! This place—these provincials! Why, this place is full of it by now. Did you think you were in Paris?”
“In Paris?” she laughed wildly. “Mon Dieu, non! ‘O Paris, c’est chez toi qu’il est doux de vivre, c’est chez toi que je veux mourir!’”
“Drop that chatter!” he said harshly. “You speak English as well as I do.”
She did not answer for a moment; then she leaned across the table, looking at him, her face white and her eyes sparkling.
“You’re ashamed that you married me, a dancer—n’est-ce-pas?”
He averted his face. She caught only the haggard whiteness of the profile, and she saw his hand, stretched on the table, clench and unclench nervously. She drew a long breath.
“You’re ashamed of me,” she said in a low,quivering voice, recoiling from him. “I—I see it!”
“I loved you,” said William passionately. “I loved you, I asked you to consider me, and—you do this!”
“You loved me!” she repeated the words slowly. “You—loved—me!”
She let the accent fall on the past tense, but he was deaf to the implied appeal.
“Fanchon, you knew what they’d think of it here—you must have known. Why did you do it?” he cried impatiently. “It’s like your cigarette in the streets—you like to do these things!”
“Mais oui, I like to do them!” she replied softly. She laughed lightly. “I’m naughty, William, but”—she leaned toward him again, looking at him with her fawn-like eyes—“I’m sorry!”
Her look, her voice, her very attitude expressed surrender, and the softness of her tone appeased him. He turned his head reluctantly and looked at her. The light was behind her, making a nimbus behind her lovely head, her soft, dark hair, and her white forehead, and the beauty of her eyes. Her dress, too, the dancer’s silky, shimmering, clinging robe, seemed to reveal just enough of her white neck and arms. She was a thing so young, so exquisite, and so subtly charming that he caught his breath. She looked as shehad looked the first time he saw her, when he lost his heart and his head. Her dark eyes clung to his. “Et toi?” she murmured softly, exquisitely, her lips trembling a little.
Involuntarily he put out his hand and touched hers as it lay on the table, and the tenderness of that touch was a caress. For the moment he forgot his father and his own anger. She was bewitching, and she was his own! What did it matter if these narrow-minded provincials were shocked at her dancing?
Yet he was aware that while she accepted his caress, accepted his forgiveness, and gave him a soft and caressing smile, she was changed. Something had come between them—something so subtle, so immaterial, that he could not grasp it; but he felt ill at ease. He said nothing, he did not know what to say, he felt that the grievance was honestly his, and yet, in some mysterious, unfathomable way, she had put him in the wrong.
He laughed uneasily and began to move the glasses about awkwardly, jingling the ice in them like a child. He was glad, too, that the waiter returned at that moment, with the supper. He changed his order again and called for wine.
“I’m tired,” he explained to Fanchon. “I feel as if I needed it.”
She shrugged, elevating her brows and glancingaround the room, aware that necks were craned here and there, and that some newcomers were staring steadily at her. One of them—a short, stout, bald-headed man in a dress-suit with a wide expanse of shirt-front—kept gazing at her, and after a while at William. He gazed and rubbed the top of his bald head, and then ate—taking large mouthfuls and gulping them down—while he still gazed at her.
Fanchon, seeing it, looked demurely at her plate, toying with her fork. She wanted to laugh, but she remembered her husband’s horror of the sensation she had just made, and she was aware, too, of another figure farther away. She flushed a little, saying nothing, and William, still feeling that little rift in the lute, busied himself filling his wine-glass again.
Fanchon, who had never seen him drink wine, lifted her heavy eyes from her plate to watch him. She knew he had already filled his glass four times.
“He’s not a drinking man,” she thought shrewdly. “He’s unhappy because he’s married me, a dancer!”
William lifted his fifth glass slowly to his lips.
“It’s not bad wine, Fanchon,” he said lightly; “but we had better in Paris.”
She shook her head.
“In Paris you didn’t drink wine,mon ami.”
He reddened.
“Didn’t I? I——” He stopped short.
The stout, bald-headed gentleman had risen abruptly from his table and was approaching theirs. He did not look at William, but bowed to Fanchon.
“Mrs. Carter, I believe?” he said suavely. “Mrs. William Carter?”
Fanchon smiled.
“Mais oui, and—Mr. William Carter,” she added archly, looking at the astonished William.
The fat man bowed again, then he produced a card-case and laid his card on the table.
“I’m Samuel Bernstein,” he said proudly, “president of the Unlimited Film Company. Perhaps you’ve heard of me, Mr. Carter?”
“No!” said William shortly, frowning. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
Mr. Bernstein gave him a pitying glance.
“Go to the movies?” he asked mildly.
William nodded.
“Sometimes.”
Mr. Bernstein elevated his brows. He looked at Fanchon, and his face changed and glowed with appreciation.
“Guess you go, madam,” he said in a confident tone, “a lady of your talent! Excuse me”—he bowed first to one and then the other—“if you’llpermit me, I’ll sit down. I’ve got a word to say—business, you know, strictly business.”
Fanchon’s eyes danced. She threw a mocking look at William’s stiffening face.
“Sit down, Mr. Bernstein,” she said sweetly. “Voilà!I love the movies!”
“There!” Bernstein beamed, drawing up a chair. “I knew a lady of your talent must love ’em.” He waved his hand gracefully, speaking to William now, but including William’s wife. “I want to say, sir, that I witnessed that dance to-night, and—well, sir, it hit me straight in the bull’s-eye! Never saw it better done—never! I congratulate Mrs. Carter, sir, and I congratulate you. It was a gem!”
William, very red, inclined his head stiffly, but Fanchon was radiant with smiles.
“Merci du compliment!” she murmured.
“Eh? Oh, you’re French, ain’t you?” Mr. Bernstein returned her smile genially. “Corwin was telling me you were Mamselle Fonchon lay Fare. That would sound a top-liner, too, on a bill-board. Corwin—you know him? Yes? Well, he’s running a vaudeville show somewhere now, besides that hairy piano man, and he wants you in his show. I suspicioned that right off.”
“My wife isn’t a show-woman!” thundered William, his brow black.
“No offense, no offense, Mr. Carter!” Mr. Bernstein waved a fat hand on which a diamond flashed magnificently. “I don’t cotton to these cheap shows myself. Now, madam, I’m a business man, and I’ve got a proposition to make to you, a gilt-edged proposition.” He edged his chair nearer, looking from Fanchon to William and back again, with the air of a benefactor. “It’ll appeal to you, sir. It’s dignified, it’s fine, and it’s money, sir, good money! Now, I saw that dance to-night and I says to myself, ‘Sammy Bernstein, if you’re a man you’ll beat it after that first thing,’ and I’m beating it. Madam, I’d offer you, as a starter, five hundred dollars a week to give that dance in a picture, a high-class, six-reel picture, for the Unlimited Film Company!” Mr. Bernstein flung himself back in his chair, thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his white waistcoat, and beamed upon them. “Five hundred dollars a week, madam, and your expenses—for one picture. You can’t beat that—Corwin ain’t going to beat that!”
“My wife won’t go into the movies!” said William, white with anger.
Mr. Bernstein reddened.
“I reckon you don’t understand, sir. The Unlimited Film Company is a star company, sir; it does the finest pictures in the country; we’ve gotmore stars than any other company this side of the Rockies. We got ’em, and we treat ’em right.”
William rose furiously.
“My wife isn’t looking for an engagement, sir, so we bid you good evening!”
Mr. Bernstein rose hastily.
“I say—no offense——”
“You’re very good,” said Fanchon softly, lingering an instant as William strode away; “I’m not in it—not now! My husband doesn’t like it, you know.Adieu, monsieur, et merci!”
She was smiling, a little flushed, altogether charming, as she lifted her fawn-like countenance to his red face. Mr. Bernstein relaxed and grinned knowingly.
“I see! I’m sorry, madam. Put my foot in it, eh?” He lowered his voice. “I’ll make it eight hundred a week—see?”
She nodded, but William had turned a white face toward them, and she fled lightly, following him in his hasty stride through the now crowded dining-room. She had caught her wraps up hastily and thrown them about her shoulders, and the chiffon frills framed her small, pointed chin.
The diners—belated motorists and traveling salesmen—stared delightedly. The scene was as plain as a charade, the angry young husband and the lovely, coquettish, frivolous young wife. Fanchoncaught whispers of admiration and glances of sympathy. At another moment they would have pleased her, would have appealed to every instinct of her light, admiration-loving nature, but to-night she saw some one ahead, some one whom she must pass, and she was thinking, thinking hard and fast, her heart beating pitifully under the splendor of her dancing dress.
Meanwhile William stalked ahead, with his square jaw set and his eyes stormy. He wanted to wring Bernstein’s neck and he could not. It made his hands clench and unclench nervously at his sides.
As they neared the door, a tall man rose from a crowded table and greeted Fanchon in French with an effusion that made William halt. Corwin caught his eye and bowed.
“Present me to your husband,” he said to Fanchon.
She turned with that delicate grace which made her small figure seem so light and buoyant. She had rallied all her forces, all her will. She smiled, her eyes shining dangerously.
“William, this is my old friend, Mr. Corwin.”
William shook hands stiffly.
“We’re just going,” he said shortly. “Good night!”
Fanchon laughed, half-apologetic, half-coquettish;but she found herself hurried out into the hall.
“Who’s that fellow?” asked William sharply. She was still laughing, half hysterical.
“Caraffi’s manager, Aristide Corwin—I’ve known him for ages.”
William grunted.
“Looks like a Monte Carlo gambler,” he said, and signaled for a taxi.