Part 11 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV
The faithful Stacey was below, lounging at the door of the grill-room, as she came tripping down, the sensation of escape sparkling on her delicate features. She was so delighted at the effect he had achieved for her that she gave him an affectionate squeeze of the arm.
”Stacey, you're a darling! When the footman announced 'Miss Baxter's car' you could have heard a pin drop among the squillionairesses!”
Stacey had been told, and dutifully believed, that the luncheon was a heavy affair, very formal, very correct.
”I say, you didn't bore yourself, did you?” he said, noticing the excitement still on her cheeks.
”No, no!”
”Fifth Avenue, or Broadway?”
”Fifth first.”
”Bundle up; it's turning cold!”
The next moment the car had found a wedge in the avenue, and Stacey, solicitous, relapsed into gratifying silence.
She was all aquiver with excitement. Her little feet, exhilarated by the memories of music, continued tapping against the floor, and had Stacey turned he would have been surprised at the mischievous, gay little smile that constantly rippled and broke about her lips. Indeed, she was delighted with her success, with the discord she had flung between Sa.s.soon and Harrigan Blood. She could scarcely believe that it could be true.
”What! I, little Dodo, have done that!” she said, addressing herself caressingly, overjoyed at the idea of two men of such power descending to a quarrel over a little imp like herself.
She had no illusions about these flesh hunters. If she had given Sa.s.soon her address instead of hotly refusing, it was from a swift vindictive resolve to punish him unmercifully, to entice him into fruitless alleys, to entangle and mock him, with an imperative desire to match her wits against his power, and teach him respect through discomfiture and humiliation. Sa.s.soon did not impress her with any sense of danger. She rather scoffed at him, remembering his silken voice, the slight feminine touch of his hand, the haunted dreamy discontent in his heavy eyes.
Harrigan Blood was different. In her profound education of a Salamander, she knew his type, too: the man without preliminaries, who put abrupt questions, brus.h.i.+ng aside the artifices and subtleties that arrest others. She would make no mistake with him--knowing just how little to venture. And yet, always prepared, she might try her fingers across such hungry flames. Strangely enough, she did not resent Harrigan Blood as she did Sa.s.soon; for men of force she made many allowances.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”No, no, not so fast!”]
She thought of Lindaberry and Judge Ma.s.singale: of Lindaberry rapidly, with a beginning of pity, but still inflamed with an irritation at this magnificent spectacle of a man going to destruction so purposelessly. He, of all, had been the most indifferent, too absorbed to lift his eyes and study what sat by his side. She did not know all the reasons why he so antagonized her, nor whence these reasons came ...
yet the feeling persisted, already mingled with a desire to know what was the history that Harrigan Blood had started to tell. Perhaps, after all, there may have been a tragic love-affair. She reflected on this idea, and it seemed to her that if it were so, then in his present madness there might be something n.o.ble ... magnificent.
”How stupid a man is to drink!” she said angrily.
”Eh? What's that, Dodo?” said Stacey.
She perceived that, in her absorption, she had spoken half aloud.
”Go down Forty-second and run up Broadway!” she said hastily.
Ma.s.singale she could not place. She comprehended the others, even the Comte de Joncy, whom she had left with a feeling of defrauded expectation. But Ma.s.singale she did not comprehend, nor did she see him quite clearly. Why was he there? To observe simply, with that tolerant baffling smile of his? What did he want in life? Of her? He had been interested; he had even tried to arouse her own curiosity. She was certain that the effort had been conscious. Then there had come a change--a quiet defensive turn to impersonality. Tactics, or what?
What impression had she left? Would he call, or pa.s.s on? She did not understand him at all; yet he excited her strangely. She had a feeling that he would be too strong for her. She had felt in him, each time his glance lay in hers, the reading eye that saw through her, knew beforehand what was turning in her runaway imagination, and that before him her tricks would not avail.
Then she ceased to remember individuals, lost in a confused, satisfied feeling of an experience. It seemed to her as if she had taken a great step--that opportunity had strangely served her, that she had at last entered a world which was worthy of her curiosity.
She had met few real men. She had played with idlers, boys of twenty or boys of forty, interested in nothing but an indolent floating voyage through life. For the first time, she had come into contact with a new type, felt the shock of masculine vitality. Whatever their cynical ideas of conduct, she felt a difference here. They were men of power, with an object, who did not fill their days with trifling, but who sought pleasure to fling off for a moment the obsession of ambitions, to relax from the tyranny of effort, or to win back a new strength in a moment of discouragement. Perhaps if she continued her career she might turn them into friends--loyal friends. It would be difficult but very useful. The men she met usually, at first, misunderstood her.
”Perhaps one of them will change my whole life! Why not? I have a feeling--” she said solemnly to herself, nodding and biting her little under lip.