CHAPTER XXIX
It being Saturday, Sutton came uptown early and found Gilda lying on the couch before the fire, still clad in a loose Chinese lounging robe and slippers.
“You’re outrageously late,” she said. “I’ve had no breakfast.”
“Why didn’t you wake up?”
“The bed was warm and I lazy. It doesn’t excuse you for keeping breakfast waiting. You annoy me, Stuart.”
He came over to her but she refused to kiss him, lay warm and spineless in his arms, half lifted from the couch.
“Darling, I’m sorry,” he said. “I can feel that you’ve lost several pounds. You’re wasting away!”
Her face remained averted but he could see she was smiling. Then, gradually her arms encircled his neck; she looked up at him, tenderly humorous, pretending defiance.
“You bully me,” she said. “Kindly remove that blond head!”
“You’re holding it.”
“Am I? Well, it’s mine. I don’t know what to do with it either.”
She considered him, searched him with hostile eyes, then with a swift sigh relented and gave him her lips.
Freda brought the card-table and spread it. Gilda, on the couch, one knee crossed over the other, glanced absently through the morning paper, pausing between pages to reach out her pretty hand to Stuart.
“Bosh,” she said, “listen to this, Stuart: ‘In response to cheers the President doffed his hat.’ Did you ever hear anything as vulgarly expressed? A gentleman lifts his hat; an old gaffer ‘doffs’ it. Can you imagine the American newspaper as an educational influence? Or a schoolmaster using double negatives?”
Stuart laughed: “The Great American Boob doesn’t know the difference. His native tongue, properly written, perplexes and annoys him. Like Mr. Lillyvick he doesn’t ‘like the langwidge.’ Besides, it is he who is writing our newspapers and our novels for us; and he likes what he writes; he likes it fine, Gilda. He would doff his hat. What does he know about other people? Don’t ever be afraid of anarchy. The terrifying part of the social revolution in America was accomplished long ago.”
The girl swung her slippered foot and laughed, carelessly turning the pages of the great New York daily.
“I thought you were a good republican,” she said. “Are you doomed to the guillotine, too?”
He smiled: “I love my country passionately,” he said. “The people in it are its only defects.”
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “I can see where our heads are going to fall some day. Mine always did fall every time the blade dropped in the Place de la Revolution.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“How should you know how a girl feels whom you picked up at Derring’s? Dame Theroigne was a natural inference——”
“Good heavens,” he protested, “——stop that baby chatter——”
“Didn’t you pick me up?”
“Are you serious?”
“No, darling. You can’t tell where you’ll find a lost diamond, or why the setting wore out. They’re even found in sewers, you know——”
“What the deuce,” he exclaimed, irritated by her wayward humour.
“You sweet thing,” she said, “I’m bad tempered because I’m hungry. You know I don’t belong in a sewer. So do I. Where on earth is Freda?” She jerked the paper open again, swung her foot with the nervous grace of a kitten switching its tail.
“I’m cross,” she remarked, “because I haven’t a vocation.”
“Do you want one, dear?”
“No, I don’t.”
They both laughed and she flung the paper at him.
“I don’t want to do anything except be your wife,” she said, swinging her slim foot to and fro and clasping her knee with both hands.
“I want children, too,” she said with a rebellious little kick. Her slipper flew. He got up and replaced it, touching her instep with his lips.
“All that,” he said, “is a vocation to which no other can compare.”
“I don’t believe you want me for your wife, Stuart.”
“You believe it utterly.”
She turned to him, searched his face. Slowly the smile dawned, deep-eyed, heavenly. She rested her cheek on her shoulder and watched him; abandoned her hand to him, her eyes, vaguely sweet, following his still caresses.
Freda came with breakfast, but they scarcely took the trouble to separate.
However, the grossly material perfume of hot muffins aroused Gilda from ethereal bowers, and she sat up hungrily surveying the tray.
During breakfast she told him about her promise to Sadoul, explained what was wanted of her.
He was hearing this for the first time, could not comprehend, was not at all edified.
“You darling,” she said, vigorously occupied with bacon and coffee, “do you suppose I’d do anything I shouldn’t?”
“I can’t see how you can endure that man——”
“Nonsense! I always shall find him interesting. Whatever he did to me has wrecked him, not me.... And it may seem strange to you—to a man—but a woman is sorry.... If she really has been loved, she can’t hate utterly. Sad indifference, regret for a man fiercely wasted, unhappy solicitude for mad perversity which brings only agony and disaster—these all generous women feel.... Once, on a lonely mountain, my collie dog went crazy and attacked me. Chasing me he fell into an abandoned well. I went back and saw the dog swimming around and ’round in the bottom of the well. There was no ladder, no rope, no way to save him. It tore my breast to look at him. I wanted to go away—but the creature had seen me, and kept up a horrible sort of screaming as it struggled.... I thought it did not want to die entirely alone.... It almost killed me to remain. But I—I talked to him—until the end.”
“Where was this?”
“In Wales, when I was a child.”
“It’s like you, Gilda.”
“It’s like any woman—if a thing once loved her.”
“You are willing to help Sadoul in his research work?”
“I am helping Dr. Pockman. I couldn’t refuse Sadoul. He’s not very successful. His books are partial failures. Outside of the free-lance press nobody reads him, nobody hears of Sadoul. Besides, I am not—untouched—by his unhappiness.”
She lifted her lovely, honest eyes to Stuart:
“Out of your own abundance,” she said, “give something to this man.”
“You are giving.”
“Not without permission.”
“Dearest,” he said, deeply stirred, “what you choose to do is my choice always.”
“I knew it. Your will is mine, also.” She smiled at him.
“What time are you due there?” he asked without enthusiasm.
“At three. But you are coming with me, of course.”
“That may not please Sadoul.”
“That,” she remarked, “is of no consequence whatever. I never intended to go without you.”
He drew a sharp breath of relief. “All right,” he said.