The address which Desire had given him was on Riverside Drive. Shortly after seven he left the Brevoort and climbed to the roof of a passing bus. The polished asphalt of Fifth Avenue gleamed like a waterway. Round and unwinking, like tethered moons, arc-lights shone in endless lines. As he passed through Madison Square, he had a glimpse of carnival—trolleys streaming like comets, and Broadway seething in a blaze of light. Then, as though velvet curtains had fallen, again the quiet.
With the secret magic and passivity of night, the city had undergone a change. It had lost its haste. It went on tiptoe now. Tall buildings stood silent as tombs, quarried from the granite of the dusk. Streets had become orientalized. A spirit of poetry was abroad. Over the turrets of this Babylon of a day the wings of Time brooded, shadowing its modern glare with the pomp of a sombre and mysterious austerity. It had become a metropolis of dreamers, as fitting a stage as Florence for any tale that love might choose to tell.
Vashti! It was a far cry from this September night to the spare-bedroom at Orchid Lodge, with the red winking eye of the winter’s fire, the tapestry of Absalom swinging by his hair and the little boy sitting up in bed, spellbound by the enchantment of a woman’s voice. A far cry to the marriage-box, to the wistful consultations with Harriet and to that same ecstasy of love, unfulfillable then, that he was dreaming now! He wondered how much of his passion for Desire was the outcome of that ghostly passion for her mother. It was like a faery-story which, with pauses and diversions, had been telling itself throughout his life. Vashti had been the enchantress who, by lifting her voice, had created his hopes and his despairs. Her voice had lured Desire from him in the darkened silence of the farmhouse. And now, with starry eyes, he was going to her that she might give him back Desire.
The coolness and rustling of trees! To his left a river black and silent To his right a rampart of houses, honey-combed with fire. Flitting on speedy errands, cars darted through the shadows with staring eyes. He caught glimpses of women, and of men who sat beside them. Men and women always and everywhere together! Where were they going? What did they talk about? With them lovers’ ways were an old story, but with him——
The conductor called from the top of the steps and pointed to an apartment-house. While his name was being telephoned up, he took in his surroundings. All this was familiar to her. He compared it with Eden Row, and was filled with hesitations. Everywhere his eye detected luxury. She might be wealthy. He had never thought of that; he had only thought of what he could give her. Their ways of life must be utterly divergent. What had he to offer? And he had come to America to marry her!
He was told he was expected. The elevator shot up and halted; the boy directed him to a door in the passage. As he stood waiting, he heard the sound of a piano played softly. The moment he was admitted, the playing stopped.
In a luxurious room illumined by a solitary shaded lamp, a woman was seated with her hands upon the keyboard. The window was open and a breeze rustled the curtains. Distant across the river in the abyss of night lights twinkled like stars in an inverted firmament. The air was filled with a summer fragrance: it drifted from a bowl of lilies of the valley which had been placed on the piano beneath the lamp.
The woman turned her head slightly; he could just begin to see her profile. Her voice reached him softly:
“Don’t speak. I was remembering. It pains, and yet it’s good to remember—sometimes, Teddy.”
Her hands commenced to wander, picking out chords, starting little airs, leaving them abruptly and starting them afresh.
“I wonder what you look like, and I’m afraid to find out. I’ve always thought of you as still a little chap, and I don’t want to undeceive myself. You used to be the faery-tale I told my little girl. ’Tell me more about Teddy,’ she used to say. And then I’d invent such wonderful stories. You were our dream-person.—She wouldn’t let you know that for worlds; you mustn’t let her guess that you know. She’s like that—an odd girl: she feels far more than she’ll ever express—goes out of her way to make people misunderstand, to make them think she’s cold and careless. It’s because—— Can you guess? It’s because she’s afraid to love too much. Her mother let love have power over her and—she got hurt. Oh, well!” She shrugged her white shoulders. “No use regretting. Ah, this brings memories!”
In a half-voice, like a lark beating up into the clouds, she commenced to hum to the accompaniment; then took up the words. In the dim-lit room, with the blackness of night peering in at the window and the lilies breathing out their exotic fragrance, all the wistful past came trooping back. He forgot New York, forgot his anxiety and loneliness. Pictures formed and melted under the spell of her singing. He remembered his childish elation, when she had carried him back to the tapestried bedroom, making him believe that she preferred him to Hal. He saw again the tenderness in her face as she had bent over him by the firelight, listening expectantly for Hal’s footstep in the passage. He felt again the despair of his first disillusion, when the great day had been spoilt and she had driven home with him through the lamp-smirched London night, begging him to believe that she was good—that she was good whatever happened. After all these years the memory of that childish tragedy burnt again intensely.
Had love hurt her? A strange complaint to hear from Vashti! Hadn’t she rather hurt herself? Her fatal sweetness must have proved cruel to many men.
His mother, Mrs. Sheerug, every one had doubted her. Even Hal doubted her now—Hal who had promised to follow her through the dark wood that few women had dared to tread. What had happened to her in the dark wood? Teddy could only guess; but because she was Desire’s mother, and still more at this moment because she was singing, he could not help but think that she was good. At last, after all these years of following, he had come up with her. Did she need his help? Was she trying to tell him?
She swung round with a rippling laugh which had tears in it. “Have you forgiven me, Teddy? A sentimental question! Of all the big sins I’ve done, that’s the one that I’ve most regretted.—Ah, you’ll not say that you havel Boys don’t forget things like that.”
He was filled with an immense compassion for her. Beneath her forced gayety he suspected heart-hunger. She looked a proud woman, with just that touch of distinction and mystery that makes for lurement. Her smile was a mask, rather than a means of self-expression. She would impress a stranger as being courteously on the defensive, yet anxiously ready for the excitement of attack. “A woman of experience!” one would say. “A proficient man-tamer! She fears nothing.”
Her face was made up; her lips too scarlet. Teddy could see that even in the half-light. Her figure was finer than in the old days—more rounded and gracious, but still sinuous in its lines. She possessed to an even greater extent her dangerous power to fascinate. By a trick of kindness, which might mean nothing, by a hint of restrained tenderness, she could quicken the blood and set a man dreaming of goddesses in a riot of blue seas, and the throb of Pan’s pipes heard distantly in sun-smitten woodlands. Her eyes spoke of other things to Teddy. They had lost their old contentment. He recognized in them the questing melancholy that he had seen in Hal’s.
She was beautiful—in some ways more beautiful: haunting and unsatisfying: an instrument for romance; a shuttered house from behind whose windows there was a continual sense of watching.
Her forehead was intensely cold and white, contradicting the eagerness of the rest of her expression. Her brows were like spread wings, hovering and poised; her eyes vague as sea-clouds till they smiled, when they flashed with gleams of blue-gray sunlight. Again he wondered whether his love for Desire was an outcome of this earlier ghostly passion. They were more than ordinarily alike, even to their gestures. The hair of both was the color of ancient bronze, dark in the hollows and burnished at the edges. The mouth of each gave the key to her character, becoming any shape that an emotion made it: petulant and unreasonable; kind and gracious and adoring. But there was this great difference: Desire’s beauty had youth’s conscious certainty of conquest; in Vashti’s there was the pathetic appeal to be allowed to conquer. Her throat was still her glory, throbbing like a bird’s and slender as a flower. Rising from her low-cut gown, it showed in its full perfection.
She clapped her hands, as Desire would have done, and laughed softly at the impression she had created. “Nearly old enough to be your mother; but still vain and pleased because you like me. I dressed especially for you, my littlest lover. And now—now that I’ve seen you, I’m not sorry that you’ve grown up.” She stretched out both her hands and drew him to her. “You’re nice. You’re even nicer. So tall! So brave-looking! And you’re still a dreamer, Teddy—a little god Love, peering in through the gate.”
Suddenly she reached up her arms. “There! Why, you’re blushing, you dear boy. We’re going to be great friends, you and I and Desire.”
He wanted to ask about Desire, but he couldn’t bring himself to frame the question. He listened intently to catch the rustle of her approach. He expected every minute to see her through the darkness, across the threshold. Why didn’t Vashti tell him? Was her kindness a subtle way of apologizing foe Desire’s absence? He had found hidden meanings in everything that had been said: “She feels far more than she’ll ever express—goes out of her way to make people misunderstand.” And then: “We’re going to be great friends, you and I and Desire.”
Vashti touched his hand gently. “You’ve something on your mind.”
Would she never be frank with him?
“On my mind! No, really. It’s only seeing you and finding myself a man. Last time,” he laughed into her eyes, “it was you that I thought I was going to marry.”
“And wouldn’t you now? No, you wouldn’t. I can see that.”
A gong tinkled faintly. She slipped an arm through his. On the right-hand side of the passage doors led off. He watched for one of them to open. When they reached the small paneled dining-room at the far end, his heart sank: only two places had been set.
“Let’s make it our day—the day that I promised you. Now tell me everything. What brought you over?”
He glanced sharply across the table. Was she poking sly fun at him? “Brought me over?”
“Yes. That’s not such an unreasonable question. You can’t persuade me that you came just to see me, Teddy.”
“And yet,” he said, “it was partly that.”
“And the rest?”
“Work. I’m a writer. I’ve had a little success. Don’t you remember how I always said I was going to be famous? But aren’t you playing with me? D’you really mean that you didn’t expect me?”
Vashti met his eyes quietly. “My baby-girl told me something. But how did you discover our address?”
While he answered, he watched her narrowly to catch the flicker of any tell-tale expression. “When she was in London this summer, she visited Madame Josephine’s Beauty Parlors. Madame Josephine’s my friend. I’ve told her a good many things about myself; amongst others—— You spoke about dream-persons. I’ve had my dream-person for years—ever since I was at the farmhouse. So there——! She spotted Desire directly.”
Vashti raised her glass: “To our dream-persons; and may they not disappoint us when they become realities.” There was a pause. He trembled on the brink of a confession. The maid entered to change the dishes. When she had gone, he leant towards Vashti. His voice was husky. “When shall I see her?”
Vashti closed her eyes and caught her breath in a quick laugh. “That depends—depends on how late you stay. Desire’s out at Long Island, taking part in some amateur theatricals. She may ’phone me up presently to say she’s stopping the night If she comes back, she’ll have to get some man to drive her, She won’t arrive till after twelve.”
He had a curious feeling of impropriety in discussing Desire with her mother. It was a stupid feeling to have just because, long ago, he had given Vashti his boyish affection. Yet instinctively he felt that he might rouse her jealousy if he laid too much stress on his change of homage. Was that why she was evading him? How much did she know of what had happened? He began to skirmish for information.
Speaking carelessly, he said, “So she’s not gone on the stage yet?”
Vashti betrayed surprise. “She wants to—but, how did you know?” Then, finding her own explanation: “Madame Josephine again, I suppose. Desire talks about her ambitions to every one.”
“You don’t want her to be an actress?”
“She’ll do what she likes. I shan’t thwart her. I’d much rather—— It’s funny that I should tell you, Teddy. I’d much rather that she should marry some nice boy, and have heaps of children. I’d like her to have all the wholesome things that her mother hasn’t had—the really good things—not the shams. It’s lonely to be forty and to have no one to protect you. Unfortunately we don’t find that out till we’re forty, and we can’t hand on our experience. She’s very young.—Tell me about yourself. How’s that big father with the bushy head?”
While they talked of the past a closer sense of comradeship grew up between them. He told her about Madame Josephine and Duke Nineveh, and how the wonderful change in their fortunes had occurred.
“And Mrs. Sheerug,” she asked, “does she still wear green plush and yellow feathers?”
“She still wears green plush and yellow feathers. But she does a bit of splashing now—drives about in a carriage-and-pair. I don’t think she likes it; she wants to please her Alonzo.—It is good to be able to speak of Eden Row. Why, I don’t feel a bit homesick now.”
“Homesick!” She pushed back her chair and rose languidly. Her hand went slowly to her heart. “My home’s hidden here; it’s an imagined place, Teddy. I’ve lived always swinging on a perch. How I envy your being able to feel homesick!—It’s seeing you that’s done it. I want to be young, young, young again to-night.”
With the reflected light from the table drifting up across her breast and her eyes brooding on him through the shadows, she looked both gorgeous and tragic. He couldn’t think of anything to say; he had always pictured her as wandering from happiness to happiness. While he struggled with his silence, a sob escaped her; she hurried from him.
He followed her into the other room, where the shaded lamp shone softly on the lilies. Ever since he had entered the apartment, he had had the sense of a thinness of atmosphere, a temporary quality, a consciousness of something lacking. He knew what it was that he had missed now; these rooms were tenanted only by women.
She was beside the window, with one knee upon the couch, staring out to where night yawned above the river and lights twinkled, like stars in an inverted firmament.
“Come.” She slipped her arm about his shoulder. “Wouldn’t you have loved me once for doing that? Am I terribly older—not quite what you expected? No, don’t tell me. Don’t lie to me. Life! It goes from us. When a woman’s lived merely to be beautiful, she’s reached the fag-end at forty. Seeing you so brave and tall, has brought that home to me. I’ll have to live whatever life I have left, through the beauty of Desire now. A little hard for a selfish woman! I trusted to my beauty to do everything. And I was beautiful when first you knew me.”
“And you’re still beautiful.”
“Dear of you to say so! Still beautiful! In a way, yes. But,” she laughed scornfully, “with an effort—with such an effort. How I’d love to see myself the way I was when your father painted me. A garden enclosed, he called me, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. You see, I remember. It was my remoteness that attracted then. All the men were at my feet, even your father. Oh, yes, he was; your mother knew it. Common men in the street, and little boys like you, and—and poor old Hal—they’d do anything for me if I raised an eyelash.”
The maid brought in coffee.
“Let’s sit down. No, not so far away—quite near to me, for old times’ sake, my littlest lover. D’you mind if I smoke a cigarette? Mrs. Sheerug, dear old Mrs. Sheerug, she wouldn’t approve of it. I always loved her and wanted her to think well of me. She’d never believe that. You’re a bit shocked yourself. I don’t often do it before my baby-girl. But tell me,” she sank her voice, “what about Hal?”
He tried to think of things to tell her. What was there to tell? Good fortune had worked no change in Hal. Money hadn’t made him happier. He was a man thrust forward by the years, but always with his face turned back.
“Ah,” she whispered, “I know. Don’t go any further. He would be like that. He lives remembering.” Her grip on Teddy’s hands tightened. “Learn a lesson. Don’t be kind to women, Teddy. You’ll get no thanks. A woman’s mean-hearted. If a man’s too good to her, she doesn’t try to be nobly good in return; she takes advantage. She plays pranks with him—wants to see how much he’ll forgive her; if he’s still magnanimous, she despises him. It takes a good woman to appreciate a good man; few women are both good and beautiful. It wasn’t till Mary Magdalene had lost her looks that she broke the alabaster box of ointment. What I mean is that beautiful women are cruel; God gives them too much power. Oh, yes, it’s true. Desire’s like that—sweetly ungrateful. I can see myself in her. A man’ll have to be a brute to make her love him.—Ah, you almost hate me! I wish she could make you hate her so that you’d go home to Eden Row, and—oh, do big work and marry another Dearie. I’m fond of you, Teddy.” She let go his hands. “When we’re forty, we beautiful women learn to be gentle, and—and you thank us, don’t you?”
She got up and buried her face in the lilies. “Sent them to her, eh? Hoped you’d find her wearing them.”
She seated herself at the piano, looking back across her shoulder and playing while she spoke, as though her hands were a separate personality.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. There was a garden enclosed—the gates all locked, and Love gazed in at it! But there came a time when Love grew tired. While he had waited, the garden had taken no notice. But when he had gone, all the lilies, and sunflowers, and roses rushed to the gates and clamored to follow him. But the locks had grown rusty. The garden which had enclosed itself against Love, found itself shut out from Love. Tra-la-la! Yea, verily.”
Her hands lay idle in her lap for a moment. “You mustn’t mind me. It’s a luxury to indulge in self-pity. I shall be so gay to-morrow you won’t know me. But just at present I’m wishing,” she mocked her own melancholy, slanting her eyes at him, “rather wishing I were Mrs. Hal Sheerug—wishing I were any good domestic woman instead of Vashti, the singer. And if I were Mrs. Hal, I’d be as much of a curiosity as Eden Row set down on Broadway.”
Again she took up her playing. “And yet—and yet life would be tedious without love. We’re so afraid that love will never come to us, aren’t we, Teddy? Afraid that our latest chance will be our last. You see, I’m like that, too; I know all about it. You’re asleep. Perhaps we’re both asleep—both dreaming of something more splendid than reality. Don’t let’s wake up—we’ll be unhappy. Let’s go on dreaming together.”
She ceased speaking, but her hands wandered from melody to melody. She played very softly. From far below in the darkness the hum of speeding cars was like the drowsy trumpeting of gnats in an English garden. Through half-closed eyes he watched her, trying to make himself believe she was Desire.
Why had she so deliberately filled his mind with doubts? And Desire—why had she gone away without mentioning him on the very day that he had landed? Was it carelessness, or a young girl’s way of impressing him with her value? “She feels far more than she’ll ever express.” It might be that—a paradoxical way of showing affection.
Vashti gazed towards him and nodded, as much as to say, “I know what thoughts are passing.” She struck three chords.
What happened next was like arms spread under him, carrying him away and away from every trouble. “Oh, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him.” Her voice sprang up like a strong white bird; at every beat of its wings the accompaniment fluttered like the weak wings of small birds following. “Oh; rest in the Lord”—the white bird rose higher with a braver confidence and the little birds took courage, plunging deeper into the grave and gentle stillness. “Oh, rest in the Lord”—it was like a sigh of contentment traveling back from prepared places. The room grew silent.
She was kneeling beside him—kneeling the way his mother would have knelt, with her arms about him and her face almost touching.
“I’m really religious, Teddy. Won’t you trust me? Don’t you think that there must be some good in me when I can sing like that?” It was like a little child pleading with him. “I’ve tried to turn you back. Desire’s too young and I don’t think—— But you won’t be turned back; so let me help you. I don’t know much of what’s happened between you, but——”
In the hall a key grated. The sound of the door opening. A gust of laughter—a man’s and a girl’s.
“Shish! It’s tee-rrifically late.—My goodness, Tom, but you were reckless! I thought every moment we’d upset.”
“Some driving, wasn’t it? You oughtn’t to complain. You liked it.”
“Liked it! I should say so. But Twinkles didn’t like it Poor Twinkles was mos’ awf’lly scared. Wasn’t ’oo, Twinkles?—Wonder if mother’s in bed.”
“Coming. I have a visitor.”
After Vashti had left him, their voices sank to a whisper.
So she’d been out with another man! While he had been waiting, almost counting the seconds, she’d been out with another man! They’d been driving through the darkness together. Perhaps they’d been making love. No wonder she hadn’t answered his letters or cables. “Come to America if you really care.” She had said it lightly and forgotten. It had meant nothing to her. And here he’d been finding delicate excuses to explain what was no more than indifference.
A Pekinese lap-dog waddled in; catching sight of him, it sniffed contemptuously. It was followed by a boy who had the perky air of an impudent fox-terrier. He stared at Teddy with an amused gleam of challenge.
“Here, all this evening! Oh, what a shame and me out!” It was Desire’s piping voice. “Get out of the way, Tom, you’re blocking up everything.”
He saw her—her piquant face alight with welcome. She tripped across the room, extending both her hands. Her eyes begged him to keep their secret “It is good of you to visit us so promptly,” she said. “Fancy your remembering! I didn’t think we’d see you till to-morrow at earliest.”
She waited for him to help her. Then: “Mother says you’re over on business. Are you going to be here long?” His sense of injury died down. He saw only the small penitent face, with its gray eyes and quivering childish mouth.
“That depends.”
“Well, we’ll see heaps of you, won’t we?”
He couldn’t endure this pretending. He pushed aside her question. “What are you doing to-morrow?” he asked abruptly.
“To-morrow! To-morrow!”
She gazed vaguely round. Her mother came to her rescue. “My baby-girl never knows what she’s doing tomorrow. She never plans ahead. Better call her up, Teddy.”
“Not too early,” Desire smiled poutingly. “I’m awfully tired. And Twinkles is tired. Isn’t ’oo, Twinkles darling?” She stooped down and touched the dog’s nose with the tip of her finger. “We shan’t get up till——”
“Call up at eleven,” said Vashti. “Before you go, I may as well introduce you two men. If I don’t, you’ll glower at each other all the way down in the elevator.”
He was passing out; Desire touched him on the arm possessingly. “I couldn’t help it,” she whispered. “We’ll have all to-morrow to ourselves. You’re not angry?” Angry! As though he’d come all the way to America to be angry.
“Couldn’t ever be angry with you,” he whispered back.
During the past two hours since he had breakfasted, he had watched the telephone as though it were a live thing—as though it were her lips which might speak to him at any moment He felt that she was there in the room with him, obstinately keeping silent.
She had told him not to disturb her till eleven, but he had persuaded himself that he would hear from her long before that—at nine, perhaps; at ten, at latest. She had tried to appear offhand in arranging the appointment because another man had been present He pretended to think it rather decent of her to have let the chap down so lightly.
During every minute of the last two hours, he had been expecting to hear the shrill tinkle of her summons. As he bent above his writing his heart was in his throat He kept glancing up, telling himself that his sixth sense had warned him that her voice was already asking its way across the wires. Though previous premonitions had proved unwarranted, he was confident that his latest was truly psychic.
Surely a girl who knew that she was loved wouldn’t sleep away the freshness of a blue September morning! Curiosity, if nothing better, would rouse her. It didn’t often happen that a man came three thousand miles to do his courting. She’d kept him waiting so long. If she felt one-tenth part of his impatience——
He finished his letter to his mother. It was all about his voyage and the interviews of yesterday. He ought to tell her more—but how, without telling her too much?
He scrawled a postscript, “By the way, yesterday I met Vashti”; then sealed the envelope. By the time an inquiry could be returned, he would know everything. He would know for certain whether Desire loved him. He pulled out his watch. A few minutes past ten! To keep his nerves quiet he made a pretense at working. He would outline the first of his series of articles.
But his thoughts wandered. There was no room in his mind for anything save her. She possessed him. The birdlike inflexions of her voice piped in his memory; he could hear her laughter, the murmur of her footsteps, the rustle of her dress. The subtle fragrance of her presence was all about him. In the silence of his brain she pleaded with him, taunted him, explained her omissions of consideration. “You don’t know what things have done to me—don’t know what things have done to me.”
It was useless; he gave up his attempt. All he had accomplished was to fill a page with sketches of her face. Here she was as he had seen her last night, fashionably attired, with her hair like a crown of bronze upon her forehead. And here as the Guinevere of that bewildering drive, mystic as the dawn in a web of shadows. And here as the coaxing, elusive sprite, who had scribbled her heart upon the dusty panes of childhood.
Would he ever be able to work again, ever be able to pursue any ambition or any dream in which she did not share?
He rose restlessly and fumbled for his watch. A minute to eleven! He stepped across to the telephone. While the boy at the switchboard was getting his number, he tapped with his foot, consumed with impatience.
“Madame Jodrell’s apartment?—I want to speak to Miss Desire.—Oh, no, I’m sure she’s not sleeping. You’re mistaken.” He laughed nervously. “This is Mr. Gurney. She asked me to ring her up at eleven.”
Silence. A long wait. “She’ll speak to you, sir.” The clicking of a new connection. He heard the receiver taken down at the other end and a curious sound which, after puzzling over, he decided must be the running of bathwater.
“Are you there?”
He listened.
“Is that you, Desire?”
No answer.
Then she gave herself away. Across the wire came to him a stifled yawn, followed by a bubbling little laugh.
“Yes, it’s Desire. What a lot of time you’re wasting. A whole minute! Time enough to decide the destiny of nations. And weren’t you punctual!—Can you come at once! Certainly not. Can’t you guess where I am? I shan’t be ready till twelve.—Oh, well, if you don’t mind waiting, I’ll expect you.”
He had intended to say more, but she rang off.
Streets were gilded with sunlight The sky was a smooth shell-like blue, without a cloud. It seemed much more distant than any sky he had seen in London. Over London the sky broods companionably; from London streets, even at their merriest the hint of melancholy is never absent But here, in New York, he was conscious of an invigorating reckless valor, a magnificent and lonely daring. It was every man for himself. There was no friendship between the city and the heavens; as ladders of stone were set up higher against the blue, the heavens receded in challenge.
There was a tang of autumn in the air. Leaves on trees began to have a brittle look. Everything shone: trolley-lines, windows, the slender height of sky-scrapers. It was a wide day—just the day for adventures.
As he passed further uptown, he noticed that people walked more leisurely; men’s faces grew rarer. He had a glimpse of the Park, a green valley of coolness between the quarried, sun-dazzled crags of the metropolis. Presently he turned off to the left, down one of those tunnels hewn between apartment-houses and sacred to the morning promenades of yapping dogs—proud little useless dogs like Twinkles, led on leashes by lately-risen mistresses. Then, in a flash, he saw the Hudson, going from one great quietness to another, sweeping down to the ocean full-bosomed and maternal from its sanctuary in the hills.
The elevator-boy seemed to have been warned of his coming; when he gave his name, he was taken up without suspicious preliminaries.
“Miss Desire hasn’t finished dressing yet,” the maid told, him. “If you’ll wait in here, she’ll be with you presently.”
He was shown into the room in which Vashti had played to him. He hadn’t taken much notice of it on his previous visit Now, as he tiptoed about he saw that it was expressive of its occupants’ personalities. It had a gay, delicate, insubstantial air. It didn’t look lived in. Everything could be packed up within an hour. It wasn’t a home; it was what Vashti had called a “perch.”
The furniture was slight and dainty, as though there for appearance rather than for use. The sofa by the window seemed the only piece meant to be sat on. On the table a dwarf Japanese garden was growing. Beside it lay a copy of Wisdom and Destiny, opened and turned face down. The books within sight were few, for the most part plays and the latest fiction. They were strewn about with a calculated carelessness. On the walls was a water-color of the Grand Canal and another of the Bay of Naples. The rest of the pictures were elaborate photos of actresses, with spidery signatures scrawled across them. One face predominated: the face of a beautiful woman, with a vague smile upon her childish, self-indulgent mouth and a soft mass of hair swathed about her head. She was taken in a variety of poses, but always with the same vague smile and always with her face stooping, as though she were trying to hypnotize the onlooker. One might have supposed that this was the den of a man who was in love with her. Scratched hurriedly in the corner of each of her portraits, prefaced by some extravagant sentiment, was the name “Fluffy.”
On the piano stood the photo of the only man in the collection, signed “To my dearest Girl.”
Teddy paused before it. He recognized the man who had brought Desire home last night—the man who had kept her from him. “To my dearest Girl.” He read and re-read it. Was that the secret of her indifference—that she was in love already? But wouldn’t Vashti have warned him? He stared his defiance. The more inaccessible she became to him, the more he felt the need of her. Something of the valor and bright hardness of the day had entered into his soul. He was like those tall buildings, climbing more recklessly into the blue every time the sky receded from them. He didn’t care who claimed her. He was glad that he would have to fight. She was his by the divine right of the dreamer, and had been his for years. At whatever sacrifice he would win her. Inconsistently, the more difficult she became to him, the more certain he grew of success.
“Hulloa, King Arthur! Getting impatient? I’ll soon be> with you.”
He stepped to the door and looked out into the passage. “Impatient! Of course I’m impatient. Where are you?”
Her laugh floated back. “Where you’re not allowed to come. You can’t complain; I told you I wouldn’t be dressed till twelve.”
“It’s nearer one by now.”
“Is it? But you’ve nothing to do. If you hunt about, you’ll find some cigarettes. Make yourself happy.”
He had hoped she would continue the conversation; but her voice grew secret as she whispered to her maid. He heard cupboards and drawers being opened and shut, a snatch of song, and, every now and then, the infectious gayety of her laughter.
He came back into the room and smiled at the photo on the piano. “She mayn’t be in love with me yet, but she’s certainly not in love with you,” he thought. Then he stood gazing at his unresponsive rival, wondering how much he could tell.
He was still intent upon the portrait when she danced across the threshold, swinging her gloves.
“Taking a look at Tom? Be careful; you’ll make him jealous.” She slipped her small hand into his. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.”
“D’you mean that—that you’re really glad?”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief, but she said demurely: “Why shouldn’t I mean it? I’m always glad to see my friends.—And now, don’t you think you’ve held my hand long enough? See how lonely it looks, just as if it were asking me to put on its glove.”
She tripped over to the window and gazed out. “Isn’t it glorious?—And I feel so happy—so full of life, so young.” Her back was towards him; she felt him drawing nearer. “I ought to tell you about my hands before we know each other better. They have names. The right one is Miss Self-Reliance, and the left Miss Independence. They’re both of them very ambitious and—” she swung round, lowering her eyes—“and they don’t like being held.” He glanced at the photo on the piano. “Did no one ever hold them?”
“Hardly any one, truth and honest” She finished the last button and winked at him solemnly. “Here have I been ready since eleven, sending you cables and whole gardens of flowers.” She burst out laughing: “I’m glad you don’t drizzle. Come on, I’m hungry for the sun.”
As they shot down in the elevator he asked her: “Drizzle! That’s a new word. What do you mean by it?”
“You’ll know soon enough.” She nodded. “Sooner or later all men do it. Tom drizzles most awfully. He drizzled last night, when I didn’t want him to come up because I thought you’d be in the apartment.”
“Then you did think that? You hadn’t forgotten that it was the day I landed?”
“Forgotten after you’d cabled me! You must think me callous.”
She gave her shoulders a haughty shrug and ran down the steps into the sunlight. He followed, inwardly laughing. Already she had taught him one way of stealing a march on the rest of her suitors. All the other men grew gloomy—“drizzled,” as she called it—when they fancied that she had hurt their feelings. He decided, then and there, that under no provocation whatsoever would he drizzle. She might do what she liked to him, he would always meet her smiling. Amor Omnia Vincit should be the legend written on his banner.
“What shall we do?” She clasped her hands against her throat in a gesture of ecstasy.
“Anything you like.”
“Anything! Really anything? Even something quite expensive?”
“Hang the expense.”
“Then come on.”
He had no idea where she was taking him, and he didn’t care. All places were alike, so long as he was alone with her. They walked shoulder to shoulder, their arms just touching. Sometimes in crossing a road they drew apart and then, as if to apologize for their brief aloofness, came together with a little bump on the farther pavement. They were embarrassed, and glad to be embarrassed. When their silences had lasted too long, they stole furtive glances at each other; when their eyes met, they smiled archly.
They had passed through the tunnels where the dogs take their morning walks, and had come out on to Broadway. Suddenly she stopped and regarded him with an expression of unutterable calamity.
“I’ve got to go back.”
“No, don’t—please.”
“I must.”
He scented tragedy—a previous engagement, perhaps. “But why—why, when we’ve only just met?”
“I’ve forgotten your lilies. I was going to wear them as—as an apology.”
He laughed his relief. “Pooh! There are heaps more.”
“But it isn’t that. I wouldn’t accept any more. It’s the dear old ones that I want—the ones you sent me almost the minute you landed.”
He glanced round sharply; a few doors off he saw a florist’s. “Don’t go back,” he pleaded. And then, with a frankness which he feared might offend her: “If you did go back, we might meet other people. I want you all to myself to-day; I can’t spare a second of you to other persons. Promise to stop here for me.”
“But I—perhaps I don’t want to lose a second of you to other persons.” She rested her hand on his arm lightly. “Where are you going?”
“Be back before you can say Jack Robinson.”
He darted off. As he entered the shop, he caught her slow smile of intelligence forbidding him.
While the flowers were being arranged, he kept his eyes turned to where she hovered on the pavement; the anxiety that she might escape him was not quite gone. He saw her hail a taxi. For a moment he thought—— But, no, she was having an earnest conversation.
“It’s all arranged, brother. We’re going to drive down
“Don’t tell me.” He banged the door and settled himself beside her. “Life’s much more surprising when you don’t know where you’re going.” He laid the flowers in her lap. “For you. You won’t refuse them?”
She bent over them curiously, as though she hadn’t the least idea what he had been purchasing. As she stripped the paper from them and the white cup of the blossoms began to appear, she frowned severely.
“Lilies of the valley! You’re too good. You spoil me. And now you’ll think that I was asking for them. No. I won’t wear them.”
Having registered her protest, she at once rewarded him with her fluttering delight as she turned back her coatee and tried several effects before finally deciding where to fasten them.
While he had walked at her side, he had been too embarrassed to take much notice of how she was dressed.
Now that her attention was occupied, he grew bold to examine her toilet.
Her beauty was a subtle, intoxicating perfume, like incense suggesting the spirit of worship. She was different from his mother—different even from Vashti, and from any woman that he had known. Her difference might not be the result of virtues—might even be due to omitted qualities. He did not stop to analyze; to him the very newness of her type was a fascination.
Nothing that she wore was useful. It was perishable as a spring garden. A shower of rain, and it would be eternally ruined. None of it could be employed as second-best when its first freshness was gone. It couldn’t even be given to the poor: her attire was too modish—it bespoke luxury and marked the wearer’s class in society. Her clothes were the whim of the moment—utterly uneconomic. If Mrs. Sheerug had had to pass judgment on them, she would have said that they weren’t sensible.
In the exact sense they weren’t even clothing; they were adornments, planned with a view to exposing quite as much as to concealing the person. To enhance the effect of beauty was their sole purpose.
The skirt was a creamy shade of muslin, with small green and blue flowers dotted over it. It was thin and blowy, and so modeled as to pronounce rather than to hide the lines of the figure. A pair of pretty feet peeped from under; the kind of feet that demand a carriage and are not meant for walking. They were clad in gossamer silk-stockings; the shoes seemed to have been designed for dancing and were absurdly high in the heel. Both shoes and stockings exactly matched the creamy tint of the muslin. Teddy thought with joy that any one who wore them would be in constant need of a man’s protection. There would be many puddles in life over which, with such shoes, she would require to be carried.
The coatee was of apple-green satin, turned back from the neck and belted in at the waist, revealing a gauzy blouse cut into a low V-shape, so as to display the gentle breathing of the throat and breast.
His eyes stole up to her face. It was shadowed by a broad hat of limp straw, trimmed with dog-roses and trailing cherry-colored ribbon. On her fresh young cheeks was the faintest dust of powder, giving to them a false bloom and smoothness. He wondered why she did that, when her unaided complexion would have been so much more attractive. Below her left eye was a beauty-patch. Behind her left ear hung a tremulous curl, which added a touch of demure quaintness. In appearance she was like to one of Lely’s portraits of the beauties of the Cavalier period—to a Nell Gwynn, whose very aspect of innocence made her latent naughtiness the more provocative.
Though he was exceptionally ignorant of the feminine arts and familiar only with domestic types of women, Teddy thought that he now understood why she had taken two hours to dress. For his sake she had made herself a work of art. It was as though she had told him, “I want you to like me better than any girl in the world, Teddy”—only, for some unexplained reason, she had avoided calling him Teddy as yet.
He sat watching her as she pinned the lilies against her breast How pretty her hair was, with its reddish tinge like specks of gold shining through its blackness! And her ears—they were like pale petals enmeshed within her tresses.
He couldn’t blame her if other men had loved her first; but he wished they hadn’t. The knowledge had come as a shock.
“Been inspecting me for quite some time! Do I meet with monsieur’s approval?” She leant her head at a perky angle and glanced up at him.
“Approval! My mind was made up before I started. I didn’t come to America to——”
“No, I know.” She cut him short. “Mother told me: you’re a gree-at success. You came on business.—Please don’t interrupt; I’ve something most important to tell you. I do want you to approve of me to-day— to-day most especially. That’s why I didn’t get up till eleven.” She saw the smile creeping round the edges of his mouth. “I didn’t mean that the way you thought. You’re looking sarcastic and—and I hate sarcastic persons. I stayed in bed to get rested that I might look my prettiest, because——- Presently I’ll tell you. I’ve done something terrible; No, I won’t tell you now—later. But promise you’ll forgive me.”
“Forgive you!” His voice trembled. Had he dared, he would have slipped his arm about her; but she had huddled herself closer into her corner. “I’ll forgive you anything, if you’ll do one thing to please me.”
He waited for her to ask him what it was; but her strategic faculty for silence again asserted itself. She sat, not looking at him, with her eyes shaded.
It was a childish longing that prompted him to make his request. “I want to see your hands,” he whispered. “They’re so beautiful. It’s a shame to keep them covered. On my word of honor,” he sank his voice, “I won’t—won’t take advantage.”
She considered poutingly whether she would grant the favor.
“The first I’ve ever asked,” he urged.
The smile came like sunshine flashing through cloud. “That kind is rarely the last.”
She pulled off the glove from her right-hand, Miss Self-Reliance, because it was furthest from him.
“When I was very little,” she said, “I used to ask you whether I was pretty. You used to drizzle in those days; all you’d tell me was, ’You have beautiful hands.’ Then Bones and I would steal away and cry in the currant-bushes. D’you remember?”
“I must have been a grudging little beast.”
“No, you were a nice boy when you weren’t quite horrid. But if I were to ask you now, ’Do you think I’m pretty?’ Please don’t answer. I’m not asking. But because of all that—the times we used to have—let’s be good playfellows while it lasts. We won’t say silly things or do silly things. Let’s be tremendously sensible. There! That’s a bargain.”
It wasn’t. If being in love wasn’t sensible, the last thing he wanted was to be sensible. He hadn’t come to America to be sensible in her meaning of the word. But the swiftness with which she took his consent for granted left no room for argument. She might mistake his arguing for drizzling—the fault which she held the most in contempt. So he kept both his tongue and his hands quiet, doing his best to forget all the ardent scenes which his imagination had conjured.
The lonely distance in the taxi between his corner and hers seemed to have widened. They passed over a long cat’s-cradle of girders, spanning the East River. She didn’t speak. She sat with her ungloved hand before her eyes and her face averted. Any stranger who had glanced in on them at that moment would have said they had quarreled. It felt very much like it to Teddy.