Читать книгу The Salamander - Owen Johnson - Страница 8

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Doré found herself between Judge Massingale and Lindaberry, Harrigan Blood opposite between Georgie Gwynne and Violetta Pax. Sassoon was at the farther end, opposite Lindaberry, with Adèle Vickers and Busby to his right, and Paula Stuart and the Comte de Joncy on his left, Consuelo Vincent sharing the noble guest, with Massingale next to her.

Beside each feminine plate a bouquet of orchids and yellow pansies, daintily blended, was waiting, and from the loosely bound stems the edge of a bank-note showed—a slit of indecipherable green.

Immediately there was a murmur of voices, a quick outstretching of hands, and a sudden careful pinning on to waists, while each glance affected unconsciousness of what it had detected. Doré did not imitate the others. Her eye, too, had immediately caught the disclosed corner. She contrived, while folding her gloves, to turn the bouquet slightly, so that no trace of what it contained showed. Then, when the opportunity came, she examined the faces of the men. So quickly had the flowers been transferred to the bodices that the male portion remained in ignorance. Massingale was too close to her to be sure of. Had his quick eye detected what the others had missed? To refuse the bouquet meant to bring down on her head a torrent of explanations; ignorance were better.

At this moment there was a hollow pause. The caviar had just been served, and the chorus girls, watching for a precedent, were in a quandary between a fork which inclined to a knife, and a fork that was a tortured spoon. But Georgie Gwynne, too long repressed, exclaimed:

"Oh, hell! Buzzy, tell us the club."

This remark, and the roar with which is was greeted, dispelled at once the gloom that had settled about the Royal Observer. The chorus girls, unbending, began to talk American—all at once, chattering, gesturing. Doré profited by the moment to affix the bouquet among the orchids she already wore. The success of Georgie Gwynne's ice-breaking was such that the Comte de Joncy, charmed by such naturalness, wished to invite her to his side; but, amid protests, it was decided, on a happy motion of Busby's, that the guests should rotate after each course.

The chorus girls began to talk

"Sorry it's so," said Massingale, turning; "I shall lose you!"

"Oh, now you know I'm a counterfeit," Dodo said maliciously, "I shall spoil your fun. Never mind; I promise to go early!"

"Who are you?" he said, by way of answer.

"Trixie Tennyson!"

"I've half a mind to denounce you!"

"Oh, Your Honor, you wouldn't do that!"

"So you won't tell me who you are?"

"It'll be so much more fun for you to find out!"

She listened to him with her head set a little to one side. She rarely gave the full of her face, keeping always about her a subtle touch of evasion.

"I know her kind well," he had said to himself. But he continued to watch her intently, interested in that innate sense of the shades of coquetry she displayed in the lingering slanted glances, and the eerie smile which gathered from the malicious corners of her eyes, slipping down the curved cheek to play a moment about her lips.

"Why did you come?" he said, wishing that she would turn toward him.

"Curiosity!"

"Precipices?"

She turned to him, genuine surprise in the blue clouded eyes, her rosy lips parted in amazement.

"How did you know?"

"It wasn't difficult!"

"You're uncanny!"

His sense of divination had so startled her that she turned from him a moment, wondering what attitude to assume. While feigning to listen to the declaiming of Harrigan Blood, she took every opportunity to study him. Massingale, scarcely forty, had an intellectual aristocracy about him that lay in the impersonality of his amused study of others. Yet in this scrutiny there was no accent of criticism. His lips were relaxed in a tolerant humor, and this smile puzzled her. Was he also of this company who sought amusement in a descent to other levels, or was he simply an observer, a man who had ended a phase of life, but who still delighted in the contemplation of the ridiculous, the grotesque and the absurdity of these petty contests of wits? She was aware that he had attacked her imagination in a way no man had tried before, and this presumption awoke an instant spirit of resistance. She stole a glance from time to time in the mirror, but she avoided opportunities for conversation.

From the farther end of the table she beheld the guest of the day radiating happiness under a storm of questions from the chorus girls:

"Perfectly horrid of you to call yourself count!"

"Count, lord, I've got a string of 'em!"

"Barons."

"Dukes, too. I know Duke of What's-His-Name Biscay. He's a nice boy! Do you know him?"

And Georgie Gwynne, flushed with her first success, said to Harrigan Blood, in a permeating aside:

"When I get to His Nibs, watch what I'll hand him!"

But Harrigan Blood, absorbed in an idea, answered her:

"Be quiet now, Georgie—gorge yourself!"

"Composing an editorial on luxury, Harrigan?" said Lindaberry, speaking for the first time.

Harrigan Blood admitted the patness of the guess with a wave of his hand, leaning heavily on the table with his elbows. He had always an air of being in his shirt-sleeves.

"See the Free Press to-morrow," he said, moving his large hand over his face and frowning spasmodically. His eye ran quickly over the menu, calculating the cost per plate, the value of the rare wines, the decorations, the presents and the tips. "Two thousand dollars at the least—four thousand dinners below Fourteenth Street, five years abroad for a genius who is stifling, twenty thousand tired laborers to a moving-picture show. And with what we turn over with our fork and regret, the waste that will be thrown away, a family could live a year! This is civilization and Christianity!"

"Appetite good, Harrigan?" said Lindaberry, with an impertinence that few would have ventured.

"Better than yours," said Blood impatiently. "Ideas and personalities have no connection. Ends are one thing, instruments another. Who was the greatest of the disciples? St. Paul. He had experienced! Shakespeare—Tolstoy. The caviar is delicious!"

In his attitude he felt no hypocrisy. He looked upon himself as a machine, to be fed and to be kept in order by sensations—experiences: a privileged nature dedicated passionately to ideal ends. For the rest, his contempt for mankind in the present was profound. He had conquered success early, but he retained an abiding bitterness against the world which had misunderstood him and forced him a short period to wait.

"And this is Harrigan Blood!" Doré thought, wondering. Another day flashed before her—two years old—when, just arrived, a despairing claimant, she had pleaded in vain for opportunity in the great soul-crushing offices of the Free Press. The sport of fate had flung her a chance, and watching Harrigan Blood from the malicious corners of her busy eyes, she planned her revenge.

Lindaberry had not as yet addressed a single word to her. He had gradually come out of the stolid dull intensity that had lain on him with the weight of last night's dissipation, but one felt in the awakening vivacity of his eye, the impatient opening and shutting of his hand, the quick smile that followed each outburst of laughter, a struggle to reach the extreme of gaiety which such a company brought him to relieve him from that depression which closed over him when condemned to be alone.

For her part, she had scarcely noticed him—having a horror of men who drank. At this moment a butler, under orders from Busby, placed before him a bottle of champagne for his special use. He turned courteously but impersonally, without that masculine impertinence in the eye which is still a compliment.

"May I freshen up your glass?"

"Thank you, no!" she said icily. "I'm afraid I don't appreciate your special brand of conversation!"

He looked at her, startled—her meaning gradually dawning on him. But, before he could reply, Busby had risen, sounding his knife against his plate.

"Next course, ladies will please chassé! Gentlemen, make sure of your jewelry!"

Doré rose, and, as she did so, addressing the butler who drew out her chair, said:

"In order that Mr. Lindaberry may feel quite at home, do please place a bottle on each side of him!"

She made him an abrupt mocking bow, and went to her place past Massingale, next to the Comte de Joncy, while Lindaberry, flushing, was left as best he could to face the laughter and clapping of hands that greeted her sally.

The Comte de Joncy had risen courteously, studying her keenly from his pocketed, watery blue eyes, seating her with marked ceremony, too keen an amateur of the sex not to feel a difference in her.

"Bravo!" he said, laughing, and in a confidential tone: "Madame de Staël could not have answered better!"

The allusion was not in her ken, but she felt the compliment.

"Are you what? Wolf in sheep's clothing, or sheep—"

"Beware!" she said maliciously, converting a fork into a weapon of attack. "I am a desperate adventuress who has taken this way to meet Your Highness!"

"If it were only true!" he said, looking questions.

"Why not?" The game amused her, and besides, something perversely incited her to recklessness. Massingale was on the other side of her—Massingale, who, after the impudence of having comprehended her, treated her with only tepid interest. "Where shall I follow you? Paris or Dresden?"

He stared at her with squinting eyes, not quite deceived, not quite convinced. At the end he laughed.

"Pretty good—almost you fool me!"

"You don't believe me?" she said, raising her eyes a moment to his.

"Mademoiselle, your eyes have a million in each of them!" he said, after a moment, but not quite so calmly. "Will you give me your address?"

"Why not?" she said, opening her hands in a gesture of surprise.

"I will come!" he said, yet not entirely the dupe of her game.

"Poor Count!" she said, with a quick change of manner. "You don't know what a dangerous animal we have here. Beware!"

"What?"

"The great American teaser!" she said, laughing.

"Teaser—teaser! What is that?"

She entered into an elaborate explanation, glancing into the mirror, striving from there to catch Massingale's look.

"I say, angels!" said Buzzy, bubbling over with mischief. "I've got an idea!"

"Buzzy has an idea!"

"Good for Buzzy!"

"We want to amuse the Count, don't we?" said Busby artfully.

"Sure!..."

"You bet!..."

"Well, then, let's tell our real names!"

Violetta Pax gave a scream of horror and retired blushing under her napkin at the storm of laughter her scream of confession had aroused.

"Real name's Lou Burgstadter!" said Consuelo Vincent in a whisper to De Joncy, who had forgot her.

Violetta Pax was on her feet in an instant.

"Consuelo Vincent, I like your nerve!... Consuelo, indeed! Cassie Hagan!" she cried furiously. "Yes, and Carrie Slater, too, needn't put on airs!"

The rest was lost in an uproar; the chorus girls were on their feet, protesting vigorously, all chattering at once, the men applauding and fomenting the tumult, Busby secretly enjoying the mischief he had exploded, running from one to the other, pleading, provoking, adding fuel to the burning.

"Ladies!... Ladies! Remember there are gentlemen present!... Georgie, Violetta's giving you away!... Girls! Girls! Remember His Highness!... Paula, dear, you ought to hear what Georgie said, of you! Awful ... awful.... Now, dearies, behave!... remember your manners!"

At the end of a moment, overcome with laughter, he capsized on a sofa in weak hysterics. Blood exclaimed that Busby had a fit, and thus procured a diversion which restored calm. Nevertheless, the storm had been so sudden that the wreckage was strewn about the room; Busby gathered them together again, conciliated every one and brought them back to their seats.

Doré was excited by this outburst. At last the party promised something to her curiosity. She waited eagerly, her eyes dancing, her fingers thrumming on the cloth, curious to see these men, of whom she had heard so much, unmask.

While continuing her banter with De Joncy, she had turned her attention to Sassoon, who, in the midst of the hilarity, preserved the fatigue and listlessness of his first appearance, a smile more contemptuous than amused lurking about the long oriental nose and burnt-out eyes without abiding quite anywhere. He paid no attention to the girls at either side, peering restlessly at those farther away, dissatisfied, unamused.

His reputation was of the worst, his name bandied about in big places and in small; nor, as is usually the case, did gossip bear unmerited reproaches. Neither a fool, as most believed, nor of originating imagination, as a few credited who witnessed from the inside the shrewd and infallible success of his colossal schemes, Sassoon at bottom was a prey to an obsession that stung him like a gadfly to restless seeking, eternally tormented by the fever of the hunter, eternally disillusioned. For thirty years, following the exigencies of a maladive heredity, he had raked the city with his craving eye, always alert, always disappointed, running into dark side streets, ringing obscure bells, pursuing a shadow that had awakened a spark of hope. And at the end it was always the same—emptiness! To-day he sat moodily, fiercely resentful at a fresh deception.

A certain disdainful defiance, a trick of Violetta Pax, fleeing, bacchante-like, in the sextette, had stirred in him a flash of expectancy, a hungering hope, which had died in hollowness now that she was at his side, unresisting, too ready. So he sat, brooding, heavy-lidded, already turning to other fugitive forms that he might follow in a vague impulse—of all the millions in the city the one most enslaved. When, in her turn, Doré came to take her place beside him, after the first listless acknowledgment he spoke no word to her. She responded by turning her back to him at once, with a complete ignoring. This attitude, so different from the challenging eyes of the others, struck him—he who craved opposition, resistance. All at once, as she was leaving him to take her place between Busby and Harrigan Blood, he said, his soft hand on her arm, in his low, rather melodious feminine voice:

"You haven't paid much attention to me, pretty thing!"

"Your own fault, Pasha!" she said impertinently. "Men run after me!"

And she was aware that his eye, dead as a cold lantern, followed her now, running over her neck and shoulders, aroused as from its lethargy. Satisfied that her instinct had not failed, she took her seat. Then, all at once, she felt a new annoyance: Massingale, the observer, was smiling to himself.

The hilarity began to freshen. Consuelo Vincent, who had magnificent hair, was heard exclaiming:

"I say, girls! we're stiff as a bunch of undertakers. Let's slip our roofs!"

Amid general acclaim, the top-lofty, overburdened hats were consigned to a butler. Every one began to chatter on a higher key, across the constant rise of laughter. Georgie Gwynne, installed by the Royal Observer, saucy and unabashed, was saying:

"Well, Kink, how do you like us?"

In another moment the Comte de Joncy, sublimely content, was being initiated into the art of eating brandied cherries from the ripe lips of Violetta Pax and Georgie Gwynne.

From the moment Doré had taken off her toque, Sassoon and Harrigan Blood had not ceased to stare at her.

"A hat is not becoming to me," she said to Harrigan Blood, and added: "Besides, I have nothing to conceal."

Amid the pyramided and confectioned head-dresses, the simplicity of her own, playing about her forehead like a golden cloud, stood out. For the first time, her youth and naturalness appeared, depending on no artifice.

Harrigan Blood did not go to what attracted him by four ways, or around a hill.

"You don't belong to this crowd," he said pointblank. "Don't lie to me! What are you?"

"The story of my life?" she said. "It's getting to the time, isn't it?"

"You know what I mean," he said roughly. "People don't often interest me. You do! I've been watching you. Do you want backing?"

She was surprised—genuinely so. She had felt that Blood was different—too powerful, too merciless, to be caught as other men were caught. She did not look up at him, as others would have, but remained smiling down at the cloth, running her mischievous fingers through the low dish of yellow pansies before her. And, with the same averted look, which brought her a complete understanding of the impetuousness of his attack, she felt Sassoon's awakened stare and the scrutiny of Judge Massingale, who, while he pretended to talk to Paula Stuart, was listening with a concentrated interest. She was pleased, quite satisfied with herself. Only Lindaberry remained.

"You are very impulsive, aren't you?" she said slowly.

"On the stage? A beginner?"

She nodded.

"Come to me—at my office, any afternoon, after five." And he added, without lowering his voice: "If you're after a career, don't waste your time on this sort. I can put you in a day where you want."

She rose to take her seat on his right, next to Lindaberry.

"Will you come?" he said, detaining her.

"Why not?" she said, lifting her eyes, with a little affectation of surprise at so simple a question.

During her progress about the table she had kept Lindaberry in mind, with a lurking sense of antagonism, a desire to return to the attack, to punish him further. A certain grace that he had, which appealed to her instinct, the quality of instinctive elegance, only increased her resentment. At the bottom, the intensity of this resentment surprised her—without her being able to analyze it.

He had risen with a bow that was neither exaggerated nor curt. There was undeniable power in his face, boyish and weak as it was in its unrestraint, like a flame spurting fiercely on a trembling wick. He brought to men a little sense of fear—never to women. To-day this intensity seemed clouded, not fully awake as if there were still dinning in his ears the echoes of the night before. The dullest observer, looking on his face, would have seen where he was riding. In his own club (where he was adored) bets were up that he would not last the year.

Presently he leaned toward her and said, protected by the shrieks of laughter that surrounded De Joncy:

"Don't you think you were in the wrong? What right had you to come here?"

She understood that Busby had betrayed her to him and to Harrigan Blood.

"Even if I were a—" she gave a glance up the table, "you should make a difference between a woman and a—bottle!"

"You are quite right," he said, after a moment. "Will you accept my apologies? I am seldom discourteous to a woman—never intentionally."

She looked at him, and saw with what an effort he spoke, his brain on fire, yet making no mistake in the precision of his words. She nodded, and turned again to Harrigan Blood, all her nature aroused to opposition at this weakness in such a man. Yet ordinarily her sympathies were quick.

"You are too hard on him," said Harrigan Blood, who had listened. "It's gone too far; he can't help it. He's got his coffin strapped to his back."

"Why doesn't some one help him?" she said irritably.

Blood shrugged his shoulders, answering with the superiority of the self-made man before the misfortune of the friend who has thrown everything away:

"Help him? There's your feminism again! The world's turned crazy on sentimentalized charity! Charity is nothing but a confession of failure! Build up! Let derelicts go! Save him? For what? In New York? We are too busy. The best that can be said is, he's drinking himself to death like a gentleman—doing it royally! His self-control's a miracle—some day there'll be an explosion! If you knew his history—"

"What is his story?"

As Blood was about to begin it, he was interrupted by a general pushing back of chairs. Busby, at the piano, flung out the chords of the sextette that had made a mediocre opera famous.

Half the party crowded, laughing and bantering, to render the chorus, the Comte de Joncy insisting on being taught the latest curious American dance. Tenafly entered to see to the clearing of the room.

He was the type of the valet ennobled, a mask of incomparable vacuity, a secret smile that missed nothing, internal rather than outward, yet still chained to the servant's habit of picking up his feet.

Sassoon summoned him with a nod which Tenafly perceived instantly across the room.

"The little girl in yellow—who is she?"

The eye of the restaurateur passed vaguely over the company, but the instant sufficed to photograph each detail.

"She's new," he said, without moving his lips.

"She's not of the sextette?"

Tenafly shook his head.

"She's dined here—below—I've seen her!"

"Know her name?"

Tenafly searched the pigeonholes of his memory.

"I don't know her."

"Find out what you can—soon!"

"I will, sir!"

He spoke a moment in low tones with the master, who had no evasions with him. At the end Sassoon said impatiently:

"Can't be bothered ... see her for me and get a receipt."

Every one wished to dance, whirling and bumping, none too restrained in their movements, the Royal Observer awkwardly enthusiastic, enjoying himself immoderately. Doré, a little apart, Harrigan Blood at her side, watched with eyes keen with curiosity. Busby, De Joncy, Lindaberry amused themselves hugely, caricaturing the eccentricities of the dance, their arms about their partners, clinging, bacchanalian, in their movements. Doré followed Lindaberry, frowning, feeling a blast of anger that set her sensitive little nostrils to quivering with scorn. The feeling was unreasonable. She did not know why he should disturb her more than another, and yet he did. He seemed so incongruous there; she could not associate his refinement, his courtesy, with Georgie Gwynne, who held him pressed in her arms, her head thrown back, her throat bared, laughing provokingly. She had come to see behind the scenes, and yet this one roused her fury. Besides, there was in his attitude a scornful note—a contemptuous valuation of the woman, of women in general, she felt, as if he were thus proclaiming: "See, this is all they are worth!"

She began to glance at the door, counting the minutes. Judge Massingale came to her side.

"Dance?"

"I turned my ankle this morning."

"You don't want to!"

"No!"

He began to dance with Adèle Vickers, but not as the others, not with the same immoderate abandon. She noted this swiftly.

At last, in a pause between the dances, to Doré's relief, a footman, entering, announced:

"Miss Baxter's car is waiting."

It was an effect she had carefully planned, taking a full half-hour to lead Stacey Van Loan to an innocent participation. A group came up, protesting, acclaiming the discovery of her name—as she had wished.

"Oho! Miss Baxter, is it?"

"We won't let you go!"

"The fun's just beginning!"

"My chauffeur can wait!" said Doré superbly, perceiving the danger of an open retreat before this over-excited group. Her curiosity was satisfied. She began to foresee what she did not wish to witness, ugliness appearing from behind the carnival mask of laughter. She began to glance apprehensively at Harrigan Blood, who clung to her side, wondering how she could elude him. Then, as the group of protestants broke up, Sassoon, advancing deliberately, in that silken effeminate voice that expected no refusal, said abruptly: "Miss Baxter, where do you live?"

She was on the point of an indignant answer, but suddenly checked herself. She gave the address, but in a sharp muffled tone, boiling with anger within, with a quick resolve to punish him later.

"When are you in?"

Before she could answer, Harrigan Blood pushed forward, determined and insolent.

"Too late, Sassoon, my boy; nothing here for you!"

"I fail to understand you," said Sassoon.

"Don't you? Well, I'll make it plainer!"

"You'll kindly not interfere."

"And I'll thank you not to trespass!"

"What?"

"Don't trespass!"

Sassoon responded angrily; Harrigan Blood retorted with equal heat. In a moment the room was in an uproar.

Doré seized the confusion of the hubbub to slip from the group which rushed in to separate these two men whom a glance from a little Salamander had turned back into the raw.

She went quickly, frightened by the sounds of anger and the increasing uproar, flung into her furs, and stole toward the door.

All at once it opened before her, and in the hall was Lindaberry, roguishly ambushed.