The Salamander Part 36

She could not prevent her lawless imagination from wandering, visualizing another Dore Baxter, who swept gorgeously among the costly women of the opera and the restaurants, compelling a startled attention, luxuriant, radiant, triumphant with the sinister blinking eyes of Sa.s.soon always over her glowing shoulder. What constantly started this torturing image before her was that she had now no doubt as to what she could do with him. At first, incredulously, she could not believe that his interest would survive a week--that he would not depart furiously, once the scales had fallen from his hungry glance and he had realized that in her mocking society nothing was reserved for him but humiliation and deception. But, to her amazement, she found it was not so; that something had penetrated profoundly into that chilled soul, and that the pa.s.sion which had been kindled was one that sweeps men on to irretrievable follies, unthinkable sacrifices, at the hands of a calm woman. Sa.s.soon--no. But Sa.s.soon and the lure of a thousand shop-windows spreading before her their soft enwrapping mysteries of splendor....

Occasionally, gazing entranced before some bewildering evening gown, a peignoir all lace and cloud, a rope of milky pearls, she felt this sensation so compellingly that she would retreat breathlessly, trembling from head to foot.

What made the temptation doubly insidious was her own awakened point of view. She saw now the immense difference in scale between the upper world and the semi-Bohemian state of the Salamanders. Their desperate struggle to make both ends meet, their prodigies of imaginative planning, their campaigns of economy, all to procure a few insignificant dollars--this struggle of wits which had once exhilarated her now depressed her fearfully. She had a sort of second sight; she saw now the approach of failure, the inexorable famine that lay beyond the short dominion of youth. She had always dimly perceived this danger, saying to herself that she could cast the die before another cast it for her. But now, thinking of her twenty-third year still six months away, she had a feeling as if she were being hurried toward her choice, frantically driven; and yet, she could not see where all this whirlwind force was carrying her.

At this moment her mentality began. She felt a new birth of her reason--that unquiet searching of the self so often child of grief. She began to question--to a.n.a.lyze and to strive to penetrate the future. She saw herself in others, the past and the possible future: Ida Summers, arriving like a skipping child, all heedless laughter, inconscient, holding out avid arms for flowers, and Winona, a figure with half averted face, hand upon the latch, ready to depart. No, she would not be like Winona; that was impossible, she said, with a shudder; Winona was but a figure standing as a warning!

Winona herself, occupied with rehearsals, went out of her day, momentarily. Dore took her to the opera on the Monday nights that Mr.

Peavey had placed at her disposal. She never made the mistake of seeking a male escort. She felt always that Peavey's timid eyes were on her, hidden somewhere in that vast concourse, spying on her actions, waiting suspiciously to see if her companion were a man, a young and ardent man of her own generation. Nor was this entirely surmise. The second Monday, he had loomed at her side out of nowhere, happiness in his eyes, radiant to find her so discreetly accompanied. He had taken them to supper afterward. It seemed to her that Winona had put herself out to attract him--excessively so, considering her proprietors.h.i.+p; for the etiquette of Salamanders is imperious on such points. But then, Winona was in a curious mood, brooding, gay by starts and as suddenly silent. Dore sometimes wondered if things were working out well at the theater. In her determination to resist this life--Ma.s.singale's world, into which she had blundered so unluckily--she turned hungrily to the company of the other Salamanders, with a new need of woman's sympathy and understanding. Besides Winona and Ida, there were on the floor below Estelle Monks, whom she knew well and Clarice Stuart and Anita Morgan, roommates, whom she knew slightly, despite their repeated advances. They were trained nurses, lately arrived from the far West, older than the rest, but Salamanders by their craving for excitement and their fidelity to the rule of never allowing business to interfere with pleasure. Dore had always had that curiosity which each Salamander feels for another.

How did they play their games? Had they methods which she had not divined? Above all, what was to be the end of the comedy? Readily welcomed, she drifted into their society for a week or so. They engaged themselves only for the day, and yet, despite the exacting strain they underwent (and, to her surprise, she soon discovered that they were pa.s.sionately devoted to their profession), each night by half past seven they came tripping down the steps to where Dore, with the escorts, was waiting in an automobile to whirl them to the theater, to a long drive into the country, dinner and an impromptu dance, and then home by the midnight stars, ready to rise with the dawn and begin the day's toil.

They seemed made of iron.

They had their stories to tell, their a.n.a.lyses of men and life. Doctors, it seemed, were sometimes human, especially old ones. Often they had in the party men whose names were famous in the profession, abrupt incisive tyrants, neither abrupt nor tyrannical with them, submitting to their banter, prodigal of compliments, just as difficult to be kept in place as other men. Dore listened in astonishment to their conversations, amazed at the impertinence of the girls, and the ready laughing acceptance of those who, in the day, commanded them.

"Why?" said Clarice Stuart, when she had once voiced this amazement.

"Putting a different coat on them isn't going to change them, is it? Lud bless you, girl, I thought the way you did, once. I got over it quickly!

Do you want to know my first experience here, when I got to New York? An eye-opener, let me tell you! I was subst.i.tute on a surgical case,--private house, patient sleeping under opiates,--when Doctor Outerwaite, the same we were with the other night up at the Arena, came in for examination. 'Course, in that case, the family always go out of the room until the examination is over. Outerwaite! Lord, we'd heard nothing but Outerwaite all through the West! I was frightened stiff!

They say he's a devil in the operating-room, swearing like a trooper if everything doesn't go like clockwork! Imagine me! First case in little New York! Well, I shooed the family out, closed the doors and stood at the patient's side--he quite out of his head, delirium and opiates; me watching the Doc, and ready to jump at a sneeze. And what do you think he did? Go to the patient? Nixie! He came straight up to little me, slipped his arm around, and said:

"'Why, you beautiful creature! where did you come from?'"

She laughed in a superior worldly way, adding:

"They're not all that way; but there are some gay boys! Lord! I could tell you some story! I say, Dodo, if you ever get appendicitis, let me know. I'll fix it for you so it won't cost you a cent!"

So even distinguished surgeons, men of international reputation, had their little excursions behind the scenes, vulnerable as the rest before an impertinent, defiant Salamander! Curious, she asked questions, seeking to know how such wardrobes grew from modest salaries. Clarice was nothing if not direct.

"Graft!" she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "Of course, the wages are good, but they don't set up a wardrobe of Paris models, do they?

Well, it's a question of presents, see?" She laughed, shrugging her shoulders. "A patient you've pulled through pneumonia, or a case of trepanning, has a right to periodic fits of grat.i.tude, hasn't he? And, of course, when you leave there's always a present--money, if you're supporting the family at home." She emphasized this with a wink. "When you get a club man, a good sport who's been in a blue funk at dying, it shapes up pretty well! Of course, when you strike a woman, it's a scarf or a kimono. But we've been rather lucky!"

Then, become suddenly serious, she continued thoughtfully:

"I say, Dodo, it's real curious, the effect you get over a man when he's pulling out of a smas.h.i.+ng illness! You know, if I'd wanted to I could have married--" She stopped, lost in a reverie. "A nice boy, too.

Sometimes I think I was a fool!"

"Will you marry?" said Dodo curiously.

"Anita says she will. Don't know about little me. I'm engaged, you know." She held up two fingers and laughed: "But, lord! there's no hurry. It's such fun as it is!"

As she grew more confidential (and secrecy was not her failing), Dore herself was surprised at the daring of the nurse's life. She spoke lightly of things that Dore did not approve of--now. She had met men in unconventional ways, without introduction, according to a fancy--the expression is "picked up." When Dore demurred, she said, with western frankness:

"Say, how _would_ I meet them, then? Oh, I manage them all right--after!

That's where their little surprise comes in!"

And she began to tell of the time when she had flirted with two well-known club men at the Horse Show, men who were dying to speak to her, but were afraid on account of the presence of curious others. But, in pa.s.sing near them, they had slipped their cards into her pocket. Of course, she had not written them--she had met them by chance afterward at a restaurant; but she had not been offended by their advance. They were of her steady acquaintance now.

But Dore's incursion into this curious society brought her small amus.e.m.e.nt. She grew tired quickly of these too easily read admirers.

Then after what she had known, they were all second-chop. The company of Estelle Monks interested her more. Since the morning she had surprised her in the office of the _Free Press_, her curiosity had been stirred to further investigation. Estelle Monks herself forestalled her. She came into her rooms suddenly one morning, and plumping down, abruptly inquired:

"Do me a favor, Dodo?"

"Any!"

"Don't mention to Mr. Harrigan Blood that I inhabit these quarters!"

Dore, puzzled, a little embarra.s.sed too, moved away, saying:

"What do you mean? Why not?"

"No offense to you, bless you!" said Estelle Monks, with a curious smile. "You see, I'm on the paper. He--well, he wouldn't quite relish the idea of tripping over me when he turns up with a bunch of flowers."

"You exaggerate," said Dore nervously. "Harrigan Blood's not really interested."

"H. B.'s a d.a.m.ned fascinating man," said Estelle Monks directly, "but he doesn't like reporters about, whether he's serious or not--particularly his own reporters."

"He's not serious!" said Dore.

Estelle Monks smiled.

"That is, he only thinks he is."

"I guess you understand him, don't you?" said Estelle Monks, still smiling.

"Yes!" She looked at her friend, interested. "What are you doing on the paper? You never told any one."

"Raise your hand and cross your heart!" said Estelle solemnly. "I'm Ferdie Amsterdam."

"You?" said Dore in amazement. For under that pseudonym was conducted the famous society column of the _Free Press_.

"Expert on the Four Hundred--social dictionary."

"Honest?"

"Since two months!"

"But how do you manage?"

She told her story. She had come from San Francisco, where she had done some clever work on the papers. She had a few letters of introduction, and she knew a few men of the journalist emigration. She had gone to the _Free Press_ office with an article in hand, _Impressions of a Western Girl_.

"What, it was you?" said Dore, suddenly enlightened.

"Don't wonder you didn't recognize the photo. Belonged to some one on the coast. Wrote my article in Chicago--fake, of course, but highly seasoned. I handed it over as if I owned a Middle West chain of papers; told them I'd go out and work up the names. But the feeling was all right, so it was! The stuff went big; I was fixed!"

Dore was on the point of divulging her own experience, and how she had been outstripped; but she held her tongue with a new caution, asking:

"But the society game, Estelle--how do you know about that?"

"I don't!" she answered frankly. "It started as a joke; it made good!

The real Ferdie Amsterdam--that's to say, the last of the line, an old maid called Benticker--got a pain somewhere and was carted off to the hospital. I was put on the column and told to fill it up somehow. I sent in a hurry call to a couple of my friends, Ben Brown and Will Cutter--you know them, big magazine specialists--and we sat down with a couple of weeklies, and doped out a cracker-jack story. It amused them.