The Salamander Part 37

They used to laugh themselves sick over being Ferdie Amsterdam. Since then we lunch at Lazare's every day and dope it out. And say, the boss is so tickled, he's raised my rates! What do you think of that? 'Course, now I'm getting the jargon, going out and meeting people--"

"Going out?" said Dore, opening her eyes.

"Some! Ferdie Amsterdam gets a bid to any big affair that's pulled off.

Say, the way these leaders of society currycomb your back would paralyze you! Trouble to get information? Why, they're dying to crowd into print!"

"And so that's the way you worked it," said Dore musingly.

"Sure. Drop in to lunch with me and see the board in session!"

Dore liked Estelle Monks. There was something self-reliant and businesslike about her that inspired confidence. She had a big point of view, one who had unbounded charity and understanding. She invited Dore to go with her as her guest to several affairs, musicales, large b.a.l.l.s and tableaux, but the invitation was always declined. As she knew her, though, Dore was surprised to find how naturally this confident little worker, with the slow and alluring smile, gathered about her men from the most fas.h.i.+onable sets, men whom she converted into friends, firm in their respect. She admired this gift, knowing how much more difficult it is to establish a friends.h.i.+p than to begin a flirtation.

She went once or twice to luncheon with her, amused at the facile clever way Estelle Monks enlisted the services of two such celebrities as Ben Brown and Will Cutter, and that in friends.h.i.+p solely. It must be a gift--a gift that was not in Dore's power. Even on the few occasions she met them, Will Cutter looked at her with awakened fixity, very different from the way he beamed jovially on Estelle Monks. A smile, and Dore felt he would enlist under her banner. But she steadfastly resisted this disloyalty; for among Salamanders etiquette is strict, and possession is all points of the law.

For three weeks, then, she sought to immerse herself in this old life--sharing the surface confidences of the Salamanders, playing her part in little financial intrigues, running into p.a.w.n-shops with Winona, or making profitable arrangements at Pouffe's for the crediting on flowers withheld for Ida Summers, who was new; working up the birthday game for Clarice and Anita, when consulted by admirers as to what would please these difficult ladies; raising her own capital by the reselling of the bi-weekly basket of champagne from Peavey, the flowers that Stacey, Gilday and Sa.s.soon a.s.siduously offered, receiving her share of convertible presents from chance admirers, hooked for a week or two--at the bottom without zest, sick at heart, tired of it all. Then, all at once, one morning after she had gone to the door of the court-house where Ma.s.singale was holding court, in a sudden revulsion she fled to Blainey's office, wildly resolved on escape.

Two days later she found herself in Buffalo, inscribed on the list of a stock company, resolved to stay for months until her mental balance had been regained and the deep wound in her heart had become but a faint scar. She stayed just two weeks. The quiet, the relaxed air, life in so many ruts of the little big town, awoke in her a fear of the past, of being sucked back into the oblivion of early days, as if what she feared night and day had already begun--retrogression. Was that the true reason of her return, or was there some impelling magnet too compelling to be resisted, or even to be acknowledged?

She came directly into Blainey's office, profiting by her entree which carried her triumphantly past the crowded anteroom, where old and young, the hopeful and the resigned, the restlessly impatient and the soddenly pa.s.sive, waited wearily, watching her with hostile eyes.

"Well, Blainey, I'm back!" she said abruptly, and nodding at the dapper secretary, she added: "Send him out! I want to talk to you."

"Well, kid?" he said, studying her shrewdly when they were alone.

"Well, I'm going to be square with you!" she said, crossing her arms defiantly. "I'm miserable, Blainey!"

"Trouble here?" he said, laying a fat forefinger on his heart.

"Yes."

"Em--bad!" he said solemnly. He flung away the half smoked cigar, chose another and nervously turned it in his fingers. "So I'd sized it up--well, we all get it. Why? Lord love me, of all I've watched and stirred up, that's what gets me--why a d.a.m.ned clever girl like you, or a cold-headed old son-of-a-gun like me should ever fall--I'm sorry, kid!

Are you going to make a fool of yourself?"

"I don't know, Blainey," she said, shrugging her shoulders. She had a feeling, all at once, of confidence in his rough common sense.

"That's queer. I thought you were too keen!" He was thinking of Sa.s.soon, wondering if she would throw away such an opportunity for a short romance. "Some youngster, eh?--without a cent--talking big!"

He lighted the cigar and puffed it reflectively.

"Kid, we Americans are a bunch of d.a.m.ned fools. Sentiment's our middle name! Why should I hand you a line of talk? Haven't I fallen for it a dozen times? Yes, and ready to begin all over again! We've got to love some one, or we get to wabbling!"

He looked at her, and again he thought of Sa.s.soon, and what the situation might yield. He wanted to be honest with her, to give her good advice according to his lights.

"So that's why you shot off to Buffalo, eh?" he said, with a long whistle. "Bad theory! Stay by it; see the fellow ten times a day--that sometimes cures. Say, I'm going to hand you the truth like a Dutch uncle! You've got things going your way; you've got the whole game before you, cinched." He hesitated. "Sa.s.soon, ready to back you to the limit, opportunity, money backing; you know the place."... He waved contemptuously at the warring world of the Rialto below--"And you know the game. Sa.s.soon's good for thousands--in your hands. And then, there's the advertis.e.m.e.nt! Don't lose your head over a couple of square shoulders!"

She did not set him right. For her purposes she preferred that he should entirely misconceive her. She allowed him to go on, volunteering his worldly, well meant advice.

"All you say is true," she said finally, with an indefinable smile.

"Blainey, I've always said I would make up my mind at twenty-three. Be patient. It may be sooner!"

"Wish I could take twenty-five years off my back," he said slowly, without rising. "Take your time--take your time; and if you get weepy, come in and use my shoulder. Understand?"

He rang the bell, waved his hand cheerily and watched her until she disappeared. She went, strongly impressed by his kindness, half inclined impulsively to return and begin in earnest.

She had gone directly to him from the station. Now she returned to Miss Pim's. When she was back once more in her own room, the sensation of homecoming was so acute that she could have sat down in the middle of the floor and cried for joy. But in another moment Ida Summers rushed in.

"Dodo! The Lord be praised! You saved my life! Dinner, theater and a gorgeous cabaret affair afterwards. Vaughan Chandler's coming for me at seven--I promised to get another girl. Every one you know is going.

Every one's been asking for you. Swear you'll come?"

"Come? You bet I will!" she cried with a great burst of relief, flinging herself frantically in Ida's arms.

At eleven o'clock, after dinner and the theater they started in a party of six, hilariously, for Healey's, where a dozen crowds were to congregate for an impromptu cabaret dance. She felt elated, gloriously happy. It seemed to her as if she had regained the mastery of herself again, that the old zest had returned with the incipient flirtation which she had already begun with two irreproachable youths who sought discreetly to touch her hand in the confusion of the b.u.mping ride, or to gaze deep, with ardent soulful messages, into her mocking eyes of cloudy blue. After all, the voluntary exile had served its purpose. It had showed her the stupidity of moping. Life was too short to be taken seriously. Admiration of ten men was better, more exhilarating, more exciting, than ridiculous fancied pa.s.sions _au serieux_. She was so happy, so brilliantly gay, liberated in spirit, avid for excitement and admiration, that even Vaughan Chandler, Ida's cavalier by rights, watched her with amazed disloyal eyes.

Others were before them in the great Jungle Room which had been reserved. From below they heard the barbaric swinging music of stringed instruments, and divined the laughing, swaying, gliding confusion of dancers. Dore, with brilliant eyes and impatient tripping feet, hurried them on, eager to lose herself in the swirling throbbing measures, and the first two persons she saw on entering, were--Lindaberry and Judge Ma.s.singale!

CHAPTER XVI

Ma.s.singale did not perceive her entrance. A moment later she was in the arms of one of her escorts, lost in the confusion of the dance. Whirling figures obscured her view. She caught flashes of his erect square-shouldered figure, glimpses of the high forehead and stern gaze, and the next moment she was flinging back a laughing salutation to a suddenly appearing acquaintance flying past her. Whatever happened, she would never look in his direction; he should never know that he existed for her! And still, in the kaleidoscopic hazards of the frantic measure, his face was the only fixed point which a dozen futile shapes strove in vain to obscure. He had his hand on Lindaberry's shoulder, bending over him in animated exhortation; other men, three or four, laughingly provocative or dissuading, were in the group. Then, all at once, an abrupt end, laughter, applause, a quick clearing of the floor, and Ma.s.singale, looking across the room, saw her.

She had no experience of the discipline of society; she understood only crude impulses of nature; she never believed that he would dare approach her. He came directly to her, offered his hand with perfect courtesy, gave a formal greeting, bowed and left her immediately. She was so taken by surprise by the ease with which he had surmounted a difficult moment that she suffered him to take her hand and to depart without the slightest resistance. But immediately afterward her anger flamed up.

What! not a word of excuse, not a regret, nothing but a trivial evasion!

And forgetting all her own resolves, she flung herself recklessly into the excitement of the evening, recklessly resolved to make herself a thousand times more desirable, to outdo even the most daring of the dancers, to draw on herself every regard, that he might see to what he had driven her. He continued to watch her, transformed into a spectator, arms folded, seeing no one else; and with a keen cutting joy she saw the furrow of pain and doubt which gathered across his brow, as she abandoned herself, head thrown back, laughing up at her partner, as she had seen Georgie Gwynne once in the embrace of Lindaberry. The men, already over-excited, crowded about her, contending for each dance.

Now she no longer avoided Ma.s.singale's troubled gaze. Each time she pa.s.sed near him, she sent him a scornful veiled glance, a smile of derision and recklessness, which said: "There--you see! This is what you have done to me; this is where I am going!" A fury impelled her on; she wished to drive him, at all costs, from the room. But still he remained rooted by the piano, never averting his eyes. She saw that he suffered, and by every coqueting provoking glance, by every seductive movement of her body, by the very vertigo of her languorous, half closed eyes and parted eager lips, she sought to bury deeper the sting.

Lindaberry sought her, among others, and she danced with him once, twice, a third time, granting him that personal distinction which would double the pain she was inflicting. This evening Lindaberry was different. She felt in him an agitation equal to her own. He danced extraordinarily well, with an impulsive sense of the alternately controlled or pa.s.sionately rebellious movements of the dance. And the impulses within him which subdued her movements to his, fiercely checking them or suddenly enveloping her in a mad, surging, frantic rush which left her breathless, was something not of the room, or the mechanics of the step, but an inner fierce revolt that sought its liberating expression in this physical madness. Even in her obsession of resentment, she felt a curiosity to know why this was so. Other men enlightened her, whispering caution:

"For G.o.d's sake, Miss Baxter, don't let him drink any more!"

"He's been on a spree for a week!"

"They say he lost forty thousand last night at Canfield's."

She could not believe it. His face was so hilariously young, lighted up with such boyish laughter. To-night she had no fear of him; if he was reckless, so was she!

"This is nothing!" he had said to her once, when he had driven her about the room at such a pace that she had halted, laughing, protesting that it was glorious, waiting for breath. "How would you like to go spinning along at eighty miles an hour? That's sensation!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Fury impelled her]

She had not understood his meaning, but, the idea once in her head, she returned to it. It seemed to her all at once that in her hand lay the final stroke that would wound Ma.s.singale as nothing else would wound, which would show him how little she cared for anything now--reputation, danger, or what might come after.

"You like the feeling of eighty miles an hour?" she said to Lindaberry, the next time he came.

"Adore it!"