The Salamander Part 75

"Miss Baxter," he said abruptly, "make your own conditions!"

"What! You are not ashamed?"

"Make your own conditions! I will agree to anything!"

"There are no conditions!"

"Wait!" He drew from his pocket a doc.u.ment, his fingers trembling so he could hardly unb.u.t.ton his coat, crumpled it in his emotion and resumed:

"First, I have arranged everything! You will marry--not a trainer or a secretary, but a gentleman, Captain Markett-Blount, an English gentleman whom I have bought. No--listen to me! Understand everything! I am not putting you into the demi-monde; I'm giving you a chance at everything. You will have a social position. You will go wherever I want you to go. You can remain married, or you can divorce, when you want.

You will have a husband who will do as I wis.h.!.+ I give him fifty thousand for his name. I will give him the same to free you. You will marry the hour you say--to-night. You will dine at my house; you will visit me on the same footing as Mrs. Sa.s.soon's friends. In a week you will join a party on my yacht, and go with us to cruise into the Mediterranean, to Egypt, anywhere! No one will say a word--no one will dare! You will be in exactly the same position as a hundred women in society--any one who would come at a whistle from me! As for you--"

"As for me?" she repeated, fascinated despite herself.

"I will give you now, simply on your word, anything you ask. Name any sum. More, I will do what I have never done. Here, look! Here is a contract in black and white. Have it examined by your own lawyer. Write down whatever sum you want. Make it for one year or ten--I'll sign it!

You can hold it over me; you can blackmail me, if you wis.h.!.+ And that is nothing to what I'll give you--jewels, houses--"

"But you are mad!" she cried, horrified at the craving in his voice and the wildness in his eyes.

"Yes, mad, Dodo. You are right--completely mad! But profit by it! You can place yourself anywhere; you can have anything from me! I myself will tell you how to torture me, to rob me--"

"Never!"

"Yes, yes! You will! You can't refuse such things!" he cried. "You're not a fool! Ah, I _will_ have you!"

Suddenly, as she shuddered and closed her hands over her eyes with loathing, he glided around the table and caught her in his arms.

"Sa.s.soon! Here! You are crazy!" she cried, struggling frantically.

"What do I care!"

"Let me go! I'll scream!"

"What do I care!" His arms inclosed her with the strength of steel, gripped her to him, struggling to bring her face to his, crying incoherent brutal words that left her sick with loathing, a cold hard pain penetrating into her breast, frightened, helpless, trying to beat away the acquiring lips with savage fingers. At the moment when, despairing, she was about to cry aloud, mercifully there came a ring at the front door. He paused, trembling and breathless; and the next she had torn herself away from him and escaped up-stairs, shaken in every muscle, sick with horror and enraged loathing. Snyder up, stared in amazement at her disordered figure. The soiling embrace seemed to cling to her arms, to her neck, to the very clothes she had on. She tore them from her with disgust, with sickening.

"Lord! Dodo, what's happened?" cried Snyder, starting up.

"Sa.s.soon! Beast!" she gasped, choking with rage. She flung her dress in a corner, and plunged her arms and head into the wash-basin, scrubbing them with a towel as if they could not be cleansed--as if nothing could ever cleanse them again.

Then suddenly she fell into a fit of hysterical weeping. Snyder, frightened, camped at her side, pressing her to her breast, calling her childish names, implored her to be calm. When at last, from sheer fatigue, she had grown quiet, she refused all questions, unwilling to talk; all at once solemn, determined, as controlled and impa.s.sive as a moment before she had been disorganized and frantic. Snyder, amazed, watched her as if she were a statue.

"You're all right now?"

"All right!"

"You can't tell me? Nothing?"

"Nothing!"

At the end of a moment she turned thoughtfully. "Come to lunch, just in Lexington Avenue?"

"Sure, petty!"

"I have no money."

"Shut up! I have lots!"

"Good! Now, don't talk to me, Snyder! I don't want to talk!"

The woman nodded, uneasy and suspicious, moving about her way, but never losing sight of the girl.

Dodo went to the trunk, took out Lindaberry's letters, and returned to the window. Outside it was raining by fits and starts, in swerving sheets, wind-driven, with the restlessness of March. Handfuls of drops flung against the panes with sudden rattling crescendo. She opened the last letter and read it without emotion, in a dull, listless, painless, concentration. It began, "Dodo, my good angel," and it announced the thing she had feared--his imminent return.

"He will get over it!" she said, staring down the avenue, where the rain-drops rebounded from the asphalt like myriads of s.h.i.+mmering insects, swarming hungrily. "He will get over it, and he will live his own life, and he will end by being grateful to me!"

She remained silent a long while, wondering, thinking of Ma.s.singale, of Blainey, watching the leaden clouds breaking and rolling above, feeling the spray that lashed the window, cooling her cheeks, fascinated by the rain-drops that swarmed, like myriad white insects, dancing below. There was so much to do--and she was unable to do anything.

At twelve she rose quietly, telephoned to Blainey for an afternoon appointment, signaled Snyder and led the way to luncheon.

She went to the theater by the subway on account of a famished pocketbook, and the depressing sensation of damp ankles and muddied skirts, which came to her as she clung to her umbrella and leaned against the wind, reinforced her determination to come to actualities.

"h.e.l.lo! This is a surprise!" he said, when at last she had come, with dripping umbrella, into his office. "Must have got my dates mixed!"

"No! It's I who am tired of waiting!" she said abruptly.

She shed her rain-coat, shaking her skirts and glancing at her muddy shoes in delicate disgust. Then she advanced in a businesslike manner to the seat which Blainey, contrary to his customary bluff indifference, was presenting to her with extreme deference.

"Blainey, I've come to the end of my rope!" she said, folding her arms over her breast. "I'm through with playing and cutting up. I'm going to make up my mind to something serious now! I've got to talk to some one about it; that's why I've come to you!"

"Good eye!" he said, nodding and reaching for a cigar. "I, too, have got something to thrash out. Well, kid, what's annoyin' you?"

"Things have been getting mixed up, Blainey," she told him seriously. "I guess I'm not as clever as I thought!" She stopped, thinking of the legion that had fallen away: of Peavey, who had gone; of Ma.s.singale, who was still a mystery; and of Nebbins, a present menace. "Either that, or I'm getting tired of fooling!"

He nodded wisely, waiting for her to continue. She noted the rough sympathetic cut of visage,--the mouth, which had changed its grimness for a tolerant humor, the eyes, which were fixed on her with keen perception, softened by a homely adoration,--and she felt that she could talk to him as to no one else. He would understand everything, the good and the bad in her. He was nearer to her, to her kind, to an understanding of her longings and her temptations, than those other men who had never known the struggle of a self-made life.

"Blainey, it's awfully hard to decide," she said, leaning forward and clutching her knee. "I'm in a fix; I don't know what I'll do!"

"Well, first," he asked, with an encouraging nod, "how's the heart?"

She sat silent a moment, her hands locked, staring at the floor.

"I wish I knew!" she said slowly.

"Marriage?"

"No!"

"Sure of the man?" he said abruptly.