CHAPTER XXVI
MAN OR TOY MAN?
The newspaper prediction of the forthcoming announcement of theengagement of Miss Ethel Manton and Gregory St. Ledger was published,not without color of authority, nor was it entirely out of keeping withappearances.
As the gay calendar of society's romp and rout drew toward its close,the names of these two became more and more intimately associated. Itwas an association assiduously cultivated by young St. Ledger, andearnestly fostered and abetted by the St. Ledger sisters who,fluttering uncertainly upon the outermost rim of the circle immediatelysurrounding society's innermost shrine, realized that the linking ofthe Manton name with the newer name of St. Ledger, would prove an opensesame to the half-closed doors of the Knickerbockers.
Despite two years' residence in the most expensive suite of a mostexpensive hotel, nobody seemed to know much about the St. Ledgers. Itwas an accepted fact that they were islanders from somewhere, variouslystated to be Jamaica, The Isle of Pines, and Barbadoes, whose wealthwas founded upon sugar, and appeared limitless.
St. Ledger _pere_, tall and saturnine, divided his time about equallybetween New York and "the islands."
The two girls, ravishingly beautiful in their dark, semi-mysteriousway, had been brought from some out-of-the-way French convent to thelife of the great city, where to gain entree into society's holy ofholies became a fetish above their gods.
There was no _mere_ St. Ledger, and vague whisperings passed back andforth between certain bleached out, flat-chested virgins, whoseforgotten youth and beauty were things long past, but whose tenure uponsociety was as firm and unassailable as Plymouth Rock and the silverleg of Peter Stuyvesant could make it.
It was hinted that the high-piled tresses of the sisters matched tooclosely the hue of the raven's wing, and that the much admired "waves"if left to themselves would resolve into decided "kinks."
They were guarded whisperings, however, non-committal, and so wordedthat a triumphantly blazoned "I told you so!" or a depreciatory andhorrified: "You misunderstood me, _dear_," hung upon the pendingverdict of the powers that be.
Gregory St. Ledger, in so far as any one knew, was neither liked nordisliked among men; being of the sort who enjoy watching games oftennis and, during the later hours of the afternoon, drive pamperedPekingese about the streets in silver-mounted electrics.
He enjoyed, also, a baby-blue reputation which successfully cloakedcertain spots of pale cerise in his rather negligible character.
He smoked innumerable scented cigarettes, gold as to tip and monogram,which he selected with ostentatious unostentation from a heavy goldcase liberally bestudded with rubies and diamonds.
He viewed events calmly through a life-size monocle, was Londontailored, Paris shod, and New York manicured; and carried an embossedleather check-book, whose detachable pink slips proved a potent safetyfactor against undue increment of the St. Ledger exchequer.
Thus equipped, and for reasons of family, young St. Ledger decided tomarry Ethel Manton; and to this end he devoted himself persistently andinsidiously, but with the inborn patience and diplomacy of the SouthIslander.
Bill Carmody he hated with the snakelike hate of little men, butshrewdly perceiving that the girl held more than a friendly regard forhim, enthusiastically sang his praises in her ears; praises that,somehow, always left her with a strange smothering sensation about theheart and a dull resentment of the fact that she cared.
With the disappearance of young Carmody, St. Ledger redoubled hisattentions. The young man found it much easier than did his sisters tobe numbered "among those present" at the smart functions of the elite.
When New York shivered in the first throes of winter, a well-plannedcruise in mild waters under soft skies on board the lavishly appointedand bountifully supplied St. Ledger yacht, whose sailing list includeda carefully selected and undeniably congenial party of guests, workedwonders in the matter of St. Ledger's social aspirations.
At the clubs, substantial and easily forgotten loans to members of theembarrassed elect, coupled with vague hints, rarely failed to paydividends in the form of invitations to ultra-exclusive _affaires_.
At the hostelry the St. Ledger _soirees_, if so glitteringly bizarre asto draw high-browed frowns from the more reserved and staid of thethinning old guard of ancestor-worshipers, nevertheless, wereenthusiastically hailed and eagerly attended by the younger set, andplayed no small part in the insinuation of "those St. Ledgers" into therealms of the anointed.
Thus the winter wore away, and, at all times and in all places GregorySt. Ledger appeared as the devoted satellite of Ethel Manton, whoentered the social melee without enthusiasm, but with doggeddetermination to let the world see that the disappearance of BillCarmody affected her not at all.
She tolerated St. Ledger, even encouraged him, for he amused andoffered a welcome diversion for her thoughts.
She was a girl of moods whose imagination carried her into far placesin the picturing of a man--her man--big, and strong, and clean;fighting bare-fisted among men for his place in the world, and aloneconquering the secret devil of desire that he might claim the right toher love.
Then it was, curled up in the big armchair in the library, the blueeyes would glow softly and tenderly in the flare of the flickeringfirelight, and between parted lips the warm breath would come and go inshort stabbing whispers to the quick rise and fall of the roundedbosom, and the little fists would clench white in the tense gladness ofit.
But there were other times--times when the dancing wall-shadows weredark specters of ill-omen gloating ghoulishly before her horror-widenedeyes as her brain conjured the picture of the man--battered, broken,helpless, with bloated, sottish features, and bleared eyes--a beatenman drifting heedlessly, hopelessly, furtive-eyed, away from hisstandards--and from her.
At such times the breath would flutter uncertainly between cold,bloodless lips, and the marble whiteness of her face became a palliddeath mask of despair.
Always in extremes she pictured him, for, knowing the man as she knewhim--the bigness of him--the relentless dynamic man-power of his being,she knew that with him there would be no half-way measure--no medianline of indifferent achievement which should stand for neither the goodnor the bad among men.
Here was no Tomlinson whose little sins and passive virtues became thejest of the gods; but a man who in the final accounting would standfour-square upon the merit of his works, and in the might of theirright or wrong, accept fearlessly his reward.
The days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months--empty months tothe heart of the girl who waited, dreading, yet hoping for word fromthe man she loved. Yet knowing, deep down in her heart, she would hearno word.
He would come to her--would answer the call of her great love--wouldbeat down the barriers and in the flush of victory would claim her ashis own; or, in the everlasting silence of the weird realm of missingmen, be lost to her forever.
Daily she scanned the newspapers. Not front pages whose glaringheadlines flaunted world-rumblings, politics, and the illness of richmen's dogs, but tiny cable-whispers from places far from the beatentrack, places forgotten or unknown, whose very names breathed mystery;whispers that hinted briefly of life-tragedies, of action and theunsung deeds of men.
And as she read, she mused.
A tramp steamer dashed upon the saw-tooth rocks off Sarawak. Thirtyperish--seven saved--no names. "Where is Sarawak? Is it possible that_he_----?"
Four sailors killed in the rescue of a girl from a dive in Singapore.Investigation ordered--no names. "_He_ would have done that."
The rum-sodden body of a man, presumably a derelict American, picked upon the bund at Papiete; no marks of identification save the tightlyclutched photograph of a well-dressed young woman. "Had _he_ given upthe fight? And was this the end?"
Eight revolutionist prisoners taken by General Orotho in yesterday'sbattle were shot at sunrise this morning before the prison wall ofManagua.
One, an American, faced the firing
squad with a laugh, and the nextinstant pitched forward, his body riddled with bullets. "_He_ wouldhave laughed! Would have played gladly the game with death and,losing--laughed!"
Each day she read the little lines of the doings of men; unnamedadventurers whose deeds were virile deeds; rough men, from whosecontaminating touch society gathers up her silken skirts and passes byupon the other side; unlovely men, rolled-sleeved and open-throated,deep-seamed of face, and richly weather-tanned of arm, who treadroughshod the laws of little right and wrong; who drink red liquor andswear lurid oaths and loud; but who, shoulder to shoulder, redden thegutters of Singapore with their hearts' blood in the snatching of ayoung girl from danger.
And in the reading there grew up in her heart a mighty respect forthese men, for, in the analysis of their deeds, the beam swayedstrongly against the measure of the world in its balance of good andharm.
Many times her feet carried her into strange streets among strangepeople, where the reek of shipping became incense to her nostrils, andhairy-chested men of many ports stared boldly into her face and,reading her aright, made room with deference.
Upon an evening just before the annual surcease of frivolity, GregorySt. Ledger called at the Manton home and, finding Ethel alone in thelibrary, asked her to be his wife.
Because it was an evening of her blackest mood she neither refused noraccepted him, but put him off for a year on the ground that she did notknow her mind.
In vain he protested, arguing the power and prestige of the St. Ledgermillions, and in the end departed to seek out an acquaintance who hadto do with a blatant Sunday newspaper.
During the interview that followed, in the course of which the reporterordered and St. Ledger paid for many tall drinks of intricateconcoction, the gilded youth made no statement of fact, but theimpression he managed to convey furnished the theme for the news storywhose headlines seared into Bill Carmody's soul to the crashing of histenets and gods.
In the library the girl sat far into the night and thought of the manwho had won her heart and of the toy man who would buy her hand.
The Promise Page 27