Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I never knew a grateful woman,” Wahl went on, “unless it’s true that gratitude is a foretaste of ambition. In that case, yes. If not, no. It’s the scheming sex.”

  “It’s the delightful sex,” said Jack Calhoun. “I drink to them.”

  “It’s the criminal sex,” Wahl continued, warming up to what might be his favorite subject. “If you’d been on newspapers as long as I have you’d agree that nine-tenths of the crime in the world, and nearly all the trouble is due to women. They’ve a natural flair for posing as virtuous—”

  “The Lord made ’em female and marvelous lovely!” Jack interrupted.

  “ — and there’s a fixed tradition that they’re incapable of evil motive or the brutal passions. But watch ’em at a prize fight!” Wahl went on. “Watch ’em at a gambling resort! Above all, I’ve learned to watch ’em when I’m on a story! Cherchez la femme is good scripture. If it’s theft, arson, crooked politics, or murder, you may safely bet your last coin there’s a woman at the bottom of it, deliberately responsible and secretly pleased — usually a young woman, with a face like a Madonna’s and a mouth that butter wouldn’t melt in.”

  “I call that disgustin’ cynicism,” Jack remarked. “I should say you get devilish small fun out of life.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Wahl answered. “I’ve had my share of fun. They don’t spare us; why should we spare them? The thing to do is to keep awake and not let a woman put one over on you. I remember—”

  But Jack Calhoun lit a cigar and got up yawning. It did not amuse him to hear of the amours of a person like Wahl, and he went out to pace the deck with Sherry.

  For a while as they strode side by side around the deck they talked at random, and Sherry spoke so eagerly of New Orleans and the probable hour of arrival that Jack Calhoun suspected more than ever that there was a love-affair not running smoothly. He worked the conversation round to women by remarking that the Creoles of New Orleans are earth’s loveliest daughters; and when the wistful expression returned instantly to Sherry’s face Jack felt sure he had uncovered the secret.

  “When the fair sex is adamant, or damned elusive,” he remarked with a far- away reminiscent air, “the key to love’s young dream consists in gettin’ your heart’s darlin’ into difficulties, and then helpin’ her out. They’ve a genius for sufferin’ over trifles. The ones most worth lovin’ furiously are the easiest to scare. I’m head over heels in love myself with a perfect little angel in a convent — and they’re like jails, y’know, those places. It’s easier to get money out of a banker than to get your adored out of a convent. I’m hopin’ mine’ll get fired out. I’ve cooked up a scheme, to make the pope or somebody believe she’s been gettin’ letters from me on the sly. That ought to work it. Once you’ve saved your adored from a predicament you’re Romeo in her eyes — and a worshipful fair woman, suh, is a brighter jewel in a gentleman’s eye than art, or religion, or even patriotism! You’ll excuse me if I speak with feeling. I’m in love myself.”

  But Sherry Mansfield astonished by not excusing him. He was hardly polite. He looked offended, as if Jack Calhoun had touched on some secret that he had no right to probe — something that hurt him almost physically. The pained look brought the cruelty in Jack Calhoun to the surface; sympathy vanished; and as Sherry Mansfield turned back into the smoking-room Jack resumed his walk alone with a smile of satisfied amusement.

  “A soft streak in him somewhere,” he reflected. Only lovely women, in his theory of life, were entitled to that form of weakness.

  But Sherwood Mansfield’s discontent had its roots in the past, not the present; he was thinking in terms of the future, and smiling, when he entered the smoking-room and sat down beside Wahl. Possible desire to cover up whatever it might be that tortured him, made him seize with all the greater energy on any subject that held optimism. And Wahl was a man who had done things, not a spendthrift like Calhoun. He glanced at Wahl with diffidence, and began to speak to him, as, not so long ago, he would have confided in the captain of the college team — manly, and sure enough of what he had to say, but deferent.

  “You’ve spoken once or twice of news and head-lines. I think your flair for news is marvelous. I wonder if you’d think it cheek on my part to suggest that you’re simply wasted on the New Orleans Star? None of my business, of course, but—”

  “Don’t apologize. I’m interested.”

  That was no exaggeration. Wahl’s eyes glittered. “My dad’s always hunting for brains. He hopes I’ll step into his shoes some day, and, of course, so do I, but that’s a long way off. It occurred to me that if I should wire him something to the effect that you’d consider an offer—”

  “There’s a wireless operator on this boat,” said Wahl.

  “ — he’d appreciate my having kept the Tribune’s interests in mind; and, of course, he’s keen to see how I shape up. It wouldn’t hurt me with him if he knew I’d picked a winner so early in the game — if you don’t mind my picking you; that is. And of course, I can’t promise anything. Dad owns the Tribune, and he manages it; there isn’t any one on earth who can dictate to him.”

  “That’s what makes the Tribune good,” said Wahl. “It won’t hurt to send your dad a wire. You’re not going back to Frisco then?”

  “Not yet. Dad wired me to stay over in New Orleans and cover the flood stuff if it happens. He’s always trying to put a big chance my way.”

  His eyes were alight with enthusiasm as he spoke of that; but Wahl smiled with cynical amusement.

  “You won’t call flood stuff a big chance when you’re my age. You can sit at your desk and write up all the floods from Noah’s to next year’s. Nothing to it — unless you can tie the blame to some one, or get the goods on Shem with Ham’s wife. The crowd’ll read flood headlines if they’re peppy, and then turn to the divorce news and the story of a soubrette blinding another woman’s lover with carbolic acid. However, I suppose your dad figures you’re passing through and you’d better cover it on the off-chance. Take my tip and don’t get too enthusiastic. Stories of broken levees and drowned cattle — lists of dead and missing — estimates of damage — cost as much over the wires as a magnate’s passion for a chorus girl, and believe me, there’s nothing to it when it comes to which sells papers. Feed the public what it wants, and it’ll feed you. That’s religion. Suppose we draft a wire to Mansfield senior. I’d rather be on the Tribune than on all the other papers put together.”

  Mansfield produced a pencil and began to write the telegram, but it was Clinton Wahl who shaped it, deftly suggesting phases, head-line fashion, and although Sherry was hardly aware of it, the telegram was almost wholly Wahl’s when it was finished and the final draft approved. Wahl took it to the operator, smiling to himself. This was opportunity, and it knocks at a man’s door only once!

  But Wahl knew too much to depend altogether on young Sherry Mansfield’s influence with his father; men of the type who can build a San Francisco Tribune out of nothing are not given to flash decisions based on a youngster’s capacity for hero-worship. Opportunity may knock, but it calls for ability to open the door wide enough.

  “That’s on the way,” he said, returning to sit beside Sherry. “Now, if only a story would break! If I could wire the Tribune something juicy and exclusive—”

  “Why not cover the Mississippi floods with me?” asked Sherry generously. “Something might happen. Your flair for news—”

  “Boy — I’ve written up the Mississippi once a year regularly since I cut my eye-teeth! Tell you what — I’ll sit here and write your story for you, head-lines and all! Put it in your pocket, and use it as your own if the levees break. If they don’t, keep it for next year. It’ll come in handy sometime.”

  But therein Wahl showed misjudgment. Sherry’s was the ambition that would rather win its own spurs. His bright face clouded over and he changed the subject, not exactly deftly:

  “Where’s the best place in New Orleans to hire a car by the day?” he asked. “I’m not
going to waste time in the city.”

  “H’m! Story up his sleeve,” thought Wahl. “I’ll do the levees with him after all.”

  A taste of opportunity acted on Wahl as the scent of blood stirs a wolf. It brought his ruthless, tireless news-sense uppermost. He became as restless as Jack Calhoun and went outside to join his promenade. Those two were as the poles apart in temperament, but something remotely resembling a fellow-feeling comforted both of them as they fell into stride together.

  The more Jack Calhoun saw of Wahl, in fact, the less he liked him; yet, strangely, enough, the less he cared to avoid him. To keep his mind off his own impatience, he encouraged Wahl to talk, and Wahl was at least no mealy-mouthed apologist; he made no secret of his views.

  “Then you’d regard a friend’s affairs as news, suh — ?”

  “Certainly. Anything’s news that sells papers. I’m not sold on friendship. When a man gets over-friendly I suspect him.”

  “Pardon my curiosity, suh, and don’t answer me unless you wish, but I’m impelled to ask whether you’re married.”

  “Me?”

  Wahl laughed sardonically.

  “You were never in love?” Jack asked him curiously, and Wahl’s smile grew broader than before.

  “I’ve seen a lot of the effects of love,” he answered. “It makes front- page news as a rule.”

  “Then you don’t believe in pure love — out-and-out devotion — chivalry on one side, faithfulness and adorable dependence on the other?”

  “Show me pure love before I’ll believe in it!” Wahl answered. “I’ve never seen any yet, and I try to keep my eyes open. Devotion, yes — to bread and butter and a roof — or to diamonds and a limousine. But faithfulness? Chivalry? Who in the world is faithful to anything except bad habits? Who is chivalrous, when his ambition is at stake? A woman is a rogue at heart, and a man who adores her either fools himself like a lunatic, or else he suffers from too much appetite. The same man would eat himself to death, or die of drink and drugs in different circumstances. What’s more, all women understand that.”

  “What a weird conviction! I should say you are the devil’s own, suh! I would rather die than think as you do,” Jack remarked.

  “I’ve seen scores die, and thousands go broke for thinking the orthodox rot about women,” Wahl answered. “And I’ve never met a woman whose real motives would bear investigation, although I’ll admit to you I’ve seen great actresses. They’re all born with the buskins on.”

  “Suh, you astonish me! I would never have believed a man could walk the earth and hold such notions!”

  That pleased Wahl enormously. Like every other newspaper man in the South, he knew more or less of the Calhoun family history, and a lot about Jack’s escapades. It tickled his sense of humor to be able to scandalize a man who thought himself made of such vastly superior clay.

  “They should vivisect emotions and traditions instead of guinea-pigs,” he said, “to find out why nine-tenths of the world is gullible and the other tenth helps itself.”

  The blood of the Calhouns was boiling, in Jack by then.

  “‘Pon my soul, suh,” he exploded, “if I were not aware I had invited your disgusting confidence, I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t insult you!”

  Wahl grinned more delightedly than ever.

  “You might call me the devil’s own, for instance!” he suggested.

  During what was left of the short voyage, Jack Calhoun avoided Wahl as he would never have shunned the devil. When the ship docked in New Orleans he hurried ashore and vanished, not even troubling to say good-by to Sherry Mansfield, whom he thought contaminated by Wahl’s company.

  “Now, if — only he’d get into a mix-up with some woman I’d have a front-page story for the Tribune!” said Wahl, watching him go. “The Calverly- Calhouns are as well known in Frisco as in New Orleans. Jack belongs to the two best clubs there, and his father used to own the Lion Line.”

  “It’s up to you to get some stories, now,” laughed Sherry Mansfield. “Here’s a wire from dad.”

  Wahl snatched it eagerly, fingers twitching and eyes glinting, but as he read the telegram his expression changed to sour displeasure.

  “Hell!” he exploded bitterly. “Is that all? Special correspondent in New Orleans for the San Francisco Tribune — space rates! Damn! I expected from what you said they’d send for me to Frisco. However, I’ll make it yet — you watch!” He met young Mansfield’s eyes for a moment, and showed his teeth in a determined leer. “I’d skin the wives and daughters of the whole Supreme Court to get on the Tribune staff. Some one’s going to suffer, Sherry Mansfield, but I’ll make it!”

  CHAPTER 8.

  “You are a prince and I will put my trust in you!”

  The convent was never unbearable, but for the first time in her experience, Jacqueline began to find it dissatisfying. The Sister Superior took Don Andres Miro’s letter literally, and “permitted Jacqueline to forget” the unpleasant incident. But it is possession, not permission, that is nine points of the law. Jacqueline possessed, and was possessed by, a sensation. Fluttering heart-beats warned her that though conditions on the surface might seem almost normal, there was something dreadful moving underneath.

  Even the surface was not what it had been. You may inhibit and decree, but not the Pope himself can keep young girls from talking, more particularly in the gigglesome between-bell interludes. Two girls had told of Jacqueline’s love-affair; one hundred and ninety-nine discussed it enviously; and the one who was silent was Jacqueline herself.

  She was aware she was being talked about and miserable because the whole trouble seemed so unjust. What was Desmio thinking of it all? The sting lay there. She had only received one letter from him since her return to the convent, and in that he had appeared his usual courteous and generous self, quietly humorous as ever, and as usual telling her the day-by-day events of the plantation without as much as a hint that life could ever be less than dignified and sane. Not a word of Jack Calhoun — no hidden reference to him, though she tried through tears to read between the lines. And of Donna Isabella nothing, except that she was well and wished to be remembered. That silence was the dreadful part of it.

  So she wrote to him in the same vein in which he wrote to her, giving him the usual news of dancing lessons and of what the visiting Jesuit lecturer had said — of a bon mot by fat old Father Pierre — and of a broken pane in one of the stained-glass windows. And she wondered whether Desmio would think she was a hypocrite.

  For he knew about Jack Calhoun now, and she felt sure that Donna Isabella was busy making as much as possible of the incident. She knew Desmio would never willingly turn against her; but she also knew intuitively that, as dropping water wears away stone, a proud man may be influenced little by little until his judgment is no longer his.

  At last on the day when Desmio should have come there was a summons instead from the Sister Superior, and with it wild misgivings. She stood trembling while the calm face watched her from under the bandeau.

  “Don Andres Miro wishes you to return home, Jacqueline. Your trunk will be packed, and Consuelo will come for you tomorrow morning.”

  Blue, bewildered eyes — the puzzling frown — no, answer — only a question!

  “Is he — is Don Andres well?”

  “I believe so. I have not heard to the contrary.”

  Jacqueline was hardly conscious after that of the Sister Superior’s voice; certainly no word of the brief admonition that followed penetrated through the veil of her emotion. She felt like something blown along by the wind: without volition of her own; and the wind, she felt sure, was Donna Isabella, blowing cold — so cold and comfortless that she shuddered.

  “Have you caught cold, Jacqueline?”

  She did not even realize that she was being spoken to. Fear gripped her, and was much more dreadful because it had no name nor any plausible excuse for being fear at all. Somehow she reached her own room, she knew that, for there she was in the room, on t
he chair beside the bed, with Sister Michaela speaking to her kindly, and her shoes off. Who took her shoes off? Why? She began to undress herself, and Sister Michaela laughed, although she did not interfere, and even helped her. Why should she laugh? Was there anything in the world to laugh about? It was broad daylight, but Sister Michaela drew the shade down, and how good the pillow felt! Somebody — Sister Michaela she supposed — was folding away her clothes and moving up and down the little room with matter-of-fact steps; but all that belonged to a world she had left behind — a world that had no more use for her, nor she for it — a world whose day-dreams all vanished in a mystery that she craved nothing better than escape from.

  Jacqueline slept until the convent bell at dawn awoke her, and never a dream had entered to interrupt her visit to the plane where all is absolute and nothing is unsolved. Sleep wrought its miracle. She awoke refreshed, and wondering what the turmoil had been all about. Was she not going home to Desmio? What fear could lie in that?

  She laughed at herself; and was singing all the while she dressed. She felt gay, and full of spirits. It seemed like the dawn of something. And the convent, funnily enough, seemed distant, although she was still in it. Nothing had been said about her not returning after this visit home, but no logic and no reasoning can change the promptings of a heart, and she knew, somewhere inside herself, that she no longer formed any part of those surroundings. As she knelt by her desk she was conscious of trying to memorize everything.

  Yet afterward, whenever she did call it up from memory, there always came first that feeling of standing, or rather kneeling on the threshold of great events. Then, Sister Michaela’s face looking straight at her. Thereafter, always, the gray eyes filled her memory, and the quiet voice saying:

  “Put not your trust in princes! Trust your intuition, Jacqueline!”

  She attended no class that morning. Consuelo came early, almost with the dew on her from rising before dawn for the forty-mile journey, and the leave- taking was hurried through as if there were something furtive about it — not orthodox and if not frowned on, wondered at. Yet Consuelo looked so red-faced and important that Jacqueline, who knew her old nurse nearly as well as the nurse knew her, could draw nothing but buoyant conclusions. That fat-hen fussiness hid secrets. Consuelo had good news up her sleeve, or else Jacqueline knew nothing.