He ascribed it — desired to ascribe it — to her relations with her husband. He had naturally learned and divined how matters stood with them; he had learned considerable in the last month or two — something of Mortimer’s record as a burly brother to the rich; something of his position among those who made no question of his presence anywhere. Something of Leila, too, he had heard, or rather deduced from hinted word or shrug or smiling silence, not meant for him, but indifferent to what he might hear and what he might think of what he heard.
He did listen; he did patiently add two and two in the long solitudes of his Louis XV chamber; and if the results were not always four, at least they came within a fraction of the proper answer. And this did not alter his policy or weaken his faith in his mentors; nor did it impair his real gratitude to them, and his real and simple friendship for them both. He was faithful in friendship once formed, obstinately so, for better or for worse; but he was shrewd enough to ignore opportunities for friendships which he foresaw could do him no good on his plodding pilgrimage toward the temple of his inexorable desire.
Lifting, now, his Delft-coloured eyes furtively, he studied the silk-and-lace swathed figure of the young matron opposite, flung back into the depths of her great chair, profile turned from him, her chin imprisoned in her ringed fingers. The brooding abandon of the attitude contrasted sharply with the grooming of the woman, making both the more effective.
“Turn in, if you want to,” she said, her voice indistinct, smothered by her pink palm. “You’re to dress in Leroy’s quarters.”
“I don’t want to turn in just yet.”
“You said you needed sleep.”
“I do. But it’s not eleven yet.”
She slipped into another posture, reaching for a cigarette, and, setting it afire from the match he offered, exhaled a cloud of smoke and looked dreamily through it at him.
“Who is she?” she asked in a colourless voice. “Tell me, for I don’t know. Agatha? Marion Page? Mrs. Vendenning? or the Tassel girl?”
“Nobody — yet,” he admitted cheerfully.
“Nobody — yet,” she repeated, musing over her cigarette. “That’s good politics, if it’s true.”
“Am I untruthful?” he asked simply.
“I don’t know. Are you? You’re a man.”
“Don’t talk that way, Leila.”
“No, I won’t. What is it that you and Sylvia Landis have to talk about so continuously every time you meet?”
“She’s merely civil to me,” he explained.
“That’s more than she is to a lot of people. What do you talk about?”
“I don’t know — nothing in particular; mostly about Shotover, and the people there last summer.”
“Doesn’t she ever mention Stephen Siward?”
“Usually. She knows I like him.”
“She likes him, too,” said Leila, looking at him steadily.
“I know it. Everybody likes him — or did. I do, yet.”
“I do, too,” observed Mrs. Mortimer coolly. “I was in love with him. He was only a boy then.”
Plank nodded in silence.
“Where is he now — do, you know?” she asked. “Everybody says he’s gone to the devil.”
“He’s in the country somewhere,” replied Plank cautiously. “I stopped in to see him the other day, but nobody seemed to know when he would return.”
Mrs. Mortimer tossed her cigarette onto the hearth. For a long interval of silence she lay there in her chair, changing her position restlessly from moment to moment; and at length she lay quite still, so long that Plank began to think she had fallen asleep in her chair.
He rose. She did not stir, and, passing her, he instinctively glanced down. Her cheeks, half buried against the back of the chair, were overflushed; under the closed lids the lashes glistened wet in the lamplight.
Surprised, embarrassed, he halted, as though afraid to move; and she sat up with a nervous shake of her shoulders.
“What a life!” she said, under her breath; “what a life for a woman to lead!”
“Wh-whose?” he blurted out.
“Mine!”
He stared at her uneasily, finding nothing to say. He had never before heard anything like this from her.
“Can’t anybody help me out of it?” she said quietly.
“Who? How?... Do you mean—”
“Yes, I mean it! I mean it! I—”
And suddenly she broke down, in a strange, stammering, tearless way, opening the dry flood-gates over which rattled an avalanche of words — bitter, breathless phrases rushing brokenly from lips that shrank as they formed them.
Plank sat inert, the corroding echo of the words clattering in his ears. And after a while he heard his own altered voice sounding persistently in repetition:
“Don’t say those things, Leila; don’t tell me such things.”
“Why? Don’t you care?”
“Yes, yes, I care; but I can’t do anything! I have no business to hear — to see you this way.”
“To whom can I speak, then, if I can not speak to you? To whom can I turn? Where am I to turn, in all the world?”
“I don’t know,” he said fearfully; “the only way is to go on.”
“What else have I done? What else am I doing?” she cried. “Go on? Am I not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to turn — to other beasts like him? — sitting patiently around, grinning and slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the mud?”
She stretched out a rounded, quivering arm, and laid the small fingers of the left hand on its flawless contour. “Look!” she said, exasperated, “I am young yet; the horror has not yet corrupted the youth in me. I am fashioned for some reason, am I not? — for some purpose, some happiness. I am not bad; I am human. What poison has soaked into me can be eliminated. I tell you, no woman is capable of being so thoroughly poisoned that the antidote proves useless.
“But I tell you men, also, that unless she find that antidote she will surely reinfect herself. A man can not do what that man has done to me and expect me to recover unaided. People talk of me, and I have given them subjects enough! But — look at me! Straight between the eyes! Every law have I broken except that! Do you understand? That one, which you men consider yourselves exempt from, I have not broken — yet! Shall I speak plainer? It is the fashion to be crude. But — I can’t be; I am unfashionable, you see.”
She laughed, her haunted eyes fixed on his.
“Is there no chance for me? Because I drag his bedraggled name about with me is there no decent chance, no decent hope? Is there only indecency in prospect, if a man comes to care for a married woman? Can’t a decent man love her at all? I — I think—”
Her hands, outstretched, trembled, then flew to her face; and she stood there swaying, until Plank perforce stepped to her side and steadied her against him.
So they remained for a while, until she looked up dazed, weary, ashamed, expecting nothing of him; and when it came, leaving her still incredulous, his arms around her, his tense, flushed face recoiling from their first kiss, she did not seem to comprehend.
“I can’t turn on him,” he stammered, “I — we are friends, you see. How can I love you, if that is so?”
“Could you love me?” she asked calmly.
“I — I don’t know. I did love — I do care for — another woman. I can’t marry her, though I am given to understand there is a chance. Perhaps it is partly ambition,” he said honestly, “for I am quite sure she has never cared for me, never thought of me in that way. I think a man can’t stand that long.”
“No; only women can. Who is she?”
“You won’t ask me, will you?”
“No. Are you sorry that I am in love with you?”
His arms unclasped her body, and he stepped back, facing her.
“Are you?” she asked violently.
“No.”
“You speak like a man,” she said tremulously. “Am I to be permitted to adore you in peace, then — decently, and in peace?”
“Don’t speak that way, Leila. I — there is no woman, no friend, I care for as much as I do you. It is easy, I think, for a woman, like you, to make a man care for her. You will not do it, will you?”
“I will,” she said softly.
“It’s no use; I can’t turn on him. I can’t! He is my friend, you see.”
“Let him remain so. I shall do what I can. Let him remain a monument to his fellow-beasts. What do I care? Do you think I desire to turn you into his image? Do you think I hope for your degradation and mine? Are you afraid I should not recognise love unaccompanied by the attendant beast? I — I don’t know; you had better teach me, if I prove blind. If you can love me, do so in charity before I go blind forever.”
She laid one hand on his arm, looked at him, then turned and passed slowly through the doorway.
“If you are going to sleep before we start you had better be about it!” she said, looking back at him from the stairs.
But he had no further need of sleep; and for a long while he stood at the windows watching the lamps of cabs and carriages sparkling through the leafless thickets of the park like winter fire-flies.
At one o’clock, hearing Agatha Caithness speak to Leila’s maid, he left the window, and sitting down at the desk, telephoned to Desmond’s; and he was informed that Mortimer, hard hit, had signified his intention of recouping at Burbank’s. Then he managed to get Burbank’s on the wire, and finally Mortimer himself, but was only cursed for his pains and cut off in the middle of his pleading.
So he wandered up-stairs into Mortimer’s apartments, where he tubbed and dressed, and finally descended, to find Agatha Caithness alone in the library, spinning a roulette wheel and whistling an air from “La Bacchante.”
“That’s pretty,” he said; “sing it.”
“No; it’s better off without the words; and so are you,” added Agatha candidly, relinquishing the wheel and strolling with languid grace about the room, hands on her hips, timing her vagrant steps to the indolent, wicked air. And,
“‘Je rougirais de men ivresse Si tu conservais ta raison!’”
she hummed deliberately, pivoting on her heels and advancing again toward Plank, her pretty, pale face delicate as an enamelled cameo under the flood of light from the crystal chandeliers.
“I understand that Mr. Mortimer is not coming with us,” she said carelessly. “Are you going to dance with me, if I find nobody better?”
He expressed himself flattered, cautiously. He was one of many who never understood this tall, white, low-voiced girl, with eyes too pale for beauty, yet strangely alluring, too. Few men denied the indefinable enchantment of her; few men could meet her deep-lidded, transparent gaze unmoved. In the sensitive curve of her mouth there was a kind of sensuousness; in her low voice, in her pallor, in the slim grace of her a vague provocation that made men restless and women silently curious for something more definite on which to base their curiosity.
She was wearing, over the smooth, dead-white skin of her neck, a collar of superb diamonds and aquamarines — almost an effrontery, as the latter were even darker than her eyes; yet the strange and effective harmony was evident, and Plank spoke of the splendour of the gems.
She nodded indifferently, saying they were new, and that she had picked them up at Tiffany’s; and he mentally sketched out the value of the diamonds, a trifle surprised, because Leila Mortimer had carefully informed him about the condition of the Caithness exchequer.
That youthful matron herself appeared in a few moments, very lustrous, very lovely in her fragrant, exotic brightness, and Plank for the first time thought that she was handsome — the vigorous, youthful incarnation of Life itself, in contrast to Agatha’s almost deathly beauty. She greeted him not only without a trace of embarrassment, but with such a friendly, fresh, gay confidence that he scarcely recognised in her the dry-eyed, feverish woman of an hour ago, whose very lips shrank back, scorched by the torrent of her own invective.
And so they drove the three short blocks to the Page’s in their hired livery; the street was inadequate for the crush of vehicles; and the glittering pressure within the house was outrageous; all of which confused Plank, who became easily confused by such things.
How they got in — how they managed to present themselves — who took Leila and Agatha from him — where they went — where he himself might be — he did not understand very clearly. The house was large, strange, full of strangers. He attempted to obtain his bearings by wandering about looking for a small rococo reception-room where he remembered he had once talked kennel talk with Marion Page, and had on another occasion perspired freely under the arrogant and strabismic glare of her mother. That good lady had really rather liked him; he never suspected it.
But he couldn’t find the rococo room — or perhaps he didn’t recognise it. So many people — so many, many people whom he did not know, whom he had never before laid eyes on — high-bred faces hard as diamonds; young, gay, laughing faces; brilliant eyes encountering his without a softening of recognition; clean-cut, attractive men in swarms, all animated, all amused, all at home among themselves and among the silken visions of loveliness passing and repassing, with here an extended gloved arm and the cordial greeting of camaraderie, there a quick smile, a swift turn in passing, a capricious bending forward for a whisper, a compliment, a jest — all this swept by him, around him, enveloping him with its brightness, its gaiety, its fragrance, and left him more absolutely alone than he had ever been in all his life.
He tried to find Leila, and gave it up. He saw Quarrier talking to Agatha, but the former saluted him so coldly that he turned away.
After a while he found Marion, but she hadn’t a dance left for him; neither had Rena Bonnesdel, whom he encountered while she was adroitly avoiding one of the ever-faithful twins. The twin caught up with her in consequence, and she snubbed Plank for his share in the disaster, which depressed him, and he started for the smoking-room, wherever that haven might be found. He got into the ball-room, however, by mistake, and adorned the wall, during the cotillon, as closely as his girth permitted, until an old lady sent for him; and he went and talked about bishops for nearly an hour to her, until his condition bordered on frenzy, the old lady being deaf and peevish.
Later, Alderdene used him to get rid of an angular, old harridan who seemed to be one solid diamond-mine, and who drove him into a corner and talked indelicacies until Plank’s broad face flamed like the setting sun. Then Captain Voucher unloaded a frightened débutante on him who tried to talk about horses and couldn’t; and they hated each other for a while, until, looking around her in desperation, she found he had vanished — which was quick work for a man of his size.
Kathryn Tassel employed him for supper, and kept him busy while she herself was immersed in a dawning affair with Fleetwood. She did everything to him except to tip him; and her insolence was the last straw.
Then, unexpectedly in the throng, two wonderful sea-blue eyes encountered his, deepening to violet with pleasure, and the trailing sweetness of a voice he knew was repeating his name, and a slim, white-gloved hand lay in his own.
Her escort, Ferrall, nodded to him pleasantly. She leaned forward from Ferrall’s arm, saying, under her breath, “I have saved a dance for you. Please ask me at once. Quick! do you want me?”
“I — I do,” stammered Plank.
Ferrall, suspicious, stepped forward to exchange civilities, then turning to the girl beside him: “See here, Sylvia, you’ve dragged me all over this house on one pretext or another. Do you want any supper, or don’t you? If you don’t, it’s our dance.”
“No, I don’t. No, it isn’t. Kemp, you annoy me!”
“That’s a nice thing to say! Is it your delicately inimitable way of giving me my congé?”
“Yes, thank you,” nodded Miss Landis coolly; “you may go now.”
“You’re spoiled, that’s what’s the matter,” retorted Ferrall wrathfully. “I thought I was to have this dance. You said—”
“I said ‘perhaps,’ because I didn’t see Mr. Plank coming to claim it. Thank you, Kemp, for finding him.”
Her nod and smile took the edge from her malice. Ferrall, who really adored dancing, glared about for anybody, and presently cornered the frightened and neglected debutante who had hated Plank.
Sylvia, standing beside Plank, looked up at him with her confident and friendly smile.
“You don’t care to dance, do you? Would you mind if we sat out this dance?”
“If you’d rather,” he said, so wistfully that she hesitated; then with a little shrug laid one hand on his arm, and they swung out across the floor together, into the scented whirl.
Plank, like many heavy men, danced beautifully; and Sylvia, who still loved dancing with all the ardour of a schoolgirl, permitted a moment or two of keen delight to sweep her dreamily from her purpose. But that purpose must have been a strong one, for she returned to it in a few minutes, and, looking up at Plank, said very gently that she cared to dance no more.
Her hand resting lightly on his arm, it did not seem possible that any pressure of hers was directing them to the conservatory; yet he did not know where he was going, and she was familiar with the house, and they soon entered the conservatory, where, in the shadow of various palms various youths looked up impatiently as they passed, and various maidens sat up very straight in their chairs.
Threading their dim way into the farther recesses they found seats among thickets of forced lilacs over-hung by early wistaria. A spring-like odour hung in the air; somewhere a tiny fountain grew musical in the semi-darkness.
“Marion told me you had been asked,” she said. “We have been so friendly; you’ve always asked me to dance whenever we have met; so I thought I’d save you one. Are you flattered, Mr. Plank?”
He said he was, very pleasantly, perfectly undeceived, and convinced of her purpose — a purpose never even tacitly admitted between them; and the old loneliness came over him again — not resentment, for he was willing that she should use him. Why not? Others used him; everybody used him; and if they found no use for him they let him alone. Mortimer, Fleetwood, Belwether — all, all had something to exact from him. It was for that he was tolerated — he knew it; he had slowly and unwillingly learned it. His intrusion among these people, of whom he was not one, would be endured only while he might be turned to some account. The hospital used him, the clergy found plenty for him to do for them, the museum had room for other pictures of his. Who among them all had ever sought him without a motive? Who among them all had ever found unselfish pleasure in him? Not one.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 303