“I wonder.”
“You’ll wonder more than ever in a few moments.... I’m going to tell you who you are. But first of all I want you to fix the forfeit — —”
“Why — I don’t know.... What do you want of me?” she asked, mockingly.
“Whatever you care to risk.”
“Then you’ll have to name it. Because I don’t particularly care to offer you anything.... And please hasten — I’ll be missed presently — —”
“Won’t you bet one day out of your life?”
“No, I won’t. I told you I wouldn’t.”
“Then — one hour. Just a single hour?”
“An hour?”
“Yes, sixty minutes, payable on demand: If I win, you will place at my disposal one entire hour out of your life. Will you dare that much, pretty dancer?”
She laughed, looked up at him; then readjusting her mask, she nodded disdainfully. “Because,” she observed, “it is quite impossible for you ever to guess who I am. So do your very worst.”
He sprang from the balustrade, landing lightly, his left hand spread over his heart, his bi-corne flourished in the other.
“You are Strelsa Leeds!” he said in a low voice.
The golden dancer straightened up to her full height, astounded, and a bright flood of colour stained her cheeks under the mask’s curved edge.
“It — it is impossible that you should know—” she began, exasperated. “How could you? Only one person knew what I was to wear to-night! I came by myself with my maid. It — it is magic! It is infernal — abominable magic — —”
She checked herself, still standing very straight, the gorgeous, blossom-woven cloth-of-gold rippling; the jewels shooting light from the fillet that bound her hair.
After a silence:
“How did you know?” she asked, striving to smile through the flushed chagrin. “It is perfectly horrid of you — anyhow — —”
Curiosity checked her again; she stood gazing at him in silence, striving to pierce the eye-slits of that black skin-mask — trying to interpret the expression of the mischievous mobile mouth below it — or, perhaps the malice was all in those slanting slits behind which two strange eyes sparkled steadily out at her from the shadow.
“Strelsa Leeds,” he repeated, and flourished one hand in graceful emphasis as she coloured hotly again. And he saw the teeth catch at her under lip.
“It is outrageous,” she declared. “Tell me instantly who you are!”
“First,” he insisted, mischievously, “I claim the forfeit.”
“The — the forfeit!” she faltered.
“Did you not lose your wager?”
She nodded reluctantly, searching the disguised features before her in vain for a clew to his identity. Then, a trifle uneasily:
“Yes, of course I lost my wager. But — I did not clearly understand what you meant by an hour out of my life.”
“It is to be an hour at my disposal,” he explained with another grotesque bow. “I think that was the wager?”
“Y-yes.”
“Unless,” he remarked carelessly, “you desire the — ah — privilege and indisputable prerogative of your delightful sex.”
“The privilege of my sex? What is that?” she asked, dangerously polite.
“Why, to change your divine mind — repudiate the obligation — —”
“Harlequin!”
“Madame?” with an elaborate and wriggling bow.
“I pay what I owe — always.... Always! Do you understand?”
The Harlequin bowed again in arabesques, very low, yet with a singular and almost devilish grace:
“Madame concedes that the poor Harlequin has won his wager?”
“Yes, I do — and you don’t appear to be particularly humble, either.”
“Madame insists on paying?” he inquired suavely.
“Yes, of course I do!” she said, uneasily. “I promised you an hour out of my life. Am I to pay it now?”
“You pay by the minute — one minute a day for sixty days. I am going to take the first minute now. Perhaps I may ask for the other fifty-nine, also.”
“How?”
“Shall I show you how?”
“Very well.”
“A magic pass or two, first,” he said gaily, crooking one spangled knee and spinning around. Then he whipped out his lathe-sword, held it above his head, coolly passed a glittering arm around her waist, and looked down into her flushed face.
“You will have to count out the sixty seconds,” he said. “I shall be otherwise occupied, and I can’t trust myself to do two things at once.”
“What are you about to do? Sink through a trap-door with me?”
“I am about to salute you with the magic kiss. After that you’ll be my Columbine forever.”
“That is not included in the bet! Is it?” she asked in real consternation.
“I may do as I please with my hour, may I not?”
“Was it the bet that you were to be at liberty to — to kiss me?”
“I control absolutely an hour out of your life, do I not? I may use it as I please. You had better count out sixty seconds.”
She looked down, biting her lip, and touched one hand against her cheeks, alternately, as though to cool them with the snowy contact.
He waited in silence for her reply.
“Very well,” she said resolutely, “if you elect to use the first minute of your hour as frivolously as that, I must submit, I suppose.”
And she began to count aloud, rapidly: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ni — —”
Her face was averted; he could see the tip of one small ear all aflame. Presently she ventured a swift glance around at him and saw that he was laughing.
“Ten, eleven, twelve,” she counted nervously, still watching him; “thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—” panic threatened her; she doubled both hands in the effort of self-control and timed her counting as though the rapid beating of the tempo could hasten her immunity— “sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, one, two, three — —”
“Play fair!” he exclaimed.
“I am trying to. Can’t I say it that way up to ten, and then say thirty?”
“Oh, certainly. I’ve still half a minute. You’d better hurry! I may begin at any moment.”
“Four — five — six — seven — m-m-m — thirty!” she cried, and the swift numbers fled from her lips fairly stumbling over one another, tumbling the sequence of hurrying numerals into one breathless gasp of: “Forty!”
His arm slid away from her waist; he stepped backward, and stood, watching her, one finger crooked, supporting his chin, the ironical smile hovering ever on his lips.
“Fifty!” she counted excitedly, her hands beating time to the counting; “ — fifty-one — two — three — four — m-m-m — sixty!” — and she whirled around to face him with an impulsively triumphant gesture which terminated in a swift curtsey, arms flung wide apart.
“Voila!” she said, breathlessly, “I’ve paid my bet! Am I not a good sport, Harlequin? Own that I am and I will forgive your outrageous impudence!”
“You are a most excellent sport, madame!” he conceded, grinning.
Relief from the tension cooled her cheeks; she laughed bewitchingly and looked at him, exultant, unafraid.
“I frightened you well with my desperate counting, didn’t I? You completely forgot to do — anything, didn’t you? Voyons! Admit it!”
“You completely terrorized me,” he admitted.
“Besides,” she said, “while I was so busily counting the seconds aloud you couldn’t very well have kissed me, could you? That was strategy. You couldn’t have managed it, could you?”
“Not very easily.”
“I really did nonplus you, didn’t I?” she insisted, aware of his amusement.
“Oh, entirely,” he said. “I became an abject idiot.”
She stood breathing more evenly now, the pretty colour coming and going i
n her cheeks. Considering him, looking alternately at his masked eyes and at his expressive lips where a kind of silent and infernal mirth still flickered, a sudden doubt assailed her. And presently, with a dainty shrug, she turned and glanced down through the gilt lattice toward the floor below.
“I suppose,” she said, tauntingly, “you hope I’ll believe that you refrained from kissing me out of some belated consideration for decency. But I know perfectly well that I perplexed you, and confused you and intimidated you.”
“This is, of course, the true solution of my motives in not kissing you.”
She turned toward him:
“What motive?”
“My motive for not kissing you. My only motive was consideration for you, and for the sacred conventions of Sainte Grundy.”
“I believe,” she said scornfully, “you are really trying to make me think that you could have done it, and didn’t!”
“You are too clever to believe me a martyr to principle, madame!”
She looked at him, stamped her foot till the bangles clashed.
“Why didn’t you kiss me, then? — if you wish to spoil my victory?”
“You yourself have told me why.”
“Am I wrong? Could you — didn’t I surprise you — in fact, paralyse you — with astonishment?”
He laughed delighted; and she stamped her ringing foot again.
“I see,” she said; “I am supposed to be doubly in your debt, now. I’d rather you had kissed me and we were quits!”
“It isn’t too late you know.”
“It is too late. It’s all over.”
“Madame, I have fifty-nine other minutes in which to meet your kindly expressed wishes. Did you forget?”
“What!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“One hour less one minute is still coming to me.”
“Am I — have I — is this ridiculous performance going to happen again?” she asked, appalled.
“Fifty-nine times,” he laughed, doubling one spangled leg under the other and whirling on his toe till he resembled a kaleidoscopic teetotum. Then he drew his sword, cut right and left, slapped it back into its sheath, and bowed his wriggling bow, one hand over his heart.
“Don’t look so troubled, madame,” he said. “I release you from your debt. You need never pay me what you owe me.”
Up went her small head, fiercely, under its flashing hair:
“Thank you. I pay my debts!” she said crisply.
“You decline to accept your release?”
“Yes, I do! — from you!”
“You’ll see this thing through! — if it takes all winter?”
“Of course;” trying to smile, and not succeeding.
He touched her arm and pointed out across the hot, perfumed gulf to the gilded clock on high:
“You have seen it through! It is now one minute to midnight. We have been here exactly one hour, lacking a minute, since our bet was on.... And I’ve wanted to kiss you all the while.”
Confused, she looked at the clock under its elaborate azure and ormolu foliations, then turned toward him, still uncertain of her immunity.
“Do you mean that you have really used the hour as you saw fit?” she asked. “Have I done my part honestly? — Like a good sportsman? Have I really?”
He bowed, laughingly:
“I cheerfully concede it. You are a good sport.”
“And — all that time—” she began— “all that time — —”
“I had my chances — sixty of them.”
“And didn’t take them?”
“Only wanted to — but didn’t.”
“You think that I — —”
“A woman never forgets a man who has kissed her. I took the rather hopeless chance that you might remember me without that. But it’s a long shot. I expect that you’ll forget me.”
“Do you want me to remember you?” she asked, curiously.
“Yes. But you won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I know — from the expression of your mouth, perhaps. You are too pretty, too popular to remember a poor Harlequin.”
“But you never have seen my face? Have you?”
“No.”
“Then why do you continually say that I am pretty?”
“I can divine what you must be.”
“Then — how — why did you refrain from—” She laughed lightly, and looked up at him, mockingly. “Really, Harlequin, you are funny. Do you realise it?”
She laughed again and the slight flush came back into her cheeks.
“But you’re nice, anyway.... Perhaps if you had seen my face you might have let me go unkissed all the quicker.... Masks cover horrible surprises.... And, then again, if you had seen it, perhaps you might never have let me go at all!” she added, audaciously.
In the gilded balcony opposite, the orchestra had now ceased playing; the whirl and noise of the dancers filled the immense momentary quiet. Then soft chimes from the great clock sounded midnight amid cries of, “Unmask! masks off, everybody!”
The Harlequin turned and drawing the black vizard from his face, bent low and saluted her hand; and she, responding gaily with a curtsey, looked up into the features of an utter stranger.
She stood silent a moment, the surprised smile stamped on her lips; then, in her turn, she slipped the mask from her eyes.
“Voila!” she cried. “C’est moi!”
After a moment he said, half to himself;
“I knew well enough that you must be unusual. But I hadn’t any idea — any — idea — —”
“Then — you are not disappointed in me, monsieur?”
“My only regret is that I had my hour, and wasted it. Those hours never sound twice for wandering harlequins.”
“Poor Harlequin!” she said saucily— “I’m sorry, but even your magic can’t recall a vanished hour! Poor, poor Harlequin! You were too generous to me!”
“And now you are going to forget me,” he said. “That is to be my reward.”
“Why — I don’t think — I don’t expect to forget you. I suppose I am likely to know you some day.... Who are you, please? Somebody very grand in New York?”
“My name is Quarren.”
There was a silence; she glanced down at the ball-room floor through the lattice screen, then slowly turned around to look at him again.
“Have you ever heard of me?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“Y-es. Pleasantly.... I supposed you to be — different.”
He laughed:
“Has the world been knocking me very dreadfully to you, Mrs. Leeds?”
“No.... One’s impressions form without any reason — and vaguely — from — nothing in particular. — I thought you were a very different sort of man. — I am glad you are not.”
“That is charming of you.”
“It’s honest. I had no desire to meet the type of man I supposed you to be. Am I too frank?”
“No, indeed,” he said, laughing, “but I’m horribly afraid that I really am the kind of man you imagined me.”
“You are not.”
“How do you know?”
“No,” she said, shaking her pretty head, “you can’t be.”
He said, quoting her own words amiably: “I’m merely one of the necessary incidents of any social environment — like flowers and champagne — —”
“Mr. Quarren!”
In her distress she laid an impulsive hand on his sleeve; he lifted it, laid it across the back of his own hand, and bowing, saluted it lightly, gaily.
“I am not offended,” he said; “ — I am what you supposed me.”
“Please don’t say it! You are not. I didn’t know you; I was — prejudiced — —”
“You’ll find me out sooner or later,” he said laughing, “so I might as well admit that your cap fitted me.”
“It doesn’t fit!” she retorted; “I was a perfect fool to say that!�
�
“As long as you like me,” he returned, “does it make any difference what I am?”
“Of course it does! I’m not likely to find a man agreeable unless he’s worth noticing.”
“Am I?”
“Oh, gentle angler, I refuse to nibble. Be content that an hour out of my life has sped very swiftly in your company!”
She turned and laid her hand on the little gilt door. He opened it for her.
“You’ve been very nice to me,” she said. “I won’t forget you.”
“You’ll certainly forget me for that very reason. If I hadn’t been nice I’d have been the exception. And you would have remembered.”
She said with an odd smile:
“Do you suppose that pleasant things have been so common in my life that only the unpleasant episode makes any impression on my memory?”
“To really remember me as I want you to, you ought to have had something unpardonable to forgive me.”
“Perhaps I have!” she said, daringly; and slipped past him and down the narrow stairs, her loup-mask fluttering from her elbow.
At the foot of the stairs she turned, looking back at him over her bare shoulder:
“I’ve mortally offended at least three important men by hiding up there with you. That is conceding something to your attractions, isn’t it?”
“Everything. Will you let me find you some supper — and let the mortally offended suitors sit and whistle a bit longer?”
“Poor suitors — they’ve probably been performing heel-tattoos for an hour.... Very well, then — I feel unusually shameless to-night — and I’ll go with you. But don’t be disagreeable to me if a neglected and glowering young man rushes up and drags me away by the back hair.”
“Who for example?”
“Barent Van Dyne, for instance.”
“Oh, we’ll side-step that youthful Knickerbocker,” said Quarren, gaily. “Leave it to me, Mrs. Leeds.”
“To behave so outrageously to Mr. Van Dyne is peculiarly horrid and wicked of me,” she said. “But you don’t realise that — and — the fact remains that you did not take your forfeit. And I’ve a lot to make up for that, haven’t I?” she added so naïvely that they both gave way to laughter unrestrained.
The light touch of her arm on his, now guiding him amid the noisy, rollicking throngs, now yielding to his guidance, ceased as he threaded a way through the crush to a corner, and seated her at a table for two.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 584