The Crimson Tide Part 64

"A joint?" she repeated, smilingly perplexed. "Is that a place where we may dine and see a spectacle too and afterward dance?"

"Something of that sort," he admitted, laughing. But under his careless gaiety an ugly determination had been hardening; he meant to go no more to Palla; he meant to welcome any distraction of the moment to help tide him over the long, grey interval that loomed ahead--welcome any draught that might mitigate the bitter waters he was tasting--and was destined to drain to their revolting dregs.

They went to the Palace of Mirrors and were lucky enough to secure a box.

The food was excellent; the show a gay one.

Between intermissions he took Marya to the floor for a dance or two.

The place was uncomfortably crowded: uniforms were everywhere, too; and Jim nodded to many men he knew, and to a few women.

And, in the vast, brilliant place, there was not a man who saw Marya and failed to turn and follow her with his eyes. For Marya had been fashioned to trouble man. And that primitively constructed and obviously-minded s.e.x never failed to become troubled.

"We'd better enjoy our champagne," remarked Marya. "We'll be a wineless nation before long, I suppose."

"It seems rather a pity," he remarked, "that a man shouldn't be free to enjoy a gla.s.s of claret. But if the unbaked and the half-baked, and the unwashed and the half-washed can't be trusted to practise moderation, we others ought to abstain, I suppose. Because what is best for the majority ought to be the law for all."

"If it were left to me," said the girl, "I'd let the submerged drink themselves to death."

"What on earth are you talking about?" he said. "I thought you were a socialist!"

"I am. I desire no law except that of individual inclination."

"Why, that's Bolshevism!"

Her laughter rang out unrestrained: "I believe in Bolshevism--for myself--but not for anybody else. In other words, I'd like to be autocrat of the world. If I were, I'd let everybody alone unless they interfered with me."

"And in that event?" he asked, laughing, as the lights all over the house faded to a golden glimmer in preparation for the second part of the spectacle. He could no longer see her clearly across the little table. "What would you do if people interfered with you?" he repeated.

Marya smiled. The last ray of light smouldered in her tiger-red hair; the warm, fragrant, breathing youth of her grew vaguer, merging with the shadows; only the beryl-tinted eyes, which slanted slightly, remained distinct.

Her voice came to him through the music: "If I were autocrat, any man who dared oppose me would have his choice."

"What choice?"

The music swelled toward a breathless crescendo.

She said: "Oppose me and you shall learn!----"

The house burst into a dazzling flood of moon-tinted light, all thronged with slim shapes whirling in an enchanted dance. Then clouds seemed to gather; the moon slid behind them, leaving a frosty demi-darkness through which, presently, snow began to fall.

The girl leaned toward him, watching the spectacle in silence. Perhaps unconsciously her left hand, satin-smooth, slipped over his--as though the contact were a symbol of enjoyment shared.

Light broke the next moment, revealing the spectacle on stage and floor in all its tinsel magnificence--snow-nymphs, polar-bears, all capering madly until an unearthly shriek heralded the coming of a favorite clown, who tumbled all the way down the stage steps and continued hysterically turning flip-flaps, cart-wheels, and somersaults until he landed with a crash at the foot of the steps again.

A large, highly coloured and over-glossy man, pa.s.sing under their box during a dancing intermission, bowed rather extravagantly to Jim. He recognised Angelo Puma, with contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt at his impudence.

It was evident, too, that Puma was quite ready to linger if encouraged--anxious, in fact, to extend his hand.

But his impudence had already ceased to amuse Jim, and he said carelessly to Marya, in a voice perfectly audible to Puma:

"There goes a man who, in collusion with a squinting partner of his, once beat me out of a commission."

Puma's heavy, burning face turned abruptly from Marya, whom he had been looking at; and he continued on across the floor. And Jim forgot him.

They remained until the place closed. Then he took her home.

It was an apartment overlooking the park from Fifty-ninth Street--a big studio and apparently many comfortable rooms--a large, still place where no servants were in evidence and where thick velvety carpets from Ushak and Sultanabad m.u.f.fled every footfall.

She had insisted on his entering for a moment. He stood looking about him in the great studio, where Vanya's concert-grand loomed up, a sprawling, shadowy shape under the dim drop-light which once had been a mosque-lamp in Samarcand.

The girl flung stole and m.u.f.f from her, rolled up her gloves and took a shot at the piano, then, laughing, unpinned her hat and sent it scaling away into the golden dusk somewhere.

"Are you sleepy, Jim?"

A sudden vision of his trouble in the long, long night to face--trouble, insomnia, and the bitterness welling ever fresher with the interminable thoughts he could not suppress, could not control----

"I'm not sleepy," he said. "But don't you want to turn in?"

She went over to the piano, and, accompanying herself on deadened pedal where she stood, sang in a low voice the "_Snow-Tiger_," with its uncanny refrain:

"Tiger-eyes Tiger-eyes, What do you see Far in the dark Over the snow?

Far in the dark Over the snow, Slowly the ghosts of dead men go,-- Horses and riders under the moon Trample along to the dead men's rune, _Slava! Slava!_ Over the snow."

"That's too hilarious a song," said Jim, laughing. "May I suggest a little rag to properly subdue us?"

"You don't like _Tiger-eyes_?"

"I've heard more cheerful ditties."

"When I'm excited by pleasure," said the girl, "I sing _Tiger-eyes_."

"Does it subdue you?"

She looked at him. "No."

Still standing, she looked down at the keys, struck the m.u.f.fled chords softly.

"Tiger-eyes Tiger-eyes, Where do they go, Far in the dark Over the snow?

Into the dark, Over the snow, Only the ghosts of the dead men know Where they have come from, whither they go, Riding at night by the corpse-light glow, _Slava!_ _Slava!_ Over the snow."

"Well, for the love of Mike----"

Marya's laughter pealed.