The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident Part 4

In that surprise and bewilderment the neighborhood joined. Scandalized at the scandal Cohen questioned the groom, questioned the chauffeur.

He might have saved himself the trouble. Then he inquired at the florist's. But there no one could be found who knew anything at all about anything whatever. Already he had questioned Rebecca. It seemed to him that in spite of her protests she must be engaged in some fathomless intrigue. But Rebecca, whose commercial instinct was beautifully developed, not only protested but appeased. She told her father that the roses were worth money. Furthermore, that which is worth money can be sold. Thereupon sold they were. But quite as inexplicably as the van had appeared so did its visits cease. When that happened Mr. Cohen felt and declared that he was robbed. He had come to regard the roses as a.s.sets.

Marie meanwhile, whom the humor of the situation had amused, ended by worrying over it. She was a good girl, as such conscientious, and it troubled her, at first only a little and then very much, to think that Loftus must believe that she was knowingly accepting his flowers.

Moreover, her father had commented upon them; in commenting he had wondered. Marie began to fear that Loftus might discover the mistake and turn in and inundate her. She did not know quite what to do. She thought of writing to him, very distantly, in the third person, or else anonymously. But the letter did not seem to get itself framed.

Then, from thinking of that, she fell to thinking of him.

To see him she had only to close her eyes. Once he visited her in dream. He came accompanied by b.u.t.terflies that fluttered about her and changed into kisses on her lips. Again she fancied him much sought after by ladies and became hotly and unaccountably vexed at the idea.

It would be so lovely to really know him, she always decided. But she did not see at all how that ever could come about.

Yet, of course, it did come about. It came about, moreover, in a fashion as sordid as the street she lived in.

That street, though sordid, is relatively silent. It is beyond, in Sixth avenue, that you get a sample of real New York noise. The slam-bang of the trains overhead, the grinding grunt of the surface cars, the demon draymen, the clanging motors, the ceaseless crowds, collaborate in an uproar beside which a bombardment is restful. But though the entire thoroughfare is appalling, Jefferson Market, behind which Gay street squats, is infernal.

Loftus loathed it. Until he pursued the girl into its horrors never before had he been there. Nor, save for her, would he have returned.

But return he did. For recompense he beheld her. She was strolling along, a roll of music under her arm, in the direction of Fifth avenue.

It was there he attempted to accost her. Without deigning to seem even aware that he had presumed to do so, she pa.s.sed on and, in pa.s.sing, turned into Washington Square, where, ascending the steps of a house, she vanished. It was then three by the clock of a beautiful day in April.

Loftus was as well able as another to put two and two together. He knew that young girls do not stroll about with a music roll under their arm for the fun of it. A music roll predicates lessons, and there where lessons are must also be a teacher.

From that teacher he was unaware of any good and valid reason why he should not himself take lessons. But fate is not unrelenting. Of such toil he was spared. He spared himself too any further toil that day.

He felt that he had done enough. He had quarried the girl again, stalked her to what was obviously a boarding-house. He turned on his heel.

The next day he was back at that house, inquiring at the door. As a result he was shown into a shabby back parlor where he made the acquaintance of Mme. Machin, a tired old Frenchwoman, who, with rouge on her yellow cheeks, powder on her pointed nose, confided to him that she had been prima donna, though whether _a.s.soluta_ or _dissoluta_ she omitted to state.

But her antecedents, her possibilities as well, Loftus divined at a glance and, while he was at it, divining too, that, personally, she was no better, and, financially, no better off than the law allows, asked point-blank about the Miss Cohen who had come there at three the day before. Learning then from the ex-first lady that the girl's name was not Cohen but Durand, he d.a.m.ned the apothecary and offered a hundred dollars to be introduced. Poverty is not a crime. But it is rumored to be an incentive. The crime which Loftus proposed to Mme.

Machin is one which the code does not specify and the law cannot reach. Knowing which, the woman may have been guilty of it before and, the opportunity occurring, was guilty again--salving her conscience, if she had a conscience, with the convenient, "Mon Dieu, il faut vivre!"

Anyway, at the offer she did not so much as blink. She smiled very receptively and declared that she would be charmed.

When, therefore, two days later Marie re-entered that shabby back parlor she found Loftus there. Generally the girl and the ex-first lady got to work at once, sometimes with the brindisi from "Lucrezia Borgia," sometimes with arias from "Ada." Save themselves no one was ever present.

Now at the unexpected spectacle of the man the cream of the girl's delicate skin suffused. It was as though there were claret in it.

She had not an idea what to do and, before she could decide, ceremoniously, with due regard for the pomps of etiquette, Loftus had been introduced.

If abrupt, the introduction was at least conventional, and Marie, who had not the remotest suspicion that it was all bought and paid for and who, if consciously startled, subconsciously was pleased, attributing the whole thing to accident and, flushing still, smiled and sat down.

"I think," said Loftus, "that I have had the pleasure of seeing you before."

At this inanity Marie looked first at him, then at the carpet. She did not know at all what he was saying. But in his voice was a deference, in his manner a sorcery and in his bearing and appearance something that went to her head. It was all very novel and delightful, and she flushed again.

"Yes," Loftus resumed, "and when I did see you I committed a very grave offense. Can you forgive me?"

For countenance sake the girl turned to Mme. Machin. But the ex-first lady, pretexting a pretext, had gone.

"Can you?" Loftus requested. "Can you forgive?"

Forgive indeed! Had she not so forgiven that she had almost wished a renewal of that grave offense? She did not answer. It was her face that spoke for her. But the silence Loftus affected to misconstrue.

"Couldn't you try?"

"Yes." The monosyllable fell from her softly, almost inaudibly. Yet for his purpose it sufficed.

"Thank you. I hoped that you would. But will you let me tell you now how I came to behave as I did?"

To this, timorously, with the slightest movement of her pretty head, the girl a.s.sented.

"Because I could not help myself. Because at the first sight of you I knew that I loved you. Because I felt that I could never love anyone else."

Marie started. She was crimson. Starting, she half got from her seat.

Loftus caught at her hand. She disengaged it. But he caught at it again.

"I love you," he continued, burning her with his words, with the contact of his fingers, that had intertwisted with hers. "Look at me, I love your eyes. Speak to me, I love your voice."

But the door opened. Preceded by a precautionary roulade, the ex-first lady reappeared.

"Allons!" she remarked to the ceiling. "Et maintenant, mademoiselle, au travail."

Loftus stood up, took Marie's hand again, held it a second, nodded at the woman. In a moment he had gone.

"Au revoir," the ex-first lady called after him. She turned to the girl. "A gallant monsieur. And good to look at." Then seating herself at the piano she attacked the brindisi from "Lucrezia." "Ah! the segreto!" she interrupted herself to exclaim, "il segreto per esser felice--the secret of happiness! Mais! There is but one! C'est l'amour! And with a gallant monsieur like that! And rich! C'est le reve! N'est ce pas, mon enfant?"

"Je vous en prie, madame," said Marie severely, or rather as severely as she could, for she was trembling with emotion, saturated with the love that had been thrown at her head, drenched with it, frightened too at the apperception of the secret which the aria that her teacher was strumming revealed.

CHAPTER IV

ENCHANTMENT

Sailing in the hansom down Fifth avenue, Loftus thought of that first interview with the girl, of the den in which it had occurred and of his subsequent visits there. Since the introduction he had seen her three times, seen, too, of course, that she was not up to f.a.n.n.y, but he had seen also that she was less ambitious, more tractable in every way. Besides, one is not loved every afternoon. To him that was the main point, and of that point he was now tolerably sure.

Suddenly the hansom tacked, veered and landed him at the ex-first lady's door.

"Bonjour, mon beau seigneur," the woman began when, presently, he reached her lair. "The little one will not delay."

"And then?"

"Be tranquil. I have other cats to whip."

Mme. Machin was hatted and gloved. Loftus stuck his hand in his pocket. Mme. Machin was too genteel to notice. From the pocket he drew a roll of yellow bills. Mme. Machin affected entire unconcern. The bills he put in her paw. Mme. Machin was so entirely unconscious of the liberty that she turned to the mantel, picked up a bag of bead, opened it, took from it a little puff with which she dusted her nose.

Then the puff went back into the bag. With it went the bills.

"I run," she announced. She moved to the door. There, looking at Loftus over her shoulder, she stopped. "You come again?"

For reply Loftus made a gesture.