The Salamander Part 19

"Oh, yes, I make a difference. There are men you receive in your room, and men you receive always in a parlor, and there's no trouble at all in cla.s.sifying them!" She jumped up, with a laugh. "And you, with all your experience among my s.e.x, can't make up your mind about me."

"You pay what? Eight--ten--fifteen a week. And you have your automobile," he said, pursuing his idea.

"Ah, that's it! Have I an auto or not? But that's not what you want to know! You want to know if some one gives me an automobile, and, if so, why? Well, have I or haven't I? Find out!"

"You know," he said in his deliberate dragging way, "I don't believe that story about the orchids!"

"What do you mean?" she said, with such a swift turn from provoking malice to erect gravity that he hesitated.

"There was a hundred-dollar bill in that bouquet, Miss Baxter!" he said, changing the attack slightly.

"A hundred!" she said, drawing herself up in surprise and scorn. "Ah!

now I understand--everything. So that's why you are here! To get your value!"

"No--no," he protested, confused.

"Now I see it all!" she continued, as if suddenly enlightened. "Of course, such presents are quite in order as mementoes when young ladies of the chorus are entertained by you. But you weren't sure of me? You wanted to know if I would take it! For, of course, that would simplify things, wouldn't it?"

"Do you regret giving it away?" he said, convinced, watching her with his connoisseur gaze.

She stopped.

"That is insulting!" she said, so simply that he never again recurred to the subject. "Now, Mr. Sa.s.soon, I am going to play fair with you. I always do--at first. I am not like other girls. I do play fair. I give one warning--one only--and then, take the consequences!"

"And what is your warning, pretty child?" he said, with a faint echo of excitement in his voice.

"You will lose your time!" she said, dropping him a curtsy. "You wish to know what I am? I won't give you the slightest hint! I may be a desperate adventuress, or I may be a pretty child; but I tell you frankly, now--once only--you had better take your hat and go! You won't?"

He shook his head stubbornly.

"Very well! You will regret it! Only, be _very_ careful what you say to me, and how you say it. Do you understand?"

"And you will lunch with me to-morrow?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"Two reasons--to tantalize you, and because I am the most curious little body in the world! There! That's quite frank!" She glanced at the clock, which had gone well past the hour. "Now I must be off--I shall be late, as it is!"

He glanced, in turn, at his watch.

"And I've been keeping a board of directors cursing me for half an hour--very important board," he said, grinning at the thought of their exasperation if they should be privileged to see the cause of his delay.

"Really?" she exclaimed, delightfully flattered. "Then you can keep them waiting some more! Your car's here? Very well; take me up to the Temple Theater, stage entrance."

It was not in his plan thus publicly to accompany her. Not that he cared about his ghost of a reputation! But to arrive thus at a stage entrance, dancing attendance on a little Salamander, savored too much of the debutant, the impressionable and gilded cub. To another woman he would have refused peremptorily, with short excuse, packing her off in the automobile, and going on foot to his destination. But with Miss Baxter he had a feeling that she would exact it, and a fear that somehow she was waiting an excuse to slip from him, a fear of losing her.

"I am waiting!" she said impatiently.

"What for?" he asked, coming abruptly out of his abstraction.

"For you to hand me in, Pasha!"

He gave her his hand hurriedly, capitulated and took his seat in turn.

She guessed his reasons, and watched him mockingly, sunk in her corner.

The melancholy and the weakness of yesterday were gone; she was again the gay little Salamander, audacious and reckless, sublimely confident in the reserves of her imagination to extricate her from any peril.

"The warning holds until to-morrow morning," she said, her eyes sparkling, the mood dramatized in every eager and malicious expression.

He did not answer, aroused and retreating by turns, uncomfortable, irritated and yet resolved. Had Dore known the fires she had kindled and the ends to which he was capable of going, perhaps she would not have felt so audaciously triumphant.

As they swung from Broadway into the crowded, narrow side street, quite a group was before the entrance--a knot of stage-hands loafing outside for a smoke, Blainey himself in conversation with an actress who was speaking to him from another automobile, and three or four of the personnel of the theater awaiting the arrival of the manager.

She forced Sa.s.soon to descend and hand her down--Sa.s.soon rebelling at being thus paraded and recognized. Then, with a fractional nod, she went through the group. All at once some one, making way for her, lifted his hat. She looked up and recognized the one man she did not wish to see her thus in Sa.s.soon's company: Judge Ma.s.singale, smiling his impersonal, tolerantly amused smile.

CHAPTER VIII

When she had pa.s.sed the familiar limping figure of the guardian of the stage door, and had caught the sound of the helter-skelter preparations behind the curtains--the ring of hammers, the hoa.r.s.e shouts into the rafters, the green-and-gold filmy sheen of the scenery, the groups in costume, chattering in the wings, the busy black-hatted, coatless stage-hands tearing about--Dore felt that tingling of the nerves that comes to the crutched veteran when the regiment pa.s.ses. She adored this life with a keen excited zest. Its unrealities were vitally real, its Lilliputian sultans and pashas great potentates. She adored it--but she was not yet decided. To have been certain of succeeding would have seemed to her the fullest of life; but she was not so blinded by the dazzling light of success as not to perceive clearly the barrenness of its mediocrity and the horror of its failure.

She pa.s.sed into the theater, which seemed to swallow her up in its impenetrable embrace. She stood a moment, peering into the darkness, seeing only a great red eye above, ghostly draperies in the galleries, and in the mysterious catacombs below a vague flitting figure stumbling to a seat. Then, her eyes growing accustomed to the obscurity, she put out her hand and felt her way along the empty seats, with their damp musty shrouds.

The curtain was up on the set for the first act, which had been ended ten minutes before. They had been rehearsing since noon; the probabilities were they would continue long past midnight. On the stage, O'Reilly of the "props" was swearing hoa.r.s.ely at the calcium light in the ceilings, throwing on reds and blues with a rapid succession that blinded the eyes. Baum was cursing the scene-shifters, clamoring for more verdure. Trimble, the stage-manager, was in the center of the stage, rearranging a scene with the soubrette and the heavy comic. In the house itself, back of the orchestra, in the dim lobby with its dungeon reflections from the street, the chorus girls and men were busily rehearsing a new step that had just been given them, humming as they balanced on their toes, took hands and twined about their partners, who, with a final twirl, sank on their knees to receive them. As the step was complicated, everywhere murmurs of expostulation and protest were heard:

"Stupid! Not that way!"

"One, two--one, two--one, two, three!"

"Catch me."

"No! I go first."

"Gee! what an ice-wagon!"

"To the left, I told ye!"

Dodo, dodging swaying bodies and arms extended in swimming gestures, found the center aisle, and her eyes acquiring more vision, began to explore the obscurities. Above the orchestra, Felix Brangstar, his head crowned with a slouch hat, stripped to shirt and crossed pink suspenders, angry, hot and on edge, was screaming to the flutes orders to transpose certain measures. O'Reilly continued to shout:

"Blind that! Throw on the whites. d.a.m.n you, _will_ you throw on your whites? Hold that!"

Trimble, on the stage, was taking the part of the soubrette, skipping about the heavy comic, coquetting and dodging under his arm, while the air was charged with electric comments:

"Lower away! More--more!"

"Is Blainey here yet?"