The Salamander Part 62

"And dinner--Christmas dinner?"

"Engaged, too; my other friends don't leave things to chance!"

"Why do you treat me this way?" he asked, frowning.

"What way? I'm sure I'm very nice to you! I'm not even angry because you've been sulking all this time!"

She stood before him, laughing, her head on one side, her hands on her hips. He made a movement as if to seize her, and she sprang away.

"Don't let's quarrel; I've been quite miserable!"

"Serves you right!" she said, unrelenting, determined to teach him by a bitter lesson what punishment she reserved for rebels.

At this moment his eye perceived the ring that Lindaberry had placed on her finger. At the same instant she caught his glance, and flourished her hand tantalizingly before his eyes.

"Isn't it beautiful?"

"What's that mean?"

"It means I'm engaged!" she said demurely.

"Who lent you that thing?"

"I'm a very mysterious person," she said gravely. "Look out! Some day you'll find me married before you know it!"

He looked at her with his intimidating, magisterial stare.

"Oh, you don't frighten me at all, Your Honor!" she said, making a face.

"I don't believe a word you say! You've borrowed the ring, and you've made ready a fine story; but I'm not going to give you the pleasure.

Will you dine with me?"

"Previous engagement!"

"With your fiance, of course?"

"Quite right!"

"That's serious?" he said, rising, and containing his wrath with difficulty.

"Very serious!"

"Good-by, then!"

"Au revoir or good-by?"

"Good-by!" he said dryly and with emphasis.

She accompanied him to the door with a well simulated mask of tragedy, shook hands gravely, and suddenly, with a burst of laughter, called after him:

"To-morrow--here--same hour! If you're not on time you won't find me!"

The next day she told him, very seriously, the story of the ring, and with the true spirit of fiction, a.s.similating all that came to her ear and turning it into personal experience, she profited by what Winona had told her.

"You are sure you want to know?" she began, with a little alarmed air.

He nodded with a jerky, irritated motion.

"You will be annoyed," she said, hesitating; "you won't like it!"

"Begin!"

"Very well! I've told you often my time is not my own. The truth is that at any moment I may have to go when I am called," she began. Her starts were always rather jerky until the mood had enveloped her. Suddenly she remembered Winona and dashed ahead. "The person who gave me this ring is an old man, sixty-five years of age--very rich. You have often wanted to know how I manage to live. He gives me the money. I have signed a contract to marry him when three years are up. There! Now you know all!

That is my fate--if he lives! To-day he is desperately ill."

She went to the window, draping herself in the proper tragic pose, gazing out into the clear frozen twilight, drawing a deep sigh.

"It was all before I knew you--when I first came, when I was desperate, without a friend, without a cent! It was either that or--" She left the window abruptly, overcome by the mood, and returning, sat down, her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. "He is a gambler, a partner of my father's. He fell in love with me there at Gold Fields--you remember? When my father was killed, he sent me to school; he has always been kind, very kind. Wanted to marry me afterward, but I wouldn't hear of it. I ran away. I wanted to be young, to enjoy life, to live! He is very ugly, very old; his skin is all spotted and loose, and his eyes are watery and faded, and when he touches me I shiver."

She raised her head, staring before her, drawing down the corners of her mouth.

"I didn't see him again until--until I came here, and that was by accident. Everything had gone wrong! The company I had come with had failed; I could get nothing to do! It was very black. There were men, horrible men, offering me--you understand! I sold newspapers, in all kinds of weather, until ten or eleven at night sometimes, to get enough to eat! That's where he found me, under an umbrella on a street corner, in a pouring rain, a bundle of newspapers soaking under my arm. I was crying; I couldn't struggle any more! He took me to his home, a beautiful place just off Washington Square. He wanted me to marry him then. I can remember every word he said:

"'I'm over sixty. I've lived hard. Two strokes--and the next will box me up. At the worst, girl, it'll only be four or five years and then seven hundred thousand coming to you!'

"I don't know what I might have answered, but he put out his hand--wrinkled chalky hand! I can see it now--and touched mine. Ugh! But I made the bargain then and there, signed it in black and white. Three years to do as I please, and then--"

"And the time is up precisely on the tenth of March?" he said, with a grim smile.

"No! I have eight months more," she said, furious that he should not have been convinced by a story which had moved even her. "Who knows? He is very, very ill; it may all be over in a week!"

All at once the true effect flashed into her imagination, she turned, seizing him by the coat violently, clinging to him, crying:

"Oh, Your Honor, forgive me whatever I do these days! I haven't told you the truth. I'm not engaged--I'm married to him! And it's horrible--it is killing me! I don't know what I shall do. I think such wicked thoughts.

I hope he'll never recover! Can you ever love me now?"

His answer was effective. He swore a splendid, soul-easing oath, adding:

"Dodo, if ever I'm fool enough to believe you, I deserve all I get!"

She laughed through the tears which had come naturally.

"So that's all you'll tell me!" he said roughly.

"Oh, there's always some truth in what I tell you!" she answered; and she had so entered into the part, so completely dramatized herself, that all that day he could not succeed in drawing her back to plain matter-of-fact.

But, despite all the good humor he put to her caprices, the determination to plague him always returned to her in some animal revulsion on leaving Lindaberry. No sooner had she left this quieter self that she found herself seized by the need of violent reaction, to which Ma.s.singale did not always suffice. Consequently she gave more time and more opportunity to Sa.s.soon than she ordinarily would have done in prudence. But Sa.s.soon, as though the lion had clipped his claws, never made the slightest attempt to presume, acting mildness and docility. She even began to consider him as rather a safe person, who could always, in the last test, be found manageable--which was exactly what Albert Edward Sa.s.soon had planned. Next mutually to provoke Judge Ma.s.singale and Harrigan Blood, she persuaded them to lunch _en trois_. The alacrity with which Ma.s.singale (who, since the unexplained ring, was suspicious of Blood) agreed where she expected resistance, drove her to too overt a display of interest before Harrigan Blood, with his keen vindictive eyes.