The Salamander Part 63

This luncheon, the result of one of those unreflecting impulses which seem so casual at the time, was destined to have the gravest consequences. Harrigan Blood, suddenly enlightened as to the true state of Dodo's interests, perceived that the ruinous quarrel with Sa.s.soon had been to no end, and disillusioned and duped, became a bitter enemy of Ma.s.singale's: for Blood, with all his idealism in the domain of ideas, was capable of petty and terrible vindictiveness when his desires were once aroused. This luncheon, in fact, cost Ma.s.singale a career.

But Dodo, having thus roused Harrigan Blood to an extent to which she little guessed, turned the tables on Ma.s.singale, who, claimed by the afternoon session, was forced to hand her over to the escort of Harrigan Blood and see them depart in the intimacy of a closed automobile.

"Thanks! now I know who is my rival!" said Harrigan Blood immediately.

"You think so?"

"I know!" he said pointblank. Then, with a sudden rage, he turned on her. "Do you know what you have cost me by making one mistake?"

"Yes," she said softly; "Mr. Sa.s.soon told me!"

He swore at this, and went on:

"Look here! I want to understand things; I want the truth! I want some straight answers!"

He was one of those men of force who believe that they can resolve all feminine intrigues by bruskly bringing things to a point. She smiled to herself at this bull rushing toward a fancied light.

"Are you in love with Ma.s.singale? If so, I want to know!"

"I haven't made up my mind," she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Are you playing a game with me or not?"

"That would be rather natural, wouldn't it?"

"What's that?" he said, amazed.

"We are rather different, aren't we?" she said quietly. "It's very easy for you to make up _your_ mind to put out your hand and take me, as you once expressed it; that's not a very great decision for you. But it's a little different, you see--it takes a little longer--to persuade _me_ that I want to be taken. You are a very poor hand at courting, Mr.

Harrigan Blood; you go out to win a woman as you would bowl down a lot of ten-pins. Don't you see?"

"Lord!" he cried, angry at the fretting and time-wasting she had made him endure and would further inflict on him. "Will there ever be a woman who'll have the courage to say, 'I love you as you love me, and let's dispense with all this backing and filling, this fencing, this coquetting and vexing of the spirit!' And why? Afraid that if you give naturally you won't be prized. That's the littleness about you women; you can't conceive anything on a big scale!"

"But I don't know at all that I love you!" she said quietly. His last words had brought to her mind an idea of Estelle Monk's, which she adopted instantly, as she had adopted Winona's story. Even as she began she was laughing inwardly at the effect she knew it would bring. "Win me--make me love you! You have big ideas; so have I!"

He came closer, putting his arm back of her shoulder, taking her hand with impulsive suddenness, excited by this first opportunity she had permitted him.

"Give me a chance, Dodo! Let me see you, like this, but be honest with me!"

"I'll be perfectly honest, Harrigan," she said demurely, smiling to herself at the thrill that went through him at this first use of his name. "You are very much mistaken if you think I am like other girls. I want to be honest, and I am not afraid. We have the same ideas about marriage. I want to be a pioneer, to have the courage to lead the way!

I'm not an adventuress. I shall never be ashamed of what I do! I shall never marry, but when I know that I love, I shall go to the man of my choice--openly!"

He placed her hand to his lips enthusiastically.

"And I shall let the world know it!"

"What?"

"And I shall announce it to every one!"

A sudden chill came over his ardor; the hand that had gripped hers so pa.s.sionately felt all at once limp and discouraged.

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely! I have made up my mind to this for a long time!"

"It isn't so easy," he said slowly.

"All the better!" she replied enthusiastically. "It'll show we have the courage of our convictions! That's what you believe in, too, isn't it?"

"H'm--yes."

The conversation suddenly dropped. He began to stare out of the window, pulling at his short mustache, while Dodo, shrunk in the corner, was choking with laughter. When they arrived at Miss Pim's, she could no longer contain herself. He looked up suddenly, detecting her laughter, furious.

"What!"

"Oh, Harrigan Blood!" she cried, between spells of laughter. "What a chance you have missed--and you such a clever man!"

"You were making fun of me; you didn't mean it!" he cried angrily.

But Dodo, waving a feeble handkerchief, ran hilariously up the stoop.

She returned from these excursions into her dramatic self to her nest, so to speak, languid and eager for calm. How did it happen that she did not attempt to dramatize herself with Lindaberry? Perhaps she did; but, if so, it was always as something bodiless and mystic, a sort of dipping into a religious exaltation, conceiving of herself as a ministering sister of the poor, s.e.xless and utterly unselfish. But she never, in the long hours when she sat by his bedside, prattling gaily or reading him to sleep, set sail on the gentler seas of romance and pa.s.sion. For him she had great depth of tenderness and affection, being often deliciously moved, as she was when Betty's childish body lay locked upon her heart.

When he welcomed her coming with a quick hailing motion of his hand, his face radiant with smiles, or when he listened, nodding or grave, fastening his profound eyes on her as if afraid the slightest turn of her head would escape him, he gave her a feeling of long intimacy; yet, when she spoke to him, even when she drew closest, it was always without the feeling of pa.s.sion, of the realization of contact, which she always felt with Ma.s.singale.

Her idea of love was more and more something unreasoning, violent and stirring, something that upset all that had been planned, a flame that consumed the will--something that was perhaps greatest when it hung on the threshold of tragedy, madness in some form or other, sweet and bitter--bitter, in the end, as _Tristan and Isolde_. At this moment she could not conceive of this serenity that lay between her and Lindaberry as love; and, besides, it made her feel older, as if she were being hurried, as if something fragile and elusive were being stolen from her.

A curious thing--she sometimes had the feeling that she was married to him, that she was a wife, watching and devoted. It rather interested her to project herself thus. The feeling came to her at times strongly, when she rose to shift the pillows under his head, as Clarice had taught her, or, watching his averted eyes, hurried to moderate the glare that smote them from the windows.

Sometimes she thought of it with a sort of regret, wishing that she were not const.i.tuted as she was, that marriage were a possibility, that another had not seized on her imagination and awakened in her such fever. Here, alas! everything was too permissible; it lacked the element of danger, of the forbidden which alone could make the perfect Eden. But she felt with him a vast security, and a curious oneness of sympathies.

If she were only ten years older--if she were not Dodo--

But one day an interruption from the outer world arrived to cast a stain of the matter-of-fact across the fragile fabric of this dream life. It was the first day that he had received permission to sit up in a chair, and the event had been duly celebrated with much gaiety. Lindaberry, in manly vanity, had insisted on taking ten steps alone without the humiliation of feminine support, but on the return trip had been forced to capitulate weakly. Having installed him again in bed, while Clarice had hurried off for luncheon, Dodo was bending over him, supporting his back with one arm, piling up the pillows, when the door opened and Lindaberry's brother entered, followed by Doctor Lampson.

"h.e.l.lo, there, old bruiser!" he began, in a rough welcome in which a note of anxiety was trembling. "You're a nice, brotherly person! Why didn't you send me a telegram?"

All at once he stopped, perceiving that Dodo was not in nurse's dress.

At the same moment she was seized with a sudden embarra.s.sment. Doctor Lampson, in the background, equally at a loss, waited, rubbing his chin with quick nervous movements. Garry, engrossed in the joy of seeing his brother, did not at once perceive the situation.

"By the Lord Harry, Jock, glad to see you! I'm not all in yet, am I? Sat up--walked--" A little movement of Dodo's, stiffening and withdrawing, caught his eye, and recalled him to the necessity of an explanation. He hesitated only a moment, a little unprepared, but that momentary delay hurt her with a sudden swift pain.

"Jock, I want you to meet a good angel," he said quickly. He stretched out his hand, taking hers, and turned proudly: "This is Miss Baxter--Dodo. We are engaged to be married."

Jock Lindaberry's face at once lost the peculiar undecided stare it had borne. He stepped forward, bending over her hand with a trace of the old-fashioned courtesy that sat so naturally on Garry.

But the slight trace of awkwardness which had attended the explanation, a fugitive sensitive thought that Garry had said what he had to save the situation,--out of _n.o.blesse oblige_,--had shocked Dore in her independent soul. She felt a sudden anger at the invalid, at the doctor who was a spectator, and at the brother who had made such an excuse a social necessity.

"Mr. Lindaberry is quite wrong!" she said hotly. "And his explanation is totally uncalled for, whatever his motives! We are not engaged. I have never promised to marry him, and I do not need any such excuse to account for my being here. Mr. Lindaberry and Doctor Lampson both know what my motives are, and I consider them quite honorable enough to need no apology. Good day!"