The Salamander Part 67

"I rather think he'll turn up here before the tenth," said Lampson, still enjoying his joke.

"He ought to stay longer, doctor!" she said, with a sinking feeling.

"Of course, but he won't! I can't imagine what it is; he seems to be fond of that date."

"It's my birthday!" she said, gazing at the rug, longing to take him into her confidence.

"Then you'd better get the roses back in your cheeks!" said the doctor briskly. "What do you think of these snapshots? Garry's more beautiful than I am, but I landed the first moose. Take 'em along!"

He put in her hand a dozen photographs, accompanying her to the door with the cordial respect he had shown her ever since that afternoon when she had indignantly disclaimed the engagement. There he took her hand in a fatherly way:

"Miss Baxter, you've one life to your credit, bless you! I didn't think it possible! You've got a better medicine than I have!"

When she went home, she sat a long while, staring at the curious figures in snow-shoes and sweaters; but she did not open the letter. She knew that he would return for the tenth, and yet the news upset her terribly.

If she shrank from the necessity of telling Nebbins the truth, this was nothing to the dread she had of Lindaberry's being present. She had hoped, almost against hope, that he would stay away for months; that, as he regained his self-control, the feeling he had for her would quiet down into a sense of profound grat.i.tude only, which would leave him not too long miserable at her flight.

She took up the envelope again, hesitated, ran her fingers along the edge, and glanced at the first page. Almost at once she rose, with a catching of the throat, thrust the letter back into the envelope and locked it in her trunk. Then she went hurriedly, blindly, to seek Ma.s.singale in court, a thing she seldom did. All that evening she was very quiet, very clinging with him, studying him with wide serious eyes.

One day at the end of the first week in March, the boarding-house was thrown into a state of violent excitement: Winona Horning had returned, paid Miss Pim, tipped Josephus the enormous sum of five dollars, left an address near the park for her trunk, and departed, after an abrupt answer to Miss Pim's exclamatory questions, saying that she had received a small legacy. The truth was discovered an hour later by Josephus, who personally delivered the trunk at an impressive apartment in the West Eighties. Winona was there under the name of Mrs. Sampson, and the automobile at the door belonged to Mr. Gilday. The next morning a letter came by messenger which left no further doubt in Dodo's mind:

"_Dear old Dodo_:

"You'll know the truth by this time. Don't waste any sympathy over me! I don't care--the other was worse! I couldn't go back and starve! Don't blame Joe, either; it's all my doing! I suppose the girls will say terrible things about me. The d.u.c.h.ess told me Ida's married: I'm glad of it. Dodo, I wish I could see you some day, just to _talk_ to, but I suppose that's impossible. Remember what I say--only I hope it won't ever happen!--if things ever go bad with you, and you're dead up against it, come to me! What you've been to me I never can forget! Perhaps now you can even forgive me about Mr. Peavey. I was desperate! Don't refuse the hundred dollars I send you in this. It'll hurt me terribly--and I owe you every cent of it, on my word of honor! Good-by, Dodo.

You've got more chances than I had; only don't make mistakes!

"WINONA (Mrs. Edgar Sampson.)"

"P. S. Now, whatever you do, don't get teary about me. It isn't necessary. I don't care in the least--now! That's honest!"

Inclosed was a bank-note of a hundred dollars. The sight of this money coming from such a source brought to Dodo a sudden horror akin to the smarting shame she had experienced at Brennon's insulting advances. She went out hastily to lunch, alone, to that mediocre noisy restaurant on Lexington Avenue where she had gone so miserably on the night of her first meeting with Ma.s.singale, Sa.s.soon and Lindaberry. There, in the quiet of a corner, she took out the letter and reread it. Her first thought was to rush to Winona and take her in her arms. No; certainly she had nothing in her heart now but charity.

How well she understood the horror of returning into the old! Why should not a woman have the right to progress, to free herself from hateful surroundings? Why should it be so difficult for a woman, when it was so easy for a man? Why should she only be forced to the wall? In the bare room, lighted by feeble curtained windows, she saw this other life from which she too had emerged, to which she was resolved never to return, but which frightened her now as a possibility. How tired and pinched these men and women were who surrounded her! And the women, how bare of coquetry and charm! Even the young men who cl.u.s.tered in a corner, talking languidly, had a tired air of being already middle-aged!

Her next impulse was to warn Winona of her insecurity: for she had read Gilday without illusions, and if five months ago she had perceived what he would be to-day, she saw now the man of to-morrow, undisturbed by sentiment or weakness, avid of experience and sensation, an egoist soon evolved, who would never deviate from his own desires from any feeling of remorse or pity. She felt that his attachment could not last. She must warn Winona, open her eyes, prepare her for the worst! She went from the lunch-room with this one thought in mind. Only, as the interview would be difficult, and she did not quite yet know what to counsel, she began to wander aimlessly through the streets, gusty with the rage of March.

The figure of Winona haunted her, rising like an accusing specter against her conscience. If only she had understood in time! She saw her always weak and irresolute, obstinately shrugging her shoulders, her brow clouded over--rebellious and foredoomed. Again she revolted at the different destinies of the s.e.xes, with a hot indignant anger. Why should the woman be cut off from all friendships, and not the man? Would it make any difference to Gilday's friends, or change his position in the slightest? That was the injustice of it all. And who was unjust? Her own s.e.x!

"No! She needs a friend more than ever!" she said resolutely. "I'll go to her now--this instant!"

All at once, by one of the perversities of the city, as, come to the thoroughfare of Fifth Avenue, she was halted and crowded against the curb, a great automobile came swinging about the corner, with Gilday at the wheel, Adele Vickers and two men behind, and in front, laughing and elegant, Winona Horning. They flashed by without even seeing her, standing on the sidewalk, elbowed by the common crowd. She had but a glimpse of the girl who had shared her wall in Miss Pim's boarding-house; but the glimpse she had caught of the b.u.t.terfly that had emerged from the grub tore down her last illusions. She it was who was left standing, depressed, struggling against the buffeting busy crowd, feeling all at once deserted and shoddy.

Until now she had never experienced the slightest temptation in regard to Sa.s.soon. She had never deceived herself on that point, for she had a horror of ugliness, and it was not money, but romance, which she wished to force from life in this ardent fleeting period of her youth. Sa.s.soon awoke, not her cupidity, but her curiosity. It was an unexplored world, and she was anxious to perceive its proportions. What would he do under strong provocation, and what, at least, would it mean to her if she were differently inclined? Besides, his docile att.i.tude had disarmed her prudence: she believed in her control over him.

But to-day, one in the mult.i.tude that moved, heavy of foot and weary of heart, through the great shop-lit thoroughfares, she felt in a peculiarly vulnerable moment. She had been walking for hours in the effort to tire her brain, afraid to seek out Ma.s.singale for fear that another deception was awaiting her, beginning more and more to doubt that anything but empty dreams would ever come. This physical weariness into which she had forced herself had brought a profound moral la.s.situde. She felt perilously near the point of surrender. At times she had a desire to take train and escape to somewhere unknown, to reconstruct everything from the bottom up. Ida's marriage, the departure of Winona, affected her in different ways. What better chance had she to struggle against the crushing weight of an implacable city? After all, was not Ida right? Did she really belong? How long could she endure in this rarefied air? At bottom, what did all these men really think of her--even Ma.s.singale? Did one of them consider her in equality?

Never had she felt the bruising brutality of New York so much as she did this evening, wandering aimlessly from shop to shop. What was the use of struggling against these enormous forces, that could reckon all emotions, joy or sorrow, love or despair, only in tens of thousands?

What difference, after all, did it really make what became of her in this huge maelstrom of New York? Who would notice, and who would remember for more than a few hours, what came to one girl in the hundreds of thousands?

In her pocket was the money Winona had sent, from which her fingers had retreated in horror. Yet now no such sensation came to her. She was very tired, weary of the struggle, of being on foot, of defeat, of the contamination of poverty, of resisting temptation which could be so easily squared with her conscience. There was one particular shop-window past which she had gone a dozen times--a window in which was a dress she coveted, all gold and black, the color men preferred on her, a dress she could have so easily for the mere acceptance of the offer about which her fingers clung. And, after all, it was but money returned, not a gift.

She was hovering before the fatal window for the tenth time, cold with the approach of darkness and the lack of the furs which had had to be surrendered, when suddenly Sa.s.soon appeared at her side from some current of the crowd. She felt him at her shoulder, silently studying her, striving to seize her secret thought, and she started as if he were an apparition of the devil himself.

"How long have you been here?" she asked hastily.

"Four minutes--five," he said, shaking hands elaborately. "Well, what do you want?"

"Everything in the window!" she replied angrily.

"May I send them to you?"

This made her angrier still. She shrugged her shoulders and glanced at her watch.

"Take me to tea somewhere!"

"A little run in the country?"

"I don't care!"

He put her into his automobile with an eagerness she did not notice, so delighted was she by the sense of escape from mediocrity which the elegance and ease of the car brought her. He considered a moment, and then, with a word to his chauffeur, followed her.

"Where are we going?"

"I thought it would be something different to run down a way toward Coney Island."

[Ill.u.s.tration: She was hovering before the fatal window]

"I don't care."

"Blue?"

She nodded, her head turned to the flying shops, the cross streets, and the maze of traffic at her side. He put out his hand to take hers, but she stopped him with a warning finger.

"None of that, Mr. Sa.s.soon!"

"I had no thought--"

"Yes, I know; but you know the conditions!"

"Why are you blue?" he asked, checking himself. "Getting near the tenth?"

"That's it!"

"And you haven't made up your mind yet?" he said slowly.

"How can I?" she said, with an irritable movement of her foot.

"Don't forget that I have something to say to you before you decide," he said quietly.