The Salamander Part 70

"Just a little gla.s.s?" he said, raising the champagne.

"Sounds like Bowery melodrama," she said mockingly. "_The Wicked Millionaire_. Please be serious! It's so nice to talk of millions!"

"If you knew what I know," he said, looking beyond her and shrugging his shoulders, "it would be easy to discuss! There's only one thing important in life, Miss Baxter. Money!"

"And love?"

"Love! You will love ten--twenty times! What do you know of such things?" he said rapidly. "You have a vague illusion before your eyes, and in reality, what is guiding you is the same principle of nature that governs all life. A woman in the state you are in now is really in a state of hysteria--an unnatural state, that causes you to do any number of illogical things, crazy things--"

"As, for instance, falling in love?"

"Falling in love with impossible people," he corrected. "What do you know of love, anyhow? I may know."

"You!" she said scornfully.

"Yes--now. I've seen the rest, and if I love, it's the young, the beautiful, the past. I won't explain: you must experience to comprehend!

Another thing about yourself that you don't understand: to love and to be loved are two different things. A woman like you will always be loved. You won't love, really love, not for a long while--not until you begin to grow old! What stops you from using me? Family? You have none!

Friends? Bah!"

"And the man?" she said coldly, beginning fiercely to resent the brutality of his philosophy, though she had determined to remain impersonal and amused.

"The man!" He laughed, throwing himself back in his chair, scowling a little at this direct personal allusion. "There you have it! With one question you have betrayed your whole morality--woman's morality! The man! If I were a young cub with a romantic strut, talking big, it would be different; it would not be a case of selling yourself--it would be an infatuation!"

"Perhaps it is our morality," she said indignantly, thinking of Ma.s.singale, and led insensibly into a defensive att.i.tude. "Say it is!

It's at least natural!"

"You mean, in my case, the thing that makes you recoil is myself?" he said abruptly. "More than any other consideration? Say it!"

"Quite true!"

"If I were asking you to marry me, if you had that opportunity, would that feeling stop you?"

She was silent, surprised.

"It's a money transaction in either case, isn't it?"

"What a terrible view of life you have!" she said, appalled. She had been prepared for danger of an overt character, not for the insidious subtle poisoning which he was distilling in her ears. She drew back, breathing quickly, fiercely resisting his ideas. "Money, money--that's all you see, because that's all you understand!"

"I only wish to make you see!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "that there is no difference in being what I offer you and in being--"

"Mrs. Sa.s.soon!" she said curtly.

He did not like the reference, man-like, though he frowned and admitted the allusion with a wave of his fingers.

"As you wish!" Then he continued, with an unwonted energy for his tired att.i.tude: "No, I don't say everything can be controlled by money, but that our world is. There are two sorts of human beings: those who work, and those who live for pleasure. It's the last we're talking about. What are you? You're a nervous, pretty little animal that has learned to love luxury. You may know it, or you may not. You may have had the taste of it before you came here, but you've steeped yourself in it since. You couldn't help yourself! It's all about you; it's the corruption in every street; it's New York! Don't you think I know you? What were you thinking as you stood before that window to-night?"

"Yes, I love luxury!" she said abruptly, admitting it to shut him off.

"If you had never known New York, you might be different," he continued triumphantly. "You might marry and be satisfied with a commonplace routine existence. But, little girl, you're what you are! You covet everything: jewels--oh, I saw your eyes when you refused that necklace; clothes--you know your own worth and you've dreamed, you must have dreamed, of what you'd be if you could wear what other women wear; you want to go where others go, pay what others pay; you want to be watched, courted, admired. Do you think you'll ever love any man as you love yourself?"

"It isn't true!" she said furiously; yet his exposition had left her weakly terrified.

"It is true! You know it! Stand up; look in the mirror! See yourself as you can be, with jewels in your hair, against your neck, in dresses that are worth hundreds, in furs that are worth thousands! Do you think you could go in any a.s.sembly, theater or restaurant, but every one wouldn't turn in amazement?"

She felt troubled, struggling against a heavy la.s.situde, regretting that she had given him this opportunity; and instinctively, by a force beyond her control, she raised her eyes to the mirror at the end of the room, and saw a little girl in a simple dress, her hair in a confusion of golden curls, and behind her the triumphant woman he had conjured to her eyes.

"No coffee!" she said, nervously averting her eyes from his eager gaze.

"It's hot, dreadfully hot, in here."

There came a moment's pause, a lull after the first skirmish, during which he lighted a cigar and waited, well content.

"It's all a question of opportunity," he began again, while her troubled eyes went past him to the mirror of the future. "You can do now what you can't do later! Do you want to end in a boarding-house, Miss Baxter?"

"Why do you--care for me?" she asked him abruptly.

"In the beginning, because you resisted me," he said, turning his cigar in his fingers. "Now, because you hate me!"

"And knowing that I hate you, you want me?"

"A thousand times more!" he said, and for the first time the greed and hunger rose in his eyes. But quickly he controlled himself.

"The moment I stopped resisting you, you would not care!" she said slowly.

"True; but you would always resist!" he said quickly. "Besides, that is what I like--what you must always do!"

He spoke now with eagerness, a restlessness in his voice, uneasiness in his eyes. Despite the tenseness of the situation, looking on him thus, a flash of pity and horror came to her as she felt, in her progress into the knowledge of life, the hidden tragedies that lurk in the reverse of a glittering medal.

"You overestimate what I can do!" she said at last.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked her, ignoring the remark. "The opinion of society?"

She did not answer.

"Go on with your career!" he said impatiently. "The world will close its eyes to what you do! If you haven't the courage, there's always a way.

Marry and separate!"

She looked so surprised at this that a thin smile came over his lips.

"There are a dozen men I can call on who will do you that slight service!" he said grimly. "Listen! Let it be so! I will procure you a husband, a very convenient, manageable husband, who will appear and disappear. You'll become Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith, and after a few months you can divorce. You will then be, in the eyes of the world, perfectly qualified to do whatever you please, without danger of criticism. That's society for you!"

"So that's the way it is done!" she thought, quite excited. For a brief moment she let herself go into the role he had opened for her, wondering if it were possible--if, under any circ.u.mstance, even if Ma.s.singale should utterly fail her, she could succeed as he had prophesied.

"Really," she said, amazed, "you have men who would sell themselves for that?"

"Do you wish to see?" he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "It can be done to-night!"

"To-night?"

"You don't believe me? I'll telephone now; I'll have your future husband here in half an hour. Would you like to see him?"