The Salamander Part 83

At ten o'clock Snyder started from her seat. Dodo had come into the room. She was against the door, her face tortured and white, her eyes very big.

"His wife!" she said solemnly. She held up her hand, on which a thin gold band was shining. "We leave to-night. He is waiting below. Tell me, did he come?"

"Yes!"

"You told him?"

"I told him!"

She caught at her throat, and made as if to ask further questions, but suddenly checked herself, went to the desk and drew out writing-paper.

She wrote but a few words, though once she stopped and rested her forehead in her hands. Then she rose.

"For him--yourself!" she said with difficulty. "To-night. This too."

With a hurried movement she joined the bracelet to the letter, and suddenly seized the woman in a straining desperate grip.

"Snyder! Snyder! If you've ever prayed for me--pray now!"

She drew her veil hurriedly over her tortured white face, and went rapidly away into the night.

EPILOGUE

And what became of Dodo? Did she completely change--in a twinkling, and changing by the divine dispensation of being a woman, forget that other turbulent self? Only once again did she return into the hazardous life of old--a last flash of the dramatic impulse--and the adventure came close to a final tragedy. Six months after that rainy March night when she had gone weakly into the rain on Garry's imperious arm, she set foot in New York once more.

Perhaps it was the tragic splendor of these Towers of Babel aflame against the night, after all the grim months of victorious struggle and abnegation; perhaps it was something deeper within her that drove her to slip from the sober cloak of matrimony and once again try the perilous paths of the Salamander.

At three o'clock the next afternoon, she left her hotel, after procuring a promise from her husband that he would not attempt to follow her.

Below Jock Lindaberry's automobile was waiting, a footman at the door.

She gave the familiar number of Miss Pim's on lower Madison and sank against the cushioned back. A mirror caught her reflection and she gazed with a queer tugging sensation of the incongruities of time. It was Dodo and it was not Dodo at all. The figure was still fragile, the alert poised eagerness was still in the glance and the arch mischief in the smile, but that was all. The old rebellion, the recklessness, the nervous unrest were gone. She looked incredulously upon a woman of the world, soberly attired in blues and blacks, correctly bonneted and veiled, a woman at peace, pensive and settled, with a note of authority.

She gazed long with memory haunted eyes, half inclined to laughter and half verging on tears. Now that she had set recklessly out in search of the past, she began to experience a little doubt. Familiar corners, a glimpse of a restaurant, ways by which she had so often returned, brought her a strange disturbance. Which was real, Dodo Baxter or the present Mrs. Lindaberry?

At the door she dismissed the automobile, aware of sudden eyes in windows above and climbed the brownstone steps. The emotion of familiarity was so instantaneous that absent-mindedly she found herself seeking in her purse for a departed latch-key. Not Josephus but another darky answered her ring. On the hat-rack was a disordered heap of letters which other girls tremulously would come to sort. In the musty parlor with its Sunday solemnity a couple were whispering, sinking their voices in sudden consciousness at her arrival. She groped her way into the obscurity of the stairs, thinking with a little melancholy of the girl and the man below, playing the old, old game. On the second landing, from the room that once was Ida's, another girl in hasty kimono was saying,

"You answer--tell him I went out with another man--make out I'm furious--"

She caught herself at Dodo's rustling coming, eying her curiously and then as though rea.s.sured ended, "If he responds with a bid for dinner, grab it!"

The whispering plotters recalled a hundred fragments of the old life, as though one cry had started echoes from every corner and cranny. She went on a little saddened by the sound of old accents in new mouths. So even she had not been different from the rest. Other Dodos would come and go as she had pa.s.sed, as everything changed and gave way to the same renewals. Then she opened the door of her room and saw Snyder standing--gazing eagerly at her.

She did not cross immediately, waiting by the door, lost in familiar details of patched walls and carpets, noting changes, the absence of confusion, the new note of bare simplicity.

"It doesn't seem quite the same--without the trunks. You've moved the couch, too. Funny, queer old room!" she said solemnly.

For the trunks that had served so often as impromptu bureaus, were gone, all save one,--those trunks that were always gaping open, in such fine disorder. Then there were no flowers, sporting their gay extravagance from rickety table or smoky mantel and the great gilt mirror which had leaned in the corner had departed, too. Yet all the familiar old seemed incredibly distant: even that rapid figure her imagination conjured up, perched on a trunk before the dressing-table studying a disastrous hole in a golden stocking. Was that Dodo and if so where had been the present self all that tempestuous time? Suddenly she noted the figure of the woman waiting on her tensely. She raised her veil, crossed quickly, holding out her arms.

"How is he--how is Mr. Lindaberry?" said Snyder at once.

"Garry? Magnificent--every inch a man."

"And you?"

"And I?" she asked a little puzzled.

"You're happy, aren't you?" said Snyder breathlessly.

"Oh--very happy--" She added with careful emphasis, "Very, very happy!"

She slipped off her black fur jacket and was about to toss it on a chair when she stopped, folded it carefully and handed it to Snyder.

"I forgot. Seems like old times for us to be here and you waiting on me." She took off her gloves, rolled them in a ball and tossed them to Snyder who placed them beside the coat on the bed. She added, seeking to give the conversation a casual note: "You got my letter of course. It's all right? I can have the room for the afternoon--alone?"

"Sure."

"I don't need to explain, do I?" she said rapidly. "It's--"

"Shut up, honey," said Snyder in the old rough manner, "it's all yours."

"No one will come?"

"No one ever comes."

"And who's in that room--Winona's?" she asked, walking to the door and listening.

"She's gone from noon--teaching Fifth Avenue to walk like Hester Street.

Don't know her. She's new."

She pa.s.sed the dressing-table, still crowded with her knickknacks and mementoes.

"Snyder," she said surprised, "you've kept all those crazy things.

Heavens, what didn't I used to do!" She sat down before the table, shaking her head at the strange reflection. "Is it possible!" Then turning quickly she said, "And you, Snyder? Tell me all about yourself."

"Me? Sliding to fame on greased rails," said Snyder pleased. "Two hundred dollars a week now. Fact. Betty? She'll marry a dook yet!"

Dodo rose and taking from her purse a pendant, a diamond cross with a pearl in the center, held it out.

"It's for Betty--the first thing we bought. It's to bring her everything in the world."

"My lord--" said Snyder aghast. "Look here--that ain't right--it must have cost--"

"Hush, you funny old thing," said Dodo, silencing her. "Don't you know it never--never could cost enough!"

But before another word could be exchanged Miss Pim burst effusively into the room, ruffling like a motherly fowl.

"Dodo! Land's sake what a swell you've become!"