The Blood Red Dawn Part 8

"Oh, but I must go home to-night! I really must! I...."

She broke off suddenly, realizing the futility of her protest.

"To-morrow morning," replied the j.a.panese, blandly. "All right to-morrow morning. You stay here.... I fix a place. You see.... I fix a very nice place for young lady."

He went out with the tray and Claire rose and walked to the window.

Flint broke into the room noisily. She turned--he had two dusty bottles in his hand, and an air of triumph.

"Mr. Flint, it seems that there has been a washout. I understand that no trains are running. What can I do? I must get back; really I...."

"Who says so?" Flint laid the bottles down with an irritating calmness.

"The station-master. Your ... your servant just telephoned for me."

"Oh, well, _we_ should worry! Sit down."

"Mr. Flint, really, I must.... You know I can't.... I...."

"Sit _down_!"

His tone was a dash of cold water thrown in the face of her rising hysteria. She sat down. Flint ignored the bottles on the table and, crossing over to the Sheraton sideboard, poured himself a stiff drink of whisky. His hair-towsled condition stood out sharply against the precise background.

He made no further comment, but he began to open the bottles of wine deliberately. Then he rummaged in the china-closet for the wine-gla.s.ses and set four, two at his place and two at Claire's, upon the table.

"White wine with the entree and red wine with the roast," he muttered.

And he poured out the white wine without further ado.

The servant came in with creamed sweetbreads. Claire forced herself to make a pretense of eating, although her appet.i.te had long since deserted her. She was thinking, and thinking hard.

She should never have come, in the first place--at least she should have turned back upon the strength of Jerry's announcement. But she saw now, with a clearness that surprised her, that the situation had really challenged her imagination. She had been too calm, too collected, too well-poised, full of smug over-confidence. She had read in the current novels of the day how hysterically unsophisticated heroines conducted themselves in tight corners and she had followed their writhings with ill-concealed impatience. She never had really put herself in their place, but she had had a vague notion that they carried on absurdly. Her fear all evening had been not what Mr. Flint would do or say or even suggest--she had been anxious merely to have the impending storm over, the air cleared, and her position in the office a.s.sured upon a purely business-like basis. She had really welcomed the forced issue; for weeks her mind had been entertaining and dismissing the idea that Mr. Flint had any questionable motives in yielding Nellie Whitehead's place to her. With this fleeting trepidation had come the realization of her dependence, the importance her sixty-five dollars a month in the scheme of things, the compromises that she might be forced into accepting in order to insure its continuance; not definite and soul-searing compromises, it was true, but petty, irritating trucklings which wear down self-esteem.

It had been the primitive violence of Flint's commanding, "Sit down!" to thrust the issue from the economic to the elemental. For the first time in her life Claire was face to face with unstripped masculine brutality.

She had wondered why women of a lower order took men's blows without striking back, without at least escaping from further torment. But she was beginning to see, as her spirits tried to rise reeling from Flint's verbal a.s.sault, the fawning submission, half admiration, half fear, that could follow a frank, hard-fisted blow. And she had a terror, sitting there trying to thrust food between her trembling lips, that the sheer physical force of the male opposite her might shatter in one blow a will that could have withstood any amount of spiritual or material attrition.

She had never seen Flint so clearly as at this moment; in fact, she had never seen him _at all_. Formerly, he had been a conventionalized masculine biped in a blue-serge covering who paid her salary and struck att.i.tudes that were symbols of predatory instincts rather than an indication that such instincts existed. Life had, after all, been peopled by the precisely labeled puppets of a morality play; they came on, and declaimed, and made gestures--but they remained abstractions, things apart from life, mere representations of the vices and virtues they impersonated. She had entertained this idea particularly with regard to Flint. She had felt that the day would come when he and she would occupy the stage together. He would speak his part with a great flourish of the hands and much high-sounding emphasis, and when he had finished she would reply with a carefully worded retort, setting forth the claims and rewards of virtue. Thus it would continue, argument succeeding argument, a declamatory give and take, dignified, pa.s.sionless, theatrical.

They were occupying the stage now, it was true, but there was something warm and human and ragged about the performance. Flint was not a mere spiritless allegory in red-satin doublet and hose to give flame to his conventionality. Instead, she saw sitting opposite her a ponderous, quick-breathing, drunken male, handsome in a coa.r.s.e, rough-hewn way, speaking in the quick, clipped speech of pa.s.sion and striking her to the ground with the energy of his stage business. She was afraid, almost for the first time in her life, with a primitive, abandoned fear. And suddenly her vista of womanhood narrowed to include the ugly foreground of life that youth had looked over in its eager, far-flung scanning of the horizon beyond. Suddenly she felt all the oppression and sorrow of the s.e.x bear down upon her and mark her with its relentless finger.

Because she was a woman she would pay for every joy with a corresponding sorrow; receive a blow for every caress; know courage and fear with equal intimacy.... She stopped eating and she began to realize with a vivid terror that Flint was looking at her fixedly and beginning to speak.

"What's the matter with the sweetbreads? Don't you like 'em?... And the wine?... Say, I'm going to get peeved in a minute. You don't suppose we serve this French-restaurant style of meal every day do you? I should say _not_! That's another one of the _frau's_ convictions. Plain living at home so as to set the right example to the _girls_!" Flint threw his head from side to side, mincing out his last statement. "Gad! I'm tired of setting a good example!... And even Sing gets tired. c.h.i.n.ks, you know, like to cook a bang-up meal once in a while. They like a chance to show their speed and put in all the fancy tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs."

His mood, during this speech, had changed with drunken facility from irritability to good humor. Claire, still attempting to marshal her wits, picked up her fork again and murmured:

"Oh, you have a Chinese cook, then? I had no idea.... The j.a.panese boy, you know. They say that the two never get along."

"That's a fairy-tale. Besides, it's next to impossible, these days, to get a Chinese second-boy. And the missus _won't_ hire a girl." He winked broadly. "Can't get one ugly enough, I guess. Sing's a wonder. I copped him from the Tom Forsythes. _You_ know--young Edington's in-laws.

They've never quite forgiven me. Though they _will_ come back and tuck away one of his dinners occasionally."

Claire's mind closed nimbly over Flint's statement. "The--the Tom Forsythes of Ross?" she asked.

He nodded and tossed a gla.s.s of wine off in one gulp. The Tom Forsythes of Ross ... Edington's sister ... Ned Stillman! The sequence of ideas flashed through Claire's mind with flas.h.i.+ng detachment. She leaned back in her seat and raised the wine-gla.s.s in obvious pretense to her lips.

Flint was watching her keenly: an ugly gleam was in his eyes.

"Well, Miss Robson, you might just as well make up your mind to finish that gla.s.s of wine first as last. We're not going to have the next course until you do."

She measured him deliberately. She knew now that it was to be a fight to a finish. She was honestly afraid and full of the courage of realization.

"I've had enough as it is, Mr. Flint. Besides, we must either be getting to work or figuring how I am to make the boat at Sausalito. I suppose you could send me in the car ... with Jerry."

"Oh, with Jerry? So that's it!... No, not on your life! He's too good-looking a boy for a job like that. No, Miss Robson, you are going to stay _right_ here.... Now, understand me, I'm not a d.a.m.n fool! You seem to have an idea that because I've had a gla.s.s or two that I've lost my reason. You're an attractive girl and all that, Miss Robson, and I am interested in you! But please don't flatter yourself that I'm staking everything on a throw like this. As a matter of fact, I'll see that you are properly chaperoned. We've plenty of neighbors. You've got the best excuse in the world for staying here and...."

"But, my dear Mr. Flint, can't you see, I...."

"No, I can't. I want you to stay _here_. My reasons are as good as yours. Now let's get that off our mind and enjoy the meal."

His manner struck her protests to the ground again. She was no longer fearing the immediate outcome, in fact, she never had, but she knew that if he broke her to his will now, all the safeguards, all the chaperons, all the conventions in the world wouldn't save her from ultimate consequences. This was the try-out that was to establish her pace in the final contest; she would stand or fall upon the record she made at this moment. For she was trying out something more than Flint's temper, something greater than a mechanical adjustment of human relations.h.i.+ps--she was trying out _herself_. She sat for some moments, thinking hard, one hand fingering the slender base of the wine-filled gla.s.s in front of her, the other dropped in pensive limpness at her side. Flint had cleared the s.p.a.ce in front of him of everything but his two wine-gla.s.ses. He had slipped down in his seat and his two bloodshot eyes were fixing her with a level stare.

She stirred finally and rose.

He was on his feet in an instant.

"I'm going to telephone," she said, calmly.

"Telephone ... where?... What's the idea?"

"Mr. Flint," she answered, a bit wearily, "at least I'm a guest in your house, am I not?"

He settled back in his seat with a grunt of acquiescence. She stood dazed for a moment, surprised at the chance that had put such telling words into her mouth. She had been fingering timidly for the key to his chivalry; quite by accident she had hit upon it in the shape of this appeal to her expectations of him in the role of host. She could have lied, of course, and told him that she wished to telephone her mother, but she had not yet been cornered sufficiently to resort to so distasteful a weapon.... As she left the room she found herself wondering whether Stillman had by any chance left the Tom Forsythes. She looked at the clock. It was not quite eight o'clock. She felt rea.s.sured, yet she was tremendously frightened.... Especially as she realized that the telephone was in the entrance hall within earshot of the dining-room....

She was decidedly more frightened when she got back from her telephoning, and looked at Flint. He was clutching at the table with both hands, his body tilted slightly forward, his lips ominously thin.

"You telephoned to the Tom Forsythes, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And you asked for Stillman.... Did you get him?"

"Yes."

"What did you want with him?"

"If you heard that much, I guess you heard the rest, Mr. Flint."

Claire stood at her place at the table. She decided not to sit. Flint bore down on both hands until things began to creak.

"Yes, I heard everything, but, dammit all, I couldn't believe my own ears. You're like every woman I ever knew ... you don't play fair. You appeal to my instinct as host and then you go and outrage every privilege you've got me to concede. You're a pretty guest, you are! And I sit here and let you 'play me for a fool.' Let you ring up Ned Stillman and ask him to fetch you away from _my_ house in _his_ car!" He stopped and took a deep breath; his words were no longer pa.s.sionate; instead, they were precise and cool and venomous. "Understand me, young lady, I'm through with you. I wouldn't care, if I thought you were really virtuous. But you're too clever for a virtuous woman.... Oh, I dare say you subscribe to the letter of the law, all right. For instance, you take care not to run around with married men whose inc.u.mbrances are in plain view of the audience.... Oh, I've seen lots of clever women in my time, but in the end they always took too much rope.

Remember, you'll have your bluff called some day."

He pushed back his chair noisily and rose. The j.a.panese servant came bobbing along.