The Salamander Part 34

Ida Summers insisted on departing on her own ways, laughingly proclaiming that if she couldn't be provided with an adorer she wasn't going to sit by for a second time and spoil the fun. Dore let her go without protest. She did not care now. Her head ached. She could not collect her thoughts--could not place before her what had happened. That everything had suddenly ceased, that in the cataclysm her youth, her dreams, her joy in being, were swallowed up, she knew. Something had happened, and yet she could not distinctly perceive it.

They went rus.h.i.+ng up the crowded driveway, and on along the open Hudson, hour after hour. The man at her side, leaning forward eagerly, facing her, talked incessantly--talked to her as a man does only when he seeks to unfold all that he has to impress a woman. She answered correctly; she even heard phrases and repeated them mechanically, seeking to comprehend them.

"You are more than life--you are youth itself. I don't know why--every reason--you attract me, but I know I'm groping for you!

"Yes, it's youth, youth, a man like myself needs--the feeling of youth again, the daring of youth, impetuous, magnificent. That's what you can give me!

"I'll give everything--not by half measures; I want you to know all I'm holding back. You'll know the greatest joy in the world, of sharing everything!"

Once he took her hand. Then she turned, and without withdrawing the fingers, which felt no sensation, said:

"Don't do that!"

And he obeyed.

She listened, seeking only the sadness in the sky, the melancholy of isolated and distant things. She knew her heart was broken, that nothing could ever exist for her again. No, never could she feel a palpitating joy; it would all be gray and brown--brown and gray as the worn hills about her, nature, which had forgot its May! And at the same time she listened, smiling and provocative, to this other man who pa.s.sionately courted her, laying open his inner-most soul for her inspection--a man who proclaimed again and again that she drew him to her by the glow of her youth and the joy of life.

That afternoon was like a phantasmagoria. Even he, at the end, noticed her mental numbness.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked.

She looked at him, smiling negation.

"You seem crushed, as if I could stick a pin in you! What's wrong? Has that beast Sa.s.soon insulted--?"

She shook her head. Even this incongruity did not penetrate.

"Listen!" he went on, retaining her hand as she started to descend.

"I'm not a fool! I won't throw myself away on any woman! I'll play fair, too, and open. I don't want backing and pulling--I want things to be big, direct, honest! You know what I feel; you know what I'm capable of feeling! Don't you?"

She smiled and nodded, without comprehending in the least. She was thinking, with a desperate longing, of the shelter of her room, still so far away.

"Very well. I'm going to see you once more," he said abruptly. "Then it's for you to decide. If you want me to come,"--he hesitated to give full emphasis,--"it's for you to send for me!"

She remembered the ultimatum afterward. Now she murmured something commonplace.

He caught her hand.

"Can't you tell me now?"

"What?" she said, striving to recall his meaning.

"Do you want me to come? Is it your wish?"

"Why--yes, why not?" she answered mechanically--nor did she see what leaped into his eyes.

She went hurriedly up the stoop and in. Suddenly she had the feeling that she used to have when she had left the tense concentrated glare of the footlights and pa.s.sed into the relief of the shadowy wings. The smiles fled from her lips, the nervous provocative mask dropped away.

She felt a mortal heaviness of accomplishment. She had lasted through the afternoon; she had not betrayed herself. Half-way up the second flight, she sat down abruptly, exhausted; then, straining every nerve in her body, she reached the haven of her room, as a spent swimmer battling for the sh.o.r.e.

Then a new trial. From behind her door came the sound of voices. Again she took up her mask. The next moment Winona had sprung to her, embracing her feverishly, crying:

"I've got it! I've got it, you darling!"

"Ah--Blainey," she said, suffering her embrace.

But Winona, not to be prevented, continued hugging her frantically, babbling everything, all in a breath, frantic with joy and relief--Winona, whom the night before she had held sobbing in her arms, who to-day was the deliriously happy one!

Then she saw Snyder standing apart, and at her skirts a little girl, half child, half baby, clinging, shyly revolted. As soon as Dore saw her, she went forward impulsively, kneeling and holding out her arms.

The child, with the divining instinct of childhood toward suffering, to the amazement of the others, ran swiftly into her embrace. Dore carried her to a chair, holding her head from her, looking into the starry eyes.

"What's your name?"

"Betty."

From that moment she forgot the others. The room seemed narrowed to their embrace, each clinging to the other. These arms, so warm against her neck, this soft weight against her breast, filled her with immeasurable awakening sadness, but a sadness that deadened the consciousness of self, as if this innocence were the only affection that could understand, the only one that could minister to her pain!

This helplessness pressing against her breast recalled her poignant childhood, unmothered yet often in pa.s.sionate grief groping for maternal arms. If only now she could go in weakness, somewhere to confide her crushed body weakly as a wounded child! If only the others would go and leave her thus--

How long she remained thus she did not know. Winona went, returned and departed. All at once Snyder was standing above them, saying:

"Sorry--time's up! Young one must be getting home to roost!"

She took her convulsively to her breast. She did not know whether it soothed or hurt her more; only that it started within her a pa.s.sionate hunger for this innocence that responded, this incomprehension that understood! She rose abruptly.

"Bring her often--often!" she said, turning away her face.

A knock at the door, and the black hand of Josephus extending a letter.

She knew at once whose letter it was; no need to look! She clutched it, hiding it against her dress. Betty, clinging to her skirts, indignant at her change of mood, clamored for recognition. She bent over, kissed her swiftly, laughed. Then she was alone.

She looked at the letter, but she did not open it. Instead, she placed it on a table, locked the doors, and clutching her hands until the nails cut in, began to pace the floor.

If he had dared--to seek another meeting!

She felt a hot indignant anger wrapping her whole body. She would show him her scorn! At one moment she was on the point of tearing up the letter unread, at the next of sending it back contemptuously. At the end she opened it and read:

"_Dear Miss Baxter_:

"I was out of my head.... I should have known my limitations....

I didn't. I am very sorry, and I only am to blame. Some later day I want to be your good friend.... Do you understand?

"With great respect, "L. M."

When she had read this unexpected renunciation, she forgot all her anger, all her resistance.

"He will never see me again!" she said, with a sob, pressing the letter convulsively against her tears.

She needed no second reading to understand that. She put the crumpled sheet into her waist, striking her temples with her little fists as she had once struck him, repeating: