The Drums of Jeopardy Part 41

When he returned he found her before a window, staring at the myriad lights.

"Sit here," he said, indicating the divan. "I shall stand and walk about as I play."

Kitty sat down, touching the pillows, reflectively. She thought of the tears she had wept upon them. That sinister and cynical thought!

Suddenly she saw light. Her problem would have been none at all if Cutty had said he loved her. There would have been something sublime in making him happy in his twilight. He had loved and lost her mother. To pay him for that! He was right. Those twenty-odd years--his seniority--had mellowed him, filled him with deep and tender understanding. To be with him was restful; the very thought of him now was resting. No matter how much she might love a younger man he would frequently torture her by unconscious egoism; and by the time he had mellowed, the mulled wine would be cold. If only Cutty had said he loved her!

"What shall I play?"

Kitty raised her eyes in frank astonishment. There was a fiercely proud expression on Hawksley's face. It was not the man, it was the artist who was angry.

"Forgive me! I was dreaming a little," she apologized with quick understanding. "I am not quite--myself."

"Neither am I. I will play something to fit your dream. But wait! When I play I am articulate. I can express myself--all emotions. I am what I play--happy, sad, gay, full of the devil. I warn you. I can speak all things. I can laugh at you, weep with you, despise you, love you! All in the touch of these strings. I warn you there is magic in this Amati.

Will you risk it?"

Ordinarily--had this florid outburst come from another man--Kitty would have laughed. It had the air of piqued vanity; but she knew that this was not the interpretation. On the streets he had been the most amusing and surprising comrade she had ever known, as merry and whimsical as Cutty--young and handsome--the real man. He had been real that night when he entered through her kitchen window, with the drums of jeopardy about his neck. He had been real that night she had brought him his wallet.

Electric antagonism--the room seemed charged with it. The man had stepped aside for a moment and the great n.o.ble had taken his place. It was not because she had been reared in rather a theatrical atmosphere that she transcribed his att.i.tude thus. She knew that he was n.o.ble.

That she did not know his rank was of no consequence. Cutty's narrative, which she had pretended to believe, had set this man in the middle cla.s.s. Never in this world. There was only one middle cla.s.s out of which such a personality might, and often did, emerge--the American middle cla.s.s. In Europe, never. No peasant blood, no middle-cla.s.s corpuscle, stirred in this man's veins. The ancient boyar looked down at her.

"Play!" said Kitty. There was a smile on her lips, but there was fiery challenge in her slate-blue eyes. The blood of Irish kings--and what Irishman dares deny it?--surged into her throat.

We wear masks, we inherit generations of masks; and a trivial incident reveals the primordial which lurks in each one of us. Savages--Kitty with her stone hatchet and Hawksley swinging the curved blade of Hunk.

He began one of those tempestuous compositions, brilliant and bewildering, that submerge the most appreciative lay mentality--because he was angry, a double anger that he should be angry over he knew not what--and broke off in the middle of the composition because Kitty sat upright, stonily unimpressed.

Tschaikowsky's "Serenade Melancolique." Kitty, after a few measures, laid aside her stone hatchet, and her body relaxed. Music! She began to absorb it as parched earth absorbs the tardy rain. Then came the waltz which had haunted her. Her face grew tenderly beautiful; and Hawksley, a true artist, saw that he had discovered the fifth string; and he played upon it with all the artistry which was naturally his and which had been given form by the master who had taught him.

For the physical exertions he relied upon nerve energy again. Nature is generous when we are young. No matter how much we draw against the account she always has a little more for us. He forgot that only an hour gone he had been dizzy with pain, forgot everything but the glory of the sounds he was evoking and their visible reaction upon this girl. The devil was not only in his heart, but in his hand.

Never had Kitty heard such music. To be played to in this manner--directly, with embracing tenderness, with undivided fire--would have melted the soul of Gobseck the money lender; and Kitty was warm-blooded, Irish, emotional. The fiddle called poignantly to the Irish in her. She wanted to go roving with this man; with her hand on his shoulder to walk in the thin air of high places. Through it all, however, she felt vaguely troubled; the instinct of the trap. The sinister and cynical idea which had clandestinely taken up quarters in her mind awoke and a.s.sailed her from a new angle, that of youth.

Something in her cried out: "Stop! Stop!" But her lips were mute, her body enchained.

Suddenly Hawksley laid aside the fiddle and advanced. He reached down and drew her up. Kitty did not resist him; she was numb with enchantment. He held her close for a second, then kissed her--her hair, eyes, mouth--released her and stepped back, a bantering smile on his lips and cold terror in his heart. The devil who had inspired this phase of the drama now deserted his victim, as he generally does in the face of superior forces.

Kitty stood perfectly still for a full minute, stunned. It was that smile--frozen on his lips--that brought her back to intimacy with cold realities. Had he asked her pardon, had he shown the least repentance, she might have forgiven, forgotten. But knowing mankind as she did she could give but one interpretation to that smile--of which he was no longer conscious.

Without anger, in quiet, level tones she said: "I had foolishly thought that we two might be friends. You have made it impossible. You have also abused the kindly hospitality of the man who has protected you from your enemies. A few days ago he did me the honour to ask me to marry him. I am going to. I wish you no evil." She turned and walked from the room.

Even then there was time. But he did not move. It was not until he heard the elevator gate crash that he was physically released from the thraldom of the inner revelation. Love--in the blinding flash of a thunderbolt! He had kissed her not because he was the son of his father, but because he loved her! And now he never could tell her. He must let her go, believing that the man she had saved from death had repaid her with insult. On top of all his misfortunes, his tragedies--love! There was a G.o.d, yes, but his name was Irony. Love! He stepped toward the divan, stumbled, and fell against it, his arms spread over the pillows; and in this position he remained.

For a while his thoughts were broken, inconclusive; he was like a man in the dark, groping for a door. Princ.i.p.ally, his poor head was trying to solve the riddle of his never-ending misfortunes. Why? What had he done that these calamities should be piled upon his head? He had lived decently; his youth had been normal; he had played fair with men and women. Why make him pay for what his forbears had done? He wasn't fair game.

He! A singular revelation cleared one corner. Kitty had spoken of a problem; and he, by those devil-urged kisses, had solved it for her. She had been doddering, and his own act had thrust her into the arms of that old thoroughbred. That cynical suggestion of his the other morning had been acted upon. G.o.d had long ago deserted him, and now the devil himself had taken leave. Hawksley buried his face in the pillow once made wet with Kitty's tears.

The great tragedy in life lies in being too late. Hawksley had learned this once before; it was now being driven home again. Cutty was to find it out on the morrow, for he missed his train that night.

The shuttles of the Weaver in this pattern of life were two green stones called the drums of jeopardy, inanimate objects, but perfect tools in the hands of Destiny. But for these stones Hawksley would not have tarried too long on a certain red night; Cutty would not now be stumbling about the labyrinths into which his looting instincts had thrust him; and Kitty Conover would have jogged along in the humdrum rut, if not happy at least philosophically content with her lot.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Decision is always a mental relief, hesitance a curse. Kitty, having s.h.i.+fted her burdens to the broad shoulders of Cutty, felt as she reached the lobby as if she had left storm and stress behind and entered calm.

She would marry Cutty; she had published the fact, burned her bridges.

She had stepped into the car, her heart full of cold fury. Now she began to find excuses for Hawksley's conduct. A sick brain; he was not really accountable for his acts. Her own folly had opened the way. Of course she would never see him again. Why should she? Their lives were as far apart as the Volga and the Hudson.

Bernini met her in the lobby. "I've got a cab for you, Miss Conover," he said as if nothing at all had happened.

"Have you Cutty's address?"

"Yes."

"Then take me at once to a telegraph office. I have a very important message to send him."

"All right, Miss Conover."

"Say: 'Decision made. It is yes.' And sign it just Kitty."

Without being conscious of it her soul was still in the clouds, where it had been driven by the music of the fiddle; thus, what she a.s.sumed to be a normal sequence of a train of thought was only a sublime impulse. She would marry Cutty. More, she would be his wife, his true wife. For his tenderness, his generosity, his chivalry, she would pay him in kind.

There would be no nonsense; love would not enter into the bargain; but there would be the fragrance of perfect understanding. That he was fifty-two and she was twenty-four no longer mattered. No more loneliness, no more genteel poverty; for such benefits she was ready to pay the score in full. A man she was genuinely fond of, a man she could look up to, always depend upon.

Was there such a thing as perfect love? She had her doubts. She reasoned that love was what a body decided was love, the psychological moment when the physical attraction became irresistible. Who could tell before the fact which was the true and which the false? Lived there a woman, herself excepted, who had not hesitated between two men--a man who had not doddered between two women--for better or for worse? What did the average woman know of the man, the average man know of the woman--until afterward? To stake all upon a guess!

She knew Cutty. Under her own eyes he had pa.s.sed through certain proving fires. There would be no guessing the manner of man he was. He was fifty-two; that is to say, the grand pa.s.sion had come and gone. There would be mutual affection and comrades.h.i.+p.

True, she had her dreams; but she could lay them away without any particular regret. She had never been touched by the fire of pa.s.sion.

Let it go. But she did know what perfect comrades.h.i.+p was, and she would grasp it and never loose her hold. Something out of life.

"A narrow squeak, Miss Conover," said Berumi, breaking the long silence.

"A miss is as good as a mile," replied Kitty, not at all grateful for the interruption.

"We've done everything we could to protect you. If you can't see now--why, the jig is up. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. And in a game like this a woman is always the weakest link."

"You're quite a philosopher."

"I have reason to be. I'm married."

"Am I expected to laugh?"

"Miss Conover, you're a wonder. You come through these affairs with a smile, when you ought to have hysterics. I'll bet a doughnut that when you see a mouse you go and get it a piece of cheese."

"Do you want the truth? Well, I'll tell it to you. You have all kept me on the outer edge of this affair, and I've been trying to find out why.

I have the reportorial instinct, as they say. I inherited it from my father. You put a strange weapon in my hands, you tell me it is deadly, but you don't tell me which end is deadly. Do you know who this Russian is?"