The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 14
When Dudley walked out upon Rao-Singh's piazza he saw that the immediate foreground below was deserted and the crowd was massed solidly down near the dance platform. As he strode in that direction he caught sight of Carmelita standing upon the platform alone while all eyes from below were turned upon her. She was haranguing the crowd in a gay, excited voice. He came near enough to listen, hardly knowing what his torn feelings toward her were.
"You've all had a good time to-night," she was telling the mass of grinning faces below her, "and it's been quite profitable for our cause. But you know we have had bad luck with the weather during the early part of the week and our total proceeds are below our expectations. We are determined to bring them up to the quota." The crowd massed in front of her seemed to lose interest at this point. At first her presence there, flushed and very lovely, had piqued their curiosity. But now they sized up her mission as an ordinary request for more money.
"We are five thousand dollars short of the—amount we have set, and I am here to collect it," she went on. Then, taking a deep breath and coming bravely out with it, "What am I bid for a kiss?"
There was a surprised moment of silence, then a buzz of comment, and "A hundred dollars!" from Jack Hodge.
She frowned at him. "Much too low, Jack, old thing," she chided him. "Five hundred dollars," was Henry Church's bid, followed by a hurried explanation to his wife standing by his side that he was merely trying to help the good cause along.
At Carmelita's announcement of the kiss auction Dudley, just arrived in the midst of the crowd, could hardly believe his ears. He had a mad impulse to rush up on the platform and carry her away. Then he heard a woman in front of him mention Carmelita's name and he listened in spite of himself. "Isn't she brazen?" the gossip was saying. "And her husband—one never sees her with him. She is always with Prince Rao-Singh, that dark, handsome fellow over there. I wonder if she is planning a divorce." And her tall, hawk-nosed companion answered, "I don't know. She is the daughter of a fearfully rich South American, I understand, and her husband hasn't a penny. They say he is living on her money and she is Rao-Singh's—" Dudley was red with anger. He would have vented the full force of his accumulated wrath upon them had he not been attracted again to Carmelita's unnaturally excited voice from the platform.
"Only two thousand dollars for a kiss? We simply must make up that five thousand. What am I bid then for a kiss and a dance?"
Suddenly almost at Dudley's elbow came the deep voice of Rao-Singh, "Five thousand." The crowd cheered. Lucy and her intimates looked at Carmelita with intense curiosity. Would she go through with it? She had turned a little pale at the Hindu's voice and tried to go on with the bidding, "Five thousand—are there any further bids?" But the quota had been reached and the crowd was now in the mood for the consummation of the excitement rather than for further competition. She tried for a few minutes longer but it was no use and she announced with assumed pleasure, "Sold then! One kiss and a dance for five thousand dollars—paying in advance."
At once Rao-Singh, a faint smile playing around his thin, cruel mouth, came toward the platform and vaulted lightly over the rail to Carmelita's side. Without a word to her he: took out his check book and rested it upon the top of the piano belonging to the orchestra and wrote out a check for five thousand dollars. This he handed to her and stood expectantly. His eyes were narrowed and there was a look in them which frightened her. Oh, why must he of all these hundreds be the successful bidder, with Dudley probably somewhere in the crowd to see and misunderstand?
She held her hand out to him and said in a low voice, "Please be a sport, Rao, and only kiss my hand." But he would not heed the plea in her voice. "No," he said tensely and, approaching very close, suddenly wrapped his long arms around her, drew her to him and pressed his lips hotly against hers in a long, fervent kiss. She had to brace her arm against his chest and resist with all her strength before he reluctantly let her go. Her face was flushed and angry.
"And now the dance," he insisted. The orchestra broke into the lulling strains of the current waltz hit. Other couples started dancing also. But before Rao-Singh and Carmelita had taken two steps another figure vaulted over the platform rail and, laying hold roughly of Rao-Singh's shoulder, tore the Indian away from Carmelita and spun him around until he with difficulty prevented himself from crashing upon the floor. It was Dudley, beside himself with rage. He followed close upon the Hindu and, standing nearly chin to chin with him with clenched fists, snapped out in a low, strained voice, "From now on you leave my wife alone or so help me, God—I'll kill you!" He seemed about to attack Rao-Singh anew when Carmelita, terrified and mortified at the same time, stepped between the two.
"Don't be a fool, Dudley," she said sharply to him. "A scene here will do no good. Think of the scandal."
There were many other dancers on the floor by this time and immediately around the excited trio there was a little buzz of agitation. But it had all taken place so quickly and the threat and Carmelita's appeal to her husband were in such low tones that few knew what was happening.
"You defend him then," Dudley turned to her, contempt in his voice. She touched his arm, appealing to him to understand. His eyes swept from her arm to Rao-Singh standing quite composed and with an expression in his cold face as if he regarded Dudley merely as a petulant boy. For a moment there was a silence between the trio as the orchestra went on playing the waltz softly and the dancers glided by with curious glances. Then Dudley, with a helpless shrug of his shoulders, removed Carmelita's arm from his and without a word walked down from the platform and away through the crowd. Carmelita stood looking after him uncertainly.
"Shall we finish our dance?" asked the Prince, intending to ignore the violence that had been done him and to dismiss Dudley without further comment. There were tears of humiliation in her eyes. Without any warning or answer to the Indian's question, she turned abruptly and hurried after her husband. There was a short cut to her own house, where she judged he had gone, through the lawns of two neighboring estates. Breathless and disheveled she dodged past the shrubbery, over hedges, the moonlight lighting her path. Her only thought at the outset was to find him and force him to take her in his arms and reason with him. But such is human perversity and our reluctance to admit there is ever a just cause for being publicly humiliated that by the time she had reached the house she was quite sure he had done her a grave wrong.
He was standing in the living-room of "their" house, hands clenched behind him, staring out through the gay little curtains into the dark. He turned as, catching for breath, she flung open the door.
She waited to recover her breath, leaning against the door. Then quite composed and with dignity she said, "I have come for an apology, Dudley." But she could not go on with it. "Oh, Dudley, how could you have humiliated me so before all those people!" she cried. If he would only hold out his arms to her and allow her to cry upon his breast.
"Humiliated you!" he said with a short laugh. "Always thinking of yourself. Have you considered by any chance the humiliating position you have been placing me in during the past two months?"
Carmelita's hope for a reconciliation abruptly vanished. She could admit to herself that she had done wrong but she could not hear it from his lips in that uncompromising, almost insulting voice. She dried her tears. Still leaning against the door, she confronted him with a dangerous flash in her eyes.
Once started, the pent-up emotions within him came to the surface in a devastating rush. He came nearer to her until she became actually afraid he was going to treat her as he had Rao-Singh. "Do you know what people are saying about you and me and your fine Hindu friend, Rao-Singh? Do you?" His voice was choked, lashing. "I have heard it many times—everybody is saying it—that he is your lover and I am a blind fool living upon your money!"
She felt as if every drop of blood had suddenly left her body. Her hand moved over her face absent-mindedly as if to ward off a blow. But she tried to be sensible, even defiant. "And you are blind fool enough to believe them?"
He stood staring at her. Was he actually doubting her then! In an instant, with the wild look and swift movement of a wild thing, she clutched at his arm and asked passionately, "Do you believe them? Do you! Answer me!"
And he answered, "No! If I did, if I for a minute thought it was true, I would kill you both!"
She loosed her tight hold upon his arm and sank into the chair by the library table. For a few minutes he paced up and down the room, coming finally to a halt in back of her. She could not see his face, but it was twisted with his jealousy, his overwrought nerves.
"I don't think you have ever understood me, Carmelita," and his voice was now steady and quiet. "When I met you I was a rather muddle-headed chap with a vague idea of the future. I fell in love with you, and after we were married it seemed the sporting thing to do to settle down and work like a dog and make enough money to make you happy as soon as possible. I thought our love would be enough incentive for us to put up with what little money I was making, am making, until I could make good. I can see now that I was wrong. You are young and beautiful and you don't want to postpone the good things in life. I don't blame you for being dissatisfied with what I had to offer. You were never meant for any other environment except the one you're in now.
"Some women are like some trees—they can't be transplanted. I once knew a very rich girl who eloped with her chauffeur at Newport. I was a good friend of hers and she told me with shining eyes about her romance and how happy she would be with him in a little house in the shabby part of town where he lived. In six months they were getting a divorce. I saw her afterward. She told me how during that six months she would walk blocks out of her way to avoid her former friends, how her mother smuggled money to her so she could have decent clothes. And the funny part of it was that the chauffeur wanted the divorce even more than she did. She couldn't cook potatoes any better than he could afford a yacht.
"Well, perhaps I'm a little like the chauffeur. I have my own wants. They're different than they used to be before we were married. I suppose it's selfish pride, but I want to feel a wife's dependence on me. I want to work for her, fight for her if need be, and when I come home at night I want to find her there to welcome me. I'm fearfully old-fashioned and Victorian, you see. As it is you're not dependent on me at all. While I'm out here I'm like any weakling who has married a millionaire's daughter for her money. The money I give to you is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what you already have. I'm like a poor relative who comes to you regularly—as a week-end guest."
She sat tensely listening, twisting her handkerchief. He was unfair. He must be. She felt his hands grip the back of her chair. His voice choked.
"There is no use trying to escape it, Carmelita. Our marriage has been a mistake—from the start. It is bound to end badly for both of us. I shall always love you—but I am ready to give you your freedom—and your happiness—if you want it." He turned away so that she would not see how near sobbing he was. He must get out, away. And, seizing his hat from the window seat, he stumbled toward the door and out into the night before she could recover and stop him.
When she comprehended what had happened she sprang from her chair with a hurt cry and rushed after him with outstretched arms.
"Dudley! For God's sake, you cannot leave me this way. I love you—I—"
He was gone. She slowly shut the door and leaned against it to recover her strength. Then with the cry of a tired, beaten child she sank limply down upon the floor and, burying her head in her arms, sobbed as if her heart would break.