The Girl in His House/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
FROM eleven until one o'clock each day Armitage sat in his office. His name was now upon the door, and he never looked at it without a tonic thrill of pride. Often it takes but little to amuse one's vanity. He was playing the game, anyhow; he was no longer a cipher in human affairs: he was something, even if infinitesimally something. It was odd, but twist away from it as he might, this new energy was primarily due to Bordman's calm, unimpassioned analysis. The irony had cut deep. Bordman had rooked him thoroughly, but on the other hand the old scalawag had awakened a desire to play the game. What he had lost in money, then, he was determined to gain in character.
About his only customer was the janitor, with the usual round of complaints from tenants. Morrissy came in about noon, and together they would go over matters in detail. Plumbers and gas-fitters, meter-men and electricians, masons and tinsmiths—there was very little poetry to the job. When Armitage undertook to serve an idea he served it thoroughly; that was in the blood. He rather enjoyed the new responsibilities. His tenants always found him courteous, albeit he was always firm.
About twenty minutes were sufficient to cover the day's work; the other hundred were devoted to the newspapers, broken dreams, and the window from which he could get a glimpse of the ceaseless flow moving north and south on Broadway, two blocks west. Sometimes he would stand over Bordman's globe and pick out the spots he had intimately known. Only a little while ago he had been in this place or that. Here he had shot his first lion, there his first black leopard, over back of Perak. Sometimes his thoughts veered to Bordman. Where had he gone with his ill-gotten fortune?
Armitage always became cynical whenever Bordman came into his mind. He recalled the old curio-dealer in one of Balzac's tales, "The Magic Skin," and how the young wastrel had wished that the old chap fall in love with a ballerina. He never could quite separate Bordman from the idea that some one had accompanied him on his journey. There was no fool like an old fool. Every day in the year the newspapers had some story of this caliber. When a young woman enters the life of an old man there is no folly inconceivable. She would probably pick his pockets some day, and retribution would come in for its own.
Promptly at one Armitage left the office, changing his restaurant frequently for fear that he might fall into the old habit of going certain rounds until he became so bored that Wanderlust might not be denied, for all that at present New York held him in the strongest thrall.
The rainy season had fallen upon the town by the end of October. There were no more gallops through the Park. But there were occasions when he drove Doris about town in his recently purchased runabout. It was rare sport teaching her how to drive. She was always alive with interest—a child's interest. He did not notice the strange silences that often fell upon her. There were a certain restraint and demureness in these spells that would have interested Betty Burlingham.
One Saturday, as he rocked in his creaky swivel chair, smoking his strong pipe and dreaming pleasantly, the door swung open and Betty and Doris swept in, bright of eye and rich in color, for a cold northeaster was blowing. He was on his feet instantly.
"Well, this is a pleasure!"
"Don't be too sure of that," replied Betty. "We came at this hour because we thought you might ask us out to lunch."
"I thought perhaps you might be looking for an office. There's one to rent."
Betty perched herself upon a corner of the desk, while Doris strolled about. She paused at the globe, and with the tip of her finger sent it spinning upon its axis.
"How do you like work?" asked Betty, pushing the still smoking pipe to the farthest end of the desk. "I don't see why we women marry you men, you have such horrid habits. But never mind. How are you making out?"
"Great! I can tell a plumber from a mason at a glance. I can tell a book agent from a charity-worker by the smile alone."
"Into what class do you put us?" asked Doris, giving the globe a final spin as she turned away.
"Angels from heaven!"
"We'll certainly fly if you talk like that. And so this is the place where that funny little agent of yours used to work? What has become of him?"
"He was getting along in years and concluded to retire," said Armitage, reaching for his pipe and putting it into a drawer mechanically and wondering all the rest of the day what he had done with it.
Betty stared at her hands because she was afraid to trust her eyes.
"He was very quaint," said Doris, innocent of the bomb fuse she had lighted. "Can you write on the typewriter?"
"I can pick out Yankee Doodle, but that's about all. It's twelve," he said, briskly. The sight of Doris in this office rather embarrassed him. "Any place in mind for lunch?"
"Yes. We want to go where there's dancing. Doris hasn't seen that phase of New York life yet. Bob's too busy to come up-town, and so we thought you might help us out."
"All right. But I'm as much in the dark as Miss Athelstone. You'll have to do the guiding, Betty. How'd you come?"
"Subway. We've been shopping all the morning. Doris wants a new dress for that dinner I'm going to give Clare. The Honorable George is very nice. Clare is in luck."
"So am I," said Armitage.
"It will be my first real dinner. I'm so excited!" Doris came close to the desk. "How nice and kind you people are to me! Some one told me once that a person might live and die in New York and not know a single neighbor."
"That's true enough," said Armitage, getting into his coat. "But on this especial occasion you moved in next to the nicest lady but one in this world."
"And just who is the nicest?" Betty demanded; but she was thinking, "What a stupendous, scrumptious thing that would be!" For now that Armitage had signified his intention of settling down and becoming a stay-at-home, she must search around among the younger women to find him a suitable wife. A normal married woman can no more tolerate a handsome eligible bachelor than she can tolerate poison in the nursery. Armitage's doom was sealed then and there. And what appealed to Betty most strongly was the fact that it would be the most romantic thing she had ever heard of.
A pleasant hour and a half was idled away at one of the popular restaurants on Broadway. There was a little dancing, just enough to show Armitage that he had entirely lost track of the game. But Doris was interested. Her little feet kept patting time to the music. She confessed that she had never known the exhilaration of a waltz. And Armitage, gazing at her beauty, considered that it would be an exceedingly pleasurable task to be her instructor.
An idea formed and grew in his head, too; it haunted him all the rest of the day, followed him into bed that night, and made havoc of his dreams. Thereafter this idea became an obsession. Arguments were out-argued and logic had its legs knocked from under. He fought it, denied it, forswore it, but always, like the north wind, the idea returned. It grew like the genie free of the bottle; and he knew that in his case he never could coax it back into he bottle again. I don't suppose he would have changed his plans even if he could have seen what was forward—the bullet that was nearly to write "Finis" to his pleasant if rather checkered career.
Rather a peculiar thing happened at the dinner Betty Burlingham gave to Clare to announce her engagement to Wickliffe. After dinner and the solemn announcement that Clare was ready to risk her liberty once more, there was dancing in the big drawing-room. Doris, of course, did not dance—that is, not well enough to risk a flight across the glistening floor. She and Armitage watched the dancers for a while. Suddenly she leaned toward him.
"Let's go home," she said in a whisper.
The suggestion hypnotized him; the phrase was so intimate and companionable. Home, her home and still his! For it was his morally, no matter how well legally she might be intrenched there. Arabian Nights! They stole out unobserved.
But no sooner were they in the house next door than he saw the monumental folly of his act. "We'd better run right back," he said, gravely.
"But why?"
He covered his confusion. "Well, they'll be missing us shortly. Betty has Argus eyes."
"But what if they do miss us?" she asked, innocently.
"How the dickens am I going to make her understand?" he thought.
"Come into your old study. There's a fire ready. And I've got the most wonderful surprise for you. I was going to give it to you some morning after our ride, but the weather's been too bad."
"We'd better march right back to Betty's."
"Don't you . . . Wouldn't you like to stay?"
"Like to! Why . . . that isn't it." How was he going to tell her that it was not proper to be with her in this house at this hour? He saw instantly that, whatever she knew about social conventions, the present situation was not clear to her. The innocent! He arraigned himself bitterly.
Whatever his resolves, these were negatived by an unexpected action on her part. She laughed, caught him by the sleeve, and ran with him into the study.
"I planned all this this afternoon," she confessed. She turned, struck a match, and threw it into the grate. "Now, sir, you sit perfectly still. You know all the nooks in this room. Study them out while I go. I'll be right back."
Never had he met such a woman, and she was a woman. She was at least twenty-two. In many things she was uncannily wise, in others as innocent as a child. And the exquisite lure of her lay in these two opposites. Never had he struck a happier phrase: pearl and pomegranate and Persian peach—jewels and fruit. She made him think of summer clouds, so lightly she moved. She made him think of his loneliness, too. He did not know then that his thought of loneliness was a dangerous one. "Let's go home! The thrill of it!"
He leaned back against the cushions, as he had leaned a thousand times before. By now the fire had got into the chestnut log, and everything was touched by the rosal light. Four weeks; he had known her just about four weeks. Her father's picture stood on the mantel, and he wondered how a man with such a daughter could lead such a life. There was a bit of mystery around the man somewhere.
This spot had always been Armitage's favorite. He had invariably smoked a pipe here after dinner, before going out for the evening. He fell into a dream. Supposing he was really living here again, and this child-woman who had unconsciously thrown about him an irresistible enchantment. . . . He heard the rustle of her gown, and she was standing before him, her hands behind her back, a tantalizing smile on her lips.
"La mano destra?—la sinistra?" she asked. "Which hand?"
"The one nearest the heart"—recalling an old game of his youth.
She thrust forth her left hand. It held a brown meerschaum pipe!
"Where did you find that?"
"In a corner of the bookcases. Oh, there are signs of you all over the house. There was a sealed tobacco-jar. Take the pipe and light it. I'm going to read you some of daddy's letters."
"But the odor of pipe tobacco?"
"I smelled a pipe the first day I entered the house, and nobody but a caretaker has been in it for years. It will always be in the curtains. Light it."
He obeyed. In truth he would have obeyed her had she asked him to take a live log from the grate with his bare hands. He did not comprehend what was happening to him.
She took an Oriental pillow—Scheherazade herself might have curled upon it once upon a time—from the lounge and dropped it between the fire and the lounge and sat down, cross-legged. She untied a bundle of letters and selected three or four. Her gown was emerald-green. On the side nearest him her throat and cheek reflected the green; on the other side the flames tinted her with rose. Her arms and shoulders were, in these changeful lights, more wonderful than any marble he had ever seen.
Oh, this must be some dream, a recurrence of some fragment he had read in a forgotten book. Presently she would vanish, his old butler would touch him on the shoulder, he would rub his eyes for a moment, and then go down to the club. The life in the jungles was a dream also—green and rose, like a cloud on the face of a stream. He longed to reach down and touch her, to assure himself that she was real. Here in his house!
She began to read. At the sound of her voice he lowered his pipe and never put it to his lips again that night. Think of her finding his pipe! Sometimes a beautiful line caught his attention; but to-night his ears were keyed to music and not to words.
The French ormolu clock struck twelve—the faithful old watchdog of his childhood. Twelve o'clock! The many times his mother had said: "Time for bed, Jimmiekins!" Doris had finished the last letter and was doing up the packet. "Isn't he wonderful?" she looked up, her eyes full of marvel.
"Very." But he hoped she would not ask him what he thought of this passage or that. He could not remember a single line!
"Did you ever know that floors talk in the night?" she asked. She possessed the queerest fancies.
"What do they say?" He glanced anxiously at the clock.
"There's a board over there, just this side of the curtains, that is always yawning and saying, 'Oh, dear!' There's another in the middle hall that says, 'Look sharp!' And I always walk around it. There's the funniest old grumbler in my room. I can't get it to say anything; it just mumbles and grumbles. The one in your room says, 'Lonesome! Lonesome!' And the store-room has one that says, 'Hark!' so sharply that I always stop and listen. I suppose it's because I'm not used to wooden floors."
"And because I don't believe you're a real human being at all, only just a fairy."
"Well, perhaps." She rose and faced him suddenly. "Am I different? I mean, am I different from your friends? Do I do things I oughtn't? Why did you want to go back?"
"I didn't. I only felt I ought to."
She wrinkled her forehead, trying to decipher this. "I speak English like anybody else, but sometimes I don't understand. . . . Santa Maria! There goes the bell!"
"It's Burlingham probably, come after us." And Bob would doubtless take Jimmie Armitage's head off for this night's work.
"All right. But wasn't it fun!"
"Hello!" said Burlingham as they opened the door. "Thought you'd be here. Jilli has just dropped in to play the violin for us. He's come straight from his concert. Mighty fine of him. He charges a thousand a night for those who consider him a fad of the hour and gives away his genius to those he knows love music. Come along."
"A violin?" Doris threw her cloak over her shoulders. "Isn't it wonderful! Floors that talk and little red-brown boxes with singing souls!"
Armitage's anxiety grew. He knew Bob's voice of old, and Bob was deeply angry about something; and Armitage suspected readily enough what this something was. Hang the world with its right-and-left angles, its fussy old hedges and barricades!
"Smoke a cigar with me when they all go," whispered Burlingham in the vestibule of his own house.
It was half after two in the morning when Armitage found himself alone with Bob and his wife. Bob lighted a cigar and walked about for a space.
"I don't know how it came to pass, but Betty and I have grown very fond of that girl next door. We've formed a kind of protectorate over her. She puzzles us. She's a type we haven't run into before. She is both worldly wise and surprisingly innocent. She'll air her views of Turgeniev one moment and then ask why a woman shouldn't go to a restaurant alone at night if she wanted to. We know why she can't. Cities and men have made it impossible."
"Don't beat about the bush with me, Bob. You're angry because I went over there the way I did."
"Why the dickens did you do it, then?"
"Don't you folks trust me?" Armitage asked, rather pathetically.
"We'd trust you anywhere, Jim, in any situation," said Betty. "That isn't it."
"I understand. I was simply hypnotized. What do you suppose she said to me? 'Let's go home!' When I followed her I did not realize what I was doing. I'm a bit tangled up still. I don't know whether I'm happy or miserable. 'Let's go home!' Think of her saying that to me! Think of going over with her to my house! I shall never be able to look upon it as anything but mine. Think of her finding an old pipe of mine and offering it to me! I've been wandering through labyrinths ever since I struck New York."
"What are you driving at?" demanded Burlingham.
"Hush!" said Betty.
Armitage went on as if he had not heard the interruption: "When I followed her to-night I did not comprehend until I got into the house and she began reading her father's letters to me. Then I knew. I followed her because it was written that I should . . . all the rest of my days."