The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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He tempered his tone. "Cora, when you liked me you went a pretty clipping gait with me," he said, trembling even more than before. "But you're infinitely more infatuated with this Toreador of a Corliss than you were with me; you're lost in him; you're slaving for him as I would for you. How far are you going with----"
"Do you want me to walk away and leave you?" she asked, suddenly sitting up straight and looking at him with dilating eyes. "If you want a `scene'----"
"It's over," he said, more calmly. "I know now how dangerous the man is. Of course you will tell him I said that." He laughed quietly. "Well--between a dangerous chap and a desperate one, we may look for some lively times! Do you know, I believe I think about as continuously of him, lately, as I do of you. That's why I put almost my last cent into his oil company, and got what may be almost my last dance with you!"
"I wouldn't call it `almost' your last dance with me!" she returned icily. "Not after what you've said. I had a foolish idea you could behave--well, at least decently."
"Did Corliss tell you that I insulted him in his rooms at the hotel?"
"You!" She laughed, genuinely. "I see him letting you!"
"He did, however. By manner and in speech I purposely and deliberately insulted him. You'll tell him every word of this, of course, and he'll laugh at it, but I give myself the pleasure of telling you. I put the proposition of an `investment' to him in a way nobody not a crook would have allowed to be smoothed over--and he allowed it to be smoothed over. He ate it! I felt he was a swindler when he was showing Richard Lindley his maps and papers, and now I've proved it to myself, and it's worth the price." Often, when they had danced, and often during this interview, his eyes lifted curiously to the white flaming crescent in her hair; now they fixed themselves upon it, and in a flash of divination he cried: "You wear it for me!"
She did not understand. "Finished raving?" she inquired.
"I gave Corliss a thousand dollars," he said, slowly. "Considering the fact that it was my last, I flatter myself it was not unhandsomely done--though I may never need it. It has struck me that the sum was about what a man who had just cleaned up fifty thousand might regard as a sort of `extra'--`for lagniappe'--and that he might have thought it an appropriate amount to invest in a present some jewels perhaps--to place in the hair of a pretty friend!"
She sprang to her feet, furious, but he stood in front of her and was able to bar the way for a moment.
"Cora, I'll have a last word with you if I have to hold you," he said with great rapidity and in a voice which shook with the intense repression he was putting upon himself. "We do one thing in the South, where I came from. We protect our women----"
"This looks like it! Keeping me when----"
"I love you," he said, his face whiter than she had ever seen it. "I love you! I'm your dog! You take care of yourself if you want to take care of anybody else! As sure as----"
"My dance, Miss Madison." A young gentleman on vacation from the navy had approached, and, with perfect unconsciousness of what he was interrupting, but with well-founded certainty that he was welcome to the lady, urged his claim in a confident voice. "I thought it would never come, you know; but it's here at last and so am I." He laughed propitiatingly.
Ray yielded now at once. She moved him aside with her gloved forearm as if he were merely an awkward stranger who unwittingly stood between her and the claiming partner. Carrying the gesture farther, she took the latter's arm, and smilingly, and without a backward glance, passed onward and left the gallery. The lieutenant, who had met her once or twice before, was her partner for the succeeding dance as well, and, having noted the advantages of the place where he had discovered her, persuaded her to return there to sit through the second. Then without any fatiguing preamble, he proposed marriage. Cora did not accept, but effected a compromise, which, for the present, was to consist of an exchange of photographs (his to be in uniform) and letters.
She was having an evening to her heart. Ray's attack on Corliss had no dimming effect; her thought of it being that she was "used to his raving"; it meant nothing; and since Ray had prophesied she would tell Corliss about it, she decided not to do so.
The naval young gentleman and Valentine Corliss were the greatest of all the lions among ladies that night; she had easily annexed the lieutenant, and Corliss was hers already; though, for a purpose, she had not yet been seen in company with him. He was visibly "making an impression." His name, as he had said to Richard Lindley, was held in honour in the town; and there was a flavour of fancied romance in his absence since boyhood in unknown parts, and his return now with a `foreign air' and a bow that almost took the breath of some of the younger recipients. He was, too, in his way, the handsomest man in the room; and the smiling, open frankness of his look, the ready cordiality of his manner, were found very winning. He caused plenty of flutter.
Cora waited till the evening was half over before she gave him any visible attention. Then, during a silence of the music, between two dances, she made him a negligent sign with her hand, the gesture of one indifferently beckoning a creature who is certain to come, and went on talking casually to the man who was with her. Corliss was the length of the room from her, chatting gayly with a large group of girls and women; but he immediately nodded to her, made his bow to individuals of the group, and crossed the vacant, glistening floor to her. Cora gave him no greeting whatever; she dismissed her former partner and carelessly turned away with Corliss to some chairs in a corner.
"Do you see that?" asked Vilas, leaning over the balcony railing with Richard Lindley. "Look! She's showing the other girls--don't you see? He's the New Man; she let 'em hope she wasn't going in for him; a lot of them probably didn't even know that she knew him. She sent him out on parade till they're all excited about him; now she shows 'em he's entirely her property--and does it so matter-of-factly that it's rubbed in twice as hard as if she seemed to take some pains about it. He doesn't dance: she'll sit out with him now, till they all read the tag she's put on him. She says she hates being talked about. She lives on it!--so long as it's envious. And did you see her with that chap from the navy? Neptune thinks he's dallying with Venus perhaps, but he'll get----"
Lindley looked at him commiseratingly. "I think I never saw prettier decorations. Have you noticed, Ray? Must have used a thousand chrysanthemums."
"Toreador!" whispered the other between his teeth, looking at Corliss; then, turning to his companion, he asked: "Has it occurred to you to get any information about Basilicata, or about the ancestral domain of the Moliterni, from our consul-general at Naples?"
Richard hesitated. "Well--yes. Yes, I did think of that. Yes, I thought of it."
"But you didn't do it."
"No. That is, I haven't yet. You see, Corliss explained to me that----"
His friend interrupted him with a sour laugh. "Oh, certainly! He's one of the greatest explainers ever welcomed to our city!"
Richard said mildly: "And then, Ray, once I've gone into a thing I--I don't like to seem suspicious."
"Poor old Dick!" returned Vilas compassionately. "You kind, easy, sincere men are so conscientiously untruthful with yourselves. You know in your heart that Cora would be furious with you if you seemed suspicious, and she's been so nice to you since you put in your savings to please her, that you can't bear to risk offending her. She's twisted you around her little finger, and the unnamed fear that haunts you is that you won't be allowed to stay there--even twisted!"
"Pretty decorations, Ray," said Richard; but he grew very red.
"Do you know what you'll do," asked Ray, regarding him keenly, "if this Don Giovanni from Sunny It' is shown up as a plain get-rich-quick swindler?"
"I haven't considered----"
"You would do precisely," said Ray, "nothing! Cora'd see to that. You'd sigh and go to work again, beginning at the beginning where you were years ago, and doing