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The Gay Rebellion, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 24 |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV SHE knew so little about the metropolis that, on her first visit, a year before, she had asked the driver of the taxicab to recommend a respectable hotel for a lady travelling alone; and he had driven her to the Hotel Aurora Borealis--that great, gay palace of Indiana limestone and plate glass towering above the maelstrom of Long Acre. When, her business transacted, she returned to the Westchester farm, still timid, perplexed, and partly stunned by the glitter and noise of her recent metropolitan abode, she determined never again to stop at that hotel. But when the time came for her to go again the long list of hotels confused her. She did not know one from the other; she shrank from experimenting; and, at least, she knew something about the Aurora Borealis and she would not feel like an utter stranger there. That was the only reason she went back there _that_ time. And the next time she came to town that was the principal reason she returned to the Aurora Borealis. But the next time, she made up her mind to go elsewhere; and in the roaring street she turned coward, and went to the only place she knew. And the time after that she fought a fierce little combat with herself all the way down in the train; and, with flushed cheeks, hating herself, ordered the cabman to take her to the Hotel Aurora Borealis. But it was not until several trips after that one--on a rainy morning in May--that she found courage to say to the maid at the cloak-room door: "Who _is_ that young man? I always see him in the lobby when I come here." The maid cast an intelligent glance toward a tall, well-built young fellow who stood pulling on his gloves near the desk. "Huh!" she sniffed; "he ain't much." "What do you mean?" asked the girl. "Why, he's a capper, mem." "A--a what?" "A capper--a gambler." The girl flushed scarlet. The maid handed her a check for her rain-coat and said: "They hang around swell hotels, they do, and pick up acquaintance with likely looking and lonely boobs. Then the first thing the lonely boob knows he's had a good dinner with a new acquaintance and is strolling into a quiet but elegant looking house in the West Forties or Fifties." And the maid laughed, continuing her deft offices in the dressing-room, and the girl looked into the glass at her own crimson cheeks and sickened eyes. At luncheon he sat at a little table by a window, alone, indolently preoccupied with a newspaper and a fruit salad. She, across the room, kept her troubled eyes away. Yet it was as though she saw him--perhaps the mental embodiment of him was the more vivid for her resolutely averted head. Every detail of his appearance was painfully familiar to her--his dark eyes, his smooth face which always seemed a trifle sun-tanned, the fastidious and perfect taste of his dress in harmony with his boyish charm and quiet distinction--and the youth of him--the wholesome and self-possessed youth--that seemed to her the most dreadful thing about him in the new light of her knowledge. For he could scarcely be twenty-five. Every movement he made had long since fascinated her; his unconscious grace had been, to her, the unstudied assurance of a man of the world bred to a social environment about which she knew only through reading. Never had she seen him but straightway she began to wonder who and what exalted person in the unknown metropolitan social circle he might be. She had often wondered, speculated; sometimes dreamily she had endowed him with name and position--with qualities, too--ideal qualities suggested by his air of personal distinction--delightful qualities suggested by his dark, pleasant eyes, and by the slight suspicion of humour lurking so often on the edges of his smoothly shaven lips. He was so clean-looking, so nice--and he had the shoulders and the hands and the features of good breeding! And, after all--after all, he was a gambler!--a derelict whose sinister living was gained by his wits; a trailer and haunter and bleeder of men! Worse--a decoy sent out by others! She had little appetite for luncheon; he seemed to have less. But she remembered that she had never seen him eat very much--and never drink anything stronger than tea. "At least," she thought with a mental quiver, "he has that to his credit." The quiver surprised her; she was scarcely prepared for any emotion concerning him except the natural shock of disillusion and the natural pity of a young girl for anything ignoble and hopelessly unworthy. Hopelessly? She wondered. Was it possible that God could ever find the means of grace for such a man? It _could_ be done, of course; it were a sin for her to doubt it. Yet she could not see how. Still, he was young enough to have parents living somewhere; unmarred enough to invite confidence if he cared to. . . . And suddenly it struck her that to invite confidence was part of his business; his charm part of his terrible equipment. She sat there breathing faster, thinking. His charm was part of his equipment--an infernal weapon! She understood it now. Long since, innocently speculating, she had from the very beginning and without even thinking, conceded to him her confidence in his worthiness. And--the man was a gambler! For a few moments she hated him hotly. After a while there was more sorrow than heat in her hatred, more contempt for his profession than for him. . . . And _somebody_ had led him astray; that was certain, because no man of his age--and appearance--could have deliberately and of his own initiative gone so dreadfully and cruelly wrong in the world. Would God pity him? Would some means be found for his salvation? Would salvation come? It must; she could not doubt it--after she had lifted her eyes once more and looked at him where he sat immersed in his newspaper, a pleasant smile on his lips. A bar of sunlight fell across his head, striping his shoulder; the scarlet flowers on the table were becoming to him. And, oh! he seemed so harmless--so delightfully decent; there where the sunlight fell across his shoulder and spread in a golden net across the white cloth under his elbows. She rose, curiously weary; a lassitude lay upon her as she left the room and went out into the city about her business--which was to see her lawyer concerning the few remaining details of her inheritance. The inheritance was the big, prosperous Westchester farm where she lived--had always lived with her grandfather since her parents' death. It was turning out to be very valuable because of the mania of the wealthy for Westchester acreage and a revival in a hundred villages of the magnificence of the old Patroons. Outside of her own house and farm she had land to sell to the landed and republican gentry; and she sold it and they bought it with an avidity that placed her financial independence beyond doubt. All the morning she transacted business downtown with the lawyer. In the afternoon she went to a matinee all by herself, and would have had a most blissful day had it not been for the unquiet memory of a young man who, she had learned that morning, was fairly certain of eternal damnation. That evening she went back to Westchester absent-minded and depressed. _ |
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