Chapter 19

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_ CHAPTER XIX

Vanya's concert had been enough of a success to attract the attention of genuine music-lovers and an impecunious impresario--an irresponsible promoter celebrated for rushing headlong into things and being kicked headlong out of them.

All promising virtuosi had cut their wisdom teeth on him; all had acquired experience and its accompanying toothache; none had acquired wealth until free of this ubiquitous impresario.

His name was Wilding: he seized upon Vanya; and that gentle and disconcerted dreamer offered no resistance.

So Wilding began to haunt Vanya's apartment at all hours of the day, rushing in with characteristic enthusiasm to discuss the vast campaign of nation-wide concerts which in his mind's eye were already materialising.

Marya had no faith in him and was becoming very tired of his noise and bustle in the stillness and subdued light which meant home to her, and which this loud, excitable, untidy man was eternally invading.

Always he was shouting at Vanya: "It's a knock-out! It will go big! big! big! We got 'em started in Baltimore!"--a fact, but none of his doing! "We'll play Philadelphia next; I'm fixin' it for you. All you gotta do is go there and the yelling starts. Well, I guess. Some riot, believe _me_!"

Wilding had no money in the beginning. After a while, Vanya had none, or very little; but the impresario wore a new fur coat and spats. And Broadway winked wearily and said: "He's got another!"--doubtless deeming specification mere redundancy.

Yet, somehow, Wilding did manage to book Vanya in Philadelphia--at a somewhat distant date, it is true--but it was something with which to begin the promised "nation-wide tour" under the auspices of Dawson B. Wilding.

Marya had money of her own, but trusted none of it in Wilding's schemes. In fact, she had come to detest him thoroughly, and whenever he was announced she would rise like some beautiful, disgusted feline, which something has disturbed in her dim and favourite corner, and move lithely away to another room. And it almost seemed as though her little, warm, closely-chiselled ears actually flattened with bored annoyance as the din of Wilding's vociferous greeting to Vanya arose behind her.

* * * * *

One day toward Christmas time, she said to Vanya, in her level, satin-smooth voice:

"You know, _mon ami_, I am tiring rapidly of this great fool who comes shouting and tramping into our home. And when I am annoyed beyond my nerve capacity, I am likely to leave."

Vanya said gently that he was sorry that he had entered into financial relations with a man who annoyed her, but that it could scarcely be helped now.

He was seated at his piano, not playing, but scoring. And he resumed his composition after he had spoken, his grave, delicate head bent over the ruled sheets, a gold pencil held between his long fingers.

Marya lounged near, watched him. Not for the first time, now, did his sweet temper and gentleness vaguely irritate her--string her nerves a little tighter until they began to vibrate with an indefinable longing to say something to arouse this man--startle him--awaken him to a physical tensity and strength.... Such as Shotwell's for example....

"Vanya?"

He looked up absently, the beauty of dreams still clouding his eyes.

And suddenly, to her own astonishment, her endurance came to its end. She had never expected to say what she was now going to say to him. She had never dreamed of confession--of enlightening him. And now, all at once, she knew she was going to do it, and that it was a needless and cruel and insane and useless thing to do, for it led her nowhere, and it would leave him in helpless pain.

"Vanya," she said, "I am in love with Jim Shotwell."

After a few moments, she turned and slowly crossed the studio. Her hat and coat lay on a chair. She put them on and walked out.

* * * * *

The following morning, Palla, arriving to consult Marya on a matter of the Club's business, discovered Vanya alone in the studio.

He was lying on the lounge when she entered, and he looked ill, but he rose with all his characteristic grace and charm and led her to a chair, saluting her hand as he seated her.

"Marya has not yet arrived?" she inquired.

His delicate features became very grave and still.

"I thought," added Palla, "that Marya usually breakfasted at eleven----"

Something in his expression checked her; and she fell silent, fascinated by the deathly whiteness of his face.

"I am sorry to tell you," he said, in a pleasant and steady voice, "that Marya has not returned."

"Why--why, I didn't know she was away----"

"Yesterday she decided. Later she was good enough to telephone from the Hotel Rajah, where, for the present, she expects to remain."

"Oh, Vanya!" Palla's involuntary exclamation brought a trace of colour into his cheeks.

He said: "It is not her fault. She was loyal and truthful. One may not control one's heart.... And if she is in love--well, is she not free to love him?"

"Who--is--it?" asked Palla faintly.

"Mr. Shotwell, it appears."

In the dead silence, Vanya passed his hand slowly across his temples; let it drop on his knee.

"Freedom above all else," he said, "--freedom to love, freedom to cease loving, freedom to love anew.... Well ... it is curious--the scheme of things.... Love must remain inexplicable. For there is no analysis. I think there never could be any man who cared as I have cared, as I do care for her...."

He rose, and to Palla he seemed already a trifle stooped;--it may have been his studio coat, which fitted badly.

"But, Vanya dear--" Palla looked at him miserably, conscious of her own keen fears as well as of his sorrow. "Don't you think she'll come back? Do you suppose it is really so serious--what she thinks about--Mr. Shotwell?"

He shook his head: "I don't know.... If it is so, it is so. Freedom is of first importance. Our creed is our creed. We must abide by what we teach and believe."

"Yes."

He nodded absently, staring palely into space.

Perhaps his lost gaze evoked the warm-skinned, sunny-haired girl who had gone out of the semi-light of this still place, leaving the void unutterably vast around him. For this had been the lithe thing's silken lair--the slim and supple thing with beryl eyes--here where thick-piled carpets of the East deadened every human movement--where no sound stirred, nor any air--where dull shapes loomed, lacquered and indistinct, and an odour of Chinese lacquer and nard haunted the tinted dusk.

* * * * *

Like one of those lazy, golden, jewelled sea-creatures of irresponsible freedom brought seemed to fill the girl cooler currents arouses a restlessness infernal, Marya's first long breath of freedom subtly excited her.

She had no definite ideas, no plans. She was merely tired of Vanya.

Perhaps her fresh, wholesome contact with Jim had started it--the sense of a clean vitality which had seemed to envelop her like the delicious, half-resented chill of a spring-pool plunge. For the exhilaration possessed her still; and the sudden stimulation which the sense of irresponsible freedom brought seemed to fill the girl with a new vigour.

Foot-loose, heart-loose, her green eyes on the open world where it stretched away into infinite horizons, she paced her new nest in the Hotel Rajah, tingling with subdued excitement, innocent of the faintest regret for what had been.

For a week she lived alone, enjoying the sensation of being hidden, languidly savouring the warm comfort of isolation.

She had not sent for her belongings. She purchased new personal effects, enchanted to be rid of familiar things.

There was no snow. She walked a great deal, moving in unaccustomed sections of the city at all hours, skirting in the early winter dusk the glitter of Christmas preparations along avenues and squares, lunching where she was unlikely to encounter anybody she knew, dining, too, at hazard in unwonted places--restaurants she had never heard of, tea-rooms, odd corners.

Vanya wrote her. She tossed his letters aside, scarcely read. Ilse and Palla wrote her, and telephoned her. She paid them no attention.

The metropolitan jungle fascinated her. She adored her liberty, and looked out of beryl-green eyes across the border of license, where ghosts of the half-world swarmed in no-man's-land.

Conscious that she had been fashioned to trouble man, the knowledge merely left her indefinitely contented, save when she remembered Jim. But that he had checked her drift toward him merely excited her; for she knew she had been made to trouble such as he; and she had seen his face that night....

* * * * *

Ilse, on her way home to dress--for she was going out somewhere with Estridge--stopped for tea at Palla's house, and found her a little disturbed over an anonymous letter just delivered--a typewritten sheet bluntly telling her to take her friends and get out of the hall where the Combat Club held its public sessions; and warning her of serious trouble if she did not heed this "friendly" advice.

"Pouf!" exclaimed Ilse contemptuously, "I get those, too, and tear them up. People who talk never strike. Are you anxious, darling?"

Palla smiled: "Not a bit--only such cowardice saddens me.... And the days are grey enough...."

"Why do you say that? I think it is a wonderful winter--a beautiful year!"

Palla lifted her brown eyes and let them dwell on the beauty of this clear-skinned, golden-haired girl who had discovered beauty in the aftermath of the world's great tragedy.

Ilse smiled: "Life is good," she said. "This world is all to be done over in the right way. We have it all before us, you and I, Palla, and those who love and understand."

"I am wondering," said Palla, "who understands us. I'm not discouraged, but--there seems to be so much indifference in the world."

"Of course. That is our battle to overcome it."

"Yes. But, dear, there seems to be so much hatred, too, in the world. I thought the war had ended, but everywhere men are still in battle--everywhere men are dying of this fierce hatred that seems to flame up anew across the world; everywhere men fight and slay to gain advantage. None yields, none renounces, none gives. It is as though love were dead on earth."

"Love is being reborn," said Ilse cheerfully. "Birth means pain, always----"

Without warning, a hot flush flooded her face; she averted it as the tea-tray was brought and set on a table before Palla. When her face cooled, she leaned back in her chair, cup in hand, a sort of confused sweetness in her blue eyes.

Palla's heart was beating heavily as she leaned on the table, her cup untasted, her idle fingers crumbing the morsel of biscuit between them.

After a moment she said: "So you have concluded that you care for John Estridge?"

"Yes, I care," said Ilse absently, the same odd, sweet smile curving her cheeks.

"That is--wonderful," said Palla, not looking at her.

Ilse remained silent, her blue gaze aloof.

A maid came and turned up the lamps, and went away again.

Palla said in a low voice: "Are you--afraid?"

"No."

They both remained silent until she rose to go. Palla, walking with her to the head of the stairs, holding one of her hands imprisoned, said with an effort: "I am frightened, dear.... I can't help it.... You will be certain, first, won't you?----"

"It is as certain as death," said Ilse in a low, still voice.

Palla shivered; she passed one arm around her; and they stood so for a while. Then Ilse's arm tightened, and the old gaiety glinted in her sea-blue eyes:

"Is your house in order too, Palla?" she asked. "Turn around, little enigma! There; I can look into those brown eyes now. And I see nothing in them to answer me my question."

"Do you mean Jim?"

"I do."

"I haven't seen him."

"For how long?"

"Weeks. I don't know how long it has been----"

"Have you quarrelled?"

"Yes. We seem to. This is quite the most serious one yet."

"You are not in love with him."

"Oh, Ilse, I don't know. He simply can't understand me. I feel so bruised and tired after a controversy with him. He seems to be so merciless to my opinions--so violent----"

"You poor child.... After all, Palla, freedom also means the liberty to change one's mind.... If you should care to change yours----"

"I can't change my inmost convictions."

"Those--no."

"I have not changed them. I almost wish I could. But I've got to be honest.... And he can't understand me."

Ilse smiled and kissed her: "That is scarcely to be wondered at, as you don't seem to know your own mind. Perhaps when you do he, also, may understand you. Good-bye! I must run----"

Palla watched her to the foot of the stairs; the door closed; the engine of a taxi began to hum.

Her telephone was ringing when she returned to the living room, and the quick leap of her heart averted her of the hope revived.

But it was a strange voice on the wire,--a man's voice, clear, sinister, tainted with a German accent:

"Iss this Miss Dumont? Yess? Then this I haff to say to you: You shall find yourself in serious trouble if you do not move your foolish club of vimmen out of the vicinity of which you know. We giff you one more chance. So shall you take it or you shall take some consequences! _Goot-night!_"

The instrument clicked in her ear as the unknown threatener hung up, leaving her seated there, astonished, hurt, bewildered.

* * * * *

The man who "hung up on her" stepped out of a saloon on Eighth Avenue and joined two other men on the corner.

The man was Karl Kastner; the other two were Sondheim and Bromberg.

"Get her?" growled the latter, as all three started east.

"Yess. And now we shall see what we shall see. We start the finish now already. All foolishness shall be ended. Now we fix Puma."

They continued on across the street, clumping along with their overcoat collars turned up, for it had turned bitter cold and the wind was rising.

"You don't think it's a plant?" inquired Sondheim, for the third time.

Bromberg blew his red nose on a dirty red handkerchief.

"We'll plant Puma if he tries any of that," he said thickly.

Kastner added that he feared investigation more than they did because he had more at stake.

"Dot guy he iss rich like a millionaire," he added. "Ve make him pay some dammach, too."

"How's he going to fire that bunch of women if they got a lease?" demanded Bromberg.

"Who the hell cares how he does it?" grunted Sondheim.

"Sure," added Kastner; "let him dig up. You buy anybody if you haff sufficient coin. Effery time! Yess. Also! Let him dig down into his pants once. So shall he pay them, these vimmen, to go avay und shut up mit their mischief what they make for us already!"

Sondheim was still muttering about "plants" in the depths of his soiled overcoat-collar, when they arrived at the hall and presented themselves at the door of Puma's outer office.

A girl took their message. After a while she returned and piloted them out, and up a wide flight of stairs to a door marked, "No admittance." Here she knocked, and Puma's voice bade them enter.

Angelo Puma was standing by a desk when they trooped in, keeping their hats on. The room was ventilated and illumined in the daytime only by a very dirty transom giving on a shaft. Otherwise, there were no windows, no outlet to any outer light and air.

Two gas jets caged in wire--obsolete stage dressing-room effects--lighted the room and glimmered on Puma's polished top-hat and the gold knob of his walking-stick.

As for Puma himself, he glanced up stealthily from the scenario he was reading as he stood by the big desk, but dropped his eyes again, and, opening a drawer, laid away the typed manuscript. Then he pulled out the revolving desk chair and sat down.

"Well?" he inquired, lighting a cigar.

There was an ominous silence among the three men for another moment. Then Puma looked up, puffing his cigar, and Sondheim stepped forward from the group and shook his finger in his face.

"What yah got planted around here for us? Hey?" he demanded in a low, hoarse voice. "Come on now, Puma! What yeh think yeh got on us?" And to Kastner and Bromberg: "Go ahead, boys, look for a dictaphone and them kind of things. And if this wop hollers I'll do him."

A ruddy light flickered in Puma's eyes, but the cool smile lay smoothly on his lips, and he did not even turn his head to watch them as they passed along the walls, sounding, peering, prying, and jerking open the door of the cupboard--the only furniture there except the desk and the chair on which Puma sat.

"What the hell's the matter with yeh?" snarled Sondheim, suddenly stooping to catch Puma's eye, which had wandered as though bored by the proceedings.

"Nothing," said Puma, coolly; "what's the matter with you, Max?"

Kastner came around beside him and said in his thin, sinister tone:

"You know it vat I got on you, Angelo?"

"I do."

"So? Also! Vas iss it you do about doze vimmen?"

"They won't go."

In Bromberg's voice sounded an ominous roar: "Don't hand us nothing like that! You hear what I'm telling you?"

Puma shrugged: "I hand you what I have to hand you. They have the lease. What is there for me to do?"

"Buy 'em off!"

"I try. They will not."

"You offer 'em enough and they'll quit!"

"No. They will not. They say they are here to fight you. They laugh at my money. What shall I do?"

"I'll tell you one thing you'll do, and do it damn quick!" roared Bromberg. "Hand over that money we need!"

"If you bellow in so loud a manner," said Puma, "they could hear you in the studio.... How much do you ask for?"

"Two thousand."

"No."

"What yeh mean by 'No'?"

"What I say to you, that I have not two thousand."

"You lying greaser----"

"I do not lie. I have paid my people and there remains but six hundred dollars in my bank."

"When do we get the rest?" asked Sondheim, as Puma tossed the packet of bills onto the desk.

"When I make it," replied Puma tranquilly. "You will understand my receipts are my capital at present. What else I have is engaged already in my new theatre. If you will be patient you shall have what I can spare."

Bromberg rested both hairy fists on the desk and glared down at Puma.

"Who's this new guy you got to go in with you? What's the matter with our getting a jag of his coin?"

"You mean Mr. Pawling?"

"Yeh. Who the hell is that duck what inks his whiskers?"

"A partner."

"Well, let him shove us ours then."

"You wish to ruin me?" inquired Puma placidly.

"Not while you're milkin'," said Sondheim, showing every yellow fang in a grin.

"Then do not frighten Mr. Pawling out. Already you have scared my other partner, Mr. Skidder, like there never was any rabbits scared. You are foolish. If you are reasonable, I shall make money and you shall have your share. If you are not, then there is no money to give you."

Sondheim said: "Take a slant at them yellow-backs, Karl." And Kastner screwed a powerful jeweller's glass into his eye and began a minute examination of the orange-coloured treasury notes, to find out whether they were marked bills.

Bromberg said heavily: "See here, Angelo, you gotta quit this damned stalling! You gotta get them women out, and do it quick or we'll blow your dirty barracks into the North River!"

Sondheim began to wag his soiled forefinger again.

"Yeh quit us cold when things was on the fritz. Now, yeh gotta pay. If you wasn't nothing but a wop skunk yeh'd stand in with us. The way you're fixed would help us all. But now yeh makin' money and yeh scared o' yeh shadow!----"

Bromberg cut in: "And you'll be outside when the band starts playing. Look what's doing all over the world! Every country is starting something! You watch Berlin and Rosa Luxemburg and her bunch. Keep your eye peeled, Angy, and see what we and the I. W. W. start in every city of the country!"

Kastner, having satisfied himself that the bills had not been marked, and pocketed his jeweller's glass, pushed back his lank blond hair.

"Yess," he said in his icy, incisive voice, "yoost vatch out already! Dot crimson tide it iss rising the vorld all ofer! It shall drown effery aristocrat, effery bourgeois, effery intellectual. It shall be but a red flood ofer all the vorld vere noddings shall live only our peoble off the proletariat!"

"And where the hell will you be then, Angelo?" sneered Bromberg. "By God, we won't have to ask you for our share of your money then!"

Again Sondheim leaned over him and wagged his nicotine-dyed finger:

"You get the rest of our money! Understand? And you get them women out!--or I tell you we'll blow you and your joint to Hoboken! Get that?"

"I have understood," said Puma quietly; but his heavy face was a muddy red now, and he choked a little when he spoke.

"Give us a date and stick to it," added Bromberg. "Set it yourself. And after that we won't bother to do any more jawin'. We'll just attend to business--_your_ business, Puma!"

After a long silence, Puma said calmly: "How much you want?"

"Ten thousand," said Sondheim.

"And them women out of this," added Bromberg.

"Or ve get you," ended Kastner in his deadly voice.

Puma lifted his head and looked intently at each one of them in turn. And seemed presently to come to some conclusion.

Kastner forestalled him: "You try it some monkey trick and you try it no more effer again."

"What's your date for the cash?" insisted Sondheim.

"February first," replied Puma quietly.

Kastner wrote it on the back of an envelope.

"Und dese vimmen?" he inquired.

"I'll get a lawyer----"

"The hell with that stuff!" roared Bromberg. "Get 'em out! Scare 'em out! Jesus Christ! how long d'yeh think we're going to stand for being hammered by that bunch o' skirts? They got a lot o' people sore on us now. The crowd what uster come around is gettin' leery. And who are these damned women? One of 'em was a White Nun, when they did the business for the Romanoffs. One of 'em fired on the Bolsheviki--that big blond girl with yellow hair, I mean! Wasn't she one of those damned girl-soldiers? And look what she's up to now--comin' over here to talk us off the platform!--the dirty foreigner!"

"Yes," growled Bromberg, "and there's that redheaded wench of Vanya's!--some Grand Duke's slut, they say, before she quit him for the university to start something else----"

Kastner cut in in his steely voice: "If you do not throw out these women, Puma, we fix them and your hall and you--all at one time, my friend. Also! Iss it then for February the first, our understanding? Or iss it, a little later, the end of all your troubles, Angelo?"

Puma got up, nodded his acceptance of their ultimatum, and opened the door for them.

When they trooped out, under the brick arch, they noticed his splendid limousine waiting, and as they shuffled sullenly away westward, Bromberg, looking back, saw Puma come out and jump lightly into the car.

"Swine!" he snarled, facing the bitter wind once more and shuffling along beside his silent brethren.

Puma went east, then north to the Hotel Rajah, where, in a private room, he was to complete a financial transaction with Alonzo B. Pawling.

Skidder, too, came in at the same time, squinting rapidly at his partner; and together they moved toward the elevator.

The elevator waited a moment more to accommodate a willowy, red-haired girl in furs, whose jade eyes barely rested on Puma's magnificent black ones as he stepped aside to make way for her with an extravagant bow.

"Some skirt," murmured Skidder in his ear, as the car shot upward.

Marya left the car at the mezzanine floor: Puma's eyes were like coals for a moment.

"You know that dame?" inquired Skidder, his eyes fairly snapping.

"No." He did not add that he had seen her at the Combat Club and knew her to belong to another man. But his black eyes were almost blazing as he stepped from the elevator, for in Marya's insolent glance he had caught a vague glimmer of fire--merely a green spark, very faint--if, indeed, it had been there at all....

Pawling himself opened the door for them.

"Is it all right? Do we get the parcel?" were his first words.

"It's a knock-out!" cried Skidder, slapping him on the back. "We got the land, we got the plans, we got the iron, we got the contracts!--Oh, boy!--our dough is in--go look at it and smell it for yourself! So get into the jack, old scout, and ante up, because we break ground Wednesday and there'll be bills before then, you betcha!"

When the cocktails were brought, Puma swallowed his in a hurry, saying he'd be back in a moment, and bidding Skidder enlighten Mr. Pawling during the interim.

He summoned the elevator, got out at the mezzanine, and walked lightly into the deserted and cloister-like perspective, his shiny hat in his hand.

And saw Marya standing by the marble ramp, looking down at the bustle below.

He stopped not far away. He had made no sound on the velvet carpet. But presently she turned her head and the green eyes met his black ones.

Neither winced. The sheer bulk of the beast and the florid magnificence of its colour seemed to fascinate her.

She had seen him before, and scarcely noted him. She remembered. But the world was duller, then, and the outlook grey. And then, too, her still, green eyes had not yet wandered beyond far horizons, nor had her heart been cut adrift to follow her fancy when the tides stirred it from its mooring--carrying it away, away through deeps or shallows as the currents swerved. _

Read next: Chapter 20

Read previous: Chapter 18

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