II
She watched the old gentleman as he made his way toward the cabin. Each time some one brushed against him, she cried under her breath:
“Stop that pushing! Ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“What you mutterin’ about?” asked a voice behind her.
Turning, she confronted her Louis.
“Well!” she exclaimed indignantly. “You’re a nice one, you are! But come on! Hurry up! We can get this boat.”
He caught her arm and held her back.
“No!” he said. “Too late to go down to the island to-day.”
“Too late!” said she. “And me waiting here all the afternoon! What do you mean, too late?”
“When I say too late, I mean too late,” replied Mr. Pirini, with his own special insolence.
“Well!” said Miss Riordan. “I don’t care!”
This speech was surely a cue for exit, but she did not go. She said to herself, as usual, that she just wanted to stay and tell that fellow what she thought of him—which was manifestly impossible, as she had[Pg 222] never yet been able to discover what she really did think of him, except that she hated him.
There he stood, with his gray spats and his gray felt hat, worn rakishly, and even new gray gloves. She knew that he had no job, nothing at all to justify his swagger. Very likely he hadn’t enough in his pocket to pay for his dinner. What cared he? He wouldn’t even thank her if she paid for it.
“Now you just look here, Louis!” she began in a trembling voice.
“All right! I’m lookin’!” said he.
His white teeth showed in a broad smile, and his eyes were fixed steadily upon her. Though Miss Riordan, when she looked in the mirror, may have seen an image which somewhat flattered the truth, she had no illusions as to how she appeared in the eyes of Mr. Pirini. She tried to roll the magazine so that her hands should be concealed. She changed the position of her feet.
“All right!” she said. “You can keep on looking!”
“You bin cryin’,” observed her cavalier.
That was too much! Those tears were not to be mentioned by him.
“You mind your own business!” she retorted hotly. “I wasn’t crying over you, anyways!”
She saw that he didn’t believe that.
“Have it your own way,” he said soothingly. “Whadder you say we go an’ get some dinner?”
“No!” replied Miss Riordan, and sat down upon the nearest seat.
She always rejected his suggestions—at first; but, as always, she regretted what she had done. Here was the very situation she had dreaded—herself seated, flushed, struggling against her ever ready tears, while he stood there smiling.
“All right!” he said. “We’ll stay here, then.”
This was another familiar move. How many victories had he won by his patience, his smiling silence! He could wait, and he could hold his tongue, and she could do neither.
“And me waiting here all afternoon!” she burst out. “And then you come and you say it’s too late to go down to the island. Well, what made you come so late?”
He did not answer. Another crowd had begun to move toward the gates, like a herd seized with a migratory impulse. Perhaps something of that ancient instinct stirred now in Miss Riordan. Certainly she had a melancholy sensation of being left behind, abandoned, while her fellow creatures moved on toward a better land—toward a Staten Island green and fair, where in a glen a cataract came foaming down, and wild flowers grew, very much like a landscape which hung up in her furnished room. Well, didn’t she, too, wish to see that lovely spot?
“I’m going to take the next boat!” she announced, rising.
“All right!” said Louis. “I’m not. Good-by!”
She wavered shamefully between the quite real Louis and the imaginary Staten Island.
“I’m going!” she answered in a loud, firm voice, but added: “Unless you say you’re sorry you were so late.”
“Sure! I’m sorry!” answered Louis readily. “Now let’s go an’ get some dinner somewheres. All dressed up to kill, ain’t you? Bought yourself some flowers an’ everything!”
Miss Riordan had temporarily forgotten her bouquet. She glanced down at the pallid blossoms, fainting in her hot hands, and a very curious emotion came over her.
“No, I did not buy them for myself!” she said vehemently. “They were given to me.”
“Sure!” said Louis. “Rudolph Valentino give ’em to you, didn’t he?”
“Now you look here, Louis! A gentleman gave them to me—he bought them for me.”
“Oh, Gawd!” said Louis.
“He did! You stop your laughing!”
But Mr. Pirini was so overwhelmed that he was obliged to drop into the seat beside her, and there he sat, his handsome head thrown back, all his strong white teeth showing in a prodigious and soundless laugh. Miss Riordan turned upon him in a fury.
“You stop that!” she commanded. “You just better believe me! It’s the truth! A gentleman came and sat down beside me and began talking to me, and by and by he got me them flowers.”
“Sure I believe you!” said Louis. “Why wouldn’t I?”
For a moment she could not speak. Her hate, and the insufferable conviction of her impotence, made her heart beat fast and violently. She felt stifled in a desperate[Pg 223] struggle against complete submersion. Louis would not believe her. She could not make him believe in her gentleman, and to doubt his existence was to deny her a soul. That the old gentleman had talked poetry to her and given her flowers was the sole proof of her own immortal value.
“I tell you it’s true!” she said in a choked voice.
“Sure!” replied Louis, still grinning.
His unfaith was destroying her. Under his arrogant, smiling glance she was disintegrating. The woman whom the old gentleman had addressed, the woman who longed for the mystic beauties of Staten Island as one longs for Paradise, was being done to death, and there would remain only the creatures she saw in her mirror—this ungainly body, this flushed and troubled face. No! No! She had been worthy of the poetry and the flowers. It was Louis who was too base to see her worth.