Light-Fingered Gentry

by David Graham Phillips

The longer he revolved it, the more clearly he saw the necessity that she be warned—and the certainty that his warning would be misunderstood. "I couldn't speak of him without showing my feelings, and women always misinterpret that sort of thing." He looked up her address; and, as he was walking to his hotel from the office in the late afternoon, or was strolling about after dinner, developing his vast and complex scheme to pile high the ruins of his enemies that he might rise the higher upon them, he would find himself almost or quite at the entrance to the apartment house where she lived. "I think I must be going crazy," he said to himself one night, when he had twice within two hours drawn himself from before her door. Then a brilliant idea came to him: "I'll go to see her, and end this. To put a woman out of mind, all that's necessary is to give her a thorough, impartial look-over. Also, in ten minutes' talk with her I can judge whether it would be worth while to warn her against that damned hound."

And at five the very next day he sent up his card. "She'll send down word she isn't at home," he decided.

He was astonished when the boy asked him into the elevator; he was confused when he faced at her door old Molly who had lived with them out in Battle Field. "Step in, sir," she said stiffly, as if he were a stranger, and an unwelcome one. He entered with his head lowered and a pink spot on either cheek. "What the devil am I doing here?" he muttered. "Yes, I'm losing my mind."

He heard indistinctly a man's voice in the room shut off by the curtains at the far end of the hall—evidently she had a caller. He went in that direction. "Is this the right way?" he called, hesitating at the curtain.

"Yes, here," came in Neva's voice. Had he not been expecting it, he would hardly have recognized it, so vibrant now with life.

He entered—found her and Boris. "I might have known he'd be here," he said to himself. "No doubt he's always here."

He ignored Boris; Boris stared coldly at him. "You two have met before?" said Neva, with a glance from one to the other, her eyes like those of a nymph smiling from the dark, dense foliage round a forest pool. "Yes, I remember. Let me give you some tea, Horace."

As she spoke that name, Boris set down his cup abruptly. He debated whether he should defy politeness and outsit the Westerner. He decided that to do so would be doubly unwise—would rouse resentment in Neva, who had had the chance to ask him to spare her being left alone with her former husband and had not; would give him an appearance of regarding the Westerner as an important, a dangerous person. With a look in his eyes that belied the smile on his lips, he shook hands with her. "Until Thursday," he said. "Don't forget you're to come half an hour earlier." And Armstrong was alone with her, was entirely free to give her the "thorough, impartial lookover."

He saw his imagination had not tricked him at Trafford's—his imagination and her dress. The change in her was real, was radical, miraculous, incredible. It was, he realized, in part, in large part, a matter of dress, of tasteful details of toilet—hair and hands and skin not merely clean and neat but thoroughly cared for. This change, however, was evidently permanent, was outward sign of a new order of thought and action, and not the accident of one evening's effort as he had been telling himself. Their eyes met and his glance hastily departed upon a slow tour of the room; in what contrast was it to his own apartment, which cost so much and sheltered him so cheerlessly. "You are very comfortable here," said he. "That, and a great deal more."

"The Siersdorfs built this house," replied she. "They have ideas—especially Narcisse." He thought her wonderfully, exasperatingly self-possessed; his own blood was throbbing fiercely and her physical charms gave him the delicious, terrifying tremors of a boy on the brink of his first love leap.