She had not spoken loudly, but her voice beat against the walls of the court as though it could have filled the whole moonlight night with dangerous beauty. The listener outside lifted his head with a low, startled exclamation. Suddenly the world was alive with adventure and alarm.
“Mind your own business, you wild cat,” answered a man’s raucous voice. “She’s my wife, which is somethin’ that your sort knows nothin’ about. Come on, you Mabel. You think that outlaw can keep me from takin’ home my wife, you’re betting wrong.”
Another silence; then the voice again, a little louder, as though the speaker had stepped out into the center of the room.
“Mabel is not a-goin’ home with you,” it said; and the listener outside threw back his head with the gesture of a man sensitive to music who listens to some ecstatic melody. “She happens to be stoppin’ here with us to-night. You say that she’s your wife, but that don’t mean that she belongs to you, body and soul, Bill Greer—not to you, who don’t possess your own body, or soul. Why, you can’t keep your feet steady, you can’t pull your hand away from mine. You can’t hold your tipsy eyes on mine. Do you call that ownin’ your own body? And as fer your soul, it’s a hell of rage and dirty feelin’s that I’d hate to burn my eyes by lookin’ closely at.”
A deep, short, alarming chorus of laughter interrupted the speech. The speaker evidently had her audience.
“So you don’t own anything to-night,” went on the extraordinary, deliberate voice; “surely you don’t own Mabel. You can’t get a claim on her, not thataway. She’s her own. She belongs to her own self. When you’re fit to take her, why, then come and tell us about it, and if we judge you’re a-tellin’ us the truth, mebbe we’ll let her go. Till then—” a pause which was filled with a rapid shuffling of feet. The door flew open and in its lighted oblong the observer saw a huddled figure behind which rose a woman’s black and shapely head. “Till then,” repeated the deep-toned, ringing voice, “get out!” And the huddled man came on a staggering run which ended in a backward fall on the cobbles of the court.
The man who watched trod lightly past him and came to the open door. Inside, firelight beat on the golden log walls and salmon-colored timber ceiling; a lamp hanging from a beam threw down a strong, conflicting arc of white light. A dozen brown-faced, booted young men stood about, three musicians were ready to take up their interrupted music, the little fat man who had called out the figures of the quadrille, stood on a barrel, his arms folded across his paunch. A fair-haired girl, her face marred by recent tears, drooped near him. Two of the young men were murmuring reassurances to her; others surrounded a stout, red-faced girl who was laughing and talking loudly. The Jew’s eyes wandered till they came to the fireplace. There another woman leaned against the wall.
The music struck up, the dancing began again, the two other girls, quickly provided with partners, began to waltz, the superfluous men stood up together and went at it with gravity and grace. No one asked this woman, who stood at ease, watching the dancers, her hands resting on her hips, her head tilted back against the logs. As he looked at her, the intruder had a queer little thrill of fright. He remembered something he had once seen—a tame panther which was to be used in some moving-picture play. Its confident owner had led it in on a chain and held it negligently in a corner of the room, waiting for his cue. The panther had stood there drowsily, its eyes shifting a little, then, watching people, its inky head had begun to move from side to side. He remembered the way the loose chain jerked. The animal’s eyes half-closed, it lowered its head, its upper lip began to draw away from its teeth. All at once it had dropped on its belly. Some one cried out, “Hold your beast!”
This young woman by the fireplace had just that panther-air of perilous quietness. She was very haggard, very thin; she wore her massive, black hair drawn away hideously from brow and temple, and out of this lean, unshaded face a pair of deep eyes looked drowsily, dangerously. Her mouth was straightened into an expression of proud bitterness, her round chin thrust forward; there was a deep, scowling line that rose from the bridge of her straight, short nose almost to the roots of her hair. It cut across a splendidly modeled brow. She was very graceful, if such a bundle of bones might be said to have any grace. Her pose was arresting. There was a tragic force and attraction about her.
The man by the door appraised her carefully between his narrowed lids. He kept in mind the remembered melody of her voice, and, after a few moments, he strolled across the floor and came up to her.