DAMNED
DAMNED
The Intimate Story of a Girl
ANONYMOUS
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1923
By THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO THE DEVIL
IN EVERYMAN THAT HAS ROUSED ME
TO THE WRITING OF THIS BOOK.
The Author
DAMNED
DAMNED
CHAPTER I
An air of apprehension pervaded the throne room.
The most imperfect day known for ages in the Court of Gehenna was drawing to a close. The seven Tartarean courtiers had effaced themselves as far back in the auditorium as the folds of its black and red electric hangings would permit. Each held eyes and ears intent, realizing far too well that his particular tenure of preferment hung upon the mood of the moment. Even the prime minister, Old Original Sin, who had weathered so many Apollyon storms that he well might have considered himself immune, sat ill at ease in his chair of honor upon the dais.
His Satanic Majesty leaned forward from the throne chair, imposing in its effect of onyx and gold. His head drooped as though from weight other than the voltage of his crown. His elbows pressed upon the chair-arms, that both his strong, long hands might stroke in turn his pointed, copper-colored beard. About the room, as lightning plays in advance of thunder, flashed his gray-eyed glances. When he spoke, although in a mild voice, each auditor quivered through taut nerves.
“Draw the night curtains. Throw on every switch. I dislike this pale, abiding light.”
Without awaiting the attendants, the courtiers sprang to do the royal will. Sin himself operated the electric switch-board. At his touch, a design in heraldry blazed from the wall behind the dais. In pseudo-seeming, bands of ebony and of beryl formed the setting for a golden crown in bas relief, its points pricked out with emeralds. Projecting from its headband, three horns of power suspended from their tips the ruby-writ words “Japheth,” “Shem” and “Ham.” The crown itself looked to rest upon a sword that dripped all jewels known, like tears of every agony, from those of water to those of blood. Beneath, through letters transparent as thin sardonyx, flamed this caption:
SATAN the FIRST and LAST.
Outcast of Paradise
Heir-apparent to Earth
Monarch of Greater Gehenna
His Highness glanced back at this elaborate conceit and a gratified expression crossed his face. He signed a page to spread out his crackling mantle of gold-bordered black; slanted a self-respecting look at the splendid proportions revealed through his easy-fitting body garment of opaque red light; matched his long-nailed finger-tips in pairs.
The seven waited with increased perturbation. They knew that calm, considering look to presage some diabolical idea; realized that no flattery might blind that super-keen sight; appreciated that the day had run too unevenly for hope of a restful end.
From the moment of the royal rising that early morn, the King had seemed of malevolent mind. The attendants in his private suite insisted that he had quit the royal bed from the right side. Yet he had seemed to assimilate perversity from his static shower, declaring the current hot when, in fact, it was cold as refrigeration could make it. In a passion he had unwound the small dynamo of a new costume considered by his chief tailor a creation; later had hurled his breakfast filectric-mignon at the first chef, asserting that it bore no resemblance, either in appearance or gastronomic satisfaction, to the beefsteaks of men.
The inadequate light cast by his pet device, an imitation of Sol, had provoked a personally conducted investigation of the mammoth power plant in the lower badlands. Disregarding the affairs which awaited his personal direction, he had spent the noon hour tinkering at the mechanism of his sun, moon and flock of stars.
At the General Assembly of Demons his ill-temper had gained momentum. After listening for a time in sneering impatience to suggestions offered as amendments to the general proposition of standardizing crime, he had hurled upon that august body a very cataclysm of political overthrow. One by one he had assailed the ministry, down to the most faded of those angel plotters cast out with him at The Fall. Announcing that he would run the nether world alone and unaided, he had dissolved the cabinet, assigning its members to labors futile as their protests.
In view of his treatment of those who had served him so long and so infernally, what was in store for mere courtiers, sycophants of a few recent centuries?
When he straightened in the throne-chair, each of the seven straightened with him. When, tilting his crown at an easier slant, he glanced speculatively about, all crowded back against the highly charged curtains and tried to look indifferent at the shock.
His gaze settled upon the prime minister.
“Sin, you aborigine, a word!”
Old Original—so called because his visability, like the King’s own, never had dimmed—made obvious effort to assume the sang-froid of one who knows himself to be indispensable; sauntered to the steps; bent in an obeisance of elaborate mockery.
“Future of the Universe, I await your will,” he remarked with nasal twang.
Satan looked contemptuous of his handyman’s forced effrontery.
“I know you do. You’ve taken to awaiting my will entirely too much for your own good. There was a time when you were full of vile ideas. But you’ve lost your ingenuity of late. Since when have you designed a sin-mask that would deceive the least suspicious of earthlings or invented a new form of torture with which to demonstrate our canons of damnation?”
The aged demon, forced on the defensive, eyed the Master with reproach.
“Æons agone there ceased to be anything new beneath the sun and I——”
“And you,” His Highness interrupted, “may be dispensed with if that is true. I am proficient in all the old tricks myself. However, I am disposed to give you a chance to disprove it, being ever kind and just. Is that not true?” The lightning of his look threatened the seven sycophants. “Am I not ever kind and just?”
“As the hope of Hell!”
“Oftener than ever!”
“In our best-worst interests, Sire!”
The medley whined from the shimmering shadows.
Sin’s voice gained in assurance, even as his mind lost at the trend of Satanic argument.
“But, my King, haven’t I had the whole mortal world at war? Didn’t I trick all peoples into slaughter of each other as you planned?”
“I notice you use the past-perfect tense in speaking of that late little unpleasantness. As a matter of fact we lost out on it—lost our one best bet since Noah and the Flood. How did you make the mistake of assuming that any scrapper who falls fighting for his country could be condemned by his fellow men? The worst of them is guaranteed a passport to Abraham’s bosom. As for the leaders—the brains of the drive—most of them were lost to us through that meanest of mortal weaknesses, fear for the integrity of their own hides. They all want to live. That is what’s wrong with conquerors. When earth-wars are such good training for——”
His Highness’ teeth bit the sentence in two. His saber-like gaze slashed suspiciously from face to face.
“You do your own army an injustice to compare its morals with that of any on earth,” soothed the old toady. “I’ll acknowledge that I am somewhat used up. Even Sin might get brain-fag, you know.”
“That excuse is antedated. You have had ample time to recuperate.” The royal digits made a crackling sound as they touched. “You failed egregiously on every important specification of the big fight. Did you keep them at it until the world was engulfed in one red sea of gore? Did you inoculate hate until it over-ruled every gentler human impulse? Did you overcome the too-young at home and the too-old who were to instruct them and the women who were to bear the spawn to continue the slaughter? With all the possibilities of modern wholesaleness, that war was not half what it should have been.”
“Admitting all you say,” the prime minister defended, “I don’t see cause for your august dissatisfaction over our progress with the mortal world.”
“You don’t? What you need is an oculist.”
His Majesty descended the steps and began to pace the great room.
“I have had a day of realization,” he continued in lifted voice. “Something must be done. Things are too slow to suit my purposes. We are not getting our share of those who enter Shadow Land. Entirely too many are ticketed through to the Fields by Mors.”
“You know, Sire, something of my efforts to buy that stubborn old keeper of the outer gate,” interpolated Sin. “Nothing I offer seems to have any value to him. He is polite enough, but drones always the same reminder that for the present he must abide by the records of Earth.”
“The trouble is not with Mors, fool fiend,” Satan snapped. “It is with that book of his—with the ‘Judgments of Men.’ The feelings of mortals do soften sickeningly toward their dead. They say the good die young. Certainly we try to see to it that the bad die old. That’s why everything has seemed to depend upon our new searchlight summoning towers. Mors is able, with only two such towers ranged on either side the Mystery Gate, to make his lists, set his automatic finders and turn on his power. What results? Every evening and all night long they come at his call. There’s certainly nothing attractive about the patriarch. He is grim as the first law of mortality and looks it. Yet every witness he subpœnas comes. Nothing stops them, the long, drear journey, the fear of the unknown, the hissing belly-crawlers along the way. What happens when I build a dozen searchlight towers to his two? I make my selected list of earthlings for whom no modern Ananias could pass a good word. I set my alleged finders and turn on all the power we can generate. With what result?”
Glaringly though he challenged reply, none who knew his latest scheme to add to the population of his kingdom dared remind him of its failure. Of necessity he answered himself.
“For a week now our tower tops have been shafting calls to Earth. Has one of the nominated accepted? I am forced to admit that there is something more to this death business than searchlighting. I’ve never been so disappointed since Pontius Pilate double-crossed me.”
“Wait until Mors summons the choice crowd of leaders you mention who started the world war,” Sin suggested.
“Wait? That seems to be your persistent idea. I tell you we can’t afford to wait.”
Halting before the lesser fiend, Satan seared him with a look.
“I don’t expect you even to suggest where the Associated Electricians of Gehenna have failed. And in other respects your title and office are jeopardized. I offer you a last chance to save them. If overnight you invent some new feasible scheme for conscripting earthlings into our standing army, your job is saved. If not——”
“The feasible idea already is invented and its workings under way, O King. Compared with it, all our past schemes are limited and crude. Camouflaged under propaganda of universal appeal, it cannot fail to start a whirlpool which will, in time, suck every man, woman and child into moral death.”
“You refer to Bolshevism, I suppose? Not a good idea—not good at all. The germ of it has lain in my mind for centuries. I’d suggest that you saunter to the outer gates and quiz the evening’s grist. You might happen upon a Red recruit with cheering news.”
“The very thing I was about to propose,” Old Original made reply on his way to the door.
The ruler frankly sneered. “Great minds, eh? Are you trying to flatter yourself or me? While you are going, take the wall decorations with you.” He included the courtiers in his gesture. “How many centuries do you obsoletes need to rise to the worst that’s in you? Do you suppose for one split-second—mortal time—that I’d work with evil natures as I have done since that fracas up in Paradise just for the company of the evilest of them through eternity? By to-morrow I shall have decided what to do with such choice parasites. Out with you, or I’ll fit my skeleton key to the trap-door of the bottomless pit and throw you in before your time.”
With alacrity which showed their relief at this temporary escape, the seven followed the prime minister through the separating rays of the rear curtain.
Satan looked to share their relief that they were gone. For a space silence reigned with him in the throne room except for the snap of his heels upon the floor and the swish of the royal robe. His reflection in one of the mercurized panels of the side walls caused him to halt. For long he studied his face, then, straightening, appreciated his magnificent outlines. A look of satisfaction cleared the frown of evil affairs from his brow. Lifting his crown, he bowed into the mirror.
A voice from behind the curtain also saluted him:
“‘No wonder that thy heart was lifted up, that thy wisdom was corrupted by reason of thy brightness.’”
“Step out, caitiff. Be as apparent as your flattery. Why do you linger to spy upon me when I order the court cleared?”
A Balial glare fixed upon the returned minister’s ingratiating grin.
“Not to spy upon you, Sire. Rather, to admire you. You certainly are the Boss of Below for looks.”
His Highness, never having outlived his first fault of vanity, gave benefit of doubt to the compliment, as also to the glass-like tumbler bewhiskered with crisp-crackling green held toward him.
“I thought Your Majesty’s harassed spirit might feel in need of refreshment, so made bold to have this quaff mixed. It is as near as may be like those they have voted too strong for the United States of America, suh. Here you are—a frappé low-bolt!”
Sin proffered both explanation and cup with that irrepressibility which so far had made, but at any moment might break him. With sympathy sips, he watched the sampling of the liquidized current concocted by the first royal bartender, a past-master indeed of the art before it was amended off Forty-second Street and Broadway, New York.
“Get the kick?” he asked, fearing as much as hoping that the julep would fail of its effect.
Satan threw the goblet on the floor, where it snapped and flashed, but did not break.
“If I didn’t, you would.”
Sin believed him. From experience he had learned the difficulty of gauging the moods of m’lord after a few such applications had filed or smoothed the edges of his tooth-sharp temper. For safety’s sake he gave a side glance into the sensitized panel.
“Notice the size of you as compared with me—and I am supposed to be well-developed from my criminal calisthenics.”
His Highness frowned. He also “noticed.”
“Where is the value in good looks,” he conceded, “if there’s none around whom you admire to admire you?”
Old Original was quick to follow the advantage. “A word on that very subject is what I returned to say, a word of condolence and advice.”
“You offer condolence and advice to me?” The King of Evil glared at the most malapert fiend of his kingdom.
“Condolence, Sire, over your state of solitariness. Advice as to how to ease it. From my hurting envy of your appearance I realize one littleness in my largeness. Absolute admiration may endure only where envy may not spring. Why does not Your Majesty seek that companionship which is not born to jealousy? Isn’t there a complete assortment of rags and bones and hanks of hair in Gehenna’s bargain basement?”
“You suggest for me the companionship of—” Satan paused briefly to sneer—“of a female shade? Don’t you suppose, if I cared for the sex, that I’d be running a harem of all nations, stocked with every famed siren, from Helen of Troy forwards and back? You should know by this time, old weakling, that your spirit in women doesn’t appeal to me any more than to mortal profligates. And the pulchritude of most has gone by the time they get here.”
“But there are the dewy-looking souls loitering about the Fields. Why not break the rule that there may be no transference between Elysium and the Lower Land before the Call? Aren’t you the exception to all rules? Why not an adventure for Your Excellency such as often we have seen in the cinemized episodes of modern villains—an abduction, say, of the most visible and fair before the guards can interfere? Don’t despise my idea, generated from a conviction that the chief lack in your life is loneliness.”
“An angel for me?” Mirthlessly His Highness laughed. “Sir Sin, they bore me limp as a summer-resort collar. To be sure that a she-soul is going to be eternally good is a fraction worse than to be sure she’ll be eternally bad. No, philanderer, you’ll have to do better than that. There is not a female, quick or dead, for whose absolute admiration I’d give a plugged nickel.”
The click of the door-knocker punctuated this assertion. Satan strode to the throne; replaced his crown; signaled the minister to respond.
Soon Sin bowed low before his Master, a look of evil animation on his face.
“Already the Seven have returned, Sire. They report that a goodly number of bad ones were crowding through the gates. Among others, they interviewed a couple who, they thought, may interest Your Majesty. They await your pleasure without.”
“May divert My Majesty from complaint of them, you mean. Yet I suppose that they, as well as you, should have that proverbial last chance due evil intenders. By no means make any diverting shade await my displeasure. Page, bid them enter The Presence.”
Royal tolerance fled, however, at sight of the candidates.
“A crippled old soldier and a woman with a suckling babe! It behooves me to find some way of revising the current notion of what constitutes My Majesty’s diversion.”
He relapsed into silence as the new-comers were half led, half dragged toward the dais by a pair of the scrub-oak dwarfs who ushered inside the Gehennan gates. By light of the dynamo that is within each soul, they were clothed as in the habiliments they had worn in their late estate on earth, he in a rusty uniform, she in nun’s gray. With his crutch the cripple resented their intent to be rough, but his travel-mate stumbled forward without resistance, her head drooped so low that her long, loose hair swaddled the whimpering infant shade in her arms.
The kingly choler increased when, at the steps, she sank as though from exhaustion rather than reverence to her knees. One last, promising glare he shot at Old Original and the seven, then spoke in a voice quiet, yet more dire to those who knew him than any thunder-clap.
“To swoon, madam or miss, is out of date down here. I pray you postpone the attempt for some less sophisticated audience.”
Sin, leaning forward from his especial chair just back of the throne, dared to insinuate: “And I pray you, Damnity, do not sentence her until you have considered her. There is something exceptional about her. She may have been sent to prove that idea of mine.”
Satan scorned to notice the suggestion.
“Come,” he ordered the woman soul, “show your passport.”
As though from shame, she crumpled against her breast a scarlet slip. Shaking back her hair, she looked up at him.
His Highness, startled, returned her look. He did not heed or hear Sin’s gasp of anticipation. He forgot the seven, the pages and the dwarfs. Leaning lower, he looked and looked.
Truly he, who had been the fate of most fair women since Eve, never had beheld one of a face of such appeal.
CHAPTER II
The multiple-candle glow from the Mephistophelian coat-of-arms lit the girl-soul’s features. From a veil that well might have been worn on Earth for mourning, so black was her hair and enveloping, they gleamed as if carved from Parian marble. The curve of her chin, the fullness of lips blent into faint, downward-traced lines, the tube-rose texture of her cheeks, all lent a suggestion of pliancy, even weakness. Above, her classic nose and broad forehead offered contradiction—were sculped as from a master’s inspiration.
Lesser wonders as to the personality behind the marble mask merged into that aroused by her eyes. Colored like the purpling depths of a midnight sky, they concealed, rather than revealed. From beneath straight brows they gazed forth, not as a hope that is lost in darkness, but as hope resting from its weariness, to rise again at dawn. Over her face they shed a light of mystery that made its beauty negligible—a mystery based neither on courage nor fear, pride nor shame, joy nor dole. They asked what confused the mind and haunted the imagination, that demand of why—why—to which only the Creator of souls Himself one day may make satisfactory reply.
Intently as the spirit-girl studied the new arbiter of her sorry fate was he studying her. At first he did not move. Then the finger-tips of his one hand sought those of the other. As they met, the ruby-red setting of his signet ring discharged a spark.
“The sight of you sounds like some song of Destiny,” said he.
“And only Destiny could be accountable for her present plight.” The crippled soldier, handling his crutch with the skill of long practice, approached the throne. His one heel clicked against the floor in a salute peculiar to the wars of yester-year. “Might I say a few words, sir, for this young mother? I got to know her well on the awful journey into Shadow Land.”
Satan, turning to him, saw that age had not blurred a youthful eagerness in his parchment face and the faded blue of his eyes.
“And why,” he scoffed, “should you speak a few words for her, or a couple, or even one—you, a mere piece of a man?”
“That you will know, sir, after you know her. A mere girl she is. Nothing truthful, I’m sure, could be written against her account in the records of Earth.”
“You evade my question.” Royal annoyance over the interruption was turned from him to his sponsors. “Why, you imperfect seven, a one-legged veteran of a past decade?”
The prime minister intervened. “Old One-leg here is not so weak a new idea as he looks. While he has not fought in the latest battles of Earth, he has been absorbed in them, he says, and theoretically knows all there is to be known of modern tactics.”
His Highness’ shoulders shrugged. “None can say that I am not glad to believe the worst of every man. Has he a passport?”
Aloud he read the soldier-shade’s card:
“Samuel Cummings, N.C.O. In youth deserted when battle was on. Changed his name and lost his identity for a time. Later reënlisted, was wounded in service, but not distinguished. Called from Soldier’s Home.”
The cripple’s free hand brushed one ear, as if forcefully to eject the words. “I deserted, yes. But she lay sick abed, my girl bride, and I loved her better than myself. Afterwards not a man in our company fought more careless than Corporal Sam. But we had a saying at the Home that you’ve got to be conscripted into the army of death. Only cowards volunteer.”
“Once a deserter, always one,” His Highness made remark. “Don’t you see that more important affairs than yours await? Just remember this, no wife is worth deserting a good fight for.”
Corporal Sam, with head sagging and shoulders disturbed by more than his crutch, stepped aside. But a wonderful light shone from his blue eyes into the Satanic gray ones.
“I know,” he muttered, “that what made my Mary Gertrude worth deserting for can’t ever die. I saw her in the border fields this very evening. She couldn’t go on, you see, without me. She had promised to wait around for me until——”
“Silence, old nuisance,” Sin advised. “One doesn’t mention the Second Call in The Presence.”
He need not have feared. His Majesty’s attention had returned to the girl-shade. A long moment he studied her; closed his eyes; quickly opened them to study her again. The puzzlement at first on his features changed to semi-recognition.
“That look in your eyes—— What is it, that look? I seem to know you, woman, although I cannot place you. Do you remember having seen me before?”
“I don’t think that I ever have seen you. But I’ve known men on Earth that resembled you.” Her voice was that of a cathedral bell retarding over the last phrase of the hymn.
“It must be that I have trailed you afar, probably at the start of the career that brought you here. Let us see how you’re written down in Mors’ copy from the book.”
Sin transferred the card from her clutch. With characteristic bravado, he read the start of it aloud.
“Dolores Trent, Grief to Men, and bastard babe.”
“What’s that you say?” With unwonted eagerness, Satan possessed himself of the passport. “That is quite a title, ‘Grief to Men.’ I like it.”
He smiled peculiarly while giving his eyes to Earth’s verdict of the newcomer, as transcribed from that tome called “Judgments of Men” which is in charge of Mors, keeper of the Great Gates into Shadow Land. From between the two lines of his strong, white teeth, his tongue appeared and smoothed both lips.
The girl-soul, with the equivocal expression of one both fascinated and repulsed, watched him as he read:
“Dolores Trent, known as ‘Grief to Men.’ A cause of disaster from first breath to last. Her birth caused the death of her mother, whose loss brought her father to ruin. Directly responsible is she held for the wrecked careers of a successful merchant, an eminent Divine, a skilled healer, a previously exemplary millionaire, and an attorney of repute. As a climax, the supreme crime of womanhood is hers—an illegitimate child. Through life she has spread sorrow in her wake. Unto death she carries her murdered ill-begot, a suicide without repentance or appeal.”
The King commented: “Æons have come and gone since I have felt surprise. Completely did that look of yours deceive me. And Raphael must have altered the face of his Madonna had he first seen yours.”
Arising, he stepped from the dais, settled his crown a trifle more to one side and slicked his vandyke with meticulous care. He then approached the cowering figure on the steps.
“It is unseemly that you should remain upon your knees, madam or miss, when many stand who probably are not half so bad as you. Allow me.”
Stooping, he lifted her to her feet.
She straightened to face him with a show of bravery.
“I was misunderstood on Earth,” she said. “In this existence, I hope for justice.”
“Fear not,” he assured her. “In Gehenna you shall receive justice, Dolores Trent, as meted by that world which has learned you to its sorrow and, it would seem, to your own.”
“I’ll tell you—I swear to you, sir, that I have done no man willing wrong.”
He greeted her protest with a punctilious laugh, as though over an attempt at wit.
“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief——”
“But you will not punish my baby for my faults?” A breeze of terror swung the cathedral bell. “Only look at her, sir. She is too tiny, you see, for the vaguest thought of wrong. To her, at least, be merciful.”
“Oh, Hell, be merciful!” Satan mocked her. “That too-late wail has been dinned into my ears until it is a wonder that I can hear you at all. Cheer up. You won’t have to part from it—I beg its pardon—her. Have you not heard that a child conceived in sin must take his—its chances with her progenitors?”
At the low, protesting cry which escaped the mother, he laid a hand on her shoulder, then allowed his arm to settle about her, as though measuring her height by his own. His touch appeared to repulse her. Shuddering, she passed the infant shade to the other arm and stood irresolute, evidently trying to decide how best she might release herself.
A commotion at the door claimed the court’s attention. Through the light-striped hangings, slipping from the grip of the pygmies, two comely creatures seemed verily to float across the throne-room, a youth costumed as a knight and a guileless-looking maid. He, drawing her by the hand, pressed toward the group before the dais. Lithe of body and ardent of eye, he caught the arm of the King and sought to remove it from about the suppliant’s form. As the pursuing dwarfs seized him with their over-long reach, His Highness found himself looking down into the flower-face of the girl intruder—into eyes shy and fearless as violets at dawn.
“And whom,” he enquired, “have we here?”
The minister undertook to announce them. “A pair by the stagy names of Innocentia and Amor. They call themselves guardian spirits and have a talent, which few share with Your Excellency and myself, of absolute invisibility. They lined up in a most theatric way beside the wench Dolores outside the door. As they had no passports and did not seem to belong, I sent them back—or thought I did.”
Satan considered Sin and them. “Where is your sense of humor, Old Original, that you explain them to me? I can’t say that I should have regretted Amor. We have all varieties of him down the Lane of Labors. But Innocentia! You might have appreciated that I seldom get a chance to see her wings flutter or hear her heart beat from fear. Tell me, you two, what madness is driving you?”
“There has been some mistake about the girl Dolores,” Amor declared. “Earth has passed another false judgment. Shouldn’t I know who have been with her since first she met the father of her child?”
“You refer, I presume, to her husband?”
The love-lad’s head threw back in defiance at the jibe. But Innocentia flushed as she took up the defense.
“I have been with our dear Dolores always, more a part of her than the blood in her veins, since that has ceased to flow and I am come with her into Shadow Land. She has heeded all my cautions against the wiles of men. Never once has she offended me.”
“More sinned against than sinning, eh?” His Highness plucked an imaginary tear from one eye. “Often as a woman has been damned have I heard that plea.”
“Only see for yourself, Sire, how she shrinks from your touch—how she suffers. We pray you, release her.”
“Little pest, don’t you know that I enjoy defying you?”
Even as he scoffed, however, his clasp of the mother relaxed. He ascended the steps and reseated himself in the throne chair.
“Innocence and love—certainly a strange companionship,” he observed. “Odd that they don’t fade out, when they are less material than the dimmest spirit in the inter-world. Shoo them back whence they came, ushers. We must get to the case in hand.”
“Oh, I beg you, sir, let them stay!” Dolores interceded. “You’ll find that they enter and exit quietly as thoughts of the mind.”
“Thoughts of the mind get very much in my way,” Satan snapped.
At his show of impatience, Innocentia pressed her lips to the cheeks of the babe. “Do not distress yourself, Dolores dear. It is best that we should disappear. But in Gehenna, as on Earth and in the Fields, we see no gates and acknowledge no commands.”
“Always remember,” Amor added, “the great love of John Cabot. Send him the strength of your good faith. In your late life it did seem that he forsook you. But when he comes to the mystery world, he will seek you, never fear.”
“I shall remember,” Dolores assured them in a low aside. “That night we said our vows, I swore that I believed. Despite appearances, Amor, I do—I must believe.”
Old Original approached them. “Why unwind these fare-ye-wells when your taxi’s waiting? Accept my arm to the door, Miss Innocentia. You look almost overcome.”
Waggishly he escorted her out.
The while His Majesty’s frown lowered to the pygmean pair salaaming before the dais.
As in one whine they put the formal demand: “To what futile labors, O King, shall we consign these recruits?”
Satan shaded his eyes with one hand. He appeared not to be thinking so much as looking. As if from under a blower, the inflammable imagination of him glowed—glowed on Dolores Trent.
The prime minister, on returning, settled in his chair and claimed the keen ear which, through ages past, had considered his suggestions.
“This modern Delilah, Excellency, I consider unique in that she cannot be classed by the naked eye. She is not, so to speak, a type. Might I call your attention to the tact with which she maintains silence, while you——”
“You might not. I detest to have fine bits of the play diagramed by my seat-mate. Have I or have I not eyes of my own?”
“But, Sire——”
“But the buts! Haven’t I paid at least as much admission as you?”
All eyes focused upon the Master, except those of the ancient hypocrite. His settled appreciatively upon her who indeed had distracted the royal resentment from himself. The pause which lapsed he had the temerity to break, although in a vague voice, as if to himself:
“Hell to be lonely.... Some sympathy soul.... Boss looker like you.... Try anything once or twice.”
“Try anything once and forever except hoodwinking me.”
If Sin’s pride was hurt by the King’s public rebuke, it must have been salved next moment with the proof that his advice was being found tenable.
His Highness to the court: “As a bad lot, this earthling pair would seem to deserve labors different from any yet devised. Until I decide upon some special form of punishment I shall keep them in the palace. Dame Dolores comes highly recommended to my ingenuity. That I may observe her vices, I appoint her for the nonce First Royal Entertainer. She shall relate to me those griefs which she has caused on Earth.”
His glance veered to the veteran.
“Always have I envied the angels their ability to weep—never have lived down the ambition to emulate their pietism with just one tear. Mayhap I shall be moved to that extent by these earth-tales of Grief to Men. I am so temperamental. In view of which possibility, Samuel Cummings, I hereby create for you the office of Holder of the Crocodile Tear Bowl to my Majesty. As for the bastard babe——”
Dolores, at his flint-hard gaze, clutched closer the tiny soul of her soul. Intensely she awaited his words.
“Don’t crucify yourself with maternal fears, my beauty. We are pleased to let the Littlest Devil stick around. Ever notice how the strongest villain has weakness for a brat? Yours is about as young as they come—almost a native, one might say. He will give the palace a homey look.”
“She, sir.”
“She. I beg its pardon.”
“You are so much kinder than I was led to expect.” To his consideration the young mother lifted the radium glow of her gratitude. “From hints I heard at the Mystery Gate, I gathered that you were—that you might be——”
The delicacy of such comment was impressed upon her by the interested expression of its subject. As she paused in confusion, a Balialic smile lightened his countenance.
“Beginning on me already, sweet Grief—and with the old baby-eyed confidence game? Even so, you are different from the rest of the damned Delilahs.”
Unexpectedly he clapped his hands. Invective, sarcasm and abuse greeted the courtiers and pages who sprang to receive and execute his orders.
“Get the machinery of this court geared up, will you? Light the snuffed lucifers that are supposed to illuminate my life. Affairs in general are going to be run more according to the ways of Earth, or certain helliots will be put through their third and last degree before their appointed time. You, tell that new chef that I have some few untried torments for him if he does not excel his predecessors to-night. He’s to prepare a banquet that will taste as well as look. Dynobasco Sauce for my burnt-out stomach, the mead that sears to wash it down—all the trimmings. And you, tell the head landscape gardener that I want moonlight to-night—gobs of it—and a free play of juice through the Garden of Bad Luck. Have him throw the limit in effect—fountains and foliage and tropical bloom. I want the mistress of royal robes paged at once. Wonderful electrician though she is, she hasn’t had a worthwhile order since Cleopatra cast me for Anthony II. in a little domestic drama whose tragic last act rather overbalanced the light lines of the start. We shall see what her genius at fabric effects can do for this trail-worn lady. Remind her of how Shakespeare once remarked: ‘Glad rags don’t spoil the work of any tragedienne.’”
The crook of a royal finger brought Old Original to his side.
“Sin, I wish you personally to see to the selection of a suitable tear-bowl. Take care that it is polished. Our electro-silver plate tarnishes so quickly from its own heat. And make sure it doesn’t leak. My first crocodile tear must be preserved—a glittering trophy to adorn the filet of m’lady Grief. Now begone, all of you. The biggest little séance since Creation is going to commence to-night.”
Alone, to his reflection in the mirror, he telepathed:
“I know that she is different from the different effect on me. Because I don’t doubt that she’s bad, I don’t dislike her looking good. She is unique, this Dame Dolores. I may be able to use her. Should I approve her method in those troubles she caused on Earth, I just might show her some larger responsibilities.”
Through the seven courses of that most remarkable of feasts, the spirit-girl Dolores exerted herself to please their Satanic host, for sake of her babe if not herself. Splendid beyond words was his appearance, from his scintillant crown to the hem of a mantle charged to imitate iridescent metal cloth. Corporal Sam Cummings she scarcely had recognized, so changed was he by the steel-scaled costume of an old-time knight in which he came arrayed, a veritable “armour of light.”
Without vanity, she appreciated the kindly soldier-soul’s gasp at first sight of her, having herself been surprised by the achievement of the mistress of robes.
A twist of green flame bound her hair and suspended one large drop, like an emerald of great price, low upon her brow. The rays of her body garment clung close, representing a material sewn through with threads of gold. This fell only to her pearl-roped ankles, but a long cloak of translucent green waved behind her when she moved, like the following billows of the sea.
Her beauty she had learned to deplore. To-night she feared it. Something worse than admiration had shone in the lurid gaze of the prime minister and lesser courtier demons, something disturbing in the silent, critical inspection of His Highness.
Gracious enough had been Satan’s manner. Not until he sampled the last course of the delusive seven did his irritation break bounds. He demanded the presence of the first chef.
“What was my last promise if you didn’t concoct something I could taste?” he demanded of that unworthy. “Why do you suppose I had you heat-tormented to suicide in the Brillon kitchens in Paris if I didn’t expect you to do better by me gastronomically than your predecessors? I have been improvising tortures for cook-soul failures for more centuries than the blades of near-grass used to tint this pistache ice. Bah, heats me to look at it! Soon as I can replace you, into the hole for Traitors to Mothers you drop.”
The wretch wrung his hands. “Not there, your Majesty! I loved my mère. And is not my present labor futile enough? Almost do I despair of tempting the palate of an immortal, with nothing but chimeras as ingredients—with flour of the bleached dust of hopes and paprika and baking-powder of imaginary ground brick or brimstone.”
“I do not grant that your labor is futile,” Satan snapped. “Surely you’ll agree that the Ruler of Greater Gehenna deserves the Epicurean joys afforded gluttonous nobodies of Earth? I want to eat, I tell you. Of course I am more or less immaterial. Every soul in Shadow Land is, the new-comers less, the old-timers more. But the appetites of Earth appeal more to me than the self-sufficiency of the angels. I intend to have them—and to have them satisfied. If by to-morrow you have not risen to the concoction of something to tempt me, into the hole for Traitors to——”
With what sincerity she could assume, Dolores interposed. “I am sure I never tasted a more delicious pasty.”
“Is that true? Can you taste it?”
Satan’s gaze was upon her with the questions, his expression more than wontedly repulsive from greed. Then wrath at her caught him.
“Liars are to be commended in a bad cause, but pitiers! You must conquer such impulses. Acknowledge that you have experienced only the vaguest reminiscence of taste. Come, let us leave this farce of a feast. I have chosen my Chamber of Chance as the most fit setting for your tale of the game of life. Lady champion of griefs, precede me.”
He pushed back from the table. The attendants scrambled after his example. The head butler turned Dolores’ chair. She found herself sweeping past the demon parasites, then past His Majesty, standing with head bent and hand on heart, a derisive smile upon his face. A page, at a gesture of the King, gathered up the phosphorescent billows of her mantle.
She fell into the accent of certain strains of music which were playing a dim, yet definite march of the dead. No ocean ever sobbed more sympathetic plaint. No snarl of fife or beat of drum ever timed sterner step. The music between two spheres—had Handel heard it in his dream of Saul?
The Royal Entertainer was placed in the strongest light at a faro table which centered a room black-hung and artistically dimmed for the occasion. Satan sat opposite as a mere auditor, his eyes glowing like lit lamps from the shadow.
“A hint or two or three before you begin,” said he. “Remember that the story’s the thing. If it doesn’t grip, aside from the fact that you are telling it, you’ll have failed in your art. You’ve read some of the old-fashioned French novels, I hope?”
“Oh, yes, Sire, and in the original. My father was a translator and taught me to read in several languages, French, Russian, Spanish——”
“Doesn’t all that come in the story? Don’t insult our intelligence with repetitions. Try to emulate the speed of modern fictionists, with the—shall we say the slow-mindedness of the old? And leave out the asterisks. We who have crossed into Mystery Land have every right to know what’s behind the stars.”
“You mean——” she faltered.
“In brief, this: give us a tale with style, but all passages that should be expurgated left in.”
Dolores, confused rather than enlightened by these specifications, essayed her earth-life story with what sprightliness she might.
“You know New York City?”
“Do I know New York—I who invented it?”
Her start was fortuitous; although not intended to be humorous, won the tribute of a chuckle from him at the head of the narrow monk table.
“Since you know New York, King Satan——”
“Call me Pluto,” suggested he. “It is my friendliest name.”
“King Pluto”—she gave him a smileless nod of agreement—“you doubtless have heard of Harlem flats?”
Again he chuckled. “Some of our best little badger games, jealousies, murders and other such trivial offenses have been conceived and executed in Harlem flats. Eh, old Original? We call them ‘incubators of discontent.’ I have visited a few in person on special occasions, although generally one of the under-demons proves bad enough to start the regular Harlem crimes. The Boulevard des Capucines, Piccadilly, Unter den Linden, the Corso and a narrow street called Wall are more usual haunts of mine, offering, as they do, larger opportunities. But this side-issuance is against the rules. Assume that I am fairly well acquainted with the cubbies of modern cliff-dwellers.”
“They named me ‘Grief to Men,’ yet I have not meant to be. To explain how the cruel title came to be forced upon me, I must begin in a Harlem flat at about my nineteenth year.”
With the tremors of a spent swimmer forced to greater effort against the tide, Dolores breasted her tale. Through that evening’s recital and through those of subsequent evenings, she sought to make of herself a mere entertainer, to remember the “style” demanded, as learned from the border-line literature of the several tongues at her command, to conquer her reluctance and lay bare the facts which had been deemed worthy of so much space in the newspapers of Earth—for sake of those whom indirectly she was protecting, to tell her tale with aptitude as impersonal as though its subject were not herself.
Yet in the telling came moments when her continuity broke, when her desperate attempt was abandoned in something more convincing than “style.” Conquered by emotions which had come with her from the mortal world to this strange beyond—emotions of reverence, of love, of passion, of shame—she would fall silent, unable to proceed. At such times her hands would shield her eyes, while the shudders of a modest spirit would plead for reprieve; her head droop until her breast touched the board; her lips refuse for a space to obey her will to divert.
Fortunately His Excellency, far from disapproving such violations of the rules which he had imposed, appeared to regard them as superstrokes of a talent patent from the start. They lent to the reality of the tale, prolonged suspense and multiplied his enjoyment in her sufferings. To him, prone to delight in the inherent worst of devils and of men, the words she could not force herself to utter often meant more than those which had fallen from her lips.
Again, when his own impatience, increased by that of the demon audience, stripped bare her soul and lashed her, with malevolent threats, into renewed effort, he would chortle aloud from satisfaction in his mental degeneracy.
From his infinite fund of information regarding persons of importance whose trails had crossed the girl-soul’s own, he was able frequently to furnish facts regarding others when, at times, she failed.
The earth-story of Dolores Trent, free in version and filled in from the super-supply of Satanic intelligence, ensues.
CHAPTER III
Close to five o’clock the decrepit vehicle which, with a dingy hearse, had formed the funeral cortège of Trevor Trent, creaked to a stop. The entrance to the Heartsease Apartments gaped wide, just as it had gaped a few hours earlier when the remains of the wastrel had passed through for the last time. The relic of a Jehu, in crinkled topper and faded blue livery sans buttons, lowered rheumatically from his seat on the box. Adjusting his soiled dickey, mainstay of a celluloid collar and green tie, he threw open the door with what might have been taken for extra ceremony, had he not verbally urged his passengers to hurry lest he miss the hot free-lunch which, with the weak prohibition-time “suds” that washed it down, was the most pleasureable event of his day.
Those who alighted stood a moment in regretful silence—two typical Harlem matrons, one with a child in arms, both with offspring attached like lead weights to their skirts. Between them was the girl whom they were seeing to-day, through the goggles of sensation, in the stellar rôle of chief mourner.
“Pore thing—pore young thing!”
Their tears, more or less sincere, vied with those of the dripping heavens, although not tears for Trevor Trent. Indeed, they who had known his life for the past seventeen years had no apologies, even to the angels, for omitting to weep over his demise. Their toil-dulled compassion went out in this loneliest moment that succeeds a death to the orphaned daughter who, hitherto, had been a detached unit in their congested midst. A substantial escort, they ushered her up the steps, unheeding the querulous welcome of the young hopefuls left at home.
“Was it a long, good, joggly ride, Ma?”
“You mighta tooken us along.”
“Can I go next time anybody dies? ’Tain’t fair the baby gets all the fun.”
Inside the door, the manner that belonged to an occasion was unceremoniously doffed. Sympathy along this particular block of the East One-Hundreds never interfered with life’s practicalities. Dolores Trent received no invitations to sup with her neighbors—expected none, since any superfluous scraps could be served very well for breakfast.
Uneasy in the emptiness of the three rooms which for so long had represented home to her, she settled at the oak desk beside the window with intent of searching the close-printed want columns of an evening paper. But at first she could not see to read.
In this chair her father had struggled over the translations from which their livelihood had been eked in those better moments when the drug to which he was addicted would permit him to work. That, of course, was before he had lost the position through inaccuracies which made the firm intolerant of trying her as substitute. In the corner to the right squatted the couch upon which he had wasted into that pallid, unresponsive thing so lately consigned to the ground, despite her terrified efforts to stay his departure and to recall him, once he had gone. How strange, how confusing to be alone, like a flower cut from its bush and thrown to the wind! It seemed as though she, too, must wither and die.
Over him toward the last had come a change which already was dear to her memory. Always gentle with her, intermittently zealous in an ambition to train her mind for some worth-while future, he had become obsessed by an anxiety over her which dulled him to the crave for poppy paste, hitherto his controlling love and hate. It was something to remember that, improvident though he had been in life, paupered though he was leaving her, his distress over her fate in these last days had conquered his desire for the drug. In the dusk, his last words seemed again to rasp in her ears.
“You have beauty and innocence, my girl. Please God a good young love may protect you on your way!”
Although her eyes burned, no tears relieved them. Although her heart near burst with longing to assure him how, above other children, she had been grateful for his affection, no whisper passed her lips. She could not reach him now. Merely pitiful was her regret over the diffidence which had kept her from telling him that, from her earliest understanding, she had recognized his right to resent her; had appreciated, on that very account, his tolerance.
But she must not regret. That would weaken her when most she needed strength. Had she not done the best she could? In her life-long defense of his habit, in the protectorate over him which had been her chief concern from childhood to this early maturity, had she not shown him that she worshiped him for forgiving the crime she had committed in being born—in making that brutal exaction of a life for a life?
The poppy paste she never had criticized, realizing that it had entered his life at the beginning of her own, when the young mother who had died to give her birth lay stark, for the first time unresponsive to his adoration. On that first night of her existence, as often he had told her, he had chosen her name as a sort of epitaph. Grief.... Grief.... That was what she had meant to him.
His improvidence she could not contemn, remembering the brilliant career which, before her advent, had appeared to be opening before him. Despite her lonely childhood, despite the endurance which had filled her time in lieu of laughter and play, she was glad now that always she had known. With the full hurt of her heart she hoped that, if he had not understood in life, he knew to-night that always—always—she had known.
Darkness had taken possession of the room.
A thought that darkness possessed her prospects also caused her to light the gas. She must not stumble into the future. She must cease looking backward; must turn and face forward. Determinedly she settled to the “Help Wanted” columns, a hopeful array.
However, as she read through one after another of the advertisements, down one column and up the next, the confidence inspired by their numbers decreased. She had not expected at once to sight an opportunity in which she might utilize the somewhat haphazard learning with which she was equipped. But she had hoped for something—something she could do.
And then:
WANTED—Pretty, young girl of innocent type. No experience necessary. Good pay to right person. Apply Wednesday, 10:30 A.M., to Vincent Seff, —— Fifth Avenue.
In small type, with the reserve of opportunity, it stood out from the rest. Dolores re-read it. “No experience necessary.” That was the kindest thing said to her since the cry of her father’s late-born anxiety: “You have beauty and innocence, my girl.” The advertisement seemed addressed to her.
As if in period to or amusement over her conclusions, there sounded a gurgle from the gas meter. The vapor flickered; sputtered; went out. Funerals, even in the East One-Hundreds, are expensive. And the slot of the meter never would have mistaken the single five cent piece remaining in her purse for the quarter that was its exaction. In darkness Dolores retired.
As she lay in her narrow white-iron bed, she saw in the gloom, even more clearly than under the jet, that the want-ad was meant for her. The signature had possessed, from first glance, a familiar look. Vincent Seff ... Vincent Seff.... Could she have heard that name before?
With the first ray of gratuitous daylight, recognition flooded her mind. Of course. Why shouldn’t it look familiar, that name? Often had she glanced at it when waiting around the corner to safeguard her father home from the publishing house. In letters of brass, hammered into an ebony plate, it identified the most alluring windows along that highway of lures:
VINCENT SEFF
LINGERIE
So there was work to be had at “good pay” handling those costly, cobwebby under-garments which she, although widely separated from them by circumstances, had paused passionately to admire. So the proprietor of that house of dear delights he was who wished to employ her, “without experience,” if only she proved pretty and innocent enough!
Even after dawn “10:30 A. M.” seemed far distant. But there was much to do toward vacating the flat. Already the landlord had given her grace of three days and the new tenants were “moving in.” Everything of value had gone to the pawnbroker over on Lenox Avenue. The remnant of furniture would be called for during the forenoon by the junk man who had advanced her money for the funeral.
The Trevor Trent alligator suit-case, its original claims to distinction contested by the years, she had retained for her wardrobe and keepsakes. This, when packed, she carried across the hall and left, “to be called for,” with one of yesterday’s emergency mourners. After neatly sweeping the floors as a wordless return for the un-landlordly lenience shown her, she stood for one last moment on the threshold of the living-room. Although no sound escaped her, there rose from heart to quivering lips the wail of the young animal bereft at once of parent and home.
Down at the corner a subway entrance suggested. The estate of Trevor Trent was closed, his last obligation honorably met. In the purse of his sole heir lay her legacy, enough to carry her swiftly and at ease to the neighbor-hood of her promised employment—promised to her by Vincent Seff. She took out the lone coin and started for the entrance.
An old friend, the Italian fruiterer, who yesterday had eyed her with the impressionability of his race, stopped her to press into her hand a luscious-looking, out-of-season nectarine. Dolores tried to thank him, but choked on the words. She decided to walk downtown. Without a clink, her nickel slid into the coin-box at the corner of his cart, as if fearful of being considered payment for this and other of his kindnesses since her little girlhood. Dolores, too, was fearful. She hoped the flush on her wontedly pale face hadn’t made him suspect. At the corner she glanced back. The old friend waved to her. Happily he had not heard; had not seen.
Ten-fifteen.
Somewhat winded, she hurried her already stiff pace at the warning of the church-tower clock on the cross-street just above the lingerie establishment. The outer doors were wide open and through the inner ones of plate glass she could see gracefully dressed women clerks shaking out and arranging their flimsy wares with a nice regard for effect. As yet there looked to be no customers. But then, as Dolores reminded herself, Vincent Seff’s was an ultra-fashionable shop. The fine ladies destined to wear his creations scarcely would be stirring beneath their satin and eider-down at ten-fifteen A. M.
She was there. But even Father Time could not bully her into entering at once. She found herself palpitating with the uneasiness of one who, for the first time, offers her services for wage. Three times she approached the door before her courage bore her through.
Down the aisle a fashion-plate of a man stepped out to meet her.
“May I direct mam’selle?”—he, in unctuous voice.
On realizing that she had been taken for a customer, Dolores’ spirits lifted. She glanced hopefully down at her threadbare blue serge suit. That daybreak pressing must have rejuvenated it more than she had thought.
“I came in answer to this.” She produced the want-ad.
Insult was added to the floor-walker’s obvious sense of injury when a woman clerk, elaborately coiffed, made comment from the nearest counter:
“You might have guessed her as the one last victim for Juke Seff’s slaughter of innocents.”
His face twisted in the very process of smiling. However, he managed—and just in time—to frown.
“One flight up,” he said curtly to Dolores. “Turn to the right and——”
“To the wrong, deary,” corrected the coiffed clerk. “Then go away, ’way back and down, down, down.”
Following directions, Dolores found herself in a large room which appeared to be a modified sort of office, furnished in gray wicker, with hangings of gray and purple chintz. As every chair and settee was occupied, she backed to the wall near the door. Surprised to see how many applicants had preceded her, she began to make comparisons.
Every shade of complexion, from ash blond to raven-brunette, was represented. Glancing among them, she might have envied some their loveliness and fashionable clothes, had she not so sincerely admired them. Like a flower garden the aggregation looked and smelled, every girl contributing her favorite color and perfume of sachet or extract to the steam-heated air.
With all her appreciation, Dolores’ heart grew heavy. Gone was her hope in the quiet distinction of her felt sailor hat, gone her assurance that the advertisement was the sign-board of Fate. Closer to the wall she shrank when, at precisely half-after-ten, Vincent Seff entered the room.
CHAPTER IV
There was no mistaking him. None less than the owner of the shop would enter with that assured step, and glance among them with that odd mixture of aesthetic distaste, yet business interest. His manner announced that they were “goods” to him.
Seff was a man of certain attractions, somewhere in the later thirties. Clothed in semi-belted homespun, his lines were so defined as to suggest stays beneath. He was of medium height, clean-shaved and almost pallid of face. His brown hair he wore somewhat tousled, probably to hide its scantiness over the crown.
By the time he had reached the center of the room, the girls had straightened and begun to smile and chatter—all, perhaps, except Dolores Trent. She watched him with the detached interest of her dead hope.
Halting, he threw up his delicate hands in an affectation of bewilderment.
“Oh, my dears!” he exclaimed, but in a voice lacking animation. “I shouldn’t have believed there was so much innocence in Gotham. Really, I am all but overcome.”
Despite the assertion, his eyes swept this corner and that.
“Would that I needed an army of innocents instead of the one superlative!” He stepped to the open door on the right. “Mrs. Hutton!” There was a click in his voice.
“Kindly be my board of elimination, Mary,” he instructed the handsome, white-haired woman who responded. “This galaxy of guilelessness is too much for little Vin. My alleged discrimination is blinded, my business shrewdness reels, my senses—— Yes, yes, I know that the lord of lingerie shouldn’t have ’em, senses. But what can a mere man do?” He laid one arm about her shoulders and leaned against her, as if for support.
“Merer than man,” she said and, as though from dislike, shrugged him off.
“Jealous again, dear heart?”
Although he had smiled with the question, her answer made him flush.
“A sensible woman isn’t jealous of a thought.”
“Be good enough, by processes of detection best known to your sex,” he instructed her more briskly, “to reduce this bevy to five of the most natural. I’ll see them in the studio.”
Something additional he murmured into her ear.
She returned him a strange look.
“In twenty minutes I’ll show in the five,” said she competently.
The shop-man addressed the array of applicants. “You will understand, young and pretty creatures, that refusal implies no aspersion, either upon your looks or, shall I say, your artful effect of artlessness. Unfortunately the house of Seff can utilize but one of you and stern business commands the selection of her best suited to our particular needs. Thanks for the sight of each and all.”
With a winning smile, generally distributed, he bowed low, backed to the chintz-curtained doorway through which he had entered and disappeared into what, evidently, was the studio.
Not once had his glance paused in the vicinity of Dolores Trent. She, in complete reversal of last night’s concept of a Fate especially interested in herself, lingered only to watch proceedings.
The softer lines which had made Mrs. Hutton’s face attractive disappeared with her employer. Sentiment evidently was to have no place in these “processes of detection best known to her sex.” She formed the seventy-odd applicants in lines, before which she walked, looking each closely in the face.
“Girls wearing rouge to this side of the room.”
No one moved. With women’s headiest hope, each evidently relied upon the artistry of her make-up.
Mary Hutton again started along the lines. Authoritatively she tapped this rose-blush blond and that brilliant brunette.
To one who protested that she would not know how to rouge: “You don’t need to tell me, my dear, anything self-evident. You shouldn’t put so much in the center of your cheeks. Natural color spreads. That’s the first lesson I give our sales-girls. Start with a dab on the chin, next a suggestion on your forehead between the eyes, then quite a bit on the lobes of the ears, where all color starts. Only with these high spots tinted to guide you can you hope for a natural effect. When you’re going out, ask for my booklet, ‘If You Must Rouge, Rouge Right.’ They’ll give you a copy free. Now, please, girls over twenty, fall out!”
Again hesitation, reproaches and complaints were met with uncompromising firmness.
Dolores never understood how it happened, for long since she had given up. She made no plea to Mrs. Hutton, nor did Mrs. Hutton say anything in particular to her. In fact, if the forewoman showed any notice of her other than of an automaton, it looked to be dislike, not approval. Yet, at the last, after the most impersonal of appraisals, she found herself among the fittest five. As one, they were waved between the curtains of gray and lavender chintz.
The “studio” might have been milady’s boudoir. Of violet velvet were the carpets and hangings. The spindly Hepplewhite furniture wore modulated tapestry. There was bric-a-brac scattered about. On the walls hung etchings.
Vincent Seff had removed his homespun coat for a smoking jacket of embroidered lavender silk, with which the more delicate tone of his shirt and tie blended satisfyingly. He did not rise as they entered; indeed, did not glance up for several minutes afterward. He was lolling upon a chaise lounge, at work over a drawing—some garment design, presumedly, as he kept glancing at a rack beside him over which hung several strips of sheer, vari-tinted fabrics.