"Because I"m in a net," she said. "And every one who tries to help me gets caught in it, too. Oh, don"t smile! You won"t smile afterward."
He picked up a coat he discovered in a corner, and held it for her to slip into.
"I like nets," he remarked lightly, "especially if they"re bright-colored, large, roomy, comfortable nets. We"ll have some great times in ours. Come along."
She shrugged her shoulders, and in the gesture slipped into the garment.
"I"ll go," she said, in a low voice. "But don"t forget that I warned you!"
CHAPTER IV
A PAIR OF GRAY EYES
On their way to the restaurant Laurie had selected he chatted to his companion in his buoyant, irresponsible fashion, but he had put through the details of the episode with tact and delicacy. He knew that in front of a club two doors away from the studio building a short line of taxicabs was always waiting, with the vast patience of their kind. A gesture brought one of these to the door, and when it had squawked its way around the corner, the girl remained in its shelter until Laurie had briefly reentered his own building and emerged again, wearing his coat and hat.
To the selection of the restaurant he gave careful thought. They drove to a quiet place where the food and service were excellent, while the prices were an effective barrier against a crowd. When he and his companion were seated on opposite sides of a table in an isolated corner, Laurie confided his order to the waiter, urged that willing individual to special haste, and smiled apologetically at the lady.
"I"m hungry," he said briskly. "I haven"t had any breakfast this morning. Don"t be surprised if I seem to absorb most of the nourishment in the place."
He studied her as he spoke. It was easy to do so, for she seemed almost to have forgotten him and her surroundings. She sat drooping forward a little in her pet att.i.tude, with her elbows on the table, and her chin in her hand, staring through the window with the look he had seen in the mirror. The lethargy he dreaded again enveloped her like a garment.
His heart sank. Here was something more than the victim of a mad but temporary impulse. Here was a victim of a sick soul, or of a burden greater than she could bear, or perhaps of both. He decided that whatever her trouble might be, it was no new or pa.s.sing thing. Every curve in her despondent figure, every line in her worn, lovely face, suggested a vast weariness of flesh and spirit. He had not seen those lines in the mirror, and he looked at them now with understanding and solemn eyes, as he had looked at the new lines in his sister"s face when Barbara had been pa.s.sing through the worst of her ordeal last year.
In this moment of realization he almost forgot the girl"s beauty, though, indeed, it was not easy to forget. It seemed enhanced rather than dimmed by the haze of melancholy that hung over it, and certainly there was nothing dim in the superb red-gold coloring of her hair. Her eyes seemed red-gold, too, for they were reddish-brown with flecks of yellow light in them, quite wonderful eyes. He told himself that he had never seen any just like them. Certainly he had rarely seen anything to equal the somber misery of their expression. There was a remoteness in them which repelled sympathy, and which was intensified by the haughty curve of the girl"s short upper lip. She was proud, proud as the devil, Laurie told himself. Again, and very humbly, he wondered how he was to handle a situation and a personality so outside his own experience. In truth, he was afraid. Though he did not know it, and perhaps would have vigorously denied it, Laurie still looked at women through stained-gla.s.s windows.
When the food came, her expression changed. She shot a quick look at him, a glance at once furtive and suspicious, which he saw but ignored.
He had dismissed the waiter and was serving her himself. In the simple boyish friendliness of his manner she evidently found rea.s.surance, for she suddenly sat up and began her breakfast.
Laurie exhaled the breath he had been holding. Up till the last moment he had feared that she might see through his subterfuge in taking her there, and even now refuse the food he offered. But if in that fleeting instant she felt doubt, it had died as it was born. She drank her coffee slowly and ate her eggs and toast as deliberately, but her characteristic air of intense preoccupation had departed. She looked at her companion as if she really saw him. Also, she apparently felt the stirring of some sense of obligation and need of response to this friendly stranger. She was answering him now, and once at least she almost smiled.
Watching the little twitch of her proud and perfect upper lip, Laurie felt his heart-beats quicken. She was a wonder, this girl; and with his delight in her beauty and her pride came another feeling, almost as new as his humility--an overwhelming sympathy for and a desire to help another.
These sentiments served as needed balance to his spirits, which, as always, mounted dangerously when he was interested. He held himself down with difficulty.
This was no time for the nonsense that he loved to talk. One doesn"t rescue a lady from suicide and then try to divert her mind with innocent prattle. One gives her a decent time to pull herself together, and then, with tact and sympathy, one gets to the roots of her trouble, if one can, and helps to destroy them. Despite his limited experience with drama off the stage, Laurie knew this. Because he was very young and very much in earnest, and was talking to a young thing like himself, though in that hour she seemed so much older, he instinctively found the right way to approach the roots.
They had finished breakfast, and he had asked and received permission to smoke. When he had lighted his cigarette and exhaled his first satisfying puff of smoke, not in rings this time, he took the cigarette from his mouth, and with his eyes on its blazing end expressed his thought with stark simplicity.
"When we were over in your studio," he said, "I admitted that twice in my life I had tried to--make away with myself. Only two other persons in the world know that, but I"d like to tell you about it, if you don"t mind."
She looked at him. There were strange things in the look, things that thrilled him, and other things he subconsciously resented, without understanding why. When she spoke there was a more personal note in her voice than it had yet held.
"You?" she asked; and she added almost lightly, "That seems absurd."
"I know."
Laurie spoke with the new humility he had found only to-day.
"You think that because I"m so young I couldn"t have been desperate enough for that. But--you"re young, too."
He was looking straight at her as he spoke. Her eyes, a little hard and challenging, softened, then dropped.
"That"s different," she muttered.
He nodded.
"I know the causes were different enough," he agreed. "But the feeling back of them, that pushes one up against such a proposition, must be pretty much the same sort of thing. Anyway, it makes me understand; and I consider that it gives me a claim on you, and the privilege of trying to help you."
Her eyes were still cast down, and suddenly she flushed, a strange, dark flush that looked out of place on the pure whiteness of her skin. She had the exaggerated but wholesome pallor of skin that often goes with reddish hair and red-brown eyes. It does not lend itself becomingly to flushes, and this deep flush lingered, an unwelcome visitor, throughout her muttered, almost ungracious words.
"Oh, please don"t talk about it," she said, brusquely. "It"s no use. I know you mean to be kind, but you can"t do anything."
"Oh, but that"s just where you"re wrong." Laurie spoke with a cheerful a.s.surance he did not feel. "If I hadn"t been there myself, I"d talk all sorts of twaddle to you, and do more harm than good; and I"d probably let you go on thinking you were facing a trouble that no one could help.
Instead of that, you and I are going to hold your bugaboo up to the light, and see just what it is and how small it is. And then--" he smiled at her--"we"re going to get rid of it together."
She echoed his words, vaguely, as if not knowing quite what to say.
"Get rid of it?"
"Yes. Tell me what it is, and I"ll show you how it can be downed."
She pushed back her chair, as if anxious to put a greater distance between them.
"No," she exclaimed, nervously, "it"s impossible; I can"t talk about it." Then, in an obvious effort to side-track the issue, "You said you wanted to tell me about your--experience."
"I do, but it isn"t a nice story. Fortunately, it won"t take long." He spoke reluctantly. It was not easy to hook two such memories out of the darkest pool of his life and hold them up to a stranger.
"Oh, I was a young idiot," he rushed on, "and I suppose I hadn"t the proper start-off. At least I like to think there"s some excuse for me.
My father and mother died when I was in knickerbockers, and I grew up doing very much as I pleased. I--made a bad job of it. Before I was twenty-one I was expelled from college and I had worked up a pretty black reputation. Then I gambled and lost a lot of money I didn"t have, and it began to look as if about the only safe place for me was the family vault.
"I made two efforts to get there. The first time a wise old doctor stopped me and never told any one about it. The second time one of my chums took a hand in the game. I don"t know why they did it. I don"t suppose either my pal or the doctor thought I was worth saving. But they talked to me like Dutch uncles, and my chum kept at it till I gave him my word that I"d never attempt anything of the sort again."
"You were just an unhappy boy," she said, as if thinking aloud, "with all life before you and many friends to back you up."
"And you," he suggested, "are just an unhappy girl with all life before you. I don"t know anything about your friends, but I"ll wager you"ve got a lot of them."
She shook her head.
"Not one," she said, slowly. "I mean, not one I dare to call on, now."
"I like that! You"ve got me to call on, right here."
This time she really smiled at him. It was a pathetic little smile, but both lips and eyes took part in it. He waited, but she said no more. He began to fear that his confidence had been given to no purpose.
Evidently she had no intention of making a confession in return. He resumed his attack from a new angle.