"Back from the river!" she cried, "soon will come men who, with long, sharp poles, will push out the logs from the eddies, and from the still waters of the bends, and, should the men of Moncrossen find this man they will kill him--for all men die! Did not Lacombie die?"
CHAPTER XXVI
MAN OR TOY MAN?
The newspaper prediction of the forthcoming announcement of the engagement of Miss Ethel Manton and Gregory St. Ledger was published, not without color of authority, nor was it entirely out of keeping with appearances.
As the gay calendar of society"s romp and rout drew toward its close, the names of these two became more and more intimately a.s.sociated. It was an a.s.sociation a.s.siduously cultivated by young St. Ledger, and earnestly fostered and abetted by the St. Ledger sisters who, fluttering uncertainly upon the outermost rim of the circle immediately surrounding society"s innermost shrine, realized that the linking of the Manton name with the newer name of St. Ledger, would prove an open sesame to the half-closed doors of the Knickerbockers.
Despite two years" residence in the most expensive suite of a most expensive hotel, n.o.body seemed to know much about the St. Ledgers. It was an accepted fact that they were islanders from somewhere, variously stated to be Jamaica, The Isle of Pines, and Barbadoes, whose wealth was founded upon sugar, and appeared limitless.
St. Ledger _pere_, tall and saturnine, divided his time about equally between New York and "the islands."
The two girls, ravishingly beautiful in their dark, semi-mysterious way, had been brought from some out-of-the-way French convent to the life of the great city, where to gain entree into society"s holy of holies became a fetish above their G.o.ds.
There was no _mere_ St. Ledger, and vague whisperings pa.s.sed back and forth between certain bleached out, flat-chested virgins, whose forgotten youth and beauty were things long past, but whose tenure upon society was as firm and una.s.sailable as Plymouth Rock and the silver leg of Peter Stuyvesant could make it.
It was hinted that the high-piled tresses of the sisters matched too closely the hue of the raven"s wing, and that the much admired "waves"
if left to themselves would resolve into decided "kinks."
They were guarded whisperings, however, non-committal, and so worded that a triumphantly blazoned "I told you so!" or a depreciatory and horrified: "You misunderstood me, _dear_," hung upon the pending verdict of the powers that be.
Gregory St. Ledger, in so far as any one knew, was neither liked nor disliked among men; being of the sort who enjoy watching games of tennis and, during the later hours of the afternoon, drive pampered Pekingese about the streets in silver-mounted electrics.
He enjoyed, also, a baby-blue reputation which successfully cloaked certain spots of pale cerise in his rather negligible character.
He smoked innumerable scented cigarettes, gold as to tip and monogram, which he selected with ostentatious unostentation from a heavy gold case liberally bestudded with rubies and diamonds.
He viewed events calmly through a life-size monocle, was London tailored, Paris shod, and New York manicured; and carried an embossed leather check-book, whose detachable pink slips proved a potent safety factor against undue increment of the St. Ledger exchequer.
Thus equipped, and for reasons of family, young St. Ledger decided to marry Ethel Manton; and to this end he devoted himself persistently and insidiously, but with the inborn patience and diplomacy of the South Islander.
Bill Carmody he hated with the snakelike hate of little men, but shrewdly perceiving that the girl held more than a friendly regard for him, enthusiastically sang his praises in her ears; praises that, somehow, always left her with a strange smothering sensation about the heart and a dull resentment of the fact that she cared.
With the disappearance of young Carmody, St. Ledger redoubled his attentions. The young man found it much easier than did his sisters to be numbered "among those present" at the smart functions of the elite.
When New York shivered in the first throes of winter, a well-planned cruise in mild waters under soft skies on board the lavishly appointed and bountifully supplied St. Ledger yacht, whose sailing list included a carefully selected and undeniably congenial party of guests, worked wonders in the matter of St. Ledger"s social aspirations.
At the clubs, substantial and easily forgotten loans to members of the embarra.s.sed elect, coupled with vague hints, rarely failed to pay dividends in the form of invitations to ultra-exclusive _affaires_.
At the hostelry the St. Ledger _soirees_, if so glitteringly bizarre as to draw high-browed frowns from the more reserved and staid of the thinning old guard of ancestor-worshipers, nevertheless, were enthusiastically hailed and eagerly attended by the younger set, and played no small part in the insinuation of "those St. Ledgers" into the realms of the anointed.
Thus the winter wore away, and, at all times and in all places Gregory St. Ledger appeared as the devoted satellite of Ethel Manton, who entered the social melee without enthusiasm, but with dogged determination to let the world see that the disappearance of Bill Carmody affected her not at all.
She tolerated St. Ledger, even encouraged him, for he amused and offered a welcome diversion for her thoughts.
She was a girl of moods whose imagination carried her into far places in the picturing of a man--her man--big, and strong, and clean; fighting bare-fisted among men for his place in the world, and alone conquering the secret devil of desire that he might claim the right to her love.
Then it was, curled up in the big armchair in the library, the blue eyes would glow softly and tenderly in the flare of the flickering firelight, and between parted lips the warm breath would come and go in short stabbing whispers to the quick rise and fall of the rounded bosom, and the little fists would clench white in the tense gladness of it.
But there were other times--times when the dancing wall-shadows were dark specters of ill-omen gloating ghoulishly before her horror-widened eyes as her brain conjured the picture of the man--battered, broken, helpless, with bloated, sottish features, and bleared eyes--a beaten man drifting heedlessly, hopelessly, furtive-eyed, away from his standards--and from her.
At such times the breath would flutter uncertainly between cold, bloodless lips, and the marble whiteness of her face became a pallid death mask of despair.
Always in extremes she pictured him, for, knowing the man as she knew him--the bigness of him--the relentless dynamic man-power of his being, she knew that with him there would be no half-way measure--no median line of indifferent achievement which should stand for neither the good nor the bad among men.
Here was no Tomlinson whose little sins and pa.s.sive virtues became the jest of the G.o.ds; but a man who in the final accounting would stand four-square upon the merit of his works, and in the might of their right or wrong, accept fearlessly his reward.
The days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months--empty months to the heart of the girl who waited, dreading, yet hoping for word from the man she loved. Yet knowing, deep down in her heart, she would hear no word.
He would come to her--would answer the call of her great love--would beat down the barriers and in the flush of victory would claim her as his own; or, in the everlasting silence of the weird realm of missing men, be lost to her forever.
Daily she scanned the newspapers. Not front pages whose glaring headlines flaunted world-rumblings, politics, and the illness of rich men"s dogs, but tiny cable-whispers from places far from the beaten track, places forgotten or unknown, whose very names breathed mystery; whispers that hinted briefly of life-tragedies, of action and the unsung deeds of men.
And as she read, she mused.
A tramp steamer dashed upon the saw-tooth rocks off Sarawak. Thirty perish--seven saved--no names. "Where is Sarawak? Is it possible that _he_----?"
Four sailors killed in the rescue of a girl from a dive in Singapore.
Investigation ordered--no names. "_He_ would have done that."
The rum-sodden body of a man, presumably a derelict American, picked up on the bund at Papiete; no marks of identification save the tightly clutched photograph of a well-dressed young woman. "Had _he_ given up the fight? And was this the end?"
Eight revolutionist prisoners taken by General Orotho in yesterday"s battle were shot at sunrise this morning before the prison wall of Managua.
One, an American, faced the firing squad with a laugh, and the next instant pitched forward, his body riddled with bullets. "_He_ would have laughed! Would have played gladly the game with death and, losing--laughed!"
Each day she read the little lines of the doings of men; unnamed adventurers whose deeds were virile deeds; rough men, from whose contaminating touch society gathers up her silken skirts and pa.s.ses by upon the other side; unlovely men, rolled-sleeved and open-throated, deep-seamed of face, and richly weather-tanned of arm, who tread roughshod the laws of little right and wrong; who drink red liquor and swear lurid oaths and loud; but who, shoulder to shoulder, redden the gutters of Singapore with their hearts" blood in the s.n.a.t.c.hing of a young girl from danger.
And in the reading there grew up in her heart a mighty respect for these men, for, in the a.n.a.lysis of their deeds, the beam swayed strongly against the measure of the world in its balance of good and harm.
Many times her feet carried her into strange streets among strange people, where the reek of shipping became incense to her nostrils, and hairy-chested men of many ports stared boldly into her face and, reading her aright, made room with deference.
Upon an evening just before the annual surcease of frivolity, Gregory St. Ledger called at the Manton home and, finding Ethel alone in the library, asked her to be his wife.
Because it was an evening of her blackest mood she neither refused nor accepted him, but put him off for a year on the ground that she did not know her mind.
In vain he protested, arguing the power and prestige of the St. Ledger millions, and in the end departed to seek out an acquaintance who had to do with a blatant Sunday newspaper.
During the interview that followed, in the course of which the reporter ordered and St. Ledger paid for many tall drinks of intricate concoction, the gilded youth made no statement of fact, but the impression he managed to convey furnished the theme for the news story whose headlines seared into Bill Carmody"s soul to the crashing of his tenets and G.o.ds.
In the library the girl sat far into the night and thought of the man who had won her heart and of the toy man who would buy her hand.