Quick Action

by Robert W. Chambers

  II

  With her silver tongs she selected a sweetmeat. When it had melted inher sweeter mouth, she lighted a cigarette, saluted us with a gay littlegesture and smilingly began:

  "Don't ask me how I know what these people said; that is _my_ concern,not yours. Don't ask me how I know what unspoken thoughts animated thesepeople; that is _my_ affair. Nor how I seem to be perfectly acquaintedwith their past histories; for _that_ is part of my profession."

  "And still the wonder grew," commented the novelist tritely, "that onesmall head could carry all she knew!"

  "Why," asked Stafford, "do you refuse to reveal your secret? Do you nolonger trust us, Athalie?"

  She answered: "_Comment pretendons-nous qu'un autre garde notre secret,si nous n'avons pas pu le garder nous-meme?_"

  Nobody replied.

  "Now," she said, laughingly, "I will tell you all that I know about the_Orange Puppy_."

  * * * * *

  Plans for her first debut began before her birth. When it becamereasonably certain that she was destined to decorate the earth, she wasentered on the waiting lists of two schools--The Dinglenook School forBoys, and The Idlebrook Institute for Young Ladies--her parents takingno chances, but playing both ends coming and going.

  When ultimately she made her first earthly appearance, and it wasapparent that she was destined to embellish the planet in the guise of agirl, the process of grooming her for her second debut, some eighteenyears in the future, began. She lived in sanitary and sterilizedseclusion, eating by the ounce, sleeping through accurately measuredminutes, every atom of her anatomy inspected daily, every pore of herskin explored, every garment she wore weighed, every respiration, pulsebeat, and fluctuation of bodily temperature carefully noted anddiscussed.

  When she appeared her hair was black. After she shed this, it came inred; when she was eight her hair was coppery, lashes black, eyes blue,and her skin snow and wild-strawberry tints in agreeably delicatenuances. Several millions were set aside to grow up with her and forher. Also, the list of foreign and aristocratic babyhood was scanned andseveral dozen possibilities checked off--the list running from theprogeny of down-and-out monarchs with a sporting chance for a crown, tothe more solid infant aristocracy of Britain.

  At the age of nine, the only symptom of intellect that had yet appearedin her was a superbly developed temper. That year she eluded a governessand two trained nurses in the park, and was discovered playing with someunsterilized children near the duck-pond, both hands full of slime andpollywogs.

  It was the only crack in the routine through which she ever crawled.Lessons daily in riding, driving, dancing, fencing, gymnastics, squash,tennis, skating, plugged every avenue of escape between morning schooland evening sleep, after a mental bath in sterilized literature. Once,out of the window she saw a fire. This event, with several runaways onthe bridle-path, included the sensations of her life up to her releasefrom special instructors, and her entry into Idlebrook Institute.

  Here she did all she could to misbehave in a blind and instinctivefashion, but opportunities were pitiably few; and by the time she hadgraduated, honest deviltry seemed to have been starved out of her; and ahalf year's finishing abroad apparently eliminated it, leaving only ahalf-confused desire to be let alone. But solitude was the luxury alwaysdenied her.

  Unlike the usual debutante, who is a social veteran two years before herpresentation, and who at eighteen lacks no experience exceptintellectual, Miss Cassillis had become neither a judge of champagne noran expert in the various cabaret steps popular at country houses and themore exclusive dives.

  "Mother," she said calmly, on her eighteenth birthday, "do you know thatI am known among my associates as a dead one?" At which that fat andhard-eyed matron laughed, surveying her symmetrical daughter with grimcontent.

  "Let me tell you something," she said. "America, socially, is only onevast cabaret, mostly consisting of performers. The spectators are few.You're one. Conditions are reversed across the water; the audience isin the majority.... How do you like young Willowmere?"

  The girl replied that she liked Lord Willowmere. She might have addedthat she was prepared to like anything in trousers that would give her afew hours off.

  "Do you think," said her mother, "you can be trusted to play in thesocial cabaret all next winter, and then marry Willowmere?"

  Said Cecil: "I am perfectly ready to marry anybody before luncheon, ifyou will let me."

  "I do not wish you to feel _that_ way."

  "Mother, I _do_! All I want is to be let alone long enough to learnsomething for myself."

  "What do you not know? What have you _not_ learned? What accomplishmentdo you lack, little daughter? What is it you wish?"

  The girl glanced out of the window. A young and extremely well-built manwent striding down the avenue about his business. He looked a littlelike a man she had seen playing ball on the Harvard team a year ago. Shesighed unconsciously.

  "I've learned about everything there is to learn, I suppose....Except--where do men go when they walk so busily about their business?"

  "Down town," said her mother, laughing.

  "What do they do there?"

  "A million things concerning millions."

  "But I don't see how there's anything left for them to do after theireducation is completed. What is there left for me to do, except to marryand have a few children?"

  "What do you want to do?"

  "Nothing.... I'd like to have something to do which would make me lookbusy and make me walk rather fast--like that young man who was hurryingdown town all by himself. Then I'd like to be let alone while I'm busywith my own affairs."

  "When you marry Willowmere you'll be busy enough." She might have added:"And lonely enough."

  "I'll be occupied in telling others how to busy themselves with myaffairs. But there won't be anything for _me_ to do, will there?"

  "Yes, dear child; it will be one steady fight to better a good position.It will afford you constant exercise."

  The tall young girl bit her lip and shook her pretty head in silence.She felt instinctively that she knew how to do that. But that was notthe exercise she wanted. She looked out into the February sunshine andsaw the blue shadows on the snow and the sidewalks dark and wet, andthe little gutter arabs throwing snow-balls, and a yellow pup barkingblissfully. And, apropos of nothing at all, she suddenly remembered howshe had run away when she was nine; and a rush of blind desire surgedwithin her. What it meant she did not know, did not trouble to consider,but it stirred her until the soft fire burned in her cheeks, and lefther twisting her white fingers, lips parted, staring across the wintrypark into the blue tracery of trees. To Miss Cassillis adolescence camelate.

  They sang _Le Donne Curiose_ at the opera that evening; she sat in herfather's box; numbers of youthful, sleek-headed, white-shirted young mencame between the acts. She talked to all with the ardor of the young andunsatisfied; and, mentally and spiritually still unsatisfied, buried infur, she was whirled back through snowy streets to the great greymansion of her nativity, and the silence of her white-hung chamber.

  All through February the preparatory regime continued, with preliminarycanters at theatre and opera, informal party practice, and trialdinners. Always she gave herself completely to every moment with awistful and unquenched faith, eager novice in her quest of what waslacking in her life; ardent enthusiast in her restless searching forthe remedy. And, unsatisfied, lingering mentally by the door of Chance,lest she miss somewhere the magic that satisfies and quiets--lest thegates of Opportunity swing open after she had turned away--reluctantlyshe returned to the companionship of her own solitary mind andundeveloped soul, and sat down to starve with them in spirit, wonderingwherein might lie the reason for this new hunger that assailed her, mindand body.

  She ran up her private flag the next winter, amid a thousand other gayand flaunting colours breaking out all over town. The newspapers roareda salute to the wealthiest debutante; and an enthusiastic pr
ess, not yethousebroken but agile with much exercise in leaping and fawning, leapednow about the debutante's slippers, grinning, slavering and panting.Later, led by instinct and its Celebrated Nose, it bounded toward youngLord Willowmere, jumped and fawned about him, slightly soiling him,until in midwinter the engagement it had announced was corroborated, anda million shop-girls and old women were in a furor.

  He was a ruddy-faced young man who wore his bowler hat toward the backof his head, a small, pointed moustache, and who walked always asthough he were shod in riding boots.

  He would have made a healthy studgroom for any gentleman's stable.Person and intellect were always thoroughly scrubbed as withsaddle-soap. Had he been able to afford it, his stables would have beensecond to none in England.

  Soon he would be able to afford it.

  To his intimates, including his fiancee, he was known as "Stirrups." Allday long he was in the saddle or on the box, every evening at theCataract Club or at a cabaret. Between times he called upon MissCassillis--usually finding her out. When he found her not at home, hecalled elsewhere, very casually.

  Two continents were deeply stirred over the impending alliance.