The Flirt

by Booth Tarkington

  “Richard,” he heard Laura say, a vague alarm in her voice, “what is it? What is the matter?”

  Then Lindley: “I did not know what to do about it. I couldn’t think of any sensible thing. I suppose what I am doing is the stupidest of all the things I thought of, but at least it’s honest—so I’ve brought it back to you myself. Take it, please.”

  There was a crackling of the stiff wrapping paper, a little pause, then a strange sound from Laura. It was not vocal and no more than just audible: it was a prolonged scream in a whisper.

  Hedrick ventured an eye at the crack, between the partly open door and its casing. Lindley stood with his back to him, but the boy had a clear view of Laura. She was leaning against the wall, facing Richard, the book clutched in both arms against her bosom, the wrapping paper on the floor at her feet.

  “I thought of sending it back and pretending to think it had been left at my mother’s house by mistake,” said Richard sadly, “and of trying to make it seem that I hadn’t read any of it. I thought of a dozen ways to pretend I believed you hadn’t really meant me to read it–-“

  Making a crucial effort, she managed to speak.

  You—think I—did mean–-“

  “Well,” he answered, with a helpless shrug, “you sent it! But it’s what’s in it that really matters, isn’t it? I could have pretended anything in a note, I suppose, if I had written instead of coming. But I found that what I most dreaded was meeting you again, and as we’ve got to meet, of course, it seemed to me the only thing to do was to blunder through a talk with you, somehow or another, and get that part of it over. I thought the longer I put off facing you, the worse it would be for both of us—and—and the more embarrassing. I’m no good at pretending, anyhow; and the thing has happened. What use is there in not being honest? Well?”

  She did not try again to speak. Her state was lamentable: it was all in her eyes.

  Richard hung his head wretchedly, turning partly away from her. “There’s only one way—to look at it,” he said hesitatingly, and stammering. “That is—there’s only one thing to do: to forget that it’s happened. I’m—I—oh, well, I care for Cora altogether. She’s got never to know about this. She hasn’t any idea or—suspicion of it, has she?”

  Laura managed to shake her head.

  “She never must have,” he said. “Will you promise me to burn that book now?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “I—I’m awfully sorry, Laura,” he said brokenly. “I’m not idiot enough not to see that you’re suffering horribly. I suppose I have done the most blundering thing possible.” He stood a moment, irresolute, then turned to the door. “Good-bye.”

  Hedrick had just time to dive into the hideous little room of the multitudinous owls as Richard strode into the hall. Then, with the closing of the front door, the boy was back at his post.

  Laura stood leaning against the wall, the book clutched in her arms, as Richard had left her. Slowly she began to sink, her eyes wide open, and, with her back against the wall, she slid down until she was sitting upon the floor. Her arms relaxed and hung limp at her sides, letting the book topple over in her lap, and she sat motionless.

  One of her feet protruded from her skirt, and the leaping firelight illumined it ruddily. It was a graceful foot in an old shoe which had been resoled and patched. It seemed very still, that patched shoe, as if it might stay still forever. Hedrick knew that Laura had not fainted, but he wished she would move her foot.

  He went away. He went into the owl-room again, and stood there silently a long, long time. Then he stole back again toward the library door, but caught a glimpse of that old, motionless shoe through the doorway as he came near. Then he spied no more. He went out to the stable, and, secluding himself in his studio, sat moodily to meditate.

  Something was the matter. Something had gone wrong. He had thrown a bomb which he had expected to go off with a stupendous bang, leaving him, as the smoke cleared, looking down in merry triumph, stinging his fallen enemies with his humour, withering them with satire, and inquiring of them how it felt, now THEY were getting it. But he was decidedly untriumphant: he wished Laura had moved her foot and that she hadn’t that patch upon her shoe. He could not get his mind off that patch. He began to feel very queer: it seemed to be somehow because of the patch. If she had worn a pair of new shoes that morning… . Yes, it was that patch.

  Thirteen is a dangerous age: nothing is more subtle. The boy, inspired to play the man, is beset by his own relapses into childhood, and Hedrick was near a relapse.

  By and by, he went into the house again, to the library. Laura was not there, but he found the fire almost smothered under heaping ashes. She had burned her book.

  He went into the room where the piano was, and played “The Girl on the Saskatchewan” with one finger; then went out to the porch and walked up and down, whistling cheerily.

  After that, he went upstairs and asked Miss Peirce how his father was “feeling,” receiving a noncommital reply; looked in at Cora’s room; saw that his mother was lying asleep on Cora’s bed and Cora herself examining the contents of a dressing-table drawer; and withdrew. A moment later, he stood in the passage outside Laura’s closed door listening. There was no sound.

  He retired to his own chamber, found it unbearable, and, fascinated by Laura’s, returned thither; and, after standing a long time in the passage, knocked softly on the door.

  “Laura,” he called, in a rough and careless voice, “it’s kind of a pretty day outdoors. If you’ve had your nap, if I was you I’d go out for a walk.” There was no response. “I’ll go with you,” he added, “if you want me to.”

  He listened again and heard nothing. Then he turned the knob softly. The door was unlocked; he opened it and went in.

  Laura was sitting in a chair, with her back to a window, her hands in her lap. She was staring straight in front of her.

  He came near her hesitatingly, and at first she did not seem to see him or even to know that she was not alone in the room. Then she looked at him wonderingly, and, as he stood beside her, lifted her right hand and set it gently upon his head.

  “Hedrick,” she said, “was it you that took my book to–-“

  All at once he fell upon his knees, hid his face in her lap, and burst into loud and passionate sobbing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Valentine Corliss, having breakfasted in bed at a late hour that morning, dozed again, roused himself, and, making a toilet, addressed to the image in his shaving-mirror a disgusted monosyllable.

  “Ass!”

  However, he had not the look of a man who had played cards all night to a disastrous tune with an accompaniment in Scotch. His was a surface not easily indented: he was hard and healthy, clear-skinned and clear-eyed. When he had made himself point-device, he went into the “parlour” of his apartment, frowning at the litter of malodorous, relics, stumps and stubs and bottles and half-drained glasses, scattered chips and cards, dregs of a night, session. He had been making acquaintances.

  He sat at the desk and wrote with a steady hand in Italian:

  MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MOLITERNO:

  We live but learn little. As to myself it appears that I learn nothing—nothing! You will at once convey to me by CABLE five thousand lire. No; add the difference in exchange so as to make it one thousand dollars which I shall receive, taking that sum from the two-hundred and thirty thousand lire which I entrusted to your safekeeping by cable as the result of my enterprise in this place. I should have returned at once, content with that success, but as you know I am a very stupid fellow, never pleased with a moderate triumph, nor with a large one, when there is a possible prospect of greater. I am compelled to believe that the greater I had in mind in this case was an illusion: my gentle diplomacy avails nothing against a small miser—for we have misers even in these States, though you will not believe it. I abandon him to his riches! From the success of my venture I reserved four thousand dollars to keep by me and for my expenses, and it is hu
miliating to relate that all of this, except a small banknote or two, was taken from me last night by amateurs. I should keep away from cards—they hate me, and alone I can do nothing with them. Some young gentlemen of the place, whose acquaintance I had made at a ball, did me the honour of this lesson at the native game of poker, at which I—though also native—am not even so expert as yourself, and, as you will admit, Antonio, my friend, you are not a good player—when observed. Unaided, I was a child in their hands. It was also a painful rule that one paid for the counters upon delivery. This made me ill, but I carried it off with an air of carelessness creditable to an adopted Neapolitan. Upon receipt of the money you are to cable me, I shall leave this town and sail immediately. Come to Paris, and meet me there at the place on the Rue Auber within ten days from your reading this letter. You will have, remaining, two hundred and twenty-five thousand francs, which it will be safer to bring in cash, and I will deal well with you, as is our custom with each other. You have done excellently throughout; your cables and letters for exhibition concerning those famous oil wells have been perfection; and I shall of course not deduct what was taken by these thieves of poker players from the sum of profits upon which we shall estimate your commission. I have several times had the feeling that the hour for departure had arrived; now I shall delay not a moment after receiving your cable, though I may occupy the interim with a last attempt to interest my small miser. Various circumstances cause me some uneasiness, though I do not believe I could be successfully assailed by the law in the matter of oil. You do own an estate in Basilicata, at least your brother does—these good people here would not be apt to discover the difference—and the rest is a matter of plausibility. The odious coincidence of encountering the old cow, Pryor, fretted me somewhat (though he has not repeated his annoying call), and I have other small apprehensions—for example, that it may not improve my credit if my loss of last night becomes gossip, though the thieves professed strong habits of discretion. My little affair of gallantry grows embarrassing. Such affairs are so easy to inaugurate; extrication is more difficult. However, without it I should have failed to interest my investor and there is always the charm. Your last letter is too curious in that matter. Licentious man, one does not write of these things while under the banner of the illustrious Uncle Sam—I am assuming the American attitude while here, or perhaps my early youth returns to me—a thing very different from your own boyhood, Don Antonio. Nevertheless, I promise you some laughter in the Rue Auber. Though you will not be able to understand the half of what I shall tell you—particularly the portraits I shall sketch of my defeated rivals—your spirit shall roll with laughter.

  To the bank, then, the instant you read. Cable me one thousand dollars, and be at the Rue Auber not more than ten days later. To the bank! Thence to the telegraph office. Speed!

  V. C.

  He was in better spirits as he read over this letter, and he chuckled as he addressed it. He pictured himself in the rear room of the bar in the Rue Auber, relating, across the little marble-topped table, this American adventure, to the delight of that blithe, ne’er-do-well outcast of an exalted poor family, that gambler, blackmailer and merry rogue, Don Antonio Moliterno, comrade and teacher of this ductile Valentine since the later days of adolescence. They had been school-fellows in Rome, and later roamed Europe together unleashed, discovering worlds of many kinds. Valentine’s careless mother let her boy go as he liked, and was often negligent in the matter of remittances: he and his friend learned ways to raise the wind, becoming expert and making curious affiliations. At her death there was a small inheritance; she had not been provident. The little she left went rocketing, and there was the wind to be raised again: young Corliss had wits and had found that they could supply him—most of the time—with much more than the necessities of life. He had also found that he possessed a strong attraction for various women; already—at twenty-two—his experience was considerable, and, in his way, he became a specialist. He had a talent; he improved it and his opportunities. Altogether, he took to the work without malice and with a light heart… .

  He sealed the envelope, rang for a boy, gave him the letter to post, and directed that the apartment should be set to rights. It was not that in which he had received Ray Vilas. Corliss had moved to rooms on another floor of the hotel, the day after that eccentric and somewhat ominous person had called to make an “investment.” Ray’s shadowy forebodings concerning that former apartment had encountered satire: Corliss was a “materialist” and, at the mildest estimate, an unusually practical man, but he would never sleep in a bed with its foot toward the door; southern Italy had seeped into him. He changed his rooms, a measure of which Don Antonio Moliterno would have wholly approved. Besides, these were as comfortable as the others, and so like them as even to confirm Ray’s statement concerning “A Reading from Homer”: evidently this work had been purchased by the edition.

  A boy came to announce that his “roadster” waited for him at the hotel entrance, and Corliss put on a fur motoring coat and cap, and went downstairs. A door leading from the hotel bar into the lobby was open, and, as Corliss passed it, there issued a mocking shout:

  “Tor’dor! Oh, look at the Tor’dor! Ain’t he the handsome Spaniard!”

  Ray Vilas stumbled out, tousled, haggard, waving his arms in absurd and meaningless gestures; an amused gallery of tipplers filling the doorway behind him.

  “Goin’ take Carmen buggy ride in the country, ain’t he? Good ole Tor’dor!” he quavered loudly, clutching Corliss’s shoulder. “How much you s’pose he pays f’ that buzz-buggy by the day, jeli’m’n? Naughty Tor’dor, stole thousand dollars from me—makin’ presents—diamond cresses. Tor’dor, I hear you been playing cards. Tha’s sn’t nice. Tor’dor, you’re not a goo’ boy at all—YOU know you oughtn’t waste Dick Lindley’s money like that!”

  Corliss set his open hand upon the drunkard’s breast and sent him gyrating and plunging backward. Some one caught the grotesque figure as it fell.

  “Oh, my God,” screamed Ray, “I haven’t got a gun on me! He KNOWS I haven’t got my gun with me! WHY haven’t I got my gun with me?”

  They hustled him away, and Corliss, enraged and startled, passed on. As he sped the car up Corliss Street, he decided to anticipate his letter to Moliterno by a cable. He had stayed too long.

  Cora looked charming in a new equipment for November motoring; yet it cannot be said that either of them enjoyed the drive. They lunched a dozen miles out from the city at an establishment somewhat in the nature of a roadside inn; and, although its cuisine was quite unknown to Cora’s friend, Mrs. Villard (an eager amateur of the table), they were served with a meal of such unusual excellence that the waiter thought it a thousand pities patrons so distinguished should possess such poor appetites.

  They returned at about three in the afternoon, and Cora descended from the car wearing no very amiable expression.

  “Why won’t you come in now?” she asked, looking at him angrily. “We’ve got to talk things out. We’ve settled nothing whatever. I want to know why you can’t stop.”

  “I’ve got some matters to attend to, and–-“

  “What matters?” She shot him a glance of fierce skepticism.

  “Are you packing to get out?”

  “Cora!” he cried reproachfully, “how can you say things like that to ME!”

  She shook her head. “Oh, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least! How do I know what you’ll do? For all I know, you may be just that kind of a man. You SAID you ought to be going–-“

  “Cora,” he explained, gently, “I didn’t say I meant to go. I said only that I thought I ought to, because Moliterno will be needing me in Basilicata. I ought to be there, since it appears that no more money is to be raised here. I ought to be superintending operations in the oil-field, so as to make the best use of the little I have raised.”

  “You?” she laughed. “Of course I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

  He sighed deeply. “You kno
w perfectly well that I appreciate all you did. We don’t seem to get on very well to-day–-“

  “No!” She laughed again, bitterly. “So you think you’ll be going, don’t you?”

  “To my rooms to write some necessary letters.”

  “Of course not to pack your trunk?”

  “Cora,” he returned, goaded; “sometimes you’re just impossible. I’ll come tomorrow forenoon.”

  “Then don’t bring the car. I’m tired of motoring and tired of lunching in that rotten hole. We can talk just as well in the library. Papa’s better, and that little fiend will be in school tomorrow. Come out about ten.”

  He started the machine. “Don’t forget I love you,” he called in a low voice.

  She stood looking after him as the car dwindled down the street.

  “Yes, you do!” she murmured.

  She walked up the path to the house, her face thoughtful, as with a tiresome perplexity. In her own room, divesting herself of her wraps, she gave the mirror a long scrutiny. It offered the picture of a girl with a hard and dreary air; but Cora saw something else, and presently, though the dreariness remained, the hardness softened to a great compassion. She suffered: a warm wave of sorrow submerged her, and she threw herself upon the bed and wept long and silently for herself.

  At last her eyes dried, and she lay staring at the ceiling. The doorbell rang, and Sarah, the cook, came to inform her that Mr. Richard Lindley was below.

  “Tell him I’m out.”

  “Can’t,” returned Sarah. “Done told him you was home.” And she departed firmly.

  Thus abandoned, the prostrate lady put into a few words what she felt about Sarah, and, going to the door, whisperingly summoned in Laura, who was leaving the sick-room, across the hall.