Chapter X

Woman, more than any known creature except the chameleon, reacts to her environment. Except for a sensitive little lizard going gray upon a rock and green upon a bush, there is nothing in nature more delicately responsive to background than the female soul. It is interesting to consider in Mr. Strachey’s wake, that Queen Victoria sans Windsor and Balmoral might have been any pleasant old person in a rocking-chair, with a bit of knitting between her fingers. That du Barry if born again into Hollywood might very well turn her temperament upon the silver screen and excite the easy emotions of a nation, while remaining as spotless, personally, as a hound’s tooth. What one means to say is--the difference between a desirable feminine citizen and a doubtful one, is sometimes merely the difference in their respective addresses ... the denizen of an exclusive dwelling on Park Avenue having no incentive to become a bobbed-hair bandit, and the inhabitant of a Harlem flat having neither inspiration nor opportunity to lead the social world around by the nose.

That isn’t socialism--it’s what every woman understands.

Melissa knew she wasn’t herself, on Sixty-third Street--she hadn’t guessed how quickly and in what vastly different ways, herself would develop once beauty and ease were round her.

She hadn’t, for instance, guessed, how idleness would grow upon her. Lying in bed of a morning, watching the sun stream through those eastern windows--that was, in no time at all, part of the daily ritual. Breakfast at ten, after a leisurely bathing and dressing--that didn’t leave much of the morning ... not that it mattered ... when, even supposing a morning were saved--what was one to do with it?

The old years when nine saw her typewriter unhooded, for work--and five, sometimes six, saw it still in action, receded in no time almost past remembering. Melissa didn’t seem to herself, at all the same creature who had drudged through dull days, and slept through tired nights--in a room on a grimy brownstone street....

She forgot--wonderfully--what she had come from. She lived--beautifully--in the moment. She wouldn’t ask herself where she was going, because she meant in any case to go--and the answer mightn’t have been too edifying.

“Here I am--” that was all she admitted ... “where I never hoped to be. It’s my chance. It will be my own fault if I fumble it.”

So she hardened herself, deliberately and coolly. She made herself a shell of deliberate and considered allure. She bought her clothes and arranged her rooms, even set the flowers in her gleaming crystal bowls, with an unswerving consideration of the appeal to be conveyed.

To masculine eyes.

It isn’t, after all, so far-fetched a picture, even in this day of economic independence for the ladies. At least half the female world still goes husband-hunting, between the ages of eighteen and ... well, shall we say between the ages? Also, the paraphernalia of the chase, while deriving more, perhaps from sport-shops and tobacco-shops and so on than it formerly did, is still--the paraphernalia of the chase. He who denies it deludes himself--and is thus merely twice doomed.

Melissa denied not even to herself the elemental starkness of her motives. Everything she did, looked one way, had one sole end in view. Of course the extenuating fact in her man-hunting was, that it wasn’t so much the man she wanted as beauty which he was to be able to give her. Beauty which all her life she had wanted and never until now come near. At that, when she allowed herself to realize how coolly, how almost dispassionately she was conducting her search for a husband--she had her moments of revulsion ... deep-seated.

“You’re an odd creature,” the Marchesa told her crossly about a week after the amazing episode of Luke Kenealy.... “--I have to remind myself, from time to time that I have seen you distressed--that I have heard you talk of killing yourself--except of course that there wasn’t any gas-jet in your room.... It’s hard to realize you ever wore plain little hats and blue serge frocks ... and read aloud to me by the hour.”

“I still wear fairly plain hats,” said Melissa calmly--“and I shall be very happy to read aloud to you again--at any time you like.”

“H’mph!” said the ungracious Marchesa. “I wouldn’t have it! It affects even _me_--that Vere de Vere manner of yours. I’d be uneasy, all the time, wondering if perhaps you weren’t bored,--”

“Sorry!” murmured Melissa, dropping white eyelids.

“There!” cried the Marchesa in a species of irritable triumph--“You might be Lady-What’s-Her-Name herself! As for your hats--you’ve got an absolute genius for clothes and you know it. I was nervous at first--I’ll admit. It isn’t every woman you could turn loose in the shops with a sizable allowance--for the first time in her life--and have her come out looking presentable. You’re more than presentable--nom d’un pipe!--you’re seductive--in a perfectly well-bred way!”

“I have no intention of being seductive,” said Melissa.

“Yes, you have! Or if you haven’t you’re a bigger fool than I take you to be--” the Marchesa emitted a disconcerting little whinny of laughter. “You know your type, my dear--you knew it before you were able to dress it--a siren in a working-girl shell--that’s what you were.... When I look at you I feel as if I’d cracked a chrysalis--or however you open ’em--and let out a Great Peacock Moth.”

“Thanks,” said Melissa, smiling faintly.

“Upon my word,” said the Marchesa, “you amuse me so, I feel twenty years younger.”

They were driving along Riverside, in the Marchesa’s palatial gray limousine, and against the windless shadows of that swiftly moving interior, Melissa’s flush showed clear.

“Hate to amuse anybody, don’t you!” continued the inquisitor placidly. “Proud as the devil--well, I don’t know that pride’s a bad thing for a woman. Helps to keep her mouth shut when she’s hurt--and she’s bound to be hurt sooner or later,--looking for a lover.”

“I am not looking for a lover,” said Melissa.

“Aren’t you?” replied the Marchesa blandly. “Well--well! Tell me more about this Mr. Kenealy of yours. Have you seen him since your very charming little tea-party the other afternoon?”

“I see him almost every day,” said Melissa languidly and watched curiosity quicken in those old-eagle eyes with a wicked satisfaction.

“Every day--? Not very discreet of you, my dear. The man will be fed up in no time.”

“It really isn’t my fault. There’s no way to avoid it.”

“Fiddlesticks--you can always say you’ve another engagement.”

“Not very well--you see, we go up and down, quite a bit, together.”

“My good girl--what are you talking about--? Up and down what? A stick?”

Melissa answered sweetly as if unaware of anything startling in her statement: “He lives in the apartment next mine.”

“Ciel!” said the Marchesa.

She added, feeling the need perhaps of a rounder oath---“Mon Dieu--it can’t be true!”

“I assure you,” said Melissa.

The Marchesa inquired sharply--“Did you know it when he brought you the letter--from your friend in--India?”

“China, it was,” said Melissa, and finished casually--“You forget--he brought me the letter two days before I left the office. I wasn’t at that time living in the place myself.”

“Of course--of course,” said the Marchesa. Upon the heels of a vibrant silence, she suddenly snapped--“Did he bring you a letter at all?”

“No,” said Melissa and looked out of the window--because it took all her courage to bring out that one flat word, without parrying the Marchesa’s glance.

“Ha!” said the Marchesa. “I thought not!” She bristled with intentness like a terrier at a rat-hole. “Where did you really meet him?”

So Melissa disdaining to withhold, when payment was requested of her, related very briefly, with no attempt at extenuation, the happening in the Park and the later happening at her door. Between these two scenes, the listener might make her own liaison--from memory.

At the end of the story, the Marchesa burst into a sequence of ribald chucklings.

“You have the soul of an adventurer!” she said at length.

“I think I have the soul of a hussy,” returned Melissa somberly.

“Nonsense! Don’t spoil the whole thing with a conscience. You are delicious. You are better than Scheherazade. I thought there was something tricky in that little affair of yours.... I caught a look or so ... something in the air.... I have a very keen nose,” said the Marchesa modestly. “Well--I can’t tell you how intrigued I am--you have seen him again? Oh--not only in the elevator--if you please! Tête-à-tête, of course!”

“I have been to dinner and to a theater with him,” said Melissa ... “and last night to a party--in his apartment.”

“A party! You have been to a party? What gown did you wear?”

“I wore the almond green georgette.”

“With pearls?”

“Earrings and the long string.”

“Good! Exactly the thing I should have selected. What sort of people did you meet?” The filmed gleam of the Marchesa’s eyes, the excited quiver about that rouged old mouth! Melissa felt herself shrinking and so put on a yet more indifferent front.

“One or two rather nice men.”

“No women?--Do you mean to say there were no women there?”

“There were women, of course--I didn’t notice them.”

The Marchesa caught up the speaking-tube and instructed the startled chauffeur shrilly--she turned back to Melissa with a positive warmth on her wrinkled cheeks, the purplish flush of a dying rose.

“I am taking you home to dinner with me,” she announced and settled her velvet neck-band and tossed her curled gray head in its invincibly smart bonnet.

“One or two rather nice men--I want to hear all about it, my dear! And you didn’t notice the women? This is too delicious! You are without a doubt--the most amusing creature I have ever met!”