Chapter XIV

Luke Kenealy took Melissa to Austin Beall’s party--under protest.

“I know,” he said--in the car, on the way to Beall’s house--“you met him in my apartment. I know he’s interesting--he’s got a good line and a better cellar--but I don’t like him--for _you_--and that’s that!”

“Which shall I avoid--his line or his cellar?” asked Melissa in a docile voice with an impertinent whiplash of laughter.

“No fooling,” said Luke Kenealy, “he’s not your kind, my dear! As for the cellar ... if I thought you needed supervision on that score--I wouldn’t be taking you out. I may not be clever but I know what I like--and I don’t like bacchanalian females. Vine-leaves on the hat if you will--but not in the hair. It isn’t pretty. It blurs the complexion and the morale. Both of which are most important in a lady....”

“Don’t be silly,” said Melissa with languid sweetness. “You know I never drink anything at all. I don’t like it.”

“Your control sometimes terrifies me,” he told her gravely.

“Then it _is_ his line you’re afraid of--for me?”

Kenealy laughed. He took Melissa’s slim-fingered cool white hand, lying idle on her silver lap and kissed it lightly. When they had passed beneath a streetlamp and into comparative obscurity, he kissed it once more and gave it back to her.

“Beall’s old at the game,” he said pleasantly. “You’re not. I think if you’ll forgive my mentioning it, you’re about to burn your fingers. He collects burnt fingers, so I’ve been told. Has whole rows of ’em hanging up in his work-shop. Some with rings and some without. New kind of Bluebeard--d’y’see?”

“Luke--are you jealous?” asked Melissa gently.

“Perhaps,” said Kenealy, “but it doesn’t affect my eyesight. Nor my memory. I’ve known Austin a long time. I knew his first wife--and his second--if that doesn’t constitute auld acquaintance--what does?”

“Two wives!” cried Melissa, forgetting to be a woman of the world who accepted such things as she found them.

“Two wives. Count them! One dead--one divorced....”

“I hadn’t known--not that it matters.”

“Stay with that point of view and see where it gets you,” Kenealy advised her.

The taxi slid down Fifth Avenue with interminable waits for cross-town traffic, sharp bursts of speed in between.

“Are we late?” murmured Melissa.

“Not late enough,” said Kenealy. With, for him, incredible earnestness, he added--“I’m trying to tell you--this’ll be a wild party--and you’ve got no business on it ... you’d be a good bit better off at home, with a bound volume of--something safe and improving. Le Rire--for example.”

“Why, Luke--the party is being given for me!”

“I know,” said Kenealy stubbornly ... “--and you put cheese in a trap when you entertain a mouse ... very well! I’ll be around some fine morning in less than a month to say What Did I Tell You?”

“How absurd--what could he possibly....”

“You’re under the microscope--at the very least--if you enjoy that.”

“You mean--his plays? But, Luke, he’s never done anything about my kind of woman.”

“Stick around next winter. See him try something new!” said Kenealy, and rode the rest of the way in silence.

Beall met them at the door, put a hand on Luke’s shoulder and caught Melissa’s fingers close. He had a charming grin, frank as a schoolboy’s but his eyes were too light and exceedingly wary. Also, his silver-gray hair, brushed back from a splendid forehead in a stubbornly rippling, close-cut cap gave him an odd suggestion of classic immobility--which the full, smooth lips, deep-dented at the corners, were far from bearing out.

“Thought you’d thrown me over!” he said warmly. Somehow, in a moment he had gotten Luke out of the way and was taking Lissa up the stairs to the dressing-room, with a hand on her arm, an approving whisper at her ear.

“Look like a million, Lissa!”

“I’m so glad,” said Melissa coolly. She faintly smiled, in a way she had found appealed to him. It inferred deeper sophistication than she possessed but she hoped he hadn’t guessed it and for the matter of that she rather hoped in time to acquire such sophistication as she needed.

She told him softly--“You said you liked this frock.”

“I adore it!” said Beall. “Don’t be long, will you?--the party’s no good without you.”

The feel of his fingers closing on her arm, lingered while she sat before the mirror, running a comb through the soft dark wave of her hair, retouching cheeks and lips. She looked rather lovely and recognized the fact with a physical tremor of exultation. A long way to come, from the Melissa of Sixty-third Street and the office ... from the Melissa of a haberdashery salesman’s abortive attentions ... the Melissa of hole-and-corner tea-rooms--of stockings washed out at night and hung over chair-backs to dry ... from all that fell into the shadows out of which this Melissa emerged, radiant, luminous, poised....

The other women chattered in high, affected voices, laying aside their gorgeous furs and brocades, smoking feverishly while they waited their turns at the mirror. Melissa took her time, stood up at last, quite satisfied, picked up handkerchief and bag--

“Never smoke, do you?” suggested a slender blonde person in vivid scarlet with hair cut close to a round young head, and a matadorish curl at each ear. Her name was Em’ly Armistead--at least that was what Melissa had heard her called, one place and another--and she cherished openly an inordinate affection for Luke Kenealy, which was why she always singled out Melissa to talk to in dressing-rooms and on stairways.

“Luke adores you,” she frequently said.

And Melissa usually replied: “Oh, do you think so?--We’re fearfully good friends.” Which seemed in a way to alleviate Em’ly’s uneasiness where Luke was concerned.

She offered to-night, going down the wide shallow stairs with her hand through Melissa’s arm: “You came with Luke, didn’t you? He looks black as your hat. Whatever have you done to him? Did you quarrel--coming up?”

“I never quarrel,” said Melissa coolly.

Em’ly Armistead bored her. Most women bored her. She remembered just at that moment a saying of the Marchesa’s ... “I have never sincerely liked any woman--except my mother.”

Melissa had never sincerely liked any woman--yet. She barely remembered her mother.

“You’re so cold!” objected Em’ly and gave Melissa’s arm a little squeeze.

Melissa withdrew it gently but definitely.

“To-night’s going to be good,” went on Em’ly, quite unrebuffed.

“So Luke says,” murmured Melissa.

“Prob’ly why he’s so black. He hates a wild party--and yet--he’d be marvelous,” sighed Em’ly wistfully--“if he’d once let himself go. Is it because he doesn’t want to--or doesn’t dare?”

“How should I know?”

“He’s sweeter to you than I’ve ever seen him. He’s been running around with this crowd for a couple of years, and you’re the first woman he’s ever seemed really to care about. You know, Melissa--he’s one of the biggest men in town--at his kind of thing. None of the others come near him. He’s had marvelous offers from syndicates.”

“He doesn’t do--anything for the movies?” asked Melissa with careful indifference.

“Luke!--For the movies? Somebody’s been spoofing you!” cried Em’ly. She added, pausing at the foot of the stairway and putting out a hand to Beall who turned to meet them, “If it were Austin--Austin would be marvelous in Hollywood ... he’s just the type!”

“Let my past alone!” retorted Beall good-humoredly. “I’m hitching my wagon to a star, now--” he drew Melissa down with a smile and a touch.

“--Then all I say is--the star had better hitch itself in heaven!” said Em’ly with a burst of derisive laughter and took her scarlet gown and her fair head and her long amber cigaret-holder off into the heart of the party.