Chapter XXX

Amazing, the swiftness and stillness with which actors in the human comedy group themselves and fall apart and regroup themselves quite otherwise, at the nod of an invisible stage-manager ... shifting like shadows on a road ... like anything but free-willed men and women! Forever making patterns, which they never see entire, and to the beauty or the horror of which they contribute blindly--confidently, even. Secure in their own control of--the moment.

Such a pattern, such a shifting Melissa now realized, without desire to question what shifting and what pattern might come after.

One day, Luke was her friend--not free to be more--next day he was her lover but all his freedom could not keep him there. Now, not even a friend ... since lovers do not go back that way....

One day Murdock stood ready to her hand--the next--gone--wiped out of her scene ... a word or so, one hadn’t, the moment before, been aware one was going to speak ... a word or so in answer ... a silence--and an exit!... Friendship, love and whatnot--all gone off-stage together. In the matter of Murdock.

Beall was like an actor whose lines have not gotten over, whose scenes have merely filled a gap till greater than he came on.

Melissa felt--about Beall--almost as if she had never known him. Had read of him in some briefly amusing book perhaps. Had seen his face upon an ink-smudged page. Heard his voice through a talking-machine.

Never to see him--never to hear him again--she didn’t in the least regret that. He had been a potential, not an active, contact--never vividly existing for her.

Nothing, now, existed for her--vividly--but Mister Roderick. She had willed to be free when he came. And a day and a night away he waited for her ... who had waited so blindly, so stubbornly for him.

Melissa scarcely slept, the night before the Marchesa’s little supper-party. She lay with closed eyes in a blissful half-dream and knew the hours going by. Knew the darkness deepening and dulling and waning ... knew the first warmth of dawn in a cloudy East. She cried to herself again and again--“You little fool! _Can’t you sleep?_ Think what you’ll look like ... to-morrow!”

But it didn’t help her--to oblivion.

Very nearly night-long she conjured up, against the blackness of closed eyelids, Mister Roderick, half-kneeling, cigarette in hand, head back, coolly asking--what? If only Kathleen hadn’t cleaned up the desk! Melissa might still have had the picture of him--under her pillow--that night.

Day came, inevitably, if tardily, and breakfast--at the end of more dragging hours, luncheon, as well.

The Marchesa had said--“Come in about seven.”

At four, Melissa, swathed in a garment of white linen, coifed in white like a moody nun, lay back in a long cushioned chair, before a dressing-table littered with gayly-colored little bottles and jars, and gave herself into the hands of an impersonal young woman in nurse-like uniform.

“I should like to look--rather nice, to-night,” murmured Melissa.

“Your eyes are a bit dark,” said the young woman reprovingly. “Have you been using our eye-lotion regularly?”

Melissa said she had. She didn’t add that she had been using up her emotions as well, in a way to render anybody’s eye-lotion fairly futile.

“Do the best you can,” said Melissa humbly.

“We’ll try a cold astringent pack,” said the young woman and did so with delightful result.

Between five and six, Melissa began the process of dressing, so as not to have to hurry at the last.

She had chosen, for Mister Roderick’s first sight of her, a gown flesh-colored and black. Dangerously simple--a tea-rose in a thunder-storm ... no rings, no pearls, no trappings of any sort. Melissa’s own soft, dark hair, her shadowy eyes, her delicately rosed mouth--the only accents of the picture.

Only a woman in love could have found so much to do to herself by way of imperceptible adornment that the little clock on the bed-table showed ten minutes of seven before Melissa bent to her mirror for a last wistful look and went out, catching her cloak about her, forgetting handkerchief and purse and key....

All of which she remembered about the seventh floor and returned for, abruptly.

She rode up Riverside in a musty yellow taxi. It might have been the King’s coach--or Cinderella’s pumpkin. She said to the driver when she alighted--“Thank you so much....” and tipped him absurdly.

She smiled at the elevator-boy on her way up to the Marchesa’s apartment and when Anna opened the door she smiled again at _her_.

“Good evening, Miss Wayne,” said Anna, in reply, not to be won over by anything in petticoats. “Will you lay your wraps in here?”

So Melissa laid her wraps in there--it was the Marchesa’s bedroom--and with one more glance at the glass, with a wild little prayer in her heart walked out to meet Mister Roderick.

The Marchesa, as was her custom, sat in the winged chair. She was all black velvet and old-fashioned diamonds--obviously an occasion--a royal cluster of orchids lay in her lap.

Mister Roderick was beside her. He had stooped for something the Marchesa had let fall, just before Melissa came in and he rose--and turned--a trifle slowly.

The Marchesa lifted her orchids to her nose--above them appreciation of a climax glinted between her scant, blackened lashes....

“Melissa--” said the Marchesa, “this is Roderick.” Nothing more. Almost a tremor in the reedy old voice.

“How do you do?” said Melissa. She gave him her hand. She gave him her eyes.

The hand was cold and the eyes were black with unbelief.

It wasn’t Mister Roderick at all.

That is, it was of course Mister Roderick, because the Marchesa said so and she had known him all his life. He was her nephew and she was his aunt. That much was incontrovertible.

But he wasn’t the man of the picture. Any more than Melissa was the Marchesa. And not being the man of the picture--it made no difference who he was. To Melissa.

She heard him say--as she had said--“How do you do?” And took back her hand and looked at the opposite wall in desperate need of a place to hide, till the universe should stop spinning.

A pleasant-faced, stocky young man, with a mild blue eye, a small blond mustache, an amiable mouth....

Not the eyes--not, in a thousand years, the mouth--of the man with the cigarette between his fingers--the man whose picture Melissa had carried about with her over her heart.... Of course the picture had been gone for weeks ... but Melissa knew every shadow and line of it.... She would have known the original in the great Gobi Desert--on Fifth Avenue--in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This man was somebody else--that was all.

And she hadn’t, with the Marchesa watching her, simpering and beaming at her in a glow of great-lady indulgence, time to do more than just accept the fact.

Melissa would very nearly have given her soul in that instant of abysmal disappointment--to be alone. She had, however, to play out the piece.

The Marchesa was saying something about a glass of sherry before dinner.

“Will you ring for Anna, Roderick?”

“The faithful Anna--” said Roderick blandly and rang as requested.

With the wine, the Marchesa gave them a toast--lifting her glass in shaky, be-jeweled fingers, looking from one to the other of them, dramatically--

“To your better acquaintance ... may it never pall!”

“Righto, Aunt Amalie!” said Roderick and looked at Melissa and laughed.

In the nicest sort of way. That was the most obvious thing about him--his entire niceness. The word might have been coined to identify him. One saw at once why he had been--wasn’t it Murdock who said so?--“one of the most popular chaps in his class.” Good humor twitched his sandy eyebrows and widened his generous mouth, at every turn. One saw him being godfather to the first baby of innumerable one-time bachelor friends. Listening to the tea-table confidences of innumerable reckless young married women ... himself, quite safe! He would always advise them to give Tom or Dick or Bill another chance.... Saying that marriage was a serious thing, by Jove!

Showing his belief in the seriousness of it by giving it, for his own part, a wide berth. The complete friend, this Roderick Delano!... But no amorist. He knew his way ’round that!

“Well, Melissa!” said the Marchesa leading the way to the supper-table with a faint clashing of bracelets and a quite perceptible dissemination of Peau d’Espagne.... “I have been telling Roderick how absurdly you adore his apartment. I have been suggesting to him that he go back to Japan and leave you to occupy it in peace....”

“Shall I?” asked Roderick obligingly. He seated first his aunt and then Melissa in the mellow light of the Marchesa’s candles, he looked at Melissa once more.

And his look was warm with approval. Not unnaturally. Melissa that night had made the most of herself, with exquisite result.

She murmured--“I _have_ enjoyed it. It is a charming place. I’m sure you must be wanting it back again.” Empty little words, prettily inflected. Beneath the sound of them she was thinking desperately ... “That window--he never stood there at all ... that wasn’t his room ... nor his fire!... It belongs to this man--all of it. Then who was the other? And where is he, now? Oh God--what a crazy fool I have been!...”

“This shrimp cocktail, dear boy,” said the Marchesa graciously, “is after your old recipe--remember?”

Her nephew remembered. He took on for a moment, at sight of it, the true epicure’s look--which alone would have confirmed his relationship to his hostess. “Just enough onion in the sauce,” he said gravely.

“Onion,” observed the Marchesa, selecting the portliest shrimp within her reach and regarding it affectionately before lifting it to her mouth.... “Onion is like woman’s love--to properly appreciate which ... one should never have too much of it!” She snickered behind her napkin and Roderick commented with a grin.

“Not bad! You’re in form to-night, aren’t you! She’s a wicked young thing, Miss Wayne. I hope you haven’t allowed her to come too near your morals.”

“Melissa,” said the Marchesa at once, “has no morals. She has illusions which may become morals--if they survive.... Roderick, try those cheese-straws--I had them made especially for you.”

And while Roderick critically tried the cheese-straws, Melissa’s heart-breaking inner monologue went on....

“Kathleen said--when I showed her the picture--that it was Mister Roderick!... Now _could_ she have been mistaken? Surely, Kathleen must have known! If it wasn’t--Roderick Delano--who was it?... It must have been some one! Who _was_ he? Where _is_ he? How can I ever find out?... I haven’t even the picture, now....”

“Isn’t this the most delightful little party!” cried the Marchesa gayly.

“Melissa--you haven’t said a word in ten minutes! That da Vinci smile is very effective ... but let Roderick hear your voice! I have been boasting of you. I told him you were the wittiest woman of my acquaintance and there you sit, dumb as....”

“A rose,” said Roderick quickly--“roses don’t need to be witty!” He drew a heavy-headed flower from the Dresden urn in the center of the supper-table and laid it beside Melissa’s plate.

Nice, beyond words--this Roderick--but what was niceness, and a mild blue eye and an amiable smile ... after the eyes and the smile and the man for whom Melissa had been waiting?

She pulled herself together. Pride put words in her mouth. She answered the Marchesa’s sallies acceptably--if not with conspicuous brilliancy. She fastened wide soft eyes on Roderick’s face while he talked of his travels so that he fancied himself for once blessed with a supernal audience and talked the evening through happily enough. He didn’t know, of course, that behind Melissa’s unswerving look, and fixed attention, her thoughts were running all about, madly, insistently questioning....

“Who was he? ... where is he?... How shall I ever...? No one to ask.... Could Kathleen ... but without the picture ... how could I describe--? And if I could--I’d be ashamed! Such a fool.... Oh, Lissa--such a miserable fool!”

An evening to remember!

Violets and roses and plump Dresden cherubs ... porcelain and silver and yellowing lace ... thin golden candle-light ... and the bronzy-gold sheen of an almost theatrically baked chicken ... black hot coffee in tiny frail cups....

Then out of all that, and back once more into the room of the Spanish shawl and the Marchesa’s winged chair, and the time-faded, tryst-keeping photographs.

Melissa thought that ten o’clock would never come. She couldn’t in decency leave earlier.

“Isn’t she quiet, Roderick?” suggested the Marchesa caressingly. “You’d never believe how much we’ve talked of you--Melissa and I! And wait till you see how charming she’s made that place of yours--with flowers and fal-lals and so on ... she’s a very feminine creature, for all this Ice-Maiden pose of hers!” Melissa being close beside her, the Marchesa, with mention of an Ice-Maiden, nipped sharply the under side of Melissa’s arm ... and muttered--“_Are you asleep?_”

At which Melissa talked a bit faster and louder.

An evening, indubitably, to remember!