Chapter VIII

“Tea for two--lemon and cream--and cinnamon toast--if you please!” said Melissa.

Shading three o’clock of that first afternoon,--preparations for the Marchesa’s advent going forward.

Downstairs in the restaurant a dark gentleman with pointed mustachios swept a bow and laid one hand upon his heart--such at least was the impression conveyed through the telephone.

“At half-past four, madame?”

“At half-past four.”

“Tea for two--madame?”

In some dim convolution of Melissa’s brain a fiber stirred.

She corrected, utterly without intention.... “Tea for _three_!”

“Tea for three,” repeated the one below-stairs ... and Melissa’s bridges burst into flame behind her.

There is neither excuse, explanation nor apology for what followed. Merely it seemed to Melissa, in some odd way, inevitable, that having said tea for three she was thereafter bound to produce three for tea ... so set at once about it.

She left the telephone, went into the bedroom and put on a misleading black hat ... misleading, because it looked ingenuous and wasn’t. She wore already a slim black frock to which she added gloves and all the rest of it. For signature to the portrait--like Whistler’s immortal butterfly--a pale camellia, subtly disposed between turn of the shoulder and prideful lift of the chin.

“I am going out into the highways and byways--” said Melissa to herself, locking the door of the apartment with slim chilly fingers. She added to cover a certain amateurish uneasiness.... “It’s been done before!”

And so it had--beginning with a person in the Bible who once gave a party and thus recruited his guests. Not ending there, of course.

Her impetus flagged when she came to the street.

“After all--I can’t just pick up somebody--girls do ... but it’s too horrid--too dreadfully cheap. Let the Marchesa eat it all!”

(Thinking, in that moment, of course--of the cinnamon toast.)

“It isn’t humanly possible that I don’t know a man I could ask....”

Possible or not--there it was!

“Even a cousin--” She had never had one.

“Or the husband of a friend--” She who had evaded friends, now pitifully wishing for them, with husbands appended!

Absurd as it may sound--fantastic, even--Melissa plumbed, while she walked from Sixty-seventh to Sixty-eighth Street and across into the Park, the wretchedest, grayest depths. Because to be a woman, to be young, to be reasonably fair and quite unreasonably romantic, with no one of the opposite sex for friend ... that is isolation in its essence.

Siberia, compared to that, would be as Broadway on New Year’s Eve.

Melissa could have cried--except for a certain distaste for publicity.

She thought: “I ought to be back in the office--it’s where I belong....”

But even to visualize the office chilled her to the marrow. That at least she had escaped from--temporarily. Remembering which, her courage flared and having come to a bench upon which a young man was sitting, reading a book, Melissa, abhorrent as the thing may seem, sat down beside him.

If he had looked up with a leer and addressed her in a hoarse, amorous voice she would no doubt have sprung to her feet and gone on again--hurriedly--safe for all time from the lighter forms of impulse.

He didn’t, however, do anything of the sort. He didn’t look up at all. So Melissa, with surprising technique, while appearing to consider a squat green bush across the path, regarded him closely and was presently convinced of his birth and breeding, therefore of her ability to handle the situation, unscarred.

He was tall and dark, slim and smooth-shaven--well-shod, yet hatted not too slavishly like the Prince of Wales; and his clothes, though good, were as a gentleman’s should be--not absolutely new.

Moreover, the book he was reading, bore in gold letters, upon its dusky back, Something Something by Michael Arlen--which between members of the authentic upper class is as good as an introduction any day.

Observing all of which....

“Jerry!” said Melissa suddenly--soft as Jeritza, sighing out Vissi del’Arte from the floor of Scotti’s dining-room.... “Aren’t you going to speak to me? Or shall I slip away and let you go back to China for another seven years--without seeing--?”

“Pardon?” said the reader of Arlen, with an upward inflection, and lifted exceedingly pleasant brown eyes from the page which had been holding his attention.

Directly those eyes met Melissa’s, she saw at once and of course, that she had made a most embarrassing mistake.

“Oh, do forgive me!” she stammered, “I _am_ so sorry....”

And she half rose from her seat but sank back again before the fact that the young man had at once removed his hat and was now looking at her with the most respectful interest.

“You thought I was some one you knew,” he suggested with reassuring calm.

“I thought,” said Melissa with delightful aloofness yet a touch of apology, “that you were some one I hadn’t seen in a fearfully long time ... a man named Jerry Tarleton. I looked at you several times before I spoke--I--I thought I was quite sure....”

“That’s odd--that’s very odd, indeed,” he told her, (his smile was engaging)--“because I’ve often been taken for Tarleton, before this.”

“Oh ... have you?” asked Melissa, slightly breathless.

“Yes--isn’t it strange!” said her companion.

He went on looking at her in the friendliest way, yet not without a deferential tinge of appreciation.

“In China, wasn’t he?”

“Why--yes,” said Melissa. “He--went out there, seven years ago.”

“Peking,--or Shanghai? I’ve often wondered. You see, I’ve been a good bit in Shanghai, myself--and it was there I ran across one or two people who mistook me for him....”

“He--I heard from him once or twice from Peking,” said Melissa.

“That would have been it,” said her companion easily. “Well--please don’t be distressed about this, because as I say, it’s happened before ... and with friends of his who’d seen him much more recently than you have. Matter of fact--I’m always rather flattered by it. From all I can gather he’s no end of a decent sort--one of the best.”

“He was always that,” said Melissa briefly yet, she couldn’t help feeling, with considerable poise.

“Did you know him very well?--Never mind--of course that’s rather an impertinent question!... I was only wondering if you’d heard.... I dare say you have ... about his wife....”

“His wife?” said Melissa--“Please tell me....”

“I don’t want to shock you....”

“Is she dead?” asked Melissa gently--and added, with subtle caution--“I never knew her.”

“Divorced,” said the young man regretfully. “Very unhappy business all ’round. I heard it on the boat coming over--these T.K.K. boats, you know--can hear almost anything ... all the gossip of the Orient--well, she left him. Left him flat, poor chap! Ran off with an English novelist.... Pretty rough on Tarleton, they said. He wasn’t looking for it, d’y’ see! Probably hadn’t supposed that any one _could_ run off with an English novelist.”

“Except--” said Melissa, “the one you’re reading!”

They exchanged glances. The stranger blinked and smiled.

“Like him?”

“Un-con-trollably!” said Melissa.

“Lineal descendant of Ouida ... isn’t he? With a draft from Lady Windermere’s fan. Odd stuff to come out of England--to-day! Your friend Jerry Tarleton, now--might have walked out of one of his stories.”

“Mightn’t he just!” said Melissa. She rose with languid grace. “Some day when you’re back--in Shanghai--if you meet Jerry, himself--you might tell him ... about this ... about seeing me....”

He rose as well, stood there smiling down at her, the low sun glinting darkly on his uncovered head. “And whom shall I tell him I saw?”

“Just say--Lissa ... he’ll know!”

“L-i-s-s-a?”

Melissa nodded.

“No other message?”

“None--and I shall be late for tea if I stop any longer. You do forgive me, don’t you--for my silly mistake?”

“Not if you’re going to leave it at that.”

“What else can one do?”

“One might let Jerry Tarleton’s double see one to one’s doorstep. Isn’t he any sort of credential at all?”

Melissa murmured moving off--“My doorstep’s only a bit away.”

He walked beside her swinging an idle stick. “Sorry--but half a loaf, you remember--great deal better than dieting.”

“I really shouldn’t do this--as you know,” said Melissa.

“And I feel very strongly,” he asserted, “that I _should_. So there’s a deadlock.” He added hopefully, “Why don’t you ask me to tea? There’s a lot about Tarleton I haven’t told you....”

“Are you quite mad?” asked Melissa sweetly.

“Not quite, but I’m off to a flying start ... and I wish _you_ were!”

“That’s very nice and unselfish of you....”

“Not unselfish at all--it was your speaking of tea that did it. I can smell the buttered toast....”

“Cinnamon toast. This is where I turn.”

“Central Park West? Oh--cinnamon toast!” he accepted cheerfully. “That’s better, if anything. Honestly--you’ve no idea how hungry I am--”

“But I don’t know you,” said Melissa in delicately amused protest.

“You know Jerry Tarleton--don’t you?”

“I do ... but you don’t! So there isn’t even that.”

Momentarily it floored him. He recovered amazingly.

“If I promise to look him up the instant I get back to China ... won’t that do?”

“Beautifully--for next time. You may bring me a letter.”

“You look like Shelmerdene or Virginia,” he told her, “but you’re behaving like Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage-Patch. Is it possible that just because we haven’t said How-do-you-do before witnesses ... you’re going to pretend that we’re strangers....”

“Here is where I live,” said Melissa, inclining a gracious head,--“and thanks, so much, for seeing me home.”

She stood between the two moon-globed lamps and smiled a little--just enough.

“_Here?_” said the young man incredulously. “Here!--Why--what a little way!”

“Good-by,” insisted Melissa, suddenly panicky. Adventure in the Park was one thing--adventure on the hearth, quite another. She might really have succeeded in sending him off, but for the Marchesa, who mounting the steps behind them, at that moment, in an aura of Peau d’Espagne, put a hand on Melissa’s arm and demanded introduction.

“So glad I’m not late,” purred the Marchesa ... “now we can all go up together. I’d no idea you’d another guest, Melissa....”

“I do so wish he could come in,” said Melissa and looked the other guest squarely in the eye.

“Thanks--I think, after all, I will,” decided the recipient of that mute refusal, pleasantly.

“Delightful!” said the Marchesa, leading the way to the elevators. “Do tell me his name again, Melissa--I didn’t quite get it.”

Which was in no way remarkable because Melissa, while achieving an introduction of sorts, yet hadn’t quite said it.

She felt herself chilling, she felt herself flaming, while across her shrinking shoulder the other guest’s voice broke in with casual amusement: “It isn’t surprising ... most people don’t. Always having to spell it. K-e-n-e-a-l-y.... Luke. Luke Kenealy.”

“How odd!” said the Marchesa.... “I once knew a man of that name--in Venice, I think it was ... who had the most heavenly tenor voice....”

“My uncle,” said Mr. Kenealy suavely--“He sang at Covent Garden.”

“Why--so he did!” said the Marchesa. “Melissa--this is too amusing! Fancy--on the first afternoon I have tea with you--you produce the nephew of a man who was once madly in love with me!”

Melissa disclaimed the credit of that production with a polite word or so and little smiling shrug. Catching the nephew’s eye as she turned the key in her silk-hung door, she murmured poignantly--“If Jerry Tarleton were only here, too--it would be quite perfect--wouldn’t it!”