Chapter XV

It wasn’t, at that, and on the surface, the orgy Luke had seemed to apprehend. A very average sort of party, Melissa thought, dropping down on a cushioned window-seat somewhere about one or two o’clock, with her eyes faintly heavy, her feet beginning to long for a pair of mules instead of their shining silver slippers.

Since dinner the rooms had been crowded with ardent dancers. People dropping in all evening. People coming, people going. Music never stopping. A babel of laughter and shrill voices over deep. A riot of color and sound and scent. But all parties were that--as Melissa had come to believe. Just foam on the crest of the wave. One said and did and allowed a great deal one wouldn’t ordinarily have considered saying and doing and allowing. There was something in that muted jazz--something infinitely insidious ... indubitably also there were other things....

Melissa hated a silly laugh. And Em’ly’s laugh--for one--was apt to be recklessly silly--after midnight.

Luke had been rather out of sight most of the time--not dancing much. Murdock had dogged Melissa’s footsteps. He was coming toward her, now, his face a trifle flushed, his eyes a burning blue in that clean weather-beaten face.

“Oh, here you are,” he cried fatuously. “Been looking all over the shop for you. Care to dance?”

“I’m so tired,” said Melissa in a plaintive drawl. “I want to go home.”

“Let me take you!” he suggested instantly.

“Sorry--I came with Luke.”

“Let me find him for you.”

“If you only would!”

But he didn’t. He sat down beside her instead and played with a spray of green buds on her gown. “Been a good party--hasn’t it?”

Did all the world say the same stupid thing over and over in the same stupid words?

“A wonderful party,” agreed Melissa.

“I hate parties,” he told her unexpectedly ... “never see anything of you. Always a lot of other birds around. Why can’t we have a party of our own sometime?”

“I shouldn’t mind,” said Melissa and smiled--the least slow flicker on lips and eyes.

It spurred him as she meant it should.

“Tell you what,” he leaned forward and put an arm along the window-sill behind her. “Tell you what--let’s have a house-party--not too big--next week--no, next week’s pretty well dated up--week after next, say--I’ve got a place just outside of Baltimore ... nice old farm ... we could drive down, you and I....”

“Nice!” said Melissa indolently. “Only--week after next’s no good for me. I’m fearfully busy. Until ...” she sighed--“let me see!--Really, Murdock--I couldn’t make it before the first of next month.”

“Couldn’t you?” asked Murdock, frankly disappointed. “Well--save that, then. Is it a promise?”

“Why--yes--I think so,” said Melissa. “Now--do find Luke for me--there’s a dear boy! I want to go home!”

“You’re the only woman I know that ever does,” said Murdock reverently. He departed beaming.

Beall happened along, however, before Murdock’s big shoulders were out of the doorway.

“What’s this?” he inquired with deep concern. “The Lady of the Evening, all by herself? How come?”

“I’m going home,” said Melissa--“in just a moment--Murdock’s gone to find Luke. I’m getting sleepy.” She lowered drowsy eyelids.

“Murdock,” said Beall very gently, “can take Luke and keep him amused till I’ve had one more dance....”

“I’m tired,” said Melissa sweetly. “I don’t want to dance any more.”

“A last cigaret, then....”

“You forget--I don’t smoke.”

“Nor drink. Strange woman you are, Melissa--to be running around the world, to-day. What’s your outlet? Have you got a big sin? You’re so scornful of all the little ones.”

“I’m not scornful--they just don’t amuse me,” said Melissa and hid a yawn--not quite.

“That’s what makes you so dangerous.”

“Am I?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No-o ...” said Melissa.... “I wish--I were!”

“Well--all that you wish comes true,” said Beall with a short laugh. “Ever read a book, called ‘The High Place’?”

“I--don’t think so. Who wrote it?”

“Mr. Cabell of Virginia. I’ll give it to you. It’s all about a man who got his heart’s desire ... and learned better.”

“It must be rather depressing.”

“On the contrary--it’s very encouraging. Showing how silly it is to dream dreams--when the real thing’s all around you--waiting....”

“Oh!” said Melissa rather doubtfully.

“Come along--I’ll get it for you,” said Beall. “Take it home with you--read yourself to sleep.” He drew Melissa to her feet. They made a devious way between dancers to the library at the farther end of the house. “This is my work-shop. You’ve never been in this room before,” said Beall.

There were books all around the walls, a fire in a deep fireplace; above the mantelshelf a glowing yet somber Zuloaga of a black-haired woman in a full-skirted black gown, with pearls in her ears, a sweetly treacherous smile on her mouth, a little dog under one arm....

“That’s not bad,” said Melissa, tilting her head to look at it.

“No, my dear,” said Beall with an irrepressible touch of amusement--“that’s not half bad! I’m glad you like it. Sit down--” He put one hand on the back of a deep chair and shoved it nearer the fire.

“Thanks,” said Melissa--“I think not. Just give me the book and I’ll go. I’m really determined.”

“In that case--” said Beall with a shrug. He prowled along his shelves, one hand in his pocket, the other touching and shifting odd volumes as he came to them. Melissa stood before the fire and looked up at the woman with the dog. She had said what seemed to her the properly casual thing to say. But she had never seen a Zuloaga before. She didn’t as a matter of fact know that it was a Zuloaga and the rich darkness of it, its almost sinister beauty, moved her like music.

Not the sort of music that came dulled by intervening walls from the other part of the house ... not that throbbing, wooing, insensate clamor ... but music of woods and brasses subtly commingled; of stateliness and struggle and heartbreak, divinely blent ... she stood and gazed, rapt in a delicious wonder.

“Here you are!” said Beall, returning, with the object of his search in hand.

“Thank you so much,” said Melissa. Her eyes coming back to him, were starry.

“You lovely thing!” said Beall huskily, caught her close, and kissed her on the mouth--again and again.

As if an animal had broken covert, green sunlit quiet covert, and leaped at one ... suddenly.

Melissa stood unresponsive as a woman made of clay--so that after a moment he released her, stared at her and laughed, abruptly.

“Sorry!” he muttered--but it took very little acuteness to see that he was nothing of the sort, only puzzled--and rather curious.

Shaken with disgust, cold with anger she took the book from the table where he had dropped it, and turned away.

“Please never do that again,” she said icily. “I loathe being kissed.”

Beall moved a chair from her path with courtesy a trifle mocking. “Forgive me,” he pleaded--“but I wonder, Melissa--if that isn’t merely protective coloration?”

(“You’re under the microscope,” Luke had warned her ... and Luke had known!)

Nothing in Melissa’s experience helped her to answer Beall’s eyes and his skeptical smile. Her extraordinarily self-cloistered existence before the Marchesa’s experimenting had not included young men who kissed one--that way.

From current fiction and drama she knew that outcries of righteous indignation on the part of young women thus affronted had gone, so to speak, out of style.

Yet she couldn’t, for the sake of her own lacerated pride, allow him so to close the episode--allow him so sharp a last word.

She thought of the Marchesa--she thought of what the Marchesa would say--pausing in the doorway, with her head back, her eyelids scornfully lowered it came to Melissa--as if the Marchesa had whispered in her ear--the way to wound her man deepest, to make him smart the cruelest. She launched her shaft with a steady hand.

“I can’t forgive you,” she drawled ... “for being so clumsy.”

And seeing him redden in surprise, she knew herself a marksman.