CHAPTER III
A Break in a Circle
MY acquaintance with the Tremaines, in the weeks that followed, grew by imperceptible degrees into an intimacy which was one of the most pleasant of my life. Of Cecily I have already attempted to give some idea, although I realise how cold and inadequate it is. As I began to know her better, I came to wonder more and more at her complexity, her simplicity, her swift change of mood, her utter ignorance of social convention. Another thing I saw, and that was her absolute worship of Tremaine. I question if he fully understood its strength; he had grown, in a way, accustomed to it; but to a stranger, an outsider, it was startlingly apparent. I say startlingly, because one was vaguely conscious of unsounded, threatening depths beneath that sweet exterior, which promised I know not what of passion and tragedy, should they be rudely stirred.
As for Tremaine, I hesitate to say how utterly I fell under his spell. Yet this was not in the least to be wondered at. My life had been, on the whole, so narrow, and his had been so broad; my experience of the world had been cast in the usual grooves, while his had so evidently overleaped them, had struck out a path for itself into all sorts of unexpected places. Why he so exerted himself to charm and conquer me, I do not yet fully understand—perhaps it was the mere delight in power, in the exercise of his dazzling faculties; or perhaps it was that he had leisure, that his mind was not yet engrossed in the game on which he staked so much.
I have said that his life had been cast in many curious places. Martinique was only the last of these, the most recent, and I gathered that the business which brought him to New York was the forming of a syndicate to build a railroad through the island. Through is the right word, for it was evident that, owing to the island’s peculiar formation, there would have to be much tunnelling. But he waved all such practical difficulties aside and discoursed of the great future before such a road with an enthusiasm that was absolutely convincing.
I remember one evening he got fairly started upon this hobby of his and talked uninterruptedly for at least an hour—facts, details, descriptions at his finger-ends. Cecily, chin in hands, listened intent to every word, and I, with the remembrance of that evening still fresh upon me, can understand how he won the ear of even Wall Street’s suspicious denizens. And, indeed, it was a wonderful prospectus which he painted—broad sugar plantations with no market, the whole traffic of the island carried upon the heads of women; the great sand-heaps of the east coast ninety per cent. pure steel, waiting only for development, but worthless now because no ship can approach them—and I know not what beside, but all of which, I have no doubt, was substantially true.
Perhaps I am lingering unduly over this portrait of Tremaine, but I have never met his equal for daring, for audacity, for personal magnetism. In the days that followed, I was to see less and less of him, but the memory of those first evenings is a living and vivid one. I can see him sitting there yet before me with his wonderful eyes, his expressive face, his lithe, graceful form and his slim, white nervous hand holding his cigarette. I found myself speculating sometimes as to his nationality. French he seemed unquestionably by temperament, and yet he spoke English with a facility and carelessness unusual in a foreigner. I was often tempted to ask him, straight out, but a feeling of hesitation always held me back. I came at last to the conclusion that he was of French parentage, but had lived in England or America probably from his youth.
I had just come in from dinner one evening and was settling down to a reperusal of “L’Affaire Lerouge,” when there came a knock at the door and Tremaine entered. He was in evening dress and was seemingly much perturbed.
“My dear Lester,” he began abruptly, in that quick, nervous way of his, “I’m in the deuce of a box, and I’m going to ask you to help me out. I promised Cecily to take her tonight to see the extravaganza at the New York and have the seats here, but at the last moment I find I can’t get away. I’ve a business engagement that I can’t afford to break, but Cecily will never forgive me if I disappoint her. Have you anything on for tonight?”
“No,” I answered, looking at him in some astonishment, for it was evident what was coming.
“Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking Cecily? It would be a tremendous favour.”
“Not at all,” I assured him, “but”
“It isn’t quite convenable?” he finished, as I hesitated. “Surely, we don’t need to stand on ceremony, and Cecily doesn’t care a hang for convention. It’s a great favour to both of us. She’ll cry her eyes out if she has to stay at home, and I simply can’t take her.”
“Very well,” I said, “I’ll be glad to take her,” and thanking me again, he hurried away.
She was dressed and waiting for me when I knocked at her door, and she caught me by both hands as I entered.
“This is good of you!” she cried. “Doudoux has been so busy for many days that we have gone nowhere; but he promised me to-night. Oh, I should not have stayed at home! I should have gone alone! I care not for the eyes of the men!”
“Oh, I shan’t let you go alone!” I protested, and watched her, fascinated, as she put on a little bonnet and gave her hair two or three final pats before the mirror.
She was in the highest spirits, singing to herself—really, I told myself, only a child—and at last she swung around and dropped me a courtesy.
“How is that, ché?” she cried, smiling up at me. “Does that please you?”
“Charming!” I cried, gasping a little, with a feeling of giddiness, as I looked down into her eyes.
“Then in a moment,” and turning, she struck a match and touched it to a wick floating on olive oil in a tiny glass before an image of the Virgin, which hung in a little chapelle against the wall. She made a genuflection and turned back to me. “Now I am ready,” she said, and tucked her hand confidingly under my arm.
“What is the light for, Cecily?” I asked, as we left the room.
“Oh,” she explained, “faut limé lampe ou pou fai la Vierge passé dans caïe-ou. Now the Virgin will watch over me while I am away. But you are a Protestant. You do not care for the Virgin.”
She looked up at me reproachfully, with a little sigh because I must be damned.
“But Tremaine—is he not also a Protestant?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she answered, shaking her head. “Certainly not—not at all. He even at one time thought of becoming a priest.”
“A priest!” I repeated, astonished. Here was news, indeed, and I was so absorbed in it that I did not resent Higgins’s stare of astonishment as we went down together in the elevator. Tremaine a priest! Yet, why not? No doubt he would have made a most successful one—an ideal Jesuit, for example, rising to a high place.
“Then why did he not become one?” I questioned, when we were seated in our cab and bowling along toward Broadway. A sudden fever of eagerness to probe into Tremaine’s past took possession of me.
“I do not know,” she answered; then she looked at me with a sudden quizzical narrowing of the eyes. “Perhaps he found the vows of a repugnance.”
We swung around into Broadway, ablaze with light, and Cecily forgot me in the excitement of watching the changing crowd, the brilliant shop-fronts.
“Here we are,” I said, as the cab drew up at the curb, and sprang out and helped her down.
As we entered the foyer, I heard that murmur of surprise and admiration which I knew my companion must inevitably call forth. As for her, she was interested in everything; the lights, the colour, the movement of the crowd, the bustle of the great theatre combined to form an excitant which brought the deep blood surging to her cheeks. She looked around with half-open lips, smiling, pleased as a child, seemingly quite unconscious of the many curious eyes centred upon her.
“Oh, it is glorious!” she cried. “I have to thank you again, ché.”
“You have nothing like this at St. Pierre?” I questioned, laughing at her eagerness.
“No,” and she shook her head; “except perhaps the Carnival.”
“I’m enjoying it, too,” I said; and, indeed, I was, for her happiness was contagious. She seemed charged with electricity, overflowing, communicating it by a look, a word, a smile.
We went up to the promenade after the first act, and ate an ice together. The place was crowded, and Cecily soon became again the centre of attraction. Men strolled past merely to look at her, and from more than one woman I caught a flash of the eye that said unutterable things. The advent of a new, incomparable siren could not pass unchallenged. At them all, Cecily glanced from time to time with admirable nonchalance; one would have sworn she had been reared in New York. She chatted gaily, eating her ice, sipping her wine, looking at me with eyes that glowed like stars. Then suddenly, as she looked up, her face changed. I glanced up, too, and caught Jim Godfrey’s astonished eyes fixed on mine. He bowed and passed on.
“Who is that gentleman?” demanded Cecily eagerly, leaning across the table toward me. “You know him?”
“Oh, quite well,” I answered, more and more surprised. “His name is Godfrey.”
“God-frey,” she repeated slowly, after me, as though fixing it indelibly in her memory. “And what is his business?”
“He’s a reporter by trade; he gathers news for a paper,” I added, seeing that she did not wholly understand.
“Oh,” she said, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. “I see.” Then, as she met my glance, she added, “I fancied that I had met him somewhere; I was mistaken. In New York I have met no one except you, missié.”
But I scarcely heard her; my eyes had dropped to a pin at her throat; as she leaned forward, I could see it very clearly—an opal surrounded by a blazing ring of diamonds. I looked at it mechanically—then with a sudden, intent interest. For one link of that brilliant ring was missing; one of the diamonds had fallen out.