The Heart Line 53
At this hour there were some twenty members in the large room reading,
talking or playing dominoes. Others came in and went out occasionally,
and of these more than half approached Cayley to say effusively: "Hello,
old man, how goes it?" or some such similarly luminous remark. This was
as offensive to Cayley as the wearing of his hat in the club was to the
old men. Nothing annoyed him so much as to be interrupted while reading
his letters. Yet he always looked up with a smile, and replied:
"Oh, so-so—what’s the news?"
To be sure, Cayley’s mail to-day was not so important that these
hindrances much mattered. The study of Esperanto was his latest fad.
With several Misses, Frauleins and Mademoiselles on the official list of
the "Esperantistoj," and whom he suspected of being young and beautiful,
he had begun a systematic correspondence. The greater part of the
answers he received were dull and innocuous, written on picture
post-cards. From Odessa, from Siberia, Rio de Janeiro, Cambodia,
Moldavia and New Zealand such missives came. Those which were merely
perfunctory, or showed but a desire to obtain a San Francisco post-card
for a growing collection, he threw into the waste-basket. Others, whose
originality promised a flirtation more affording, he answered
ingeniously.
A man suddenly slapped him on the shoulder.
"Hello, Blanchard, have a game of dominoes?"
"No, thanks."
"Come and have a drink, then."
"No, thanks, I’m on the wagon now."
"Go to the devil."
"Same to you."
The man grinned and dropped into a big chair opposite Cayley and lighted
a cigar. Then his glance wandered out of the window. Cayley put the
bunch of letters in his pocket and yawned.
"By Jove, there’s a peach over there," said the man. Cayley turned and
looked.
"In front of the shoe store. See?"
She was standing, looking idly into the show window—a figure in gray and
red. Scarlet cuffs, scarlet collar, scarlet silk gloves. Her form was
trim and her carriage jaunty.
It was Fancy Gray—drifting. She stood, hesitating, and shot a glance up
to the second story of the club house where the men sat. She caught
Cayley’s eye and smiled, showing her white teeth. Her eyebrows went up.
Then she turned down the street and walked slowly away.
"Say," said the man, "was that for you or for me, Blan?"
"I expect it must have been for me. Good day."
"Something doing? Well, good luck!"
Cayley walked briskly out of the room, got his hat, and ran down the
front steps. Fancy was already half a block ahead of him, nearing
Kearney Street. He caught up with her before she turned the corner.
"I’ve been looking for you for three weeks," he began.
She paused and gave him a saucy smile. "You ought to be treated for
it," was her somewhat elliptical reply.
"I’m afraid I am pretty slow, but I’ve got you now. It seems to me
you’re looking pretty nimble."
"Really? I hope I’ll do."
"Fancy Gray, you’ll indubitably do. Won’t you come to dinner with me
somewhere, where we can talk?"
"I accept," said Fancy Gray.
"Are you still with Granthope?"
She hesitated for a second before replying. "No, I left last week."
"What’s the row?"
"Oh, nothing, I got tired of it."
"That’s not true," he said, looking into her eyes, which had dimmed.
"Cut it out then, I don’t care to talk about it."
"I bet he didn’t treat you square. He’s too much of a bounder."
At this her face flamed and she stopped suddenly on the sidewalk,
drawing herself away from him. "Don’t," she pleaded, "don’t, please, or
I can’t go with you—"
He saw now what was in her eyes and put his hand into her arm again.
"Come along, little girl, I won’t worry you," he said gently. And they
walked on.
She recovered her spirits in a few moments, but the sparkling of her
talk was like the waves on the surface of an invisible current sweeping
her toward him. It was too evident for him, used as he was to women, not
to notice it. She was a little embarrassed, and such self-consciousness
sat strangely on her face. Behind that flashing smile and the quick
glances of her eye something slumbered, an emotion alien to such
debonair moods as was her wont to express, and as foreign to the deeper
secret feelings she concealed. Her eyes had darkened to a deeper brown,
the iris almost as dark as the pupils. Cayley did, as she had said,
fascinate her. Whether the charm was most physical or mental it would
be hard to say, but her demeanor showed that it partook of both
elements. She gave herself up to it.
He began to play upon her. He took her arm affectionately, and the tips
of his fingers rested upon the little, cool circle of her wrist above
her gloves. She did not remove his hand. His eyes sought hers again
and again, vanquishing them with his meaning glances. Her pulse beat
faster. She talked excitedly. A soft wave of color swept up from her
neck.
"Suppose we dine at the ’Poodle Dog’?" he suggested.
"I’m game," she replied; "I like a quiet place where there’s no music."
"We can get a room up-stairs where we won’t be interrupted."
"Anywhere for mine. I’ve got a blue bean and I’d like to be cheered
up."
She was cheered up to an unwonted pitch by the time the dinner was over.
As she sat, flushed, mettlesome with wine, thrilling to his advances, he
plied her artfully, and she responded with less and less discretion.
She could not conceal her impulse towards him.
"Do you think I’m pretty?" she asked, her eyes burning.
"Indeed you are—you’re beautiful!" he said, his hand resting on hers.
"But I don’t want to be beautiful—that’s what you are when you’re queer
and woozly—like the girls Maxim paints," she pouted. "They’re awful
frights—they’re never pretty. I want to be just pretty, not handsome or
good-looking or anything apologetic like that—that’s what men call a
girl when she can’t make good with her profile. You’ve got to tell me
I’m pretty, Blan, or I won’t be satisfied."
"You certainly are pretty," he laughed, as he filled her glass.
"That makes me almost happy again," she mused. "Let’s forget everything
and everybody else in the world. It’s funny how I’ve been thinking
about you and wondering if I’d ever see you again. I had a good mind to
put a personal in the _Chronicle_. It seemed to me as if I simply had
to see you, all this week. Wasn’t it funny at Carminetti’s? I guess I
was struck by lightning that time. You certainly did wireless me. It’s
fierce to own up to it, Blan, but I like you. I’ve stood men off ever
since I was old enough to know what they wanted, but you’ve got me
hypnotized. How did you do it?" She laughed restlessly.
"Why, if I hadn’t thought you were a little too thick with Granthope, I
would have looked you up before."
"I haven’t been there for a week. The wide, wide world for mine, now."
"That’s pretty tough, to fire you after you’d been with him for two
years, isn’t it?"
"I don’t want to talk about that, really, Blan; it’s all right."
He poured out another glass of champagne for her and she drank it
excitedly. Cayley still caressed her free hand, but his eyes were not
upon her; he was thinking intently. She took his head in her two hands
and turned it gently in her direction.
"There! _That’s_ where you want to look. Here is Fancy, Blan, right
here."
"I see you. I was only thinking—do you know, you look like the pictures
of Cleopatra?" he suggested. "Did you ever hear of Cleopatra, Fancy?"
She laughed. "I guess I ought to—I played Cleopatra once."
"Did you really—where?—comic opera or vaudeville?"
"Oh, never mind where—I made a hit all right." She leaned back in her
chair, clasping her hands behind her head, smiling to herself. A tress
of hair had fallen across her ear; it did not mar her beauty.
"I’ll bet you got every hand in the house, too."
Fancy became suddenly convulsed with giggles. She sipped her glass and
choked as she tried to swallow the wine.
Cayley passed this mysterious mirth without comment. "Granthope looks as if he had been an actor, too."
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