Chapter III (2)

    It was a woman's hand, warm, slender and strong. Each time he grasped it, his spine tingled and he thought of the deep carpets in the network offices that produced leaping sparks when you touched a light switch. The hand had been helpful, too, turning him left and right with friendly pressures, leading him through his first confusion. The orchestra went "Pop." Lennox stopped, held his candle high and looked around the circle.
    There was Cooper, looking solemn and perplexed in the glimmering light as he blew mightily in the direction of Le Jazz Hot. There were two honey-haired stereotypes in thin-strapped gowns, shielding their candles with their hands. There was a horsy woman with an extinguished flame, tramping off the floor. The music started again before Lennox could examine the others. He was cynically certain that the horsy woman had owned the hand. Then, as he circled, again came that electrifying touch.
    He looked quickly at his partner. Lennox had a weakness for straw-colored blondes, big-boned women who looked Swedish. This was the exact opposite. She looked like a slave on a Moorish auction block; cropped jet hair in tight ringlets, deep dark almond eyes, a full mouth, strong white teeth. The head was beautifully poised on a long neck. She had wide shoulders and the deep-cut jersey bodice revealed a high full bosom. Her skin was astonishing, very clear, very dark, and as lustrous as black pearl under the candle-light. She was slender, not tall, and moved with a lazy grace that was familiar to Lennox but not yet identifiable.
    The orchestra went "Pop." Lennox and the girl stopped and examined each other, unmindful of their candles. She smiled. Her smile was sudden and changing, like the unexpected dazzle of light reflected from water. The music started again and she danced on to the next partner. Lennox watched her circling and weaving and suddenly recognized what was familiar about her carriage. She moved like a slender, graceful, cow-puncher; the shoulders square, the slim hips swaying, the arms slow and relaxed.
    In that moment Lennox remembered that he had written a thousand love scenes and knew that every one had been a lie. There was a thundering confusion in his head; exultation and terror pounded in his heart. His whole life seemed drawn by the burning glass of this moment into a focus on this girl. She was smiling now at Cooper and murmuring to him. Lennox could have killed Sam.
    He murdered each of her partners in succession until she came around the circle to him again. As he reached eagerly for her hand, the orchestra went "Pop." The other dancers stopped. Lennox continued until he was close to her and took her hand. In the flickering light, his face was black and white with shadows and highlights and looked almost ferocious. The girl's almond eyes widened slightly, and her smile faded, but her body did not lose its easy poise.
    Dancers nudged Lennox politely. The music had started. The girl released herself and continued. Lennox went through the motions and grimly defended his flame from extinction while the girl remained in the dance. Le Jazz Hot left. The stereotypes left. Cooper was eliminated. Six remained. Then five. Then three. Finally it was Lennox and the girl, circling and turning, hand in hand, candles fluttering no more than his own breath.
    They danced for timeless moments, and Lennox, dazed and intoxicated, was not aware that he was speaking to her in silence ... by touch, by glance, by moving expression ... revealing the secret part of himself that had never been shown before. Then he did something extraordinary for Jordan Lennox, the man who never quit, who never conceded, who had wanted to win a victory before those awesome spectators. The music went "Pop." He held out his candle to the girl, and with his right hand extinguished the flame.
    There was a burst of applause. The lights went up. The orchestra swung into a dance tune and the floor filled. Lennox lost the girl in the crush and wandered aimlessly to the side of the ballroom where an unidentified person took the candlestick from him. He went to the bar, now inhabited exclusively by the red-headed teacher from Yale and the bartender.
    "Listen," Lennox began incoherently, "A dark girl. In an off-the-shoulder dress. She.... With cropped hair and oriental eyes. She gleamed...."
    "Who?" the red-head inquired, weaving violently.
    "A girl with black short hair. She—You heard me. Do you know her? Know who she is?"
    The bartender shrugged. The red-head eyed Lennox fixedly, meanwhile shaking his head. "Never heard of her. Never-never-never. No such thing's dark girls anymore. Species extinct. Like used t'be everywhere poodles. Now only boxers. Poodles extinct. Also poodle brunettes, Q.E.D.?"
    Lennox returned to the ballroom. He searched for the girl. He searched for Cooper. Two steps led up to the white door of the oval library. Lennox mounted them for a better view and found himself face to face with Le Jazz Hot.
    "Who was she?" he burst out.
    "Pardon, M'sieur?" Le Jazz Hot goggled at him.
    "The dark girl. In the dance with us."
    "I am so sorry."
    Lennox abandoned him, left the steps and prowled around the edge of the ballroom. He went again to the bar, regarded the red-head and the bartender without comprehension, wandered off and discovered, in a hall of Chinese teapaper, a small Christmas tree hung with corsages. A honey-haired girl in a thin-strapped evening gown was unpinning some orchids from the tree.
    "I beg your pardon," Lennox mumbled.
    She looked at him curiously.
    "The dark girl who was dancing with us. Do you know her?"
    "Dancing with us?" All her charm disappeared in the bray of her voice.
    "My God!" Lennox thought in panic, "I haven't heard her speak. What if she...." Aloud, he said: "The Candle-Dance. The dark girl in our circle who—"
    "I wasn't in the Candle-Dance," the girl informed him coldly and turned away. She was the wrong stereotype.
    Lennox went back to the library steps and began searching the dance floor, couple by couple. Below him and to one side a voice called: "Psst! Hey Jake!"
    He looked down. Cooper was standing there, grinning. "Three down from the drums. With a guy in hornshell glasses."
    Lennox glared at Cooper, challenging derision, then stared at the dance band. He found her and murdered the man in the spectacles. Without moving his eyes he asked: "Who is she?"
    "Don't know."
    "I've got to meet her."
    "Grab her after this dance."
    "I've got to be introduced."
    "Come on, Jake! This isn't the nineties."
    "I want to be introduced. Can you swing it?"
    "I can try."
    Cooper departed. Lennox remained where he was, watching the girl as the man in the hornshell spectacles whirled her out to the middle of the floor. The dance ended, the couples applauded languidly and shuffled. Lennox looked around desperately for Cooper. When he turned back to the dance floor he had lost the girl again. Before he could get panicky he saw her as the music started. She was alone on the floor, walking toward him, with square shoulders and lazy arms and hips. He could not believe his eyes. She came directly to the library stairs, stepped up and held out her hand. Lennox took it and felt both of them tremble slightly.
    "Why didn't you cut in?" she asked in a candid, transparent voice.
    He could not believe his ears. Drawing her with him, he backed into the white and gold oval library. She was smiling uncertainly. After a tremulous pause she asked: "Is this how it happens?"
    Lennox couldn't speak. There was a long silence; a long communication that seemed to dread words.
    "I'm frightened," she said.
    Lennox shook his head.
    "At first I thought I'd help. You know, the dance? Then I thought you were being hasty. And then it happened, didn't it?"
    Lennox nodded.
    "If you don't let go of my hand, I'll faint ... I think. What do we do now?"
    Before he could answer, Cooper appeared in the door with a magnificent white-haired woman wearing a bronze dress and a jade necklace. Both smiled.
    "Ah! Just in time," Cooper said, "Our hostess, Madam McVeagh. Jordan Lennox."
    "So nice to have you, Mr. Lennox." Alice McVeagh shook hands magnificently. Everything about her was magnificent and overpowering. "Gabby, dear, have you met the gentlemen? Jordan Lennox ... Sam Cooper. Gabby Valentine." She overpowered Lennox. "Sam tells me you're an author, Mr. Lennox. Do you write all night?"
    Lennox pulled himself together before the Presence. "No," he answered in the voice of the second son of the Marquis of Suffolk. "I work from nine to five, Mrs. McVeagh."
    "But how disappointing. Aren't you an artist?"
    "No, Mrs. McVeagh, I'm a business man. I sell ideas for a living."
    "Oh dear! And I had such a lovely picture of you ... working all night and smoking opium."
    "Only when he's plastered," Cooper grinned.
    Lennox looked at him stonily. Poor Jake! Standing there on his best behavior, tall and erect with his hands at his side; keeping his face wooden and unrecognizable, trying to belong on Alice McVeagh's terms, and destroying himself before Gabby Valentine. To his hostess he tried to appear austere, kindly, infallible and sophisticated. To Gabby he seemed hostile and unyielding. If only Cooper had come five minutes later. When he finally departed with the hostess and Lennox turned to resume the intimacy with Gabby, it was too late.
    "Gabby...." he began.
    "No," she interrupted, bitterly disappointed. "No. It was only the candle-light." She took a deep breath. Her smile was no longer a private matter between them. "Please forget everything I said. I thought you—" She broke off.
    "You thought I what?" Lennox asked sharply. He was deeply hurt by her abrupt change.
    "It doesn't matter."
    "It matters to me."
    "Please don't cross-examine me," Gabby said gently. "I made fool of myself, that's all."
    "I think you're trying to make a fool of me."
    "No. It's all right. I'm the idiot, not you. What do you write, Mr. Lennox?"
    "I write better scenes than this, Miss Valentine. My characters don't play games."
    "Neither do I."
    "Then what the hell happened?"
    "Nothing happened. That's why I'm an idiot."
    Lennox was furious, and, consequently, icy and sardonic. He imagined that this was an impudent young society girl, willful and cavalier, who had taken it into her head to make an ass of him. He couldn't have been more wrong.
    Gabrielle Valentine was a unique creature. You meet people like that occasionally, and if you're not too cynical you treasure them ... beautiful beings who've been loved and adored from birth and have grown up unspoiled and trusting, completely honest and without guile. This is rare because beauty is more often a curse for a woman and usually sickens her unless she turns it into her profession. No plain girl will believe this, but it's true.
    Gabby had received affection all her life and gave it as freely. She was not brilliant, which was just as well. No one really likes brilliant people. She was a girl of average intelligence who had grown up in a world which she was able to treat with the disarming confidence of a child. Half the world treated her with the tenderness reserved for children. The cynical half could not abide her transparent honesty.
    She was twenty-eight. Her father had been an old-line Socialist and had worked with Eugene Debs. He had come from a French Colonial family which had lived in Indo-China for generations and, I suspect, probably intermarried with natives. Certainly Gabby seemed to support the legend that women of mixed French and Oriental blood are the loveliest in the world. Her mother was still living and was a very smart couturiere. Gabby didn't see much of her. She was too busy making her own affectionate way in the world.
    She had trained, of all things, as an architect, and worked as a free-lance draftsman. Drafting pays well and Gabby was able to afford her own apartment in one of the better Village studio buildings. She was political-minded, an inheritance from her father no doubt, and was an invaluable asset in fund-raising campaigns. She had once gone down to Wall Street and bearded a Republican financier in his den for a contribution to the Democratic party. Or maybe it was a Democrat for the Republican party. I forget which, not being political-minded myself. The point of the story is that she got the money.
    She was an artist, but she didn't understand music. She had learned to be chic, but wasn't interested in clothes. She liked good food, but had to be told when it was good. She drank very little. She liked people more than anything else ... liked to be with them and talk to them, provided they were honest and unaffected. Everyone came to her with their troubles and she gave all her affection and help. She had never been in love.
    And then had come this burst of flame in the glimmering darkness with Lennox, and there was a stranger in his body who had killed the flame with his rigid poise before Alice McVeagh and was trampling on the embers in icy fury.
    "Please go away," Gabby said quietly. "You're making me hate you, and I don't like that."
    "I'm sorry, Miss Valentine," Lennox answered. "I don't know the rules of your game. Is that a request or a challenge?"
    "Why should it be? Do you like to fight?"
    "I'm enjoying this fight ... with all my heart." Lennox showed his teeth in a smile.
    "That's a sign of weakness, isn't it?" Gabby looked at him with steady eyes. "Like sick dogs that bite. Please go away."
    "You've done the biting."
    "Oh. You're hurt. I'm sorry."
    "No, I'm enjoying the game. What do you do, Miss Valentine, when you can spare the time?"
    "You can't be a very good writer if you talk like that," Gabby said slowly. "You sound as though you like to hate people."
    "I'm a very successful writer."
    "There's a difference."
    "What big teeth you have, grandma."
    "I don't like to be with people who hate," Gabby nodded gracefully. "Goodbye, Mr. Lennox."
    "The end of Round One?"
    "No. The end. I don't think we should see each other again."
    "You'll see me often," Lennox assured her. "We'll fight this to a finish."
    "There's nothing to fight."
    "Something happened, and then you changed your mind. I'd like to find out how your gears mesh. Professionally, of course. I can always use a comedy gimmick." Automatically he flexed his right arm against his chest and was appalled to remember that his gimmick book was lost, but he was too angry with Gabby to concentrate on it.
    "Who did you hope I was in the dark?" he asked. "Aly Khan?"
    "You're making it worse."
    "Who did you think I was?"
    "I thought you...." She shook her head. "How can I say? I thought I—" Suddenly her dark eyes filled with tears. "You're not very kind. I've just made a fool of myself and I'm hurt too. Are you enjoying this?"
    "Passionately."
    "Please let me go."
    She broke away from him and descended the library steps to the ballroom, her shoulders square, her carriage relaxed and graceful. The bright chandelier lights gleamed on her skin. Lennox followed her doggedly around the edge of the ballroom and into the bar. He could not let go. He would not let up. Gabby bent over the red-head sleeping on the bar.
    "Phil," she said. "It's time to leave." She shook him gently.
    The red-head snorted and slept. Gabby looked reproachfully at the bartender who instantly became apologetic, as though he had personally supervised the downfall of the teacher from Yale.
    "It's not your fault," Gabby told him. "He comes down from New Haven full of undergraduate notions. He had to work his way through college. He never had a chance to be hedonistic."
    Lennox stepped forward. "I'll take you home, Miss Valentine."
    "It isn't me that has to be taken. It's Phil."
    "To New Haven?"
    "What if I said yes?"
    "Bon voyage, Miss Valentine."
    "Oh, why are you so hostile?"
    "Because I'm a damned fool," Lennox answered furiously. "All right. I'll take him back to New Haven for you."
    "Not New Haven. New York. The Harvard Club."
    "A neat one-two. Next time I'll know when to duck. I'll take you both home."
    "Not me. Phil."
    "You and Phil both."
    "That's your price?"
    "It's a bargain, Miss Valentine. Snap it up."
    "I think I'd better get someone else."
    She left the bar. Lennox heaved the red-head up, powerfully but not unkindly, and hauled him to the door. There, an efficient man in black uniform located hats and coats without clues and helped Lennox dress the red-head. Then Lennox dressed himself. When Gabby came to the foyer with three eager admirers, Lennox looked them over and growled: "I'm taking you both home. I'm prepared to fight for it. If you don't believe me get ready for a scene."
    Her eyes flashed, but she dismissed the men and got into her coat. Together they took the teacher downstairs in a burning silence and propped him in a cab between them. As the cab drove off Lennox asked: "Why the Harvard Club? He teaches at Yale."
    No answer.
    He contrived to peer past the red-headed barricade at her. She was impassive. The street lights flickered on her skin like lightning on jewels. He had never wanted anyone and hated anyone so badly in his life; nor known anything so inexplicably out of his grasp.
    He said: "I worked my way through college too. I was a telegrapher."
    No answer.
    After five minutes he said: "Can you spell hedonistic?"
    No answer.
    They arrived at the Harvard Club and turned the teacher over to a patient doorman. Lennox did not ask permission to re-enter the cab. He got in and slammed the door. Gabby gave her address in the Village and the cab started. Lennox was startled. He had expected a number on Park Avenue. He revised his guess about her society background.
    The cab crunched downtown through crusted streets. The rain and snow had stopped. There was no wind, but the air was still bitter. A few blocks from Union Square, Lennox abruptly called to the driver: "Stop here. On the right, two doors down. Don't argue with me. Stop."
    The cab stopped. Lennox opened the door and got out. To Gabby he said: "Wait here for me. Understand? Wait." He turned and ran across the sidewalk to the open door of a Salvation Army Mission in a small store. There were candles burning in the window. He ducked into the store, removed two candles from the window, dropped a five dollar bill in their place, and ran back to the cab. He got in and shut the door.
    "All right, get going," he told the driver. He handed one of the burning candles to Gabby without a word.
    She smiled; that sudden dazzle of light on water, then her face lost its expression when she saw the cold fury in him. She shook her head.
    Lennox slid the glass partition panel aside. "Can you sing?" he asked the driver. "Sing Pop Goes The Weasel."
    "Have a heart, buddy."
    "'Pop Goes The Weasel' ... in the key of C. Take it."
    "That ain't no Christmas Carol."
    "And this ain't no Christmas present." Lennox poked a bill through the slit and dropped it. "Sing."
    The driver began a miserable croaking. Lennox sat back and eyed Gabby. She blew out her candle and turned her head away. He dropped his candle and trampled it.