Winner Take All Part 14

"Don't you!" he advised her. "Don't you listen. And don't you believe, either."

Still that bright regard. And thereupon Cecille realized that she had been troubled deeply by one thing which she had heard. Felicity had pa.s.sed it on to her.

"They say he cheated," she voiced it, wide-eyed. "That he has a--yellow streak."

"So's a Bengal tiger." Such succinctness was rea.s.suring. "A whole lot of 'em. And a man like him don't cheat. You'd oughta know that."

Laconic, but good to listen to. And again:

"Don't you worry. I never saw a man so fast--so quick! That's why I'm using him. And some day--some day when he's in earnest--he's going to find out that he can hit. And they? They've said words that they'll choke then to swallow."

"I hope so." Her voice was meek and small.

"I know so," said English. "Don't you worry. You've picked a game guy. He can take punishment. You stick!"

"I--I mean to." Her voice was smaller still.

She wanted to cry.

And that night when they were riding home together upon a bus-top she tried an experiment. How long they had been riding thus she did not know, but all in a breath she was conscious of the contact of his knee.

That was what she had been avoiding--trying to make herself avoid--ever since she'd grown aware of her impulse to stay always close. But now she tried an experiment. She contemplated the contact contentedly for a time. Then drew away.

Perry had been thinking of Felicity.

"Crowding you?" he asked.

She shook her head. And a minute later she let her knee move back against him. Proved! Instantly the tiny pulse had picked up its throbbing in her throat. Yet she let the contact endure. Defiant, she rode all the way home that way.

But the inevitable reaction came. Revulsion might be the more accurate word applied to Cecille. That night she had stripped off one stocking in preparation for bed; she had sat longer than she could have told, broodingly studying her bare knee.

"No smoother than he," she murmured at last.

The sound of her own voice smote her, the thing that she had said.

As her head flung up she encountered in a mirror her own reflection.

She stared, transfixed, at her image; her moist, curling mouth, her dusky cheeks and eyelids drooping down. Then she closed her eyelids tight to shut it out. She groped and found the light and snapped it off. And she lay hours upon her face, her hair fanwise on her pillow, sick and debased.

She laid it to the pitch that she had touched. You _had_ to be defiled. But she didn't blame Felicity. She wasn't that kind of a coward. It must be the slow poison of her frank creed. She'd fight it. Game? She'd be game. But this time she refused to wonder why she didn't pack her bag and get out. She couldn't. She knew she couldn't go. She wondered why she couldn't cry.

Thus she found a private little h.e.l.l in what should have been pure glory.

But she fought. After she had admitted to herself that she loved him, she crouched from it like something in a corner. Love? That wasn't love! And yet Felicity in all her pa.s.sionless calculation had never once--

It baffled her, bowed her down. It was too snarled now. She'd never make it out. But she wouldn't go again to the gymnasium. No! But what of that? She had only to close her eyes to see. She fought it.

It was a very hot though private little h.e.l.l.

CHAPTER IX

DUNHAM TALKS BUSINESS

And presently Perry learned why he had been keeping in shape.

Something did turn up. It happened in this wise:

Felicity had been very canny; she'd made each trump card tell. And with Perry Blair waved always in his face, Dunham had grown ugly.

"You know I'm crazy about you," he complained. "Give that four-flusher the gate."

"A million Johns have told me that," Felicity answered. "Talk business."

But Dunham had refused to talk business. He was ugly about it. And then he thought to see a way around. He sent for Perry Blair, and Perry came. That surprised Dunham. He had expected in the end to have to go to Blair. He did not know how Felicity, unwittingly, had helped him.

For Felicity, unable not to enjoy a little the boy's inarticulate devotion, had indulged herself. With artistry that would have called down from Hamilton even hotter sarcasm, she had let Perry glimpse her soul; not the cheap and tawdry thing which unsympathetic persons were likely to think it, but her real one, a little saddened, a little forlorn!

"I wish I could get away from all this," she'd said, with appropriate wistfulness. "I'm dead sick of it--sick of it all. I wish I could go away--somewhere--anywhere where things are clean. Where there are trees and growing gra.s.s--"

It was a very good speech. She knew it must be because she had heard a high-priced leading lady utter it in a three-dollar-and-a-half Broadway success.

And it proved effective uttered by Felicity. For it fooled Perry.

Fooled him badly just when he had begun to speculate a little concerning her soul himself. Perry believed her. But then it is easy for any woman to fool any man. Twice as easy when he wants so badly to be fooled.

Perry cursed his lack of ready money. And then Dunham sent for him.

And he went, hiding his eagerness.

They held the conversation in Dunham's book-lined office. The books were never used; the office saw strange usage. And the conference was short.

"Ready to be a good boy?" Dunham asked.

Perry rose to leave.

"Sit down," said Dunham. "That was intended as a joke. My mistake."

But it angered him; angered him almost as much as it did to look upon the boy's unsquandered youth.

"I've got something for you at last," he offered. "If you care to take it."

"I'll listen," said Perry.

So Dunham drew readily upon invention.

"We've talked it over," he said. "Devereau and I and some of the other boys. And we've decided that there's nothing in it for any of us as the situation now stands. The t.i.tle's too obscured. You claim it. So does Montague. So we've decided to offer you a match with--"

"I've challenged Montague," Perry interrupted. "He paid no attention to it."

"Not Montague," Dunham corrected silkily. "Holliday."