"'Each life's unfulfilled, you see,And both hang patchy and scrappy.We have not sighed deep, laughed free,Starved, feasted, despaired, been happy!'
"'Each life's unfulfilled, you see,And both hang patchy and scrappy.We have not sighed deep, laughed free,Starved, feasted, despaired, been happy!'
"That's it—that's it—that's life. To sigh deep—to laugh free; to make your bed in hell, and then soar on the wings of the morning.... I'm young, beautiful. I have everything but experience. I mean to have it.... No wonder Eve took the apple the serpent offered, if she was as bored in the Garden of Eden as I am. I'd have bitten more than one, though. What is the use of living if you don't live?"
And while Perdita raged in inward rebellion, the world, viewing things from the outside, took an entirely different view of her matter.
Popular opinion inclined to the belief that the good fairies had too heavily dowered this young woman at her cradle, and consequently a readjustment was inevitable, probably by the gracious means of ennobling tribulation. The dramatic event was rather eagerly anticipated. Not that envy had any part in it or that any of Perdita's friends or acquaintances wished to see a fellow being punished for the liberality of Providence. On the contrary. It was merely a sane desire to mark the balances of the universe in faultless equilibrium and to have the comforting assurance that the mills of the gods still ground with the proverbial exactness.
Youth, health, wealth, beauty, happiness, all unlimited! An exasperating spectacle! How could all be right with the world as long as Hebe continued to pour most of the nectar into one glass, while so many thirsty, deserving souls were denied even a sip?
And Perdita went her way and smiled alike on those who caviled and those who applauded. She had accepted her husband's friends as her own with a sort of careless, indifferent good nature and the relations existing between herself and the closely cemented little group were sufficiently harmonious under the circumstances. Maud Carmine and she had struck "leagues of friendship" at once, and Maud's prediction that Hepworth's friends would have to serve as Perdita's relatives would seem to have been verified.
And Maud, through constant association, appeared to have reflected some of Dita's beauty, for there was evidenced the most remarkable change in the plain Miss Carmine, her name no longer prefaced by that deplorable adjective, however. Alice Wilstead explained it by frankly giving the credit to Perdita. It was she, Alice asserted, who had had the faith and the courage to take Maud vigorously in hand and make of her a new creature as far as the outward presentment was concerned. The results had been so mutually satisfactory as to rivet the friendship between the two; for Dita had proved by her works her belief that there was not the faintest necessity for any such creature as an unattractive woman; and Maud, having lost all faith in the willingness of nature to better her original handiwork, had turned hopefully to art, with the result that she was now one of the most talked-of women in town. By men, because she had recently grown attractive enough for them to discover that she was also extremely agreeable and sympathetic. By women, because they ached to discover her secret. They remembered as easily as the men forgot that for twenty-eight years of her life Maud had been as a weed by the wall, a lank and sallow weed, oppressed by the sparseness of her leaves and the entire absence of either flowers or fruit, and suddenly she had acquired an art, an air, the trick of dress so subtle that it imparted distinction even to her worst points.
But when Perdita proceeded to verify, a little tardily, it is true, the hope of Mrs. Willoughby Hewston, sighingly expressed at the wedding breakfast, and furnished herself with a relative, the coterie gasped. It was not perhaps just the selection Mrs. Hewston would have made for her, but, nevertheless, Perdita had produced a relative, although, it must be confessed, of a rather dubious and indefinite nearness.
If Mrs. Hewston had been questioned on the subject she might have confessed that the relative she had in mind, as presenting an admirable background for a young and lovely girl, was either a silver-haired mother with a white lace cap, and a hair brooch fastening the snowy lawn collar of her black gown; or, in lieu of her, a maiden aunt. Indeed, had Mrs. Hewston been given free choice, she would have inclined toward the latter. Unquestionably, a maiden aunt is the best possible promoter of that nice sense of the proprieties, those right feelings and carefully graduated moral sentiments which are indispensable to a homeless, penniless young woman scrambling for a living. But Perdita, in presenting her relative, had almost flippantly disregarded these considerations involving a sense of universal fitness. It was a far cry, really an almost revolutionary distance, one felt, from the silver-haired mother or rather acid maiden aunt to Eugene Gresham. Eugene Gresham! Fancy!
For Eugene had returned to his native land with the recognition of Paris and London, even their acclaim—golden bay leaves and purple cloaks. Therefore was he thrice welcomed of New York. Therefore, the next presumption followed as naturally as the first. It was out of the question that Mrs. Hepworth, whose beauty was a matter of international comment, should lack a Gresham portrait, a distinction now unattainable save to those upon the mountain peaks of noble birth, enormous wealth, great achievement, remarkable beauty or superlative notoriety.
As Alice Wilstead pointed out, no one could cavil at any relative Mrs. Hepworth chose to set up, however regretable might be Perdita Carey's claim of kinship with this particular person, and she had certainly, as far as one knew, been discreet enough not to flaunt him during her scrambles. Now, as Mrs. Hepworth's cousin (how many times removed, dear?) he was one more jewel in her crown.
Mrs. Hewston sighingly acquiesced. "Yes, really. As Mrs. Hepworth's relative, yes. But hardly as the guide, philosopher and friend of youth, feminine youth, anyway." Only the happily married might safely claim him, for Gresham, with his fame as a painter of beautiful women and his almost equal reputation as a fascinating person, would not have been commended by any maiden aunt for either right feelings, nice moral sentiments or a discriminating taste for the proprieties.
As for Cresswell Hepworth, he looked after his vast and varied interests, kept up his collections, especially his collection of amulets, in which he was greatly interested, and occupied his leisure in seeing that his wife was sufficiently entertained and amused to gratify the requirements even of her eager youth.
Did she hint a longing for the Roc's egg? It was cabled for within the hour. Did she breathe a desire for the moon? Orders were given that an aëronautic expedition capable of securing it be manned at once.
And yet in spite of all this obvious contentment and happiness, Mr. Willoughby Hewston in the rôle of raven had never ceased to flap his wings and croak. He was particularly in this favorite vein of his one afternoon when he shuffled into his wife's sitting-room, where she and Alice Wilstead sat over their tea-cups. They heard him sighing heavily as he came.
"No, I don't want any tea," he said, letting himself down slowly into an easy chair, "you know I never touch it.
"Poor old Cress!" He shook his head gloomily at a spot in the carpet. "Well, it's just as I predicted. That wife of his is the talk of the town!"
"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed his wife. She, loyal soul, never failed him as audience. A quick glance passed between Mrs. Wilstead and herself, as if he had mentioned the subject uppermost in their minds, and, no doubt, in their conversation.
"Oh, come now, Willoughby," said Alice, instinctively choosing the best method of drawing him out, "you know it's nothing like so bad as that."
Hewston scowled heavily and laid one hand gingerly upon his rheumatic knee, which gave him an especially sharp twinge at the moment. "It's probably worse," he replied with even more than his customary acerbity, "worse than we, any of us, know. Didn't I see them walking up Fifth Avenue together this afternoon, and didn't a fellow speak of it to me? And Cress out of town!"
"Well, let me tell something, dear," said his wife soothingly. "Cress will very soon be in town again, for here are invitations to a dinner the Hepworths are having next week. Quite an informal affair. Perdita writes me, 'Just the little group of Cresswell's best friends, which I hope I may also claim as mine,'" reading from the note she had picked up from the table. "Very sweet of her."
"A dinner, eh," growled Hewston, "with all of us, and I suppose that painter fellow. Well, I only hope it will not fall to me to open poor Cresswell's eyes."
"Oh, Willoughby!"
"I'll not shirk my duty if it does. You can understand that. What evening is this dinner? Next Thursday! Humph! Who is that?" as the curtain before the door was pushed aside and some one entered.
"I!" said Wallace Martin, "only poor little me. They told me to come up. What's happening next Thursday?"
"The Hepworths' dinner. There is probably an invitation awaiting you at home."
"No, there is not," he said. "It's in my pocket now. I picked it up as I was leaving. From what Maud Carmine has just told me, I imagine it's a touching family group composed of ourselves and Eugene Gresham."
"Dear me," deplored Mrs. Hewston, "I do wish she would consider Willoughby more. She must know that he can not endure the sight of Mr. Gresham."
"It is not her fault," said Martin quickly, "as far as I can make out from what Maud told me. Cress became imbued with the idea that he wanted his dear old friends clustering about the board, and made out the list himself."
"How like a man!" remarked Alice Wilstead gloomily. "But why, just now?"
"Oh, he's been adding to that pet collection of amulets of his, and he wanted to show us his new acquisitions. That's the root of it, I fancy. I don't imagine the lovely Perdita pined for us. She has been a creature of moods lately. Very hotty-like with me."
"She was actually almost impertinent to Willoughby the other day." Mrs. Hewston spoke with a hushed mournfulness. "I'm afraid all this luxury and adulation has turned her head, and Willoughby spoke so gently to her, too, did you not, dear?"
"Ugh! Humph!" quoth Willoughby.
AS it chanced the Hepworths were not particularly fortunate in their choice of an evening for the dinner so gloomily anticipated by their guests. The weather was unpropitious. All day rain had threatened, and the air had been almost sultry, a parting word flung over her shoulder to autumn by a mischievous July who should long ago have vanished. As the evening wore on clouds banked more densely upon the horizon, occasionally muttering thunder, and this electric hint of storm in the air had in some way communicated itself to the mental atmosphere. A sense of foreboding, a consciousness of discord, seemed to swell ominously now and again beneath the smooth and colorful surface of the dinner. Even the dullest of the guests felt that, and to the intuitive, the stately progress of the meal was nerve-racking.
When the hostess rose, every individual sigh of relief involuntarily exhaled became a chorus, shocking in volume.
They winced nervously, but in spite of it, each guest stood by his guns. They had, apparently with one mind, and certainly with one voice, decided against bridge. The ordeal of dinner bravely borne, licensed them, they felt, even bestowed the accolade of privilege on them, to escape the prevalent atmosphere of unrest as quickly as possible.
In the brief time they had allotted themselves to remain, barely skirting the limits of conventional decency, Alice Wilstead, Isabel and Willoughby Hewston and Wallace Martin had elected to take their coffee and cigarettes on a small balcony opening from the drawing-room by long French windows and giving upon a garden, quite half of a city block, with thick, close-cropped lawn, and black masses of dense shrubbery permeating the damp and sultry air with the mingled fragrance of earth and leaves and some late-blooming flowers. Maud Carmine, good-natured as usual, had seated herself at the piano, across the length of the room from the balcony, to play a ballad of Chaminade's at her host's request.
Hepworth, who alone appeared to be oblivious of the sinister atmospheric influences, leaned his elbows on the piano and listened, occasionally unhesitatingly breaking the flow of the music with conversation.
With their friend and host thus comfortably within sight, yet out of earshot, the group on the balcony felt at liberty to speak with freedom; no danger of sudden appearances, consequent jumps and hot wonder at what might have been overheard.
"Gad!" said Mr. Hewston, more gray and pink, puffy and heavily financial than ever, "when will people learn to eat and drink without flowers on the table?"
"No flowers!" repeated Alice Wilstead. "It would look dull, would it not?" From her tone it was evident that she had paid little heed to his words.
"What difference does that make?" he argued irritably. "You don't go to dinner to look at the table decorations. But if they must have 'em, why can't they have the artificial kind or those paper things. Anything but the beastly, smelly, live ones."
"Don't you really care for them?" she asked, laughing. "I thought every one loved flowers. To tell the truth, they were about all that made that unending dinner bearable to me. They were so exquisitely arranged."
"Oh, that," in grudging admission, "goes without saying in this house, but," fretfully, "they were all the loud smelling kind."
"She always arranges them herself," said Mrs. Wilstead, "she has wonderful taste, wonderful. Her house, her clothes, even down to the smallest detail of the table. Marvelous!"
"Humph! she doesn't show the same taste in men," grunted Hewston. "No brains at all."
Mrs. Wilstead leaned forward to tap his arm with her fan.
"Do not make any mistake on that score," her voice was emphatic, "she has plenty of brains."
"Humph!" more scornfully than before. "Then I wish they'd keep her from making the fool of herself that she is doing now."
"Hs-s-sh," Alice looked as if she would like to thrust a handkerchief into his mouth. "Ah!" glancing up with relief as Isabel and Wallace Martin turned from their contemplation of the garden over the balcony railing. "Sit down here," she motioned to two chairs beside her.
"Dear me, Alice," said Martin, "isn't your face tired with the effort of keeping the corners of your mouth turned up and the sparkle in your eyes? The only person who seems calm and serene this evening is dear old Hepworth. What do you think it is on his part, the quintessence of pose or simple, uncomprehending, fatuous ignorance?"
"My God!" growled Hewston explosively. His wife started nervously.
"Oh Willoughby dear, not so loud! Wallace," in what was as near a tone of reproof as she could achieve, "I do wish you wouldn't say those reckless things before Willoughby. You know how emotional he is."
Alice also shook her head impatiently. "Don't you think we are a lot of old gossips magnifying matters enormously? You may expect so beautiful a young woman as Dita Hepworth to be more or less talked about; but there is probably a perfect understanding between herself and Cress. Lord help her if there isn't," she added almost under her breath, "I've known him many a year."
"'When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect?'" quoted Martin impressively. As a would-be playwright he had the dramatists at his finger-tips.
"Wallace, you are too bad," expostulated Mrs. Wilstead. "No wonder you quote fromThe School for Scandal. Here we are a lot of old wreckers doing our best to shatter a reputation. Why Dita Hepworth and Eugene Gresham have known each other ever since they were children. Naturally, she shows her pleasure in his society."
"Oh pish!" scoffed Wallace Martin, "those unconcealed glances she bestowed on him at dinner spoke not of sisterly affection, and how we all squirmed under them and wondered miserably if Hepworth was seeing them too."
"He always did see everything without appearing to," murmured Mrs. Wilstead gloomily.
"Now merely as a sporting chance, which would you bet on," said Martin, drawing his chair a bit nearer, "the rich, middle-aged husband, or the fascinating artist, the painter of beautiful women, in the zenith of his fame? It is the same old plot you know, and the oft-told tale may have just two endings. First, she goes off with the artist, lives a squalid and miserable life abroad, falls ill, and dies, holding the hand and imploring the forgiveness of her husband, who conveniently and miraculously appears. In the second ending, she makes all preparations to flee and then something occurs which causes her to see the sculpturesque nobility of her husband's character and the curtain descends to slow sweet music while they stand heart to heart in the calcium light of a grand reconciliation scene."
"Oh, Wallace, do forget for once that you are trying to be a playwright. Forget the shop." Mrs. Wilstead was irritable. "I do wish she would join us," looking about her nervously, "I want to go home. Is she utterly careless?"
"Only absorbed," returned Martin calmly. "Didn't you hear her ask him before they left the room, to come and look at the picture gallery where he is to paint her portrait? She wanted him to judge of the lighting—a night like this. I thought I saw the flutter of her white gown in the garden yonder a bit ago."
"Oh do, for goodness sake, change the subject," said Alice Wilstead hurriedly. "I am sure Cresswell must think it queer the way we are all sitting out here with our heads together, in the teeth of that approaching storm."
"Not at all," Martin reassured her. "Don't you see that Maud is doing her duty heroically? Maud isn't the wife's confidante and dearest friend for nothing."
"Isn't it perfectly wonderful about Maud?" commented Mrs. Hewston. "You all know what a plain, angular creature she was, nothing really to recommend her but her music and she always spoiled that by playing with her shoulder blades."
"She's an extremely stunning woman," said Wallace Martin shortly.
"And all due to Dita Hepworth," announced Mrs. Wilstead. "Wonderful! I never saw a woman with such a genius for dress and decoration. If her beauty wasn't such an obvious quality, I should think it was due to her almost uncanny knowledge of what is becoming and—Ah, thank Heaven, here she is!"
Perdita Hepworth had entered the room, with Eugene Gresham just a step or two behind her, and, after a glance in the direction of Maud Carmine and her husband, had moved toward the little group on the balcony. Gresham was used to any amount of attention and admiration, but the adulatory interest which he may have merited and had, in fact, grown to regard as his due, was always conspicuously lacking when he appeared with Perdita.
"The picture gallery is the chosen spot," she announced as if bearing some intelligence for which they had long been waiting, "and the sittings are to be begun at once. I remember when I first knew Maud Carmine, she said to me, 'Fancy what it must be like to have your portrait painted by Eugene Gresham!'" Her low laughter rang with a sort of triumphant amusement. "'Dear child,' I answered, 'I have had my portrait painted by him so many times that there would be no novelty whatever in the experience.' You know," to Mrs. Hewston, who looked faintly puzzled, "'Gene and I have always known each other." She looked over at Gresham who was seated on the arm of a chair talking to Maud Carmine and Hepworth. "Has Maud been playing for Cresswell?" she asked suddenly. "He is so fond of her music."
"Yes, she has been playing delightfully," answered Mrs. Wilstead, "and she looks charming to-night. Maud who was always regarded as an ugly duckling has suddenly become a swan."
"Ah, why not?" said Perdita carelessly. "Maud hadn't the faintest idea how to make the most of herself. She gave the effect of hard lines and angles, and hair and eyes and skin all cut from the same piece, a dingy dust color. Like every other woman of that type she has a perfect passion for mustard colors and hard grays. Ugh!" she shivered. "The only thing to do with Maud was to make her realize that she must look odd and mysterious, you know. That was all. Oh, she is beckoning to me. They want something."
She crossed the room with that grace of bearing which nature had bestowed upon her and with the added poise and assurance gained within the last two years. She still gave the effect of extreme simplicity in dress but it was retained as by a miracle, for although she wore no jewels her white gown was of the most exquisite and costly lace. But her head was undeniably carried a trifle higher than usual, and a very close observer might have read boredom in her eyes, defiance in her chin, rebellion in her shoulders. As she turned from the little group on the balcony, she bit her lip irritably, before she again composed her features to the conventional smile of hostess-like cordiality.
Alice Wilstead followed her with puzzled eyes.
"It is very difficult to understand a beauty," she said plaintively to Martin.
"Put it more correctly," as he blew a cloud of smoke. "Say, it's difficult to understand a woman."
"But I do not find it so," she smiled. "I'm one myself. I'm on to all our various vagaries, but Dita Hepworth puzzles me. Look at this house. There are effects here in decoration, so beautiful and unusual that every one says Eugene Gresham directed them. I know he did not. Look at Maud Carmine, and yet Dita herself usually wears the plainest of gowns."
"I must confess," said Martin, "that I do not follow you."
"Perhaps not," she mused, then with more animation. "Come, Wallace, tell me exactly how she impresses you."
"That is easy," he replied. "She is one of the prettiest women I ever saw in my life."
"Ah, of course," in annoyance, "but I didn't mean that. That is no impression of character."
"Mm," he pondered. "It isn't much of one, no."
Alice leaned back in her chair. "I seem to discern depths in her that the rest of you refuse to see. You stop at her beauty and are content with never a peep beneath the surface."
Martin tossed his cigarette over the railing into the garden. "Frankly, I think that you are searching for something that isn't there," he said abruptly. "The gods never bestow all their gifts on one person. Since you profess to know your own self so well you should realize that women so very pretty as Mrs. Hepworth are rarely clever. Why should they be? It is enough of an excuse for existence that they are beautiful."
"It is indeed," growled Hewston, who had been absorbed in sulky meditation for some time. "I'd be contented if I thought she had enough head on her shoulders to keep straight and not involve good old Hepworth in God knows what."
Wallace laughed. "I'll lay you a wager, Mrs. Wilstead," he whispered, tapping her fan with his finger-tips, "that the way things are going now there will be a split in the Hepworth household within three months."
"Do not say it," she cried quickly. "I can not bear to think of such a thing."
"I'll give you heavy odds, too," he went on cynically, leaning forward to regard the group at the piano. "I'll make it a bracelet against a box of cigars, provided I'm allowed to choose the brand of cigars."
"You might as well put in another provision then," she retorted, "provided I am allowed to choose the bracelet. My taste in ornaments, dear Wallace, is both unique and expensive. I like only odd jewelry."
"Odd jewelry! That is an old fad of yours, Alice," said Hepworth's voice behind her.
She started slightly, she had not noticed his approach. "And your own," she smiled up at him. "Have you secured any new amulets lately, Cresswell?"
"Yes, one. It is a beauty, a scarab. I must show it to you; also another, a carved bloodstone set in very curiously wrought iron. I got that from a Gipsy woman. It is an old Romany talisman."
"Do let us see them," pleaded Mrs. Hewston.
"Certainly, I shall be delighted to. Excuse me a few moments. I will get the box myself. Naturally I would not trust it to the servants." He smiled at his weakness.
"Naturally," said Hewston. "Come, let us all get into the drawing-room to look at them. It is beginning to rain anyway."
It was only a few moments before Hepworth returned bearing a large, black leather box. He placed it on a table just under the light and then choosing a key from a ring, fitted it into the lock.
"I hold one key," he said to the group pressing about him as he lifted the lid, "and Perdita the other. That is in case she may want to wear any of these trinkets."
Alice Wilstead had been looking at Mrs. Hepworth at the moment her husband entered the room and she alone had noticed that Dita started violently when her eyes had fallen on the box and that all the rich color had fled her cheek, leaving her, for a second or two, white as a ghost.
The box held a series of trays, each padded and velvet lined and upon these were fastened Cresswell Hepworth's noted collection of amulets. Most of these talismans were very ancient, many of them revealed the most beautiful workmanship. All of them were distinctive. Each one, almost without exception, had a history, strange, romantic or sinister, and these were all duly catalogued, but it was never necessary for Hepworth to refer to this written history. He had not only the symbolic significance of his favorite toys, but also the vicissitudes through which they had passed, at his finger ends.
The top trays held scarabs, one of the most remarkable collections of them extant, commemorating certain mighty and fallen dynasties; or this reign or that of remote Egyptian rulers long crumbled to dust, and Hepworth lifted them lovingly from their trays and turning them deftly in his fingers explained their histories and expatiated on their beauty.
Beneath the scarabs lay the jade talismans exquisitely carved and handed down from distant centuries. The hearts that had once beat beneath them had long been dust, but the talismans, with no stain of time upon them to dim their luster, would still serve as emblems of good luck to future generations. Then there were quaint amber charms preserving the warmth and flooding radiance of the sunlight that sparkles on sea foam in their depths, and opals delicately clouded with mystery, their "hearts of fire bedreamed in haze," carbuncles, jasper and hyacinth, all in their time the almost priceless possessions of their owners because of the mystic significance attaching to them. And then there were trays containing a somewhat heterogeneous collection of old pieces of beaten silver and iron with odd characters on them, representing periods of even greater antiquity than scarab or jade.
These amulets were in many instances the memorials of bitter feuds and hot duels, fought on the moment, at the gleam of a talisman which both contestants claimed. More than one had been hastily rifled from the dead, and more than one had been bestowed by a great lady on an untitled lover of empty purse to aid him in winning fame and fortune.
"By the way, Alice," said Hepworth suddenly, "you have seen Dita's amulet, have you not? It is almost, if not quite the gem of the collection."
"No, I have never seen it," Mrs. Wilstead's whole piquant face was alive with interest. "But I have heard of it. It was through it that you met, was it not?"
Dita nodded. The color had come back to her face. "It was that old talisman he was really interested in," she said. "I always tell him he married me to get it."
Hepworth laughed. "It is well worth any one's interest. It has been in her family for generations, and there are all sorts of legends and traditions connected with it. It is said to give his heart's desire to whomever possesses it, isn't it, Dita?"
"More than that," she replied, a little strangely, or at least so it seemed to Alice Wilstead. "He to whom it is given—and it can not be bought or bartered, it must always be bestowed—must sooner or later reveal himself in his true character, either his baseness or his nobility."
"Fascinating!" cried the women in chorus. "What is it like?"
"It is a square of crystal set in silver and gold. About the silver is twined one of those old Celtic chains which can only be seen with a microscope, where the links are so tiny that we have no instruments delicate enough to fasten them together and which were believed to have been made by the fairies. And now for a sight of it."
He was about to lift the next tray, when Dita laid a detaining hand on his arm. "It isn't there, Cresswell," she said in a quick, low voice.
As if he had not heard her or had not taken in the full import of her words, he laid the tray carefully upon the table, disclosing the one beneath. Like the others, it too was full of curious amulets, but one space was empty. Perdita's talisman was indeed missing.
"Why, Dita!" he exclaimed. "You did not mention to me—"
She shot a quick, unmistakable glance at Gresham. "Didn't I?" she interrupted before he could go further. "It's being mended."
"Ah, those antique bits, they are always coming to pieces, at least I know mine are," said Mrs. Wilstead with hasty fluency. "But, Cresswell, there is still another tray, and I must see its contents before I go home."
"Make it a month," said Martin in her ear. "I said three, didn't I?"
"Good night, Hewston, good night, Alice. Don't go yet, Gresham." Hepworth laid a detaining hand on the artist's arm. "Sit down and smoke. We haven't had a moment to discuss this portrait matter yet."
"I think," said Dita, moving toward the door, "that I shall leave you two to discuss it and go to bed."
"Oh, my dear," her husband detained her with the same light touch with which he had held Gresham. He pushed an easy chair forward so that she should be seated between Eugene and himself. "We are going to get all the details of the portrait settled to-night. A portrait of you and painted by Gresham is sure to bloom and be admired for a century or two at any rate."
Dita looked at him quickly as if suspecting him of some intention beyond the discussion of the contemplated portrait, but meeting the smiling blankness of his expression, turned away, not in the least reassured, but more puzzled than ever, and sinking listlessly into the chair sat staring moodily before her with veiled eyes and compressed lips.
Eugene glanced at her uneasily, a frown between his brows. He knew her like a book. She had always, always from childhood, been a creature of moods. He was perfectly familiar with the various stages of the sirocco, as he had long ago named her outbursts. She would become restless, abstracted, absent, and then she would sit and brood as she was doing now, until finally the sullen and threatening atmosphere would be cleared by a burst of storm, a swift cyclone of anger.
Gresham gave the faintest of sighs and an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. This was a situation which he foresaw would require all his tact and ingenuity.
"Is the picture gallery all right? Did you find it satisfactory?" asked Hepworth.
"Excellent!" Eugene's brow cleared. He spoke with enthusiasm. "Yes, I told Perdita that the lighting there will be perfect. I've about decided to paint her in white. Yes," scrutinizing the indifferent object of the discussion narrowly and yet remotely, as if he were visualizing his finished portrait of her, "white velvet, I think, and rather a blare of jewels. You see I want to bring out the dominating quality of her beauty, harp on it, you know, so I want to present her eclipsing and reducing to their proper places all the splendid accessories with which we can surround her."
Her husband nodded approvingly. "What do you think, Dita?"
"Oh, by all means," she roused herself to answer, but making no effort to conceal the irony of her tones. "Let Eugene give me all the distinction and grace he is noted for bestowing on, you observe I do not say perceiving in, his clients, or patients, or patrons, whatever he may call them. Make the stones of my tiara and necklace even bigger and whiter and more sparkling than they are, Eugene. Or better still, I'll wear my diamond collar and my string of rubies and my rope of sapphires, all shouting hurrah at once, three cheers for the red, white and blue! Make me all glittery, Eugene, throw my sables over my shoulders."
"By Jove!" cried Gresham, interrupting her, a white flash of enthusiasm across his face, "you may not dream it, Dita, but that's it exactly. You've hit it."
"Yes," she went on satirically, "and present me in the middle of all this splendor, overcome by the 'burden of an honor into which I was not born.'"
"But you were born to it," interposed her husband quickly, "no one more so."
"Perhaps," she sighed a little, her eyes and voice grew softer, "but at a time when the outward manifestation had vanished."
The glow had lingered, even become intensified in Gresham's face. "By Jove!" he cried again, "you were trying to be sarcastic and all that, Dita, but it was a great idea of yours just the same. I will paint your portrait and it shall be hung side by side with my working girl. They shall be companions of contrast. You see," explaining his idea to Hepworth, "I am going to paint my working girl in the city streets just at twilight on a winter evening, hastening home after the day's long toil. The lights and colors of the shop windows dance and glitter about her, blurred by the falling snow. Everything, lights, buildings, passers-by, are all in that blurred, indistinct atmosphere, and she, herself, is a part of the blur, looking through it, with her young, worn face and wistful eyes, craving the beauty and the joy of life."
"No, no!" cried Dita suddenly. Rising, she moved rapidly up and down the room, her head bent, her finger at her lip. "No!" she cried again, her voice deeply vibrating. "I reckon you've just missed it, Eugene, it's too—too conventional. I can imagine something truer than that. My working girl, if I were painting her, should not be born to toil, not always have regarded it as the great fact of existence, an inevitable portion of her days and years from which she has never dreamed of escape. No, I would picture her delicate, highly nurtured, with traditions of race and breeding behind her; but poor, oh, very poor. And she shouldn't look out on life with resigned, wistful eyes, but with passionate, demanding ones, rebelling that her youth, her wonderful, beautiful, dreaming youth was passing in a tomb of tradition, a green and flowery tomb perhaps, maybe an old southern garden, but nevertheless a place of dead lives, dead memories, dead customs. And she, this girl, hates it, the dust and must of it. She hears always in her ears the surges of that mighty ocean of life. And she can't resist it. She can't. Then because her heart is set on it, she comes to a great city like this, comes with all her high hopes and her untarnished confidence in herself; and all this magnificent swirling tide of life, with its mingled and mingling streams, seems to bear her onward to the highest crest of the highest wave. Then she begins to hear, at first faintly and then ever louder and more menacing, the voice of New York, with its ceaseless reiteration of one theme, 'pay, pay, pay.' She turns desperately to her little accomplishments, those little, untrained, unskilful things that she can do, straws on that ocean; and expects them to save her.
"Ah!" she drew her hand across her brow, her face contracting a moment. "Then comes the grind between the millstones, the continual disappointments, the terror by day and night, the rent, that rolls like a snowball, the dreary evenings which she must spend alone in the dreary little room, while all the time she hears the mocking invitation of the great, glittering city to partake of her many feasts.
"And she," again Dita sighed deeply, "she begins to believe herself doomed to dash her youth and beauty against the walls of a tomb. And she has to learn so many things, among them the hideous accomplishment of making both ends meet. What does she know of the use and value of money? Oh, of course all kinds of cheap, left-handed pleasures are offered her, because people consider her pretty, but it is an impossibility for her to accept them. She has been born in the traditions of real lace and real jewels. And the panic-fear! Ah!—" she broke off abruptly.
"Dear me, Dita. You should have been an orator." For the past five minutes Eugene had been scarcely able to conceal his irritation, frowning, biting his lips, twisting in his chair and casting furtive glances at Hepworth. "I remember you used to be given to those bursts of eloquence now and then."
"And what finally becomes of her?" asked Hepworth of his wife, ignoring Eugene's interruption. His voice was low, expressing nothing more than a polite interest.
"I don't know," said Dita wearily. "A number of things. She may comfortably die, or marry, poor thing, any one who will have her."
"Very dramatic," said Gresham dryly. "You always did have histrionic talent, Dita. I've often wondered that you did not attempt the stage."
Perdita opened and closed her eyes once or twice as if she had just returned from a far country.
"I certainly wasn't much of a success at painting lamp-shades and menus, was I, Eugene, in spite of your early training?"
He shrugged his shoulders without answering, made a slight, disclaiming gesture with one hand and rose to his feet. "What!" listening intently as a clock chimed somewhere. "I had no idea it was so late." His face cleared. He was evidently relieved at his chance of escape. He shook hands with Hepworth and then turned to Dita. "Remember that the first sitting will be at twelve o'clock Wednesday morning, and please don't keep me waiting. That is a fact that I have to impress on these charming women," he turned laughingly to Hepworth, "that I am neither their manicure nor hair-dresser. I am accustomed to keep them waiting if I choose."
"I'll be ready," she said indifferently, but Eugene noticed with apprehension, even alarm, that those deep vibrations which spoke of barely controlled emotion were still existent in her tones. "I'll be ready, velvet, diamonds, hurrah of jewels, if you wish, sables and all."
Again a gust of wind swept through the room and Hepworth went over to close a window.
Eugene took quick advantage of the occasion. "For Heaven's sake," he whispered, "pull yourself together."
His words were too late. Too late by half an hour. The sirocco had done its work.
With the departure of a third person the situation immediately changed complexion. It became more intimate and therefore more embarrassing. With Eugene had departed the audience and the stimulus of playing to it. The star and the stage manager were left alone. Untrammeled emotional expression no longer seemed an heroic necessity. Under the calm, unreadable, steady regard of her husband's eyes it held its elements of banality and of sensationalism, of pseudo-emotion. Dita became sullen. "I think I shall go to bed," she said abruptly and for the second time and then turned to the door.
"Wait a moment." His voice was courteous, pleasant, but it would have been a dull ear which could not have discerned the tone of command beneath its even modulations.
It was new to Dita and arresting, and she paused, wavered a moment and came back to the chair she had left and folding her arms upon its high cushioned back, stood with still, sullen mouth and downcast eyes, exhaling reluctance. She was feeling the reaction from her late mood of exaltation, of dramatic visioning of poignant past experiences.
He waited a second or so, and then said, "Your working girl was a far more dramatic conception than Gresham's. It might not lend itself so much to pictorial representation. It might be more literary." He appeared to give this question some consideration. "However," he dismissed it with a wave of the hand, "that is neither here nor there. What counts is this, were you the girl whose life you described so feelingly and dramatically?"
There was silence between them for a moment. Dita's first impulse was to maintain it indefinitely; ignore this question with barely suggested contempt; with a faint gesture of dissent, signify that she considered it a crudity, almost a vulgarity, and lightly, languidly, indifferently dismiss the whole subject and leave the room. She knew how, intuitively. Behind her were generations who understood how to flick an unpleasant situation from the tips of their fingers, who would ignore and dismiss with amused disdain an invitation to exculpate themselves or explain, when to explain meant practically to retract. But false as she felt, with waves of shame, she had been to her traditions and upbringing in revealing her emotion, she was no coward. She lifted her head and met his eyes. Gray eyes faced gray eyes—but with a difference. Hers were the passionate, emotional Irish gray—with black beneath them, and the long curling black lashes, but his were like mountain lakes, reflecting a gray and steely sky. Hers revealed all the secrets she might wish to hide; his concealed all his secrets admirably—discreet windows, revealing nothing but what their owner desired they should reveal.
"Yes," she said with defiant brevity.
He appeared again to give this reply due consideration. He had risen now and was walking up and down the floor. "What an impression it must have made on you!" he said at last, very gently.
She plaited the lace of her sleeve. "You knew about me before we were married," she said. "Why—?"
"Quite true, but sometimes something is said, it may be only a word, and one's eyes become, as it were, unsealed. One sees a perfectly familiar object or situation in an entirely new light. Your attitude now," he turned to her rather sharply, "is that I am about to blame you, to take you to task. Far from it. Why should I blame you for what has been beyond your power? Your words to-night have made me realize that it has been quite impossible for you to care for me, and that I have not been able to make you happy. Ah," lifting his hand as she was about to speak, "do not disclaim it. I know. You see, that very fact sends the whole house of cards tumbling. The bitterness with which you have spoken to-night would not have been in your mind, rankling, rankling all this time, if you had been a happy woman. It was bound to burst into flame sooner or later."
"Oh!" she broke out. "You have always won. You do not know what it is like to lose; but I—I missed every mark I aimed at. I came up from the South, so dead sure that I was a very gifted and accomplished person, and that all I had to do was to hold out my apron and all the beautiful and delightful things would tumble into it. But this great city surely taught me a lesson, and she's no very gentle teacher, either. And I used to sit up there in that tiresome little apartment among those candle-shades and cotillion favors and think how—how pretty I was," she flushed under his smile, "and rage, and get sick with disgust when I thought how I would look after about twenty years of that kind of life. I knew exactly how I'd look. I'd be one of those peaked, wistful-eyed old maids, with rusty black clothes turning green and brown, and a general air of apology for living. I could just see myself ironing out the ribbons of my winter bonnet with which to trim my summer hat, and then laundering my handkerchiefs and pasting them on the window-panes to dry. And life, life was like a great, wonderful river, flowing by and leaving me stranded on the shore. And then you came."
Hepworth laughed. "I don't wonder that you took the alternative. I'm conceited enough to think it better than those ugly pictures your young eyes were gazing at."
"Yes, they were ugly," she agreed. "Life just seemed like a dark, dreary, cobwebby passageway, but I always felt as if I might come to a door any minute and step through it into a beautiful garden. You seemed the door." She spoke the last words a little shyly.
He glanced at her again, inscrutable, unfathomable things in that gaze. "Ah, youth, youth and the waste of it!" There were tones in his voice that brought the tears to her eyes, but he did not see them. He was musing on the accident of her life, this flower of the dust, which he had taken from the dingy environment she loathed. He had lavished all the beauty and experience within his power upon her, and taken away perhaps the one thing that had redeemed her life. He had seen only the limitations and the makeshifts and how they had oppressed her dainty and fastidious spirit; but it had never struck him before that in lifting her away from them, above them, he had taken from her the one thing that might have glorified her life, that the sordidness and the scrimpiness were for her for ever haunted by the unexpected. That because she was young and beautiful and free, the dreariness must have been irradiated always by the rainbow tints of romance; and he had given her all the beauty and glitter his money could buy in exchange for the joy of a dream, and fancied that he had actually done something for her.
"Dita, forgive me," he murmured, a curiously bitter smile about his mouth.
"Forgive you!" she looked at him a little cautiously. She didn't understand the workings of his mind. He never gave her a hint either in eyes or expression that would seem as a clue for her to follow.
"Yes. You should." Again he smiled at her. "You didn't get a fair exchange. I see that very plainly now."
"You must not speak like that," she said quickly. "Believe me, it was a great deal more than a fair exchange and I have always regarded it so. Why do you think I have not been happy?"
"Because you have never really loved me."
"But I—I have always liked you," she cried quickly. "But," forlornly, "you knew the truth at the time. Even if I had not, I should have had to marry you anyway. I was so deep in debt I couldn't help it. I could not manage any more than I can speak Sanscrit. So you see that there is nothing to forgive. Believe me, I am always grateful, for before I married you, I thought and thought, but I could see no other way."
He laughed again. He couldn't help it. He had a sense of humor and he seemed to see, in a flashlight of vision, shocked Romance gather up her skirts and shake the dust of Dita's threshold from her winged shoes.
"You are so really fearless and honest, Dita, that I venture to ask the question." He put it with a rather diffident gentleness. "You have found it quite impossible to care for me?"
"Oh, no," impulsively. "I have always liked you. I am really very fond of you. But I am always tongue-tied before you. I never can think of anything to say to you and I always say foolish things." She regarded him with a wistful timidity.
He laughed ruefully. It was sorry mirth. "That is a proof of my stupidity, my child, not yours."
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Up and down the room he walked twice, three times, engrossed. Then having arrived at a decision, he put it into words. "Dita," he stopped before her and looked at her earnestly, "perhaps I am utterly rash and foolish, but will you answer me one question? But first get all melodramatic ideas of the state of my feelings out of your head." His smile was faintly cynical, obscurely so. "And believe me, that what really concerns me is your happiness. Are you in love with Eugene Gresham?"
She started, cast one quick glance at him, and then stared frowningly before her, but he noticed that her hand trembled on the back of the chair. "Why do you ask me that? I—I am married to you—I—" her voice faltered, broke.
"Oh, no conventional utterances, please," he cried quickly. "That is not worthy of you, not like you. There should be, there must be absolute sincerity between us now. Tell me, Perdita, are you in love with Eugene Gresham?"
"Ah, that I do not know." She looked beyond him and, still gazing, shook her head. "I do not know. I never have known, never been sure. We were boy and girl together, he a few years older. He is associated in my mind with the life of green old gardens and the smell of jasmine flowers. He lives in a wonderful world, a world of color that something in me always yearns toward. It seems to me sometimes as if I would rise to it, and my heart would blossom in purple and red. I seem doomed to talk foolishly to you," she exclaimed rather piteously, "but most people's hidden thoughts would sound foolish to others, would they not?"
"Go on, my dear." Then his controlled utterance gave way. "For heaven's sake, why should you not feel that you can say anything to me? What kind of an idea have I given you of myself? But tell me," quickly subduing his emotion, "what is it you feel?"
"As if—as if my heart were a flower which had never really bloomed—a cold, tightly folded bud, that yet held within the colorless outer leaves wonderful red and purple petals. All there, awaiting a sesame, and I sometimes dream that only Eugene can give me that sesame. But," the glow left her eyes, her head drooped, "I don't know, I don't know. I thought I was sure once that I loved him. I do not know now."
"Where was Gresham during the time you were struggling here?" he asked presently. And it struck her irrelevantly.
"In the East somewhere, I think. Doing his desert pictures. I used to hear from him once in a great while."
He said nothing. Then he came nearer and took both her hands in his.
"Dita, my clear, I'm going to be egotistical and talk about myself for a minute. Let me see if I can explain." Again that worn and flashing smile, with a deeper touch of cynicism, flitted over his arrogant face.