"'King Canute was weary-hearted,He had reigned for years a score,Pushing, struggling, battling, fighting,Killing much and robbing more.'
"'King Canute was weary-hearted,He had reigned for years a score,Pushing, struggling, battling, fighting,Killing much and robbing more.'
"Let us hope that it is not quite so bad as the last line infers; but it gives the idea, the picture. Well, Dita, I saw you, a beautiful flower, purple and red, if you will, although I do not think the combination of colors appropriate. And you were blooming in a tin can in a tenement window. It was insupportable, so I dreamed of transplanting the flower into its fitting surroundings, a marble court. That was what I crudely thought would mean your happiness. But I never secured the flower to adorn the marble court. Believe that. Above all, I wanted and I want its happiness. Dita, I'm weary-hearted, but I long—I long above all things—to make you happy. Take the poor surroundings that I can give you; but let your beauty have its meed, let your heart flower as it will. Feel free to meet, with outstretched hands, the romance your youth has dreamed of, for, Dita, I, who have only fettered you with jewels, am going to give you something really worth while, thanking God very humbly that it is in my power to do so, and the gift is freedom. You are free from now on."
She started back, looking at him in frowning bewilderment and yet he saw deep within her eyes a wild gleam of hope, of joy. "Free!" she repeated uncertainly, "Free! How can I be free when I am married to you?"
He laughed once more, and the dreariness of that laughter rang suddenly hours afterward in her ears. "Those things can always be arranged," he said. "But I am going to ask you a favor." Although he said "favor" her quick ear caught the ring of authority in his tone. "Since you are not sure that you love Gresham, I am going to ask that you wait a year before securing your legal freedom. You shall have it, whether you decide on him or not. Oh, believe that. Ah, one more request. Let me urge you not to have your portrait painted just now. In view of possible future events, it is much wiser, much safer to let that go for the present. I think you will have to trust my judgment here. There is no danger of your beauty waning." Again his worn and flashing smile. "And now, it is very late and I think you had better get some sleep. Good night." He smiled again, but she noticed how dreadfully tired he looked. She winced a bit in soul.
"I am sorry that it has been such a fizzle," she turned to him with a sort of shy, girlish friendliness and impulsiveness.
He smiled again and lightly touched her cheek with his finger. "Give no more thought to that." He turned abruptly away.
"Ah, Dita," his voice arrested her from the threshold, "one more request I am going to make and that is that you get your amulet to-morrow. If not I shall have to see about it myself and I am really too busy to bother with it at present." Again that iron ring of authority was in his voice, but authority masked in velvet. "Will you very kindly attend to this, my dear?"
She nodded mutely from the doorway, but did not lift her down-bent head, nor raise her eyes to his.
When Dita wakened the next morning, it was very late, almost noon. She came slowly to waking consciousness over wastes of apprehension, oppressed by some heavy sense of disaster. What had happened? Ah, she remembered it, it was last night. She squirmed uncomfortably and then lay gazing with somber and introspective eyes about the beautiful room. Slowly, the chaotic and uncomfortable thoughts which thronged confusingly in her mind resolved themselves into two or three distinct facts as scorching to her sensitiveness as if written in letters of fire. First, she had let herself go unwarrantably. An electric storm always exerted a sinister effect upon her, inducing a wildness, a recklessness at first, eventually followed by melancholy and culminating either in tears or temper. And she had yielded weakly to every phase of this storm-induced mood.
Why did events have to take the bits in their teeth and gallop madly along the road to ruin at the most placid and unexpected moments? Why should an electric storm have blotted the sky and flashed its jagged lightning over her nerves that especial evening? Why had she not mastered the sirocco, driven it off in its first stealthy approaches? But she melted to self-pity; Cresswell should not have taken her so seriously. He might have realized that the storm, and that tiresome dinner, and those tiresome people had goaded her unendurably. Grant them every virtue, every grace, admit that there might have been an attraction between herself and them in ordinary circumstances, but the fact that they were old friends of her husband changed the whole chemical situation. Attraction became repulsion, attempt to conceal the fact as she would. But self-pity ultimately merged into self-accusation. No matter what the causes, she had made a melodramatic scene. She had told a lot of bare truths, which, like all bare truths, were only half truths; about Eugene, for instance, practically admitting that she loved him.
Well, did she? She sat up suddenly in bed and pushed the hair back from her brow with both hands. She pondered intensely a moment. She didn't know. She really didn't know. Was it love, this feeling she had for him, had had for him ever since she had been a girl of fifteen? It was a powerful attraction anyway—a sympathy, an understanding.
And Cresswell had offered her freedom, freedom! What did it mean? Her heart began to beat quickly, excitedly. It meant the great adventure ... if one had the courage ... one need "mourn no joy untasted, envy no bliss gone by." She would throw off this ennui, this apathy which afflicted her. She was free, free to seek and meet the unexpected. The great adventure, a thousand adventures were before her. At last, she would live. Suddenly she remembered her amulet. She must get it. She gave this a moment's consideration, and then, before summoning her maid, she went quickly to the telephone in her sitting-room, and rang up Eugene Gresham's studio.
To her relief, he was there and answered the ring almost immediately.
"Are you there, 'Gene. I want to see you to-day, as soon as possible, within an hour or so. Will it be convenient for you?"
"Oh, perfectly. But," there was anxiety in his voice, "nothing is wrong, I hope."
"Oh, nothing much," she replied evasively, "only I want to talk to you—but not here."
"Why not take luncheon with me," he replied, "at half-past one and where?"
"Oh, not in any crowded restaurant," she answered a little impatiently. "At some quiet place. A tea-room—the Wistaria?"
"Very well. Then within an hour and a half."
"And, oh, Eugene," her voice detaining him, "I want the talisman. Do not fail to bring it. Do you understand?"
If Dita wore as a protecting disguise the simple and conventional dark gown which has been prescribed by certain unalterable rules of fiction as the proper costume for a lady hastening to a rendezvous, it failed of its effect, but served instead to accentuate her beauty; nor detracted in the least from her as an object of interest and comment.
And Eugene, with his fame, and his air, and his eyes, his lifted shoulder and his limp, the pointed laurel leaves seeming to gleam through his cloud of hair, handed her from her motor-car with the manner of courts, his hat in hand, to the admiration of the passers-by. The whisper ran: "Eugene Gresham and the beautiful Mrs. Hepworth." They passed through a gaping aisle. They entered the tea-room to the craning of necks. Poor souls! This was their measure of seclusion. Beauty and genius! Fame and wealth! It is a combination New York loves. She serves them up to her multitudes on a salver.
They were successful, however, in finding a remote table beneath swaying purple clusters of artificial wistaria and a dimly mellow light. And while Eugene ordered the luncheon, Dita glanced about her with a sensation of relief; new surroundings always seem to hold out the alluring if frequently vain promise of new thoughts and this was the beginning of adventure, of that new life of infinite variety she meant to live at last.
Eugene turned from the waiter, and leaning across the table narrowly observed her.
"A trifle pale," he remarked. "Mad Dita!" reproachfully and yet tenderly. "I hope all that atmospheric unpleasantness—mental, I mean, did not come boiling and seething to the surface after I left last night. I hoped the sirocco had spent itself before I left. But doubtless Hepworth understands how you are affected by a storm."
"I'm afraid I did make rather a scene," she admitted, her lashes on her cheek. "However, that is neither here nor there."
He drew a breath of relief.
"Then it is all over, the atmosphere cleared and we are to begin our sittings to-morrow." He smiled in anticipation and laughingly drew her picture upon the air.
"No," she shook her head, and spoke more reluctantly than before, "Cresswell has requested me not to have my portrait painted just now. He is kind enough," her smile was shadowy, "to think that there is no particular danger of an immediate waning of my beauty and he desires me to wait a few months."
"But that is impossible! Incredible!" he scowled with irritation and threw himself back in the chair. "Oh, what a sirocco, what a sirocco it must have been!" He shook his head back and forth and then dropped it in his hands, studying the pattern of the table-cloth as though it were the map of the situation. "To pass over my disappointment"—he lifted his head and mechanically pushed about some of the dishes the waiter placed before him on the table—"ignore it, let it go. I'm not going to press that now; but there are other things to be considered. It is known that I am to do your portrait. It was openly discussed last night. All this must be taken into account. That is for appearances as far as you are concerned. Then regarding me. I am not a paper-hanger or house painter to be engaged and then dismissed at the whim of a millionaire. I can not accept a commission from Hepworth and permit him to cancel it by a negligent message, sent through a third person. Absurd!" He frowningly bit a finger. "My plans and arrangements must be concluded for months ahead. They can not be thrown askew like this. Oh, Dita, what did you do, what did you say that brought this about? I worked like a Trojan last night to avert anything of the kind."
She did not answer, but sipped her tea with downcast eyes and he saw that the lashes on her cheeks were wet.
"Ah, Dita," his voice fell to a charming note of tenderness, a note to stir any woman's heart, with the purple and white of the wistaria clusters swaying above their heads and the mellow light reflected in his eyes, his eager eyes which pierced life's stained and sordid curtain and saw the wonder and miracle of beauty; and it was this power to discern the eternal vision which illuminated his ugly, irregular, fascinating face upon which work and dreams and experience had stamped their impress. "You can not fancy what it means to me to paint your portrait now. I've painted it before, crudely, in boyhood, and experienced then a casual delight in the effort to portray a beautiful thing, and wrest a few new secrets of art from the portrayal. That was all. But now," his voice without being raised, yet lifted exultantly, "but now—my heart is swept with insurgent seas at the thought of what it means. I am lover and artist, fused in a fire of white enthusiasm. The lover sees, divines what the artist can only guess at, and the artist offers to the lover a perfected technique. I feel the stirring of this power to catch your loveliness, Dita, and fix it on canvas imperishably. It would be the great achievement. That is in the background of every artist's thoughts. It is his pillar of cloud by day and his pillar of fire by night. The great achievement!" He dreamed over it a moment. "I would paint the South in you, Dita, 'warm and sweet and fickle is the South.' Ah! I thought I loved you then. I thought I loved you the evening we parted, but I know now that I have never really loved you before or I could not have given you up."
They were almost alone, nearly every one had left the room. A long trail of wistaria blew before her eyes. The light glowed through the silken, yellow shades. The South! She smelled roses and jasmine. It seemed to her for one bewildering moment as if her heart had indeed blossomed in purple and red. She smiled lingeringly, sweetly into his eyes.
"The portrait's only postponed, Eugene, look at it in that way." The words recalled her to herself with a start. This was paper wistaria and electric light. She was no longer a girl in a flower-scented, green old garden about to pose for a boyish and impatient artist. Here she was, in spite of all her vows to the contrary, yielding to Eugene's spell without a struggle. She was quite sure of his charm and magnetism, but what she doubted now was her own heart.
"'Ah, the little more and how much it is. And the little less, and what worlds away,'" she murmured beneath her breath, wondering unhappily if she were born to doubt everything.
"But I can't and I won't submit to a postponement." He was now both impatient and impassioned.
"It is not final," she explained. "Do take it as a postponement, nothing more. He has his reasons—oh, they are not what you suspect. He is not jealous. He is too big for that. It is something I can not go into now." Her sentences were disjointed. She seemed almost incoherent to him. "Let it be so for the present. I implore, no, I insist, that there be no explanations. But I must go, it is getting late," she started as if to rise; then sank back in her chair and held out her hand. "Oh, the amulet, Eugene."
"I haven't got it," he threw out both empty hands and looked up at her from under his brows with the expression of a naughty child. "Now listen, Dita, before you get angry, although you're so wonderful when you're angry that any one might be forgiven for tempting you into that state; but after you called me up, the Nasmyths, those English people you know, mother and daughter, were at the studio, and I was so intent on getting them away in time to meet you, the mother is the most interminable talker, that I finally bundled them out of the door and came with them, with never a thought of the amulet."
"'Gene, how like you!" Her face was full of dismay. "Cresswell especially asked me to get it to-day, and I don't think he believed for one moment that clumsy fib I told about having it mended."
"I'll go at once and get it, and bring it to the house," he said contritely. "You can make any explanation—"
"No, no more explanations," she said decisively. "They are perfect spider-webs, the most involving things any poor fly can tangle himself up in. They are, to mix metaphors, the quicksands of any situation. They make of the simplest matter a problem of complexities."
"What does that go for?" Gresham tilted his head on one side and studied her. "Does it mean that you and Hepworth quarreled about me, last night?"
She looked back at him in inscrutable pondering, as if considering the point, wondering, in fact, whether she and her husband really had quarreled about him.
"No explanations, Eugene, that's fixed."
"As you will," in careless assent. "But, Dita," again that ardent note of tenderness, warming his voice, and stirring her heart with all those intimations of romance which she had never known. "We might as well accept the inevitable, accept it with joy, face the light quite fearlessly. We might as well see clearly at last, what for years we should have known and believed and welcomed with all our hearts—that we belong to each other."
Her quickly lowered eyelids veiled the sudden glow of her eyes. "Perhaps," she whispered, "only I want time to think it out, to be sure of myself. I—I've grown cautious."
He looked at her with the smile that could say so many things and to her said but one. "Take time then, Dita, but permit me to pray that it will not be long. And I—I shall await with what patience I may that dazzling morning when you will open your beautiful, dreaming eyes, and know at once and for ever that you are at last awake. When you will say, 'This is my day of love, this is my hour and Eugene's! The world may go.' Take your days or months, Dita. I give them to you, for I know that every hour that passes will bring you nearer to me."
Famous artist, famous lover! Men saw his irregular, swarthy face, his lifted shoulder, his limp, and wondered. But women saw the experiences and aspirations and dreams that that face held, they saw the smiles which said so many things exquisitely, they felt the subtle, intuitive comprehension of every word, an understanding which held no condemnation, but was as warming and stimulating as sunshine. His love-making was as delightful and perfect as his art.
But again she threw off the sweet, poignantly sweet influence and strove to think clearly.
"You had your chance, Eugene, before I was married. I would have listened to you then, the night before you sailed for Europe, but you didn't believe in me, you showed it plainly." Angry tears glittered in her eyes at the remembrance.
"Ah, how could I?" His smile was at once cynical and tender. "I knew your temperament, that craving, artistic temperament. It is much like my own. We spring from the same stock, remember. You had all the inherited love of luxury and beauty as I told you then and you were starved, starved, Dita, and in a state of revolt. Your imagination was aflame with what Hepworth offered. And I—" he threw out his hands with a disclaiming gesture, "Where was I? My feet on shifting sands, I hadn't touched bedrock then. Ah, well, what's the use? The past is past. It's the future we face. My heaven, Perdita, what a future!"
His eyes held her, drew her. Involuntarily, she swayed toward him. Then, impatiently, as if resenting her own attitude, she rose to her feet.
Dita drove home, with the faint smile still lingering about her lips, still dreaming in her eyes. She drove through the park, green still in spite of frost. A mist palely irradiated by the sunshine it obscured enveloped the landscape in a sort of opaline enchantment and unsubstantiality.
It was with a sigh of regret that she entered her own house. She felt as if she had wilfully shut the door on the wooing and pensive autumn without and gone into the bleak and wintry atmosphere of regret and puzzle and doubt.
But as she moved listlessly across the hall a servant handed her a note from her husband.
She tore it open and read it. Then she read it again. It seemed to her that the rustle of the paper was like the crackle of thorns, and the fool's laughter associated with it. She had meant to manage this situation in her own way, to keep her hand well on the lever, and behold it was all arranged for her.
Very briefly the letter informed her that Hepworth's western interests would require his personal supervision for several months. That he hoped she would endeavor to make herself as comfortable and happy as possible and arrange her time in any way that best suited her. That was all. But as she walked to her own apartments it seemed to her that the air echoed and rang with the arid and mirthless laughter of fools.
Maud Carmine was slowly pulling off her gloves before the fire in the old-fashioned drawing-room of the old-fashioned down-town house where she and her mother lived alone. It was not five o'clock, but the evenings were so short now that she hesitated whether or not to turn on the lights, but the firelight was brilliant and so much more attractive than electricity, no matter how softly shaded that might be.
Yes, the firelight was so bright that in its radiance she could see her figure reflected in the long mirror between the windows with its ornate and early Victorian frame. She walked forward and standing before it gazed at herself with a little smile. She was not a pretty woman, but she was certainly a striking and attractive one and quite beautifully gowned. That was the most noticeable thing about her, thedernier criworn with style and distinction. Her heart went out in gratitude to Perdita.
While she stood there still surveying herself Wallace Martin was announced.
"And no tea here for you," said Maud. "I've been out all afternoon. Mother is gadding somewhere at this unconscionable hour, so I suppose they thought I didn't want any. I'll send for some and it will be here in a jiffy."
"I do want some, and some solid substantial bread and butter," confessed Martin. "I'm hungry. I'm dining out to-night, but the dinner is set for some unholy late hour, and I've been at a rehearsal all afternoon."
"A rehearsal of your own play?"
He nodded. "My very own," he said. "One of the million or two I've written has actually been accepted."
"Oh, Wallace!" She held out her hands, her interest and pleasure showing plainly in her voice. "I am more than delighted. It seems too good to be true."
"Don't be too enthusiastic yet," he strove to speak dryly. "It may be accepted by the managers, it is still a question whether it will be accepted by the public. It's run one gantlet, but whether it will run two remains to be seen."
"Oh, Wallace," she cried again. "How can you be so pessimistic and calm and calculating and all that? Why, I should be off my head with joy."
"I am," he said tersely. "Maud, don't tell any one, but I feel like a Wright aëroplane."
"I won't breathe it," she promised gaily, "but please don't add to the fame I'm sure you're going to get from that play, by flying over the housetops to rehearsals. Oh, here is tea, muffins, bread and butter, cake. Anything else you'll have?"
He sank back contentedly. "Nothing but to insist that you tell that 1820 butler of yours that you're not at home to any one else. It's too deliciously cosy to be spoiled by women simpering and rustling and men lounging and clattering in. Just the firelight—it's a little early for fire, but this evening is quite chilly—and the tea-kettle singing in that nice homey way, and even a big Persian cat on the hearthrug. It's 'ome and 'eaven. And what a contrast to last night! Better a dinner of herbs like this, where love is, than the stalled ox of yestere'en."
A faint blush seemed to tinge Maud's cheek, but it may have been, after all, but the flickering firelight.
"Last night wasn't awfully pleasant, was it?" she said with a little sigh.
"Pleasant! It was deadly. Poor Maud!" helping himself to more bread and butter. "How hard you worked!"
"How silly you are!" she cried indignantly. "Perfectly absurd the way you all acted. Horrid-minded creatures, bored and trying to make a situation out of nothing. Eugene Gresham and Dita have known each other for years. There is even some kind of a southern relationship between them, quite near, I believe."
"La, la!" said Wallace, again helping himself generously this time to cake, "your loyalty is beautiful, but don't let it drive you to take a stand you may have to abandon."
"Wallace!" she turned from him indignantly and the firelight showed that her eyes were full of tears.
"I mean it just the same." He placed his tea-cup on the table and bent toward her. "Look here, Maud, your friend, Mrs. Hepworth, is a very pretty woman, but she isn't a very bright one."
"That is just where you are mistaken," she returned. "She is extremely clever but you don't seem to understand how much training and environment have to do with those things. Take a woman as pretty as Dita, a woman who has been beautiful and admired from her babyhood—she has always been the center of attraction, she has never had to observe people closely, to study their moods and characteristics, never has had to try to please." There was a depth of mournful experience in Maud's tone. "Therefore she seems to carry things with a high hand, seems to lack subtlety and finesse and deference to the opinions of others. Therefore, you, seeing this, immediately put it down to lack of brains. It is a stupidity unworthy of you, at least it is a snap-shot judgment, a lack of that careful, sympathetic study and analysis of character which I should fancy would be necessary to you as a playwright."
He sat for a moment or two, with hands loosely clasped between his knees, gazing into the bed of glowing coals. This attitude and silence on his part continued for some minutes. "There!" he turned around so suddenly that she jumped, "I've given due and careful consideration to all you have to say and I will repeat my original statement. Mrs. Hepworth is a very pretty woman, but she isn't a very bright one, not bright enough to be ordinarily discreet."
Her shoulders twitched petulantly. "Wallace! The blot on your character is that you are a bit of a gossip, yes you are, and you mingle with a lot of idle people who have nothing better to do than to spend time that might be put to valuable uses in making mountains out of mole hills. Truly, it's an idiotic mental employment that is not worthy of you."
"Maud, you rouse me to argument; you do, really. I am not talking about Mrs. Hepworth's very manifestly displayed interest in Gresham last night. That might be attributed to half a dozen different causes. She might have had a row with her husband or dressmaker, or have been so bored by the happy family group gathered about her that she was ready for anything. Any one could see that she was rather out-of-sorts, excited and reckless and all that. I am not even thinking of last night, and I will immediately withdraw any aspersions I may seem to have cast on Mrs. Hepworth's brain power, if you will tell me why she gave Eugene Gresham that old trinket, amulet, talisman or whatever it is?"
Maud began to laugh, quite naturally at first, and then she stopped suddenly. She remembered the scene of the night before, the empty space in the tray. She remembered Cresswell Hepworth's surprise, and Dita's sullenness.
"But you heard Dita last night say that it was broken and that it was being mended," she protested, but some way her protestations sounded flat and unconvincing in her own ears.
"Yes, and you remember that she glanced quickly at Eugene Gresham before she answered. You also remember that Hepworth, in the innocence of his heart, explained that the old legend or tradition which had been connected with the charm for centuries had been that it could neither be bought nor sold, but that it could only be given away, given away with the heart's love of the possessor, and in that case it would prove a blessing to both him who gave and him who took."
Martin stooped and lifted the Persian cat upon his knees. "Well, my dear Maud, the end of that story is that Gresham has the amulet."
"If that is true," she flashed back, "he took it to be mended for her."
"The circumstances do not seem to point that way," he said mildly. "Really, Maud, it's the deuce of a mix-up, and I'm simply trying to prepare you for the worst. You know those English people, the Nasmyths, in draggled tweeds and velveteens; the mother wears an India shawl, and the daughter a hat which looks as if it were made of carpet. Well, they were at the Hewstons' to luncheon to-day and they had just come from Eugene Gresham's studio where they had been pottering about the best part of the morning, although Alice Wilstead said their boots and their faces looked as if they had been chasing over plowed fields. Well, they were yelping about Gresham like all other women, and raving about the beautiful things he had, and Mrs. Nasmyth told how she got to poking about on a table and found your friend's amulet; and she, of course, made an awful scream about it, and Gresham, who, she naïvely remarked, didn't seem any too pleased at her discovery, explained that it was a good-luck charm, of very ancient workmanship, which had been given to him by a dear friend, and then he gently and firmly locked it up before her eyes in a little cabinet."
"Horrid creature!" murmured Maud.
"Who?" said Wallace eagerly. "You can't possibly mean Gresham, do you, Maud? What!" his tones expressed a wondering delight as she mutely but emphatically nodded her head. "To hear a woman speak thus of that hero of romance! Never has such a grateful sound saluted my ears. Never! Maud, I am really afraid I am going to hug you."
"You are going to do nothing of the kind." She could not help laughing, although she was seriously worried.
"Well, we'll waive it for the present," he conceded, again sinking languidly back in his chair, "but that isn't the worst. I told you that it was the deuce of a mix-up, and so it is. To continue now on page eight hundred and ninety-nine, the Nasmyths babbled all this out at luncheon, and old Hewston got perfectly apoplectic. He swelled up and became purple and emitted the most dreadful snorts and whiffles, and grunts and groans, until finally just as his wife and Alice Wilstead thought he was going to fall down in a fit, he got up and puffed away from the table, and Alice and Mrs. Hewston rushed after him, leaving the poor Nasmyths to take care of themselves. And not one thing could those two women do with him. You know what an obstinate, pig-headed, meddlesome old thing he is—and his head was set on jumping into his car and off to tell Hepworth as quickly as possible and, my dear Maud, that is what he did. Alice Wilstead said that she and Mrs. Hewston hung on to his coat-tails up to the very moment he entered the car, begging, praying, beseeching, imploring. She said he dragged them all the way across the sidewalk and literally kicked himself free from them." Martin threw back his head in a great burst of laughter in which Maud very feebly joined.
"I wish I'd been there," she said regretfully. "He'd only have got in that motor over my dead body; but, Wallace, when did you hear all this?"
"I met Alice Wilstead limping up the avenue, on her way home, and she told me about it."
"I wish—" began Maud, but she was interrupted by a summons to the telephone. When she returned to the room a few moments later, her face was graver than ever.
"I'll have to leave you, Wallace," she said. "You can stay here with the cat and the fire and the tea-kettle if you want to. Perhaps mother will come in, but Dita wishes me to come to her at once."
Prompt as Maud was in responding to Dita's plea for her immediate presence, Dita was equally prompt in hurling herself upon her friend's sympathetic bosom.
Maud had been shown at once to the sitting-room of Mrs. Hepworth's personal suite of apartments, and there Dita sat in the dim and depressing gloaming of the unlighted chamber, a figure of dejection.
She had not even removed her hat, but sat brooding in the twilight until Maud's entrance roused her and she flung herself across the room and into the latter's arms with the impetuous rush of a cyclone.
Dita was temperamentally far more given to anger than to tears, but the strain of the last two days had culminated now in a burst of wild weeping, and Maud found it necessary to soothe and calm her before she could venture to inquire into the immediate cause of her friend's very poignant and unfeigned distress; so she applied herself to the task of consolation with only vague conjectures as to the cause for grief.
She was able, however, from Dita's almost incoherent statements, to patch together a fairly accurate idea of what had occurred.
"Just read this letter," Dita thrust the sheets into Maud's hand. "Oh, you can not, not in this light. Wait a moment," she touched a button and the room was flooded with a rose-colored radiance. Maud stepped nearer one of the lamps and gave her most earnest attention to the words Cresswell Hepworth had written. His utterance through the medium of the pen, was brief, self-controlled, restrained and to the point. And as Maud read his well-considered words, something like a feeling of despair swept over her.
"He has gone, actually gone," cried Dita, as Maud handed the letter back to her without comment. "Gone," she repeated the words as if the fact in itself were quite unbelievable. She crushed the letter in her hand and threw it on the floor. "He will be gone months, looking after his mines and railroads and I'm to stay here. He never even said good-by to me, and this," she touched the crumpled ball of paper contemptuously with her foot, "gives me very plainly to understand that it is a virtual separation. Oh," she jerked the pins out of her hat and sent that plumey velvet head-covering spinning across the room, then turned to her calm and sympathetic friend with a real fear and a real appeal in her eyes. "What am I going to do? For a few months it will be all right, and then people will begin to talk like everything. And you know how it will appear. Every one will say that Cresswell discovered that I was having an affair with some one, Eugene, of course, and that he, Cresswell, and I had a row and that he refused to live with me longer, but that he nevertheless was so chivalrous that he turned over this house and the country places to me. Oh, dear, why did I have to have a sirocco?"
"Heaven knows," said Maud. "Let it be a lesson to you. Never have another one. There, there, dear, I didn't mean any reproaches or I told-you-sos. So stop howling or you'll mar your beauty permanently. Oh, now, don't lift your head and glare at me indignantly and say you hope you will, that it's never been anything but a curse to you. I've been too plain all my life to listen with patience to anything of the kind. Now, let me think." She sat with finger on lip deeply considering, while Dita still punctured the silence with loud occasional sobs.
"You will have to travel," she said decisively. "Yup will have to travel until people begin to talk and then you will have to keep on traveling until they stop talking. But oh, Dita, can't you try and patch it up?"
Her words gave fresh impetus to Perdita's gradually decreasing sobs. "You do not know him," she wept, "and to tell the truth, neither do I; but I have enough of an understanding of him to know that he always considers a step very thoroughly before he takes it, looks well into the chasm before he leaps, and it's no use trying to get him to change his mind when he has decided what course he means to pursue. Anyway, I do not wish it. I want to be free, but not this way. Oh, was ever a woman placed in such a position as I? I believe Cresswell would forgive anything but the sin of not knowing one's own mind and I had to confess to him last night that I wasn't sure of mine or of my heart either. He has a contempt for me, of course, and," rising restlessly and moving about, "I can't and won't accept his contempt, and I can't and won't continue to live on his money and potter about his old houses. I feel as if I would rather die."
"But, dearest," cried Maud bewildered. "What else is there for you to do? What else can you do?"
"Nothing apparently," she said. Her dark gown fell about her in the long lines of perfect grace. As she stood there, beautiful as the tragic muse, her great eyes transfixed Maud with her scorn, but the scorn was not for her friend, but for herself. "What can I do? I am about the most useless creature on all this green earth. I sit and cry at a situation which tortures my pride, instead of coming to a decision. I made a beggardly pittance trying to earn my own living, and I won't go back to that kind of life, a disgusting, sordid, scrimpy life, which stifled every generous impulse or spontaneous action. I will not go back, I will not give up all the things I love and have become accustomed to. I was born to this. I love it, and will have it, but not on these terms.
"I haven't been utterly futile here, as I was in those other circumstances. I have made Cresswell Hepworth's upholstery, stiff houses, 'decorated and furnished by the most expensive and artistic firms,' look really livable and lovely. Truly, haven't I? Great artists have raved over them. Oh, I'm not afraid of velvets and tapestries and embroideries. I have no burgeois reverence for them. Color was always like clay to me. I always long to take it and mold it into new combinations. Why, I couldn't keep my hands off a rainbow if I got a chance at it, even the angels couldn't shoo me away." She was in one of her swift, mercurial changes of mood, her mouth dimpling, her eyes sparkling. "I'm not afraid of all the splendor of color or of all the gorgeously rich materials that God or man ever devised. I ache to take them and combine them and melt them together and contrast them. I'll dare any combination to get an effect I want, an effect that haunts me, and is like music in my consciousness. Isn't it strange that I can do anything I like with great heavy draperies? I wave my hand at them and they fall into just the lines I want. I can get all kinds of effects in a room, but give me a little palette with little gobs of paint on it, and little, little brushes and I can't do even a decent lamp mat. That is one reason Eugene and I have always understood each other so well. He, too, knows the call of color. Oh, stop looking that way, as if I were going straight to shipwreck just because I mention Eugene. The important thing to consider now is what I am going to do."
"I've told you once," said Maud, with settled conviction; "travel."
"On Cresswell's money?" bitterly. "Well, I suppose you think it's either that or huddling into some black hole and attempting to earn my living again—a phrase that's the synonym for me of a cheap and nasty experience, but there must be some way out. No, I am utterly wasted, futile, ineffective. I do not believe, I solemnly do not believe, that I have one single, solitary gift in this world except being pretty."
"Look at me!" said Maud with a rather whimsical, cynical little smile. "I think that I'm the living proof of one of your especial gifts. Why, Dita, my dear, I'm a creation of yours. I'm considered one of the most stunning women in town and about the best dressed and," Maud's really soft and attractive smile transfixed her face, "I've won, I am really beginning to dare to believe it, the interest and I hope the affection of the only man I ever cared for and who never gave me a glance when I was just 'that plain Maud Carmine, who is musical, you know.' Oh, I mean Wallace, of course," blushing. "I haven't got over the wonder of it yet, I assure you. I'm still mentally pinching myself and saying, 'If this be I.' Think of it, Dita! I know the treasures of the socially humble, if any one does. I always had position, but that amounts to very little in these days, unless one has other things to back it up. It has been gradually losing importance, pushed to the wall by money, the ability to entertain, personal charm and good clothes, an air, a flare, a wit; until now the poor, solemn, superannuated thing, so long unduly revered, is really trotted back into the corner. Yes, I had position, but not recognition. The back seats for me, so I rubbed along on my music and conversation as best I could, poor fool! And then you came, and waved your magic wand over me, took me in hand, and the world began to appraise me at your valuation."
"That was nothing," said Dita carelessly. "I just have the knack of seeing people as they ought to be. I could do what I did for you with anybody, if they would only let me. You were nice and plastic and put yourself entirely in my hands."
"Plastic!" echoed Maud. "You mean hopeless! But turn about is fair play. Take the advice I offer you, and travel. If you say the word we'll start for Japan to-morrow. And you needn't touch a penny of your husband's money either, my child. I have enough for both of us."
"Maud, you're a darling." Dita smiled in warm appreciation. "But—"
"But, Dita," Maud's voice held both fear and appeal, "if you do stay here, you will not, you must not see Eugene Gresham."
Dita smiled at her again, inscrutably. "An idea has come to me," she said, quite irrelevantly, "a dazzling idea. I really believe that it is the solution of the whole matter."
She considered this dazzling idea, her eyes growing brighter every moment.
"Oh, Maud, Maud!" she cried, clasping her hands, "what an inspiration! I'm going on my own again. Yes, I am. Don't look so horrified. I know I've grouched and fussed a lot over my past efforts in that direction, but you see I tried to do things in a small way, cotillion favors and such, and it didn't suit me. It wasn't mymétier, not my way. I loathe detail. I can do things on a big scale or not at all. You know that. And my present idea means the big scale. When I first came to New York I regarded it as the great adventure, but then I didn't know how to go about anything. I was as ignorant as a baby of everything—everything. The tremendous professional skill required, my own ineptitude, the utter inadequacy of my poor, amateur accomplishments, my entire ignorance of business methods, all frightened, dazed, stupefied me, but now, now, I just believe I'll have another try."
"Oh, whathaveyou got in your head now?" cried Maud in frightened resignation.
"You see it's like this," Dita ignored the question and continued to follow her own train of thought. "New York demands one of two things of the stranger who comes knocking at her gates, either training or a new idea. She can take care of any trained person, but if she has to conduct the educational process, she does it with a club. Now I'm going back to her with my new idea. Oh, I was crushed a bit ago, but now I am really enjoying myself as I have not done since the first dazzle of marrying Cresswell and seeing his money turn itself so easily into the beautiful things I had longed for all my life. But I've been getting tireder and tireder of being the twittering canary in the gilded cage. Cresswell opened the door last night and now I'm going to fly put, but in a totally different direction from the one he expects me to take." She laughed delightedly. "Oh, do you think New York will listen to my new idea?"
"She'll listen to Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth," said Maud dryly. "It won't make much difference about the idea, whether it's new or old." She thought of a conversation Hepworth's friends had held at the wedding breakfast and sighed reminiscently. "I'm afraid you're making Cress rather a background."
"Why not?" said Dita cheerfully and defiantly. "Serves him right, going away in the fashion he did and putting me in such a position. 'Moses an' Aaron,' as my old mammy used to say, you needn't try to dissuade me. You'll be as crazy about the idea as I am when I unfold it to you. The twittering canary is going to hop out of the gilded cage, and build her own nest. It's the great adventure. It is to live. Won't Cresswell open those sleepy eyes of his when he sees this move of mine on the chessboard? I'm done with failure, this venture of ours is a success before it's begun."
Perdita, being one of those ardent, mercurial creatures who run with winged feet to meet every event in life, whether it be joyous or disastrous, had encountered her bad quarter of an hour the morning after the dinner party.
Hepworth's, however, was postponed for a later and more lingering occasion. We euphemistically limit these seasons of judgment to quarters of an hour in speaking of them, but they are quite independent of time, and may continue through days.
Perdita had a temperamental advantage. Hers were those swift changes of mood so disconcerting to the devils of ennui and depression; but her husband's period of reaction lasted, with but little mitigation, all the way across the continent.
A most lusty and persistent demon of doubt and self-accusation boarded his car within a few hours after the train left the station, invaded his luxurious solitude and, indifferent to a chilling reception, there remained. To Hepworth, the demon's most searing insinuation was that, instead of a masterly retreat in good order, this departure of his for the other side of the continent was a virtual renunciation of all that he cared most to win and to hold. Fool and coward, the demon whispered, to quit the game just at the moment when his presence was an imperative necessity. But, although the demon was eloquent—it is an attribute of demons—and his suggestions were like red-hot pincers, it never entered Hepworth's head to turn back. On the contrary, it was characteristic that having decided on a certain course, he was not to be swayed by the demon's most subtle and ingenious arguments. He was merely rendered supremely uncomfortable by them.
He had offered Perdita her freedom and he meant it without any reservations. She should decide on her own course, follow her own leadings according to the limits of her own folly or discretion, but free she should be, and free even from any shadowy influence that his mere presence might exert. Quixotic, scrupulously so: but then that was Hepworth's way.
The demon laughed at this obstinately maintained, unalterable decision. What chance, it sardonically suggested, had any mere average man against a rival like Eugene Gresham? Women love glamour. Perdita especially adored it blindly. Most women, certainly Perdita, would rather follow the alluring, brilliant gleam of the will-o'-the-wisp, any time, than the smoky but dependable light of the useful household lantern.
These gloomy reflections served to goad and stab like so many tormenting banderillos, but Hepworth's resolution to absent himself for a time, and thus insure Perdita a free hand, remained unalterable, in fact it hardened, became like iron.
The journey over, his spirits improved; the demon was far less persistent and only occasionally showed himself. There were a number of business matters of varying importance requiring his attention, and these very fully occupied his mind. He had made his headquarters for a time at Santa Barbara.
Then, suddenly, his busy, if rather monotonous and routine existence became diversified by a series of peculiar events which, in his most wildly imaginative moments, he would never have conjectured.
One afternoon, as he sat before an open window in the villa he had taken, looking out over a wonderful garden, all fragrance and color, at the blue channel, the mountains, the distant islands gleaming fairy-like through their golden haze, the name of Mr. James Fleming was brought to him and served very effectually to rouse him from his spiritless daydreaming, on whose confines hovered the demon.
Hepworth sat up, care vanished from his brow, the depressed droop of his mouth changed to a smile. "Fleming! Jim Fleming!" he exclaimed. "Show him in at once," to the waiting servant.
Mr. Fleming wasted no time in appearing and Hepworth pushed back his chair and rose, meeting him with a hearty hand-clasp and one of his most brilliant smiles.
This was the effect the arrival of Fleming invariably produced. One might have thought from the way men greeted him that he was some great public benefactor. Quite the opposite. Hepworth, and no doubt many others, had, through him, lost thousands of dollars, but this did not in the least affect their pleasure in his society nor tarnish their confidence in his good intentions.
Fleming was about Hepworth's age, rather tall and rather stout. He had a broad, clean-shaven face, and the mouth of an orator, large, mobile, stretching across his face in a straight line and turning up sharply at the corners. His eyes, which were blue-gray, had a most ingratiating and irresistible expression of camaraderie.
During the course of his life many unkind names had been applied to Fleming, but by women, mark you, never by men. There were quantities of good wives and mothers who regarded him very much as the devil is supposed to regard holy water. Had they not reason? At the very mention of his name they had seen a certain wild, primitive gleam light the eyes of even their most staid and house-broken men, and at the sound of his voice the most tractable and responsible husbands would seem to hear again the pipes of Pan, and forgetful of duty, daily bread and family obligations would follow eagerly whither those wild notes led.
Beyond question Fleming possessed that magnetic quality which opens all doors. He was at home in any society and where he was laughter flowed as wine. He had neither profession nor settled business, but always referred to himself as a "prospector—a prospector of the old school."
The first gay greetings over, Mr. Fleming established himself in a comfortable chair, and said without preamble, but with his usual devil-may-care nonchalance, "I've come to ask a favor of you, Cress, a mighty big favor."
Hepworth mechanically stretched his hand out toward his check book.
"Oh, it's not money I want this time," said Fleming easily. "It's no favor to me to lend me money. That's always spent on others. Anyway, I've got more than I can handle for once. You see, it's this way. I've got to go over to Idaho. I've just got wind of a big thing there, a big thing. Two boys I know want me to go over and look at it and I'm off to-day. Biggest thing that's been struck in years, they tell me. Both of them stone broke. Didn't have enough money to pay railway fare. Stole rides, practically no food for a week. If there's anything in it, I may be good enough to allow you to finance it."
"Let me see," said Hepworth reflectively, "according to the invariable law of ratio, I'm about due to win on some of these ventures of yours I've so obligingly financed."
Mr. Fleming solemnly and sadly shook his head. "Set a beggar on horseback and sooner or later he'll show his rags. The born millionaire! You show all the degenerate earmarks." He pointed the finger of scorn at Hepworth. "Even if I hadn't come along you would still have been a millionaire, climbed to it on some one else's shoulders. Entirely forgotten the old days, haven't you? Why who," explosively, "laid the foundation of your soul-deadening fortune? Me. Myself. Well, that's what a man has to expect in this world. But seriously, Cress, I do want you to do something for me."
"Don't frighten me in this way then," said Hepworth. "If it isn't money, I'm getting apprehensive. You're in some scrape and I've got to take off my coat and work like a nigger to get you out."
"Honest to God, no," said Mr. Fleming fervently. "It's just this. You see my little girl is here to spend her vacation with me—jumped across three states and got here day before yesterday, and under the circumstances it's kind of rough on her for me to go skating off this way leaving her all alone in a barracks of a hotel and in this place where she don't know a soul. Sure's I'm sitting here, Cress, I did my best not to listen to the boys," Fleming spoke earnestly. He always had the virtue of believing profoundly in himself. "It didn't seem fair to her, you know. But, oh Lord! What's the use? You know how it is when a new property swims into my ken. I get the fever so's I can't eat and I can't sleep, and it's 'my heart in the Highlands' so's I'm like to die unless I'm up and away to that little old new mine that's just been found, seeing what's to her, anyway. And you may believe it or not," in solemn asseveration, "but all the time I'm holding back and trying not to go. I've got the cramp in my feet so that I can't hobble, but the moment I yield, and take to the path again, it's gone. That's a fact. Now," the musical note of persuasion was strong in Mr. Fleming's voice, "now all I'm asking of you, Cress, is to look in on my little girl now and then and see that she has everything she wants. She's got a sort of vinegar-faced Sue with her that she calls her maid, so she's not entirely alone; but I want to be easy in my mind about her, to know that she's got some one to fall back on if anything unpleasant comes up.
"She's pretty cute, you know. About on to everything that's going. Can take the best kind of care of herself. Has had to, poor kid. Her mother died, and you know, Cress, she might just as well have had a grasshopper for a father as me. Although I've tried, she'd tell you herself, I've tried, that is, as far as the limitations of my artistic temperament would permit. But when I feel thewanderlustand theweltschmerzand all that in my blood and hear the siren voices of new properties calling, why, the fireside fetters have got to fall, the white, clinging arms have got to unloosen their grip. That's all there is to it. You know in books how the father of a motherless daughter is always father and mother and brothers and sisters and grandmother, uncles and aunts to her? Well, I haven't been all those to Fuschia. I wouldn't have known how and she wouldn't have stood for it. She's got no particular use for fireside fetters, herself. Oh," optimistically, "I guess she'll be all right here. I'm leaving her all the money she can spend. But I just want you to keep an eye on her. Kind of see that the wheels are running all right and that she's amused and don't mope. You'll like her, you know. It's a funny thing, but everybody's just crazy and always has been about that kid."
Hepworth was not proof against the appeal in his old friend's eyes, neither was he capable of shattering Fleming's simple faith that he, Hepworth, a jaded and middle-aged person, would find Fleming's daughter a delightful and interesting charge.
Fleming's mind still ran on his child. "She's about the only thing in petticoats that has any real confidence in me," he said, with pride. "It's only been once or twice in my career that I've seen a look of real friendship in a woman's eyes. The first sight of me brings that wary, on-guard gleam way back in their blue or brown windows of the soul. You can't fool a woman. They've got those intuitions, you know, and they know instinctively that I'm a born missionary to the henpecked, that it's my mission in life to bring a little cheer into the lives of those poor shut-ins, the married men; scatter a little sunshine on their path.
"By the way," as if struck by a sudden thought, "you've married since I last saw you. Some slip of a girl, I'll be bound. That's what the middle-aged millionaire's sure to do. Well, hold on to your money, Cress. Don't trust to your own fascinations. And you keep an eye on my little Fuschia, won't you?"
Manfully concealing his apprehensions, Hepworth promised to do all that lay in his power to be a father to Fleming's daughter and had the consolation of seeing his old friend depart most jauntily and evidently with a weight off his mind.
But when the door had finally closed on him Hepworth let his perfunctorily smiling face relax. But it did not remain merely grave and preoccupied, for as he continued to gaze fixedly, but unseeingly, at a large paper weight before him, his eyes narrowed and his brow contracted in a frown.
He had neither the heart, time nor inclination to spend his leisure moments amusing such an utterly spoiled, untrained, undisciplined child as he was sure Fleming's daughter must be. Allowed to choose her own path from babyhood, wilful, headstrong—oh, well, what was the use of anticipating? He'd promised to look after her, and disagreeable duty as it was sure to be, he had to see it through, and that was all there was about it.
He decided to look her up the next afternoon. Take her a doll or a box of candy. Perhaps, though, she was too old for a doll. How old was she, anyway? He had forgotten to ask Jim. Probably about twelve or fifteen years. Yes, certainly, the box of candy was safer. That was always acceptable and agreeable to any of the seven ages of women.
He sighed again, and then, as if seeking distraction, he picked up the New York newspaper he was about to open when Fleming's card had been brought to him. He surveyed it languidly, his eye roving with indifference up and down the columns. Suddenly his attention was vividly arrested.
His whole gaze, even further, his whole heart hung on a paragraph stating that Eugene Gresham had just sailed on theMauritania. It was known among Mr. Gresham's friends that he had recently received a commission to paint the portrait of a princess of the royal house of Austria and that upon completing this he would go to England to finish a portrait, already begun, on a previous occasion, of the beautiful Lady Heppelwynd. Mr. Gresham, when seen on board ship a moment before sailing, would neither confirm nor deny these rumors.
The frown disappeared from Hepworth's face. What commendable discretion! Whether the credit were due Dita or Gresham mattered little. It was the admirable restraint, this delicate and unexpected regard for appearances, which Hepworth applauded. To do him justice, that was his first thought, the sober second one was profound relief that the fascinating will-o'-the-wisp was as far away from the impulsive and curious Dita as was the smoky lantern. He put the paper down and rose to his feet. Fleming's little girl should have a box of candy that was a box of candy.
Procrastination was a thief that had never succeeded in wresting much time from Hepworth. He was one of those rare and exemplary natures who never put off until to-morrow what they can do to-day. Never did he stand shivering on the edge of his cold bath, but plunged in immediately without pause for consideration. Obnoxious virtues these—prejudicial to any popularity among his fellow-beings, therefore it speaks volumes for him that he was able to overlive them.
This all goes to show that although the duty of keeping an eye on Fleming's daughter became more repugnant to him the longer it remained in contemplation, he yet lost no time in looking her up, as he expressed it to himself. Neither did he waver in his promise to himself fitly to celebrate Eugene Gresham's departure for other shores, but kept his vow by selecting the most gaudily decorated and wastefully beribboned box of sweets he could secure, and armed with it, as a hostage to impertinent childhood, took himself to the big hotel where Miss Fuschia Fleming was stopping.
He sent up his name to her and was very shortly informed that Miss Fleming was in the garden and would be delighted to have him join her there.
Hepworth curled his lip. What grown-up airs! Naturally, she had lost no time in turning up her hair and having her gowns lengthened since her father's departure, and he, Hepworth, would have to play up to this phase of missishness.
He was dazzled for the moment by the bright sunshine, the brilliant flowers, and mechanically followed the page, threading his way through various groups of people. Before a table among the roses sat a young woman reading. The page stopped; Hepworth stopped; the young woman cast aside her book and rose.