The smart world received the change in Orson Vane with no immediate wonder. Wonder is, at the outset, a vulgarity; to let nothing astonish you is part of a smart education. A good many of the smartest hostesses in town were glad that Vane had emerged from his erstwhile air of aristocratic aloofness; he took, with them, the place that Reggie Hart's continuing illness left vacant.
In the regions where Vane had been actually intimate whispers began to go about, it is true, and it was with no little difficulty that an occasional story about him was kept out of the gossipy pages of the papers. Vane was constantly busy seeking notoriety. His attentions to several of the younger matrons were conspicuous. Yet he was so much of a stimulating force, in a society where passivity was the rule, that he was welcome everywhere.
He had become the court fool of the smart set.
To him, the position held nothing degrading. It was, he argued, a reflection on smart society, rather on himself, that, to be prominent in it, one must needs wear cap and bells. Moreover his position allowed him, now and then, the utterance of grim truths that would not have been listened to from anyone not wearing the jester's license.
At the now famous dinner given by Mrs. Sclatersby, Orson Vane seized a lull in the conversation, by remarking, in his ladylike lisp:
"My dear Mrs. Sclatersby, I have such a charming idea. I am thinking of syndicating myself."
Mrs. Sclatersby put up her lorgnettes and smiled encouragement at Orson. "It sounds Wall Streety," she said, "you're not going to desert us, are you?"
"Oh, nothing so dreadful. It would be an entirely smart syndicate, you know; a syndicate of which you would be a member. I sometimes think, you know, that I do not distribute myself to the best advantage. There have been little jealousies, now and then, have there not?" He looked, in a bird-like, perky way, at Mrs. Barrett Weston, and the only Mrs. Carlos. "I have been unable to be in two places at once. Now a syndicate—a syndicate could arrange things so that there would be no disappointments, no clashings of engagements, no waste of opportunity.
"How clever you always are," said a lady at Orson's right. She had chameleon hair, and her poise was that of a soubrette. The theatre was tremendously popular as a society model that season. Orson blew a kiss at her, and went on with his speech.
"Actors do it, you know. Painters have done it. Inventors do it. Why not I?" He paused to nibble an olive. "To contribute to the gaiety of our little world is, after all, the one thing worth while. Think how few picturesque people we have! Eccentricity is terribly lacking in the town. We have no Whistler; Mansfield is rather a dull imitation. Of course there is George Francis Train; but he is a trifle, a trifle too much of the larger world, don't you think?"
"I never saw the man in my life," asserted the hostess.
"Exactly," said Orson, "he makes himself too cheap. It keeps us from seeing him. But Whistler; think of Whistler, in New York! He would wear a French hat, fight duels every day, lampoon a critic every hour, and paint nocturnes on the Fifth avenue pavement! He would make Diana fall from the Tower in sheer envy. He would go through the Astoria with monocle and mockery, and smile blue peacock smiles at Mr. Blashfield and Mr. Simmons. He would etch himself upon the town. We would never let him go again. We need that sort of thing. Our ambitions and our patience are cosmopolitan; but we lack the public characters to properly give fire and color to our streets. Now I—"
He let his eyes wander about the room, a delicate smile of invitation on his lips.
"Don't you think," said one of the ladies, "that you are quite—quite bohemian enough?"
Orson shuddered obviously. "My dear lady," he urged, "it is a dreadful thing to be bohemian. It is no longer smart. If I am considered the one, I cannot possibly be the other. There is, to be sure, a polite imitation; but it is quite an art to imitate the thing with just sufficient indolence. But I really wish you would think the thing over, Mrs. Sclatersby. I know nobody who would do the thing better than I. Our men are mostly too fond of fashion, and too afraid of fancy. One must not be ashamed of being called foolish. Whistler uses butterflies; somebody else used sunflowers and green carnations; I should use—lilies, I think, lilies-of-the-valley. Emblematic of the pure folly of my pose, you know. One must do something like that, you see, to gain smart applause; impossible hats and improbable hair, except in the case of actresses, are quite extinct."
A Polish orchestra that had been hitherto unsuccessful against the shrill monologue of Orson, and the occasional laughter of the ladies, now sent out a sudden, fierce stream of melody. It was evident that they did not mean to take the insult of a large wage without offering some stormy moments in exchange. The diners assumed a patient air, eating in an abstracted manner, as if their stomachs were the only members of their bodies left unstunned by the music. The assemblage wore, in its furtive gluttony, an air of being in a plot of the most delicious danger. Some rather dowdy anecdotes went about in whispers, and several of the ladies made passionate efforts to blush. Orson Vane took a sip of some apricotine, explaining to his neighbor that he took it for the color; it was the color of verses by Verlaine. She had never heard of the man. Ah; then of course Mallarmé, and Symons and Francis Saltus were her gods? No; she said she liked Madame Louise; hers were by far the most fragile hats purchasable; what was the use of a hat if it was not fragile; to wear one twice was a crime, and to give one away unless it was decently crushed was an indiscretion. Orson quite agreed with her. To his other neighbor he confided that he was thinking of writing a book. It would be something entirely in the key of blue. He was busy explaining its future virtues, when an indiscreet lull came in the orchestral tornado.
"I mean to bring the pink of youth to the sallowest old age," he was saying, "and every page is to be as dangerous as a Bowery cocktail."
Then the storm howled forth again. Everyone talked to his or her neighbor at top voice. Now and then pauses in the music left fag ends of conversation struggling about the room.
"The decadents are simply the people who refuse to write twaddle for the magazines...."
"The way to make a name in the world is to own a soap factory and ape William Morris on the side...."
"I can always tell when it is Spring by looking at the haberdashers' windows. To watch shirts and ties blooming is so much nicer than flowers and those smelly things...."
"The pleasantest things in the world all begin with a P. Powders, patches and poses—what should we do without them?..."
This sort of thing came out at loose ends now and then. Suddenly the music ceased altogether. The diners all looked as if they had been caught in a crime. The lights went out in the room, and there were little smothered shrieks. After an interval, a rosy glow lit up the conservatory beyond the palms; a little stage showed in the distance. Some notorious people from the music-halls began to do songs and dances, and offer comic monologues. The diners fell into a sort of lethargy. They did not even notice that Orson Vane's chair was empty.
Vane was in a little boudoir lent him by the hostess. His nostrils dilated with the perfume of her that he felt everywhere. He sank into a silk-covered chair, before which he had arranged a full-length mirror, and several smaller glasses, with candles glowing all about him. He was conscious of a cloying sense of happiness over his physical perfections. He stripped garment after garment from him with a care, a gentleness that argued his belief that haste was a foe to beauty. He stretched himself at full length, in epicurean enjoyment of himself. The flame of life, he told himself, burnt the more steadily the less we wrapped it up. If we could only return to the pagan life! And yet—what charm there was in dress! The body had, after all, a monotony, a sameness; the tenderest of its curves, the rosiest of its surfaces, must pall. But the infinite variety of clothes! The delight of letting the most delicate tints of gauze caress the flesh, while to the world only the soberest stuffs were exposed! The rustle of fresh linen, the perfume that one could filter through the layers of one's attire!
Orson Vane closed his eyes, lazily, musingly. At that moment his proper soul was quite in subjection; the ecstasy in the usurping soul was all-powerful.
He was thinking of what the cheval-glass in that little room must have seen.
It would be unspeakably fine to be a mirror.
The little crystal clock ticking on the dressing-table tinkled an hour. It brought him from his reveries with a start. He began gliding into some shining, silken things of umber tints; they fitted him to the skin.
He was a falconer.
It was a costume to strike pale the idlers at a bathing beach. There was not a crease, not a fold anywhere. A leathern thong upon a wrist, a feathered cap upon his head, were almost the only points that rose away from the body as God had fashioned it. Satisfaction filled him as he surveyed himself. But there was more to do. Above this costume he put the dress of a Spanish Queen. When he lifted the massively brocaded train, there showed the most exquisitely chiseled ankles, the promise of the most alluring legs. The corsage hinted a bust of the most soothing softness. He spent fully ten minutes in happy admiration of his images in the mirrors.
When he proceeded to the conservatory, it was by a secret corridor. The diners were wearily watching a Frenchwoman who sang with her gloves, which were black and always on the point of falling down. She was very pathetic; she was trying to sing rag-time melodies because some idiot had told her the Newport set preferred that music. A smart young woman had danced a dance of her own invention; everyone agreed, as they did about the man who paints with his toes, that, considering her smartness in the fashionable world, it was not so much a wonder that she danced so well, as that she danced at all. They were quite sure the professional managers would offer her the most lavish sums; she would be quite as much of an attraction as the foreign peer who was trying to be a gentleman, where they are most needed, on the stage.
At a sign from Orson, the lights went out again, as the Frenchwoman finished her song. Several of the guests began to talk scandal in the dark; there are few occupations more fascinating than talking scandal in the dark. The question of whether it was better to be a millionaire or a fashionable and divorced beauty was beginning to agitate several people into almost violent argument, when the lights flared to the full.
The chorus of little "Ohs" and "Ahs," of rapid whispered comment, and of discreetly patted gloves, was quite fervid for so smart an assemblage. Except in the rarest cases, to gush is as fatal, in the smart world, as to be intolerant. There is a smart avenue between fervor and frowning; when you can find that avenue unconsciously, in the dark, as it were, you have little more to learn in the code of smartness.
Mrs. Sclatersby herself murmured, quite audibly:
"How sweet the dear boy looks!"
Her clan took the word up, and for a time the sibilance of it was like a hiss in the room. A man or two in the company growled out something that his fairer neighbor seemed unwilling to hear. These basso profundo sounds, if one could formulate them into words at all, seemed more like "Disgusting fool!" or "Sickening!" than anything else. But the company had very few men in it; in this, as in many other respects, the room resembled smart society itself. The smart world is engineered and peopled chiefly by the feminine element. The male sex lends to it only its more feminine side.
It is almost unnecessary to describe the picture that Orson Vane presented on that little stage. His beauty as "Isabella, Queen of Spain," has long since become public property; none of his later efforts in suppression of the many photographs that were taken, shortly after the Sclatersby dinner, have succeeded in quite expunging the portraits. At that time he gave the sittings willingly. He felt that these photographs represented the highest notch in his fame, the completest image of his ability to be as beautiful as the most beautiful woman.
Shame or nervousness was not part of Orson Vane's personality that night. He sat there, in the skillfully arranged scheme of lights, with his whole body attuned only to accurate impersonation of the character he represented. He got up. His motion, as he passed across the stage, was so utterly feminine, so made of the swaying, undulating grace that usually implies the woman; the gesture with his fan was so finically alluring; the poise of his head above his bared shoulders so coquettish,—that the women watching him almost held their breaths in admiration.
It was, you see, the most adroit flattery that a man could pay the entire sex of womankind.
Then the music, a little way off, began to strum a cachuca. The tempo increased; when finally the pace was something infectious, Orson Vane began a dance that remains, to this day, an episode in the annals of the smart. The vigor of his poses, the charm of his skirt-manipulation, carried the appreciation of his friends by storm. Some of the ladies really had hard work to keep from rushing to the stage and kissing the young man then and there. When we are emotional, we Americans—to what lengths will we not go!
But the surprises were not yet over. A dash of darkness stayed the music; a swishing and a flapping came from the stage; then the lights. Vane stood, in statue position, as a falconer. You could almost, under the umber silk, see the rippling of his veins.
Only a second he stood so, but it was a second of triumph. The company was so agape with wonder, that there was no sound from it until the music and the bare stage, following a brief period of blackness, recalled it to its senses. Then it urged Mrs. Sclatersby to grant a great favor.
Mr. Vane must be persuaded not take off his falconer's costume; to mingle, for what little time remained, with the company without resuming his more conventional attire.
Vane smiled when the message came to him. He nodded his head. Then he sent for the Sclatersby butler.
"Plenty of Red Ribbon!" he said to that person.
"Plenty, sir."
"Make a note of your commissions; a cheque in the morning."
Then he mingled again with his fellow-guests, and there was much toasting, and the bonds all loosened a little, and the sparkle came up out of the glasses into the cheeks of the women. The other men, one by one, took their way out.
Women crushed one another to touch the hero of the evening. Jealousies shot savage glances about. Every increase in this emulation increased the love that Orson Vane felt for himself. He caressed a hand here, a lock there, with a king's condescension. If he felt a kiss upon his hand, he smiled a splendid, slightly wearied smile. If he had hot eyes turned on him, burning so fiercely as to spell out passion boldly, he returned, with his own glances, the most ineffable promises.
There have been many things written and said about that curious affair at the Sclatersbys, but for the entire history of it—well, there are reasons why you will never be able to trace it. Orson Vane is perhaps the only one who might tell some of the details; and he, as you will find presently, has utterly forgotten that night.
"Time we went home, girls," said Vane, at last, disengaging himself gently from a number of warm hands, and putting away, as he moved into freedom, more than one beautiful pair of shoulders. He needed the fresh air; he was really quite worn out. But he still had a madcap notion left in him; he still had a trump to play.
"A pair of hose," he called out, "a pair of hose, with diamond-studded garters, to the one who will play 'follow' to my 'leader!'"
And the end of that dare-devil scamper did not come until the whole throng reached Madison Square.
Vane plunged to the knees in the fountain.
That chilled the chase. But one would not be denied. Hers was a dark type of beauty that needed magnolias and the moon and the South to frame it properly. She lifted her skirts with a little tinkling laugh, and ran to where Orson stood, splashing her way bravely through the water.
Vane looked at her and took her hand.
"I envy the prize I offered," he said to her.
Dawn found Orson Vane nodding in a hansom. He had told the man to drive to Claremont. The Palisades were just getting the first rosy streaks the sun was putting forth. The Hudson still lay with a light mist on it. The ascent to Claremont, in sunshine so clustered with beauty, was now deserted. A few carts belonging to the city were dragging along sleepily. Harlem was at the hour when the dregs of one day still taint the morn of the next one.
Vane was drowsy. He felt the need of a fillip. He did not like to think of getting back to his rooms and taking a nap. It was still too early, it seemed, for anything to eat or drink. He spied the Fort Lee ferry, and with it a notion came to him. The cabman was willing. In a few minutes he was aboard the ferry, and the cooler air that sweeps the Hudson was laving him. On the Jersey side he found a sleepy innkeeper who patched up a breakfast for him. He had, fortunately, some smokable cigars in his clothes. The day was well on when he reached the New York side of the river again, and gave "The Park!" as the cabman's orders.
His body now restored to energy again, his mind recounted the successes of the night. He really had nothing much to wish for. The men envied him to the point of hatred; the women adored him. He was the pet of the smartest people. He was shrewd enough, too, to be petted for a consideration; his adroitness in sales of Red Ribbon added comfortably to his income. He took pride in this, as if there had ever been a time, for several generations, when the name of Vane had not stood good for a million or so.
The Park was not well tenanted. Some robust members of the smart set were cantering about the bridle paths, and now and then a carriage turned a corner; but the people who preferred the Park for its own sake to the Park of the afternoon drive were, evidently, but few. Vane felt quite neglected; he was still able to count the number of times that he had bowed to familiars. The deserted state of the Park somewhat discounted the tonic effects of its morning freshness. Nature was nothing unless it was a background for man. The country was a place from which you could come to town. Still—there was really nothing better to do, this fine morning. He rather dreaded the thought of his rooms after the brilliance of the night.
His meditations ceased at approach of a girlish figure on horseback, a groom at a discreet distance behind.
It was Miss Vanlief.
He saw that she saw him, yet he saw no welcome in her eyes. He rapped for the hansom to stop; got out, and waved his hat elaborately at the young woman. She, in sheer politeness, had reined in her horse.
"A sweet day," he minced, "and jolly luck my meeting you! Thought it was rather dull in the old Park, till you turned up. Sweet animal you're on." He looked up with that air that, the night before, had been so bewitching. Somehow, as the girl eyed him, he felt haggard. She was not smiling, not the least little bit.
"I have read about the affair at Mrs. Sclatersby's," she said.
"Really? Dreadful hurry these newspapers are always in, to be sure. It was really a great lark."
"It must have been," was her icy retort. She beckoned to the groom. "That—that sheet," she ordered, sharply, holding out one gauntleted hand. The groom gave her the folded newspaper. She began to read from it, in a bitter monotone:
"The antics of Mr. Orson Vane," she read, "for some time the subject of comment in society, have now reached the point where they deserve the censure of publicity. His doings at a certain fashionable dinner of last night were the subject of outspoken disgust at the prominent clubs later. Now that the case is openly discussed, it may be repeated that a prominent publication recently had occasion to refuse print to a distinctly questionable photograph of this young man, submitted, it is alleged, by himself. In the more staid social circles, one wonders how much longer Mrs. Carlos and the other leaders of the smartest set will continue to countenance such behavior."
Vane, as she read, was enjoying every inch of her. What freshness, what grace! What a Lady Godiva she would have made!
"Sweet of you to take such interest," he observed, as she handed the paper to the groom. "Malice, you know, sheer malice. Dare say I forgot to give that paper some news that I gave the others; they take that sort of thing so bitterly, you know. As for the photo—it was really awfully cunning. I'll send you one. Oh, must you go? I'm so cut up! Charming chat we've had, I'm sure."
She had given her horse a cut with the whip, had sent Vane a stare of the most open contempt, and was now off and away. Vane stood staring after her. "Very nice little filly," he murmured. "Very!"
Then he gave his house number to the cabman.
Turning into Park avenue, at Thirty-Ninth street, the horse slipped on the asphalt. The hansom spun on one wheel, and then crashed against a lamp-post. Vane was almost stunned, though there was no mark on him anywhere. He felt himself all over, but he could feel not as much as a lump. But his head ached horribly; he felt queerly incapable of thought. Whatever it was that had happened to him, it had stunned something in him. What that something was he did not realize even as he told Nevins, who opened the door to him in some alarm:
"Send the cab over to Mr. Reginald Hart's. Say I must—do you hear, Nevins?—I must have him here within the hour—if he has to come in a chair!"
Not even when he let the veil glide from the new mirror did he understand what part of him was stunned. He moved about in a sort of half wakefulness. The time he spent before Hart's arrival was all a stupor, spent on a couch, with eyes closed.
Hart came in feebly, leaning on a stick.
"Funny thing of you to do," he piped, "sending for me like this. What the—" He straightened himself in front of the new mirror, and, for an instant, swayed limply there. Then his stick took an upward swing, and he minced across the room vigorously. "Why, Vane," he said, "not ill, are you? Jove, you know, I've had a siege, myself. Feel nice and fit this minute, though. Shouldn't wonder if the effort to get here had done me good. What was the thing you wanted me for?"
Vane shook his head, feebly. "Upon my word, Hart, I don't know. I had an accident; cab crushed me; I was a little off my head, I think. All a mistake."
"Sorry, I'm sure," lisped Hart, "hope it won't be anything real. I tell you I feel quite out of things. All the other way with you, eh! Hear you're no end of a choice thing with thecafe au laitgang. Well, adios!"
Vane lay quite still after the other had gone. When he spoke, it was to say, to the emptiness of the room, but nodding to where Hart had last stood:
"What a worm! What an utter worm!"
The voice was once more the voice of Orson Vane.
As realization of that came to him, he spoke again, so loud that Nevins, without, heard it.
"Thank God," he said.
The time that had passed since he began the experiment with the Professor's mirror now filled Vane with horror. The life that had seemed so splendid, so triumphant to him a short while ago, now presented itself to him as despicable, mean, hateful. Now that he had safely ousted the soul of Reginald Hart he loathed the things that, under the dominance of that soul, he had done. The quick feeling of success that he had expected from his adventure into the realm of the mind was not his at all; his emotions were mixed, and in that mixture hatred of himself was uppermost. It was true: he had succeeded. The thoughts, the deeds of another man had become his thoughts, his deeds. The entire point of view had been, for the time, changed. But, where he had expected to keep the outland spirit in subjection, it was the reverse that had happened; the usurping soul had been in positive dominance; he had been carried along relentlessly by the desires and the reflections of that other.
The fact that he knew, now, to the very letter, the mind that animated that fellow, Reginald Hart, was small consolation to him. The odium of that reputation was inescapably his, Orson Vane's. Oh, the things he had said,—and thought,—and done! He had not expected that any man's mind could be so horrible as that. He thought of the visitation he had conjured upon himself, and so thinking, shuddered. How was he ever to elude the contempt that his masquerade, if he could call it so, would bring him?
Above all, that scene with Miss Vanlief came back to him with a bitter pang. What did it profit him, now, to fathom the foul depths of Reginald Hart's mind concerning any ever so girlish creature? It was he, Orson Vane, for all that it was possible to explain to the contrary, who had phrased Miss Vanlief's beauty in such abominable terms.
Consternation sat on his face like a cloud. He could think of no way out of the dark alley into which he had put himself.
Each public appearance of his now had its tortures. Men who had respected him now avoided him; women to whom he had once condescended were now on an aggravating plane of intimacy. Sometimes he could almost feel himself being pointed out on the street.
The mental and physical reaction was beginning to trace itself on his face. He feared his Florentine mirrors now almost as much as the Professor's. The blithe poise had left him. He brooded a good deal. His insight into another nature than his own filled him with a sense of distaste for the human trend toward evil.
He spent some weeks away from town, merely to pick up his health again. His strength returned a little, but the joy of life came back but tardily.
On his first day in town he met Moncreith. There was an ominous wrinkle gathering in the other's forehead, but Vane braved all chance of a rebuff.
"Luke," he said, "don't you know I've been ill? You can't think how ill I've been. Do you remember I told you I was going abroad? I've been abroad, mentally; I have, Luke, really I have. It's like a bad dream to me. You know what I mean."
Moncreith found his friend rather pathetic. At their last meeting he had been hot in jealousy of Orson. Now he could afford to pity him. He had made Jeannette Vanlief's acquaintance, and he stood quite well with her. He had made up his mind to stand yet better; he was, in fact, in love with her. He was quite sure that Vane had quite put himself out of that race. So he took the other's hand, and walked amicably to the Town and Country Club with him.
"You have been doing strange things," he ventured.
"Strange," echoed Vane, "strange isn't the word! Ghastly, horrible—awful things I've been doing. I wish I could explain. But it—it isn't my secret, Luke. All I can say is: I was ill. I am, I hope, quite well again."
It seemed an age since he had spent an hour or so in his favorite club. The air of the members was unmistakably frosty. The conversation shrank audibly. He was glad when Moncreith found a secluded corner and bore him to it. But he was not a bright companion; his own thoughts were too depressing to allow of his presenting a sparkling surface to the world. They talked in mere snatches, in curt syllables.
"I've seen a good deal of Miss Vanlief," said Moncreith, with conscious triumph.
"Oh," said Vane, with a start, "Miss Vanlief? So you know her? Is she—is she well?"
"Quite. I see her almost every day."
"Fortunate man!" sighed Vane. He was a little weary of life. He wanted to tell somebody what his dreams about Miss Vanlief were; he wanted to cry out loud, "She is the dearest, sweetest girl in the world!" merely to efface, in his own mind, the alien thought of her that had come to him weeks ago. Moncreith did not seem the one to utter this cry to. Moncreith was too engrossed in his own success. He could bear Moncreith's company no longer, not just then. He muttered lame words; he stumbled out to the avenue.
Some echo of an instinct turned his steps to the little bookshop.
It was quite empty of customers. He passed his fingers over the back of books that he thought Miss Vanlief might have handled. It was an absurd whim, a childish trick. Yet it soothed him perceptibly. Our nerves control our bodies and our nerves are slaves of our imaginations.
He was turning to go, when his eye fell on a parcel lying on the counter. It was addressed to "Miss Jeannette Vanlief."
"Jeannette, Jeannette!" he said the name over to himself time and again. It brought the image of her before him more plainly than ever. The sunset glint in her hair, the roses and lilies of her skin, the melody in her voice! The charm with which she had first met him, in that very shop. It all came to him keenly. The more remote the possibility of his gaining her seemed, the more he hugged the thought of her. He admitted to himself now, all the more since his excursion into an abominable side of human nature, that she was the most unspoilt creature in his world. A girl with that face, that hair, that wit, was sure to be of a charm that could never lose its flavor; the allurement of her was a thing that could never die.
Nothing but thoughts of this girl came to him on the way to his rooms. Once in his own place, he felt that his reflections on Miss Vanlief had served him as a tonic. He felt an energy once more, a vigor, a desire for action. In that mood he turned fiercely upon some of the drawings on his walls. He called Nevins, and had a heap made of the things that now filled him with loathing.
"All of the Beardsleys must come down," he ordered. "No; not all. The portrait of Mantegna may stay. That has nobility; the others have the genius of hidden evil. They take too much of the trapping from our horrible human nature. The funeral procession by Willette may hang; his Montmartre things are trivially indecent. Heine and his grotesqueries may stay in jail for all I care. Leave one or two of Thoeny's blue dragoons. Leandre's crowned heads will do me no harm; I can see past their cruelties. But take the Gibsons away; they are relegated to the matinee girl. What is to be done with them? Really, Nevins, don't worry me about such things. Sell them, give them, lose them: I don't care. There's only one man in the world who'd really adore them, and he—" he clenched his hands as he thought of Hart,—"he is a worm, a worm that dieth and yet corrupts everything about him."
He sat down, when this clearance was over, and wrote a rather long letter to Professor Vanlief. He told as much as he could bring himself to tell of the result of the experiment. He begged the Professor, knowing the circumstances as no other did, to do what was possible to reinstate him, Vane, in the esteem of Miss Vanlief. As to whether he meant to go on with further experiments; he had not yet made up his mind. There were consequences, obligations, following on this clear reading of other men's souls, that he had not counted upon.
To cotton-batting and similar unromantic staples the great house of R.S. Neargood & Co. first owed the prosperity that later developed into world-wide fame. It was success in cotton-batting that enabled the firm to make those speculations that eventually placed millions to its credit, and familiarized the Bourse and Threadneedle Street with its name.
What ever else can be said of cotton-batting, however, it is hardly a topic of smart conversation. So in smart circles there was never any mention of cotton-batting when the name of Neargood came up. Instead, it was customary to refer to them as "the people, you know, who built the Equator Palace for the Tropical Government, and all that sort of thing." A certain vagueness is indispensable to polite talk.
Yet not even this detail of politics and finance counted most in the smart world. The name of Neargood might never have been heard of in that world if it had not been for the beautiful daughters of the house of Neargood. There is nothing, nowadays, like having handsome daughters. You may have made your millions in pig, or your thousands in whisky, but, in the eyes of the complaisant present, the curse dies with the debut of a beautiful daughter. It is true that the smart sometimes make an absurd distinction between the older generation and the new; sometimes a barrier is raised for the daughter that checks the mother; but caprice was ever one of the qualities of smartness.
Through two seasons the beautiful Misses Neargood—Mary and Alice—reigned as belles. They were both good to look at, tall, stately, with distinct profiles. There was not much to choose, so to put it, between them. Mary was the handsomer; Alice the cleverer. Through two seasons the society reporters, on the newspapers that are yellow as well as those that make one blue, exhausted the well of journalese in chronicling the doings of these two young women.
The climax of descriptive eloquence was reached on the occasion of the double wedding of Mary and Alice Neargood.
Mary changed the name of Neargood for that of Spalding-Wentworth; Alice became Mrs. Van Fenno.
Up to this time—as far, at least, as was observable—these two sisters had dwelt together in unity. Never had the spirits of envy or uncharitableness entered them. But after marriage there came to each of them that stormy petrel of Unhappiness, Ambition.
As a composer of several songs and light operas. Van Fenno was fairly well known. Spalding-Wentworth was known as a man of Western wealth, of Western blue blood, and of prominence in the smart set. For some time the worldly successes of the Van Fennos did not disturb Mrs. Spalding-Wentworth at all. Her husband was smart, since he moved with the smart; he and his hyphen were the leaders in a great many famous ways, notably in fashion and in golf. From the smart point of view the Van Fennos were not in the hunt with the other family.
Mrs. Van Fenno chafed and churned a little in silence, but hope did not die in her. She made up her mind to be as prominent as her sister or perish in the attempt.
She did not have to perish. Things took a turn, as they will even in the smart world, and there came a time when it was fashionable to be intellectual. The smart set turned from the distractions of dinners and divorces to the allurements of the arts. Music, painting and literature became the idols of the hour. With that bland, heedless facility that distinguishes To-day, the men and women of fashion became quickly versed in the patter of the Muses.
The Van Fennos became the rage. Everybody talked of his music and her charm. Where the reporters had once used space in describing Spalding-Wentworth's leadership in a cotillon or conduct of a coach, they were now required to spill ink in enumeration of "those present" at Mrs. Van Fenno's "musical afternoons."
Wherefore there was a cloud on the fair brow of Mary Wentworth. Her intimates were privileged to call her that. Ordinary mortals, omitting the hyphen, would have been frozen with a look.
When there is a cloud on the wife's brow it bodes ill for the husband. The follies of a married man should be dealt with leniently; they are mostly of his wife's inspiration. One day the cloud cleared from Mary Wentworth's brow. She was sitting at breakfast with her husband.
"Why, Clarence," she exclaimed, with a suddenness that made him drop his toast, "there's literature!"
"Where?" said Clarence, anxiously. "Where?" He looked about, eager to please.
"Stupid," said his wife. "I mean—why shouldn't we, that is, you—" She looked at him, sure that he would understand without her putting the thing into syllables. "Yes," she repeated, "literature is the thing. There it is, as easy, as easy—"
"Hasn't it always been there?" asked her dear, dense husband. A woman may brood over a thing, you see, for months, and the man will not get so much as a suspicion.
She went on as if he had never spoken. "Literature is the easiest. Clarence, you must write novels!"
He buttered himself another slice of toast.
"Certainly, my dear," he nodded, with a pleasant smile. "Quite as you please."
It was in this way that the Spalding-Wentworth novels were incited. The art of writing badly is, unfortunately, very easy. In painting and in music some knowledge of technic is absolutely necessary, but in literature the art of writing counts last, and technic is rarely applauded. The fact remains that the smart set thought the Spalding-Wentworth novels were "so clever!" Mrs. Van Fenno was utterly crushed. Mary Wentworth informed an eager world that her husband's next novel would be illustrated with caricatures by herself; she had developed quite a trick in that direction. Now and again her husband refused to bother his head with ambitions, and devoted himself entirely to red coats and white balls. Mrs. Wentworth's only device at such times was to take desperately to golf herself. She really played well; if she had only had staying power, courage, she might have gone far. But, if she could not win cups, she could look very charming on the clubhouse lawn. One really does not expect more from even a queen.
It did not disturb Mrs. Wentworth at all to know that, where he was best known, her husband's artistic efforts were considered merely a joke. She knew that everyone had some mask or other to hold up to the world; and she knew there was nothing to fear from a brute of a man or two. In her heart she agreed with them; she knew her husband was a large, kindly, clumsy creature; a useful, powerful person, who needed guidance.
Kindly and clumsy—Clarence Spalding-Wentworth had title to those two adjectives: there was no denying that. It was his kindliness that moved him, after a busy day at a metropolitan golf tournament, toward Orson Vane's house. He had heard stories of Vane's illness; they had been at college together; he wanted to see him, to have a chat, a smoke, a good, chummy hour or two.
It was his clumsiness that brought about the incident that came to have such memorable consequences. Nevins told him Mr. Vane was out; Wentworth thought he would go in and have a look at Vane's rooms, anyway; sit down, perhaps, and write him a note. Nevins had swung the curtain to behind him when Wentworth's heel caught in the wrapping around the new mirror.
He looked into the pool of glass blankly.
"Funny thing to cover up a mirror like that!" he told himself. He flung the stuff over the frame carelessly. It merely hung by a thread. Almost any passing wind would be sure to lift it off.
"Wonder where he keeps his smokes?" he hummed to himself, striding up and down, like a good natured mammoth.
He found some cigars began puffing at one with an audible satisfaction, and at last let himself down to an ebony escritoire that he could have smashed with one hand. He wrote a scrawl; waited again, whistled, looked out of the window, picked up a book, peered at the pictures, and then, with a puff of regret, strode out.
As he passed the Professor's mirror the current of air he made swept the curtain from the glass and left it exposed.
At about the time that Wentworth was scrawling his note in Vane's rooms a slender young woman, dressed in a grey that shimmered like the winter-sea in sunlight, wearing a hat that had the air of having lit upon her hair for the moment only,—merely to give the world an instant's glance at the gracious combination that woman's beauty and man's millinery could effect—was coming out from one of those huge bazaars where you can buy almost everything in the world except the things you want. As she reached the doors, a young man, entering, brushed her arm; his sleeve caught her portemonnaie. He stooped for it, offered it hastily, and then—and not until then, gave a little "Oh!" of—what was it, joy? or mere wonder, or both?
"Oh," he repeated, "I can't go in—now. It's—it's ages since I could say two words to you. 'Good-morning!' and 'How do you do?' has been the limit of our talk. Besides, you have a parcel. It weighs, at the very least, an ounce. I could never think of letting you tire yourself so." He took the flimsy mite from her, and ranged his steps to hers.
It was true, what he had said about their brief encounters. Do what she would to forget that morning in the Park, and the weeks before it, Jeannette Vanlief had not quite succeeded. Not even the calm dissertations of her father, the arguments pointing to the unfathomable freakishness of human nature, had altogether ousted her aversion to Orson Vane. It was an aversion made the more keen because it came on the heels of a strong liking. She had been prepared to like this young man. Something about him had drawn her; and then had come the something that had simply flung her away. Yet, to-day, he seemed to be the Orson Vane that she had been prepared to like.
She remembered some of the strange things her father had been talking about. She noted, as Orson spoke, that the false tenor note was gone out of his voice. But she was still a little fluttered; she could not quite trust herself, or him.
"But I am only going to the car," she declared. "It will hardly be worth while. I mustn't take you out of your way."
"I see," he regretted, "you've not forgotten. I can't explain; I was—I think I was a little mad. Perhaps it is in the family. But—I wish you would imagine, for to-day, that we had only just known each other a very little while, that we had been in that little bookshop only a day or so ago, that you had read the book, and we had met again, and—." He was looking at her with a glow in his eyes, a tenderness—! Her eyes met his for only an instant, but they fathomed, in that instant, that there was only homage, and worship, and—and something that she dared not spell, even to her soul—in them. That burning greed that she had seen in the Park was not there.
She smiled, wistfully, hesitatingly. Yet it was enough for him to cling to; it buoyed his mood to higher courage.
"Let us pretend," he went on, "that there are no streetcars in the town. Let us be primitive; let us play we are going to take a peep-show from the top of the Avenue stage! Oh—please! It gets you just as near, you know; and if you like we can go on, and on, and do it all over again. Think of the tops of the hats and bonnets one sees from the roof! It's such a delightful picture of the avenue; you see all the little marionettes going like beads along the string. And then, think of the danger of the climb to the roof! It is like the Alps. You never know, until you are there, whether you will arrive in one piece or in several. Come," he laughed, for she was now really smiling, openly, sweetly, "let us be good children, come in from Westchester County, to see the big city."
"Perhaps," she ventured, "we will make it the fashion. And that would spoil it for so many of the plainer people."
"Oh," and he waved his hand, "after us—the daily papers! Let us pretend—I beg your pardon, let me pretend—youth, and high spirits, and the intention to enjoy to-day."
A rattling and a scraping on the asphalt warned them of an approaching stage, and after a scramble, that had its shy pleasures for both, they found themselves on the top of the old relic.
"It is a bit of the Middle Ages," said Orson, "look at those horses! Aren't they delightfully slender? And the paint! Do you notice the paint? And the stories those plush seats down below us could tell! Think of the misers and the millionaires, the dowagers and the drabs, that have let these old stages bump them over Murray Hill! You can't have that feeling about a street-car, not one of the electric ones, at any rate. Do you know the story of the New Yorker who was trying to sleep in a first-class compartment on a French railway? There was a collision, and he was pitched ten feet onto a coal-heap. He said he thought he was at home and he was getting off the stage at Forty-Second street."
They were passing through the most frequented part of the avenue. Noted singers and famous players passed them; old beaux and fresh belles; political notabilities and kings of corruption. A famous leader of cotillions, a beauty whose profile vied with her Boston terriers for being her chief distinction, and a noted polo-player came upon the scene and vanished again. Vane and his companion gave, from time to time, little nods to right and left. Their friends stared at them a little, but that caused them no sorrow. Automobiles rushed by. They looked down upon them, lofty in their ruined tower.
"As a show," said Vane, "it is admirably arranged. It moves with a beautiful precision. There is nothing hurried about it; the illusion of life is nearly complete. Some of them, I suppose, really are alive?"
"I am not sure," she answered, gravely. "Sometimes I think they merely move because there is a button being pressed somewhere; a button we cannot see, and that they spend their lives hiding from us."
"I dare say you are right. In the words of Fay Templeton, 'I've been there and I know.' I have made my little detours: but the lane had, thank fortune, a turning."
She saw through his playfulness, and her eyes went up to his in a sympathy—oh, it made him reel for sweetness.
"I am glad," she said, simply.
"But we are getting serious again," he remonstrated, "that would never do. Have we not sworn to be children? Let us pretend—let us pretend!" He looked at the grey roofs, the spires oozing from the hill to the sky. He looked at the grey dream beside him: so grey, so fair, so crowned with the hue of the sun before the world had made him so brazen. "Let us pretend," he went on, after a sigh, "that we are bound for the open road, and that we are to come to an inn, and that we will order something to eat. We—"
"Oh," she laughed, "you men, you men! Always something to eat!"
"You see, we are of coarse stuff; we cannot sup on star-dust, and dine on bubbles. But—this is only to pretend! An imaginary meal is sometimes so much more fun than a real one. At a real one, you see, I would have to try to eat, and I could not spend the whole time looking at you, and watching the sunshine on your hair, and the lilies—" He caught his breath sharply, with a little clicking noise. "Dear God," he whispered, "the lilies again! And I had never seen them until now."
"You are going to be absurd," she said, though her voice was hardly a rebuke.
"And wouldn't I have excuse," he asked, "for all the absurdities in the world! I want to be as absurd as I can; I want to think that there's nothing in the world any uglier than—you."
"And will you dine off that thought?"
"Oh, no; that is merely one of the condiments. I keep that in reach, while the other things come and go. I tell you: how would it be if we began with a bisque of crab? The tenderest pink, you know, and not the ghost of any spice that you can distinguish; a beautiful, creamy blend."
"You make it sound delicious," she admitted.
"We take it slowly, you know, religiously. The conversation is mostly with the eyes. Dinner conversation is so often just as vapid as dinner-music! The only point in favor of dinner-music is that we are usually spared the sight of it. There is no truth more abused than the one that music must be heard and not seen. When I am king I mean to forbid any singing or playing of instruments within sight of the public; it spoils all the pleasure of the music when one sees the uglinesses in its execution."
"But people would not thank you if you kept the sight of Paderewski or De Pachmann from them."
"They might not thank me at first, but they would learn gratitude in the end, A contortionist is quite as oppressive a sight as an automaton. No; I repeat, performers of music should never, never be visible. It is a blow in the face of the art of music; it puts it on the plane of the theatre. What persons of culture want to do is to listen, to listen, to listen; to shut the eyes, and weave fancies about the strains as they come from an unseen corner. Is there not always a subtle charm about music floating over a distance? That is a case in point; that same charm should always be preserved. The pianist, the soloist of any sort, as well as the orchestra, or the band—except in the case of the regimental band, in battle or in review, where actual spectacle, and visible encouragement are the intention—should never be seen. There should always be a screen, a curtain, between us and the players. It would make the trick of music criticism harder, but it would still leave us the real judges. Take out of music criticism the part that covers fingering, throat manipulation, pedaling, and the like, and what have you left? These fellows judge what they see more than what they hear. To give a proper judgment of the music that comes from the unseen; that is the only test of criticism. There can be no tricks, no paddings."
"But the opera?" wondered the girl.
"The opera? Oh, the opera is, at best, a contradiction in terms. But I do not waive my theory for the sake of opera. It should be seen as little as any other form of music. The audience, supplied with the story of the dramatic action, should follow the incidents by ear, not by eye. That would be the true test of dramatic writing in music. We would, moreover, be spared the absurdity of watching singers with beautiful voices make themselves ridiculous by clumsy actions. As to comic opera—the music's appeal would suffer no tarnish from the merely physical fascination of the star or the chorus ... I know the thought is radical; it seems impossible to imagine a piano recital without long hair, electric fingers, or visible melancholia; opera with only the box-holders as appeals to the eye seems too good to be true; but—I assure you it would emancipate music from all that now makes it the most vicious of the arts. Painters do not expect us to watch them painting, nor does the average breed of authors—I except the Manx—like to be seen writing. Yet the musician—take away the visible part of his art, and he is shorn of his self-esteem. I assure you I admire actors much more than musicians; actors are frankly exponents of nothing that requires genius, while musicians pretend to have an art that is over and above the art of the composer.... Music—"
"Do you realize," interrupted the girl, with a laugh that was melody itself, "that you are feasting me upon dinner-music without dinner. It must be ages since we began that imaginary feast. But now, I am quite sure we are at the black coffee. And I have been able to notice nothing except your ardor in debate. You were as eager as if you were being contradicted."
"You see," he said, "it only proves my point. Dinner-music is an abomination. It takes the taste of the food away. While I was playing, you admit, you tasted nothing between the soup and the coffee. Whereas, in point of fact—"
"Or fancy?"
"As you please. At any rate—the menu was really something out of the common. There were some delightful wines. A sherry that the innkeeper had bought of a bankrupt nobleman; so would run his fable for the occasion, and we would believe it, because, in cases of that sort, it takes a very bad wine to make one pooh-pooh its pedigree. A Madeira that had been hidden in a cellar since 1812. We would believe that, every word of it, because we would know that there was really no Madeira in all the world; and we must choose between insulting our stomachs or our intelligence. And then the coffee. It would come in the tiniest, most transparent, most fragile—"
"Yes," she laughed, "I dare say. As transparent and as fragile as the entire fabric of our repast, I have no doubt. But—pity me, do!—I shall have to leave the beautiful banquet about where you have put it, in the air. I have a ticking conscience here that says—"
"Oh, hide it," he supplicated, "hide it. Watches are nothing but mechanisms that are jealous of happiness; whenever there is a happy hour a watch tries to end it. When I am king I shall prohibit the manufacture and sale of watches. The fact that they may be carried about so easily is one of their chief vices; one never knows nowadays from what corner a woman will not bring one; they carry them on their wrists, their parasols, their waists, their shoulders. Can you be so cruel as to let that little golden monster spoil me my hour of happiness—"
"But I would have to be cruel one way or the other. You see, my father will wonder what has become of me. He expects me to dinner."
"Ah, well," he admitted soberly, if a little sadly, "we must not keep him waiting. You must tell the Professor where we have been, and what we said, and how silly I was, and—Heigho, I wish I could tell you how the little hour with you has buoyed me up. Your presence seems to stir my possibilities for good. I wish I could see you oftener. I feel like the provincial who says good-bye with a: 'May I come 'round this evening?' as a rider."
"A doubtful compliment, if I make you rustic," she said. "But I have something on this evening; an appointment with a man. The most beautiful man in the world, and the best, and the kindest—"
"His name?" he cried, with elaborate pretense of melodrama, for he saw that she was full of whimsies.
"Professor Vanlief," she curtsied.
They were walking, by now, in the shade of the afternoon sun. Vane saw a stage approaching them, one that would take him back to the lower town. She saw it, too, and his intention. She shook hands with him, and took time to say, softly:
"Do you never ride in the Park any more?"
"Oh," he said, "tell me when. To-morrow morning? At McGowan's Pass? At ten? Oh, how I wish that stage was not coming so fast!"
In their confusion, and their joyous sense of having the same absurd thought in common, they both laughed at the notion of a Fifth avenue stage ever being too fast. Yet this one, and Time, sped so swiftly that Vane could only shake hands hastily with his fair companion, look at her worshipfully, and jump upon the clattering vehicle.
He would never have believed that so ramshackle a conveyance could have harbored so many dreams as had been his that day.
That thought was his companion all the way home. That, and efforts to define his feelings toward Miss Vanlief. Was it love? What else could it be! And if it was, was he ready, for her, to give up those ambitions of still further sounding hitherto unexplored avenues of the human mind? Was this fragile bit of grace and glamour to come between him and the chance of opening a new field to science? Had he not the opportunity to become famous, or, at the very least, to become omnipotent in reading the hearts, the souls, of men? Were not the possibilities of the Professor's discovery unlimited? Was it not easy by means of that mirror in his rooms, for any chief of police in the world to read the guilt or innocence of every accused man? Yet, on the other hand, would marriage interfere? Yes; it would. One could not serve two such goddesses as woman and science. He would have to make up his mind, to decide.
But, in the meanwhile, there was plenty of time. Surely, for the present, he could be happy in the thought of the morrow, of the ride they were to take in the Park, of the cantering, the chattering together, the chance to see the morning wind spin the twists of gold about her cheeks and bring the sparkle to her eyes.
He let himself into his house without disturbing any of the servants. He passed into his room. He lifted the curtain of the doorway with one hand, and with the other turned the button that lighted the room. As the globes filled with light they showed him his image in the new mirror.
He reeled against the wall with the surprise of the thing. He noted the mirror's curtain in a heap at the foot of the frame. Perhaps, after all, it had been merely the wind.
He summoned Nevins. The curtain he replaced on the staring face of the mirror. Whence the thought came from, he did not know, but it occurred to him that the scene was like a scene from a novel.
"Nevins," he asked, "was anyone in my rooms?"
"Mr. Spalding-Wentworth, sir."
Orson Vane laughed,—a loud, gusty, trumpeting laugh.
He understood. But he understood, also, that the accident that had brought the soul of Spalding-Wentworth into his keeping had decreed, also, that the dominance should not be, as on a former time, with the usurper.
He knew that the soul of Spalding-Wentworth, to which he gave the refuge of his own body, was a small soul.
Yet even little souls have their spheres of influence.
It was a morning such as the wild flowers, out in the suburban meadows, must have thought fit for a birthday party. As for the town, it lost, under that keen air and gentle sun, whatever of garish and unhealthy glamour it had displayed the night before.
"The morning," Orson Vane had once declared, in a moment of revelation, "is God's, and the night is man's." He was speaking, of course, of the town. In the severe selectiveness that had grown upon him after much rout and riot through other lands, he pretended that the town was the only spot on the map. Certainly this particular morning seemed to bear out something of this saying; it swept away the smoke and the taint, the fever and the flush of the night before; the visions of limelights and glittering crystals and enmillioned vice fled before the gust of ozone that came pouring into the streets. Before night, to be sure, man would have asserted himself once more; the pomp and pageant of the primrose path would have ousted, with its artificial charm, the clean, sweet freshness of the morning.
The grim houses on upper Fifth avenue put on semblance of life reluctantly that morning. Houses take on the air of their inmates; these houses wore their best manner only under artificial lights. Surly grooms and housemaids went muttering and stumbling about the areas. Sad-faced wheelmen flashed over the asphalt, cursing the sprinkling carts. It was not too early for the time-honored preoccupation of the butcher cart, which consists of turning corners as if the world's end was coming. Pallid clubmen strode furtively in the growing sunshine. To them, as to the whole town, the sun and its friend, the breeze, came as a tonic and a cure.
So strange a thing is the soul of man that Orson Vane, riding towards the Park that morning, caught only vague, fleeting impressions of the actual beauty of the day. He simply wondered, every foot of the way to McGowan's Pass, whether Miss Vanlief played golf. The first thing he said to her after they had exchanged greetings, was:
"Of course you golf?"
She looked at him in alarm. There was something—something, but what was it?—in his voice, in his eye. She had expected a reference to the day before, to their infantile escapade on the roof of the coach. Instead, this banale, this stupid, this stereotyped phrase! Her flowerlike face clouded; she gave her mare the whip.
"No," she called out, "I cannot bear the game." His horse caught the pace with difficulty; the groom was left far out of sight, beyond a corner. But the diversion had not touched Vane's trend of thought at all.
"Oh," he assured her, when the horses were at an amble again, "it's one of those things one has to do. Some things have to be done, you know; society won't stand for anything less, you know, oh, no. I have to play golf, you know; part of my reputation."
"I didn't know," she faltered. She tried to remember when Orson Vane had ever been seen on either the expert or the duffer list at the golf matches.
"Oh, yes; people expect it of me. If I don't play I have to arrange tournaments. Handicapping is great fun; ever try it? No? You should. Makes one feel quite like a judge at sessions. Oh, there's nothing like golf. Not this year, at least. Next year it may be something else. I may have to take to polo or tennis. One is expected to show the way, you know; a man in my position—" He looked at her with a kind of 'bland, blunt, clumsy egoism, that made her wonder where was the Orson Vane of yesterday. This riddle began to sadden her. Perhaps it was true, as she had heard somewhere, that the man was mentally unbalanced; that he had his—well, his bad days. She sighed. She had looked forward to this ride in the Park; she admitted that to herself. Not in a whole afternoon spent with Luke Moncreith had she felt such happy childishness stirring in her as yesterday, in the hour with Orson Vane. And now—She sighed.
The hum of an approaching automobile reached them, the glittering vehicle proclaiming its progress in that purring stage whisper that is still the inalienable right of even the newest "bubble" machine. The coat worn by the smart young person on the seat would have shocked the unenlightened, for that sparkling, tingling morning it struck the exact harmonious note of artifice.
Orson Vane bowed. It was "the" Miss Carlos. Just as there is only one Mrs. Carlos, so there is only one Miss Carlos.
"She plays a decent game," said Vane to his companion.
"Of life?"
"No; golf." He looked at her in amazement. Life! What was life compared to golf? Life? For most people it was, at best, a foozle. Nearly everybody pressed; very few followed through, and the bunkers—good Lord, the bunkers!
"I'm thinking of writing a golfing novel," began Orson, after an interval in which he managed to wonder whether one couldn't play golf from horseback.
"Oh," said Miss Vanlief wearily, "how does one set about it!"
He was quite unaware of her weariness. He chirped his answer with blind enthusiasm.
"It's very easy," he declared. "There are always a lot of women, you know, who are aching to do things in that line. You give them the prestige of your name, that's all. One of them writes the thing; you simply keep them from foozling the phrases now and then. Another illustrates it."
"And does anyone buy it?"
"Oh, all the smart people do. It's one of those things one is supposed to do. There's no particular reason or sense in it; but smart people expect one another to read things like that. The newspapers get quite silly over such books. Then, after novels, I think, I shall take to having them done over for the stage? Don't you think a golfing comedy, with a sprinkling of profanity and Scotch whiskey, would be all the rage?"
Jeannette Vanlief reined in her mare. She looked at Orson Vane; looked him, as much as she could, through and through. Was it all a stupid jest? She could find nothing but dense earnestness in her face, in his eyes. Oh, the riddle was too tiresome, too hopeless. It was simply not the same man at all! She gave it up, gave him up.
"Do you mind," she said, "if I ride home now? I'm tired."
It should have been a blow in the face, but Orson Vane never so much as noticed it.
"Tired?" he repeated. "Oh; all right. We'll turn about. Rather go back alone? Oh, all right. Wish you'd learn to play golf; you really must!" And upon that he let her canter away, the groom following, some little wonder on his impassive front.
As for Jeannette Vanlief she burst into her father's room a little later, and then into tears.
"And I wanted to love him!" she wailed presently, from out her confusion and her distress.
The Professor was patting her hair, and wondering what in all the world was the matter. At her speech, he thought he saw a light.
"And why not?" he asked, soothingly, "He seems quite estimable. He was here only a moment ago?"
"Who was here?" she asked in bewilderment.
"Mr. Moncreith."
At that she laughed. The storm was over, the sunshine peeped out again.
"You dear, blind comfort, you!" she said, "What do I care if a thousand Moncreiths—"
"Then it's Orson Vane," said the Professor, not so blind after all. "Well, dear, and what has he been doing now?"
He listened to her rather rambling, rather spasmodic recital; listened and grew moody, though he could scarce keep away some little mirth. He saw through these masquerades, of course. Who else, if not he? Poor Jeannette! So she had set her happy little heart upon that young man? A young man who, to serve both their ends, was playing chameleon. A young man who was mining greater secrets from the deeps of the human soul than had ever been mined before. A wonderful young man, but—would that make for Jeannette's happiness? At any rate he, the Professor, would have to keep an eye open for Vane's doings. There was no knowing what strange ways these borrowed souls might lead to. He wondered who it was that, this time, had been rifled of his soul.
Wonder did not long remain the adjuncts of the Professor and his daughter only. The whole world of society began to wonder, as time went on, at the new activities of Orson Vane. Wonder ceased, presently, and there was passive acceptance of him in his new role. Fashions, after all, are changed so often in the more external things, that the smart set would not take it as a surprising innovation if some people took to changing their souls to suit the social breeze.
Orson Vane took a definite place in the world of fashion that season. He became the arbiter of golf; he gave little putting contests for women and children; he looked after the putting greens of a number of smart clubs with as much care as a woman gives her favorite embroideries. He took to the study of the Turkish language. There were rumors that he meant to become the Minister to Turkey. He traveled a great deal, and he published a book called "The Land of the Fez." Another little brochure bearing his name was "The Caddy; His Ailments and Diseases." It was rumored that he was busy in dramatization of his novel, "Five Loaves and Two Fishes!" When Storman Pasha made his memorable visit to the States it was Orson Vane who became his guide and friend. A jovial club of newspaper roysterers poked fun at him by nominating him for Mayor. He went through it all with a bland humorlessness and stubborn dignity that nothing could affront. His indomitable energy, his intense seriousness about everything, kept smart society unalterably loyal. He led its cotillions, arranged its more sober functions, and was a household word with the outsiders that reach society only through the printed page. His novels—whether they were his own or done for him hardly matters—were just dull enough to offend nobody. The most indolent dweller in Vanity Fair could affect his books without the least mental exertion. The lives of our fashionables are too full, too replete with a multitude of interests and excitements, to allow of the concentration proper for the reading of scintillating dialogue, or brilliant observations. Orson Vane appeared to gauge his public admirably; he predominated in the outdoor life, in golf, in yachting, in coaching, yet he did not allow anyone else to dispute the region of the intellect, of indoors, with him. He shone, with a severe dimness, in both fields.
Jeannette Vanlief, meanwhile, lost much of the sparkle she had hitherto worn. She drooped perceptibly. The courtship of Luke Moncreith left her listless; he persevered on the strength of his own ambition rather than her encouragement. His daughter's looks at last began seriously to worry Professor Vanlief. Something ought to be done. But what? It was apparently Orson Vane's intention to keep that borrowed soul with him for a long time. In the meanwhile Jeannette.... The Professor, the more he considered the matter, felt the more strongly that just as he was the one who had given Vane this power, so had he the right, if need be, to interfere. The need was urgent. The masquerade must be put an end to.
His resolve finally taken, Professor Vanlief paid a visit to Orson Vane's house. Vane was, as he had hoped, not at home. He cross-questioned Nevins.
The man was only too willing to admit that his master's actions were queer. But Mr. Vane had given him warning to that effect; he must have felt it coming on. It was a malady, no doubt. For his part he thought it was something that Mr. Vane would wish to cure rather than endure. He didn't pretend to understand his master of late, but—
The Professor put a period to the man's volubility with some effort.
"I want you," he urged, "to jog your memory a little. Never mind the symptoms. Give me straightforward answers. Now—did you touch the new mirror, leaving it uncovered, at any time within the past few weeks?"
"Oh," was the answer, "the new mirror, is it! I knows well the uncanny thing was sure to make trouble for me. But I gives you my word, as I hopes to be saved, that I've never so much as brushed the dust off it, much less taken the curtain off. It's fearsome, is that mirror, I'm thinking. It's—"
"Then think back," pressed the Professor, again stemming the tide of the other's talk relentlessly, "think back: was anyone, ever, at any time, alone in Mr. Vane's rooms? Think, think!"
"I disremember," stammered Nevins. "I think not—Oh, wait! It was a long time ago, but I think a gentleman wrote Mr. Vane a note once, and I, having work in the other rooms, let him be undisturbed. But I told the master about it, the minute he came in, sir. He was not the least vexed, sir. Oh, I'm easy in my mind about that time."
"Yes, yes,—but the gentleman's name!" The Professor shook the man's shoulder quite roughly.
"His name? Oh, it was just Mr. Spalding-Wentworth, sir, that was all."
The Professor sat down with a laugh. Spalding-Wentworth! He laughed again.
Nevins had the air of one aggrieved. "Mr. Vane laughed, too, I remember, when I told him. Just the minute I told him, sir, he laughed. I've puzzled over it, time and again, why—"
The Professor left Nevins puzzling. There was no time to be lost. He remembered now that Spalding-Wentworth had for some time been ailing. The world, in its devotion to Orson Vane, had forgotten, almost, that such a person as Spalding-Wentworth had ever existed. To be forgotten one has only to disappear. Dead men's shoes are filled nowhere so quickly as in Vanity Fair; though, to be paradoxic, for the most part they are high-heeled slippers.