II
A FEW hours later William Fox presented himself at the home of the new Cabinet minister. He was an intimate habitué of the house; a fact which created no little comment in social and political circles, for Fox and White were naturally almost antipodal personalities and had often engaged in political controversies, which had inevitably ended in White’s defeat at the hands of his daring and brilliant adversary. But it was not their antipathies or their rivalries in politics which aroused the gossip, of which Fox was vaguely and carelessly aware, but the presupposed existence of an old sentimental relation between him and White’s wife. However, gossip of all kinds troubled Fox but little, and he followed his own inclinations with the indolent egoism of a man who has been for many years the spoiled darling of fortune.
The house was one of the old landmarks of Washington, and the true values of space and effect were consequently somewhat diminished bylow ceilings and small old-fashioned doors. As Fox entered he heard the buzz of conversation in the distance, in more tongues than English, and when the butler announced him he came upon a group of dinner guests who were gathered around the immense fireplace at the end of the ballroom—a huge addition to the original house especially designed for the elaborate entertainments for which the host and hostess were already famous—and the warm glow of the leaping fire increased the effect and brilliance of the scene.
At his name his hostess detached herself from the group and tossing her cigarette into the fire held out her hand in greeting. “You inconsequent wretch!” she said, shaking an admonishing finger, “late as usual—we expected you to dinner and M. de Caillou tells us that, instead, you made a great speech! Pray, what became of you afterwards?”
“Total oblivion for the space of three hours,” replied Fox gaily; “I come now to congratulate you! The next step will be the Presidency, White,” he added, as he shook hands with his host.
“If I can keep you out of it,” retorted the secretary, dryly.
Fox laughed, acknowledging the intimate greetings of the other guests. At a glance he saw thatthe gathering was as notable as usual, and was secretly amused at White’s attitude which seemed to accept all this as his own achievement, ignoring the influence of his wife. The French ambassador was there, a Russian prince, an Austrian savant, an Italian ex-diplomat, the chancellor of the British embassy, two other Cabinet ministers, a literary celebrity, a Roman Catholic dignitary, and a somewhat notorious French journalist and socialist who had dipped his pen in gall during the controversy between France and the Vatican. Margaret’s usual selections, Fox thought with a smile, and noted that the only other woman was Mrs. Osborne, the former wife of an American ambassador to Russia, whose divorce had created a sensation as distinct and startling as her beauty, which was of that type which somewhat openly advertises the additions of art. A woman, in fact, who had given rise to so much “talk” that the old-fashioned wondered at Margaret White’s complacence in receiving her and even admitting her upon terms of intimacy at the house. But Margaret’s personality was as problematical as it was charming. She stood now regarding Fox with a slightly pensive expression in her gray eyes, which seemed unusually large and bright because of the dark shadows beneath them, while her small headwas set on a slender white neck which supported it like the stem of a flower. She was thin, but with a daintiness which eliminated angles, and she possessed in a marked degree, as Allestree had said, the talent for artistic costumes; her slight figure, which had the grace and delicate suppleness of some fabled dryad, had the effect, at the moment, of being marvellously enveloped in a clinging, shimmering cloud of soft, gold-colored silk and embroidery out of which her white shoulders rose suddenly; she was much décolletée, and, except for the jewelled shoulder-straps, her slender but beautiful arms were bare.
She rested her hands on the high back of a chair, apparently listening to all, but actually attentive only to that which immediately concerned Fox and her husband, who were exchanging commonplaces with the purely perfunctory manner of men who cordially detested each other at heart.
“White only pretends indifference,” said Louis Berkman, the literary genius, who was one of the famous writers of the day; “actually he is overjoyed at the exit of Wingfield; that is the very pith of the matter, isn’t it, Mrs. White?”
Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?” she retorted; “what was it Walpole said?‘One tiger is charmed if another tiger loses his tail.’”
There was the general laugh at this, which always followed Margaret’s careless and daring candor.
“It was certainly a case of ‘heads or tails’ with the President,” Louis Berkman retorted, with the ease of political detachment in the midst of the inner circle of officialdom; “we shall have a budget now which will carry a billion dollar naval increase.”
“You’ve lived too long in England,” said Fox amusedly, “you don’t get our terms, Berkman. But we shall insist on Mrs. White christening all the new ships.”
“To be sure—I forgot that I was speaking to the money supply, Fox,” he replied; “heaven help White if he gets into your clutches; I should as soon expect mercy from an Iroquois Indian!”
“I don’t mind that from you,” laughed Fox,—“we expect anything from the ‘outs,’—as long as you don’t write us up for the magazines!”
“The gods forbid!” said Berkman sharply, “I’m not ‘the man with the muckrake;’ now if—” he turned his head and, catching a glimpse of the French journalist engaged in an animateddiscussion with the Italian ex-diplomat, who fairly bristled with suppressed anger, he bit his lip to hide a smile.
One of the secretaries leaned forward to select a new cigarette from the elaborate gold box on the table. “Berkman,” he remarked, “I read that article of yours on the Duma with a great deal of interest, but I got an impression that you lost sight of the main issues in your passion for artistic effects.”
The author responded at once to this challenge with an eagerly indignant denial, and Fox found himself again slightly detached from the group and still standing beside his hostess. She had been taking no part in the conversation and seemed to be in a dreamy mood which ignored alike her environment and her social duties. There was always something in Margaret’s aspect which differentiated her from other people, a spiritual aloofness from the passing moment which could fall upon her suddenly, even in her wildest and gayest moods, and which always carried with it a mystical, uninterpreted suggestion of some tragic destiny, which cast a long shadow before it across the unthinking sybaritism of her life.
“It seems some time since I saw you last,” said Fox; “the House has been very exacting latelyand abominably dull. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, learning to dance,” she replied, “I’m to be a Merry Andrew now, you know, for the delectation of the dear public. Wicklow insists that I must have public receptions; good heavens, what an endless bore!”
Fox smiled. “He takes it seriously then, I see! We must look higher, in that case; you may as well study for the White House rôle at once.”
Margaret laughed derisively, glancing across at her husband who was leaning over Mrs. Osborne’s chair with a quite apparent air of absorption. “Look at them!” she mocked, her eyes gleaming with malicious mischief; “see the pose; Lily Osborne is playing now for a Madame d’Épinay; she discusses French literature and the philosophers. Can you imagine Wicklow as Jean Jacques? I must get him a black cloak!”
Fox laughed involuntarily, but said nothing; Margaret’s free speech sometimes offended his finer discrimination, and the notion of criticizing White to White’s wife did not coincide with his masculine code. “I heard that Mrs. Osborne won the cup at the fencing contest,” he remarked, after a moment.
“She did; Wicklow gave it, you know,” Margaretsmiled sarcastically. Then she looked at him suddenly. “Where did you dine to-night?—with Allestree?”
“No, at the club. I really didn’t understand that I was expected here.”
“I must have forgotten how to write notes, or I have too much else to say to you. I’m going to let Bobby Allestree paint my portrait; you know he’s been trying to do it for years.”
Fox smiled. “I admire Allestree’s work,” he said, “but there are limitations; one can’t paint intangible sprites.”
“Do you mean to infer that I’m not human?” she retorted with a frown; “wait and see how beautiful I shall be.”
“You don’t really want compliments from me, Margaret?”
She was silent a moment, then she lifted her softest glance to his face, her own pensive again and slightly shadowed with thought. “No, I don’t!” she said abruptly, “I don’t think I should believe in them—it makes me shiver sometimes to even imagine what you must think of me!”
Fox hesitated how to reply; he was by no means a prudent man, but he was instinctively aware of the dangers of her mood, and he had swiftly entertainedand rejected two or three answers which would have led them into yet deeper intricacies, when they were happily interrupted by the approach of the French ambassador, a gentleman who united with great astuteness and diplomatic suavity a strong resemblance to an intelligent and bewhiskered French poodle.
“We have heard so much of those dancing steps, Mrs. White; when shall we have the pleasure of seeing them?” he asked, smilingly courteous and attentive.
“Oh, now!—on the instant,” Margaret retorted, her mood changing like a flash and her eyes sparkling a gay defiance; “there’s no time like the present. William, are the musicians there?”
Fox looked across at the palm-screened alcove, and catching a glimpse of a violin, assented. She clapped her hands. “Tell them to play me the Spanish piece which they played on Tuesday,” she commanded.
At the first note there was a general cessation of conversation, and every eye turned quickly toward her. She stood in the centre of the room, her slender arms raised and her hands clasped behind her head, a dreamy expression on her half lifted face, the shadowy masses of her pale brownhair framing a white brow. Her eyes drooped, her whole aspect seemed to change, like the chameleon’s, to become an embodiment of the dreamily seductive strains which floated softly into space, then, as the music quickened and developed, she began to sway slightly, dancing down the long room alone, her clinging, shimmering skirts trailing around her feet, flowing in and out, but never seeming to arrest the wonderful rhythmic swing of her movements. With her, dancing was an interpretation of music, an expression of some subtle mystery of her nature, the very personification of an enchanting grace.
There was an almost breathless attention on the part of her guests, and no one was conscious of the displeasure on White’s full flushed face. No one but his wife; as she danced to and fro, weaving in the fantasy of strange figures, her eyes rested occasionally on him, and the mockery of her glance was a revelation to those who could read it. It was but little observed, however, nor was she understood when, at last, with a sudden swift movement she caught up her filmy draperies, displaying two slender ankles and a pair of wonderfully shod feet, as she executed a deliberate fandango which not a little amazed the more sedate of her guests.
In answer, perhaps, to some secret signal of White’s, the music stopped abruptly and with it Margaret’s astonishing performance. Quite unmoved, and ignoring the interruption, or rather treating it as the natural termination of her dance, she turned with a graceful swirl of gleaming silks and received the rather effusive applause of her guests with heightened color and flashing eyes.
Louis Berkman alone had lost all the bizarre effect of the finish, and been absorbed in the dance. “A poem in motion, superb!” he exclaimed, with such genuine enthusiasm that Margaret’s expression softened.
The French ambassador was still softly applauding. It appeared that he had seen Bernhardt execute the same figures once; “but madame’s performance was more exquisite, an interpretation, the very expression of the music itself!”
“Naturally,” laughed Margaret maliciously, “I’m an American, ambassador. Did you dream that even Bernhardt could excel one?”
“Bien!I admire your patriotism, also,” he replied smiling.
“Oh, it’s only the screech of the eagle! Of course you are all enthusiastic—all except you, William,” she added abruptly, whirling around toconfront Fox with a teasing glance, “you are mute; didn’t I please you?”
He smiled. “You bewildered me; the sudden transitions are confusing. Where did you learn the dance?”
She put her head on one side. “Last week—that’s all I shall ever tell you!” she replied, “but I want Bobby Allestree to paint my portrait dancing. Wicklow would prize it so highly,” and she laughed wickedly.
“Allestree is painting a portrait now, I think,” Fox said, to turn her aside from a dangerous channel, “Miss Temple’s, I believe.”
Margaret’s eyes widened and she looked keenly at him, an indescribable change in her face. “Rose—yes,” she said slowly, “have you seen it?”
He shook his head. “I saw her for the first time to-night.”
She made no immediate reply. M. de Caillou and Berkman had begun to talk together, and the others were already engaged in animated conversation; the controversy between the Italian and the Frenchman having been resumed was rising in a staccato duet. Fox was abruptly aware of a stir in the room beyond and surmised the arrivalof evening guests, but his hostess was apparently oblivious.
“She is supremely lovely at times,” she said quietly, after a moment, “but—but not exactly a beauty. What do you think of her?”
Fox parried the question easily. “My dear Margaret, I only saw her for a moment getting into her carriage.”
She gave him a searching glance and bit her lip. He thought he had never seen her wear so entirely the air of a spoiled child; her flushed cheeks, her slightly rumpled hair and the angry droop of her eyes, all appealed for praise and resented criticism. “Allestree is painting her on his knees,” she said, with a little bitter laugh; “he doesn’t regard her as human; you will see that he will make me the imp to her angel, he—”
“Margaret!” Mr. White was hurrying forward, with the ruffled manner of an affronted host; “are you blind as well as deaf, my dear?” he asked curtly, “here are your guests!”
She turned haughtily and looked over her shoulder, her smallest attitude always seeming to defy him, while Fox had an uneasy feeling that he was more acutely aware than usual to-night of the impossible relations between the two. Meanwhile, the entrance to the long room was already fillingwith the rapidly arriving throng which seemed, to the casual observer, a mass of satin and jewels and lavishly exposed necks and shoulders, with here and there a sprinkling of the black coats of the men.
In spite of this influx, however, the young hostess stood a moment longer looking at them with a glance of malicious amusement in her drooping eyes, noting the whole effect of White’s large and rather florid personality as he received the first enthusiastic advance, responding genially to the murmur of congratulations. Then she turned and swept across the wide intervening space, her small head thrown proudly back, her whole grace of figure and dignity of pose—in direct contradiction to her former wild gayety and audacity—at once suggesting thegrande dameassuming her rightful and appropriate place. But Fox found it impossible to as easily free himself from the haunting sorrow of her beautiful haggard eyes. Sometimes she seemed to him to be as fragile, as exquisite and as perishable as a bit of delicately carved ivory. Yet he was forced to dismiss the analogy, for ivory, no matter how marvellously carved in imitation of a living creature, is inanimate, while she was the very personification of unrest; it seemed rather that some wild and beautifulsprite must have been enthralled into temporary captivity, and was wearing its way to liberty through the exquisite clay which had been fashioned into human shape for its mortal disguise, that the touch of inevitable sadness which sometimes came upon her was the moment when the sprite relapsed into the melancholia of prolonged captivity.