Natalie and her mother were sitting on the west veranda of Consolation Cottage at the evening hour. Just within the open door of the dining-room mammy swayed to and fro in a vast rocking-chair that looked too big for her.
The years had not dealt kindly with the three. Years in the tropics never do deal kindly with women. Mammy had grown old and thin. Her clothes, frayed, but clean, hung loosely upon her. Her hair was turning gray. She wore steel-rimmed glasses. Mrs. Leighton's face, while it had not returned to the apathy of the years of sorrow at Nadir, was still deeply lined and of the color and texture of old parchment. The blue of her eyes had paled and paled until light seemed to have almost gone from them. To Natalie had come age with youth. She gave the impression of a freshly cut flower suddenly wilted by the sun.
In Mrs. Leighton's lap lay two letters. One had brought the news thatNatalie had inherited from a Northern Leighton aunt an old property on aNew England hillside. The other contained the third offer from adevelopment company that had long coveted the grounds about ConsolationCottage.
"It's a great deal of money, dear," said Mrs. Leighton to Natalie. "What shall we do?"
For a moment Natalie did not reply, and when she spoke, it was not in answer. She said:
"Mother, where is Lew? I want him." Her low voice quivered with desire.
Mrs. Leighton put her fingers into Natalie's soft hair and drew the girl's head against her breast. A lump rose in her throat. She longed to murmur comfort, but she had long since lost the habit of words. What was life worth if she could not buy with it happiness for this her only remaining love?
"Darling," she whispered at last, "whatever you wish, whatever you say, we'll do. Do you think—would you like to go back to—to Nadir—and look for Lewis?"
Natalie divined the sacrifice in those halting words. Her thin arms went up around Ann Leighton's neck. She pressed her face hard against her mother's shoulder. She wanted to cry, but could not. Without raising her face, she shook her head and said:
"No, no. I don't want ever to go back to Nadir. Lew is not there. That night—that night after we buried father I went out on the hills and called for Lew. He did not answer. Suddenly I just knew he wasn't there. I knew that he was far, far away."
Ann Leighton did not try to reason against instinct. She softly rocked Natalie to and fro, her pale eyes fixed on the setting sun. Gradually the sunset awoke in her mind a stabbing memory. Here on this bench she had sat, Natalie, a baby, in her lap, and in the shelter of her arms little Lewis and—and Shenton, her boy. By yonder rail she had stood with her unconscious boy in her arms, and day had suddenly ceased as though beyond the edge of the world somebody had put out the light forever. Her pale eyes grew luminous. The unaccustomed tears welled up in them and trickled down the cheeks that had known so long a drought. They rained on Natalie's head.
"Mother!" cried Natalie, looking up—"Mother!" Then she buried her face again in Ann's bosom, and together they sobbed out all the oppressing pain and grief of life's heavy moment. Not by strength alone, but also by frailty, do mothers hold the hearts of their children. Natalie, hearing and feeling her mother sob, passed beyond the bourn of generations and knew Ann and herself as one in an indivisible, quivering humanity.
Mammy's chair stopped rocking. She listened; then she got up and came out on the veranda. Her eyes fell upon mother and daughter huddled together in the dusk. She hovered over them. Her loose clothes made her seem ample, almost stolid.
"Wha' fo' you chilun's crying?" she demanded.
"We'renotcrying," sobbed Natalie.
"Huh!" snorted mammy. "Yo' jes come along outen this night air, bof of yo', an' have yo' suppah. Come on along, Miss Ann. Come on along, yo' young Miss Natalie."
"Just a minute, mammy; in just a minute," gasped Natalie. "You go put supper on the table." Then she rose to her feet, and drew her mother up to her. "Kiss me," she said and smiled. She was suddenly strong again with the strength of youth.
Ann kissed her and she, too, almost smiled.
"Well, dear?" she said.
"We're going away," said Natalie, holding protecting arms around her mother. "We're going to sell this place, and then we're just going away into another world. This one's too rough for just women. We'll go see that old house Aunt Jed left to me. I want to live just once in a house that has had more than one life."
Day after day the ship moved steadily northward on an even keel. Upon mammy, Natalie, and Mrs. Leighton a miracle began to descend. Years fell from their straightening shoulders. At the end of a week, Ann Leighton, kneeling alone in her cabin, began her nightly devotions with a paean that sounded strangely in her own ears: "Oh, Thou Who hast redeemed my life from destruction, crowned me with loving-kindness and tender mercies, Who hast satisfied my mouth with good things so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's!"
Among Leighton's many pet theories was one that he called the axiom of the propitious moment. Any tyro at life could tell that a thing needed saying; skill came in knowing how to wait to say it. At Lady Derl's dinner Leighton had decided to go away for several months. He had something to say to Lewis before he went, but he passed nervous days waiting to say it. Then came the propitious moment. They were sitting alone over a cheerful small fire that played a sort of joyful accompaniment to the outdoor struggle of spring against the cold.
"In every society," said Leighton, breaking a long silence, "where women have been numerically predominant, the popular conception of morality has been lowered. Your historical limitations are such that you'll have to take my say-so for the truth of that generality."
"Yes, sir," said Lewis.
"Man's greatest illusion in regard to woman," continued Leighton, "is that she's fastidious. Men are fastidious and vulgar; women are neither fastidious nor vulgar. There's a reason. Women have been too intimately connected through the ages with the slops of life to be fastidious. That's driven them to look upon natural things with natural eyes. They know that vulgarity isn't necessary, and they revolt from it. These are all generalities, of course."
"Yes, sir," said Lewis.
"Women are very wonderful. They are an unconscious incarnation of knowledge. Knowledge bears the same relation to the wise that liquor does to the man who decided the world would be better without alcohol and started to drink it all up. Man's premier temptation is to drink up women. Lots of men start to do it, but that's as far as they get. One woman can absorb a dozen men; a dozen men can't absorb one woman. Women—any one woman—is without end. Am I boring you?"
"No, sir," said Lewis. "You are giving me a perspective."
"You've struck the exact word. Since we met, I've given you several of my seven lives, but there's one life a man can't pass on to his son—his life with relation to women. He can only give, as you said, a perspective."
Leighton chose a cigar carefully and lit it.
"Formerly woman had but one mission," he went on. "She arrived at it when she arrived at womanhood. The fashionable age for marriage was fifteen. Civilization has pushed it along to twenty-five. Those ten cumulative years have put a terrific strain on woman. On the whole, she has stood it remarkably well. But as modernity has reduced our animalism, it has increased our fundamental immorality and put a substantial blot on woman's mission as a mission. Woman has had to learn to dissemble charmingly, but in the bottom of her heart she has never believed that her mission is intrinsically shameful. That's why every woman feels her special case of sinning is right—until she gets caught. Do you follow me?"
"I think so," said Lewis.
"Well, if you've followed me, you begin to realize why a superfluity of women threatens conventional life. There are an awful lot of women in this town, Lew."
Leighton rose to his feet and started walking up and down, his hands clasped behind him, his head dropped.
"I haven't been feeding you on all these generalities just to kill time. A generality would be worth nothing if it weren't for its exceptions. Women are remarkable for the number of their exceptions. You are crossing a threshold into a peculiarly lax section and age of woman. I want you to believe and to remember that the world still breeds noble and innocent women."
Leighton stopped, threw up his head, and fixed Lewis with his eyes.
"Do you know what innocence is? Ask the average clergyman to describe innocence to you, and when he gets through, think a bit, take off the tinsel words with which he has decked out his graven image, and you'll find what? Ignorance enshrined. Every clergy the world has seen has enshrined ignorance, and ignorance has no single virtue that a sound turnip does not share."
Leighton stopped and faced his son.
"Now, my boy," he said, "here comes the end of the sermon. Beware of the second-best in women. Many a man trades his soul not for the whole world, but for a bed-fellow." He paused. "I believe," he continued, flushing, "I still believe that for every man there is an all-embracing woman to whom he is all-embracing. Thank God! I'm childish enough to believe in her still, though I speak through soiled lips—the all-embracing woman who alone can hold you and that you alone can hold."
Lewis stared absently into the fire.
"'The worlds of women are seven,'" he repeated, half to himself: "'spirit, weed, flower, the blind, the visioned, libertine, and saint. None of these is for thee. For each child of love there is a woman that holds the seven worlds within a single breast. Hold fast to thy birthright, even though thou journey with thy back unto the light.'"
"What—where—what's that?" stammered Leighton, staring at his son.
Lewis looked up and smiled.
"Only Old Immortality. Do you remember her? The old woman who told my fortune. She said that. D'you know, I think she must have been a discarded Gipsy. I never thought of it before. I didn't know then what a Gipsy was."
"Gipsy or saint, take it from me, she was, and probably is, a wise woman," said Leighton. "Somehow I'm still sure she can never die. Do you remember all she said when she told you your fortune?"
"Yes," said Lewis; "I think I do. Every once in a while I've said it over to myself."
"I wish you'd write down what she said and—and leave it on my table for me. You'll have to do it tonight, for I'm off to-morrow. Old Ivory and I have shot so much game we've grown squeamish about it, but it seems there's a terrific drought and famine on in the game country of the East Coast, and all the reserves have been thrown open. The idea is meat for the natives and a thinning out of game in the overstocked country. We are going out this time not as murderers, but as philanthropists."
"I'd like to go, too," said Lewis, his eyes lighting. "Won't you let me?"
"Not this trip, my boy," said Leighton. "I hate to refuse you anything, but don't think I'm robbing you. I'm not. I merely don't wish you to eat life too fast. Times will come when you'llneedto go away. Just now you've got things enough to hunt right here. One of them is art. You may think you've arrived, but you haven't—not yet."
"I know I haven't," said Lewis.
Leighton nodded.
"Ever heard this sort of thing? 'Art is giving something for nothing. Art is the ensnaring of beauty in an invisible mesh. Art is the ideal of common things. Art is a mirage stolen from the heavens and trapped on a bit of canvas or on a sheet of paper or in a lump of clay.' And so on and so on."
Lewis smiled.
"As a matter of fact," continued Leighton, "those things are merely the progeny of art. Art itself is work, and its chief end is expression with repression. Remember that—with repression. Many an artist has missed greatness by mistaking license for originality and producing debauch. I don't want you to do that. I want you to stay here by yourself for a while and work; not with your hands, necessarily, but with your mind. Get your perspective of life now. Most of the pathetic 'what-might-have-beens' in the lives of men and women are due to misplaced proportions that made them struggle greatly for little things."
Lewis looked up and nodded.
"Dad, you've got a knack of saying things that are true in a way that makes them visible. When you talk, you make me feel as though some one had drawn back the screen from the skylight."
Leighton shrugged his shoulders. For a long moment he was silent; then he said:
"A life like mine has no justification if it can't let in light, even though it be through stained glass."
Lewis caught a wistful look in his father's eyes. He felt a sudden surge of love such as had come to him long years before when he had first sounded the depths of his father's tenderness. "There's no light in all the world like cathedral light, Dad," he said with a slight tremble in his voice, "and it shines through stained glass."
"Thanks, boy, thanks," said Leighton; then he smiled, and threw up his head. Lewis had learned to know well that gesture of dismissal to a mood.
"Just one more word," continued his father. "When you do get down to working with your hands, don't forget repression. Classicism bears the relation to art that religion does to the world's progress. It's a drag-anchor—a sound measure of safety—despised when seas are calm, but treasured against the hour of stress. Let's go and eat."
Lewis rose and put his hand on his father's arm.
"I'll not forget this talk, Dad," he said.
"I hope you won't, boy," said Leighton. "It's harder for me to talk to you than you think. I'm driven and held by the knowledge that there are only two ways in which a father can lose his son. One is by talking too much, the other's by not talking enough. The old trouble of the devil and the deep, blue sea; the frying-pan and the fire. Come, we've been bandying the sublime; let's get down to the level of stomachs and smile. The greatest thing about man is the range of his octaves."
For a week Lewis missed his father very much. Every time he came into the flat its emptiness struck him, robbed him of gaiety, and made him feel as though he walked in a dead man's shoes. He was very lonely.
"Helton," he said one night, "I wish things could talk—these old chairs and the table and that big worn-out couch, for instance."
"Lucky thing they can't, sir," mumbled Helton, holding the seam of the table-cloth in his teeth while he folded it.
"Why?" said Lewis. "Why should it be lucky they can't? Don't you suppose if they had the power of talk, they'd have the power of discretion as well, just as we have?"
"I don't know about that, sir," said Helton. "Things is servants just like us serving-men is. The more wooden a serving-man is in the matter of talk, the easier it is for 'im to get a plice. If you ask me, sir, I would s'y as chairs is wooden and walls stone an' brick for the comfort of their betters, an' that they 'aven't any too much discretion as it is, let alone talking."
"Nelton," said Lewis, "I've been waiting to ask you something. I wonder if you could tell me."
"Can't s'y in the dark," said Nelton.
"It's this," said Lewis. "Everybody here—all dad's friends except Lady Derl—call him Grapes Leighton. Why? I've started to ask him two or three times, but somehow something else seems to crop up in his mind, and he doesn't give me a chance to finish."
Nelton's lowered eyes flashed a shrewd look at Lewis's face.
"The exercise of discretion ennobles the profession," he said, and stopped, a dazed, pleased look in his face at hearing his own rhyme. He laid the table-cloth down, took from his pocket the stub of a pencil, and wrote the words on his cuff. Then he picked up the cloth, laid it over his arm, and opened the door. As he went out he paused and said over his shoulder: "Master Lewis, it would hurt the governor's feelin's if you asked him or anybody else how he got the nime of Gripes."
Let a man but feel lonely, and his mind immediately harks along the back trail of the past. In his lonely week Lewis frequently found himself thinking back. It was only by thinking back that he could stay in the flat at all. Now for the first time he realized that he had been stepping through life with seven-league boots. The future could not possibly hold for him the tremendous distances of his past. How far he had come since that first dim day at Consolation Cottage!
To every grown-up there is a dim day that marks the beginning of things, the first remembered day of childhood. Lewis could not fasten on any memory older than the memory of a rickety cab, a tall, gloomy man, and then a white-clad group on the steps of Consolation Cottage. Black mammy, motherly Mrs. Leighton, curly-headed Shenton, and little Natalie, with her 'wumpled' skirt, who had stood on tiptoe to put her lips to his, appeared before him now as part of the dawn of life.
As he looked back, he saw that the sun had risen hot on his day of life. It had struck down Shenton, blasted the Reverend Orme, withered Ann Leighton, and had turned plump little Natalie's body into a thin, wiry home for hope. Natalie had always demanded joy even of little things. Did she still demand it? Where was Natalie? Lewis asked himself the question and felt a twinge of self-reproach. Life had been so full for him that he had not stopped to think how empty it might be for Natalie, his friend.
How little he had done to trace her! Only the one letter. He decided to write again, this time to Dom Francisco. If only he could talk to Natalie, what long tours it would take to tell and to hear all! A faint flush of anticipation was rising to his cheeks when a rap on the door startled him. Before he could look around Nelton announced, "A lady to see you, sir."
Lewis leaped to his feet and stepped forward. Had one of the miracles he had been taught to believe in come to pass? Had prayer been answered? The lady raised her arms and started to take off her veil. Then she turned her back to Lewis.
"Do untie it for me," she drawled in the slow voice of Lady VioletManerlin.
Lewis felt his face fall, and was glad she had her back to him. He undid her veil with steady, leisurely fingers.
"This is awfully good of you," he said. "How did you know I was alone?"
"Telephoned Nelton, and told him not to say anything."
Vi took off her hat and jacket as well as her veil, and tossed the lot into a chair. Then she sat down in a corner of the big couch before the fire, doubled one foot under her, tapped the floor with the other, and yawned. Lewis offered her a cigarette, took one himself, and then shared a match with her.
"It's good of you to take it so calmly," said Vi. "Are you one of the fools that must always have an explanation? I'll give you one, if you like."
"Don't bother," said Lewis, smiling. "You've been bored—horribly bored. You looked out of the window, and saw the green things in the park, and remembered that there was only one bit in your list of humanity as green and fresh as they, and you headed straight for it."
"Yes," drawled Vi, "like a cow making for the freshest tuft of grass in the pasture. Thanks; but I'm almost sorry you told me why I came. That's the disappointing thing to us women. When we think we're doing something original, somebody with a brain comes along and reduces it to first elements, and we find we've only been natural."
Lewis straddled a chair, folded his arms on the back of it, and looked Vi over with a professional eye. She was posed for a painter, not for a sculptor, but even so he found her worth looking at. A woman can't sit on one foot, tap the floor with the other, and lean back, without showing the lines of her body.
"Mere length," said Lewis, "is a great handicap to a woman, but add proportion to length, and you have the essentials of beauty. Short and pretty; long and beautiful. D'you get that? A short woman may be beautiful as a table decoration, but let her stand up or lie down and, presto! she's just pretty."
Vi reached out one long arm toward the fire, and nicked off the ash from her cigarette. She tried to hide the tremor that Lewis's words brought to her limbs and the color that his frankly admiring eyes brought to the pallor of her cheeks. She was a woman that quivered under admiration.
"Have you never—don't you ever kiss women?" she asked, looking at him with slanted eyes.
Lewis shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, I suppose so. That is—well, to tell you the truth, I don't remember."
For a second Vi stared at him; then she laughed, and he laughed with her.
"Oh! oh!" she cried, "I believe you're telling the truth!"
They sat and talked. Nelton brought in tea; then they sat and talked some more. A distant bell boomed seven o'clock. Vi started, rose slowly to her feet, and stretched.
"Have you got your invitation for the Ruttle-Marter fancy-dress ball next week?" she asked, stifling a yawn.
"No," said Lewis; "don't know 'em."
"That doesn't matter," said Vi. "I'll see that you get a card to-morrow. I'd like you to come. Nobody is supposed to know it, but I'm going to dance. Will you come?"
"Oh, yes," said Lewis, rising; "I'll come. I've been a bit lonely since dad went away." Then he smiled. "So I was wrong, after all."
"Wrong?" said Vi, staring at him, "When, how?"
"This is what you really came for—to ask me to see you dance," he said, laughing.
"Oh, was it?" said Vi. "I'm always wondering why I do things. Well, I suppose I'd better go, but I hate to. I've been so comfy here. If you'd only press me, I might stay for dinner."
Lewis shook his head.
"Better not."
"Why?"
"Well, you're married, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Vi, grimly, her eyes narrowing.
"Well," said Lewis, "you've heard dad talk. He says marriage is just an insurance policy to the mind of woman."
"Yes," said Vi, "and that the best place to keep it is away from the fire. Your dad's insight is simply weird. But if you think you're going to start on life where he left off, let me tell you you'll be chewing a worn-out cud."
Lewis laughed.
"You would be right if I were to live life over on his lines. But I won't. He doesn't want me to. He never said so, but I just know."
Vi shrugged her shoulders.
"You have a lot of sense," she said. "There's nothing women dislike more. Good-by." She held out her hand and stepped toward him. She seemed to misjudge the distance and half lose her balance. The full length of her quivering body came up against Lewis. He felt her hot, sweet breath almost on his mouth. He flushed. His arms started up from his sides and then dropped again.
"Touch and go!" he gasped.
"Which?" drawled Vi, her mouth almost on his, her wide, gray eyes so near that he closed his to save himself from blindness.
"Better make it 'go,'" said Lewis, and grinned.
"You've saved yourself," said Vi, with a laugh. "If you hadn't grinned,I'd have kissed you."
Lewis went to the Ruttle-Marter ball determined to be gay. He searched for Vi, but did not find her. By twelve o'clock he had to admit that he was more than bored, and said so to a neighbor.
"That's impossible," said the neighbor, yawning. "Boredom is an ultimate. There's nothing beyond it; consequently, you can't be more than bored."
"You're wrong," said Lady Derl from behind them. "For a man there's always something beyond boredom: there's going home."
"Touché," cried Lewis and then suddenly straightened. While they had been chatting, the curtain of the improvised stage at one end of the ball-room had gone up. In the center of the stage stood a figure that Lewis would have recognized at once even if he had not been a participant in the secret.
The figure was that of a tall woman. Her dark hair—and there was plenty of it—was done in the Greek style. So were her clothes, if such filmy draperies could be justly termed clothes. They were caught up under her breasts, and hung in airy loops to a little below her knees. They were worn so skilfully that art did not appear. They fluttered about her softly moving limbs, but never flew. The woman was apparently blindfolded—with chiffon. The foamy bandage proved an efficient mask. Chiffon and draperies were of that color known to connoisseurs ascuisse de nymphe.
A buzz of interested questioning swept over the company. Mrs. Ruttle-Marter, who had been quite abandoned for over an hour, suddenly found herself the center of a curious and eager group.
"Who is she?" "What is she?" "Where did you get her?"
The trembling hostess, flushed by the first successful moment in many dreary seasons, was almost too gulpy to speak. But words came at last.
"Really, my dear Duchess, I don't know who she is. I don't know where she comes from or what she is. I only know her price and the name of her dance. If I told the price, well, there wouldn't be any rush in this crowd to engage her." So early did power lead the long-suffering Mrs. Ruttle-Marter to lap at revenge!
"Well, tell us the name of her dance, anyway," said a tall, soldierly gray-head that was feeling something for the first time in twenty years. "Do hurry! She's going to begin."
"I can do that," said Mrs. Ruttle-Marter. "Her dance is called 'Love is blind.'"
"Love is blind," repeated Lewis to Lady Derl. "Let's see what she makes of it."
People did not note just when the music began. They suddenly realized it. It was so with Vi's dance. So gradually did her body sway into motion that somebody who had been staring at her from the moment she appeared whispered, "Why, she's dancing!" only when the first movement was nearing its close.
The music was doubly masked. It was masked behind the wings and behind the dance. It did not seem interwoven with movement, but appeared more as a soft background of sound to motion. So it remained through all the first part of the dance which followed unerringly all the traditions of Greek classicism, depending for expression entirely on swaying arms and body.
"Who would have thought it!" whispered Lewis. "To do something well at a range of two thousand years! That's more than art; it's genius."
"It's not genius," whispered back Lady Derl; "it's just body. What's more, I think I recognize the body."
"Well," said Lewis, "what if you do? Play the game."
"So I'm right, eh? Oh, I'll play the game, and hate her less into the bargain."
So suddenly that it startled, came a crashing chord. The dancer quivered from head to foot, became very still, as though she listened to a call, and then swirled into the rhythm of the music. The watchers caught their breath and held it. The new movement was alien to anything the marbled halls of Greece are supposed to have seen; yet it held a haunting reminder, as though classicism had suddenly given birth to youth.
The music swelled and mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell prone, riven by a single, throbbing sob. Down came the curtain. The music faded away in a long, descending sweep.
Men shouted hoarsely, unaware of what they were crying out, and women for once clapped to make a noise, and split their gloves. A youth, his hair disordered and a hectic flush in his cheeks, rushed straight for the stage, crying, "Who is she?"
Lewis stuck out his foot and tripped him. Great was his fall, and the commotion thereof switched the emotions of the throng back to sanity. Conventional, dogged clapping and shouts of "Bis! Bis!" were relied on to bring the curtain up again, and relied on in vain. Once more Mrs. Ruttle-Marter was surrounded and beseeched to use her best efforts. As she acceded, a servant handed Lewis a scribbled note. "Come and take me out of this. Vi," he read. He slipped out behind the servant.
In the cab they were silent for a long time. Lewis's eyes kept wandering over Vi, conventional once more, and lazing in her corner.
"Well," she drawled at last, "what did you think of it?"
"Think of it?" said Lewis. "There were three times when I wanted to shout, 'Hold that pose!' After that—well, after that my brain stopped working."
"Do you mean it?" asked Vi.
"Mean what?"
"About wanting me to hold a pose."
"Yes," said Lewis; "of course. What of it?"
"What of it? Why, I will. When?"
"Doyoumean it?" asked Lewis.
Vi nodded.
"Name your own time."
"To-morrow," said Vi, "at ten."
The following morning Lewis was up early, putting his great, bare studio in fitting order, and trying to amplify and secure the screened-in corner which previous models had frequently damned as a purely tentative dressing-room. Promptly at ten Vi appeared.
"Where's your maid?" asked Lewis. "You've simply got to have a maid along for this sort of thing."
"You're wrong," said Vi. "It's just the sort of thing one doesn't have a maid for. It's easier to trust two to keep quiet than to keep a maid from vain imaginings. And—it's a lot less expensive."
"Well," said Lewis, "where's your costume?"
"Here," said Vi, "in my recticule."
They laughed. Ten minutes later Vi appeared in her filmy costume.Lewis's face no longer smiled. He was sitting on a bench at the fartherend of the room, solemnly smoking a pipe. He did not seem to notice thatVi's whole body was suffused, nervous.
"Dance," said Lewis.
Vi hesitated a moment and then danced, at first a little stiffly. But her mind gradually concentrated on her movements; she began to catch the impersonal working atmosphere of a model.
"Hold that!" cried Lewis, and, a second later: "No, that will never do.You've stiffened. Try again."
Over and over Vi tried to catch the pose and keep it until, without a word, she crossed the room, threw herself on a couch, and began to cry from pure exhaustion. When she had partly recovered, she suddenly awoke to the fact that Lewis had not come to comfort her. She looked up. Lewis was still sitting on the bench. He was filling a fresh pipe.
"Blown over?" he asked casually. "Come on. At it again."
At the end of another half-hour Vi gave up the struggle. She had caught the pose twice, but she had been unable to hold it.
"I give it up," she wailed. "I'll simply never be able tostaythat way."
"If you were a professional dancer," said Lewis, "I'd say 'nonsense' to that. But you're not. I'm afraid it would take you weeks, perhaps months, to get the stamina. Take it easy now while I make some tea."
"Tea in the morning!" said Vi. "I can't stand it. I'd rather have a glass of port or something like that."
"I've no doubt you would, but you're not going to get it," said Lewis, calmly, as he went about the business of brewing tea.
Vi finished her first cup, and asked for a second.
"It's quite a bracer, after all," she said. "I feel a lot better." She rose and went to the model's throne at one side of the room. "Is this where they stand?" she asked.
Lewis nodded.
Vi climbed the throne, and took a pose. Her face was turned from Lewis, her right arm half outstretched, her left at her side. She was in the act of stepping. Her long left thigh was salient, yet withdrawing. It was the pose of one who leads the way.
"This is the pose you will do me in," she said.
For a moment Lewis was silent, then he said gravely:
"No, you don't really want me to do you that way."
"I do, and you will," said Vi, without looking around.
For another long moment Lewis was silent.
"All right," he said at last. "Come down. Dress yourself. You've had enough for to-day."
Weeks passed. Lewis worked steadily at his figure of Vi. From the time the wires had been set and the rough clay slapped on them, he had never allowed her to see the figure.
"It's no use asking," he said. "You're no master at this art. The workman who shows unfinished stuff to anybody but a master is a fool."
"Well, when, then?" asked Vi, impatiently, after weeks had lengthened to months.
"Almost any day now," said Lewis; but before 'any day' came around, something happened that materially delayed the satisfaction of Vi's curiosity.
Lady Derl had frequently drafted Lewis into dinners that she thought would be stupid for her without him. As a result, the inevitable in London happened. It became a habit to invite Lewis when Lady Derl was coming. He never took her in,—her rank and position made that impossible,—but he was there, somewhere at the lower end of the table, where she could watch him when she felt bored and occasionally read in the astonished faces of his neighbors the devastation he had caused by some remark; for Lewis, like his father, had a way of saying things. The difference was that Leighton'smotswere natural and malicious, while Lewis's were only natural. On the whole, Lewis created the greater sensation.
The night after Lewis had said "Almost any day now" to Vi, he found himself at a semi-diplomatic dinner next to a young person who, like himself, seemed to find the affair a bit heavy.
"What did they invite you for?" asked Lewis.
"They couldn't help it," replied the young person, stifling a yawn. "I'm the wife of the charge of the Brazilian legation. And you?"
"Oh, I'm here just to take Lady Derl home."
The young person's eyes showed a gleam of interest as they glanced up the table to where Lady Derl sat and reigned an easy queen in that assembly.
"Oh," she said, "are you? Why you?"
"Well," said Lewis, "I suppose it's because I'm the only man in town that always remembers Lady Derl's beauty and gray hair at the same time."
The young person smiled.
"I believe I've heard of you. Leighton is your name, isn't it?"
"It's only five minutes since I was introduced," said Lewis, smiling, "and you made me say it over three times."
"Ah, yes," said the lady, unperturbed, "but five minutes is a long time—sometimes. Is Leighton a common name?"
"Not as common as some," said Lewis. "Why?"
"Nothing, only I know some Leightons in Brazil."
Lady Derl saw Lewis start, and quickly lay down his fork. She watched in vain through the rest of that dinner for a conversational sensation at his end of the table. When they were in the carriage and on the way home she asked:
"Well, what was it?"
"What was what?" said Lewis, out of a reverie.
"What did that Senhora What's-her-name have to tell you that made you forget to eat?"
"She was telling me about an old pal of mine," said Lewis. "Did dad ever tell you where he found me?"
"Yes," said Lady Derl; "he said he found you in the geometrical center of nowhere, surrounded by equal parts of wilderness."
"That's what he thought," said Lewis; "but there was a home tucked into the wilderness. It had been my home for a great many years. People had been kind to me there—Mrs. Leighton; Natalie, my pal; an old darky named just mammy; and, in a way, the Reverend Orme. After I'd been away a year, I wrote back. They had gone. I've just found out where they are, all but the Reverend Orme. I reckon he must be dead."
"And you're going to write?"
"Write?" said Lewis. "No, I'm not going to write. I'm just going." For a moment they were silent, then he said, "There's something about hearing of people what were kind to you that makes you feel awfully lonely."
Lady Derl reached out and took his hand. Their hands lay together on his knee. The drive came to an end, and they had said nothing more. As they stood under the light of the outer hall Hélène turned to Lewis.
"When are you going?"
"To-morrow."
She held up her lips to him.
"Kiss me good-by, Boy."
He kissed her, and for a moment gripped her wrists.
"Hélène," he said, "you've been awfully good to me, too. I—I don't forget."
"You don't forget," repeated Lady Derl. "That's why I kissed you. Don't be hard on your little pal when you find her. Remember, you've gone a long way alone."
As Lewis strode away rapidly toward the flat, the fragrance of Hélène clung to him. It clung to him so long that he forgot Vi—forgot even to leave a note for her explaining his sudden departure. When he reached Santos, three weeks later, it didn't seem worth while to cable.
As Lewis stepped out of the station at San Paulo, he felt himself in a dream. He crossed the street into the public gardens and looked back. He had never seen a station like that. It was beautiful. It had the spirit of a cathedral raised by some pagan as a shrine to the commercial age. Had the railroad bred a dreamer?
Several motor-cars for hire lined the curb. Lewis stepped up to one of the drivers.
"How did they come to build that?" he asked in Portuguese, with a nod toward the station.
The driver shrugged his shoulders.
"Too much money," he said. "The charter limits them to twenty-five per cent, profits. They had such a surplus, they told the architect he could go as high as he liked. He went pretty high." The driver winked at his own joke, but did not smile.
"I want you by the hour," said Lewis. "Do you know Mrs. Leighton's house—Street of the Consolation?"
The driver shook his head.
"There's no such house," he said.
"Well, you know the Street of the Consolation? Drive there. Drive slowly."
On the way Lewis stared, unbelieving, at the things he saw. Gone were the low, thick-walled buildings that memory had prepared him for; gone the funny little street-cars drawn by galloping, jack-rabbit mules. In their stead were high, imposing fronts, with shallow doorways and heavy American electric trams.
The car shot out upon a mighty viaduct. Lewis leaned out and looked down. Here was something that he could remember—the valley that split the city in two, and up and down the sides of which he had often toiled as a boy. Suddenly they were across, and a monster building blotted all else from his sight. He looked up at the massive pile. "What is it?" he asked.
"Theater built by the state," answered the driver, without looking around. "Cost millions."
"Reis?" asked Lewis, smiling.
"Reis? Bah!" grunted the driver. "Pounds."
The street left the level and started to climb. Lewis looked anxiously to right and left. He saw a placard that read, "Street of the Consolation."
"Stop!" he cried.
The driver drew up at the curb.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"This isn't the Street of the Consolation," said Lewis, dismayed. "Where's the big cotton-tree and the priest's house, and—and the bamboos? Where are the bamboos?"
The driver looked around curiously.
"I remember them, the bamboos," he said, nodding. "They're gone."
"Wait here," said Lewis.
He stepped out of the car and started to walk slowly up the hill. He felt a strange sinking of the heart. In his day there had been no sidewalk, only a clay path, beaten hard by the feet of three children on their way to school. In his day the blank row of houses had been a mudtaipawall, broken just here by the little gate of the priest's house. In his day there had been that long, high-plumed bank of bamboos, forever swaying and creaking, behind the screen of which had lain the wonder realm of childhood.
He came to the spot where the gate to Consolation Cottage had been. The old wooden gate and the two friendly, square brick pillars on which it had swung were gone; but in their stead rose a wondrous structure of scrolled wrought iron between two splendid granite shafts.
Lewis stood on tiptoe and gazed through the gate, up the driveway, to where Consolation Cottage had once stood. Through the tepid haze of a beautiful tropical garden he saw a high villa. It did not look back at him. It seemed to be watching steadily from its hilltop the spread of the mighty city in the valley below.
Lewis was brought to himself with a start. Somebody behind him cried out, "O-la!" He turned to find two impatient horses almost on top of him. A footman was springing from his place beside the coachman to open the gate.
Lewis stepped aside. In the smart victoria sat a lady alone. She was dressed in white, and wore a great, black picture-hat. Lewis glanced at her face. He recognized the Anglo-Saxon pallor. Out of the dead-white shone two dark eyes, unnaturally bright. He raised his hat.
"I beg your pardon," he began in English.
The gate had swung open. The horses were plunging on the taut reins. The lady drew her skirts in at her side and nodded. Lewis stepped into the carriage. The horses shot forward and up the drive.
"It was the only way," said the lady as Lewis handed her out of the carriage. "The horses wouldn't wait, once the gates were open. What did you wish to say?"
"I—I wanted to ask you about the Leightons," stammered Lewis. "They used to live here. That is—"
"I know," said the lady. "Come up on the veranda."
That veranda made Consolation Cottage seem farther away than ever to Lewis. Its floor was tiled. Its roof was cleverly arranged to give a pergola effect. It was quite vine-covered. The vines hid the glass that made it rain-proof. In one corner rugs were placed, wicker chairs, a swinging book-rack, and a tea-table. The lady motioned to Lewis to sit down. She sat down herself and started drawing off her long gloves. She looked curiously at Lewis's face.
"You're a Leighton yourself, aren't you? Some relative to Mrs. Leighton and Natalie?"
Lewis nodded.
"A cousin in some Scotch degree to Natalie," he said; "I don't know just what." Then he turned his eyes frankly on her.
"Where are they—Mrs. Leighton and—and Natalie?"
"They are gone," said the lady. "They sold out here almost a year ago and went back to the States. I have the address somewhere. I'll get it for you." She went, but was back in a moment.
"Thanks," said Lewis. He did not look at her any more or around him. His eyes fixed vaguely on distance, as one's eyes do when the mind tells them they are not wanted.
The lady sat perfectly still and silent. The silence grew and grew until by its own weight it suddenly brought Lewis back to the present and confusion. He colored. His lips were opening in apology when the lady spoke.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
Lewis gave her a grateful look.
"I've been playing about the old place," he said, smiling. "Not alone. Natalie, Shenton, and I. We've been racing through the pineapple-patch, lying on our backs under an orange-tree, visiting the stables, and—and Manoel's little house, hiding in the bramble-patch, and peeking over the priest's wall." Lewis waved his hand at the scene that made his words so incongruous. "Sounds to you like rank nonsense, I suppose."
The lady shook her head.
"No," she said—"no, it doesn't sound like nonsense."
Then he asked her about Natalie. She told him many little things. At the end she said:
"I feel that I've told you nothing. Natalie is one of those persons that we generally call a 'queer girl' because we haven't the intelligence or the expression to define them. Our local wit said that she was a girl whom every man considered himself good enough for, but that considered herself too good for any man. That was unjust, but it sounded true because sooner or later all the eligibles lined up before Natalie—and in vain." The lady frowned. "But she wasn't selfish or hard. She used to let them hang on till they just dropped off. She was one of those women that nothing surprises. Her train was made up of the ugly and the handsome—bore, prude, wit, and libertine. She gave them all something; you could feel it. I think she got tired of giving and never taking."
"Is she so beautiful?" asked Lewis.
"Beautiful? Oh, no," said the lady, and then suddenly stopped and straightened. She laughed. "Now I look back on it all, it seems she must be beautiful, but—but I know she isn't. NowI'mtalking nonsense."
"No, you 're not," said Lewis. "There are women like that." He reached out for his hat and stick.
"You're not going?" said the lady. "You'll stay to tea?"
Lewis shook his head.
"You've been very kind," he said, "but I must be going."
Without rising, she took the hand that he held out and then sat and watched his erect figure swing down the drive to the gate. Suddenly she remembered him. They had been together in school. She did not call him back. Bores are people that misjudge the values of impressions. The lady was not a bore; she was a wise woman.
By traveling overland to Rio, Lewis caught the newest and finest of the big steam-packets plying between Buenos Aires and Southampton. This old world of his had been moving apace in more ways than one. The years since, with his father, he had made this same trip were comparatively few, but during them progress had more than taken a long stride; it had crossed a line.
He dressed for dinner at eight. As he stepped into the dining-room, he paused and stared. It was like walking into some smart London restaurant after the theater. Gone were the long ship-boards at which for generations human beings had been lined up like cattle at a trough. In their place were scattered small tables, round and square, of a capacity varying from two to eight.
Around the tables wealth rioted. There were wealthy coffee-planters, who spent a yearly fortune on their annual trip to Paris, surrounded by their wives and such of their offspring as were old enough to escape the nursery table; planters, sheep- and cattle-men from the Argentine, some of them married, all accompanied; and women. Lewis had never before seen so many beautiful women at one time. It wastheboat of the season. Over all hung an atmosphere of vintage wines.
Lewis was shown to a seat at a table for two. Hisvis-à-viswas a rare, lonely little man. The black studs in his shirt seemed to explain him. He was sour and morose till he found Lewis could speak French, then he bubbled over with information. It transpired that the room was alive with situations.
"This is a crowded boat, but see the lady over there?"
Lewis's eyes followed the speaker's backward nod. He saw a remarkably beautiful blonde in evening dress sitting alone at a table for four. She kept her eyes steadily on her plate.
"We call her the Duchess," continued the little man. "She belongs to De la Valla, the sugar king. He's got his daughters with him, so she had to sit at another table, and he paid four passages for her so she'd be kept alone."
Lewis nodded politely.
"Now slant your eyes over my left shoulder," continued the little man.
To Lewis's surprise, he saw another beautiful woman, a bright-eyed brunette, sitting alone at a table for four. He turned, interested, to his table companion for the explanation.
"Ah-ha!" said the little man, "you begin to wake up. That, my friend, is Mlle. Folly Delaires. She's been playing in Buenos Aires. When she saw people staring at the Duchess, she stepped up to the purser's office and laid down the cash for a table for four. At first we thought it was just vanity and a challenge, but we know her better now. She's just the devil of mischief and several other things in the flesh. We ought all to be grateful for her."
Lewis looked curiously at Mlle. Delaires. He watched to see her get up. She passed close to him. She did not have the height that his training had taught him was essential to beauty, but she had certain attributes that made one suddenly class height with other bloodless statistics. From her crown of brown hair to her tiny slippers she was alive. Vitality did not radiate from her, but it seemed to lurk, like a constant, in her whole body and in her every supple movement. Lewis did not see it, but she was of the type that forever takes and never gives.
As she passed close by him he felt an utterly new sensation, as though he were standing in a garden of narcotics, and lassitude were stealing through his limbs. When she had gone, a single memory clung to him—the memory of the wonderful texture of her skin. He had read in a child's book of physiology that our skin breathes. The affirmation had meant nothing to him beyond mechanics; now, suddenly, it meant much. He had seen, felt, this woman's skin breathe, and its breath had been like the fragrance of a flower.
For the first time in his life Lewis looked on woman with blind eyes. During almost three weeks the years that he had lived in familiar contact with women stood him in good stead. He never spoke to the bright-eyed rival to the Duchess, but he watched her from afar. Men swarmed about her. She stood them as long as they amused her, and then would suddenly shake them all off. There were days when she would let no one come near her. There was no day when any man could say he had been favored above another.
Then came an evening when Lewis had dressed unusually early and slipped up to the boat-deck to cool off before dinner. He sat down on a bench and half closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw a woman—the woman, Folly Delaires—standing with her back to him at the rail. He had not heard or seen her come. Almost without volition he arose and stepped to the rail. He leaned on it beside her. She did not move away.
"I want to kiss you," said Lewis, and trembled as he heard his own words.
The woman did not start. She turned her face slowly toward his.
"And I want you to," she said.
Within two weeks of Lewis's departure for South America, Leighton returned from his shooting-trip. Despite the fact that he had not written telling Lewis he was coming, he felt a great chagrin at finding the flat deserted except for the ever-faithful Nelton.
"Where's the boy?" was Leighton's first question. Even as he stepped across the threshold he felt that he stepped into an empty house.
"South America," said Nelton, relieving his master of hat, stick, and gloves.
"South America!" cried Leighton, dismayed, and then smiled. "Well, he's getting his dad's tricks early. What for?"
"Don't know, sir. Mr. Lewis said as you'd get it from her ladyship."
Lady Derl was out of town. Leighton followed her, stayed two days, decided her momentary entourage was not to his taste, and returned to London. He reached the flat in the afternoon, just in time to receive a caller. The caller was Vi.
"Hallo!" said Leighton as Nelton showed her in, "this is fortune. Take off your things and stay."
"I will—some of them," drawled Vi; "but not just yet." She sat down.
"What on earth are you doing in town?" asked Leighton.
"Well," said Vi, "up to three weeks ago I was here at the beck and call of your son. Then he suddenly took French leave." She turned and faced Leighton. "Where has he gone? It isn't like one of you to be rude in little things."
"I don't think Lew meant to be rude," said Leighton. "He's gone to South America. He heard about some cousins he 'd lost track of, and he just bolted the next morning."
"Cousins!" said Vi. "I didn't know any one still went in for family ties to the extent of South America, short of a fat death."
"No," said Leighton, smiling; there's no money in this trip. Why were you at his beck and call?"
"Model," said Vi, coolly. "He's been doing me."
"Doingyou!" said Leighton, looking at her curiously.
"There, there," said Vi, "don't let your imagination run away with you. Not in the nude. By the way, can you let me have the key? I left something in the studio, and I didn't like to go to Nelton."
"Certainly," said Leighton. "I'll walk by there with you."
Vi gave a shrug of protest, but Leighton's back was already turned. He fetched the key, and together they walked over to Lewis's atelier. When they had climbed the stairs and were at the door, Vi said a little breathlessly and without a drawl:
"Do you mind very much not coming in? I won't be but a minute."
Leighton glanced at her, surprised. "Not at all," he said, and handed her the key. He took out a cigarette and lit it as she opened the door and closed it behind her. He started pacing up and down the bare hall. Presently he grew impatient, and glanced at his watch; then he stopped short in his tracks. From behind the closed door came unmistakably the sound of a woman sobbing.
Leighton did not hesitate. He threw open the door and walked in. Except for Vi, curled up in a little heap on the couch, the atelier was very still, vast, somber. In its center shone a patch of light. In the patch of light, on a low working pedestal, stood a statue. On the floor were a tumbled cloth and a fallen screen. Leighton stood stock-still and stared.
The sculptured figure was that of a woman veiled in draperies that were merely suggested. Her face, from where Leighton stood, was turned away. Her right arm was half outstretched, her left hung at her side, but it was peculiarly turned, as though to draw the watcher on. Then there was the left thigh. Once the eye fell on that, all else was forgotten. Into this sinking sweep had gone all the artist's terrific force of expression and suggestion. No live man would have thought of the figure as "Woman Leading the Way," once his eyes had fallen on that thigh. To such a one the statue named itself with a single flash to the brain, and the name it spoke was "Invitation."
Leighton's first impulse was one of unbounded admiration—the admiration we give to unbounded power. Then realization and a frown began to come slowly to his face. Vi, crumpled up on the couch, and sobbing hard, dry sobs,—the sobs that bring age,—-helped him to realization. Lewis, his boy, had done a base thing.
Without moving, Leighton glanced about the room till his eyes fell on the mallet. Then he stepped quickly to it, picked it up, and crossed to the statue. Beneath his quick blows the brittle clay fell from the skeleton wires in great, jagged chunks. With his foot he crushed a few of them to powder. He tossed the mallet aside, and glanced at Vi. She was still crying, but she had half risen at the sound of his blows, and was staring at him through wet eyes.
Leighton started walking up and down, the frown still on his brow.Finally he came to a stop before the couch.
"Vi," he said—"Vi, listen! You must tell me something. It isn't a fair question, but never mind that."
She lifted a tear-stained face.
"Vi," said Leighton, tensely, "did he follow?"
Vi raised herself on her arms and stared at him for a moment before she gasped:
"You fool, do you suppose I would have cared if he had followed?" Then shame gripped her, and she threw herself full-length again, face down. Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound.
Leighton waited half an hour. He spent the time walking up and down and smoking cigarettes. He was no longer frowning. At the end of the half-hour he caught Vi by the arms and lifted her to her feet.
"Come on," he said.
Vi stared at him as one half-awakened.
"I don't want to go anywhere," she said. "I'm very well here."
"Nonsense!" said Leighton, "you don't realize what you're doing to yourself. On my word, you look positively puttyish."
"Puttyish!" cried Vi, a flush of anger rising to her face. "Grapes, you're brutal! Since when have you learned to trample on a woman?"
"That's better," said Leighton, coolly. "I thought it would rouse you a bit."
Vi almost smiled at herself. She laid her hand on Leighton's arm and turned him toward the door.
"And they still say that no man knows women," she said. She paused and looked back at the fragments of the statue. Her lips twisted. "Even boys," she added, "pick out our naked souls and slap them in our faces."
As they walked slowly toward the flat, Vi said:
"I know why you had to ask that question. I'm glad you did. You were misjudging Lew. But you can be sure of one thing: no one but us three ever saw that statue; I know now that no one but just Lew and myself were ever meant to see it. He didn't want to model me that way. When I asked for it, he hesitated, then suddenly he gave in." She paused for a moment, then she added, "I believe it's part of a man's job to know when to trample on women."