Ewing's Lady Part 17

"Thing that needed to be done for his own good," he explained. "Max believes he's an art editor, but n.o.body else does--n.o.body else ever believed it in this whole wide, beautiful world. So I lined those trusting little boys up in front of his door and said, 'Boys, look in there and you will see a real art editor.' They looked in at old Max and then at me. 'You believe it, don't you, boys?' I asked them, and they all said, 'Yes, sir!' So I made them bow to him and say in concert, 'We _do_ believe you are an art editor, no matter what other people say,'

and then we left. We had to. I'm ashamed to tell you--but old Max seemed to forget that he was a gentleman. He'll thank me when he comes to his senses, all the same. He can lay his head on his pillow to-night knowing that there are others in the world besides himself who believe he's an art editor. Oh, I love to do good!" he concluded with a benevolent smirk.

Once more they were in the hansoms and Ewing slept again, to the strains of "I have other mothers now," sung by Baldwin, who sat in his lap.

As they climbed the stairs of the Rookery Baldwin found the moment suited for sage counsel to Chalmers.

"'T won't do, my boy--'t won't do! Can't burn candles both ends. Your face this minute looks like one of those cheap apple pies in a restaurant window."

Ewing mounted to his own floor and found himself in the curious stillness of the big room. It had seemed to wait there for him, mutely, but with desire. He stood a moment in the silence, his ears ringing with after sounds of the night. He fell on the couch, too tired to go formally to bed, and felt himself falling into sleep as into a beneficent and welcoming abyss.

CHAPTER XIII

SEARCHING THE WILDERNESS

He awoke from a dream noisy with laughter and the ring of shod hoofs on a stone roadway; a phantasma in which faces were gray and distorted through smoke and people did wild things in sane ways. He lay long enough to separate the fiction of this dream from the actual but not more credible performances of the night before. Then he rose, yawning away the last of his drowsiness, and looked out over the roofs. He saw that it was late afternoon, for the shadows of the water b.u.t.ts ran well to the east. The mute solitude of the scene gave his loneliness a new pang. He felt more solitary in the mult.i.tude than he had ever felt in his unpeopled hills. Yet the place still lured him, not less than in days when he had hungered for it, a starved lover of life in the desert.

If only he could find some one to come near, some one to whom he could be his unguarded self. Such a one must exist.

His eyes swept the reticent roofs, and his mind searched beneath them: what felicitous possibilities did they not conceal? People doubtless fasting like himself, longing for the friendly cry, eating their hearts out in loneliness--men and women he might know or never know. He lifted each roof as he gazed; under any one of them might be the companion; under all were charms of adventurous search.

In this moment of homesick longing his mind caught at Mrs. Laithe. She had told him to come soon. Did that mean in one day, or in ten? She was his one link with an old life that had filled if it did not satisfy. And sometimes she had met him. Chiefly she had been a woman for the eyes, but there had been fleeting times when they touched in ways that brought him a deeper satisfaction--times when invisible antennae from each seemed to be in communicative contact. These moments brought back the palsy of shyness that had stricken him at his first glimpses of her; yet they brought, too, some potent, strange essence that sustained him. He resolved to go to her now. She mystified, she dismayed him, but her kindness was dependable.

It was the memory of this that moved him to throw off his stale, smoke-saturated garments, to bathe, to dress himself afresh, and to walk briskly through the tonic sharpness of a September afternoon.

As he rang the bell a vague, delightful home-coming warmth rushed over him.

"In a moment I shall see her," he said within himself. As the door swung back he heard the din of many voices and caught a rush of heated air, sweetish with the odor, as it seemed, of tired and fainting flowers. At the entrance to the drawing room he faltered, for the place was thronged with terrifying strange people who held teacups and talked explosively.

Longing to flee, he saw Mrs. Laithe across the room, turning somewhat wearily, he thought, away from three or four voluble women, as if to s.n.a.t.c.h at a moment of rest from her perfunctory smile. Almost instantly her eyes swung to his, and he became aware, as she started toward him, of some sudden flurry leaping behind their black-fringed curtains, a quick play of lights that stirred and confused him. She gave him her hand with half-formal phrases of greeting under which he detected a rising nervousness.

"So good of you to come, and on my day! They're tiresome at best. You are well? You shall have tea and know some people." She went to a table between the two rooms, where a girl in white drew tea from a samovar into many little cups. Ewing began to watch this girl, a slight but rounded creature with yellowish hair curving down either side of her tanned face. He caught a greenish light in her eyes, as she bent to her task with a somewhat anxious concentration.

Mrs. Laithe brought him the tea, which he helplessly took, and presented him to a vivid-hued young matron, who made room for him beside her. His part in the talk that followed was confined to mutterings of agreement, tinged now and then with a discreet sympathy. He heard the latest golf and yachting news and sprightly chat of the lady's newest motor car. He caught a blurred view of the Austrian Tyrol, and absorbed technical data on the operation of smuggling silk stockings from Paris. He gleaned that Airedales were difficult to raise; that Caruso would return; that all coachmen were but hirelings of the sales stables, when you got at the root of the trouble. He learned that Newport had been deadly, Bar Harbor impossible, Tuxedo not half bad for a week end; and that New York would be empty for another fortnight.

Upon none of these difficult matters had he anything of moment to offer.

The a.s.sertion that New York was empty bereft him, indeed, of even his slender power of a.s.sent. The lady would have considered him stupid but for the look with which he met her quick eyes from time to time. She decided that he was merely bored--a thing not to be particularly remarked. It was common enough in the men she met.

In one of the roving looks he permitted himself under his companion's discourse his glance rested on two people far back in the library. One was Mrs. Laithe's father. He stood, cup in hand, talking down to a smartly attired, whitehaired woman who sat forward in her chair and stared at Ewing. Her gown was black, and one white-gloved hand rested on Bartell's arm. Her eyes did not waver as Ewing met them. He saw that Bartell seemed to identify him in the throng and speak a few words to the lady. Ewing turned to his companion, discomfort under that steady survey. A moment later he was drawn to look again and saw Bartell coming toward him.

"Ah, young man!" His greeting oozed cordiality, the soothing friendliness of a man fitted to find only the pleasantness of life.

"And come with me, if Mrs. Dudley will let you off--" the lady smiled a pretty but unreserved a.s.sent--"an old friend, Mrs. Lowndes, wants to know you. She's a dear soul, always jolly. Tell her about cowboys and things, won't you--something pleasant."

They stood before the woman in the chair, and Bartell uttered a few words which Ewing did not hear, for at the moment he had glanced up to see Mrs. Laithe watching him with eyes of such genuine dismay that confusion overtook him. He wondered what wrong thing he could have done, but recovered in time to bow and murmur a phrase of acknowledgment. His new acquaintance indicated a seat beside her, but did not look at him.

"Thank you, Chris. Mr. Ewing will entertain me. Run off to someone as young as yourself."

Bartell smiled himself back into the more crowded room, and Ewing waited, apprehending talk like that he had lately undergone. But he found that this woman who had stared at him so curiously was not voluble. For a long time she remained silent. Once he glanced up to observe that her eyes were closed, and seized the moment to study her face. He thought she was very old--sixty at least. Yet the face showed strength in its frailness. The cheeks, looking brown under the plenteous white hair, were lined but not withered, and the curve from brow to chin revealed more than a suggestion of self-will. A dainty but imperious old lady he thought her. He might have believed himself forgotten but for an intimation of waiting thrown out by her manner, a suggestion of leaning toward him, breathless, one of the gloved hands poising as if to alight on his arm. He found this less tiring than the compulsion he had lately been under to agree with a livelier woman about matters strange to him.

And yet he was relieved when she opened her eyes as if to speak. He regarded her with puzzled but kind expectancy. At last she said, and he understood that her voice was unnaturally tight and hard:

"Mr. Bartell tells me that you are a painter, Mr. Ewing."

"I'm trying to be--they are very kind here."

"Your father was Gilbert Ewing--a painter?"

"Oh, you _knew_ him?" He thrilled at the thought, but was disappointed.

"Mr. Bartell mentioned his name--and yours."

"He was a painter, yes; he died out there in Colorado."

She seemed to shudder ever so slightly and her eyes closed again.

"And your--your mother?" The words were hardly more than a whisper.

"My mother died when I was very small."

Again she seemed to wince under a sting. But now she fell away from that waiting tenseness with which she had held him. The hand that had hovered over his arm fell limply into her lap, and she leaned back in her chair.

"I'm afraid you aren't very well," he ventured. "The rooms are close."

She opened her eyes, with no sign of having heard. Sitting forward in her chair she gazed ahead with narrowed eyes.

"I am an old woman and dull, Mr. Ewing, but I should like to have you come and see me."

"I'll be glad to come," he answered promptly enough, though he could not keep surprise from his voice.

"Come to-morrow, if you will, and pardon an old woman's whim in asking you with so little ceremony."

"I will come, of course." He wondered if she felt a city loneliness like his own.

"Thank you. I shall be in after four." She gave him a card from a small silver case at her belt. "The room _is_ close. You may fetch me tea."

He was certain her eyes were sharply on him as he went, and when he returned, her full gaze swept him with a look in which he curiously read incredulity, with something beside that might have been fear or repulsion--he could not determine. She took the tea, but set it down untasted. A very queer old lady he thought her. He stood by in embarra.s.sment, not knowing what to say. Glancing about for inspiration he was relieved to see Bartell bearing down upon him from the side of Mrs. Laithe. He came up jovially.

"I've been ordered to separate you two, Kitty. Young men aren't plentiful at this time, and Eleanor wants one."

"Thank you for bringing him, Chris." She gave Ewing a little nod, which he construed as his release, and he turned to meet Mrs. Laithe.

She sought his eyes with that swift look of apprehension which had before puzzled him, and threw another glance toward Mrs. Lowndes, who now chatted smilingly with Bartell. She seemed to be rea.s.sured.

"I do hope you've not been bored. No? I was afraid. Come and meet my sister," and she momentarily swept away his memories of the queer old lady by leading him to the girl in white who poured tea.

"Virgie, this is Mr. Ewing."