Jewel Weed Part 38

Lena glanced enviously about the heaped up gowns and lacy lingerie. It made her own stock seem mean.

"Perhaps it will amuse you to look these over while I am busy," Mrs.

Appleton went on good-humoredly, pushing a leather-bound case across the table toward Lena's arm. Mrs. Percival lifted out one little tray after another with growing sullenness. The profusion of jewels gave her no pleasure. She slammed the trays back in place.

"Did Mr. Appleton give you all of these?" she demanded.

"Yes. Isn't he generous? But he says that my type of beauty is one that can stand lavish decoration."

"He's certainly more free than d.i.c.k," Lena said with bald envy, reviewing her own small store that a few short months ago had seemed to her like the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.

"My dear," Mrs. Appleton exclaimed with a self-conscious laugh, "you can hardly expect d.i.c.k Percival to rival Humphrey."

Mrs. Percival felt bitterly her friend's loftiness of position. It was of course impossible for a woman to feel superior to what she owns and Mrs. Appleton owned more and always would own more than Lena Percival.

"Do you know, my love," Mrs. Appleton pursued, "I think your husband is making a great mistake in going in for petty politics. With his pull, and his fair amount of capital to start with, he ought to be able to make a fortune. He's just throwing his life away."

"Don't you suppose I know it?" Lena cried tearfully. "I've told him so a hundred times. He's just crazy over these nasty little things. He's willing to sacrifice anything to get the place of ward alderman away from some miserable Swede. Think of me tied in town all summer!"

"I wouldn't stand it," Mrs. Appleton answered absently, her eyes on Marie, stuffing tissue paper in a sleeve. "A woman has such influence on her husband. Take matters in your own hands, my dear."

Lena, rebellious at heart, found her only diversion in occasional week-ends at other people's country houses, or in long flights by evening in d.i.c.k's motor. Her husband was self-absorbed and often silent, another person, as she frequently and querulously rubbed into him, from the ardent creature of a few months before.

Sometimes he made attempts to open to her his subjects of thought, but Lena never attempted to understand things that did not interest her, and now that she was safely married, it was too much trouble to make much pretense at it; so she was often alone, and frequently bored.

Even Mr. Early was away most of the time, and the great blank eyes of closed windows blinked down at her from his closed house beyond the dividing hedge that flanked the garden. His place stood on a corner, and on the two sides that fronted the streets, Sebastian had hidden the wonders of his terraces and trimmed trees by high walls, but toward the Percivals he had been less exclusive. Most of the houses in St. Etienne, like their own, had no property dividing line, but lawn melted into lawn with a park-like openness that hinted at communistic kindliness. This had its disadvantages in lack of privacy, and hence it was that in spite of quite an extensive demesne, Lena found in her own garden no spot absolutely hidden from curious eyes of pa.s.sers, except in one thicket of trees and shrubbery over near the Early boundary. Here there was seclusion, and here, therefore, young Mrs. Percival had her hammock and her group of chairs and tables; and here she spent long indolent afternoons in sleepy reading and sleepier dreaming, which was only less agreeable than the social triumphs of which she dreamed. And yet she often found herself weary of nothing, and wished she had some one exactly to her taste to keep her company and talk to her about little things in that "fool's paradise of laziness" where, it is said, Satan is entertainer in chief. Once in a while, on his brief home-stays, Mr.

Early illuminated her retreat with his presence.

Toward the middle of the summer, certain business interests called d.i.c.k to North Dakota, and then life was duller than ever.

Therefore it was a not wholly unwelcome diversion when, late on an August afternoon, she saw the thick laurels of the hedge near her part a little and the form of Ram Juna stand in the cleft, snowy white from turban to slippers save for the gleaming ruby and the polished bronze face. He looked like the day itself, glowing, sultry, indolent.

"Pardon me, dear lady," he said, "that through the bush I spied you. I was solitary. You are solitary. The heat suits not with the severer thought. The weak body refuses to yield to the commands of mind. I fail to write; and perhaps you fail to read."

"I guess your thinking is harder work than my reading. Won't you come over and sit down?" said Lena cordially.

"Then you, like me, would welcome companionship?"

"Yes. Isn't this a nice shady place?" Lena answered. "The maid is just bringing me some iced drinks, and I dare say they'll taste good to you if you have been trying to write that wonderful book of yours in all this blaze."

The Hindu pushed the hedge still farther asunder and swept with a sigh of content over to a cushioned reclining chair.

"If one's heart were set on the things that fade, what greater satisfaction? Shadow, deep shadow from the heat, cool drafts, the voice of a fair woman."

"You must not count me among the things that fade, though," laughed Lena, as she handed him a tall gla.s.s of clinking fragrance. "I shan't like you a bit if you do."

"Everything fades, the rose, the lady, even thought, which is after all but a grub on the tree of truth. All, all fade."

"I wish you wouldn't talk that way," objected Lena. "You make me feel quite creepy."

"Ah," said Ram Juna, "you love the things of to-day. To me the thought that all is transitory is bliss. Is it not so?"

"Yes," said Lena, "I'm sure I like roses and jewels and iced minty stuff to drink. And Ram Juna, I wish you would tell me the really-truly history of your ruby. I've heard so many stories about it." He put up his hand, detached the great jewel from its place and laid it in her small outstretched palm.

"That is a mark of my confiding," he said. "There are few to whom I would give to handle my treasure. It may truly be called a stone of blood. Such angry storms of greed and pa.s.sion, such murders of father by son and husband by wife link their story to it. And now it rests at last on the head of a man of peace. For how long? For how long?" Lena looked at it with the eyes of fascination as it lay in her open hand.

"It charms you like a serpent?" asked her companion, leaning forward with indolent amus.e.m.e.nt. "You are true woman. You love the glitter.

Would you like to see others?"

"Have you others?" cried Lena. "Oh--oh, I should like to see them!" He rose, made her a salaam of grace, parted the hedge once more and disappeared only to return bringing in his hands a curious box of carven ivory, which he set on the table between them and proceeded to unlock with a key of quaint device.

Lena gave a cry of rapture and astonishment as the lid fell back. Ram Juna laid his hand on her arm.

"Silence!" he commanded, "would it be well that the flippant public who pa.s.s near at hand on the pavement should know that there are such treasures in this thicket?"

"I did not know that there was so much splendor in the world," whispered Lena in admiration.

"Rubies--all rubies! They were the stones beloved of my ancestors. This dangled once on the neck of a maha-ranee, more beautiful than itself, only, unfortunately, she lost her neck, murdered by a rival queen."

He twisted the string of gems about her arm, bare to the elbow, and Lena gasped with pleasure.

"Let me add this bracelet--a serpent. See of curious carved gold the scales, and the eyes again two wicked rubies to beguile men's souls. Yet it becomes the arm, does it not? Look, at your pleasure, at the rest of the box."

He pushed the case toward her and Lena began to finger its profuse contents with occasional sighs of envious delight and glances at her white flesh enhanced by its ornaments. Ram Juna sat in silence.

"How do you dare to carry such things around with you?" she asked.

"Not much longer," he answered with a shrug. "To me they are delusions inappropriate. I see that is your thought. Is it not so? What have I to do with necklaces and rings of princesses? I had forgotten that I had them, until a chance thought recalled it. I had long since meant to sell them and give the money to the great cause for which I labor. That is my treasure, is it not? I shall never take them back to India. I must hasten to get rid of them, for I purpose to return there at once."

"Why, are you going away?"

"To-morrow I leave this city. My work here is done. It is the last of work. Hereafter I shall find some solitary spot and end my life in meditations. And the rubies--I might give them away; but perhaps the trifle I should receive for them would help the Brothers in their service. I shall not expect or wish their value."

"Oh, I wish I might buy some of them!"

"Why not? No lady could wear them with greater dignity. Young, beautiful, beloved, and clothed with jewels. It is the frame for the picture, Madame."

"Oh!" said Lena.

"To you, whom I reverence, they should cost but a trifle."

"How much?" gasped Lena.

"The necklace, now," said Ram Juna, and he leaned over and twisted it about her arm as he seemed to hesitate, "I would give you that for five thousand dollars--and you can see that it is worth--ah, I know not how many times that sum. I do not understand these things."

"But my husband is away, and I have not any thing like that sum.

Besides, I could not buy it without asking him, you know. Oh, I should like it!"

"Bah, it is a trifle to a lady in your position. You could in many ways raise so paltry an amount. I can not, unfortunately, give you time to deliberate." He was speaking very rapidly with many gestures, quite unlike his usual calm. "I tell you I return to India without delay. If you would wish those beautiful things you must hasten--to-day. Any person, I think, would lend you such money. Mr. Early--ah, yes--Mr.

Early."