Linda Condon Part 8

he proceeded. "Verlaine wrote you--_'Les Ingenus':_

"'From which the sudden gleam of whiteness shed Met in our eyes a frolic welcoming.'

"What if I'd kiss you?"

"Nothing," she returned coldly.

"You're remarkable!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "If you are not already one of the celebrated beauties you're about to be. As cool as a fish! Look--Pleydon is going to rise and spill little Russia. Have you heard her sing Scriabine?" Linda ignored him in a sharp return of her interest in the big carelessly-dressed man. He put Susanna Noda aside and moved to the dim middle of the room. His features, Linda saw, were rugged and p.r.o.nounced; he was very strong.

For a moment he stood gazing at the Winged Victory, his brow gathered into a frown, while he made a caressing gesture with his whole hand.

Then he swung about and, from the heavy shadows of his face, he looked down at her. He was still for a disconcerting length of time, but through which Linda steadily met his interrogation. Then he bent over and seriously removed the man beside her.

"Adieu, Louis," he said.

The weight of Pleydon's body depressed the entire divan. "An ordinary man," he told her, "would ask how the devil you got here. Then he would take you to your home with some carefully chosen words for whatever parents you had. But I can see that all this is needless. You are an extremely immaculate person.

"That isn't necessarily admirable," he added.

"I don't believe I am admirable at all," Linda replied.

"How old are you?" he demanded abruptly.

She told him.

"Age doesn't exist for some women, they are eternal," he continued. "You see, I call you a woman, but you are not, and neither are you a child.

You are Art--Art the deathless," his gaze strayed back to the Victory.

As she, too, looked at it, it seemed to Linda that the cast filled all the room with a swirl of great white wings and heroic robes. In an instant the incense and the dark colors, the uncertain pallid faces and bare shoulders, were swept away into a s.p.a.ce through which she was dizzily borne. The illusion was so overpowering that involuntarily she caught at the heavy arm by her.

XV

"Why did you do that?" he asked quickly, with a frowning regard. Linda replied easily and directly. "It seemed as if it were carrying me with it," she specified; "on and on and on, without ever stopping. I felt as if I were up among the stars." She paused, leaning forward, and gazed at the statue. Even now she was certain that she saw a slight flutter of its draperies. "It is beautiful, isn't it? I think it's the first thing I ever noticed like that. You know what I mean--the first thing that hadn't a real use."

"But it has," he returned. "Do you think it is nothing to be swept into heaven? I suppose by 'real' you mean oatmeal and scented soap. Women usually do. But no one, it appears, has any conception of the practical side of great art. You might try to remember that it is simply permanence given to beauty. It's like an amber in which beautiful and fragile things are kept forever in a lovely glow. That is all, and it is enough.

"When I said that you were Art I didn't mean that you were skilfully painted and dressed, but that there was a quality in you which recalled all the charming women who had ever lived to draw men out of the mud--something, probably, of which you are entirely unconscious, and certainly beyond your control. You have it in a remarkable degree. It doesn't belong to husbands but to those who create 'Homer's children.'

"That's a dark saying of Plato's, and it means that the _Alcestis_ is greater than any momentary offspring of the flesh."

Linda admitted seriously, "Of course, I don't understand, yet it seems quite familiar--"

"Don't, for Heaven's sake, repeat the old cant about reincarnation;" he interrupted, "and sitting together, smeared with antimony, on a roof of Babylon."

She hadn't intended to, she a.s.sured him. "Tell me about yourself," he directed. It was as natural to talk with him as it was, with others, to keep still. Her frank speech flowed on and on, supported by the realization of his attention.

"There really isn't much, besides hotels, all different; but you'd be surprised how alike they were, too. I mean the things to eat, and the people. I never realized how tired I was of them until mother married Mr. Moses Feldt. The children were simply dreadful, the children and the women; the men weren't much better." She said this in a tone of surprise, and he nodded. "I can see now--I am supposed to be too old for my age, and it was the hotels. You learn a great deal."

"Do you like Mr. Moses Feldt?"

"Enormously; he is terribly sweet. I intend to marry a man just like him. Or, at least, he was the second kind I decided on: the first only had money, then I chose one with money who was kind, but now I don't know. It's very funny: kindness makes me impatient. I'm perfectly sure I'll never care for babies, they are so mussy. I don't read, and I can't stand being--well, loved.

"Mother went to a great many parties; every one liked her and she liked every one back; so it was easy for her. I used to long for the time when I'd wear a lovely cloak and go out in a little shut motor with a man with pearls; but now that's gone. They want to kiss you so much. I wish that satisfied me. Why doesn't it? Is there anything the matter with me, do you think? I've been told that I haven't any heart."

As he laughed at her she noticed how absurdly small a cigarette seemed in his broad powerful hand. "What has happened to you is this," he explained: "a combination of special circ.u.mstances has helped you in every way to be what, individually, you were. As a rule, children are brought up in a house of lies, like taking a fine naked body and binding it into hideous rigid clothes. You escaped the d.a.m.nation of cheap ready-cut morals and education. Your mother ought to have a superb monument--the perfect parent. Of course you haven't a 'heart.' From the standpoint of nature and society you're as depraved as possible. You are worse than any one else here--than all of them rolled together."

Curiously, she thought, this didn't disturb her, which proved at once that he was right. Linda regarded herself with interest as a supremely reprehensible person, perhaps a vampire. The latter, though, was a rather stout woman who, dressed in frightful lingerie, occupied couches with her arms caught about the neck of a man bending over her. Every detail of this was distasteful.

What was she?

Her attention wandered to the squat Chinese G.o.d in the gla.s.s case. It was clear that he hadn't stirred for ages. A difficult thought partly formed in her mind--the Chinese was the G.o.d of this room, of Markue's party, of the women seated in the dim light on the floor and the divans; the low gurgle of their laughter, the dusky whiteness of their shoulders in the upcoiling incense, the smothered gleams of their hair, with the whispering men, were the world of the grayish-green image.

She explained this haltingly to Pleydon, who listened with a flattering interest. "I expect you're laughing at me inside," she ended impotently.

"And the other, the Greek Victory," he added, "is the G.o.ddess of the other world, of the spirit. It's quaint a heathen woman should be that."

Linda discovered that she liked Pleydon enormously. She continued daringly that he might be the sort of man she wanted to marry. But he wouldn't be easy to manage; probably he could not be managed at all. Her mother had always insisted upon the presence of that possibility in any candidate for matrimony. And, until now, Linda's philosophy had been in accord with her. But suddenly she entertained the idea of losing herself completely in--in love.

A struggle was set up within her: on one hand was everything that she had been, all her experience, all advice, and her innate detachment; on the other an obscure delicious thrill. Perhaps this was what she now wanted. Linda wondered if she could try it--just a little, let herself go experimentally. She glanced swiftly at Pleydon, and his bulk, his heavy features, the sullen mouth, appalled her.

Men usually filled her with an unaccountable shrinking into her remotest self. Pleydon was different; her liking for him had destroyed a large part of her reserve; but a surety of instinct told her that she couldn't experiment there. It was characteristic that a lesser challenge left her cold. She had better marry as she had planned.

Susanna Noda came up petulantly and sank in a brilliant graceful swirl at his feet. Her golden eyes, half shut, studied Linda intently.

XVI

"I am fatigued," she complained; "you know how weary I get when you ignore me." He gazed down at her untouched. "I have left Lao-tze for Greece," he replied. She found this stupid and said so. "Has he been no more amusing than this?" she asked Linda. "But then, you are a child, it all intrigues you. You listen with the flattery of your blue eyes and mouth, both open."

"Don't be rude, Susanna," Pleydon commanded. "You are so feminine that you are foolish. I'm not the stupid one--look again at our 'child.' Tell me what you see."

"I see Siberia," she said finally. "I see the snow that seems so pure while it is as blank and cold as death. You are right, Dodge. I was the dull one. This girl will be immensely loved; perhaps by you. A calamity, I promise you. Men are pigs," she turned again to Linda; "no--imbeciles, for only idiots destroy the beauty that is given to them. They take your reputation with a smile, they take your heart with iron fingers; your beauty they waste like a drunken Russian with gold."

"Susanna, like all spendthrifts, is amazed by poverty."

Even in the gloom Linda could see the pallor spreading over the other's face; she was glad that Susanna Noda spoke in Russian. However, with a violent effort, she subdued her bitterness. "Go into your Siberia!" she cried. "I always thought you were capable of the last folly of marriage.

If you do it will spoil everything. You are not great, you know, not really great, not in the first rank. You've only the slightest chance of that, too much money. You were never in the gutter as I was--"

"Chateaubriand," he interrupted, "Dante, Velasquez."

"No, not spiritually!" she cried again. "What do you know of the inferno! Married, you will get fat." Pleydon turned lightly to Linda:

"As a supreme favor do not, when I ask you, marry me."