Madcap Part 13

"In what respect?"

"Oh, in all respects. I'm a great disappointment to her--" He stopped suddenly. "I mean socially--professionally. You see I'm not the stuff that successful portrait painters are made of--"

"Except perhaps that you really can paint?" she asked over her shoulder.

He shrugged and followed.

CHAPTER VIII

OLGA TCHERNY

As the guests gathered in the drawing-room and on the terrace before dinner it was apparent to Markham that, unless he obeyed the injunctions of his small preceptor, he would be quite forgotten amid this gay company. On Thimble Island, as in New York, he had not found them necessary to his own existence, and it was quite clear that her at "Wake-Robin" they returned his indifference. After the first nod and appraising glance in his direction, Crosby Downs and Carol Gouverneur had completely ignored him. Archie Westcott had unbent to the point of offering him a cigarette, and Trevvy Morehouse, who had joined them over the c.o.c.ktails, and injected polite bromidics into the conversation which Reggie Armistead, who knew nothing of Markham's art and cared less, only saved by some wholesome enthusiasm, in which all joined, over the "sand" and all-around good fellowship of their hostess.

But it required little a.s.surance to make one's self at home here where informality seemed to be the rule, and before Hermia and the Countess came down Markham found himself on easy terms with the group he had joined. Mrs. Renshaw's appraisal and patronizing air dismayed him less than the china blue eyes of Phyllis Van Vorst which she had raised with a pretty effectiveness to his; Hilda Ashhurst hadn't even taken the trouble to notice him. When Carol Gouverneur was in her neighborhood there were no other men in the world.

But Hermia took pains to make her guests aware of the status of Mr.

Markham in her house by seating him on her right at dinner and paying him an a.s.siduous attention which detracted something from Reggie Armistead's interest, as well as Olga's, in that repast.

With a carelessness which put him off his guard Hermia drew him into the general conversation, aroused his sense of humor, until with a story of an experience in France, which he told with a dry wit that well suited him, he found himself the center of interest at the head of the table.

Out on the terrace over the coffee and tobacco, the compound slowly resolved itself into its elements, social and sentimental. Markham, scarcely aware of the precise moment when she had appropriated him, found himself in the garden below the terrace with Olga Tcherny. The heavy odor of the roses was about them, unstirred by the land breeze which faintly sighed in the treetops. A warm moon hung over Thimble Island, its soft lights catching in the ornaments Markham's companion wore, caressing her white shoulders and dusky hair, and softening the shadows in her eyes which peered like those of a seer down the path of light where the moonbeams played upon the water.

He had always thought her handsome, but to-night she was a fragment of the night itself, with all its tenderness and its melancholy mystery.

He watched her slender figure as she reached forward, plucked a rose and raised its petals to her lips--a full flown rose, wasting its last hours of loveliness. She fastened it in her corsage and led the way to a stone bench beneath an arbor at the end of the wall where she sat and motioned to the place beside her.

The accord which existed between these two was unusual because of the total difference in their points of view on life and the habits of thought which made each the negative pole of the other. However unusual Markham may have appeared to a person of Olga Tcherny's training, he was not an unusual young man in the ordinary sense. He had always taken life seriously, from the hour when as a clerk in a broker's office he had started to work at night at the League in New York, with the intention of becoming a painter. He was no more serious than thousands of other young men who plan their lives early and live them up to specifications; but Olga Tcherny, who had flitted a zig-zag b.u.t.terfly course among the exotics, now found in the meadows she had scorned a shrub quite to her liking. Markham was the most refreshingly original person she had ever met. He always said exactly what he thought and refused to speak at all unless he had something to say. Those hours in the studio when he had painted her portrait had been hours to remember, sound, sane hours in which they had discussed many things not comprehended in her philosophy, when he had led her by easy stages up the steep path he had climbed until she had gained, from the pinnacle of his successes, a vista of what had lain beneath.

Unconsciously he had drawn upon her mentality until, surprised at its own existence, it had awakened to life and responded to his. To make her mental subjection the more complete, he had in his simplicity peered like a child through all her disguises and painted her soul as he saw it--as it was. The flattery was the more effectual because of its subtlety and because she knew, as he did, that in it there was no guile, no self-interest or sentimentality. And in return she could have paid him no higher compliment than when coolly, almost coldly, she told him of her life and what she had made of it.

She was very winning to-night--very gentle and womanly--more English than French or Russian, more American than either. Neither of them spoke for a long while. Such words as they could speak would have taken something from the perfection of their background. But Markham thought of her as he had frequently done, thankful again for the benefits of her regard, the genuineness of which she had brought home to him in many material ways.

To Olga alone there was a peril in the silence, a peril for the sanity he had taught her, for the pact which she had made with herself. She had eaten the bread and salt of his friendship and had given him hers.

He believed in her and she could not deceive him. She knew his nature well. She had not been a student of men all her life for nothing. It would have been so easy to lie to him, to befuddle and bewitch him, to bring him to her feet by unfair means. But she had scorned to use them. For her, John Markham had been taboo. But there was peril in the silence. She sat looking into the wake of the moon in the water, very quiet, tense and almost breathless.

"You're glad you came?" she asked at last in the tones of matter and fact.

"Yes, I am. You've been too kind and patient with me, Olga."

He laid his hand over hers with a genuine impulse. It did not move beneath his touch or return his pressure.

"Yes," she said coolly, "I think I have."

"Have I offended you?"

"No. Not at all--only disappointed me a little. I had such nice plans for you."

He laughed.

"Olga, you're the most wonderful woman in the world. I don't deserve your friendship. But I _did_ want to loaf--I worked pretty hard last winter."

"Oh, you needn't evade me. I can't make you like my friends. But I hoped you wouldn't disappoint them. Mrs. Berkley Hammond, the Gormeley twins, and now Hermia--"

"Miss Challoner!" in surprise. "Her portrait! I thought she disapproved of my method."

She smiled. "Oh, you don't know Hermia as I do. One is never more certain in one's judgment of her than when one thinks one is wrong."

She gave a short laugh. "At any rate, she said she was going to speak to you about it."

"That's curious," he muttered.

"Will you do it?" she asked.

He looked away toward the terrace.

"I hadn't planned to do any portraits until Fall."

"Doesn't she interest you?" she continued quickly.

"She's paintable--it would be profitable, of course--"

"You're evading again."

"Yes, she interests me," he said frankly. "She's clever, amiable, hospitable--and quite irresponsible. But then she would want to be 'pretty.' I'm afraid I should only make her childish."

"Oh, she's prepared for the worst. You had better paint her. It will do you a lot of good. Besides, you paint better when you're a little contemptuous."

"I'm not sure that I could take that att.i.tude toward Miss Challoner,"

he said slowly. "She's too good for the crowd she runs with, that's sure, and--"

"Thanks," laughed Olga. "You always had a neat turn for flattery."

But he didn't laugh.

"I mean it," he went on warmly. "She's too good for them--and so are you. Mrs. Renshaw, a woman notorious even in New York, who at the age of thirty has already changed husbands three times, drained them and thrown them aside as one would a rotten orange; Hilda Ashhurst who plays cards for a living and knows how to win; Crosby Downs, a merciless voluptuary who makes a G.o.d of his belly; Archie Westcott, the man Friday of every Western millionaire with social ambitions who comes to New York--a man who lives by his social connections, his wits and his looks; Carol Gouverneur, _his_ history needn't be repeated--"

"Nor mine--" finished Olga quietly, "you needn't go on." The calmness of her tone only brought its bitterness into higher relief. Markham stopped, turned and caught both her hands in his.

"No, not yours, Olga. G.o.d knows I didn't mean _that_. You're not their kind, soulless, cynical, selfish and narrow social parasite who poison what they fee don and live in the idleness that better men and women have bought for them. Call them your crowd if you like. I know better. You've only taken people as you've found them--taken life as it was planned for you--moved along the line of least resistance because you'd never been taught that there was any other way to go.

In Europe you never had a chance to learn--"

"That's it," she broke in pa.s.sionately, "I never had a chance--not a chance."

Her fingers clutched his and then quickly released them.

"Oh, what's the use?" she went on in a stifled tone. "Why couldn't you have let me live on, steeped in my folly? It's too late for me to change. I can't. I'm pledged. If I gamble, keep late hours, and do all the things that this set does it's because if I didn't I should die of thinking. What does it matter to any one but me?"

She stopped and rose with a sudden gesture of anger.

"Don't preach, John. I'm not in the humor for it--not to-night--do you hear?"