Madcap Part 16

"Yes," she murmured.

"Can we forget--to-night--"

"No, no," she said. "Never. I know."

"Will you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive."

He shook his head.

"Nothing to forgive if you were only amusing yourself--much to forgive if you really care"

His ingenuousness was alarming.

"_Par exemple_!" She bantered him. "You mean that I--that I love you?"

"Yes, I mean just that."

She took quick refuge in laughter.

"You are the most surprising creature! Much as I esteem, I cannot flatter you so much as that." And she drew away from him, still laughing softly.

"I have done you a wrong," he went on steadily.

His simplicity was heroic. She did not dare question him.

"You have a New England conscience, _mon ami_," she said, gently ironical. "Your code is meshed in the cobwebs of antiquity. One kisses in the moonlight--or one doesn't kiss. What is the difference?

It is a pastime--not a tragedy. _Je M'amusais_. I fished for minnows and caught a Tartar--_voil? tout_. I love you--I do love you--but only when you paint, _monsieur l'artiste_--then you are magnificent--a companion to the G.o.ds! When you kiss-- Oh, la la! You are--er--paleozoic!"

It was Olga's master stroke. She could parry no longer and must thrust if she would survive. The tenderness that this gaucherie aroused in her made her the more merciless in her mockery! And she was aware of a throb of exaltation as she made the sacrifice which prevented the declaration that was hanging on his lips. In making a fool of him again she was saving him from making a fool of himself.

Markham did not reply and only stood there gnawing at his lips. He was no squire of dames he knew, and what she said of him touched him on the raw of his self-esteem. Paleozoic he might be, but it stung him that she should tell him so.

She delivered his _coup de grace_ unerringly.

"Take my advice and let love-making alone, or if you must make love, do it as other G.o.ds do--my messenger. Otherwise your Elysian dignity is in jeopardy. You are not the kind of man that women love, _mon cher_.

Come, it is time that we joined the others."

She led him down the avenue of roses, every line of her graceful figure rebuking his insufficiency, and he followed dumbly, aware of it.

Upon the terrace occupied by couples intent upon private matters, she promptly deserted him, leaving him without a word to his own devices.

He stood for a moment of uncertainty, and then fumbling in his pocket for his pipe, which was not there, went into the smoking-room in search of a cigarette.

"Two spades," declared Archie Westcott at the auction table, and then when Markham went out, "Odd fish--that."

"Three hearts," said Mrs. Renshaw. "Why Hermia asks such people I can't imagine. You're never certain whom you're asked to meet nowadays. Prig, isn't he?"

"Oh, rather! Has ideals, and all that sort of thing, hasn't he, Hilda?"

"If his ideals are as rotten as his manners I can't say much for 'em."

"Olga likes him--"

"Oh, Olga--" sniffed Hilda. "Anything for a new sensation. Remember that queer little French marquis who trailed around after her at Monte Carlo?"

"Oh, play ball," growled Gouverneur. "Who cares--so long as he keeps out of here."

Unaware of these unflattering comments, Markham strolled out of doors and into a lonely armchair on the terrace, and smoked in solitary dignity. Indeed solitude seemed to be the only thing left to him. He was not a man who made friends rapidly, and the three or four people whom he might have cared to cultivate had other fish to fry to-night--and were not frying them on the terrace. Olga, it seemed, had no intention of returning and Hermia Challoner was doubtless already in that happy phase of experimentation so warmly advocated by Reggie Armistead.

He envied those two young people their carelessness, their grace, their ruddy delights which by contrast added conviction to Olga's indictment of him. He tried with some difficulty to a.n.a.lyze the precise nature of his sentiments toward Olga Tcherny, and found at the end of a quarter of an hour, to his surprise, that the only feeling of which he was conscious was one of dull resentment at her for having made a fool of him.

Whatever Markham the painter had accomplished in the delineation of character of the fashionable women he had painted, the truth was that Markham both feared and misunderstood them. Their changing moods, their unaccountable likes and dislikes, their petty ambitions and vanities he accepted as part of the heritage of a race of beings apart form his own, and he hid his timidity under a brusque manner which gave him credit for a keener penetration than he actually possessed.

And, strangely enough, Fate, with sardonic humor, had given him a knack, which so few painters possess, of catching on canvas the elusive charm of his feminine sitters, of investing with grace those characteristics he professed so much to despise. He had told Hermia Challoner that he did not paint "pretty" portraits, but as Olga knew, it was upon his delineation of beauty, his manipulation of dainty draperies, the sheen of silk and satin, that his reputation so securely rested. It was perhaps merely a contemptuous cleverness which had given him the name among his craft of being a "master brushman."

Into Olga Tcherny's portrait he had put something more of his sitter than usual. He had painted the soul of the girl in the body of the woman of thirty, and if he rendered his subject in a manner more stilted than usual, he repaid her in the real interest with which her portrait was invested. He liked Olga. He had accepted her warily at first until he had proved to his own satisfaction the disinterestedness of her regard and then he had given her his friendship without reserve, his first real friendship with a woman of the world, conscious of the charm of their relation from which all sentiment had been banished.

He had awakened rudely to-night. He was now aware that sentiment on Olga's part had never been banished nor could ever be banished with a woman of her type. He had made the mistake of judging her by the records of their friendship, unmindful of her history as to which he had been forewarned.

To-night the secret was out. The feminine in her had been triumphant.

He was a different kind of fish from any she had caught and for reasons of her own she wanted him. She had been playing him skillfully for months, giving him all the line in her reel that he might be hooked the more easily. And to what end? Their friendship had fallen into shreds. What was to follow?

Of one thing he was certain. He was learning something, also progressing. In the twelve hours that had pa.s.sed he had kissed two women--something of a record for a man of his prejudices. He rose and threw the unsatisfactory cigarette into the bushes. It was high time he was making his way back to Thimble Island and solitude.

There was a rustle of silk behind him, and he turned.

"Oh, do stay, Mr. Markham. I was just coming out to talk to you."

He greeted Hermia with delight, quickly responding to the charm of her juvenility.

"I was wondering if I would see you again," he said genuinely.

"You see," she laughed, "I don't always pop in feet first." She sat and examined him curiously, and then, after a pause.

"What a fraud you are, Mr. Markham!"

"I?"

"A deep-dyed hypocrite--I can't see how you can dare look me in the face--"

"But I can--and I find it very pleasant."

"Oh--shame! To take advantage of my childish credulity--my trusting innocence. You make me believe you to be a fossilized pedant--a philosopher prematurely aged--willing to barter your hope of salvation for a draught of the Fountain of Youth--and I find you making love to my chaperon and most distinguished woman guest! And I was actually offering to teach you! Aren't you a little ashamed of yourself?"

"No, I think not," he said slowly. "You know Madame Tcherny is a very old friend of mine."

"So she is of mine. She's a perfectly adorable chaperon--but then there are limits even to the indiscretions of a chaperon."

"Do you think it quite fair to Olga--" he began.