The Beauty Part 1

The Beauty.

by Mrs. Wilson Woodrow.

CHAPTER I

A BACHELOR'S BRIDE

If the proper statistics of bachelorhood were accurately tabulated they would show that at certain fixed and recurring periods, a confirmed old bachelor, say one in every ten, casts his dearly-bought experience, his hard-won knowledge of the world and women to the four winds of heaven, and chooses for himself a wife; and, as his friends and relatives invariably protest, a bungling job he makes of it. He may, before the world, walk soberly, discreetly, advisedly and in the fear of G.o.d in every other respect, but when it comes to selecting a companion for the rest of his life, he follows, apparently, a predestined leading, some errant and tricksy impulse, and from a world of desirable and waiting helpmates, eminently suitable, he will, in nine cases out of ten, fix his heart upon the one inevitable She who can keep the pot of trouble ever boiling for him.

This, according to Mr. Cresswell Hepworth's old and intimate friends, was exactly the course which he had followed; nor was even one voice upraised in dissent from this opinion, as they frankly discussed the matter over their champagne and truffled sweetbreads at the breakfast following the wedding.

It was but natural that they who were rarely in complete agreement on any subject which commended itself for discussion among them, should hold a unanimous opinion on this matter which involved the happiness of their lifelong friend. But although the opinion was unanimous, it was not unprejudiced. Hepworth had had his distinct niche in their homes and hearts for many years, and now as they gazed metaphorically at the empty s.p.a.ce, it struck a chill to their affections.

Nevertheless they did not, could not fail to join in the little gasp of admiration which breathed through the church as the bride swept up the aisle on the arm of Mr. Willoughby Hewston, the well-known banker and intimate friend of the bride-groom. She had been stopping, it was understood, with Mrs. Wilstead, another friend of Hepworth's, for several weeks.

There were those in the large audience who saw a certain pathos in the fact that she was given away by one of Hepworth's friends, thus exposing the lack of either relatives or friends of her own, but there was nothing in her bearing to indicate that she was conscious of her isolated position as she advanced, leaning lightly on Mr. Hewston's arm.

The world, Hepworth's world, and it was a large one, was tingling with curiosity. He was a great figure, looming immense upon the financial horizon; but no one had ever heard of the bride. The invitations to the wedding were the first intimation of his impending marriage, and the bride's name, Perdita Carey, conveyed nothing to anybody. By dint of careful collection of sc.r.a.ps of information, it gradually became known that she was young, of southern birth and extremely pretty. Bare facts.

No more.

It was also considered rather an odd reading of the customary conventions on Hepworth's part, this crowded church wedding exposing the bride's poverty in relatives, the breakfast to follow, at his town house, thus making equally plain her homeless state; but when this view was set before him, sighingly, by Isabel Hewston, and vivaciously by Alice Wilstead, he became obstinate in the insistence of his plans. He seemed possessed of some masculine idea of getting things over, of having all his friends meet his wife en ma.s.se, so to speak, and having the matter settled.

And so it was, "Nice customs curtsy to great kings"--or millionaires.

The audience then of his friends--there was none of hers present, if indeed she possessed any--sat with heads turned at an aching angle and awaited, with concealed impatience, the choice of Cresswell Hepworth.

The weight of opinion leaned to a sunburst of a woman, darkly splendid, opulently graceful, and instead, when the stately strains of the wedding-march echoed through the church, the guests lifted their astonished eyes to a brown and slender girl; but no matter what the expectation had been, each realized that he gazed on a more poetic loveliness than he had dreamed.

Another unhesitating mental admission. Obscure, unknown she might have been, but she could never be considered ordinary. It had taken generations of cultivation to give that pose of the head and shoulders, that arch of the instep, that taper to her slender wrist. And what intimation of individuality! Few women could have borne more regally the weight of heavy and l.u.s.terless satin or a diadem of flashing jewels; but this girlish bride of a millionaire had insisted on being married in the white muslin her own scanty purse had furnished; and wore as if it were a crown of diamonds the wreath of white jasmine flowers which held her long tulle veil close about the cloudy ma.s.ses of her hair.

For once the entire interest of any occasion which he happened to grace was not centered on Hepworth, who, with his usual invincible composure, awaited the bride at the altar, fortified by his best man, Wallace Martin.

But the owner of millions--unctuous sound--is worth more than a mere dismissing word. Let the bride continue to advance, he to await her, while he is presented in a lightning sketch.

Cresswell Hepworth was far from old, not fifty. He had more than three generations of cultivated ancestry behind him. In type he was American, approaching the Indian; tall, slightly aquiline of feature, somewhat granitic and imperturbable. His hair, which had been brown, was almost white, his eyes were gray, trained to express nothing, but startlingly penetrating when he chose to lift rather heavy lids with a peculiarly long droop at the corners.

Emerson says somewhere that "a feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds."

Hepworth was a strong man. He saw possible houses and farms, externalized them and became the acquirer of vast and profitable tracts of land--a fair map blackly dotted with mines and scrawled with the angular lines of intersecting railroads. In this yellow triangle, a great wheat farm. Here, in this square of living green, irrigated and profitable ranches. He stood, this "Colossus of Finance"--journalese--with his feet planted firmly on this solid map-basis, and, with a golden rake, drew toward him from countless clutching hands securities, stocks, bonds, curios, pictures (he was an ardent collector), loot of every description, and, it was even whispered through the church, his young and lovely bride.

But now he stepped forward to meet her with a smile that enlivened his whole face, even his eyes. The service flowed on. With that air of sulky geniality which represented his most urbane manner, Willoughby Hewston gave away the bride. The responses were duly made, and Mr. and Mrs.

Cresswell Hepworth turned to walk through an aisle of smiling and nodding friends.

At that moment the mellow October sunlight fell through the stained windows enwrapping Perdita in a regal and impalpable vesture of scarlet and gold; and again a murmur of admiration rippled and echoed at this fresh revelation of her beauty. She had been pale as she walked up the aisle, but now her color had risen and the crimson on her brown cheek was the hue of a jacqueminot rose. Her hair, a deep chestnut at the temples, flowed into copper, dark in the hollows, gold where it caught the light. Her coloring was a harmony of all soft, warm, dusky shades, and one looked to the eyes to focus these tints in light or darkly rich topaz; but Perdita's eyes were gray, handed down perhaps from those Irish kings to whom her father had laughingly traced his descent.

"Lucky girl!" murmured Alice Wilstead an hour later to the group of Hepworth's intimate friends who sat together at one table during the breakfast that followed the wedding. "Just think of it. He has no family enc.u.mbrances. Never an 'in-law' will she have to cope with."

It never struck her that Hepworth's little circle of close friends had gradually a.s.sumed about all of the intrusive and proprietary prerogatives of the nearest and most affectionate relatives.

Alice Wilstead was a widow, dark, slender, piquant, versed in the secrets of grace and the art of wearing her jewels so that they accentuated her sparkling eyes and her one precious dimple without eclipsing them. Warmly sympathetic and impulsive, she had been overcome by the vision of Perdita's isolation as the girl walked up the aisle on the grudging arm of Willoughby Hewston; and had pressed her handkerchief lightly to her eyes, a moment of emotion viewed with callous interest by a misinterpreting world which regarded it as a last tear shed for a lost opportunity, a shattered hope.

"Well," said Hewston, finishing his sweetbreads and preparing to begin on the next course, "it went off very well. I was all right, wasn't I?"

"You were perfect, dear," his wife hastened to a.s.sure him, "and it was a beautiful wedding."

Mrs. Hewston was gray and pink and plump like her husband; and this morning her grayness and pinkness and plumpness were underlined, thrown into high relief by a violet gauze gown, heavily spangled in silver.

Isabel Hewston resembled nothing so much as a comfortable, placid, fireside cat, purry and complacent. If she possessed claws, which is doubtful, they were always well concealed.

"Yes, a beautiful wedding and a beautiful bride," she murmured, with a little sighing inflection habitual to her, "so young, so--"

"Humph!" interrupted her husband, with as much of a snort as a mouthful of game would permit, "I tell you it's a pretty tough thing for all of us to see old Hepworth looking so happy." He thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled up his eyes until he bore a grotesque likeness to a baby about to cry. "Hepworth's my best friend, and to see that look of almost boyish joy on his face was pretty hard. There are some things you can do and some you can't; now one of these things that no man can afford to do is to marry outside his own cla.s.s. I could have told Cress so."

The other members of this intimate little coterie of friends, five in all, looked at one another and burst into involuntary laughter.

Wallace Martin, an old young man, a magazine writer, who would fain be a playwright, gave the single bark of mirth which served him for an explosion of laughter. It sounded particularly derisive now.

"I would give my little all to have the new Mrs. Hepworth hear you say that," he chuckled. "Dear old Hewston, she would not in a thousand years consider any of us in her cla.s.s. She belonged, let me inform you, to one of the oldest of southern families. Her mother was a cotton princess of the loveliest and haughtiest variety. One of the famous belles of her day. Her father, too, was of the old South."

"Why, what are you talking about?" growled Hewston irascibly. "She hadn't a dime--was a beautiful cloak model or something of that kind."

"She painted d.i.n.ky things for a living, if you mean that," said Martin carelessly, "lamp-shades and menu cards and such."

"If she only had some friends, even one relative," deplored Mrs.

Hewston, "it would look so much--er--nicer, you know. Relatives do add a background." She shook her head regretfully.

"We'll have to be her relatives," said Maud Carmine, a niece of Mrs.

Hewston and a plain rather faded young woman of pale and indefinite tints and many angles. Her claim to distinction rested on the fact that she was a drawing-room musician of--strange anomaly--real musical feeling. It was her misfortune always to be explained by those who found her tact, good nature and practical common sense useful, and who drew heavily on them, as, "not attractive looking, you know; but pure gold, and one of the most dependable persons," and this d.a.m.ning tribute of friendship served as an admirable check to further curiosity concerning her. "Yes, we must be her background." Her glance lingered for a moment on Wallace Martin, but he returned it briefly and indifferently.

"A young woman who has just married millions needs no family group,"

remarked Alice Wilstead lightly. "The most effective background is her husband."

"Gad!" Mr. Hewston put down his knife and fork to glare at her. "The idea of looking at Hepworth as a background. He who has always been in the front of everything. A background! And for a snub-nosed chit of a girl!"

"Oh, Willoughby, dear, not snub-nosed," expostulated his wife mildly.

"Snub-nosed, I said," insisted Willoughby. "Didn't I walk up the aisle with her?"

"Hush, dear, hush," murmured his wife. "Here she comes now."

The bride was leaving. Pa.s.sing through the handsome, stiff apartments like a white cloud, to make ready for the journey before her, she stopped a moment for a word or two with Maud Carmine as she paused at that table.

Hewston rose reluctantly to his feet. "I once heard of a wedding," he said confidentially and hopefully to Wallace Martin, "where the bride went up to change her gown, and never showed up again."

"Where did she go?" asked Wallace with interest.

"Dunno," returned Willoughby. "Old lover. Fourth dimension.

Unexplainable, but fact, I a.s.sure you."