The Beauty Part 12

That was what Hepworth, rather overcome by the unconventional and unexpected expression of her thanks, was preparing to do. He thought it best, but his decision was not adamantine, far from it. He always prided himself upon the open mind, and an ability to see all sides of a question, so when Fuschia suggested that he return later and dine with her, it struck him as a possible, even admirable solution of his daily puzzle how to put in the evening and he accepted without more debate, with an alacrity, in fact, bordering on grat.i.tude.

He was therefore on time to the minute and Miss Fleming was equally punctual.

As they sat through a dinner, not elaborate, but as prolonged as if it were composed of all the courses on the menu, Hepworth was struck by the positive quality of Fuschia's beauty. It was not always so, evidently.

She was as changeful as the chameleon she had spoken of. In the garden that afternoon, in her white serge frock, she had at first impressed him as a pale, rather attractive looking young woman whose charm was greater than her prettiness; but viewed in the rose-colored lights, and across the pink blossoms on their small table, she was a very wonderful creature. She was, in truth, wild with joy and her expression of it was delightful. Her eyes were blue as the sea when the sun is one vast sparkle over it, her mouth, made for laughter, grew curlier every moment. Her white evening gown was a dream.

In addition to her admirable outward appearance, Miss Fuschia Fleming was a comedienne of unsurpa.s.sed gifts. She was also witty, well-read and sweet-natured, and when she chose to exert herself she could make sixty minutes seem sixty seconds by any one's watch, even that of the grimmest old curmudgeon, and Hepworth certainly was not the grimmest old curmudgeon. He was only a very lonely and sad-hearted man whose days had been hanging heavily on his hands.

"Good old Jim," he soliloquized as he took his way homeward that evening. "He believed sufficiently in my friendship to come right to me when he was in a hole. Made no bones about it. Asked me to keep an eye on his daughter, sure enough of my affection for him to know I'd do it.

I shouldn't wonder if this Idaho proposition is a good thing if it's properly financed. Jim's judgment is pretty sound. Well, we'll see, we'll see."

CHAPTER XIII

SHOCKING THE HEWSTONS

As the winter wore on the weather in New York offered daily a more violent and odious comparison to the blue seas and balmy airs of California. The cold, sullen skies, dull, damp days and piercing winds set more than one dreaming of sunshine and summer, and among the many was Alice Wilstead.

She was pondering thus, looking about her with surprise, one especially snowy, dreary winter afternoon as she took her way to Mrs. Hewston's. It was one of those thoroughly depressing days when nothing could really raise one's spirits but the inspiring glow of firelight. Mrs. Wilstead certainly looked as if she needed that and all positively cheering if not inebriating things as she entered Mrs. Hewston's drawing-room. Her piquant dark face was meant for smiles and gaiety, all of her features apparently designed to that end, for the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the slant of her eyes, all inclined upward. It is a tragedy when a person of such countenance is in an introspective or melancholy mood. Sober meditations have an aging and blighting effect on the features of those born to look out upon the world with an arch and piquant interest.

Isabel Hewston roused herself a little reluctantly. She was sitting alone most comfortably in a delightfully easy chair, she had on a becoming and loose Paris tea-gown. She had resolutely put behind her the haunting specter of increasing flesh, had taken an afternoon off from the persistent and continued battle she had been forced to wage with it, and now lay, a box of sweets on the table beside her, a new novel in her hand, enjoying to the full her temporary respite. It is to her credit that she put aside her book at the most nerve-tingling paragraph without a sigh.

"Dear Alice," she exclaimed, lifting herself on one elbow, "you have a bad-news look all over you, the very rustle of your skirt proclaims it.

What can be the matter?"

"Give me some tea," said Mrs. Wilstead gloomily, "and let me sit down and rest." She slowly removed her furs. "My dear Isabel, do you mean to say you do not know?"

"Know what?" asked Mrs. Hewston in bewilderment, ringing and mechanically ordering tea. "How could I possibly know anything after just getting off the steamer this morning? What has happened? You haven't been speculating, Alice, and losing all your money?"

Mrs. Wilstead hastily disclaimed any such unforgivable crime and inconsolable grief as losing money. "Then really you have not heard,"

she exclaimed. "Isabel, I am more worried than I can say. Lemon, please.

It is stupid of you, Isabel, never to get into your head the fact that I couldn't be guilty of taking cream. To think of such a thing occurring!

I had hoped that with Eugene Gresham out of the way, having the decency to go to England and France, and the papers full of his spectacular stunts, that all talk would cease and that when Cresswell Hepworth came back from that western trip that everything would be all right."

"What are you talking about?" asked Isabel Hewston with the calmness of despair. "If it isn't too much trouble, would you mind making a few explanations? Just one might suffice."

"It is that absurd, undisciplined Perdita Hepworth. She has had her head completely turned by the success of Maud Carmine and now she and Maud have gone into business together."

"Into business?" Mrs. Hewston made a tremendous clatter among the tea-cups. "Business! What can you mean? Cresswell has not failed?"

"Good heavens, no! But that is the reason he has been so long in the West. At least that is what every one says. Dita and Maud informed him of this scheme, and he, of course, expressed his opinion of the whole matter, refused to countenance it; but he couldn't do anything with such a headstrong creature as Dita, and so he simply cleared out; went West and has stayed there, while those two girls have gone stubbornly on and carried out their plans."

"Business!" Isabel still rolled her eyes in dazed speculation. "But what kind of business? What could they possibly do? Lamp-shades, menu-cards?

I'm sure I've always heard that Perdita didn't make such a brilliant success when she tried that sort of thing before!"

"Menu-cards! Lamp-shades!" Alice laughed scornfully. "That's mere paper dolls to this venture. This is a business of their own invention, although Dita does take orders for house decoration also; but the main purpose is dressing the wealthy, telling the plain little daughters of the rich what to wear."

"For pity's sake!" gasped Isabel. "What sort of place is it, beauty parlors or dressmaking?"

"Oh, dear me, neither! Nothing so commonplace. They have taken a house just on the Avenue (they say it is a dream within), and you have to write for an appointment, and then if they will consider you at all they write back and set a time, and you go exactly as if you were calling, you know, and you are received by either Maud or Dita or both. Then you come again whenever they tell you, and all the time Dita is studying you just as a portrait painter would. Finally, when she feels that she has you thoroughly in mind, and is quite decided about the way you shall be clothed, she has designs made for you of hats and gowns, little water colors, you know, and sends you to her dressmaker. She also has your maid come and dress your hair before her, according to her directions.

And it costs you!" Alice Wilstead pursed her mouth and lifted her brows, "It costs you! Oh, like the d.i.c.kens!"

"Who is that?" said Mrs. Hewston turning.

"Only me," Wallace Martin replied modestly and ungrammatically, entering, as usual, unannounced, a privileged friend of the family, and greeting the two women with his usual barking cheerfulness.

"I just walked up home with that pretty little Lolita Withers, and, as you were only a block or two farther, I came on here."

The two women gazed at each other with a long, wondering stare. "Lolita Withers!" they exclaimed simultaneously. "Pretty!" Nothing could have been more eloquent than their tones.

"My dear Wallace," said Mrs. Hewston, finding her voice, "is this some new joke? Are you quite sane?"

"He means it for a joke," said Mrs. Wilstead, who had been peering at him curiously. "He is going in for eccentricity, or else the success of his play has gone to his head."

"Not a bit of it," replied Martin with unmoved smiles. "Lolita Withers is at present an obviously pretty girl. Any one would so consider her."

"Obviously pretty." Mrs. Wilstead had found her tongue by this time, and acrid and scoffing it proved. "That skinny, ineffective little Lolita Withers! Dull-eyed, anaemic, with stooping shoulders and wispy light hair."

"She looks like a dream of spring," said Wallace, helping himself lavishly to tea and cakes. "A sort of an evanescent beauty. Truly, yes,"

he affirmed, "she's been to Maud Carmine and Perdita Hepworth." He gave a great burst of laughter.

"If they can make any one believe that Lolita Withers is pretty," said Mrs. Hewston dazedly, "they are indeed benefactors of the race."

"Perdita Hepworth is a genius, a wizard. I always said so." Alice announced this with a sort of triumphant conviction. "She could make Aaron's rod blossom like the rose."

"But where did they get the money?" Mrs. Hewston's mind turned always to practical things. "If Dita really quarreled with Cress, would he--?"

"Maud's money." Martin spoke with the a.s.surance of one possessing authoritative knowledge. "Cresswell Hepworth! Oh, no, he went off in a terrible huff because the girls laid their plans before him and told him what they were going to do. At least," he amended, "that is the idea I got from the little that Maud has occasionally told me. Yes, it's Maud's money; but they'll lose nothing, plucky girls! Double and treble it, more likely. They've already had an overwhelming success."

"I'm going to them," cried Isabel Hewston excitedly. "If they are so wonderful they ought to be able to make me look slender without my having to go to all the bother of being really slender."

"You'll have to stand in line then; that old Mrs. Peter Huff is jumping for joy and calling down blessings on their heads because they've literally transformed her three ugly daughters. Maud said they were splendid material, and Dita did wonders with them. The old lady hopes to get them married off now."

"Alice! When can we go to them?" Mrs. Hewston's voice was trembling with excitement.

"I can't go now." There was a distinct fall of disappointment in Alice Wilstead's voice. "The truth is, I'm going to California with the Warrens the first of next week. Why, what is that?"

There was a sound of some one wheezing, puffing, muttering without the door, and then the curtain was violently jerked aside and Mr. Hewston entered. His hair stood up white and ruffled about his head, his face was of a much livelier crimson than usual, and he was puffing out his lips as if blowing fire and smoke from his mouth. In one hand he was tightly clasping a newspaper.

"Willoughby! My dear!" his wife rose in consternation. "What is it, what has happened?"

For answer Mr. Hewston spread open the paper and struck it with his hand. "Read that," he cried tragically, "read that! My poor friend, driven from his home by the vagaries of a mad, irresponsible girl, his life ruined by the foolish, frivolous creature he married! Turned from his home, he was driven to this."

Wallace had seized the paper, and the two women hung over his shoulder to scan the sheet before them.

What met their eyes were huge, black head-lines above and below the pictures of Cresswell Hepworth and a very pretty woman.