The Beauty Part 17

This Alice read with interest, but greater interest still did she bestow upon the statement that there appeared to be a coldness between Wallace Martin and Maud Carmine, owing, it was said, to the fact that she had ruthlessly criticized his last play, and prophesied accurately its speedy failure.

"It does seem too bad, dear," Isabel wrote next, "that you, away off in California, should have to come in for your share of the gossip which seems so sadly rife this season."

Here Alice clutched the pages and, bending over, bestowed upon them an almost breathless attention. What could Isabel mean?

"It is perfectly stupid, of course," the letter ran, "and I would not think of mentioning it to you except that we have always been frank about such things, and, anyway, you ought to know. There is a rumor about that you went to California hoping to catch Cresswell's heart in the rebound. People now believe that he and Perdita have definitely separated and that you knew this, and, as some one put it to me, so vulgarly too, dear, camped down on his trail. They say now that the incident of the actress was merely to make things easier for Perdita in gaining her freedom, but that soon after that is granted her, Willoughby says that, as those coa.r.s.e men express it, you will lead Cress to the altar."

"Darn Willoughby!" Alice breathed hard as she muttered the words between her clenched teeth, the vivid scarlet of hot anger suffusing her face.

Preston turned quickly to her, throwing away his cigarette, and ceasing to regard the brilliant garden through meditative, half-closed eyes.

"What is it?" he asked. "Something has worried you."

"No," she smiled, with an effort, and shrugged the matter lightly off her shoulders, "some mistake about a very trifling matter. It annoyed me for a second, that is all."

For a moment or two neither spoke. Alice was watching the flight of a b.u.t.terfly that soared in the air until almost out of sight and then came back to drift about a group of tall, white yuccas.

"Hayward, do you still love me as much as you did ten minutes ago?" She smiled charmingly at him, that very, very especial smile of hers, and he, with his rather slow perceptions quickened by love, read capitulation and a real affection in her softened eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Hayward, do you love me?"]

"Alice!" And the depth and fervor of his love will be appreciated when it is recorded that he, Hayward Preston, the most conventional of men, deliberately tilted her rose-lined parasol and in the face of the world and before the very eyes of an advancing couple, kissed her.

CHAPTER XVIII

PLAYING THE GAME

It was only a day or two after her arrival in New York that Fuschia Fleming, who had been rehearsing the greater part of the night, opened her sleepy eyes in the hotel chamber to find her maid bending above her with a visiting card in one hand and a perplexed expression upon her face.

"I hated to waken you, Miss Fuschia," she said, "but when I saw the name--"

"What is the name?" Fuschia's voice was drowsily indifferent.

"Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth."

"_Mrs._ Cresswell Hepworth!" Both indifference and sleepiness were things of the past. Miss Fleming sat up in bed with a spring. "She's in the parlor, isn't she? Here, Martha Mary, hustle about. Get me out my gold-colored kimono with the silver wistaria on it, and some yellow stockings and slippers. Tell her I regret having to keep her waiting, late at rehearsal last night. You know the proper thing. Now, go ahead and do your prettiest and then dance back here and help me get into things."

"Certainly no time wasted," reflected the actress standing before her mirror, winding her long ash blonde hair round and round her head. "I dare say it's a case of 'Gur-rl, what have you done with me husband?'

There is only one reply to that. I shall draw myself up haughtily and say, 'Pardon, Madame, it was you who first carelessly mislaid him, not I.' Where the deuce are my hair-pins? She'd never come to my apartments with a cat-o'-nine-tails under her golf cape, or a bottle of acid in her shopping bag. Sure-ly not. They always choose the foyer of the theater for such stunts. Oh, Martha Mary," as that person whom Jim Fleming had once designated as a "vinegar-faced-Sue" returned to the bedchamber. "I can find nothing. Everything has crawled under the bed or the bureau.

How is the lady dressed for the part? Handsome, dark garments, rich, dark furs, black veil over face, handkerchief handy?"

"The lady is wearing rose-colored cloth and chinchilla," replied Martha Mary literally.

"Rose color and chinchilla. That is a note out, positively frivolous.

Oh, dear me! I am only half put together. You get more worthless every day, Martha Mary. Put on all my moonstone rings, for luck. They may save my life."

When Fuschia entered her temporary drawing-room, Perdita Hepworth was standing with her back to her, gazing from the window out upon the bleak wind-swept streets. March was departing with lion-like roars and buffets and striving bravely but vainly to obscure his ugly countenance in clouds of dust. Hearing a slight sound, she turned and saw advancing down the pleasantly warmed, flower-scented room, a young woman whom she instantly likened to a pale but radiant ray of spring sunshine.

This sunshine, yellow kimono, pale yellow hair, a cheek like the heart of a tea-rose, gold-colored silk stockings and slippers, paused between a jar of white lilacs and a basket of hyacinths. The lion-like roars without seemed suddenly all hollow pretense. Spring had come to New York and involuntarily Perdita smiled in greeting.

"Miss Fleming, please forgive this unseemly early call; but you see it is important, this matter I wish to see you about." Perdita thus opened the conversation.

"She can chew up the scenery about me husband all she wishes," said Fuschia to herself, "if she just lets me look at her. Her pictures give no idea of her. She's red roses and music and emotion. She's poetry and romance. My Lord!"

In spite of Perdita's brave attempt, conversation languished. She appeared to be weighing some matter which lay on her mind. At last she looked up with a slightly ironical smile. "You will think I have come on some affair of state, Miss Fleming, the way I am hesitating--"

Fuschia here made a violent mental protest. "Now don't you begin by telling me that I broke up your home, because I didn't. You broke it yourself."

Mrs. Hepworth made an impatient gesture as if at her own unusual lack of adequate expression.

"Do you play cards at all?" she asked, "bridge or--"

Fuschia could not suppress one stare of surprise. "Play bridge!" she murmured, wondering what that had to do with the matter. "No, I have no card sense. Strange, too, for papa has a lot."

"The reason I asked was this," in rather diffident explanation; "I was wondering if you could appreciate what it means to make an unexpected play which takes several tricks--to play trumps in such a way as to make the other players gasp with surprise, to--"

"Oh, I know what you mean," said Fuschia comprehendingly, a light dawning in her puzzled eyes. "You are talking about playing the game.

Why, of course, I understand. That's all there is; that's what I'm on this dizzy old planet for."

But although a basis of mutual agreement and understanding was thus established, Dita seemed still to struggle with an unwonted embarra.s.sment.

It was not, however, within Fuschia to prolong a situation of this kind.

She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her fingers covered with moonstone rings clasped lightly in front of her, her eyes full of a thousand twinkles and the upturned corners of her mouth curving almost to her eyes.

"Let's get down to cases, Mrs. Hepworth, man to man. Is it a go?"

Perdita drew a breath of relief and smiled back. She certainly was not one of the few, the very few, who could resist the twinkles in Fuschia's eyes.

"It's a go," she answered; "then man to man, it is this way. You have made it easy, you see, for me to say the things I wanted to, although I did not know in what feminine phrases I might have to clothe them. But you and I are, at present, very much in the public eye. Now every one is waiting to see what our att.i.tude toward each other will be. It is a.s.sumed openly by the newspapers, as you probably know, that there is a sort of woman's war on between us. Now, Miss Fleming, I want--"

"Your husband," supplemented Fuschia mentally. "Well, I haven't got him; never did have him; don't want him."

"--to design your stage costumes and to have it so announced," concluded Perdita.

Then she saw a remarkable change come over the dainty, thistledown Miss Fleming. Her mouth became an almost straight line, the gleam in her eyes was almost uncannily shrewd. She gave Perdita's words a concentrated consideration for a few moments and then nodded two or three times, brief, quick, clean-cut little nods.

"Great!" she said succinctly. Then her mouth curled again, the twinkles, like splintered diamonds, came back to her eyes. She flew across the room and threw her arms about Perdita, enveloping her in a momentary and rose-scented embrace. Her enthusiasm was unrestrained. "The advertis.e.m.e.nt is above rubies," she cried. "No wonder you are such a success."

"Oh, that is no credit to me," replied Dita carelessly. "I have a sort of sixth sense about clothes, you know. It is my one gift. I know the moment I put eyes on any one exactly how she, it is always she, of course, ought to look. I see colors when I look at people. Women often say to me, 'Oh, I can not wear this or that color,' when it is just the one thing they should wear, it is their mental correspondence."

"And how are you going to dress me?" asked Fuschia with intense interest.

"Princ.i.p.ally in gold and silver," Dita answered without hesitation. "You have on the right thing now. Most designers would put you in black, because you are so very fair. They would try to make you striking by force of contrast, but not I. You see very few women of your coloring could stand the dazzle of gold and silver. It would completely eclipse them; but you are mentally dazzling. Your personality is strong enough to reduce anything you wear to its proper place. One must take all those things into account in designing, you know. Now you are quicksilver, sunlight, glimmer of day on speeding waters, and we must accentuate that fact; not ignore it and slur it over."

"It sounds fascinating," said Fuschia. "How sweet of you to do this for me."

"For myself, you mean." Perdita rose. "You'll do, my dear. You're new, you're different. New York will be yours whether you can act or not."