The Beauty Part 20

"But I want you to keep on being good," pleaded Maud; "especially now."

"I am gooder than you can possibly imagine," laughed Perdita, "but, all the same, I do not wish you tagging about this morning." She smiled teasingly at her puzzled business partner as she left the room.

She went down to meet Eugene in the same room at the same hour she had talked with her husband the day before.

But Eugene was not one to endure for one moment a situation dominated by the shadowy third person. No woman should gaze at him with the remembrance of yesterday in her eyes, the smile of wistful reminiscence on her lips. An hour with him must be a dazzling and kaleidoscopic episode. He would hold it in his hand, and at the bidding of his will, the moments, like bits of colored gla.s.s, should revolve and melt and mingle--rainbow arabesques on the background of Time.

"Your meditations, remembrances and regrets for your oratories, my dear," his challenging eyes seemed to say, "but with me you live, you laugh, you thrill responsive to the harp of life; the yesterdays forgotten, the to-morrows unborn."

"Dita!" he caught her hands in his as she entered. His eyes were shining, his head thrown back. He was more vivid than the spring sunshine which fell through the open windows.

"Eugene! You look as if you had just received some wonderful new commission."

"So I have, a commission to love you. That is right, blush. Dita, why do you not always wear rose color? But no, don't listen to me. If it were blue or green, I would be making the same request. Dearest, my eyes drink in, drink up your loveliness. You never, never were so beautiful as you are this morning."

"Eugene, you are mad; too foolish for anything. What is the matter with you?"

"Mad doesn't half express it. May I smoke?" He took her consent for granted, for he was already rolling cigarettes in his deft, supple fingers. "Yes? No? I am delirious with joy. Hepworth is back as, of course, you know. That can only mean one thing; every one says that just as soon as a divorce can be decently arranged, he and Alice Wilstead will be married. The verdict of the world is that he was so angry at your going into business that he flung off to the West. It was the most spectacular of your many caprices and it proved the last straw for him.

Blessed last straw!" lifting his eyes devoutly. "And then Alice Wilstead cleverly appeared on the scene and the consoling offices of friendship did the trick."

"Three months ago it was Fuschia Fleming, according to gossip." Her eyes were downcast, her tone expressionless.

"Oh, that," he blew rings of smoke lightly through the air and followed them with gay eyes; "that is a part of the game. That was making evidence for you. It is all arranged that I am to paint her portrait, you know. I have not met her yet, either." He threw his cigarette through the window. "Dita, Dita, how can you sit there so cool and still? When I think that you are actually on the very eve of freedom, I become delirious with joy."

"So sure of the winning, Eugene?"

"Dita!" His face clouded, there was a world of reproach in his voice.

"That is a terrible trait in your character, that teasing desire of yours always to fling a little dash of cold water on one's mounting enthusiasms."

"There is another dash coming," she laughed. "I want my amulet, and I want it at once, to-day. I know," antic.i.p.ating his protestations, "that you returned it to me the afternoon Hepworth left for the West, and I would not see you to receive it in person. Then, my mind was so perturbed and occupied that I didn't think of it again before you sailed, and since your return," a little smile creeping about her mouth, "I haven't thought about it either; but now that the matter has come up between us, please see that I have it to-day, Eugene."

He had looked slightly annoyed while she was speaking, but now he bent toward her with his most charming manner, his most winning smile. "You know my greatest weakness, Dita? I try to overcome it, really I do," in laughing excuse, "but in spite of will or reason those superst.i.tions of mine persist. Alas! They do." He admitted it as a naughty little boy might admit a pa.s.sion for stealing jam. "And I have tremendous faith in that old charm of yours." He picked up another cigarette from his skilfully rolled little heap, placed as orderly on the table beside him as if they were his paint brushes.

"Ever since I have had it," he went on, "the luck of the high G.o.ds has been mine. Princessin, Contessin and high Altessin still clamoring to have their portraits painted. The critics amiable and almost intelligent, money pouring into my coffers and pouring out faster than it comes in--I wish there were such a thing as a money-tight purse--and best of all, ah, best of all, the love of my heart so near, so near."

His eyes held the warm glow which changed, irradiated them. "The star of my life comes slipping, wavering through the s.p.a.ces of the sky and down the purple pathways of heaven to my arms." He leaned forward quickly and almost enfolded her.

"Eugene!" She stood haughty and tall before him. "You a.s.sume entirely too much. You have from the beginning. More, much more, than I have ever given you any reason to a.s.sume. According to the tradition the amulet can only bring one luck when it is given with the heart's love; and I never gave it to you, Eugene, never. You laughingly filched it one day when I took it off the chain about my neck, that you might look at it more closely. And you are so sure, so sure of me, when I am anything but sure of myself. I have never deceived you as to the state of my feelings. How would that have been possible when I am still so doubtful myself? Ah, those doubts!"

"They are nothing, dearest, nothing. I shall brush them away as I brush cobwebs." He put his hands upon her shoulders and stood gazing deeply into her eyes.

"Ah," she shook her head, and, at the same time, stepped away from him, "I am no more sure that I love you than I was six months ago."

"Never any more sure?" His voice deep and rich as a low-toned bell.

Her black eyelashes lay long on her cheek, where the crimson, the hue of a jacqueminot rose petal, was spreading. "There are moments," she admitted, "times when I am with you that I believe that the magic word has been spoken and that my heart has blossomed in purple and red, that I truly love you, but," she shook her head sighingly, "the moment I am away from you, I know that that is not so; that you haven't said the magic word yet, 'Gene."

"But I know it, that magic word," he whispered, "and I shall awake you, just as the Prince did the Sleeping Beauty. Not with a word at all, dear, but with a kiss." He bent forward, but she had slipped away from him, and before he knew it had put almost the length of the room between them.

"You--you must not talk so to me now, 'Gene," the words were barely breathed, "and," with a desperate clutch at a safe topic, "my amulet. I must have it by to-morrow morning."

There was a flash like fire in Gresham's eyes. A quick scowling change darkened his whole face. He picked up the five or six beautifully rolled cigarettes which yet remained of his neat heap and tossed them out of the window.

"I see it," he cried harshly. "You probably have Hepworth's box of amulets in your keeping. You wish to return it to him, and show him when you do so that your old charm is safe in its place. Oh, I can see the whole scene. He will courteously hand it to you and say, 'Your property, I believe, my dear Perdita.' I can hear his frigid, formal utterance.

And you will accept it with that grand, ancestral manner of yours, murmuring, 'Thank you, yes, I regret that I can not ask you to accept it as a small contribution to your collection, but that being out of the question on account of certain traditions which adhere to it, I feel that I must continue to hold it in my possession.' Why not be honest, Dita, and tell him that you have given it to me?"

"Eugene, you are impossible. You go entirely too far." There was no mistaking the displeasure in her voice, and his immediate recognition that it was cold, not hot anger, brought him to himself at once.

"Flower of magnolia!" his voice fell to all those exquisite and heart-touching modulations of which he was master. "I was only teasing.

Forgive me. You shall have your bit of gla.s.s early to-morrow morning.

And until I see you again I shall dream only of the wonderful, beautiful years we shall have together. We shall wander about the world, here, there and everywhere, and I shall paint the glory and color of the universe and you, always you, Perdita, the focus, the center, the heart of all beauty."

CHAPTER XXI

TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS

Dita had barely finished her breakfast the next morning when the message was brought to her that a lady who refused to give her name but insisted on seeing her at once upon important business awaited her in the reception-room.

Dita hesitated a moment, debating whether or not to rebuke the maid, who must have yielded to the lure of gold so readily to forget her orders, and send back a peremptory request for the lady's name and her business, or whether to yield to her natural and feminine curiosity and grant an interview to this visitor who appeared so desirous of maintaining an incognito.

This brief hesitation proved a loss, however, to the waiting lady, whose method of being announced showed that she hoped to take Perdita by surprise, for Maud Carmine entered at the moment and with some show of indignation in both voice and expression informed Dita that Mrs.

Wilstead was the person guilty of strategic entrance.

"Such impertinence!" breathed Maud. "Scrawl a note in pencil, Dita, to the effect that it will be impossible for Mrs. Hepworth to see Mrs.

Wilstead. That will show her that her ruse and her bribes have been quite unsuccessful."

In her ardor for Mrs. Wilstead's demolition Maud had forgotten that the last thing Dita could endure was dictation. Now, no sooner had the words of admonition left her lips than, to her chagrin, she saw Dita's chin lifted, Dita's nostrils quiver, Dita's shoulders flung back ever so slightly.

"I think I shall see her." Mrs. Hepworth was on her feet, her voice cool, firm, pleasant, with just that little warning vibration which always meant danger. "You may tell Mrs. Wilstead that I will see her immediately." Her eyes scorched the maid, who hastened to obey, with the impression of an X-ray having been turned on her immaculate white waist, and exposing with startling vividness the crisp, green bill hastily thrust within.

"Come, Maudie," Perdita touched her on the shoulder in pa.s.sing. "Do not look so downcast. Why do you wish to deprive me of a little legitimate amus.e.m.e.nt?"

Maud, strong now in tardy wisdom, said nothing, and Perdita's light, quick step might be heard a moment later descending the stairs.

Alice Wilstead turned hastily from her contemplation of the small green yard without the window.

"My dear Perdita!" She came forward with Dita's note of the day before in her hand. "I just received this in the morning's mail, and I lost no time in getting here, I a.s.sure you, and making the attempt to see you by hook or crook. I know it's outrageous of me, but I don't understand, and I want to understand. Why is it, my dear, that you have refused to take me? Surely I'm not a hopeless case." She smiled ingratiatingly, and Dita was bound to admit that never had she appeared more attractive. Her piquant face was radiant with happiness, the whole effect of her was of a sort of buoyant joyousness.

Dita's chin was just half an inch higher than when she had left Maud, her smile was sweet and cold and faint, as remote as if it had been bestowed upon a pa.s.sing acquaintance in Mars, and she remained standing.

Mrs. Wilstead's mental recoil was but momentary. Her cause was good, her motives pure, her courage high. Above everything, she desired the benefits of Perdita Hepworth's genius. They were on sale, to the high bidders, and she did not purpose to be excluded merely because it was to be supposed that she would espouse the cause of her old friend, Cresswell Hepworth, in the event of open differences between himself and his wife.

"I regret, Mrs. Wilstead," Dita's voice matched her smile, "that it will be quite impossible for us to take any one else now. The summer is almost upon us, you see."

Mrs. Wilstead should not be blamed for not seeing. April, as wind and sky portended, was about to burst, not into tears, but into a snowstorm.