The Beauty Part 21

Alice shivered in her furs.

"Oh, but, my dear child," she begged, "do have some mercy on me. Here am I getting my trousseau. Oh, no wonder you start. I've always said that I never, never either would or could do anything so idiotic as to get married again, and yet here I am not only considering it, but actually committed to a wedding-day. And that is to be so appallingly soon. I tried and tried to put it off a little longer, but he is so impatient."

Dita's mouth had frozen, and the haughty and incredulous gaze which she cast for a brief, indignant moment on Alice would have turned one less bubblingly gay into a pillar of salt. This interview seemed incredible.

She had always regarded Alice Wilstead as an especially well-bred woman, but this greed to attain an object at the sacrifice of her self-respect, even decency of feeling, and regardless of the position in which she would place the woman with whom she pleaded, was, to Dita, shocking, insulting, unforgivable. While she waited the fraction of a second to command her voice, Alice spoke again.

"But you seem angry." She was obviously both hurt and bewildered. "What have I done? Surely, you will not fail me now at this most crucial moment of my life. Why, consider, I am going to marry a man five years younger than myself."

Dita caught at a chair, and sat down, the room seemed to whirl about her, she pressed her hand to her brow.

"Alice Wilstead," she said, "what on earth do _you_ mean?"

"I mean what I say," returned Alice with a touch of acerbity. "I am going to be married. What do you mean?"

"But to whom, to whom?" Dita was all impatience.

"To whom? Why, to Hayward Preston, of course. One of your husband's business a.s.sociates in the West. Surely you knew that?"

"I wish I had Maud by the throat," muttered Dita irrelevantly.

It was twenty minutes later when Maud put her shocked and disgusted head within the door.

"Dita," coldly surveying the two enthusiasts before her, who sat together in jocund amity, "Mrs. Hewston is out here in a state of great perturbation. Do you wish--"

But she got no further, for Mrs. Hewston, in the superiority of her greater bulk, pushed Maud into the room before her and now stood, the picture of pink and white and plump tragedy, on the threshold.

"Oh, Alice, I am glad to find you here," she wailed, advancing further into the room, while Maud discreetly closed the door, not upon herself, oh, no, but behind both of them. "You are always such a support." She sank into the chair Dita pushed toward her. "It's Willoughby, of course." She drew her handkerchief from her bag and mopped her eyes.

"Perdita Hepworth," she abandoned her spineless att.i.tude and sat upright, speaking with vehemence. "I am more ashamed of being here than I can ever make you understand. But Willoughby!" There was resignation in her uplifted eyes, acidity in the purse of her mouth. "He is the dearest, most lovable fellow in the world," she looked at her listeners suspiciously, but meeting no correction, permitted her irritation a natural outlet, "but he is the most obstinate, stupid mule the Lord ever made."

"What is it now, dear?" asked Alice sympathetically.

"This, and it's quite enough," returned Mrs. Hewston bitterly.

"Cresswell Hepworth, your husband," accusingly to Dita, "and may Heaven forgive him, for I never can! dined with us last night and just before he left, Willoughby got to asking him about his plans and Cresswell was telling him that he was due in London before long. 'But how much longer will you be in New York?' asked Willoughby, and Cresswell said, with a queer little smile, 'I can't quite say. There are a number of things to be looked after, among others a duel I may have to fight.'"

The women looked at each other in pale horror. Dita herself ghastly, half rose from her chair.

"I told Willoughby," sobbed Mrs. Hewston, "that it was just one of Cresswell's jokes. You know that odd, dry humor he sometimes shows, but," despairingly, "you also know Willoughby. He tore and snorted and raved and routed all night long. I would rather have had a hippopotamus in my room. And he excoriated you, Perdita. Called her the most dreadful names, really," this to Alice and Maud, confidentially and quite as if Dita were not present. "He said that Cresswell's life was ruined because of the caprices of an unG.o.dly, wanton girl. Yes, Dita, I don't blame you for being angry, but it was worse than that, too. You see, he's got the idea firmly into his head that Cresswell is going to fight a duel with Eugene Gresham and--"

"For goodness sake, let us keep our common sense," said Mrs. Wilstead, laying a detaining hand on Dita's shoulder, noting that Mrs. Hepworth's eyes were turned longingly toward the telephone. "You know perfectly well, Isabel, you know, Maud, and you, also, Dita, that Cresswell Hepworth does not for one moment contemplate anything so crazy. Nothing could induce him to put either himself or you, Dita, into such a position. Such a thing would be entirely against his nature. He would regard it as farcical melodrama, turn from it even in thought with infinite contempt and scorn. The idea of Willoughby thinking such a thing. Just like him. Meddlesome idiot. Ah, I don't care, Isabel, you know he is one. I wish I had him here now."

"He's out there in the motor," wept his wife. "He was afraid I wouldn't come and tell Perdita unless he came with me. But, Alice, you shan't speak of him so, he's the best--"

"He's still there," interrupted Maud, who had gone to peer from the window at Mrs. Hewston's announcement that this watch-dog of Dita's morals waited without, "with his head out of the window looking up at the house. And, oh, Heavens!" falling back against the lintel, "here is Eugene Gresham coming up the steps, and Mr. Hewston is glaring at him until his eyes are standing out of his head. He is purple in the face.

Now he is speaking to the chauffeur. Why, they are off, gone like the wind."

Mrs. Hewston fell back limply in her chair. She seemed incapable of speech for a moment. "Alice," she said at last, in awe-stricken tones, "he has gone to tell Cress that Eugene Gresham is here."

"Well, what of it?" snapped Mrs. Wilstead. "Cresswell will only laugh at him and smooth him down. You know that."

"I hope so," breathed Mrs. Hewston. "He seems to amuse Cresswell. Fancy.

But then," more understandingly, "he doesn't have to live with him."

CHAPTER XXII

HEPWORTH MISUNDERSTANDS

Dita's fears calmed by Mrs. Wilstead's essentially common-sense point of view, her confidence was further restored by Eugene's evident ignorance of any plots and plans on Mr. Cresswell Hepworth's part of bringing this triangular situation, involving himself, his wife and the other man, to a fiction-hallowed and moss-grown conclusion.

It was therefore without particular apprehension, at any rate apprehensions of the kind nourished by Mr. Hewston, that she dressed for the dinner _en tete-a-tete_ with her husband. It was rather with a sense of mounting interest, even excitement.

She wavered in her choice of a gown, scanning with hypercritical eye a dozen or more. White savored of a school-girl simplicity and disarmed her if she chose to be subtle. Blue was unbecoming; sufficient taboo.

"Green's forsaken and yellow's forsworn," she murmured ruefully. Black remained, thin, soft-falling gauze, distinguished, distinctive, exquisite in design and effect; above its shadow rose her neck of cream, her hair was the dusk shadow of copper, her eyes were darkly brilliant.

She hesitated at jewels. He had given her so many. Which would go best with her gown? Then she turned away from even the mental contemplation of them with a feeling of distaste. She could not, even to please him, wear his jewels when he and she were almost strangers, when but the details of their final parting remained to be settled. And yet would it not look a bit odd to appear without any ornaments whatever?

She considered the matter a moment, and then smiling a little, she opened the box which Gresham had given into her hands that morning, and which lay upon her dressing-table.

She turned over this old trinket in her hand, and gazed at it, forgetful of the pa.s.sing time. How impressive Eugene had been when he had returned it to her!

[Ill.u.s.tration: She gazed at the old trinket.]

"I am only lending it to you, remember that, for you will give it to me with your heart's love, Dita, and soon."

She was roused from her reverie by the sound of a motor stopping without. Her maid waited to place a black and gold wrap about her shoulders. "One moment," said Dita. Quickly she slipped the amulet on a thin, old-fashioned gold chain and fastened it about her throat. Then she went downstairs to greet her husband.

Commonplaces of the most conventional and ba.n.a.l order they talked.

Nothing else on the drive to the restaurant, nothing else on first taking their seats at the table on one side of the great garish room.

There were many curious eyes on them, necks craned, the incredulous whisper ran:

"Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth actually together! What does it mean!"

The stereotyped babbling went on intermittently, until dinner had been ordered and the earlier courses come and gone, and then Dita suddenly awoke to the fact that her husband had taken the conversation into his own hands and was actually talking to her. Oh, of course, he had often talked to her before, arranged new amus.e.m.e.nts for her, discussed what jewels she would like, what plays she would care to see, what people interested her most, what journey she would enjoy.

But now, she almost caught her breath at the surprise of it, he was talking to her as if she were a man, or at least an intelligent human being and not just merely--a pretty woman.

He was talking straight ahead, discussing business matters, several interesting problems which had come up in his affairs during his recent western sojourn. He did not pause to explain anything to her, quite took it for granted that she would understand. He did not apparently stop to consider whether she was interested or amused, and that pleased her enormously. She began to ask questions, and he answered them fully, even pondering some of them carefully before replying. One he considered for a moment or so and then said: "Do you know, I had not thought of that before, that puts a new phase upon the whole situation." Her strand of rubies had never given Dita such a glow of pride and pleasure.

"Ah, why have you never talked to me like this before?" she asked navely. "Think of all the stupid dinners we've eaten together when you treated me like a tiresome little girl who had to be continually amused, and I was one, too; as tongue-tied and missish as anything, because you took it for granted that I was."

"No one could accuse you of being either tongue-tied or missish to-night. You are quite matronly in that black gown."

"Oh, I love to hear about the big things that go on," she said enthusiastically, if irrelevantly, "but men will never talk to me about them. All my life, whenever I'd try really to talk sense to a man, he'd say, 'What wonderful eyes you have,' showing that he hadn't heard one word I'd been saying. They always seem to think that I expect them to tell me how lovely I am. It's the curse of the pretty woman."

"Oh, well, console yourself," he said carelessly. "There are prettier women in the world than you, quant.i.ties of them!"