The Beauty Part 7

She started, cast one quick glance at him, and then stared frowningly before her, but he noticed that her hand trembled on the back of the chair. "Why do you ask me that? I--I am married to you--I--" her voice faltered, broke.

"Oh, no conventional utterances, please," he cried quickly. "That is not worthy of you, not like you. There should be, there must be absolute sincerity between us now. Tell me, Perdita, are you in love with Eugene Gresham?"

"Ah, that I do not know." She looked beyond him and, still gazing, shook her head. "I do not know. I never have known, never been sure. We were boy and girl together, he a few years older. He is a.s.sociated in my mind with the life of green old gardens and the smell of jasmine flowers. He lives in a wonderful world, a world of color that something in me always yearns toward. It seems to me sometimes as if I would rise to it, and my heart would blossom in purple and red. I seem doomed to talk foolishly to you," she exclaimed rather piteously, "but most people's hidden thoughts would sound foolish to others, would they not?"

"Go on, my dear." Then his controlled utterance gave way. "For heaven's sake, why should you not feel that you can say anything to me? What kind of an idea have I given you of myself? But tell me," quickly subduing his emotion, "what is it you feel?"

"As if--as if my heart were a flower which had never really bloomed--a cold, tightly folded bud, that yet held within the colorless outer leaves wonderful red and purple petals. All there, awaiting a sesame, and I sometimes dream that only Eugene can give me that sesame. But,"

the glow left her eyes, her head drooped, "I don't know, I don't know. I thought I was sure once that I loved him. I do not know now."

"Where was Gresham during the time you were struggling here?" he asked presently. And it struck her irrelevantly.

"In the East somewhere, I think. Doing his desert pictures. I used to hear from him once in a great while."

He said nothing. Then he came nearer and took both her hands in his.

"Dita, my clear, I'm going to be egotistical and talk about myself for a minute. Let me see if I can explain." Again that worn and flashing smile, with a deeper touch of cynicism, flitted over his arrogant face.

"'King Canute was weary-hearted, He had reigned for years a score, Pushing, struggling, battling, fighting, Killing much and robbing more.'

"Let us hope that it is not quite so bad as the last line infers; but it gives the idea, the picture. Well, Dita, I saw you, a beautiful flower, purple and red, if you will, although I do not think the combination of colors appropriate. And you were blooming in a tin can in a tenement window. It was insupportable, so I dreamed of transplanting the flower into its fitting surroundings, a marble court. That was what I crudely thought would mean your happiness. But I never secured the flower to adorn the marble court. Believe that. Above all, I wanted and I want its happiness. Dita, I'm weary-hearted, but I long--I long above all things--to make you happy. Take the poor surroundings that I can give you; but let your beauty have its meed, let your heart flower as it will. Feel free to meet, with outstretched hands, the romance your youth has dreamed of, for, Dita, I, who have only fettered you with jewels, am going to give you something really worth while, thanking G.o.d very humbly that it is in my power to do so, and the gift is freedom. You are free from now on."

She started back, looking at him in frowning bewilderment and yet he saw deep within her eyes a wild gleam of hope, of joy. "Free!" she repeated uncertainly, "Free! How can I be free when I am married to you?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Free! How can I be free?"]

He laughed once more, and the dreariness of that laughter rang suddenly hours afterward in her ears. "Those things can always be arranged," he said. "But I am going to ask you a favor." Although he said "favor" her quick ear caught the ring of authority in his tone. "Since you are not sure that you love Gresham, I am going to ask that you wait a year before securing your legal freedom. You shall have it, whether you decide on him or not. Oh, believe that. Ah, one more request. Let me urge you not to have your portrait painted just now. In view of possible future events, it is much wiser, much safer to let that go for the present. I think you will have to trust my judgment here. There is no danger of your beauty waning." Again his worn and flashing smile. "And now, it is very late and I think you had better get some sleep. Good night." He smiled again, but she noticed how dreadfully tired he looked.

She winced a bit in soul.

"I am sorry that it has been such a fizzle," she turned to him with a sort of shy, girlish friendliness and impulsiveness.

He smiled again and lightly touched her cheek with his finger. "Give no more thought to that." He turned abruptly away.

"Ah, Dita," his voice arrested her from the threshold, "one more request I am going to make and that is that you get your amulet to-morrow. If not I shall have to see about it myself and I am really too busy to bother with it at present." Again that iron ring of authority was in his voice, but authority masked in velvet. "Will you very kindly attend to this, my dear?"

She nodded mutely from the doorway, but did not lift her down-bent head, nor raise her eyes to his.

CHAPTER VIII

FOOLS' LAUGHTER

When Dita wakened the next morning, it was very late, almost noon. She came slowly to waking consciousness over wastes of apprehension, oppressed by some heavy sense of disaster. What had happened? Ah, she remembered it, it was last night. She squirmed uncomfortably and then lay gazing with somber and introspective eyes about the beautiful room.

Slowly, the chaotic and uncomfortable thoughts which thronged confusingly in her mind resolved themselves into two or three distinct facts as scorching to her sensitiveness as if written in letters of fire. First, she had let herself go unwarrantably. An electric storm always exerted a sinister effect upon her, inducing a wildness, a recklessness at first, eventually followed by melancholy and culminating either in tears or temper. And she had yielded weakly to every phase of this storm-induced mood.

Why did events have to take the bits in their teeth and gallop madly along the road to ruin at the most placid and unexpected moments? Why should an electric storm have blotted the sky and flashed its jagged lightning over her nerves that especial evening? Why had she not mastered the sirocco, driven it off in its first stealthy approaches?

But she melted to self-pity; Cresswell should not have taken her so seriously. He might have realized that the storm, and that tiresome dinner, and those tiresome people had goaded her unendurably. Grant them every virtue, every grace, admit that there might have been an attraction between herself and them in ordinary circ.u.mstances, but the fact that they were old friends of her husband changed the whole chemical situation. Attraction became repulsion, attempt to conceal the fact as she would. But self-pity ultimately merged into self-accusation.

No matter what the causes, she had made a melodramatic scene. She had told a lot of bare truths, which, like all bare truths, were only half truths; about Eugene, for instance, practically admitting that she loved him.

Well, did she? She sat up suddenly in bed and pushed the hair back from her brow with both hands. She pondered intensely a moment. She didn't know. She really didn't know. Was it love, this feeling she had for him, had had for him ever since she had been a girl of fifteen? It was a powerful attraction anyway--a sympathy, an understanding.

And Cresswell had offered her freedom, freedom! What did it mean? Her heart began to beat quickly, excitedly. It meant the great adventure ...

if one had the courage ... one need "mourn no joy untasted, envy no bliss gone by." She would throw off this ennui, this apathy which afflicted her. She was free, free to seek and meet the unexpected. The great adventure, a thousand adventures were before her. At last, she would live. Suddenly she remembered her amulet. She must get it. She gave this a moment's consideration, and then, before summoning her maid, she went quickly to the telephone in her sitting-room, and rang up Eugene Gresham's studio.

To her relief, he was there and answered the ring almost immediately.

"Are you there, 'Gene. I want to see you to-day, as soon as possible, within an hour or so. Will it be convenient for you?"

"Oh, perfectly. But," there was anxiety in his voice, "nothing is wrong, I hope."

"Oh, nothing much," she replied evasively, "only I want to talk to you--but not here."

"Why not take luncheon with me," he replied, "at half-past one and where?"

"Oh, not in any crowded restaurant," she answered a little impatiently.

"At some quiet place. A tea-room--the Wistaria?"

"Very well. Then within an hour and a half."

"And, oh, Eugene," her voice detaining him, "I want the talisman. Do not fail to bring it. Do you understand?"

If Dita wore as a protecting disguise the simple and conventional dark gown which has been prescribed by certain unalterable rules of fiction as the proper costume for a lady hastening to a rendezvous, it failed of its effect, but served instead to accentuate her beauty; nor detracted in the least from her as an object of interest and comment.

And Eugene, with his fame, and his air, and his eyes, his lifted shoulder and his limp, the pointed laurel leaves seeming to gleam through his cloud of hair, handed her from her motor-car with the manner of courts, his hat in hand, to the admiration of the pa.s.sers-by. The whisper ran: "Eugene Gresham and the beautiful Mrs. Hepworth." They pa.s.sed through a gaping aisle. They entered the tea-room to the craning of necks. Poor souls! This was their measure of seclusion. Beauty and genius! Fame and wealth! It is a combination New York loves. She serves them up to her mult.i.tudes on a salver.

They were successful, however, in finding a remote table beneath swaying purple cl.u.s.ters of artificial wistaria and a dimly mellow light. And while Eugene ordered the luncheon, Dita glanced about her with a sensation of relief; new surroundings always seem to hold out the alluring if frequently vain promise of new thoughts and this was the beginning of adventure, of that new life of infinite variety she meant to live at last.

Eugene turned from the waiter, and leaning across the table narrowly observed her.

"A trifle pale," he remarked. "Mad Dita!" reproachfully and yet tenderly. "I hope all that atmospheric unpleasantness--mental, I mean, did not come boiling and seething to the surface after I left last night. I hoped the sirocco had spent itself before I left. But doubtless Hepworth understands how you are affected by a storm."

"I'm afraid I did make rather a scene," she admitted, her lashes on her cheek. "However, that is neither here nor there."

He drew a breath of relief.

"Then it is all over, the atmosphere cleared and we are to begin our sittings to-morrow." He smiled in antic.i.p.ation and laughingly drew her picture upon the air.

"No," she shook her head, and spoke more reluctantly than before, "Cresswell has requested me not to have my portrait painted just now. He is kind enough," her smile was shadowy, "to think that there is no particular danger of an immediate waning of my beauty and he desires me to wait a few months."

"But that is impossible! Incredible!" he scowled with irritation and threw himself back in the chair. "Oh, what a sirocco, what a sirocco it must have been!" He shook his head back and forth and then dropped it in his hands, studying the pattern of the table-cloth as though it were the map of the situation. "To pa.s.s over my disappointment"--he lifted his head and mechanically pushed about some of the dishes the waiter placed before him on the table--"ignore it, let it go. I'm not going to press that now; but there are other things to be considered. It is known that I am to do your portrait. It was openly discussed last night. All this must be taken into account. That is for appearances as far as you are concerned. Then regarding me. I am not a paper-hanger or house painter to be engaged and then dismissed at the whim of a millionaire. I can not accept a commission from Hepworth and permit him to cancel it by a negligent message, sent through a third person. Absurd!" He frowningly bit a finger. "My plans and arrangements must be concluded for months ahead. They can not be thrown askew like this. Oh, Dita, what did you do, what did you say that brought this about? I worked like a Trojan last night to avert anything of the kind."

She did not answer, but sipped her tea with downcast eyes and he saw that the lashes on her cheeks were wet.

"Ah, Dita," his voice fell to a charming note of tenderness, a note to stir any woman's heart, with the purple and white of the wistaria cl.u.s.ters swaying above their heads and the mellow light reflected in his eyes, his eager eyes which pierced life's stained and sordid curtain and saw the wonder and miracle of beauty; and it was this power to discern the eternal vision which illuminated his ugly, irregular, fascinating face upon which work and dreams and experience had stamped their impress. "You can not fancy what it means to me to paint your portrait now. I've painted it before, crudely, in boyhood, and experienced then a casual delight in the effort to portray a beautiful thing, and wrest a few new secrets of art from the portrayal. That was all. But now," his voice without being raised, yet lifted exultantly, "but now--my heart is swept with insurgent seas at the thought of what it means. I am lover and artist, fused in a fire of white enthusiasm. The lover sees, divines what the artist can only guess at, and the artist offers to the lover a perfected technique. I feel the stirring of this power to catch your loveliness, Dita, and fix it on canvas imperishably. It would be the great achievement. That is in the background of every artist's thoughts.

It is his pillar of cloud by day and his pillar of fire by night. The great achievement!" He dreamed over it a moment. "I would paint the South in you, Dita, 'warm and sweet and fickle is the South.' Ah! I thought I loved you then. I thought I loved you the evening we parted, but I know now that I have never really loved you before or I could not have given you up."