The Beauty and the Bolshevist Part 2

"My set! Good for him to be outside of it, I say. What have they ever done to make anyone want to be inside of it? Why, David is an educated gentleman. To hear him quote Horace--"

"Horace who?"

"Really, Eddie."

"Oh, I see. You mean the poet. That's nothing to laugh at, Crystal. It was a natural mistake. I thought, of course, you meant some of those anarchists who want to upset the world."

Crystal looked at him more honestly and seriously than she had yet done.

"Well, don't you think there _is_ something wrong with the present arrangement of things, Eddie?"

"No, I don't, and I hate to hear you talk like a socialist."

"I am a socialist."

"You're nothing of the kind."

"I suppose I know what I am."

"Not at all--not at all."

"I certainly think the rich are too rich, while the poor are so horridly poor."

"_You'd_ get on well without your maid and your car and your father's charge accounts at all the shops, wouldn't you?"

Though agreeable to talk seriously if you agree, it is correspondingly dangerous if you disagree. Crystal stood up, trembling with an emotion which Eddie, although he was rather angry himself, considered utterly unaccountable.

"Yes," she said, almost proudly, "I _am_ luxurious, I _am_ dependent on those things. But whose fault is that? It's the way I was brought up--it's all wrong. But, even though I am dependent on them, I believe I could exist without them. I'd feel like killing myself if I didn't think so. Sometimes I want to go away and find out if I couldn't live and be myself without all this background of luxury. But at the worst--I'm just one girl--suppose I were weak and couldn't get on without them? That wouldn't prove that they are right. I'm not so blinded that I can't see that a system by which I profit may still be absolutely wrong. But you always seem to think, Eddie, that it's part of the Const.i.tution of the United States that you should have everything you've always had."

Eddie rose, too, with the manner of a man who has allowed things to go far enough. "Look here, my dear girl," he said, "I am a man and I'm older than you, and have seen more of the world. I know you don't mean any harm, but I must tell you that this is very wicked, dangerous talk."

"Dangerous, perhaps, Eddie, but I can't see how it can be wicked to want to give up your special privileges."

"Where in the world do you pick up ideas like this?"

"I inherited them from an English ancestor of mine, who gave up all that he had when he enlisted in Washington's army."

"You got that stuff," said Eddie, brushing this aside, "from David Moreton, and that infernal seditious paper his brother edits--and that white-livered book which I haven't read against war. I'd like to put them all in jail."

"It's a pity," said Crystal, "that your side can't think of a better argument than putting everyone who disagrees with you in jail."

With this she turned and left him, and, entering the ballroom, flung herself into the arms of the first partner she met. It was a timid boy, who, startled by the eagerness with which she chose him, with her bright eyes and quickly drawn breath, was just coming to the conclusion that a lovely, rich, and admired lady, had fallen pa.s.sionately in love with him, when with equal suddenness she stepped out of his arms and was presently driving her small, open car down the avenue.

Under the purple beech Eddie, left alone, sank back on the stone bench and considered, somewhat as the persecutors of Socrates may have done, suitable punishments for those who put vile, revolutionary ideas into the heads of young and lovely women.

In the meantime Ben, who had enjoyed the party more than most of the invited guests, and far more than the disconsolate Eddie, had left his vantage point at the window. He had suddenly become aware of a strange light stealing under the trees, and, looking up, he saw with surprise that the stars were growing small and the heavens turning steel-color--in fact, that it was dawn.

Convinced that sunrise was a finer sight than the end of the grandest ball that ever was given, he made his way down a shabby back lane, and before long came out on the edge of the cliffs, with the whole panorama of sunrise over the Atlantic spread out before him.

He stood there a moment, somebody's close, well-kept lawn under his feet, and a pale-pink sea sucking in and out on the rocks a hundred feet below. The same hot, red sun was coming up; there wasn't a steady breeze, but cool salt puffs came to him now and then with a breaking wave. It was going to be a hot day, and Ben liked swimming better than most things in life. He hesitated.

If he had turned to the left, he would have come presently to a public beach and would have had his swim conventionally and in due time. But some impulse told him to turn to the right, and he began to wander westward along the edge of the cliffs--always on his left hand, s.p.a.ce and the sea, and on his right, lawns or gardens or parapets crowned by cactus plants in urns, and behind these a great variety of houses--French chateaux and marble palaces and nice little white cottages, and, finally, a frowning Gothic castle. All alike seemed asleep, with empty piazzas and closed shutters, and the only sign of life he saw in any of them was one pale housemaid shaking a duster out of a window in an upper gable.

At last he came to a break in the cliffs--a cove, with a beach in it, a group of buildings obviously bathing-houses. The sacredness of this pavilion did not occur to Ben; indeed, there was nothing to suggest it. He entered it light-heartedly and was discouraged to find the door of every cabin securely locked. The place was utterly deserted. But Ben was persistent, and presently he detected a bit of a garment hanging over a door, and, pulling it out, he found himself in possession of a man's bathing suit. A little farther on he discovered a telephone room unlocked. Here he undressed and a minute later was swimming straight out to sea.

The level rays of the sun were doing to the water just what the headlights of the motors had done to the road; they were enlarging every ripple and edging the deep purple-blue with yellow light. Except for a fishing dory chunking out to its day's work, Ben had the sea and land to himself. He felt as if they were all his own, and, for a socialist, was guilty of the sin of pride of possession. He was enjoying himself so much that it was a long time before he turned to swim back.

He was swimming with his head under water most of the time so that he did not at once notice that a raft he had pa.s.sed on his way out was now occupied. As soon as he did see it his head came up. It was a female figure, and even from a distance he could see that she was unconscious of his presence and felt quite as sure of having the world to herself as he was. She was sitting on the edge of the raft, kicking a pair of the prettiest legs in the world in and out of the water.

They were clad in the thinnest of blue-silk stockings, the same in which a few minutes before she had been dancing, but not being able to find any others in her bathhouse, she had just kept them on, recklessly ignoring the inevitable problem of what she should wear home. She was leaning back on her straightened arms, with her head back, looking up into the sky and softly whistling to herself. Ben saw in a second that she was the girl of the silver turban.

He stole nearer and nearer, cutting silently through the water, and then, when he had looked his fill, he put his head down again, splashed a little, and did not look up until his hand was on the raft, when he allowed an expression of calm surprise to appear on his face.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "Is this a private raft?"

The young lady, who had had plenty of time since the splash to arrange her countenance, looked at him with a blank coldness, and then suddenly smiled.

"I thought it was a private world," she replied.

"It's certainly a very agreeable one," said Ben, climbing on the raft.

"And what I like particularly about it is the fact that no one is alive but you and me. Newport appears to be a city of the dead."

"It always was," she answered, contemptuously.

"Oh, come. Not an hour ago you were dancing in blue and green and a silver turban at a party over there," and he waved his hand in the direction from which he had come.

"Did you think it was a good ball?"

"I enjoyed it," he answered, truthfully.

Her face fell. "How very disappointing," she said. "I didn't see you there."

"Disappointing that you did not see me there?"

"No," she replied, and then, less positively; "No; I meant it was disappointing that you were the kind of man who went to parties--and enjoyed them."

"It would be silly to go if you didn't enjoy them," he returned, lightly.

She turned to him very seriously. "You're right," she said; "it is silly--very silly, and it's just what I do. I consider parties like that the lowest, emptiest form of human entertainment. They're dull; they're expensive; they keep you from doing intelligent things, like studying; they keep you from doing simple, healthy things, like sleeping and exercising; they make you artificial; they make you civil to people you despise--they make women, at least, for we must have partners--"

"But why do you go, then?"

She was silent, and they looked straight and long at each other. Then she said, gravely:

"The answer's very humiliating. I go because I haven't anything else to do."

He did not rea.s.sure her. "Yes, that's bad," he said, after a second.

"But of course you could not expect to have anything else to do when all your time is taken up like that. 'When the half G.o.ds go,' you know, 'the G.o.ds arrive.'"

The quotation was not new to Crystal; in fact, she had quoted it to Eddie not very long before, apropos of another girl to whom he had shown a mild attention, but it seemed to her as if she took in for the first time its real meaning. Whether it was the dawn, exhaustion, a stimulating personality, love, or mere accident, the words now came to her with all the beauty and truth of a religious conviction. They seemed to shake her and make her over. She felt as if she could never be sufficiently grateful to the person who had thus made all life fresh and new to her.