The Imitator Part 4

"Oh, Lord, yes! Looks odd, just the same, you trailing in here after a petticoat, and hanging around for--" he pulled out his watch,--"for a good half hour."

Orson burst out in a sort of clenched breath of rage. He kept the phrases down with difficulty. "Better choose your words," he said. "I don't like your words, and your watch be d.a.m.ned. Since when have my--my friends taken to timing my actions? It's a blessing I'm going abroad."

He turned and walked out of the shop, fiercely, swiftly. As the fresh air struck his face, he put his hand to it, and shook his head, wonderingly. "What's the matter with Moncreith? With me?" He thought of the t.i.tle of the book he had just given away. "Are we all as mad as that?" he asked himself.

The t.i.tle was "March Hares."

CHAPTER V.

A young man so prominent in the town as Orson Vane had naturally a very large list of acquaintances. He knew, in the fashionable phrase, "everybody," and "everybody" knew him. His acquaintances ranged beyond the world of fashion; the theatre, the turf, and many other regions had denizens who knew Orson Vane and held him in esteem. He had always lived a careful, well-mannered life; his name had never been in the newspapers save in the inescapable columns touching society.

When he was ready to proceed with the experiment of the mirror, the largeness of his social register was at once a pleasure and a pain.

There were so many, so many! It was evident that he must use the types most promising in eccentricity; he must adventure forth in company with the strangest souls, not the mere ordinary ones.

Sitting in the twilight of his rooms one day, it occurred to him that he was now ripe for his first decision. Whose soul should he seize? That was the question. He had spent a week or so perfecting plans, stalling off awkward episodes, schooling his servants. There was no telling what might not happen.

He picked up a newspaper. A name caught his eye; he gave a little laugh.

"The very man!" he told himself, "the very man. Society's court fool; it will be worth something to know what lies under his cap and bells."

He scrawled a note, enclosed it, and rang for Nevins.

"Have that taken, at once, to Mr. Reginald Hart. And then, presently, have a hansom called and let it wait nearby."

"Reggie will be sure to come," he said, when alone. "I've told him there was a pretty woman here."

He felt a nervous restlessness. He paced his room, fingering the frames of his prints, trying the cord of his new mirror, adjusting the blinds of the windows. He tingled with mental and physical expectation. He wondered whether nothing, after all, would be the result. How insane it was to expect any such thing to happen as Vanlief had vapored of! This was the twentieth century rather than the tenth; miracles never happened. Yet how fervently he wished for one! To feel the soul of another superimposing itself upon his own; to know that he had committed the grandest larceny under heaven, the theft of a soul, and to gain, thereby, complete insight into the spiritual machinery of another mortal!

Nevins returned, within a little time, bringing word that Mr. Hart had been found at home, and would call directly.

Vane pushed the new mirror to a position where it would face the door.

He told Nevins not to enter the room after Mr. Hart; to let him enter, and let the curtain fall behind him.

He took up a position by a window and waited. The minutes seemed heavy as lead. The air was unnaturally still.

At last he heard Nevins, in gentle monosyllables. Another voice, high almost to falsetto, clashed against the stillness.

Then the curtain swung back.

Reginald Hart, whom all the smart world never called other than Reggie Hart, stood for a moment in the curtain-way, the mirror barring his path. He caught his image there to the full, the effeminate, full face, the narrow-waisted coat, the unpleasantly womanish hips. He put out his right hand, as if groping in the dark. Then he said, shrilly, stammeringly.

"Vane! Oh, Vane, where the de--"

He sank almost to his knees. Vane stepping forward, caught him by the shoulder and put him into an arm-chair. Hart sat there, his head hunched between his shoulders.

"Silly thing to do, Vane, old chappy. Beastly sorry for this--stunt of mine. Too many tea-parties lately, Vane, too much dancing, too much--"

his voice went off into a sigh. "Better get a cab," he said, limply.

He had quite forgotten why he had come: he was simply in collapse, mentally and physically. Vane, trembling with excitement and delight, walked up to the mirror from behind and sent the veil upon its face again. Then he had Nevins summon the cab. He watched Hart tottering out, upon Nevins' shoulder, with a dry, forced smile.

So it was real! He could hardly believe it. In seconds, in the merest flash, his visitor had faded like a flower whose root is plucked. The man had come in, full of vitality, quite, in fact, himself; he had gone out a mere husk, a sh.e.l.l.

But there was still the climax ahead. Had he courage for it, now that it loomed imminent? Should he send for Hart and have him pick up his soul where he had dropped it? Or should he, stern in his first purpose, fit that soul upon his own, as one fits a glove upon the hand? There was yet time. It depended only upon whether Hart or himself faced the mirror when the veil was off.

He cut his knot of indecision sharply, with a stride to the mirror, a jerk at the cord and a steady gaze into the clear pool of light, darkened only by his own reflection.

Strain his eyes as he would, he could feel no change, not the faintest stir of added emotion. He let the curtain drop upon the mirror listlessly.

Walking to his window-seat again, he was suddenly struck by his image in one of the other gla.s.ses. He was really very well shaped; he felt a wish to strip to the buff; it was rather a shame to clothe limbs as fine as those. He was quite sure there were friends of his who would appreciate photographs of himself, in some picturesque costume that would hide as little as possible. It was an age since he had any pictures taken. He called for Nevins. His voice struck Nevins as having a taint of tenor in it.

"Nevins," he said, "have the photographer call to-morrow, like a good man, won't you? You know, the chap, I forget his name, who does all the smart young women. I'll be glad to do the fellow a service; do him no end of good to have his name on pictures of me. I'm thinking of something a bit startling for the Cutter's costume ball, Nevins, so have the man from Madame Boyer's come for instructions. And see if you can find me some perfume at the chemist's; something heavy, Nevins. The perfumes at once, that's a dear man. I want them in my pillows tonight."

When the man was gone, his master went to the sideboard, opened it, and gave a gentle sigh of disappointment.

"Careless of me," he murmured, "to have no Red Ribbon in the place. How can any gentleman afford to be without it? Dear, dear, if any of the girls and boys had caught me without it. Another thing I must tell Nevins. Nothing but whisky! Abominably vulgar stuff! Can't think, really, 'pon honor I can't, how I ever came to lay any of it in. And no cigarettes in the place. Goodness me! What sweet cigarettes those are Mrs. Barrett Weston always has! Wonder if that woman will ask me to her cottage this summer."

He strolled to the window, yawned, stretched out his arms, drawing his hands towards him at the end of his gesture. He inspected the fingers minutely. They needed manicuring. He began to put down a little list of things to be done. He strolled over to the tabouret where invitations lay scattered all about. That dear Mrs. Sclatersby was giving a studio-dance; she was depending on him for a novel feature. Perhaps if he did a little skirt-dance. Yes; the notion pleased him. He would sit down, at once, and write a hint to a newspaper man who would be sure to make a sensation of this skirt-dance.

That done, he heard Nevins knocking.

"Oh," he murmured, "the perfumes. So sweet!" He buried his nose in a handful of the sachet-bags. He sprayed some Maria Farina on his forehead. Perfumes, he considered, were worth worship just as much as jewels or music. The more sinful a perfume seemed, the more stimulating it was to the imagination. Some perfumes were like drawings by Beardsley.

He looked at the walls. He really must get some Beardsleys put up. There was nothing like a Beardsley for jogging a sluggish fancy; if you wanted to see everything that milliners and dressmakers existed by hiding, all you had to do was to sup sufficiently on Beardsley. He thought of inventing a Beardsley c.o.c.ktail; if he could find a mixture that would make the brain quite pagan, he would certainly give it that name.

His mind roved to the feud between the Montagues and Capulets of the town. It was one of those modern feuds, made up of little social frictions, infinitesimal jealousies, magnified by a malicious press into a national calamity. It was a feud, he told himself, that he would have to mend. It would mean, for him, the l.u.s.tre from both houses. And there was nothing, in the smart world, like plenty of l.u.s.tre. There were several sorts of l.u.s.tre: that of money, of birth, and of public honors.

Personally, he cared little for the origin of his l.u.s.tre; so it put him in the very forefront of smartness he asked for nothing more. Of course, his own position was quite impeccable. The smart world might narrow year by year; the Newport set, and the Millionaire set, and the Knickerbocker set--they might all dwindle to one small world of smartness; yet nothing that could happen could keep out an Orson Vane. The name struck him, as it shaped itself in his mind, a trifle odd. An Orson Vane? Yes, of course, of course. For that matter, who had presumed to doubt the position of a Vane? He asked himself that, with a sort of defiance. An Orson Vane, an Orson Vane? He repeated the syllables over and over, in a whisper at first, and then aloud, until the shrillness of his tone gave him a positive start.

He rang the bell for Nevins.

"Nevins," he said, and something in him fought against his speech, "tell me, that's a good man,--is there anything, anything wrong with--me?"

"Nothing sir," said Nevins stolidly.

Orson Vane gave a sort of gasp as the man withdrew. It had come to him suddenly; the under-self was struggling beneath the borrowed self. He was Orson Vane, but he was also another.

Who? What other?

He gave a little shrill laugh as he remembered. Reggie Hart,--that was it,--Reggie Hart.

He sat down to undress for sleep. He slipped into bed as daintily as a woman, nestling to the perfumed pillows.

Nevins, in his part of the house, sat shaking his head. "If he hadn't given me warning," he told himself, "I'd have sent for a doctor."