The Imitator Part 5

CHAPTER VI.

The smart world received the change in Orson Vane with no immediate wonder. Wonder is, at the outset, a vulgarity; to let nothing astonish you is part of a smart education. A good many of the smartest hostesses in town were glad that Vane had emerged from his erstwhile air of aristocratic aloofness; he took, with them, the place that Reggie Hart's continuing illness left vacant.

In the regions where Vane had been actually intimate whispers began to go about, it is true, and it was with no little difficulty that an occasional story about him was kept out of the gossipy pages of the papers. Vane was constantly busy seeking notoriety. His attentions to several of the younger matrons were conspicuous. Yet he was so much of a stimulating force, in a society where pa.s.sivity was the rule, that he was welcome everywhere.

He had become the court fool of the smart set.

To him, the position held nothing degrading. It was, he argued, a reflection on smart society, rather on himself, that, to be prominent in it, one must needs wear cap and bells. Moreover his position allowed him, now and then, the utterance of grim truths that would not have been listened to from anyone not wearing the jester's license.

At the now famous dinner given by Mrs. Sclatersby, Orson Vane seized a lull in the conversation, by remarking, in his ladylike lisp:

"My dear Mrs. Sclatersby, I have such a charming idea. I am thinking of syndicating myself."

Mrs. Sclatersby put up her lorgnettes and smiled encouragement at Orson.

"It sounds Wall Streety," she said, "you're not going to desert us, are you?"

"Oh, nothing so dreadful. It would be an entirely smart syndicate, you know; a syndicate of which you would be a member. I sometimes think, you know, that I do not distribute myself to the best advantage. There have been little jealousies, now and then, have there not?" He looked, in a bird-like, perky way, at Mrs. Barrett Weston, and the only Mrs. Carlos.

"I have been unable to be in two places at once. Now a syndicate--a syndicate could arrange things so that there would be no disappointments, no clashings of engagements, no waste of opportunity.

"How clever you always are," said a lady at Orson's right. She had chameleon hair, and her poise was that of a soubrette. The theatre was tremendously popular as a society model that season. Orson blew a kiss at her, and went on with his speech.

"Actors do it, you know. Painters have done it. Inventors do it. Why not I?" He paused to nibble an olive. "To contribute to the gaiety of our little world is, after all, the one thing worth while. Think how few picturesque people we have! Eccentricity is terribly lacking in the town. We have no Whistler; Mansfield is rather a dull imitation. Of course there is George Francis Train; but he is a trifle, a trifle too much of the larger world, don't you think?"

"I never saw the man in my life," a.s.serted the hostess.

"Exactly," said Orson, "he makes himself too cheap. It keeps us from seeing him. But Whistler; think of Whistler, in New York! He would wear a French hat, fight duels every day, lampoon a critic every hour, and paint nocturnes on the Fifth avenue pavement! He would make Diana fall from the Tower in sheer envy. He would go through the Astoria with monocle and mockery, and smile blue peac.o.c.k smiles at Mr. Blashfield and Mr. Simmons. He would etch himself upon the town. We would never let him go again. We need that sort of thing. Our ambitions and our patience are cosmopolitan; but we lack the public characters to properly give fire and color to our streets. Now I--"

He let his eyes wander about the room, a delicate smile of invitation on his lips.

"Don't you think," said one of the ladies, "that you are quite--quite bohemian enough?"

Orson shuddered obviously. "My dear lady," he urged, "it is a dreadful thing to be bohemian. It is no longer smart. If I am considered the one, I cannot possibly be the other. There is, to be sure, a polite imitation; but it is quite an art to imitate the thing with just sufficient indolence. But I really wish you would think the thing over, Mrs. Sclatersby. I know n.o.body who would do the thing better than I. Our men are mostly too fond of fashion, and too afraid of fancy. One must not be ashamed of being called foolish. Whistler uses b.u.t.terflies; somebody else used sunflowers and green carnations; I should use--lilies, I think, lilies-of-the-valley. Emblematic of the pure folly of my pose, you know. One must do something like that, you see, to gain smart applause; impossible hats and improbable hair, except in the case of actresses, are quite extinct."

A Polish orchestra that had been hitherto unsuccessful against the shrill monologue of Orson, and the occasional laughter of the ladies, now sent out a sudden, fierce stream of melody. It was evident that they did not mean to take the insult of a large wage without offering some stormy moments in exchange. The diners a.s.sumed a patient air, eating in an abstracted manner, as if their stomachs were the only members of their bodies left unstunned by the music. The a.s.semblage wore, in its furtive gluttony, an air of being in a plot of the most delicious danger. Some rather dowdy anecdotes went about in whispers, and several of the ladies made pa.s.sionate efforts to blush. Orson Vane took a sip of some apricotine, explaining to his neighbor that he took it for the color; it was the color of verses by Verlaine. She had never heard of the man. Ah; then of course Mallarme, and Symons and Francis Saltus were her G.o.ds? No; she said she liked Madame Louise; hers were by far the most fragile hats purchasable; what was the use of a hat if it was not fragile; to wear one twice was a crime, and to give one away unless it was decently crushed was an indiscretion. Orson quite agreed with her.

To his other neighbor he confided that he was thinking of writing a book. It would be something entirely in the key of blue. He was busy explaining its future virtues, when an indiscreet lull came in the orchestral tornado.

"I mean to bring the pink of youth to the sallowest old age," he was saying, "and every page is to be as dangerous as a Bowery c.o.c.ktail."

Then the storm howled forth again. Everyone talked to his or her neighbor at top voice. Now and then pauses in the music left f.a.g ends of conversation struggling about the room.

"The decadents are simply the people who refuse to write twaddle for the magazines...."

"The way to make a name in the world is to own a soap factory and ape William Morris on the side...."

"I can always tell when it is Spring by looking at the haberdashers'

windows. To watch shirts and ties blooming is so much nicer than flowers and those smelly things...."

"The pleasantest things in the world all begin with a P. Powders, patches and poses--what should we do without them?..."

This sort of thing came out at loose ends now and then. Suddenly the music ceased altogether. The diners all looked as if they had been caught in a crime. The lights went out in the room, and there were little smothered shrieks. After an interval, a rosy glow lit up the conservatory beyond the palms; a little stage showed in the distance.

Some notorious people from the music-halls began to do songs and dances, and offer comic monologues. The diners fell into a sort of lethargy.

They did not even notice that Orson Vane's chair was empty.

Vane was in a little boudoir lent him by the hostess. His nostrils dilated with the perfume of her that he felt everywhere. He sank into a silk-covered chair, before which he had arranged a full-length mirror, and several smaller gla.s.ses, with candles glowing all about him. He was conscious of a cloying sense of happiness over his physical perfections.

He stripped garment after garment from him with a care, a gentleness that argued his belief that haste was a foe to beauty. He stretched himself at full length, in epicurean enjoyment of himself. The flame of life, he told himself, burnt the more steadily the less we wrapped it up. If we could only return to the pagan life! And yet--what charm there was in dress! The body had, after all, a monotony, a sameness; the tenderest of its curves, the rosiest of its surfaces, must pall. But the infinite variety of clothes! The delight of letting the most delicate tints of gauze caress the flesh, while to the world only the soberest stuffs were exposed! The rustle of fresh linen, the perfume that one could filter through the layers of one's attire!

Orson Vane closed his eyes, lazily, musingly. At that moment his proper soul was quite in subjection; the ecstasy in the usurping soul was all-powerful.

He was thinking of what the cheval-gla.s.s in that little room must have seen.

It would be unspeakably fine to be a mirror.

The little crystal clock ticking on the dressing-table tinkled an hour.

It brought him from his reveries with a start. He began gliding into some shining, silken things of umber tints; they fitted him to the skin.

He was a falconer.

It was a costume to strike pale the idlers at a bathing beach. There was not a crease, not a fold anywhere. A leathern thong upon a wrist, a feathered cap upon his head, were almost the only points that rose away from the body as G.o.d had fashioned it. Satisfaction filled him as he surveyed himself. But there was more to do. Above this costume he put the dress of a Spanish Queen. When he lifted the ma.s.sively brocaded train, there showed the most exquisitely chiseled ankles, the promise of the most alluring legs. The corsage hinted a bust of the most soothing softness. He spent fully ten minutes in happy admiration of his images in the mirrors.

When he proceeded to the conservatory, it was by a secret corridor. The diners were wearily watching a Frenchwoman who sang with her gloves, which were black and always on the point of falling down. She was very pathetic; she was trying to sing rag-time melodies because some idiot had told her the Newport set preferred that music. A smart young woman had danced a dance of her own invention; everyone agreed, as they did about the man who paints with his toes, that, considering her smartness in the fashionable world, it was not so much a wonder that she danced so well, as that she danced at all. They were quite sure the professional managers would offer her the most lavish sums; she would be quite as much of an attraction as the foreign peer who was trying to be a gentleman, where they are most needed, on the stage.

At a sign from Orson, the lights went out again, as the Frenchwoman finished her song. Several of the guests began to talk scandal in the dark; there are few occupations more fascinating than talking scandal in the dark. The question of whether it was better to be a millionaire or a fashionable and divorced beauty was beginning to agitate several people into almost violent argument, when the lights flared to the full.

The chorus of little "Ohs" and "Ahs," of rapid whispered comment, and of discreetly patted gloves, was quite fervid for so smart an a.s.semblage.

Except in the rarest cases, to gush is as fatal, in the smart world, as to be intolerant. There is a smart avenue between fervor and frowning; when you can find that avenue unconsciously, in the dark, as it were, you have little more to learn in the code of smartness.

Mrs. Sclatersby herself murmured, quite audibly:

"How sweet the dear boy looks!"

Her clan took the word up, and for a time the sibilance of it was like a hiss in the room. A man or two in the company growled out something that his fairer neighbor seemed unwilling to hear. These ba.s.so profundo sounds, if one could formulate them into words at all, seemed more like "Disgusting fool!" or "Sickening!" than anything else. But the company had very few men in it; in this, as in many other respects, the room resembled smart society itself. The smart world is engineered and peopled chiefly by the feminine element. The male s.e.x lends to it only its more feminine side.

It is almost unnecessary to describe the picture that Orson Vane presented on that little stage. His beauty as "Isabella, Queen of Spain," has long since become public property; none of his later efforts in suppression of the many photographs that were taken, shortly after the Sclatersby dinner, have succeeded in quite expunging the portraits.

At that time he gave the sittings willingly. He felt that these photographs represented the highest notch in his fame, the completest image of his ability to be as beautiful as the most beautiful woman.

Shame or nervousness was not part of Orson Vane's personality that night. He sat there, in the skillfully arranged scheme of lights, with his whole body attuned only to accurate impersonation of the character he represented. He got up. His motion, as he pa.s.sed across the stage, was so utterly feminine, so made of the swaying, undulating grace that usually implies the woman; the gesture with his fan was so finically alluring; the poise of his head above his bared shoulders so coquettish,--that the women watching him almost held their breaths in admiration.

It was, you see, the most adroit flattery that a man could pay the entire s.e.x of womankind.

Then the music, a little way off, began to strum a cachuca. The tempo increased; when finally the pace was something infectious, Orson Vane began a dance that remains, to this day, an episode in the annals of the smart. The vigor of his poses, the charm of his skirt-manipulation, carried the appreciation of his friends by storm. Some of the ladies really had hard work to keep from rushing to the stage and kissing the young man then and there. When we are emotional, we Americans--to what lengths will we not go!

But the surprises were not yet over. A dash of darkness stayed the music; a swishing and a flapping came from the stage; then the lights.

Vane stood, in statue position, as a falconer. You could almost, under the umber silk, see the rippling of his veins.

Only a second he stood so, but it was a second of triumph. The company was so agape with wonder, that there was no sound from it until the music and the bare stage, following a brief period of blackness, recalled it to its senses. Then it urged Mrs. Sclatersby to grant a great favor.