The Silver Butterfly Part 14

Kitty thought quickly. "Give me ten days to decide upon things and have my orders carried out."

"Very good. Ten days. Let me see, that will be Tuesday of week after next. Do you think the rest will come?"

"Of course they will come. They would break any other engagement to meet Mademoiselle Mariposa."

"Then I will find out now if she will come, if you will allow me to use your telephone."

He was lucky enough to find Ydo at home; but when he informed her that he was giving a dinner for a few friends on Tuesday, ten days away, and that he earnestly desired her presence, she demurred.

"What are you doing this evening?" he asked.

"Nothing," she answered, "and I am bored."

"Then jump into your electric and come here to my cousin's, Mrs. Warren Hampton's, as fast as you can," he said audaciously.

"How do you know she wants me? You are taking a great deal on yourself."

For answer Hayden handed the receiver to Kitty, who had followed him out and now stood at his shoulder listening breathlessly to every word.

"Mademoiselle is in doubt of your eagerness to see her," he said.

"Oh, please come," urged Kitty through the telephone. "Waste no time."

"I will be with you in twenty minutes," said Ydo sweetly.

Back in the drawing-room, Kitty was too excited to remain quietly in her chair, but danced about expressing her delight at the prospect of at last seeing the Mariposa sans mask and mantilla.

"Tell me, Bobby," she insisted, "is she really so eccentric?"

"I fancy she does exactly as she pleases, always," he replied.

"And extravagant? Warren says no one could be more extravagant than I."

"She is a dreamer," he averred, "a dreamer who dreams true. Her ideas are so vivid that she insists on seeing them in tangible form. I don't believe she particularly counts the cost or the base material means by which these things must be accomplished."

"Fancy!" sighed Kitty. "Oh, I do hope she will wear one of her stunning gowns and some of those marvelous jewels they say she possesses, set in the most wonderful, quaint ways, Horace Penfield says. But surely she will."

"I think it likely," agreed Robert amiably.

"And is she very clever and interesting?" continued Kitty.

"She is herself," said Hayden. "I can not describe her any other way. She may strike you as a bit staccato and stilted sometimes; but it is natural to her. She is always herself."

There was a faint sound of a curtain before the door being pushed aside, but this, Kitty and Hayden, absorbed in their conversation, had not heard, and now, Mrs. Hampton turned with a stifled scream to see a stranger, a Gipsy, standing almost at her elbow.

"Pretty lady!" The English was more deliciously broken than ever, and so cajoling was the whisper that it would have coaxed the birds off the trees and wheedled money from the stingiest pocket. "Pretty lady, let me tell your fortune. Cross my palm with silver. 'Tis the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter who asks you."

Kitty looked from the Gipsy to Robert in bewilderment. This was not the dazzling figure in gauzes and satins and jewels she had expected, a capricious lady of a foreign and Southern n.o.bility, whose whimsical and erratic fancy was occasionally amused by a change of role. This was a daughter of the long, brown path, who afoot and light-hearted took naturally to the open road, with the tanned cheek, white teeth, and merry eyes of her kind.

And yet, if not the glittering vision Kitty had antic.i.p.ated, Ydo was a sufficiently vivid and picturesque figure. Her short corduroy skirt had faded with wear and washing to a pale fawn-tint with a velvety bloom upon it; her brown boots were high and laced, her blue blouse had faded like her skirt to a soft and lovely hue. A red sash confined her waist, a handkerchief of the same color was knotted loosely about her throat, while a yellow scarf was tied about her head and fell in long ends down her back.

Kitty immediately recovered from the shock she had experienced at the unheralded advent of the strange visitor and endeavored to make up in warmth of greeting for the surprise she had shown.

"Forgive me, instead," said Ydo, with charming penitence. "But I was the Gipsy to-night in heart and feeling. I had to put on these. Oh," throwing herself into a chair, "I have suffered to-day. It has been coming on for days. Ennui. Do you know it, pretty lady? And the longing for mine own people."

"Your people are not in this country, are they?" asked Kitty politely.

The Mariposa drew her brows together in a little puzzled frown. "My people!" she repeated. "Oh," with dawning comprehension, "you mean relatives. I," with a short laugh, "I said mine own people. You," turning to Robert, "you understand. One of the greatest, most searching questions ever asked, and which must finally be answered by each of us from the promptings of his own heart, is: 'Who is my brother and my sister?' Ah, I shall soon take to the road again. If I could only go now!"

"To find your own people," asked Kitty timidly.

"One does not seek one's own," said Ydo disdainfully. "One does not 'scour the seas nor sift mankind a poet or a friend to find.' He comes, and you know him because he is a poor Greek like yourself. Dear lady"--she broke into one of her airy rushes of laughter--"in spite of your smiles and all the self-control of a careful social training, you are the picture of bewilderment. See, you can keep no secrets from the fortune-teller. You can not place me. Why do you try? I refused to be announced and mine was the fate of the listener. Brutus there is an honorable man who admits that I am extravagant, even if he condones it.

Ah, madame, money is not wealth, it is a base counterfeit, a servant whom I bid to exchange itself for beauty. These"--she stripped the petals from a red rose in a vase near her, and tossed them in the air--"these are the real wealth of the world. And Brutus says I am stilted, exaggerated in my conversation, given to metaphor and hyperbole. That is because I dare to express what I feel, and since everywhere I see parables I voice them.

Why not?

"And Brutus says I am eccentric, admitting that I dare to be myself; and to dare to be one's self, dear lady, is to dare everything. We are afraid of life, of love, of sorrow and joy, of everything. This fear of life is universal."

"And you, are you never afraid?" asked Kitty.

"Of what?" laughed the Gipsy. "Let me tell you a secret; and oh, madame, wear it next your heart, guard it. 'Tis a talisman against fear. The lions are always chained. Believe me, it is so. But our conversation is of a seriousness! Mr. Hayden spoke of a dinner."

"Yes, and he's given me permission to do just as I choose," said Kitty.

"So it's got to be a success--"

"And she's trying to say," interrupted Hayden, "that it couldn't possibly be a success without you."

"Of course I am," agreed Kitty, "only I should have put it less bluntly."

"Wait! I have an inspiration." Ydo thought a moment. "I will not come to the dinner. We can make it much more effective than that. Ah, listen!"

waving her hands to quell their protests. "Let me appear, later in the evening, in my professional capacity and tell the past, present and future of your guests. Yes, I will come in mask and mantilla, The Veiled Mariposa," with a dramatic gesture, a quick twinkle of the eyes toward Hayden. "I a.s.sure you, it will be far more interesting so."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"There is really no doubt about that," said Kitty thoughtfully, and together they silenced Robert's eloquent plea that the dinner would fall flat unless Ydo was one of the guests.

"It is settled, and I must go." The Mariposa spoke decisively. "I shall go home and make Eunice play for me, and perhaps I shall dance off some of my restlessness."

"Oh, dance for us," begged Kitty. "I will play for you, and you see that the piano is so placed that I can watch you at the same time. What shall I play? Some Spanish dances?"

Ydo, full of the spirit of the thing, considered. "I think I will show you a pretty little dance I learned down in South America."

"South America!" Hayden started as if he had received an electric shock.

Perhaps a heightened color glowed on Mademoiselle Mariposa's cheek; but she gave no further sign of perturbation. "Yes," she answered carelessly, "I have lived there, in one place or another. Any one of those Spanish dances will do, Mrs. Hampton. Watch my steps. They are peculiar and very pretty."

As she stood there swaying like a flower in a breeze, it was, to Hayden's fancy, as if he had never seen color before. Kitty in her pinks and blues was a gay little figure; her drawing-room was a rich and sumptuously decorated apartment, but under the spell of the Mariposa's "woven paces and weaving hands," Mrs. Hampton appeared a mere Dresden statuette, the tapestried and frescoed walls became a pale and evanescent background, and Ydo alone, dancing, focused in herself all light and beauty; nay, she herself was the pride of life, the rhythm of motion, the glory of color.

On and on she danced and Hayden, watching, dreamed dreams and saw visions. She was the Mariposa floating over a field of flowers, scarlet and white poppies, opening and closing its gorgeous wings in the hot sunshine; she was a snow-flake whirled from the heart of a winter storm; she was an orchid swaying in the breeze; she was a thistledown drifting through the gra.s.ses.

Then, at the height of her spells she stopped and laughingly cast herself into a chair.