The Imitator Part 3

None of the horrible things occurred to him as possibilities; that she might be an adventuress, or a mere masquerading shop-girl, or an adroit soubrette. No tangible intention came to the young man; he had not made it clear to himself whether he would keep on, and on, and on, until she came to her own door; whether he would accost her; whether he would leave all to chance; or whether he would fas.h.i.+on circ.u.mstances to his end.

The girl turned into a little bookshop that, as it happened, was one of Vane's familiar haunts. It was a place where one could always find the new French and German things, and where the shopman was not a mere instrument for selling whatever rubbish publishers chose to shoot at the public. When Vane entered he found this shopman, who nodded smilingly at him, busy with a bearded German. The girl stood at a little table, pa.s.sing her slim fingers lovingly over the t.i.tles of the books that lay there. It was evident that she had no wish for advice from the a.s.sistant who hovered in the background. She did not so much as glance at him.

Her eyes were all for her friends in print. She did look up, the veriest trifle, it is true, when Orson came in; it was so swift, so shy a look that he, in a mist of emotions, could not have sworn to it. As for him, a boyish boldness took him to the other side of the table at which she stood; he bent over the books, and his hands almost touched her fingers.

In that little, quiet nook, he became, all of a moment, once more a youth of twenty; he felt the first shy stirrings of tenderness, of wors.h.i.+p. The names of the volumes swam for him in a mere haze. He saw nothing save only the little figure before him, the s.h.i.+mmer of rose upon her face pa.s.sing into the ruddier s.h.i.+mmer of her hair; the perfume of her lilies and some yet subtler scent, redolent of fairest linen, most fragile laces and the utterest purity, came over him like a glow.

And then the marvel, the miracle of her voice!

"Oh, Mr. Vane," he heard her saying, "do help me!" Their eyes met and he was conscious of a bewildering beauty in hers; it was with quite an effort that he did not, then and there, do something absurd and stupid.

His hesitation, his astonishment, cost him a second or so; before he caught his composure again, she was explaining, sweetly, plaintively, "Help me to make up my mind. About a book."

"Why did you add that?" he asked, his wits sharp now, and his voice still a little unsteady. "There are so many other things I would like to help you in. A book? What sort of a book? One of those stories where the men are all eight feet high, and wear medals, and the women are all models for Gibson? Or one of those aristocratic things where n.o.body is less than a prince, except the inevitable American, who is a newspaper man and an abomination? Or is it, by any chance," he paused, and dropped his voice, as if he were approaching a dreadful disclosure, "poetry?"

She shook her head. The lilies in her hair nodded, and her smile came up like a radiance in that dark little corner. And, oh, the music in her laugh! It blew ennui away as effectually as a storm whirls away a leaf.

"No," she said, "it is none of those things. I told you I had not made up my mind."

"It is a thing you should never attempt. Making up the mind is a temptation only the bravest of us can resist. One should always delegate the task to someone else."

The girl frowned gently. "If it is the fas.h.i.+on to talk like that," she said, "I do not want to be in the fas.h.i.+on."

He took the rebuke with a laugh. "It is hard," he pleaded, "to keep out of the fas.h.i.+on. Everything we do is a fas.h.i.+on of one sort or another."

He glanced at her wonderful hat, at the gown that held her so closely, so tenderly. "I am sure you are in the fas.h.i.+on," he said.

"If Mr. Orson Vane tells me so, I must believe it," she answered. "But I wear only what suits me; if the fas.h.i.+on does not suit me, I avoid the fas.h.i.+on."

"But you cannot avoid beauty," he urged, "and to be fair is always the fas.h.i.+on."

She turned her eyes to him full of reproach. They said, as plainly as anything, "How crude! How stupidly obvious!" As if she had really spoken, he went on, in plain embara.s.sment:

"I beg your pardon. I--I am very silly this morning. Something has gone to my head. I really don't think I'd better advise you about anything to read. I--"

"Oh," she interrupted, already full of forgiveness, since it was not in her nature to be cruel for more than a moment at a time, "but you must.

I am really desperate. All I ask is that you do not urge a fas.h.i.+onable book, a book of the day, or a book that should be in the library of every lady. I am afraid of those books. They are like the bores one turns a corner to avoid."

"You make advice harder and harder. Is it possible you really want a book to read, rather than to talk about?"

"I really do," she admitted, "I told you I had no thought about the fas.h.i.+on."

"You are like a figure from the Middle Ages," he said, "with your notion about books."

"Am I so very wrinkled?" she asked. She put her hand to her veil, with a gesture of solicitous inquiry. "To be young," she sighed, with a pout, "and yet to seem old. I am quite a tragedy."

"A G.o.ddess," he murmured, "but not of tragedy." He laughed sharply, and took a book from the table, using it to keep his eyes from the witchery of her as he continued: "Don't you see why I'm talking such nonsense? If it meant prolonging the glimpse of you, there's no end, simply no end, to the rubbish I could talk!"

"And no beginning," she put in, "to your sincerity."

"Oh, I don't know. One still has fits and starts of it! There's no telling what might not be done; it might come back to one, like childishness in old age." He put down the book, and looked at her in something like appeal. "There is such a thing as a sincerity one is ashamed of, that one hides, and disguises, and that the world refuses to see. The world? The world always means an individual. In this case the world is--"

"The world is yours, like _Monte Cristo_," she interposed, "how embara.s.sed you must feel. The responsibility must be enervating! I have always thought the clever thing for _Monte Cristo_ to have done was to lose the world; to hide it where n.o.body could find it again." She tapped her boot with her parasol, charmingly impatient. "I suppose," she sighed, "I shall have to ask that stupid clerk for a book, after all. He looks as if he would far rather sell them by weight."

"No, no, I couldn't allow that. Consider me all eagerness to aid you. Is it to be love, or ghosts, or laughter?"

"Love and laughter go well together," she said. "I want a book I can love and laugh with, not at."

"I know," he nodded. "The tear that makes the smile come after. You want something charming, something sweet, something that will taste pleasantly no matter how often you read it. A trifle, and yet--a treasure. Such a book as, I dare say, every writer dreams of doing once in his life; the sort of book that should be bound in rose-leaves. And you expect me to betray a treasure like that to you? And my reward? But no, I beg your pardon; I have my reward now, and here, and the debt is still mine. I can merely put you in the way of a printed page; while you--" He stopped, roving for the right word. His eyes spoke what his voice could not find. He finished, lamely, and yet aptly enough, "You--are you."

"I don't believe," she declared, with the most arch elevation of the darkest eyebrows, "that you know one book from another. You are an impostor. You are sparring for time. I have given you too much time as it is. I am going." She picked up her skirts with one slim hand, turned on a tiny heel, and looked over her shoulder with an air, a mischievousness, that made Orson ache, yes, simply ache with curiosity about her. He put out a hand in expostulation.

"Please," he pleaded, "please don't go. I have found the book. I really have. But you must take my word for it. You mustn't open it till you are at home." He handed it to the clerk to be wrapped up. "And now," he went on, "won't you tell me something? I--upon my honor, I can't think where we met?"

"One hardly expects Mr. Orson Vane to remember all the young women in society," she smiled. "Besides, if I must confess: I am only just what society calls 'out.' I have seen Mr. Orson Vane: but he has not seen me.

Mr. Vane is a leader; I am--" She shrugged her shoulder, raised her eyebrows, pursed up her mouth, oh, to a complete gesture that was the prettiest, most bewildering finish to any sentence ever uttered.

"Oh," said Orson, "but you are mistaken. I have seen you. No longer ago than last night. In--"

"In a mirror," she laughed. Then she grew suddenly quite solemn. "Oh, you mustn't think I didn't know who you were. It was all very rash of me, and very improper, my speaking to you, just now, but--"

"It was very sweet," he interposed.

"But," she went on, not heeding his remark at all, "I knew you so well by sight, and I had really been introduced to you once,--one of a bevy of debutantes, merely an item in a chorus--and, besides, my father--"

"Your father?" repeated Orson, jogging his memory, "you don't mean to say--"

"My father is Augustus Vanlief," she said.

He took a little time to digest the news. The clerk handed him the book and the change. He saw, now, whence that charm, that grace, that beauty came; he recalled that the late Mrs. Vanlief had been one of the Waddells; there was no better blood in the country. With the name, too, there came the thought of the wonderful revelations that were presently to come to him, thanks to this girl's father. A sort of dizziness touched him: he felt a quick conflict between the wish to wors.h.i.+p this girl, and the wish to probe deeper into life. It was with a very real effort that he brushed the charm of her from him, and relapsed, again, into the man who meant to know more of human life than had ever been known before.

He took out a silver pencil and held it poised above the book.

"This book," he said, "is for you, you know, not for your father. Your father and I are to be great friends but--I want to be friends, also, with--" he looked a smiling appeal, "with--whom?"

"With Miss Vanlief," she replied, mockingly. "My other name? I hate it; really I do. Perhaps my father will tell you."

She had given him the tip of her fingers, her gown had swung perfume as it followed her, and she was out and away before he could do more than give her the book, bow her good-bye, and stand in amaze at her impetuousness, her verve. The thought smote him that, on the night before, he had seen her, in the mirror, and spurned the notion of her being other than a sham, a mockery. How did he know, even now, that she was other than that? Yet, what had happened to him that he had been able so long to stay under her charm, to believe in her, to wish for her, to feel that she was hardly mortal, but some strange, sweet, splendid dream? Was he the same man who, only a few hours ago, had held himself shorn of all the primal emotions? He beat these questionings back and forth in his mind; now doubting himself, now doubting this girl. Surely she had not, in that dining-room, been sitting with her father? Would he not have seen them together? Perhaps she was with some of her family's womenfolk? Yes; now he remembered; she had been at a table with several other ladies, all elderly. He wished he knew the name one might call her, if ... if....

Luke Moncreith came into the shop. Orson caught a shadow of a frown on the other's face. Moncreith's voice was sharp and bitter when he spoke.

"Been buying the shop?" he asked.

"No," said Orson, in some wonder. "Only one book."

"Hope you'll like it," said the other, with a manner that meant the very opposite.

"I? Oh, I read it ages ago. It was for somebody else. You seem very curious about it?"

"I am. You aren't usually the man to dawdle in bookshops."

"Dawdle?" Orson turned on the other sharply. "What the deuce do you mean? Are you my keeper, or what? If I choose to, I can _live_ in this shop, can't I?"