The Imitator Part 7

The time that had pa.s.sed since he began the experiment with the Professor's mirror now filled Vane with horror. The life that had seemed so splendid, so triumphant to him a short while ago, now presented itself to him as despicable, mean, hateful. Now that he had safely ousted the soul of Reginald Hart he loathed the things that, under the dominance of that soul, he had done. The quick feeling of success that he had expected from his adventure into the realm of the mind was not his at all; his emotions were mixed, and in that mixture hatred of himself was uppermost. It was true: he had succeeded. The thoughts, the deeds of another man had become his thoughts, his deeds. The entire point of view had been, for the time, changed. But, where he had expected to keep the outland spirit in subjection, it was the reverse that had happened; the usurping soul had been in positive dominance; he had been carried along relentlessly by the desires and the reflections of that other.

The fact that he knew, now, to the very letter, the mind that animated that fellow, Reginald Hart, was small consolation to him. The odium of that reputation was inescapably his, Orson Vane's. Oh, the things he had said,--and thought,--and done! He had not expected that any man's mind could be so horrible as that. He thought of the visitation he had conjured upon himself, and so thinking, shuddered. How was he ever to elude the contempt that his masquerade, if he could call it so, would bring him?

Above all, that scene with Miss Vanlief came back to him with a bitter pang. What did it profit him, now, to fathom the foul depths of Reginald Hart's mind concerning any ever so girlish creature? It was he, Orson Vane, for all that it was possible to explain to the contrary, who had phrased Miss Vanlief's beauty in such abominable terms.

Consternation sat on his face like a cloud. He could think of no way out of the dark alley into which he had put himself.

Each public appearance of his now had its tortures. Men who had respected him now avoided him; women to whom he had once condescended were now on an aggravating plane of intimacy. Sometimes he could almost feel himself being pointed out on the street.

The mental and physical reaction was beginning to trace itself on his face. He feared his Florentine mirrors now almost as much as the Professor's. The blithe poise had left him. He brooded a good deal. His insight into another nature than his own filled him with a sense of distaste for the human trend toward evil.

He spent some weeks away from town, merely to pick up his health again.

His strength returned a little, but the joy of life came back but tardily.

On his first day in town he met Moncreith. There was an ominous wrinkle gathering in the other's forehead, but Vane braved all chance of a rebuff.

"Luke," he said, "don't you know I've been ill? You can't think how ill I've been. Do you remember I told you I was going abroad? I've been abroad, mentally; I have, Luke, really I have. It's like a bad dream to me. You know what I mean."

Moncreith found his friend rather pathetic. At their last meeting he had been hot in jealousy of Orson. Now he could afford to pity him. He had made Jeannette Vanlief's acquaintance, and he stood quite well with her.

He had made up his mind to stand yet better; he was, in fact, in love with her. He was quite sure that Vane had quite put himself out of that race. So he took the other's hand, and walked amicably to the Town and Country Club with him.

"You have been doing strange things," he ventured.

"Strange," echoed Vane, "strange isn't the word! Ghastly, horrible--awful things I've been doing. I wish I could explain. But it--it isn't my secret, Luke. All I can say is: I was ill. I am, I hope, quite well again."

It seemed an age since he had spent an hour or so in his favorite club.

The air of the members was unmistakably frosty. The conversation shrank audibly. He was glad when Moncreith found a secluded corner and bore him to it. But he was not a bright companion; his own thoughts were too depressing to allow of his presenting a sparkling surface to the world.

They talked in mere s.n.a.t.c.hes, in curt syllables.

"I've seen a good deal of Miss Vanlief," said Moncreith, with conscious triumph.

"Oh," said Vane, with a start, "Miss Vanlief? So you know her? Is she--is she well?"

"Quite. I see her almost every day."

"Fortunate man!" sighed Vane. He was a little weary of life. He wanted to tell somebody what his dreams about Miss Vanlief were; he wanted to cry out loud, "She is the dearest, sweetest girl in the world!" merely to efface, in his own mind, the alien thought of her that had come to him weeks ago. Moncreith did not seem the one to utter this cry to.

Moncreith was too engrossed in his own success. He could bear Moncreith's company no longer, not just then. He muttered lame words; he stumbled out to the avenue.

Some echo of an instinct turned his steps to the little bookshop.

It was quite empty of customers. He pa.s.sed his fingers over the back of books that he thought Miss Vanlief might have handled. It was an absurd whim, a childish trick. Yet it soothed him perceptibly. Our nerves control our bodies and our nerves are slaves of our imaginations.

He was turning to go, when his eye fell on a parcel lying on the counter. It was addressed to "Miss Jeannette Vanlief."

"Jeannette, Jeannette!" he said the name over to himself time and again.

It brought the image of her before him more plainly than ever. The sunset glint in her hair, the roses and lilies of her skin, the melody in her voice! The charm with which she had first met him, in that very shop. It all came to him keenly. The more remote the possibility of his gaining her seemed, the more he hugged the thought of her. He admitted to himself now, all the more since his excursion into an abominable side of human nature, that she was the most unspoilt creature in his world. A girl with that face, that hair, that wit, was sure to be of a charm that could never lose its flavor; the allurement of her was a thing that could never die.

Nothing but thoughts of this girl came to him on the way to his rooms.

Once in his own place, he felt that his reflections on Miss Vanlief had served him as a tonic. He felt an energy once more, a vigor, a desire for action. In that mood he turned fiercely upon some of the drawings on his walls. He called Nevins, and had a heap made of the things that now filled him with loathing.

"All of the Beardsleys must come down," he ordered. "No; not all. The portrait of Mantegna may stay. That has n.o.bility; the others have the genius of hidden evil. They take too much of the trapping from our horrible human nature. The funeral procession by Willette may hang; his Montmartre things are trivially indecent. Heine and his grotesqueries may stay in jail for all I care. Leave one or two of Thoeny's blue dragoons. Leandre's crowned heads will do me no harm; I can see past their cruelties. But take the Gibsons away; they are relegated to the matinee girl. What is to be done with them? Really, Nevins, don't worry me about such things. Sell them, give them, lose them: I don't care.

There's only one man in the world who'd really adore them, and he--" he clenched his hands as he thought of Hart,--"he is a worm, a worm that dieth and yet corrupts everything about him."

He sat down, when this clearance was over, and wrote a rather long letter to Professor Vanlief. He told as much as he could bring himself to tell of the result of the experiment. He begged the Professor, knowing the circ.u.mstances as no other did, to do what was possible to reinstate him, Vane, in the esteem of Miss Vanlief. As to whether he meant to go on with further experiments; he had not yet made up his mind. There were consequences, obligations, following on this clear reading of other men's souls, that he had not counted upon.

CHAPTER IX.

To cotton-batting and similar unromantic staples the great house of R.S.

Neargood & Co. first owed the prosperity that later developed into world-wide fame. It was success in cotton-batting that enabled the firm to make those speculations that eventually placed millions to its credit, and familiarized the Bourse and Threadneedle Street with its name.

What ever else can be said of cotton-batting, however, it is hardly a topic of smart conversation. So in smart circles there was never any mention of cotton-batting when the name of Neargood came up. Instead, it was customary to refer to them as "the people, you know, who built the Equator Palace for the Tropical Government, and all that sort of thing."

A certain vagueness is indispensable to polite talk.

Yet not even this detail of politics and finance counted most in the smart world. The name of Neargood might never have been heard of in that world if it had not been for the beautiful daughters of the house of Neargood. There is nothing, nowadays, like having handsome daughters.

You may have made your millions in pig, or your thousands in whisky, but, in the eyes of the complaisant present, the curse dies with the debut of a beautiful daughter. It is true that the smart sometimes make an absurd distinction between the older generation and the new; sometimes a barrier is raised for the daughter that checks the mother; but caprice was ever one of the qualities of smartness.

Through two seasons the beautiful Misses Neargood--Mary and Alice--reigned as belles. They were both good to look at, tall, stately, with distinct profiles. There was not much to choose, so to put it, between them. Mary was the handsomer; Alice the cleverer. Through two seasons the society reporters, on the newspapers that are yellow as well as those that make one blue, exhausted the well of journalese in chronicling the doings of these two young women.

The climax of descriptive eloquence was reached on the occasion of the double wedding of Mary and Alice Neargood.

Mary changed the name of Neargood for that of Spalding-Wentworth; Alice became Mrs. Van Fenno.

Up to this time--as far, at least, as was observable--these two sisters had dwelt together in unity. Never had the spirits of envy or uncharitableness entered them. But after marriage there came to each of them that stormy petrel of Unhappiness, Ambition.

As a composer of several songs and light operas. Van Fenno was fairly well known. Spalding-Wentworth was known as a man of Western wealth, of Western blue blood, and of prominence in the smart set. For some time the worldly successes of the Van Fennos did not disturb Mrs.

Spalding-Wentworth at all. Her husband was smart, since he moved with the smart; he and his hyphen were the leaders in a great many famous ways, notably in fas.h.i.+on and in golf. From the smart point of view the Van Fennos were not in the hunt with the other family.

Mrs. Van Fenno chafed and churned a little in silence, but hope did not die in her. She made up her mind to be as prominent as her sister or perish in the attempt.

She did not have to perish. Things took a turn, as they will even in the smart world, and there came a time when it was fas.h.i.+onable to be intellectual. The smart set turned from the distractions of dinners and divorces to the allurements of the arts. Music, painting and literature became the idols of the hour. With that bland, heedless facility that distinguishes To-day, the men and women of fas.h.i.+on became quickly versed in the patter of the Muses.

The Van Fennos became the rage. Everybody talked of his music and her charm. Where the reporters had once used s.p.a.ce in describing Spalding-Wentworth's leaders.h.i.+p in a cotillon or conduct of a coach, they were now required to spill ink in enumeration of "those present"

at Mrs. Van Fenno's "musical afternoons."

Wherefore there was a cloud on the fair brow of Mary Wentworth. Her intimates were privileged to call her that. Ordinary mortals, omitting the hyphen, would have been frozen with a look.

When there is a cloud on the wife's brow it bodes ill for the husband.

The follies of a married man should be dealt with leniently; they are mostly of his wife's inspiration. One day the cloud cleared from Mary Wentworth's brow. She was sitting at breakfast with her husband.

"Why, Clarence," she exclaimed, with a suddenness that made him drop his toast, "there's literature!"

"Where?" said Clarence, anxiously. "Where?" He looked about, eager to please.

"Stupid," said his wife. "I mean--why shouldn't we, that is, you--" She looked at him, sure that he would understand without her putting the thing into syllables. "Yes," she repeated, "literature is the thing.