Madcap Part 52

"I'm sure I wish you every happiness. Only--"

He paused.

"Please finish."

"Nothing--except that you will leave me with an unpleasant sense of having been made a fool of."

She rose, flicked her cigarette into the fire and then turned as if about to speak. But thought better of it. There was a long silence.

"Pierre de Folligny and I are friends of long standing," she said at last. "One marries some day. Why not an old friend? The age of madness pa.s.ses--I am almost thirty and I have lived--much. It is time--" she finished wearily, "time that I married again. We understand each other perfectly." A smile slowly dawned and broke.

"What one wants in a husband is not so much a rhapsodist as a rhymester, not so much a lover as a walking-gentleman--Pierre is that, you know."

She sighed again and rose.

"It was very sweet of you to come in, John. Don't misunderstand me again. _That_--" and she paused to give the word emphasis, "is all over. I'm quite safe as a _confidante_. Hermia has treated you very badly, I think. I'd like to tell her so--No? Well, good-bye. Do come in again. I want you to know Pierre better. He really is all that a walking-gentleman should be."

He laughed and kissed her fingers, and in a moment had gone.

Olga Tcherny stood immovable where he had left her, one foot upon the fender, her gaze upon the fire. After a time she stretched forth her fingers to the blaze. All over! She straightened slowly and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror. The firelight gleamed under her brows, brought out with unpleasant sharpness the angle of her jaw and touched the bones of her cheek caressingly. She looked again, the truth compelling her, and then buried her face in her arm. The truth--middle age, had set its first mark upon her. The sallow fingers of Time had touched her lightly, more as a warning than as a prophecy, painted with a reluctant brush a deeper tone into the shadows, a higher note in the lights, had brushed in haltingly the false values that now mocked at her. Time! She seemed to count it by her heart-throbs.

She walked across the room and stood before the portrait John Markham had painted of her. The face gazed out from its shadows, its eyes met hers for a moment, then looked through her and beyond, eyes which looked, yet saw not, eyes deep and inscrutable, seers of visions, bathed in memories which would not sink into oblivion. Her eyes he had painted carefully. For him it seemed the rest of the face had been a blank. The nose, the chin, were hers, and the mouth--the lips, a scarlet smudge of illusiveness. They were hers, too. He had had difficulty with her lips, painting and repainting them. They had puzzled him. "The eyes we are born with," he had said--how well she remembered it now! "The lips are what we make ourselves." At last he had painted them in quickly--almost brutally and let them be. They seemed to mock at her now--to contradict the meaning of the eyes--which would not, could not, smile.

Hermia had scoffed at this portrait because it was not "pretty." There was something bigger than mere prettiness here. He had painted the soul of her, reading with his art what had been hidden from the man, as he had strayed through the labyrinth of her thoughts viewing the blighted blossom of her girlhood and wifehood and the neglected garden of her maturity. As she viewed the portrait now in the light of time and event, she saw, more clearly than ever, her soul and body as Markham had seen it. He had painted her as he would have painted character--an old man or an old woman, searching for shadows rather than lights, seeking the anatomy of sorrow rather than that of joy--had made her the subject of a cool and not too flattering psychological investigation. Was this how he had always seen her? This far-looking, inscrutable, satiated woman of the world, who peered forth into the future, from the dull embers of the past--a being whose physical beauty was rather suggested than expressed--whose loveliness lay in what she might have been rather than in what she was? He had always thought of her thus?

She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Not, not always. She remembered now--he couldn't have painted her as he had painted others--as he had painted a while ago the portrait of Phyllis Van Vorst--carelessly, contemptuously. He had probed deeply--painted form his own deeps.

They had been very close together in those hours, mentally, spiritually, and only the barrier she herself had raised prevented their physical nearness. That, too, she could have had?

A mist fell across the canvas and Hermia's vision interposed, rosy and careless, her braggart youth triumphant.

She turned, threw herself upon the couch and buried her head, her fingers clenched, in the pillows. She made no sound and lay so immovable that one might have thought she was sleeping. But her blood was coursing madly and her pulses throbbed a wrist and neck. She had been true to her better self--with Markham--and her idealism had brought her only this void of barren regret. Whichever way she looked into the past or into the future, the vista was empty; behind her only the echoes of voices and a grim shape or two; before her--vacancy. She had bared her soul to Markham, there in the Square, torn away the veil of her pride and let him know the truth. Why, G.o.d knew. She had been mad. She had believed the worst of Hermia and of him, and had offered herself to him that he might judge between them--her heart and Hermia's, her mind, her body and Hermia's. Was her own face no longer fair that he should have looked at her so curiously and turned away with Hermia's name on his lips, Hermia's image in his heart? A doubt had crept into her mind and lingered insidiously. Hermia innocent!

She was beginning to believe it now. In spite of the d.a.m.ning facts she had discovered, the evidence of Madam Bordier and Monsieur Duchanel, of the peasant women at Tillires and of Pierre de Folligny, the testimony of Hermia's pale face at the shooting lodge at Alenon and of her confession which she had not thought of doubting, the belief had slowly gained force in her mind that Markham had not lied to her. She found confirmation of it in Hermia Challoner's disappearance in France, in her att.i.tude toward Markham and in the announcement of her engagement to another man. Markham could not guess, as she did now, that this was only a _ruse de femme_, born of the access of timidity at the discovery of her indiscretion and the consciousness that she had gone too far with Markham, who must be punished for his share in her downfall. It seemed pitifully clear now.

Olga's bitterness choked and whelmed her. It seemed even worse that Hermia should be innocent. She dared not think of the picture she had made in Markham's mind when she had thrown herself into the scales that he might weigh their frailties and compare them. Hermia innocent! How Olga hated her for it, and for her youth and beauty. They mocked and derided the tender flame that she had nourished, which now glowed ineffectually as in another, a greater light. She hated Hermia for all the things that she herself was not.

Lucidity came to her slowly. After a long while she raised a disordered face and leaned her chin upon her hands, staring at the dying log. She had promised him not to speak. She could not. She had even promised to persuade De Folligny to silence. Had he mentioned the incident already? She did not know. He was not by nature a gossip, but Hermia had not been too tactful and it was a good story--the sanct.i.ty of which, upon the mind of a man of De Folligny's temperament, might not be impressive. She would keep her promise to Markham and persuade Pierre to silence. No one should know by word of mouth--

Olga started up, her eyes wide open, staring at the opposite wall, where there hung a colored print of a woodland scene by Morland, and a smile slowly grew at one end of her lips, a crooked smile, that might have been merely quizzical, had not the impression been unpleasantly modified by the narrowing eyes and the tiny wrinkle that suddenly grew between her brows.

"I will do it," she muttered. "It may be amusing."

CHAPTER XXVI

MRS. BERKELEY HAMMOND ENTERTAINS

The heritage of the world comes at last to the pachyderms. Fate is never so unkind as to those who blindly resist her and into the lap of stoic and unimpressionable she pours the horn of plenty.

Trevelyan Morehouse had gone through life on the low gear. In fact he had no change of gears and needed none. He never "hit it up" on the smooth places or burned out his tires on the rough ones, and was therefore always to be found in perfect repair. He was a good hill climber and had a way of arriving at his destination no matter how difficult the going. When others pa.s.sed him he let them go, and plodded on after them with solemn a.s.surance, his gait so leisurely that rapid travelers had the habit of regarding his conservatism with undisguised contempt. And yet his perseverance, though inconspicuous, was singularly effective. He had won his way into the sanctorum of a big corporation and his advice, though never brilliant, was always sane and peculiarly reliable. He did not mind rebuffs and was so indifferent to indignities that people had ceased to offer them.

Socially he could always be trusted to do the usual thing in the usual way and was therefore always much in demand by hostesses who required conventional limitations. In a word he was "the excellent Trevelyan."

and the adjective fitted him as snugly as it did the well-known comestible with which it had come to be so comfortably and freely a.s.sociated. His excellence lay largely in the fact that he did not excel. He was content with his subordinate capacity, wise in his confidence that all things would come to him in the end, if he only waited long enough.

The same rules which he found so successful in business he now applied to his affair of the heart, and plodded off in the wake of the fast flying Hermia, imperturbable and undismayed. His flowers had been sent to her with the regularity of the clock, his visits carefully timed, and his proposals renewed with a well-bred ardor. He had waited patiently through Hermia's short and sportive attachment for "Reggie"

Armistead, and when their "trial" engagement reached its tempestuous conclusion, had stepped softly into the breach, rosy with hope and a definite sense that his time had come. Hermia liked him--had liked him for years. She had gotten used to him as one does to a familiar chair or an article of diet. He was a habit with her like her bedroom slippers or her afternoon tea. He was comfortable, always safe and quite sane, which she was not, and she accepted him in the guise of counselor and friend with the same cheerful tolerance that she gave to her Aunt Harriet Westfield or to Mr. Winthrop of the Pilgrim Trust Company.

When Hermia departed suddenly for Europe, her sportive idyl so suddenly shattered, Mr. Morehouse followed her in the next steamer. She had given him no definite encouragement, it was true, and yet he found reasons to hope that the time was at hand when she must make some definite decision. In Europe her brief disappearance from the scene of her usual activities had mystified him and her return to her hotel, shabby and uncommunicative, had aroused a chagrin and an anxiety quite unusual to him; but he had sat and waited her pleasure, survived her turbulent moods and had found his patience at last rewarded by her silent acquiescence in his presence, and by an invitation to accompany her to Switzerland, where she was to join her Aunt Julia and the children.

From the vantage point of his office window down town, where he now sat and viewed the bleak perspective of the city, his memories of the summer with Hermia seemed a strange compound of brief blisses and more enduring pangs. They had been much seen together and the announcement of their engagement which had appeared in the newspapers had not been surprising. Aunt Julia had favored his suit and Mrs. Westfield had given him to understand that it was time Hermia married. But the fact remained that Hermia had not accepted him. His insistence had always provoked and still provoked one of two moods--either resentment or mockery. She either dismissed him in a dudgeon or cajoled him with elusive banter. Why was he so impatient? There was plenty of time?

Was he sure that he wanted to marry her? What did her really know about her heart of hearts? Perhaps, if he knew her better he might not want to marry her. He pleaded in patient calm. The world, it seemed, thought them engaged. Why shouldn't _he_ be permitted to think so.

She only laughed at him and her heart of hearts had come to be the most profound enigma that it had ever been his fortune to study. So the prize, which he had thought most surely his own, still hung reluctantly upon the lip of the horn of plenty. It would not fall, and all the traditions of his experience forbade that he should jostle it. And so he only watched with patient eyes and a physical restraint which could only be described as "excellent."

What did she mean by saying that if he knew her better he might not want to marry her? Vague doubts a.s.sailed him. Did he, after all, know her? What was this chapter of her life of which he knew nothing and to which she had so frequently alluded? Was it something which had happened to her in America? Or had it something to do with her disappearance last summer from Paris, after which she had returned sober and intolerant? He gave it up. He was always giving her up and then putting his doubts of her in his pocket with his neat handkerchief, plodding sedulously as before. He must wait. Everything that he had got in life had come from waiting and Hermia, his philosophy told him, must be no exception to the rule.

The winter drew on toward spring. Lent arrived, and society, quite bored and thoroughly exhausted, halted in the mad round of the "one-step" and turned to calmer delights. Country places in adjacent counties were opened and guests flitted from one house to the other in a continuous round of visits.

Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's invitations, whether to the big house near the Park or to Rood's Knoll, her place in the country, were much in demand.

The Hammonds had unlimited means, the social instinct, worthy family traditions, and a talent for entertainment, a combination of qualities and circ.u.mstances which explained the importance of this family in the social life of the city. The mantle of an older leader who had pa.s.sed had fallen comfortably on Mrs. Hammond's capacious shoulders and she wore it with a familiar grace which gave the impression that it had always been there. Conservative, the more radical called her, and radical, the conservative; but her taste and her _chef_ were both above reproach, and her dinners, whether large or small, had the distinction which only comes of a rare order of tact and discrimination. Nor were her hospitalities confined to the entertainment of the indigenous.

Visitors to New York, foreign celebrities, literary, artistic or political, found within her doors a welcome and a company exactly suited to their social requirements. She liked young people, too, and contrived to let them know it, to the end that her dances, while formal, were gay rather than "stodgy," juvenescent rather than patriarchal.

The house at Rood's Knoll was a huge affair, of brick and timbered plaster, set in the midst of its thousand acres of woodland in the heart of the hills. Lent found it full of people and its gayety was reflected in other houses of the neighborhood whose owners, like the Hammonds, kept open house. There was much to do. March went out like a lion and the snow which kept the more timid indoors at the cards made wonderful coasting and sledding, of which latter these wearied children of fortune were not slow to take advantage. The ponds were frozen, too, and skating was added to the sum of their rural delights.

Hermia Challoner, who was visiting Caroline Anstell, joined feverishly in these pursuits, glad of the opportunity they afforded her of relief from her personal problems. There were some of her intimates here in the neighborhood, but she found greater security in the society of an older set of whom she had seen little in town and in the pleasure of picking up the loose ends of these acquaintances.h.i.+ps she managed to forget, at least temporarily, her sword of Damocles. Olga Tcherny was one of Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's house guests, but she had not been in evidence on either of the occasions when Hermia had called. There was some excitement over an evening which Mrs. Hammond was planning to take place in the country during the latter days of Lent. The invitations were noncommittal and merely mentioned the date and hour, but it was understood that "everyone" was to be there, and that an entertainment a little out of the ordinary was to be provided.

It was, therefore, with a pleasurable antic.i.p.ation that Hermia got down from the Anstell's machine on the appointed evening, and followed her party into the great house. The rooms were comfortably filled, but not crowded, and it seemed that the women had done their best to add their share to the merely decorative requirements of the occasion. The ball-room lights s.h.i.+mmered softly on the rich tissues of their costumes, and caught in the facets of the jewels on their bared shoulders. Society was at its best, upon its good behavior, patiently eking out the few short days that remained to it of the penitential season. Hermia managed to elude the watchful Trevelyan and entered the ball-room with Beatrice Coddington and Caroline Anstell. Just inside she found herself face to face with the Countess Tcherny. She would have pa.s.sed on, but Olga was not to be denied.

"So glad to see you, Hermia, dear," she purred, her eyes lighting.

"It's really dreadfully unlucky how seldom we've met this winter.

You're a little thinner, aren't you? But it becomes you awfully."

"Thanks," said Hermia. "I'm quite well."

"I hope you'll like the play, you know I--" and she whispered. "n.o.body knows--_I_ wrote it."

"Oh, really," Hermia smiled coolly. "I hope it's quite moral."

"Oh, you must judge for yourself," said Olga, and disappeared.

The men, having searched the premises vainly for the bridge tables, resigned themselves to the inevitable and drifted by twos and threes into the ball-room, where they melted into the gay company which was not seated, or stood along the back and side walls, making a somber background for the splendid plumage of their dinner-partners.

"_Tableaux-vivants_, for a dollar!" said Archie Westcott in bored desperation.

"Oh, rot!" blurted out Crosby Downs in contempt. "What's the use?

They'll be havin' Mrs. Jarley's waxworks next--"

"Or the 'Dream of Fair Women'--"

"Or charades. Not a card in sight--or a cigar! Rotten taste--_I'd_ call it."

The music of the orchestra silenced these protests and a ripple of expectation pa.s.sed over the audience as the curtain rose, disclosing a sylvan glade and a startled nymph in meager draperies hiding from a faun. The music trembled for a moment and then, as the nymph was discovered, broke into wild concords through which the violins sang tunefully as the chase began. It was not for some moments that the audience awoke to the fact that these must be the Austrian dancers whose visit to New York had been so widely heralded. Captured at last, the nymph was submissive, and the dance which followed revealed artistry of an order with which most of the spectators were unfamiliar.

Even Crosby Downs ceased to grumble and wedged himself down the side wall where he could have a better view. The dance ended amid applause and the audience now really aroused from its lethargy eagerly awaited the next rise of the curtain.