The Beauty Part 16

"Cautiously, cautiously, daughter," admonished Fleming, looking a trifle alarmed. "That's all right on the stage; but in real life when an outsider tries to join the parted hands of husband and wife, he's likely to get a cuff on the ear."

"Oh, men are crude," sighed Fuschia. "You didn't suppose I was going to do the child at Christmas act, did you? No, what I mean to do, that is, if it's just her imagination and not really her heart that's captured, is to take her boy-Raphael away from her."

Fleming gasped, and, lowering his head slightly, looked at his daughter from under his eyebrows. "Fuschia," he said, "there are few things that can feaze me. 'No limitations and no limits' has always been my motto, but you do, child, you really do take my breath away sometimes. Why, if report is true, Cress' wife is one of the most beautiful women in the world."

"Um-huh," Fuschia yawned indifferently. "What has that got to do with it? I've usually," she continued thoughtfully, "succeeded in getting anything I wanted; that is, men. The wildest of them will trot right up to me, and eat out of my hand."

"You're your father's own little girl, Fuschia," said Jim with emotion.

"Yes, and it's a good thing I inherited father's const.i.tution as well as his spell-binding abilities, considering that I have to be practically my own press agent, stage manager and all the rest of it; the management of Fuschia Fleming and Fuschia Fleming herself and then take up the task of reuniting families besides. But Mr. Hepworth is a good, good man, Papa, and we're going to make him happy, even if we have to do it on his money."

CHAPTER XVII

DO YOU LOVE ME?

The Warrens and Mrs. Wilstead had remained in Santa Barbara a week, time enough for Alice to discover that Hepworth was in no apparent need of the consolatory offices of his old friends, that Fuschia Fleming was a most entertaining young woman, and that Hayward Preston's attentions were persistent and his intentions manifest and purposeful.

During the next month, no matter in what part of the state they were and in what hotel Alice and her friends registered, Preston was sure to turn up before the day was over; and to begin at the earliest possible moment his unending argument. Along palm-shaded boulevards, under avenues of pepper trees, in orange groves, on lonely mountain trails, in the shadow of old missions, on surf-pounded beaches, in secluded nooks of great hotels, everywhere and at all times he told his plain, unvarnished tale. He had now asked Mrs. Wilstead to marry him in every resort in California; and had not yet succeeded in winning her consent, and the day of her departure was drawing near. Within two days she would be leaving for New York. It was at Pasadena that Mr. Preston made his last desperate stand.

He and Alice were strolling about the gardens of the hotel; she had not wished to get too far away from the sheltering Warrens, and there Preston was making what he a.s.sured her was his last appeal.

She, however, preferred to view his condition of mind and heart in a psychological rather than a sentimental way.

"It is a habit, an obsession," she a.s.severated, tilting her rose-lined parasol toward the sun so that charming pink reflections fell upon her face. "You have lost sight of the object in the zest of pursuit. It is the game which absorbs you, believe me. The winning would disconcert you. Yes, it's the game. I am convinced that you have lost sight of the goal and all that it entails."

Mr. Preston merely looked at her. "It entails you," he replied simply.

"It entails a great deal more," her speech was as quick as his was slow.

"You are, you tell me, exactly thirty-three years old. I, Alice Wilstead," she shut her lips and breathed hard a moment and then gallantly took the fence, "am just thirty-eight."

Not by even the flicker of an eyelash did he show either surprise or dismay. Alice's heart went out to him. She really adored his impa.s.sivity; it was so unlike anything she was capable of.

"What has that got to do with my loving you and your loving me?" asked Preston stolidly.

"Everything," she answered deeply, regarding with drooping eyes and wistful mouth a great, fragrant rose which she held between her fingers.

"If we could but hold this moment, if neither of us would know further change, why--"

"Then you admit that you could care for me, that you do care for me," he exclaimed with brightening eyes.

"Let it remain at 'could' and 'might,'" with one of her swift smiles.

"But under any circ.u.mstances, I do not wish to marry any one. Look at my admirable position, rich, free, supposedly attractive, young--a widow, you know, is always a good five or six years younger than either a married or an unmarried woman. One is regarded as a young widow until one is quite an elderly person. Now, really, why should I marry?"

"There isn't any possible reason," agreed Mr. Preston unhappily, "unless you love me, and then there is every reason. But are you not tired walking up and down, up and down these paths? Shall we not sit down on this seat a few minutes?"

She acquiesced. It was a glorious morning and the spot was enchanting with all this fragrant, almost tropical plant life blooming and blowing about them, and Alice, impelled by the softness and sweetness of the air and scene, forgot her adamantine resolutions and lifted her eyes to his in one long and too-revealing glance.

"Alice, Alice"--there were all manner of tender inflections in his usually colorless and unemotional tones--"you can not now deny--"

"Yes, I can," she cried quickly; "I can and I do. Hayward, believe me, it will never, never do. You are looking at the matter from the man's viewpoint, I, from the woman's, and, in cases of this kind, the woman's is the surer, the more safely intuitive."

"Bos.h.!.+" Preston's exclamation was calm, but pregnant.

"But consider, consider," she besought him. "Look at us, you are the robust, ruddy, phlegmatic type that will not change in twenty years, and I am exactly your opposite in every respect and that's the reason you like me and therein lies the whole tragedy. I'm nervous, mercurial, emotional, and nothing, nothing brings wrinkles so quickly as vivacity and expression."

"But you haven't any wrinkles."

"Not yet. Care, ma.s.sage, a good maid and a light heart have kept them at bay. And, oh! gray hair!"

"But you haven't any gray hair," he said, with the same patient obstinacy.

"Not yet, but when they do begin to come, they come all at once.

Hayward, I do not deny that I could care for you if I would let myself, but when I realize that for a woman to marry a man younger than herself makes life one long, hideous effort to keep the same age as her husband; oh, it is too frightening! Just think! No matter how much one may long for repose to have to be always up and exercising to keep one's figure; to have to hold on to one's complexion by always sleeping in stifling masks and slippery cold cream; to be always watching the roots of one's hair to see if it doesn't need retouching, and, worst of all, to have to be gay and vivacious and conceal, heaven knows, what twinges of rheumatism under a smiling face."

"You're just talking," said Preston calmly. "Keep on if it amuses you.

It doesn't mean anything at all to me. Not at all." His success in life was largely due to the fact that he always kept the main object in view and never permitted himself to be diverted by side issues. "Your personal appearance ten years from now has nothing to do with the matter. We may both be dead ten years from now. There is only one question to be discussed and that is, 'Do you love me?'"

The petals fell from the red, red rose as Alice twisted it nervously in her fingers.

"I think I have given you ample proof of my liking for you," she said at last, "but the _loving_ is obscured in doubts."

"Forget them, for my sake," he murmured. "Can't you, won't you, Alice?"

"If I could only get away from those mental pictures," she confessed.

"They stand between us like a barrier. Just think of arriving at the point where you want to doze after dinner and dream over some nice, slow, old book, with your head comfortably nodding now and then. And the fire flickering and the cat purring on the rug. Lovely, isn't it? And instead, think of realizing wearily that you've got to spend the evening at the opera or playing bridge. And that, of course, means turning yourself at an early hour into the hands of your maid for repairs and decoration. And then you've got to sit upright the whole evening because your stays, which are guaranteed to give you the lithe and willowy figure of youth, will not let you lean back. And you do not dare to smile, because you will crack the kalsomining on your face; neither may you move your head, you are so afraid that the curls and puffs and braids may not be pinned on tight. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she sighed heavily.

"And it's not for you," Preston spoke firmly. "There is nothing coltish about me." Alice laughed, it was so true. "Business is all that very deeply interests me, and amus.e.m.e.nts bore me very much. I like the after-dinner doze and the fire and cat already. You will probably have more of that kind of thing than you like, if you marry me. Alice, will you not consider?"

"Mrs. Wilstead, Mrs. Wilstead," a page's voice rang through the shrubbery and came nearer and nearer and Alice took from him a thick letter addressed to her in Isabel Hewston's hand and adorned with a special delivery stamp.

"From a dear friend," Alice exclaimed. "Will you excuse me while I look at it? There may be some matter of importance, you know."

In Preston's manner there was no hint of his annoyance. He behaved as well as a man could when interrupted in the most fervent declarations of affection which the limitations of his nature permitted him. He even suggested that he withdraw, and rose, hat in hand. Could complaisance, consideration go further? There were only two days before him, and she had never been so near yielding before.

"Oh, no, no," almost possessively, she stretched forth a hand to detain him. "You have nothing to do but wait, and I shall run through this,"

touching the letter, "in a moment."

Preston sat down beside her again and lighting a cigarette, smoked and looked out over the brilliant garden before him while she read.

It was evident, Alice discovered this before she had finished the first page, that Isabel Hewston was actuated by no deeper motive than pure, erratic impulse when she placed that special stamp upon the letter. At least so Alice and Preston probably would have agreed and Isabel reluctantly would have admitted it. But the Fates who sit in the background and transmit wireless messages to mortals would have smiled inscrutably and shaken their heads. If Isabel hadn't stuck that stamp on for no reason whatever, and if the page hadn't sought Alice through the breeze-caressed, rose-scented garden and given her the missive at the exact moment he did--but, as Eugene Gresham would say, "What's the use?

Why conjecture?" What really occurred was this:

"Dearest Alice," wrote Mrs. Hewston, "how I envy you in that southern paradise while here the weather merely changes from sleet and snow to rain and then back again."

There was a page or two of this and of Willoughby's various ailments and symptoms, and then a long and glowing account of her visit to Perdita Hepworth, and a great deal of minute, enthusiastic description of the gowns that Dita was designing for her.