The Beauty Part 3

"I wonder--I wonder--what kind of a husband Eugene would have made. Not one of the amiable, benign, deferential ones, anyway. What were those lines 'Gene used to say?

"'Each life's unfulfilled, you see, And both hang patchy and sc.r.a.ppy.

We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired, been happy!'

"That's it--that's it--that's life. To sigh deep--to laugh free; to make your bed in h.e.l.l, and then soar on the wings of the morning.... I'm young, beautiful. I have everything but experience. I mean to have it.... No wonder Eve took the apple the serpent offered, if she was as bored in the Garden of Eden as I am. I'd have bitten more than one, though. What is the use of living if you don't live?"

And while Perdita raged in inward rebellion, the world, viewing things from the outside, took an entirely different view of her matter.

Popular opinion inclined to the belief that the good fairies had too heavily dowered this young woman at her cradle, and consequently a readjustment was inevitable, probably by the gracious means of enn.o.bling tribulation. The dramatic event was rather eagerly antic.i.p.ated. Not that envy had any part in it or that any of Perdita's friends or acquaintances wished to see a fellow being punished for the liberality of Providence. On the contrary. It was merely a sane desire to mark the balances of the universe in faultless equilibrium and to have the comforting a.s.surance that the mills of the G.o.ds still ground with the proverbial exactness.

Youth, health, wealth, beauty, happiness, all unlimited! An exasperating spectacle! How could all be right with the world as long as Hebe continued to pour most of the nectar into one gla.s.s, while so many thirsty, deserving souls were denied even a sip?

And Perdita went her way and smiled alike on those who caviled and those who applauded. She had accepted her husband's friends as her own with a sort of careless, indifferent good nature and the relations existing between herself and the closely cemented little group were sufficiently harmonious under the circ.u.mstances. Maud Carmine and she had struck "leagues of friends.h.i.+p" at once, and Maud's prediction that Hepworth's friends would have to serve as Perdita's relatives would seem to have been verified.

And Maud, through constant a.s.sociation, appeared to have reflected some of Dita's beauty, for there was evidenced the most remarkable change in the plain Miss Carmine, her name no longer prefaced by that deplorable adjective, however. Alice Wilstead explained it by frankly giving the credit to Perdita. It was she, Alice a.s.serted, who had had the faith and the courage to take Maud vigorously in hand and make of her a new creature as far as the outward presentment was concerned. The results had been so mutually satisfactory as to rivet the friends.h.i.+p between the two; for Dita had proved by her works her belief that there was not the faintest necessity for any such creature as an unattractive woman; and Maud, having lost all faith in the willingness of nature to better her original handiwork, had turned hopefully to art, with the result that she was now one of the most talked-of women in town. By men, because she had recently grown attractive enough for them to discover that she was also extremely agreeable and sympathetic. By women, because they ached to discover her secret. They remembered as easily as the men forgot that for twenty-eight years of her life Maud had been as a weed by the wall, a lank and sallow weed, oppressed by the spa.r.s.eness of her leaves and the entire absence of either flowers or fruit, and suddenly she had acquired an art, an air, the trick of dress so subtle that it imparted distinction even to her worst points.

But when Perdita proceeded to verify, a little tardily, it is true, the hope of Mrs. Willoughby Hewston, sighingly expressed at the wedding breakfast, and furnished herself with a relative, the coterie gasped. It was not perhaps just the selection Mrs. Hewston would have made for her, but, nevertheless, Perdita had produced a relative, although, it must be confessed, of a rather dubious and indefinite nearness.

If Mrs. Hewston had been questioned on the subject she might have confessed that the relative she had in mind, as presenting an admirable background for a young and lovely girl, was either a silver-haired mother with a white lace cap, and a hair brooch fastening the snowy lawn collar of her black gown; or, in lieu of her, a maiden aunt. Indeed, had Mrs. Hewston been given free choice, she would have inclined toward the latter. Unquestionably, a maiden aunt is the best possible promoter of that nice sense of the proprieties, those right feelings and carefully graduated moral sentiments which are indispensable to a homeless, penniless young woman scrambling for a living. But Perdita, in presenting her relative, had almost flippantly disregarded these considerations involving a sense of universal fitness. It was a far cry, really an almost revolutionary distance, one felt, from the silver-haired mother or rather acid maiden aunt to Eugene Gresham.

Eugene Gresham! Fancy!

For Eugene had returned to his native land with the recognition of Paris and London, even their acclaim--golden bay leaves and purple cloaks.

Therefore was he thrice welcomed of New York. Therefore, the next presumption followed as naturally as the first. It was out of the question that Mrs. Hepworth, whose beauty was a matter of international comment, should lack a Gresham portrait, a distinction now unattainable save to those upon the mountain peaks of n.o.ble birth, enormous wealth, great achievement, remarkable beauty or superlative notoriety.

As Alice Wilstead pointed out, no one could cavil at any relative Mrs.

Hepworth chose to set up, however regretable might be Perdita Carey's claim of kins.h.i.+p with this particular person, and she had certainly, as far as one knew, been discreet enough not to flaunt him during her scrambles. Now, as Mrs. Hepworth's cousin (how many times removed, dear?) he was one more jewel in her crown.

Mrs. Hewston sighingly acquiesced. "Yes, really. As Mrs. Hepworth's relative, yes. But hardly as the guide, philosopher and friend of youth, feminine youth, anyway." Only the happily married might safely claim him, for Gresham, with his fame as a painter of beautiful women and his almost equal reputation as a fascinating person, would not have been commended by any maiden aunt for either right feelings, nice moral sentiments or a discriminating taste for the proprieties.

As for Cresswell Hepworth, he looked after his vast and varied interests, kept up his collections, especially his collection of amulets, in which he was greatly interested, and occupied his leisure in seeing that his wife was sufficiently entertained and amused to gratify the requirements even of her eager youth.

Did she hint a longing for the Roc's egg? It was cabled for within the hour. Did she breathe a desire for the moon? Orders were given that an aeronautic expedition capable of securing it be manned at once.

And yet in spite of all this obvious contentment and happiness, Mr.

Willoughby Hewston in the role of raven had never ceased to flap his wings and croak. He was particularly in this favorite vein of his one afternoon when he shuffled into his wife's sitting-room, where she and Alice Wilstead sat over their tea-cups. They heard him sighing heavily as he came.

"No, I don't want any tea," he said, letting himself down slowly into an easy chair, "you know I never touch it.

"Poor old Cress!" He shook his head gloomily at a spot in the carpet.

"Well, it's just as I predicted. That wife of his is the talk of the town!"

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed his wife. She, loyal soul, never failed him as audience. A quick glance pa.s.sed between Mrs. Wilstead and herself, as if he had mentioned the subject uppermost in their minds, and, no doubt, in their conversation.

"Oh, come now, Willoughby," said Alice, instinctively choosing the best method of drawing him out, "you know it's nothing like so bad as that."

Hewston scowled heavily and laid one hand gingerly upon his rheumatic knee, which gave him an especially sharp twinge at the moment. "It's probably worse," he replied with even more than his customary acerbity, "worse than we, any of us, know. Didn't I see them walking up Fifth Avenue together this afternoon, and didn't a fellow speak of it to me?

And Cress out of town!"

"Well, let me tell something, dear," said his wife soothingly. "Cress will very soon be in town again, for here are invitations to a dinner the Hepworths are having next week. Quite an informal affair. Perdita writes me, 'Just the little group of Cresswell's best friends, which I hope I may also claim as mine,'" reading from the note she had picked up from the table. "Very sweet of her."

"A dinner, eh," growled Hewston, "with all of us, and I suppose that painter fellow. Well, I only hope it will not fall to me to open poor Cresswell's eyes."

"Oh, Willoughby!"

"I'll not s.h.i.+rk my duty if it does. You can understand that. What evening is this dinner? Next Thursday! Humph! Who is that?" as the curtain before the door was pushed aside and some one entered.

"I!" said Wallace Martin, "only poor little me. They told me to come up.

What's happening next Thursday?"

"The Hepworths' dinner. There is probably an invitation awaiting you at home."

"No, there is not," he said. "It's in my pocket now. I picked it up as I was leaving. From what Maud Carmine has just told me, I imagine it's a touching family group composed of ourselves and Eugene Gresham."

"Dear me," deplored Mrs. Hewston, "I do wish she would consider Willoughby more. She must know that he can not endure the sight of Mr.

Gresham."

"It is not her fault," said Martin quickly, "as far as I can make out from what Maud told me. Cress became imbued with the idea that he wanted his dear old friends cl.u.s.tering about the board, and made out the list himself."

"How like a man!" remarked Alice Wilstead gloomily. "But why, just now?"

"Oh, he's been adding to that pet collection of amulets of his, and he wanted to show us his new acquisitions. That's the root of it, I fancy.

I don't imagine the lovely Perdita pined for us. She has been a creature of moods lately. Very hotty-like with me."

"She was actually almost impertinent to Willoughby the other day." Mrs.

Hewston spoke with a hushed mournfulness. "I'm afraid all this luxury and adulation has turned her head, and Willoughby spoke so gently to her, too, did you not, dear?"

"Ugh! Humph!" quoth Willoughby.

CHAPTER IV

OUR LOVING FRIENDS

AS it chanced the Hepworths were not particularly fortunate in their choice of an evening for the dinner so gloomily antic.i.p.ated by their guests. The weather was unpropitious. All day rain had threatened, and the air had been almost sultry, a parting word flung over her shoulder to autumn by a mischievous July who should long ago have vanished. As the evening wore on clouds banked more densely upon the horizon, occasionally muttering thunder, and this electric hint of storm in the air had in some way communicated itself to the mental atmosphere. A sense of foreboding, a consciousness of discord, seemed to swell ominously now and again beneath the smooth and colorful surface of the dinner. Even the dullest of the guests felt that, and to the intuitive, the stately progress of the meal was nerve-racking.

When the hostess rose, every individual sigh of relief involuntarily exhaled became a chorus, shocking in volume.

They winced nervously, but in spite of it, each guest stood by his guns.

They had, apparently with one mind, and certainly with one voice, decided against bridge. The ordeal of dinner bravely borne, licensed them, they felt, even bestowed the accolade of privilege on them, to escape the prevalent atmosphere of unrest as quickly as possible.

In the brief time they had allotted themselves to remain, barely skirting the limits of conventional decency, Alice Wilstead, Isabel and Willoughby Hewston and Wallace Martin had elected to take their coffee and cigarettes on a small balcony opening from the drawing-room by long French windows and giving upon a garden, quite half of a city block, with thick, close-cropped lawn, and black ma.s.ses of dense shrubbery permeating the damp and sultry air with the mingled fragrance of earth and leaves and some late-blooming flowers. Maud Carmine, good-natured as usual, had seated herself at the piano, across the length of the room from the balcony, to play a ballad of Chaminade's at her host's request.

Hepworth, who alone appeared to be oblivious of the sinister atmospheric influences, leaned his elbows on the piano and listened, occasionally unhesitatingly breaking the flow of the music with conversation.

With their friend and host thus comfortably within sight, yet out of earshot, the group on the balcony felt at liberty to speak with freedom; no danger of sudden appearances, consequent jumps and hot wonder at what might have been overheard.