The Beauty Part 5

"It is indeed," growled Hewston, who had been absorbed in sulky meditation for some time. "I'd be contented if I thought she had enough head on her shoulders to keep straight and not involve good old Hepworth in G.o.d knows what."

Wallace laughed. "I'll lay you a wager, Mrs. Wilstead," he whispered, tapping her fan with his finger-tips, "that the way things are going now there will be a split in the Hepworth household within three months."

"Do not say it," she cried quickly. "I can not bear to think of such a thing."

"I'll give you heavy odds, too," he went on cynically, leaning forward to regard the group at the piano. "I'll make it a bracelet against a box of cigars, provided I'm allowed to choose the brand of cigars."

"You might as well put in another provision then," she retorted, "provided I am allowed to choose the bracelet. My taste in ornaments, dear Wallace, is both unique and expensive. I like only odd jewelry."

"Odd jewelry! That is an old fad of yours, Alice," said Hepworth's voice behind her.

She started slightly, she had not noticed his approach. "And your own,"

she smiled up at him. "Have you secured any new amulets lately, Cresswell?"

"Yes, one. It is a beauty, a scarab. I must show it to you; also another, a carved bloodstone set in very curiously wrought iron. I got that from a Gipsy woman. It is an old Romany talisman."

"Do let us see them," pleaded Mrs. Hewston.

"Certainly, I shall be delighted to. Excuse me a few moments. I will get the box myself. Naturally I would not trust it to the servants." He smiled at his weakness.

"Naturally," said Hewston. "Come, let us all get into the drawing-room to look at them. It is beginning to rain anyway."

It was only a few moments before Hepworth returned bearing a large, black leather box. He placed it on a table just under the light and then choosing a key from a ring, fitted it into the lock.

"I hold one key," he said to the group pressing about him as he lifted the lid, "and Perdita the other. That is in case she may want to wear any of these trinkets."

Alice Wilstead had been looking at Mrs. Hepworth at the moment her husband entered the room and she alone had noticed that Dita started violently when her eyes had fallen on the box and that all the rich color had fled her cheek, leaving her, for a second or two, white as a ghost.

The box held a series of trays, each padded and velvet lined and upon these were fastened Cresswell Hepworth's noted collection of amulets.

Most of these talismans were very ancient, many of them revealed the most beautiful workmans.h.i.+p. All of them were distinctive. Each one, almost without exception, had a history, strange, romantic or sinister, and these were all duly catalogued, but it was never necessary for Hepworth to refer to this written history. He had not only the symbolic significance of his favorite toys, but also the vicissitudes through which they had pa.s.sed, at his finger ends.

The top trays held scarabs, one of the most remarkable collections of them extant, commemorating certain mighty and fallen dynasties; or this reign or that of remote Egyptian rulers long crumbled to dust, and Hepworth lifted them lovingly from their trays and turning them deftly in his fingers explained their histories and expatiated on their beauty.

Beneath the scarabs lay the jade talismans exquisitely carved and handed down from distant centuries. The hearts that had once beat beneath them had long been dust, but the talismans, with no stain of time upon them to dim their l.u.s.ter, would still serve as emblems of good luck to future generations. Then there were quaint amber charms preserving the warmth and flooding radiance of the sunlight that sparkles on sea foam in their depths, and opals delicately clouded with mystery, their "hearts of fire bedreamed in haze," carbuncles, jasper and hyacinth, all in their time the almost priceless possessions of their owners because of the mystic significance attaching to them. And then there were trays containing a somewhat heterogeneous collection of old pieces of beaten silver and iron with odd characters on them, representing periods of even greater antiquity than scarab or jade.

These amulets were in many instances the memorials of bitter feuds and hot duels, fought on the moment, at the gleam of a talisman which both contestants claimed. More than one had been hastily rifled from the dead, and more than one had been bestowed by a great lady on an unt.i.tled lover of empty purse to aid him in winning fame and fortune.

"By the way, Alice," said Hepworth suddenly, "you have seen Dita's amulet, have you not? It is almost, if not quite the gem of the collection."

"No, I have never seen it," Mrs. Wilstead's whole piquant face was alive with interest. "But I have heard of it. It was through it that you met, was it not?"

Dita nodded. The color had come back to her face. "It was that old talisman he was really interested in," she said. "I always tell him he married me to get it."

Hepworth laughed. "It is well worth any one's interest. It has been in her family for generations, and there are all sorts of legends and traditions connected with it. It is said to give his heart's desire to whomever possesses it, isn't it, Dita?"

"More than that," she replied, a little strangely, or at least so it seemed to Alice Wilstead. "He to whom it is given--and it can not be bought or bartered, it must always be bestowed--must sooner or later reveal himself in his true character, either his baseness or his n.o.bility."

"Fascinating!" cried the women in chorus. "What is it like?"

"It is a square of crystal set in silver and gold. About the silver is twined one of those old Celtic chains which can only be seen with a microscope, where the links are so tiny that we have no instruments delicate enough to fasten them together and which were believed to have been made by the fairies. And now for a sight of it."

He was about to lift the next tray, when Dita laid a detaining hand on his arm. "It isn't there, Cresswell," she said in a quick, low voice.

As if he had not heard her or had not taken in the full import of her words, he laid the tray carefully upon the table, disclosing the one beneath. Like the others, it too was full of curious amulets, but one s.p.a.ce was empty. Perdita's talisman was indeed missing.

"Why, Dita!" he exclaimed. "You did not mention to me--"

She shot a quick, unmistakable glance at Gresham. "Didn't I?" she interrupted before he could go further. "It's being mended."

"Ah, those antique bits, they are always coming to pieces, at least I know mine are," said Mrs. Wilstead with hasty fluency. "But, Cresswell, there is still another tray, and I must see its contents before I go home."

"Make it a month," said Martin in her ear. "I said three, didn't I?"

CHAPTER VI

SIROCCO

"Good night, Hewston, good night, Alice. Don't go yet, Gresham."

Hepworth laid a detaining hand on the artist's arm. "Sit down and smoke.

We haven't had a moment to discuss this portrait matter yet."

"I think," said Dita, moving toward the door, "that I shall leave you two to discuss it and go to bed."

"Oh, my dear," her husband detained her with the same light touch with which he had held Gresham. He pushed an easy chair forward so that she should be seated between Eugene and himself. "We are going to get all the details of the portrait settled to-night. A portrait of you and painted by Gresham is sure to bloom and be admired for a century or two at any rate."

Dita looked at him quickly as if suspecting him of some intention beyond the discussion of the contemplated portrait, but meeting the smiling blankness of his expression, turned away, not in the least rea.s.sured, but more puzzled than ever, and sinking listlessly into the chair sat staring moodily before her with veiled eyes and compressed lips.

Eugene glanced at her uneasily, a frown between his brows. He knew her like a book. She had always, always from childhood, been a creature of moods. He was perfectly familiar with the various stages of the sirocco, as he had long ago named her outbursts. She would become restless, abstracted, absent, and then she would sit and brood as she was doing now, until finally the sullen and threatening atmosphere would be cleared by a burst of storm, a swift cyclone of anger.

Gresham gave the faintest of sighs and an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. This was a situation which he foresaw would require all his tact and ingenuity.

"Is the picture gallery all right? Did you find it satisfactory?" asked Hepworth.

"Excellent!" Eugene's brow cleared. He spoke with enthusiasm. "Yes, I told Perdita that the lighting there will be perfect. I've about decided to paint her in white. Yes," scrutinizing the indifferent object of the discussion narrowly and yet remotely, as if he were visualizing his finished portrait of her, "white velvet, I think, and rather a blare of jewels. You see I want to bring out the dominating quality of her beauty, harp on it, you know, so I want to present her eclipsing and reducing to their proper places all the splendid accessories with which we can surround her."

Her husband nodded approvingly. "What do you think, Dita?"

"Oh, by all means," she roused herself to answer, but making no effort to conceal the irony of her tones. "Let Eugene give me all the distinction and grace he is noted for bestowing on, you observe I do not say perceiving in, his clients, or patients, or patrons, whatever he may call them. Make the stones of my tiara and necklace even bigger and whiter and more sparkling than they are, Eugene. Or better still, I'll wear my diamond collar and my string of rubies and my rope of sapphires, all shouting hurrah at once, three cheers for the red, white and blue!

Make me all glittery, Eugene, throw my sables over my shoulders."

"By Jove!" cried Gresham, interrupting her, a white flash of enthusiasm across his face, "you may not dream it, Dita, but that's it exactly.

You've hit it."

"Yes," she went on satirically, "and present me in the middle of all this splendor, overcome by the 'burden of an honor into which I was not born.'"