Linda Condon Part 2

"The enchantments were as thick as shadows under the trees: perhaps the loveliest of women riding a snow-white mule, with a saddle cloth of red samite, or, wrapped in her s.h.i.+ning hair, on a leopard with yellow eyes, lured you to a pavilion, scattered with rushes and flowers and magical herbs, and a shameful end. Or a silver doe would weep, begging you to pierce her with your sword, and, when you did, there knelt the daughter of the King of Wales.

"But I started to tell you about the wors.h.i.+p of beauty. Plato started it although Cardinal Pietro Bembo was responsible for the creed. He lived in Italy, in an age like a lily. It developed mostly at Florence in the Platonic Academy of Cosomo and Pico della Mirandola. Love was the supreme force, and its greatest expression a desire beyond the body."

He gazed at Linda with a quizzical light in his eyes deep in shadow.

"Love," he said again, and then paused. "One set of words will do as well as another. You will understand, or not, with something far different from intellectual comprehension. The endless service of beauty. Of course, a woman--but never the animal; the spirit always.

Born in the spirit, served in the spirit, ending in the spirit. A direct contradiction, you see, to nature and common sense, frugality and the sacred symbol of the dollar.

"It wouldn't please your Mr. Jasper, with his heaps and heaps of money.

Mr. Jasper would consider himself sold. But Novalis, not so very long ago, understood.... A dead girl more real than all earth. You mustn't suppose it to be mere mysticism."

Linda said, "Very well, I won't."

He nodded. "No one could call Michelangelo hysterical. Sometime in the history of man, of a salt solution, this divinity has touched them.

Touched them hopefully, and perhaps gone--banished by the other destination. Or I can comprehend nature killing it relentlessly, since it didn't lead to propagation. Then, too, as much as was useful was turned into a dogma for politics and priests.

"You saw in the rushlight a woman against the arras; there was a humming of viola d'amore from the musicians' balcony; she smiled at you, lingering, and then vanished with a whisper of brocade de Lyons on a sanded floor. Nothing else but a soft white glove, eternally fragrant, in your habergeon, an eternally fragrant memory; the dim vision in stone street and coppice; a word, a message, it might be, sent across the world of steel at death. And then, in the last flicker of vision, the arras and the clear insistent strings, the whispering brocade de Lyons on the landing.

"The philosophy of it," he said in a different tone, "is exact, even a scientific truth. But men have been more concerned with turning lead into gold; naturally the spirit has been neglected. The science of love has been incredibly soiled:

"The old gesture toward the stars, the bridge of perfection, the escape from the fatality of flesh. Yet it was a service of the body made incredibly lovely in actuality and still never to be grasped. Never to be won. It ought to be clear to you that realized it would diminish into quite a different thing--

"'_La figlia della sua mente, l'amorosa idea._'"

His voice grew so faint that Linda could scarcely distinguish articulate sounds. All that he said, without meaning for her, stirred her heart.

She was used to elder enigmas of speech; her normal response was instinctively emotional, and nothing detracted from the gravity of her attention.

"Not in pious men," he continued, more uncertain; "nor in seminaries of virtue. They have their reward. But in men whose bitterness of longing grew out of hideous fault. The distinction of beauty--not a payment for prayers or chast.i.ty. The distinction of love ... above chests of linen and a banker's talent and patents of n.o.bility.... Divine need. Idiotic.

But what else, what better, offers?"

He was, she saw, terribly sick. His hands were clenched and his entire being strained and rigid, as though he were trying to do something tremendously difficult. At last, with infinite pain, he succeeded.

"I must get away," he articulated.

Linda was surprised at the effort necessary for this slight accomplishment when he had said the most bewildering things with complete ease. Well, the elevators were right in front of him. He rose slowly, and, with Linda standing at his side, dug a sharp hand into her shoulder. It hurt, but instinctively she bore it and, moving forward, partly supported him. She pressed the bell that signaled for the elevator and it almost immediately sank into view. "Hurry," he said harshly to the colored operator in a green uniform; and quite suddenly, leaving a sense of profound mystery, he disappeared.

III

Linda decided that he had told her a rather stupid fairy story. She was too old for such ridiculous things as ladies in their s.h.i.+ning hair on a leopard. She remembered clearly seeing one of the latter at a zoological garden. It had yellow eyes, but no one would care to ride on it. Her mother, she was certain, knew more about love than any man. His words faded quickly from her memory, but a confused rich sense stirred her heart, a feeling such as she experienced after an unusually happy day: white gloves and music and Mr. Jasper displeased.

A clock chimed ten, and she proceeded to her mother's room, where she must wait up with her information about Mr. Jasper's wife. She was furious at him for a carelessness that had brought her mother such unfavorable criticism. Everything had been put away before going down, and there was nothing for her to do. The time dragged tediously. The hands of the traveling-clock in purple leather on the dressing-table moved deliberately around to eleven. A ringing of ice in one of the metal pitchers carried by the bell boys sounded from the corridor. There was the faint wail of a baby.

Suddenly and acutely Linda was lonely--a new kind of loneliness that had nothing to do with the fact that she was by herself. It was a strange cold unhappiness, pressing over her like a cloud and, at the same time, it was nothing at all. That is, there was no reason for it. The room was brightly lighted and, anyhow, she wasn't afraid of "things." She thought that at any minute she must cry like that baby. After a little she felt better; rather the unhappiness changed to wanting. What she wanted was a puzzle; but nothing else would satisfy her. It might be a necklace of little pearls, but it wasn't. It might be--. Now it was twelve o'clock.

Dear, dear, why didn't she come back!

Music, awfully faint, and a whisper, like a dress, across the floor.

Her emotion changed again, to an extraordinary delight, a glow like that which filled her at the expression of her adoration for her mother, but infinitely greater. She was seated, and she lifted her head with her eyes closed and hands clasped. The clock pointed to one and her parent came into the room.

"Linda," she exclaimed crossly, "whatever are you doing up? A bad little girl. I told you to be asleep hours before this."

"There is something you had to know right away," Linda informed her solemnly. "I only just heard it from Mrs. Randall and Miss Skillern."

Her mother's flushed face hardened. "Mr. Jasper is married," Linda said.

Mrs. Condon dropped with an angry flounce into a chair. Her broad scarf of sealskin slipped from one shoulder. Her hat was crooked and her hair disarranged. "So that's it," she said bitterly; "and they went to you.

The dam' old foxes. They went to you, nothing more than a child."

Linda put in, "They didn't mean to; it just sort of came out. I knew you'd stop as soon as you heard. Wasn't it horrid of him?"

"And this," Mrs. Condon declared, "is what I get for being, yes--proper.

"I said to-night, 'George,' I said, 'go right back home. It's the only thing. They have a right to you.' I told him that only to-night. And, 'No, I must consider my little Linda.' If I had held up my finger,"

she held up a finger to show the smallness of the act necessary, "where would we have all been?

"But this is what I get. You might think the world would notice a woman's best efforts. No, they all try to crowd her and see her slip. If they don't watch out I'll skid, all right, and with some one they least expect. I have opportunities."

Linda realized with a sense of confusion that her mother had known of Mr. Jasper's marriage all the while. But she had n.o.bly tried to save him from something; just what Linda couldn't make out. The other's breath was heavy with drinking.

"You go to bed, Lin," she continued; "and thank you for taking care of mama. I hope to goodness you'll learn from all this--pick out what you want and make for it. Don't bother with the antique frumps, the disappointed old tabbies. Have your fun. There's nothing else. If you like a man, be on the level with him--give and take. Men are not saints and we're better for it; we don't live in a heaven. You've got a sweet little figure. Always remember mama telling you that the most expensive corsets are the cheapest in the end."

Linda undressed slowly and methodically, her mother's words ringing in her head. Always remember--but of course she would have the nicest things possible.... A keepsake and faint music. She thought, privately, that she was too thin; she'd rather be her mother, with shoulders like bunches of smooth pink roses. In bed, just as she was falling asleep, a sound disturbed her from the corridor above--the slow tramping of heavy feet, like a number of men carefully bearing an awkward object. She listened with suspended breath while they pa.s.sed. The footfalls seemed to pound on her heart. Slowly, slowly they went, unnatural and measured.

They were gone now, but she still heard them. The cras.h.i.+ng of her mother into bed followed with a deep sigh. The long fall of a wave on the sh.o.r.e was audible. Two things contended in her stilled brain--the mysterious feeling of desire and her mother's advice. They were separate and fought, yet they were strangely incomprehensibly joined.

IV

In the morning Mrs. Condon, with a very late breakfast-tray in bed, had regained her usual cheerful manner. "The truth is," she told Linda, "I'm glad that Jasper man has gone. He had no idea of discretion; tired of them anyhow." Linda radiated happiness. This was the mother she loved above all others. Her mind turned a little to the man who had talked to her the night before. She wondered if he were better. His thin blanched face, his eyes gleaming uncomfortably in smudges, recurred to her.

Perhaps he'd be down by the cigar-stand again. She went, presently, to see, but the row of chairs was empty.

However, the neglected thick brown-covered magazine was still on the ledge by which he had been sitting. There was a name on it, and while, ordinarily, she couldn't read handwriting, this was so clear and regular, but minutely small, that she was able to spell it out--Howard Welles.

It disappointed her not to find him; at lunch she observed nearly every one present, but still he was lost. He wasn't listening to the music after dinner, nor below. A deep sense of disappointment grew within her.

Linda wanted to see him, hear him talk; at times a sharp hurt in the shoulder he had grasped brought him back vividly. The next day it was the same, and finally, diffidently, she approached the hotel desk. A clerk she knew, Mr. Fiske, was rapidly sorting mail, and she waited politely until he had finished.

"Well?" he asked.

"I found this down-stairs," she said, giving him the magazine. "Perhaps he'll want it." Mr. Fiske looked at the written name, and then glanced sharply at her. "No," he told her brusquely, "he won't want it." He turned away with the magazine and left Linda standing irresolutely. She wanted to ask if Mr. Welles were still at the Bos...o...b..; if the latter didn't want the magazine she'd love to have it, Linda couldn't tell why.

But the clerk went into the treasurer's office and she was forced to move away.

Later, lingering inexplicably about the spot where she had heard so many bewildering words, a very different man spoke to her. He, Linda observed, was smoking a cigar, a good one, she was certain. He was smallish and had a short bristling mustache and head partly bald.

His shoes were very s.h.i.+ny and altogether he had a look of prosperity.

"h.e.l.lo, cutie!" he cried, capturing her arm. She responded listlessly.

The other produced a crisp dollar bill. "Do you see the chocolates in that case?" he said, indicating the cigar-stand. "Well, get the best. If they cost more, let me know. Our financial rating is number one." Linda answered that she didn't think she cared for any. "All right," the man agreed; "sink the note in the First National Ladies Bank, if you know where that is."