CHAPTER XII
FUSCHIA FLEMING
Procrastination was a thief that had never succeeded in wresting much time from Hepworth. He was one of those rare and exemplary natures who never put off until to-morrow what they can do to-day. Never did he stand shivering on the edge of his cold bath, but plunged in immediately without pause for consideration. Obnoxious virtues these--prejudicial to any popularity among his fellow-beings, therefore it speaks volumes for him that he was able to overlive them.
This all goes to show that although the duty of keeping an eye on Fleming"s daughter became more repugnant to him the longer it remained in contemplation, he yet lost no time in looking her up, as he expressed it to himself. Neither did he waver in his promise to himself fitly to celebrate Eugene Gresham"s departure for other sh.o.r.es, but kept his vow by selecting the most gaudily decorated and wastefully beribboned box of sweets he could secure, and armed with it, as a hostage to impertinent childhood, took himself to the big hotel where Miss Fuschia Fleming was stopping.
He sent up his name to her and was very shortly informed that Miss Fleming was in the garden and would be delighted to have him join her there.
Hepworth curled his lip. What grown-up airs! Naturally, she had lost no time in turning up her hair and having her gowns lengthened since her father"s departure, and he, Hepworth, would have to play up to this phase of missishness.
He was dazzled for the moment by the bright sunshine, the brilliant flowers, and mechanically followed the page, threading his way through various groups of people. Before a table among the roses sat a young woman reading. The page stopped; Hepworth stopped; the young woman cast aside her book and rose.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Before a table sat a young woman reading.]
"How do you do, Mr. Hepworth?" She stretched out her hand with a boyish gesture, smiling into his eyes, and the sunshine grew dim. "Won"t you sit down? I"ve just ordered some tea. If you don"t drink it, won"t you tell the man to bring you something else when he comes? Father said--"
"But father is surely not Fleming, Jim Fleming," he said, firmly determined to get this absurd mistake straightened out at once.
"But father just is," she a.s.serted as firmly. "And since you asked for Miss Fleming, I am she, Fuschia Fleming. That is my ridiculous name."
But Hepworth had so far lost his mental equilibrium that he could not immediately recover himself.
"Fuschia Fleming is a little girl," he insisted, although this time not half so positively, "and great Heavens," with one of his quick smiles, "I"ve brought you a box of candy and just barely escaped buying you a doll."
"I wish you had," she said. "I love dolls, especially the kind that you would bring me." There was undeniably something heady about Fuschia Fleming"s glance. "And as for sweets, they"re grateful and comforting to any age. You"d better give me that box at once, and I"ll give you a practical demonstration of my appreciation."
Fuschia had the curliest mouth. There is no other way to describe it. It was all in ripples, not small, but looking smaller than it really was because it turned up quite sharply at the corners, like her father"s.
And the lashes that lay on her pale, smooth cheeks were the curliest and longest Hepworth had ever seen. Her eyes were blue, blue as the sea, and very cool and gay and inclusive. Without being sharp or speculative or inquisitive, they yet took in all the details of whatever they rested upon.
But Hepworth was a keen observer, and he noticed at once that although her pale face was for the most part alive with laughter, there was yet a certain worn look about it, as if she had been recently over-taxed and fatigued. There were faint but undeniable lines about the mouth and eyes that time had never etched there; and that blythe a.s.sured bearing, her detached, yet ready manner, were not suggestive of the ease of confident youth. They bespoke training.
Hepworth"s eyes, their droop rather more p.r.o.nounced than usual, were fastened on an adjacent palm, as if he demanded from it the answer to this riddle. Getting no response there, he turned his speculating eye on a tree of magnificent crimson roses as if hoping for some enlightenment from that quarter.
"Why do you not tell me all about it?" urged Fuschia gently. "What"s the use of trying to puzzle me out unaided? Father has evidently told you a lot of conflicting things. I really can throw more light on the subject than any one else."
Her voice was beautiful, soft and full and creamy, with all exquisite modulations and inflections, and its music cleared Hepworth"s befogged brain. He released the palm and the rose tree from the third degree to which he had been subjecting them, and leaned back in his chair as if he relaxed his mind as well as his body, smiling back at her, as confident now, and as a.s.sured as herself.
"I don"t have to," he said. "I know. It"s just come to me. You see your father didn"t happen to mention that you are studying for the stage."
"Studying for the stage!" she cried, as if to refute him, considered, and then nodded emphatically. "Of course I am, and expect to be until I die; but hardly in the sense you mean. My field of study at the present time includes a good deal of practical experience. I"ve been on the stage now for three years, ever since I left school."
"On the stage!" he exclaimed. "But my dear child, under what name?"
"My own," she answered. "Oh, do not look so puzzled. It is the most unlikely thing in the world that you should ever have heard of me. I"m far from a star, just one of the humble members of first this and then that western stock company. You see, my idea was to get my training and experience before I burst upon New York. But New York is beginning to seem too iridescent a dream ever to be realized."
There was a fall in her voice, a touch of wistfulness, which Hepworth found rather touching because its pathos was both uncalculated and unconscious.
"Why?" he asked in surprise. This note of resignation in her tones, of acceptance of a disappointing, inevitable circ.u.mstance, struck him as singularly out of character and aroused his curiosity.
"It"s been the same thing several times in succession now," said Fuschia, a touch of superst.i.tious gravity in her expression. "Just as father is preparing to stake me, and I"m getting a company together to take New York by storm as Rosalind, why, father loses his last dime on a dead-sure thing. There"s a law about it. The biggest winning proposition in years, always comes along just as I am ready to cross the Alps and storm Italy. Uncanny, isn"t it?"
"What nonsense!" Hepworth clipped off the end of a cigar as if it were Fleming"s head. "Do not let yourself be affected by such an absurdity.
The only law, and I admit it"s a strong and binding one, is Jim"s selfishness and irresponsibility. Now my dear child," Hepworth was beginning to fancy himself enormously in the role of paternal adviser, "you make him give you as much as possible."
"I do," she interrupted softly.
"And you lay it all aside, very securely, never touching a penny of it--"
"What about my clothes?" another interruption.
"Never touching a penny of it," went on Hepworth firmly, ignoring these asides on her part, "until you have saved enough to finance yourself.
Isn"t that reasonable?"
"Ye-s," admitted Fuschia. "It is a very reasonable and sensible suggestion, Mr. Hepworth, that is," thoughtfully, "if you leave out father and me. But just get it into your head that at the moment I"d save a nice little heap, father would be hit with an overwhelming impulse to back the wrong horse, and, here"s something awfully queer psychologically, Mr. Hepworth, I"d know as sure as I"m Fuschia Fleming that it was the wrong horse, and yet, I"d get inoculated with the mental virus before I"d know it, and beg him to let me in on it. And you know that father is incapable of staking half or even two thirds of his little all against any proposition he believes in. The only thing that can satisfy him and make his blood tingle is to stake the whole. No limit but the blue canopy of heaven. Limits do fret father."
Mr. Hepworth slightly lifted his shoulders. Then he dropped another lump of sugar into a cup of hot tea she had given him.
"I wish to seem neither irrelevant nor impertinent," he said at last, "but can you act?"
Miss Fuschia Fleming threw up her white chin and laughter bubbled unquenchable from her throat, not vain-glorious mirth, as if the fact of her superlative achievement mocked his crude question, but the unrestrained laughter of genuine amus.e.m.e.nt.
"The idea of asking an actress such a question," she said at last, touching each eye lightly and deftly with a delicate handkerchief. "You may thank your lucky stars that I don"t nearly drown you with picturesque and highly colored tales of my triumphs and then hurl the full sc.r.a.p-book at you. My, but you are a rash man! To ask a professional if she can act!" Again her full-throated laughter rang out delightfully and so heartily that it shook the petals from the cl.u.s.ter of pale golden roses she wore on her breast.
"But look here, seriously now," her laughter died quickly away, her face a.s.sumed a gravity he had not dreamed her mobile features could express, her gaze fastened upon him with a sort of hungry, pa.s.sionate eagerness.
"That was a horrible question of yours," she shivered, as if the breeze blowing over the gardens from the Elysian sea chilled her. "One should know intuitively, instinctively whether an actress can act or not. Good Lord!" she brought her hand down on the table. "If you don"t feel it, know it, beyond all argument, why it isn"t there, that"s all.
"Unless I set you dreaming, unless I suggest in this or that varying pose or expression, the whole world of women, I"m not a born actress.
Training, study can make a good mechanical nightingale of me, a clever imitation of the real thing. That"s all. But unless I have the chameleon quality of reflecting my part, the unerring understanding of any type of woman I may be called upon to represent, how can I be an actress? What does it profit me to give the public a carefully studied, intellectual representation of Portia or Nora, or Juliet or Candida, wide apart as the poles as they may be? I must not only apprehend them, I must be them in every fibre of my being, in every cell of my brain, in every beat of my heart, or I"m nothing. Unless I can convince you that Camille and I are one in emotion and view of life, and then obliterate that impression when I speak to you as Rosalind, why I"m not an actress, not the kind I care to be, anyway."
"By Jove, my dear," cried Hepworth, "you need have no doubts on that score." He had not felt the thrill of such genuine enthusiasm for many a long day.
He forgot the delicate and uncertain state of his marital affairs, forgot the censorious world, his ennui and doubt and regret.
"I have a conviction," he said, "that Jim is going to win a lot on this new proposition of his. If he doesn"t, it"s all the same anyway. Why should you waste your youth and your genius in twentieth rate stock companies?"
In spite of these cheering words, her head continued to droop. Her face had grown paler, and sad were the eyes she lifted to his.
"But you asked me if I could act. You weren"t sure. You didn"t see me as Camille or Rosalind. You just saw Fuschia Fleming all the time."
"Of course I did." His smile was most comfortingly rea.s.suring. "But I saw Fuschia Fleming as Juliet and Portia and all the others. I merely asked you if you could act to see what you would say. No, no, my dear, your future is written so plainly that he who runs may read. No more one-night stands in dreary little towns, Miss Fuschia Fleming, but long engagements, crowded houses, enormous box-office receipts, wildly enthusiastic audiences. Can"t you hear and see them? New York, London, Paris for you!"
"Oh-h!" Fuschia was herself again. She exhaled rapture in an ecstatic sigh. She rose. It is impossible to sit in moments of such high exultation. She positively seemed to soar, to tread on clouds. It was growing late and chill. Almost every one had left the garden, only a few absorbed groups remained. Fuschia was an actress. Self-expression was a necessity to her. She rested her hand, a snowflake, gratefully on his arm, she floated against him, a thistledown, and before he knew it had lightly, enthusiastically, unconcernedly kissed him on the cheek.
"You dear," she cried, "I"ll repay you by showing you what I can do. To tread the forest of Arden in New York! Oh-h! But you are not going. No, no, no!"