A flame went over Fuschia"s face and seemed to pa.s.s as swiftly as it had come; but instead, it remained, focused in her eyes.
"I can act," she said briefly, "and, look here, New York may accept me on the magnificent advertising I"ve had and will continue to have; or New York may accept me on the strength of my wonderful gowns designed by Perdita Hepworth. That"s all right, that"s as it should be. But I"m going to make New York forget my press notices, and your gowns and Fuschia Fleming, and I"m going to make it sit tight and still in its boxes and orchestra chairs and balcony seats and laugh and cry with the heroine on the stage who shall be the realest thing on earth to them for the time. That"s the game for me, Mrs. Hepworth. That"s all the game I care a hang about."
"Maudie," said Perdita to Miss Carmine, an hour or two later, "I have just secured a new commission, a big one."
"What?" asked Maud with interest.
"Hepworth and Carmine are to design the costumes that Miss Fuschia Fleming will wear in the repertoire of society dramas in which she will appear after two weeks of Shakespearean roles. Paula Tangueray, Mrs.
Dane, you know the lot of them."
"Perdita! The cheek of her. To make such a request under the circ.u.mstances."
"Maudie! The cheek of _me_," mocked Dita softly.
"You!" astonishment was beyond all bounds now. "You!"
"Yes. Did you fancy--" there were those deep vibrations in Dita"s voice which always bespoke some strong emotion, "that I was going to endure the spectacle of Miss Fleming triumphant "in our midst," and every one watching to see how I would take it, and predicting that only one course remained open for me and that was with dignity to ignore the incident?
Not so. The world will see, and this, amusingly enough, happens to be a fact, that Miss Fleming and Mrs. Hepworth are excellent friends, that Mrs. Hepworth is one of Miss Fleming"s warmest admirers, and that she, still speaking of myself, has a.s.sisted in Miss Fleming"s unparalleled success in New York by designing for her some of the most wonderful costumes ever seen on the stage."
"Unparalleled success!" scoffed Maud. "It is rather early to predict that. New York is like a cat. You never know which way it will jump."
"It will jump Fuschia Fleming"s way," replied Dita confidently. "You haven"t met her."
"Is she so beautiful then? As beautiful as you?"
"Oh, no," Perdita was smoothing out her gloves on her knee. She shook her head decidedly. "Nothing like. She isn"t beautiful at all. She"s just a slender creature with rather colorless _blonde cendre_ hair and blue eyes."
"Oh," Maud was plainly puzzled. "Then what do you mean?"
But Perdita only smiled. "Have you and Wallace made up yet?" she asked with what appeared to the other woman striking irrelevance.
"Impertinent, I know; but there"s a reason?"
"No-o-o," said Maud reluctantly and evidently wondering if Dita had suddenly lost her mind.
"Then do so at once," advised her business a.s.sociate. "Do so before he meets Fuschia Fleming."
"From what you say." Miss Carmine"s chin was high and haughty. "I see no cause for alarm."
"No?" Perdita tapped the table with her finger-tips, still inscrutably smiling.
Maud rarely permitted herself to become angry, but she did so now. She had never imagined that Perdita could be so aggravating. "Just because Cresswell lost his head about her, you think--" she flashed out.
"He didn"t," cried Perdita not with bravado, but with a confidence which Maud realized with surprise was genuine. "I hadn"t been with her three minutes before I knew that. But take my advice," again her voice fell to that teasing note. "If you really love Wallace make up your differences with him to-day, to-day, before he, a playwright, meets the actress.
Then get a new steel chain, one that he can"t chew through, and fasten it securely to his collar."
CHAPTER XIX
HE CALLS ON HIS WIFE
Early in April Hepworth returned to New York. It was a gentle, smiling April, inclining more to laughter than to tears and striving to obliterate the memories of March. He arrived one evening and wasted no time in communicating with Perdita. The next day in fact was marked by the pa.s.sage of notes between them, severely businesslike, and yet models of courtesy.
The result of these diplomatic negotiations was that Mr. Cresswell Hepworth, at a suitable hour the following morning, wended his way to his wife"s business establishment.
It was a deliciously balmy morning, the rare sort of a day that slips in now and then between April showers and sets one dreaming of the glory of the spring in the silent woody places. The great, roaring canyons of brick and stone floated in a silvery, sparkling mist, and in that atmospheric alembic dreary perspectives a.s.sumed an unsubstantial and fairy-like beauty. The little leaves on the trees fluttered in the soft breeze and were so young, so green, so gay that they lifted the heart like tiny wings of joy.
In spite of himself there was the hint of a smile about the corners of Hepworth"s mouth and this deepened and deepened until as he rang the bell of his wife"s door, he suddenly became conscious of it, and carefully suppressed it.
The sphinx, past mistress of inscrutability of expression, would have paid him the tribute of a flicker of admiration as he entered the reception-room. It was without a suggestion of curiosity or even interest in his eyes that he glanced absently about him; perhaps the long droop of the lids at the corners, which appeared to accentuate his rather weary and listless gaze, was more marked than usual, but this was always so when he was making mental notes and registering his observations with the rapidity and accuracy of a ticker.
He awaited Perdita in her reception-room, that charming apartment, and here, in view of certain events which occurred later, it would be well to give the plan of the first floor.
This room opened from the hall and ran the length of the house with windows at the front looking out upon the street while those in the rear opened upon a strip of garden. There was another door at the lower end of the room, which, with the long room, formed an ell, and terminated the hall.
Dita kept Hepworth waiting a bare moment. Her approach was unkindly noiseless, but nevertheless he heard her, and was on his feet, his eyes meeting hers full as she appeared in the doorway. The conventional ba.n.a.lities of greeting were gone through with ease on his part, grace on hers.
Merciful ba.n.a.lities! They gave him time to consider the change in her, a change which was to him sufficiently striking almost to have trapped him into an expressed surprise, and this change was so subtle that he wondered that it should yet be so apparent. It was not a matter of outward appearance, that remained the same in effect. It was a mental change so animating and vital that Cresswell felt all former estimates of her crumble. Had she always been so, and had he never really seen her until now? Had time and absence in some way cleared his obscured vision?
He felt a momentary sense of confusion, a brief mental giddiness, and then he pulled himself together. The first impression was the correct one. She had changed, and thereby had gained, gained tremendously in poise.
But there was no time now in which to a.n.a.lyze impressions.
"So this is the magic parlor where all the ugly women are transformed into beauties." He looked about him as if he had not thought to glance at her surroundings before. "The presence of mere man here seems rather profane, do you not think so? Ah, well, my stay is brief. You have proved, haven"t you, that it is not an impossibility after all, to paint the lily and gild refined gold?"
"So few women have any taste," she said carelessly. "And oh, their houses! You should see them when I go over their hideous houses like a devouring flame and ruthlessly order out all their dreadful junk. And the most awful objects are always the most precious in their eyes. I feel so sorry for them. I have always a guilty sense of being a naughty boy robbing a bird"s nest, and the poor mother birds stand around and flap their wings and hop and shriek. It"s very mournful, but they needn"t have me if they don"t want me."
He laughed. "And Maud? Is she, too, well and happy?"
Dita lifted her hands and eyes. "That is a very tame way of describing her. Her gowns are dreams this spring, she is considered almost a beauty; people, you see, are gradually forgetting that she was ever "that plain Maud Carmine who plays nicely," and Wallace Martin and herself are engaged to be married." A faint, amused smile crept around her mouth at this announcement.
Hepworth looked up with sudden interest. "Indeed! Well, that might have been expected, I dare say, but will it not rather seriously interfere with the business?"
"No," she shook her head. "No, I think not, Maud has no intention of quitting. Wallace"s plays are more or less problematical and Maud has invested a good deal of her money in this. It is really paying remarkably well, you know."
"Dita," his voice was low, and he could not conceal the chagrin, the touch of pain in it. "Why have you never touched a cent of your own money, since my departure? I only learned a few days ago that you had not. I can not begin to tell you how it made me feel. It not only distressed but deeply wounded me."
She twisted a little in her chair. "It--it has never been necessary,"
she said. "We began to make money at once. Really, Cresswell, Maud and I have prospered beyond our wildest dreams."
"But suppose you had not. Is your prosperity the only reason you have not touched it? Would you have done so under any circ.u.mstances? That is what I have been asking myself for the past week, and am now asking you."
She flushed uncertainly. "Ah," she said. "I can not answer you that. I can not tell. One never knows what one will do when the pinch comes."
He smiled faintly. "I"ll not put any more embarra.s.sing questions to you, but confine myself to perfectly safe topics. You are looking very well."