"Gad!" said Mr. Hewston, more gray and pink, puffy and heavily financial than ever, "when will people learn to eat and drink without flowers on the table?"
"No flowers!" repeated Alice Wilstead. "It would look dull, would it not?" From her tone it was evident that she had paid little heed to his words.
"What difference does that make?" he argued irritably. "You don"t go to dinner to look at the table decorations. But if they must have "em, why can"t they have the artificial kind or those paper things. Anything but the beastly, smelly, live ones."
"Don"t you really care for them?" she asked, laughing. "I thought every one loved flowers. To tell the truth, they were about all that made that unending dinner bearable to me. They were so exquisitely arranged."
"Oh, that," in grudging admission, "goes without saying in this house, but," fretfully, "they were all the loud smelling kind."
"She always arranges them herself," said Mrs. Wilstead, "she has wonderful taste, wonderful. Her house, her clothes, even down to the smallest detail of the table. Marvelous!"
"Humph! she doesn"t show the same taste in men," grunted Hewston. "No brains at all."
Mrs. Wilstead leaned forward to tap his arm with her fan.
"Do not make any mistake on that score," her voice was emphatic, "she has plenty of brains."
"Humph!" more scornfully than before. "Then I wish they"d keep her from making the fool of herself that she is doing now."
"Hs-s-sh," Alice looked as if she would like to thrust a handkerchief into his mouth. "Ah!" glancing up with relief as Isabel and Wallace Martin turned from their contemplation of the garden over the balcony railing. "Sit down here," she motioned to two chairs beside her.
"Dear me, Alice," said Martin, "isn"t your face tired with the effort of keeping the corners of your mouth turned up and the sparkle in your eyes? The only person who seems calm and serene this evening is dear old Hepworth. What do you think it is on his part, the quintessence of pose or simple, uncomprehending, fatuous ignorance?"
"My G.o.d!" growled Hewston explosively. His wife started nervously.
"Oh Willoughby dear, not so loud! Wallace," in what was as near a tone of reproof as she could achieve, "I do wish you wouldn"t say those reckless things before Willoughby. You know how emotional he is."
Alice also shook her head impatiently. "Don"t you think we are a lot of old gossips magnifying matters enormously? You may expect so beautiful a young woman as Dita Hepworth to be more or less talked about; but there is probably a perfect understanding between herself and Cress. Lord help her if there isn"t," she added almost under her breath, "I"ve known him many a year."
""When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect?""
quoted Martin impressively. As a would-be playwright he had the dramatists at his finger-tips.
"Wallace, you are too bad," expostulated Mrs. Wilstead. "No wonder you quote from _The School for Scandal_. Here we are a lot of old wreckers doing our best to shatter a reputation. Why Dita Hepworth and Eugene Gresham have known each other ever since they were children. Naturally, she shows her pleasure in his society."
"Oh pish!" scoffed Wallace Martin, "those unconcealed glances she bestowed on him at dinner spoke not of sisterly affection, and how we all squirmed under them and wondered miserably if Hepworth was seeing them too."
"He always did see everything without appearing to," murmured Mrs.
Wilstead gloomily.
"Now merely as a sporting chance, which would you bet on," said Martin, drawing his chair a bit nearer, "the rich, middle-aged husband, or the fascinating artist, the painter of beautiful women, in the zenith of his fame? It is the same old plot you know, and the oft-told tale may have just two endings. First, she goes off with the artist, lives a squalid and miserable life abroad, falls ill, and dies, holding the hand and imploring the forgiveness of her husband, who conveniently and miraculously appears. In the second ending, she makes all preparations to flee and then something occurs which causes her to see the sculpturesque n.o.bility of her husband"s character and the curtain descends to slow sweet music while they stand heart to heart in the calcium light of a grand reconciliation scene."
"Oh, Wallace, do forget for once that you are trying to be a playwright.
Forget the shop." Mrs. Wilstead was irritable. "I do wish she would join us," looking about her nervously, "I want to go home. Is she utterly careless?"
"Only absorbed," returned Martin calmly. "Didn"t you hear her ask him before they left the room, to come and look at the picture gallery where he is to paint her portrait? She wanted him to judge of the lighting--a night like this. I thought I saw the flutter of her white gown in the garden yonder a bit ago."
"Oh do, for goodness sake, change the subject," said Alice Wilstead hurriedly. "I am sure Cresswell must think it queer the way we are all sitting out here with our heads together, in the teeth of that approaching storm."
"Not at all," Martin rea.s.sured her. "Don"t you see that Maud is doing her duty heroically? Maud isn"t the wife"s confidante and dearest friend for nothing."
"Isn"t it perfectly wonderful about Maud?" commented Mrs. Hewston. "You all know what a plain, angular creature she was, nothing really to recommend her but her music and she always spoiled that by playing with her shoulder blades."
"She"s an extremely stunning woman," said Wallace Martin shortly.
"And all due to Dita Hepworth," announced Mrs. Wilstead. "Wonderful! I never saw a woman with such a genius for dress and decoration. If her beauty wasn"t such an obvious quality, I should think it was due to her almost uncanny knowledge of what is becoming and--Ah, thank Heaven, here she is!"
CHAPTER V
PERDITA"S TALISMAN
Perdita Hepworth had entered the room, with Eugene Gresham just a step or two behind her, and, after a glance in the direction of Maud Carmine and her husband, had moved toward the little group on the balcony.
Gresham was used to any amount of attention and admiration, but the adulatory interest which he may have merited and had, in fact, grown to regard as his due, was always conspicuously lacking when he appeared with Perdita.
"The picture gallery is the chosen spot," she announced as if bearing some intelligence for which they had long been waiting, "and the sittings are to be begun at once. I remember when I first knew Maud Carmine, she said to me, "Fancy what it must be like to have your portrait painted by Eugene Gresham!"" Her low laughter rang with a sort of triumphant amus.e.m.e.nt. ""Dear child," I answered, "I have had my portrait painted by him so many times that there would be no novelty whatever in the experience." You know," to Mrs. Hewston, who looked faintly puzzled, ""Gene and I have always known each other." She looked over at Gresham who was seated on the arm of a chair talking to Maud Carmine and Hepworth. "Has Maud been playing for Cresswell?" she asked suddenly. "He is so fond of her music."
"Yes, she has been playing delightfully," answered Mrs. Wilstead, "and she looks charming to-night. Maud who was always regarded as an ugly duckling has suddenly become a swan."
"Ah, why not?" said Perdita carelessly. "Maud hadn"t the faintest idea how to make the most of herself. She gave the effect of hard lines and angles, and hair and eyes and skin all cut from the same piece, a dingy dust color. Like every other woman of that type she has a perfect pa.s.sion for mustard colors and hard grays. Ugh!" she shivered. "The only thing to do with Maud was to make her realize that she must look odd and mysterious, you know. That was all. Oh, she is beckoning to me. They want something."
She crossed the room with that grace of bearing which nature had bestowed upon her and with the added poise and a.s.surance gained within the last two years. She still gave the effect of extreme simplicity in dress but it was retained as by a miracle, for although she wore no jewels her white gown was of the most exquisite and costly lace. But her head was undeniably carried a trifle higher than usual, and a very close observer might have read boredom in her eyes, defiance in her chin, rebellion in her shoulders. As she turned from the little group on the balcony, she bit her lip irritably, before she again composed her features to the conventional smile of hostess-like cordiality.
Alice Wilstead followed her with puzzled eyes.
"It is very difficult to understand a beauty," she said plaintively to Martin.
"Put it more correctly," as he blew a cloud of smoke. "Say, it"s difficult to understand a woman."
"But I do not find it so," she smiled. "I"m one myself. I"m on to all our various vagaries, but Dita Hepworth puzzles me. Look at this house.
There are effects here in decoration, so beautiful and unusual that every one says Eugene Gresham directed them. I know he did not. Look at Maud Carmine, and yet Dita herself usually wears the plainest of gowns."
"I must confess," said Martin, "that I do not follow you."
"Perhaps not," she mused, then with more animation. "Come, Wallace, tell me exactly how she impresses you."
"That is easy," he replied. "She is one of the prettiest women I ever saw in my life."
"Ah, of course," in annoyance, "but I didn"t mean that. That is no impression of character."
"Mm," he pondered. "It isn"t much of one, no."
Alice leaned back in her chair. "I seem to discern depths in her that the rest of you refuse to see. You stop at her beauty and are content with never a peep beneath the surface."
Martin tossed his cigarette over the railing into the garden. "Frankly, I think that you are searching for something that isn"t there," he said abruptly. "The G.o.ds never bestow all their gifts on one person. Since you profess to know your own self so well you should realize that women so very pretty as Mrs. Hepworth are rarely clever. Why should they be?
It is enough of an excuse for existence that they are beautiful."