The Beauty Part 24

[Ill.u.s.tration: Before she knew it, his arms were about her.]

He spoke now with a sincerity almost stern. "You or all the world may think me false," his head lifted lightly, "it is nothing to me. To the one thing I know as truth I am eternally true. I really, fundamentally do not care that," he snapped his fingers, "for the rest of the show. I have always the dream and before me lies the great achievement. So out of your house, out of your life, out of your heart I go." He came near her as he spoke, his voice was like music. Before she knew it, his arms were about her and he was kissing her hair, where the copper shadows rippled into gold above her temple. "Beautiful and still loved Perdita!

Good-by."

CHAPTER XXIV

WAITING FOR PERDITA

Perdita committed an unpardonable social sin that evening. She, the hostess, was late in her own house. In fact she had sent down word that they were to begin dinner without her.

The three of them then, Maud, Wallace Martin and Hepworth were sitting gazing at one another in a rather mournful and embarra.s.sed fas.h.i.+on, when Mr. and Miss Fleming were announced. Fuschia had stipulated that she was only to remain with them until the appearance of the roast. That was the signal for her departure, the definite limit of her stay. She was due at the theater before eight and it was her custom never to eat anything before the evening performance. This was the first time any of the group had seen her since her tremendous success of a few evenings before.

"Hands up!" she called from the doorway, her gay, delicious voice pealing through the room, "hands up, I say," making an imaginary pistol of her thumb and forefinger and covering the three. "I don't want either your money or your life, but I do insist upon seeing who has blisters on his hands. I shall accept no other proof of friends.h.i.+p."

Hepworth and Martin promptly held up their hands. "I'm ent.i.tled to first honors," said Hepworth, "I've sprained both wrists, can't write my signature and have to have my food cut up for me."

"My hands," said Wallace Martin proudly, "are trained. They no longer show wear and tear. You could drive a dagger against them and it would splinter harmlessly. From long practice in trying to make my own plays go by virtue of my own applause they have acquired the substance and fiber of hickory."

"But dear Miss Fleming," cried Maud, "I deserve more credit than they, for I recklessly sacrificed my most beautiful fan. When the curtain went down for the last time and we climbed off our seats and stopped howling, I held in my hand a limp shred of something and discovered that I had beaten my poor, exquisite, fragile fan to bits."

Fuschia's eyes were full of starry twinkles, her smile was a revelation of joyousness. She drew a long, ecstatic breath, "Boys and girls, it was nice, wasn't it?"

"Nice!" exclaimed Hepworth pus.h.i.+ng a chair forward for her, "Nice! Is that the only word you can find to express your pleasure in the fact that the curtain rose thirty times amid continuous cheers, and New York simply took you to her heart and hugged you?"

"Good old New York! She knew her own little Fuschia by the strawberry mark on her left arm, didn't she? I heard Caruso sing for the first time the other afternoon, and when they asked me afterward how I liked it, I said I only knew of one thing more heavenly and that was the sound of a great audience clapping and shouting. There's no music like that."

Dinner was announced, and Maud, with a slightly worried expression, began explaining to Fuschia that Perdita had been detained; but as they moved toward the door, Hepworth noticed that Fleming had not stirred from the remote corner he had sought upon entering the room.

"Jim, what is the matter?" said Hepworth with some concern; "you haven't interrupted Fuschia once since she came in and you know it's always a neck and neck race between you to see which can talk the faster?"

"He's been asleep," said Fuschia, taking her seat at the table. "Poor papa! the gay life, you know!"

Fleming eyed her indignantly across the bank of primroses in the center of the board. "The gay life! I've had no sleep since I struck New York, that's true. I've had to keep going, and take these poor little pick-me-ups of cat-naps whenever I can get them; but why? For a week before this great first night, I had to sit up with Fuschia and hold her hand and tell her what an unparalleled success she was going to have and then that night, after all the excitement and anxiety I suffered as her father, and the exhaustion incident upon being first _claqueur_, why she drove me out into the cold, damp, rainy streets with one of your New York blizzards just setting in, to buy her the first morning papers, and since then I've had to celebrate her triumph. I'll tell you what it is, friends, I'm a raveled sleeve of care and no kind sleep to knit me up."

"Do you know what has really happened?" said Fuschia, in calm explanation. "Dear papa can't help putting in those Dumas and Poe touches, but come to me for the straight truth. It's really the funniest thing about papa. His luck always comes right along with mine. Now what do you think?"

"He's made a million since he came to New York," said Wallace Martin.

"Lost the other fellow's million, you mean," said Hepworth with feeling.

"Wrong. It's the most unexpected thing you ever dreamed of," Fuschia's voice was triumphant, "papa's got a social success. Yes," nodding impressively, "just look at him closely and you'll see that he's lost his natural, unconscious man-look. He now has a drawing-room-pet expression and he's wearing his hair differently, and throwing out his chest. Oh, you needn't laugh, Mr. Hepworth, it's true. 'Hyperion curls, the front of Jove himself.' When we were coming on I determined that I would always be very kind to papa. I'd never neglect nor ignore him, no matter how famous I became; but, of course, he'd just be Fuschia Fleming's father. But what are the real facts of the case? Father sits in the seats of the mighty, flattered by great ladies and avoids mention of his humble actress daughter. King Cophetua and the chorus girl!"

"I had to come to New York to find out that the feminine boycott against me wasn't complete," said Mr. Fleming with emotion. "I tell you, Hep, it's a wonderful experience suddenly to realize that the entire crew of petticoats the world over don't look at you as if they all had gla.s.s eyes in their heads instead of real ones."

"How do you account for it, Jim?" asked Hepworth.

"From camp to court, my boy, has ever been but a step, although sometimes it's a mighty long one," returned Fleming oratorically. "Now this is the way I've explained it to myself. You see, I've got that wild, free, above-timber-line flavor about me that simply locos the type of woman that keeps husband hobbled to a stake under the big tree by the back porch where she can keep an eye on him from the kitchen windows. Now, personally, the catnip and parsley kind of woman never did appeal to me; but these New York orchids are different. They know how to appreciate the Rocky Mountain edelweiss, and seem grateful to me for taking their husbands off their hands now and then. And they're so interested, too, in the little every-day incidents of an old prospector's life."

"You just ought to hear papa Oth.e.l.loize those Ophelias," said Fuschia, deftly seizing the first opportunity to get into the conversation.

"He'll tell them about being carried down a thousand feet in a mighty snowslide and escaping unhurt, and of the fabulous properties he's discovered, and of frequent encounters with enormous grizzlies, where he'll tap them lightly on the jaw and advise them to hasten home and then if they get too familiar, he gives them a twist of the wrist that sends them howling back to the woods."

"Fuschia," said her father sternly, "you talk entirely too much, and there's a day of reckoning coming for you. Just wait till you get to London. There you'll be sneaking in at the back door and eating a cold biscuit in the pantry while you're waiting to do a few recitations for the ladies and gentlemen; while I'll be sailing in to dinner with a belted earless on one arm and a tiaraed d.u.c.h.ess on the other."

"I'm afraid I see your finish, Jim," sighed Hepworth. "You'll end as a leader of cotillions. Your head is badly turned."

"There's no denying, Hep, that we are apt to set and undue value on what we've never had, and these late-blooming feminine smiles are like a bottle of champagne in the desert."

"Oh, dear, here is the roast," cried Fuschia disconsolately, "and Cinderella must run away. Is there no hope of seeing Mrs. Hepworth this evening?" turning to Maud.

Maud hesitated a moment, then, "I really do not know," she confessed frankly, "she--she has not been particularly well all day." She simply could not plead for Perdita the conventional bad headache while Hepworth's steady eyes were fixed upon her.

Fuschia, who happened to be looking at him, saw a quick shade of disappointment pa.s.s over his face, and her impulsive sympathy was roused by the depth and poignancy of that immediately suppressed emotion. She threw herself into the breach.

"Oh, I want dreadfully to see her to-night about the gown I am to wear when I play the scheming adventuress next week. We were to have decided it to-night. She is thinking of putting me in green instead of the usual black with touches of scarlet, and the accustomed badge of the adventuress, high-heeled scarlet slippers. And I am so anxious to know if Mrs. Hepworth has decided upon green, a wonderful, wicked, dazzling green, with strange blue lights in the shadows. Oh, may I send a message and ask her to see me just a moment?"

But before Maud could answer, Perdita entered the room. She pleaded the usual headache, which Maud had so carefully avoided, and that threadbare social fiction was for once upheld and substantiated. Dita's appearance fully bore it out. Her face was pale, her eyes heavy. She promised, however, to give a full consideration to the question of Fuschia's green gown the next morning, and the actress who had already overstayed the limits of the time she had allotted herself prepared to take her departure.

"Oh," she cried from the door, "I forgot to announce my two important bits of good news. Mr. Martin is going to write me a comedy and Eugene Gresham is going to paint my portrait."

A faint smile hovered for one moment about Perdita's lips. "When did Eugene make his request?" she asked in her usual low tones, although her head lifted suddenly.

"This afternoon," replied Fuschia, and Dita's smile deepened. "And he is going to give me a fete in his studio."

"The usual ball in the artist's studio?" laughed Maud looking at Martin.

"Don't you dream it," Fuschia laughed irrepressibly, also; "not the stage kind with its crowd of maskers. This is to be patterned after an afternoon among the great artists in j.a.pan. You wear j.a.panese things and crawl through a little door into a room with nothing in it but just one perfect flower in a perfect vase, and we will all sit on the floor and drink tea."

"It sounds very much like him," said Maud, "but is it true Wallace that you are really going to do a play for Miss Fleming?"

"It happily is," said Martin, "a comedy."

"Not a problem play?" The light of hope dawned in Miss Carmine's eyes.

"Oh, dear me, no," cried Fuschia; "and he's going to write it just as he talks."

"I'd very much prefer to have you talk it as I write," said Martin, but she had already vanished.

In a very few minutes the others followed her example, Fleming leaving the house with Maud and Wallace.

CHAPTER XXV