The Imitator Part 12

Her hands slim and white; her voice firm and low; her eyes of a hue like that of bronze, streaked like the tiger-lilies; her profile sharp as a cameo's; the nose, with its finely-chiseled nostrils, curved in Roman mode; the mouth, thin and of the faintest possible red, slightly drooping. And then, her hair! It held, again, a spray of lilies of the valley; the artificial lights discovered in the waves and the curls of it the most unexpected shades, the most mercurial tints. The slight touch of melancholy that hovered over her merely enhanced her charm.

Moncreith told himself that he would go to the uttermost ends of evil to win this woman. He had come, the afternoon of that day, through the most dangerous stream in the world, the stream of loveliness that flows over certain portions of the town at certain fas.h.i.+onable hours. It is a stream the eddies of which are of lace and silk; its pools are the blue of eye and the rose of mouth; its cataracts are skirts that swirl and whisper and sing of ivory outlines and velvet shadows. Yet, as he looked at Jeannette Vanlief, all that fascinating, dangerous stream lost its enticement for him; he saw her as a dream too high for comparison with the mere earthiness of the town. He felt, with a grim resolution, that nothing human should come between him and Jeannette.

Orson Vane, from his chair, paid scant attention to his fellow spectators. He was intent upon the dish that O'Deigh and Wantage had prepared for his delectation. He felt a delicious interest in every line, every situation. He had made up his mind that he would go to the root of the mystery that men called Arthur Wantage. Whether that mask concealed a real, high intelligence, or a mere, cunning, monkeylike facility in imitation--his was to be the solution of that question.

Wrapped up in that thought he never so much as glanced toward the box where his friends sat.

At the end of the first act Vane strolled out into the lobby. He nodded hither and thither, but he felt no desire for nearer converse. A hand on his shoulder brought him face to face with Professor Vanlief. He was asked to come up to the box. He listened, gravely, to the Professor's words, and thanked him. So Moncreith was smitten? He smiled in a kindly way; he understood, now, the many brusqueries of his friend. That day, long ago, when he had been so inexplicable in the little bookshop; the many other occasions, since then, when Luke had been rude and bitter. A man in love was never to be reckoned on. He wished Luke all the luck in the world. It struck him but faintly that he himself had once longed for that sweet daughter of Augustus Vanlief's; he told himself that it was a dream he must put away. He was a mariner bent on many deep-sea voyages and many hazards of fate; it would be unfair to ask any woman to share in any such life. His life would be devoted to furthering the Professor's discoveries; he meant to be an adventurer into the regions of the human soul; it was a land whither none could follow.

Perhaps, if he had seen Jeannette, he might have felt no such resignation. His mood was so tense in its devotion to the puzzle presented by the player, Wantage, that the news brought him by Vanlief did not suffice to rouse him. He had a field of his own; that other one he was content to leave to Moncreith.

Moncreith, in the meanwhile, was making the most of the opportunity the Professor, in the kindness of his heart, had given him. The orchestra was playing a Puccini potpourri. It rose feebly against the prattle and the chatter and the hissing of the human voices. Moncreith, at first, found only the most obvious words.

"A trifle bitter, the play," he said, "rather like a sneer, don't you think?"

"Well," granted Jeannette, indolently, "I suppose it is not called 'Voltaire' for nothing. And there are moods that such a play might suit."

"No doubt. But--do you think one can be bitter, when one loves?"

The girl looked up in wonder. She blushed. The melancholy did not leave her face. "Bitter? Love?" she echoed. "They spell the same thing."

"Oh," he urged, "the play has made you morbid. As for me, I have heard nothing, seen nothing, but you. The bitterness of the play has skimmed by me, that is all; I have been in too sweet a dream to let those people on the stage--"

"How Wantage would rage if he heard you," said the girl. She felt what was coming, and she meant to fence as well as she could to avoid it.

"Wantage? Bother Wantage!" He leaned down to her, and whispered, "Jeannette!"

The flush on her cheek deepened, but she did not stir. It was as if she had not heard. She shut her eyes. All her weapons dropped at once. She knew it had to come; she knew, too, that, in this crisis, her heart stood plainly legible to her. Moncreith's name was not there.

"Jeannette," Moncreith went on, in his vibrant whisper, "don't you guess what dream I have been living in for so long? Don't you know that it is you, you, you--" He faltered, his emotions outstriding his words. "It is you," he finished, "that spell happiness for me. I--oh, is there no other, less crude way of putting it?--I love you, Jeannette! And you?"

He waited. The chattering and light laughter in the stalls and throughout the house seemed to lull into a mere hushed murmur, like the fluttering and twittering of a thousand birds. Moncreith, in his tense expectation, had heed only for the face of the girl beside him. He did not see, in the aisle below, Orson Vane, sauntering to his seat. He did not follow the direction of Jeannette Vanlief's eyes, the instant before she turned, and answered.

"I wish you had not spoken. I can't say anything--anything that you would like. Please, please--" She shook her head, in evident distress.

"Ah," he burst out, "then it is true, after all, what I have feared. It is true that you prefer that--that--"

She stayed him with a quick look.

"I did not say I preferred anyone. I simply said that you must consider the question closed. I am sorry, oh, so sorry. I wish a man and a woman could ever be friends, in this world, without risking either love or hate."

"All the same," he muttered, fiercely, "I believe you prefer that fellow--"

"Orson Vane's downstairs," said the Professor entering the box at that moment.

"That d.a.m.ned chameleon!" So Moncreith closed, under his breath, his just interrupted speech.

CHAPTER XIV.

A little before the end of that performance of "Voltaire," Orson Vane made his way to Arthur Wantage's dressing-room. They had, in their character of men in some position of eminence in different phases of the town's life, a slight acquaintance. They met, now and then, at the Mummers' Club. Vane's position put him above possibility of affront by Wantage in even the most arrogant and mannerless of the latter's moods.

Vane's invitation to a little supper, a little chat, and a little smoke, just for the duet of them, brought forth Wantage's most winning smile of acquiescence.

"Delighted, dear chap," he vowed. He could be, when he chose, the most winning of mortals. He was, during the drive to Vane's house, an admirable companion. He told stories, he made polite rejoinders, he was all glitter and graciousness. But it was when he was seated to an appetizing little supper that he became most splendid.

"My dear Vane," he said, lifting a gla.s.s to the light, "you should write me a play. I am sure you could do it. These fellows who are in the mere business of it,--well, they are really impossible. They are so vulgar, so dreadful to do business with. I hate business, I am a child in such affairs; everyone cheats me. I mean to have none but gentlemen on my business staff next season. The others grate on me, Vane, they grate.

And if I could only gather a company of actors who were also gentlemen--Oh, I a.s.sure you, one cannot believe what things I endure.

The stupidity of actors!" He p.r.o.nounced the word as if it were accented on the last syllable. He raised his eyes to heaven as he faltered in description of the stupidities he had to contend with.

"Write a play?" said Orson, "I fear that would be out of my line. I merely live, you know; I do not describe."

"Oh, I think you would be just the man. You would give me a play that society would like. You would make no mistakes of taste. And think, my dear fellow, just think of the prestige my performance would give you.

It would be the making of you. You would be launched. You would need no other recommendation. When you approach any of these manager fellows all you have to do is to say, 'Wantage is doing a play of mine.' That is a hallmark; it means success for a young man."

"Perhaps. But I have no ambitions in that way. How do you like my Bonnheimer?"

"H'm--not bad, Vane, not bad. But you should taste my St. Innesse. It is a '74. I got it from the cellars of the Duke of Arran. You know Merrill, the wine-merchant on Broadway? Shrewd fellow! Always keeps me in mind; whenever he sees a sale of a good cellar on the other side, he puts in a bid; knows he can always depend on Wantage taking the bouquet of it off his hands. You must take dinner with me some night, and try that St.

Innesse. Ex-President Richards told me, the other evening, that it was the mellowest vintage he had tasted in years. You know Richards? Oh, you should, you should!"

Vane listened, quietly amused. The vanity, the egoism of this player were so obvious, so transparent, so blatant. He wondered, more than ever, what was under that mask of arrogance and conceit. The perfect frankness of the conceit made it almost admirable.

"You know," Wantage remarked presently, "I'm really playing truant, taking supper with you. I ought to be studying."

"A new play?"

"No. My curtain speech for to-morrow night. It's the last night of the season, and they expect it of me, you know. I've vowed, time and again, I would never make another curtain-speech in my life, but they will have them, they will have them!" He sighed, in submission to his fate. Then he returned to a previous thought. "I wish, though," he said, "that I could persuade you to do a play for me. Think it over! Think of the name it would give you. Or you might try managing me. Eh, how does that strike you? Such a relief to me if I could deal with a gentleman. You have no idea--the cads there are in the theatre! They resent my being a man who tries to prove a little better educated than themselves. They hate me because I am college-bred, you know; they prefer actors who never read. How many books do you think I read before I attempted _Voltaire_? A little library, I tell you. And then the days I spent in noting the portraits! I traveled France in my search. For the actor who takes historic characters there cannot be too many doc.u.ments.

Imagination alone is not enough. And then the labor of making the play presentable; I wish you could see the thing as it first came to me! You would think a man like O'Deigh would have taken into consideration the actor? But no; the play, as O'Deigh left it, might have been for a stock company. _Frederick the Great_ was as fine a part as my own. Oh, they are numbskulls. And the rehearsals! Actors are sheep, simply sheep. The papers say I am a brute at rehearsals. My dear Vane, I swear to you that if Nero were in my place he would ma.s.sacre all the minor actors in the land. And they expect the salaries of intelligent persons!"

Vane, listening, wondered why Wantage, under such an avalanche of irritations, continued such life. Gradually it dawned on him that all this fume and fret was merely part of the man's mummery; it was his appeal to the sympathy of his audience; his argument against the reputation his occasional exhibitions of rage and waywardness had given him.

Vane's desire to penetrate the surface of this conscious imitator, this fellow who slipped off this character to a.s.sume that, grew keener and keener. Where, under all this crust of alien form and action, was the individual, human thought and feeling? Or was there any left? Had the constant corrosion of simulated emotions burnt out all the original character of the mind?

Vane could not sufficiently hasten the end for which he had invited Wantage.

"You are," he said presently, as a lull in the other's monologue allowed him an opening, "something of an amateur of tapestry, of pictures, of bijouterie. I have a little thing or two, in my dressing-room, that I wish you would give me an opinion on."

They took their cigarettes into the adjoining dressing-room. Wantage went, at once, to the mirrors.

"Ah, Florence, I see." He frowned, in critical judgment; he went humming about the room, singing little German phrases to the pictures, s.n.a.t.c.hes of chansonettes to the tapestries. He was very enjoyable as a spectacle, Vane told himself. He tiptoed over the room, now in the mode of his earliest success, "The King of Dandies," now in the half limping style of his "Rigoletto."

"You should have seen the Flemish things I had!" he declared. That was his usual way of noting the belongings of others; they reminded him of his own superior specimens. "I sold them for a song, at auction. Don't you think one tires of one's surroundings, after a time? People go to the hills and the seash.o.r.e, because they tire of town. I have the same feeling about pictures, and furniture, and bric-a-brac. After a time, they tire me. I have to get rid of them. I sell them at auction. People are always glad to bid for something that has belonged to Arthur Wantage. But everything goes for a song. Oh, it is ruinous, ruinous." He peered, and pirouetted about the corners. "Ah," he exclaimed, "and here is something covered up! A portrait? Something rare?" He posed in front of it, affecting the most devouring curiosity.

"A sort of portrait," said Vane, touching the cord at back of the mirror.

"Ah," said Wantage, gazing, "you are right. A sort of portrait." And he laughed, feebly, feebly. "That Bonnheimer," he muttered, "a deuce of a wine!" He clutched at a chair, reeling into it.

Vane, pa.s.sing to the mirror's face, took what image it turned to him, and then, leisurely, replaced the curtain.