The Silver Butterfly Part 16

"Wilfred?" the mother repeated, with a rising inflection.

"Yes, Wilfred; you were speaking of him, were you not?" The Mariposa's green eyes sparkled with mirth. "Well, madame"--she spoke negligently--"what can I do for you? You know I do not receive any one professionally on Sunday."

"Would you regard it as professional if I ask you what you are going to do about my son?"

"Not at all. I think it quite natural that you should wish to know. I can quite appreciate your state of mind, maternal anxiety, and all that. To have been in terror for fear your son would marry Marcia Oldham and then discover that he is really interested in me! It illuminates that pa.s.sage in _Paradise Lost_, does it not? It is sometimes considered obscure. You doubtless recall it. Something about 'and in the lowest depths a lower depth was found.'"

"You seem to have some appreciation of the situation," said the old woman grimly.

"Believe me, I have. Only the mask smiles Comedy at me, and Tragedy at you. Madame, why do you cluck so over your one chicken?"

"The answer to that," Mrs. Ames tartly replied, "is first Miss Oldham and then yourself."

"The declining scale! Fancy where he will end!" Ydo murmured.

"It may be a circus-rider yet," admitted his mother.

"I have been one," announced Ydo calmly, and Hayden could not tell whether she spoke the truth or fiction. "Well"--there was a touch of impatience in her tones now--"what do you wish me to do?" She lifted a fan from her lap, and rapidly furled and unfurled it, a sure sign of irritation with her. "Find him a pretty doll with a blue sash and a wreath of daisies? You must have urged many a one on him and see to what they have driven him."

"Wait," said the old lady, laying one bony, yellow hand stiff with rings, dusty diamonds in dim gold settings, on Ydo's arm. "Why do you take it for granted that I have come to you to do the tearful mother, imploring the wicked adventuress to give up her son? They do those things on the stage, and I've never regarded the stage as a mirror of life. I have heard more about you than you think, mademoiselle. Horace Penfield sits in my ingle-nook. Now, what I came to find out is what you want with Wilfred, if indeed you want him at all."

"You flatter me," said Ydo. "More, you interest me. Now, just why do you wish to know?"

"Are you going to marry him?"

"It is evidently cards on the table with us." Ydo had recovered her good spirits. "Truly, I have not decided. You see, madame, your Wilfred is a big, good-natured fellow. He is like a faithful, loyal, devoted dog. You and I being cats need neither his a.s.sistance, advice nor sympathetic companions.h.i.+p. I can also say truly that his ancient name and his money are nothing to me. But he has something I want." She rested her cheek on her fan, a wistful note had crept into her voice, a shadow lay in her eyes. "Ah, madame, do you not understand that we, to whom all things come easily, are often very lonely? Life's spoiled and petted darlings, we are of necessity isolated. We live at high pressure, absorbed in our enthusiasms and interests, but there come moments of weariness when we would droop on the heart that really loves us, when we would rest in that maternal and protecting love which never criticizes, never judges or condemns, never sees the ravages of time or the waste of beauty, never puts upon us the crowning indignity of forgiveness--only loves. Loves, madame, as Wilfred loves me. 'Tis the rarest thing in all the world."

"And what would you give the poor dog in exchange for this?" Mrs. Ames'

voice was dry to sarcasm. But Ydo was unmoved.

"My brains, madame, my knowledge of men, women and the world. My diplomacy, my power of attack. Wouldn't it be a fair exchange?"

Mrs. Ames clasped her stiff hands together and dropped the lorgnon on the floor. "By George!" she cried. "You're a man after my own heart. Look at me! I'm a withered, haggard old woman, fierce as a cat and ugly as sin. Why? Because all my life I've been baffled. I was born as wild a bird, my dear, as yourself; but I never knew how to get out of the cage and I was always getting into new ones. I lacked--what-d'-y'-m'-call-it--initiative; and all this longing in me for freedom"--she clutched the dangling fringes on her breast--"and life and the choosing of my own path never had an outlet. It turned sour and curdled, and became malice and all uncharitableness.

"Well, when I began to realize that Wilfred would probably give me a companion in the cage I got sick. I could bear the cage myself, I'd learned to do that; but I didn't want another she-bird molting around.

And then when it looked as if it would be Marcia Oldham I got sicker. It drove me wild to think of that milk-faced chit of a girl, with a fool of a mother that I've always despised! I tell you what you do, Miss Gipsy Fortune-teller!" She rapped the arm of Ydo's chair emphatically. "Marry Wilfred! Sure if you do," peering at her suspiciously, "that you won't elope with some one else?"

"I may," said Ydo coolly. "Only I have had the experience twice before, and it doesn't amuse me." Again, for the life of him, Hayden could not decide whether this were the embroidery of fiction or the truth. "The first man used scent on his handkerchief, and the second ate garlic with his fingers. I couldn't endure either of them for a week."

"You rake!" chuckled Wilfred's mother, clapping the Mariposa on the shoulder. "Marry Wilfred, do now! Make him president, at any rate a foreign amba.s.sador." She rose. "You've given me fresh hope. I feel twenty years younger. Well, Mr. Heywood--Harden--whatever your name is, we've treated you as if you were a piece of furniture."

"Regard me instead as a wall," said Hayden pleasantly, "which has ears but no tongue. Won't you vouch for my discretion, Mademoiselle Mariposa?"

"As I would for the chairs and tables to which Mrs. Ames so amiably compares you," smiled Ydo.

When Hayden returned from putting the old lady in her carriage he showed all the elation of one who has scored heavily.

"Aha!" he cried. "Warning me one moment with serious argument against the Inevitable ennui induced by settling in Eldorado and all the time preparing to build your own castles there!"

"But not for permanent residence," she protested, "and I a.s.sure you, I have not even decided whether or not to build there at all. My real home is for ever in Arcady. Do you think, seriously think, that there is anything in Eldorado which can hold me when I see the beechwoods growing green, and hear the fifes of June in my ears and get a whiff of the wild-grape fragrance? Then I know that there's nothing for me but Arcady; and it's up and away in the wake of the clover-seeking bee. But you're a man, Bobby, who has--what is that awful phrase?--oh, yes, 'accepted responsibilities,' and you'll stay there in Eldorado, bound by white arms and ropes of gold."

CHAPTER XIII

Marcia had been causing Hayden much perturbation and unrest by keeping him very sedulously at a distance. The glimpses he had had of her recently had been few and far between, and in response to his pleadings and reproaches, he was informed that her time was tremendously occupied and that she was absorbed in a picture she was anxious to finish by a certain time. In consequence, he was inordinately delighted to hear her voice one morning over the telephone--although the reason she gave for calling him up occasioned his undisguised surprise, for she informed him that sometime during the day he would receive an informal invitation from Mrs. Ames requesting him to be present at a luncheon she was giving at the Waldersee the following day.

"Mrs. Ames! Inviting me!" Hayden uttered rapid fire exclamations. "Well, it is a foregone conclusion that I shall not accept, of course."

"Please reconsider your decision before you so hastily decline," Marcia's voice was full of amus.e.m.e.nt, "please."

A dreadful suspicion shot through Hayden's mind. Why was Marcia pleading the cause of this old woman who had so abominably used her? Had Wilfred returned to his allegiance?

Perhaps Marcia divined some of these thoughts, for she added a little hastily, "It is in reality a luncheon given for Mademoiselle Mariposa, and both she and Wilfred have begged me to be present. It is really for Wilfred's sake that I am going. We have so long been good friends, you know. When I heard you were to be invited, I suspected at once that you would refuse."

"I certainly should have done so," interrupted Hayden grimly, "and you know why."

"I do know," she said sweetly, "and it's dear of you; but now that you understand things you'll accept, won't you?"

"Of course I shall, if you wish it," he replied with fervor.

"Thank you, and--and--I shall not be nearly so busy from now on. I have almost finished my--my--picture."

The answer, the various answers that Hayden made were of the usual order and need not be recorded; but her predictions were speedily fulfilled, for within the hour, Mrs. Ames had called him to the telephone and in the nearest approach to dulcet tones which she could compa.s.s was urging him to take luncheon with herself and a few friends at the Waldersee on the following day.

With Marcia in mind, he promptly, even effusively accepted. He was struck by the fact that his prospective hostess had chosen one of the most conspicuous hotels in the town wherein to entertain her guests instead of doing the thing decently and soberly amid the 1850 splendors of her ancestral down-town home. Yes, the eccentric old creature had something in the wind, beyond question, and his curiosity was but increased when he learned, some hours later, from Kitty Hampton that neither herself, Bea Habersham nor Edith Symmes were bidden to the feast.

But not long was he left in suspense, for Mrs. Ames herself hastened to allay his curiosity when she met him the next day in one of the reception-rooms of the hotel, where he arrived promptly on the hour she had mentioned. He looked about him in some surprise, for although there were several detached people in the room, the rest of her guests, whoever they might be, had not yet arrived.

"I asked you a bit early, Mr. Heywood, Harden,--oh, what is your name?

Well, it doesn't matter--Hayden--oh, yes; because there was something I particularly wanted to say to you. You see, this is rather an especial occasion," she settled complacently a row of dull black bracelets set with great diamonds on her arm. Hayden reflected on her odd pa.s.sion for dusty gems. "Can you imagine who my guests are and why I have asked them here?" she lifted her formidable lorgnon and surveyed him through it, her eyes reminding more than ever of those of some fierce, inquisitive bird.

"Truly, I can not, dear lady," Hayden a.s.sured her in all sincerity. "You suggest all manner of unexpected and delightful things."

"My guests," said Mrs. Ames, smoothing her black bombazine impressively and detaching a bit of straw from some tangled fringe, "are, to mention the men first, Wilfred, Horace Penfield and yourself, and my women guests are Marcia Oldham and Ydo Carrothers."

"Really!" was all Hayden could think of to exclaim, and he uttered that somewhat feebly.

"Yes," the old lady nodded her head, all the jet ornaments on her rusty black bonnet jingling together. "Yes, I've been so nasty about Marcia Oldham that I want to make some public reparation." She drew herself up and spoke virtuously; but Hayden doubted the entire sincerity of the statement. That might be her reason, in part, but he felt convinced of some deeper motive. She might feel that she no longer had cause for active opposition to Marcia; but the girl did not appeal to her temperament and never could. At best, she could regard a woman of Marcia Oldham's type with but tepid interest. "And she's been gracious enough to say she'd come. At first, she refused point blank, but I got Wilfred to persuade her. He and she have always been good friends. Miss Gipsy Fortune-teller was also inclined to balk; but she too will be here. The wild thing!" she chuckled delightedly. "I do hope she'll marry Wilfred.

Why, Mr. Hayden, she'd make something of him. Wilfred's not a fool by any means; but he's so dreadfully lazy. She'll be whip and spur to him. What do I care for her fortune-telling and all her wild escapades! I like 'em.

They make my old blood tingle. There's a girl after my own heart!"

"Dear me! Who is that?" peering through her gla.s.ses. "Maria Sefton and a party! Good!" She went into a series of cackles that positively made her bones rattle. "Every one in town has heard of Wilfred's infatuation for the Mariposa by this time, and there is just one question asked: 'How will that old witch of a mother of his behave now?'" Again she broke into peals of her shrill, cackling laughter. "What will they say to this? Look how I've fooled them! Marcia on one side of me, the Mariposa on the other! They won't know which it is or why the other dear charmer's here, or what it all means." She wiped away the tears laughter had brought to her eyes. Hayden saw now laid bare her underlying motive in urging Marcia to be present. It was really to mystify her world.

"Ah, Mr. Hampton--Henderson--I can truthfully say that through a long life, I've never yet done the thing people expect of me."