HERMIA DISCOVERS HERSELF.
Had Hermia been a bride on her wedding-night she could not have felt
more trepidation than when she stood on the threshold of her first
interview with her new self. She was to meet a strange, potent being,
who would unlock for her those doors against which, with fierce, futile
longing, she had been wont to cast herself, since woman’s instinct had
burst its germ.
She entered her bedroom and locked the door. But she did not go to the
mirror at once; she was loath to relinquish pleasurable uncertainty. She
sank on a rug before the hearth and locked her hands about her knee in
the attitude which had been a habit from childhood. For a few moments
she sat enjoying the beauty of the room, the successful embodiment of
one of her dearest dreams. The inlaid floor was thick with rugs that had
been woven in the looms of the Orient. The walls were hung with cloth of
gold, and the ceiling was a splendid picture of Nautch girls dancing in
the pleasure palace of an Indian prince. The bed, enameled to represent
ivory, stood on a dais over which trailed a wonderful Hindoo shawl. Over
the couches and divans were flung rich stuffs, feathered rugs, and odd
strips of Indian conceits. The sleeping-room was separated from the
boudoir by a row of pillars, and from the unseen apartment came the
smell of burning incense.
Hermia leaned back against a pile of cushions, and, clasping her hands
behind her head, gazed about her with half-closed eyes. There was a
sense of familiarity about it all that cast a shadow over her content.
It was a remarkably close reproduction of an ideal, considering that the
ideal had been filtered through the practical brain of a nineteenth
century decorator—but therein lay the sting. She had dreamed of this
room, lived in it; it was as familiar as Bessie’s parlor in Brooklyn,
with its tidies and what-nots; it wanted the charm of novelty. She had a
protesting sense of being defrauded; it was all very well to realize
one’s imaginings, but how much sweeter if some foreign hand had
cunningly woven details within and glamour above, of which she had never
dreamed. The supreme delight of atmospheric architecture is the vague,
abiding sense that high on the pinnacle we have reared, and which has
shot above vision’s range, is a luminous apex, divine in color, wondrous
in form, a will-o’-the-wisp fluttering in the clouds of imagination.
Hermia sighed, but shrugged her shoulders. Had not life taught her
philosophy?
Where the gold-stuffs parted on the wall opposite the pillars, a mirror,
ivory-framed, reached from floor to ceiling. Hermia rose and walked a
few steps toward the glass without daring to raise her eyes. Then with a
little cry she ran to the lamps and turned them out. She flung off her
clothes, threw the lace thing she called her night-gown over her head,
and jumped into bed. She pulled the covers over her face, and for ten
minutes lay and reviled herself. Then, with an impatient and audible
exclamation at her cowardice, she got up and lit every lamp in the room.
She walked over to the mirror and looked long at herself, fearfully at
first, then gravely, at last smilingly. She was beautiful, because she
was unique. Her victory was the more assured because her beauty would be
the subject of many a dispute. She had not the delicate features and
conventional coloring that women admire, but a certain stormy, reckless
originality which would appeal swiftly and directly to variety-loving
man. Her eyes, clear and brilliant as they had once been dull and cold,
were deep and green as the sea. Her hair, which lay in a wiry cloud
about her head and swept her brows, was a shining mass of brazen
threads. Her complexion had acquired the clear tint of ivory and was
stained with the rich hue of health. The very expression of her face had
changed; the hard, dogged, indifferent look had fled. With hope and
health and wishes gratified had come the lifting and banishment of the
old mask—that crystallization of her spirit’s discontent. Yes, she was
a beautiful woman. She might not have a correct profile or a soft
roundness of face, but she was a beautiful woman.
She pinched her cheek; it was firm and elastic. She put her hands about
her throat; it rose from its lace nest, round and polished as an ivory
pillar. She slipped the night-gown from her shoulders; the line of the
back of her head and neck was beautiful to see, and a crisp, waved
strand of shorter hair that had fallen from its place looked like a
piece of gold filigree on an Indian vase. Her shoulders did not slope,
but they might have been covered with thickest satin. She raised one arm
and curved it slowly, then let it hang straight at her side. She must
always have had a well-shaped arm, for it tapered from shoulder to
wrist; but health and care alone could give the transparent brilliancy
and flawless surface.
Hermia gazed long at herself. She swayed her beautiful body until it
looked like a reed in an Indian swamp, blown by a midnight breeze. It
was as lithe and limber as young bamboo. She drew the pins from her
hair. It fell about her like a million infinitesimal tongues of living
flame, and through them her green eyes shone and her white skin gleamed.
Tossing her hair back she sprang forward and kissed her reflection in
the glass, a long, greeting, grateful kiss, and her eyes blazed with
passionate rapture. Then she slowly raised her arms above her head,
every pulse throbbing with delicious exultation, every nerve leaping
with triumph and hope, every artery a river of tumultuous, victorious,
springing life.
* * * * *