THE OPAL
[Illustration: THE OPAL
_From a painting by J. H. Gardner-Soper._]
THE OPAL
A NOVEL
[Illustration: Riverside Press logo]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND
COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE
PRESS CAMBRIDGE 1905
COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 1905
CONTENTS
I DRAMATIS PERSONAE 1
II MERELY PLAYERS 9
III A THOUSAND WOMEN IN ONE 40
IV ONE WOMAN IN A THOUSAND 63
V A DIRECTOR OF DESTINIES 84
VI A PUPPET IN TRAGEDY 103
VII THE FULFILLING OF THE LAW 150
THE OPAL
CHAPTER I
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Mary Elton was a girl whom her friends called unusual, and her friends’
friends, peculiar. She was young enough to be judged leniently by her
elders on the ground of her immaturity, and old enough to be looked
up to by her juniors as a clever woman whose character was past
the formative period. An undisguised interest in her own character
frequently laid her open to the charge of egotism, but she had never
been accused of conceit. A sort of fundamental frankness, combined with
a remarkably clear vision, was the basis of her nature. Seeing things
without disguise made it possible to speak of things without reserve,
and neither timidity nor politeness ever tempted her to call black
white, or even gray, and a spade was given no less definite a name when
she found it necessary to refer to that symbol of the unmentionable.
Men discovered in Mary Elton certain masculine characteristics of mind
and heart, an almost grim sense of humor and a readiness to see the
man’s point of view, which, paradoxically enough, made her the more
feminine, there being no quality regarded as so essentially womanly as
intelligent sympathy for the superior male, and understanding of his
complexities.
But, as Mary acknowledged with equal openness to herself and to her
friends, no man had ever been in love with her. Many had given her
their warmest friendship, and had confided their affairs of the
heart to her as to one of their own sex, but no one had ever faintly
intimated that marriage could concern her in any more personal way
than as a subject of abstract discussion.
Among her clear-sighted and warm-hearted friendships there was
none more sincere than that which bound her with mutual chains of
comprehending sympathy to Philip Morley. There had always been good
comradeship between them, their temperaments being sufficiently unlike
to enable them to act and react upon each other to their common
advantage and stimulus. He confided his small love affairs to Mary,
and she gave them either the sympathy he craved or the scolding he
deserved, as circumstances seemed to demand.
To outward view he was tall, with a suggestion of latent power about
him, which was in singular contrast with the superficial laziness of
his manner. Mary used to tell him that it was a mere toss-up of chances
whether he became a leader of men or a follower of women. Certainly
hints of both tendencies lurked in his handsome features, the strength
lying in his firm mouth and decided chin, the sentiment and love of
pleasure looking out from his blue eyes.
One morning, after a lapse of time longer than Philip usually allowed
to pass without having seen Mary, he found a bulky envelope on his
office desk, addressed in so boldly and blatantly masculine a hand that
it instantly proclaimed the writer to be a woman. He glanced at the
pile of letters it surmounted, with the constitutional indifference
that extended even to his morning mail; then a slow smile brightened
his features into an expression of half-amused pleasure.
“Mary’s screeds generally deserve to be read first,” he said to
himself. “She always insists that the length of her letters is in
inverse ratio to their importance, by which token this must be a trifle
of exceptional airiness.”
With a slit of his finger he liberated two closely written sheets of
letter-paper and read as follows:--
MY DEAR PHILIP,--I am sending cards to the rabble (and notes to the
elect) to bid them come here “very informally”--whatever that may
mean--next Wednesday afternoon, November twenty-seventh, to meet
Miss Edith Dudley. I am perfectly aware that every one hates teas,
and I know that nothing less than a personal appeal eight pages
long would bring you to one, but I do want you to come and see this
holiday novelty that I am exhibiting for the first time in Boston.
“Who under the sun is Miss Dudley?” I hear you inquire, “and why
did I never hear of her before?” Because, I reply sententiously,
like all Bostonians, your knowledge of men and women is limited to
State Street and the Back Bay; and this lovely creature, who is
a sort of step-cousin-in-law of mine, happens to be known only in
Europe and the southern and western portions of this continent.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear why she is what she is.
Don’t fancy that you are beginning a Balzac novel if I go into
her ancestry sufficiently to tell you that her mother was French,
her father Kentuckian, her education as cosmopolitan as her
inheritances, and her beauty as bewilderingly elusive as that of
the opal or the rainbow. Her mother died several years ago, and by
some strange inconsistency of temperament her hot Southern father
must needs marry the cold Northern cousin of my uncle. (Doesn’t
that sound Ollendorfian?) The alliance instantly froze him to
death; so this lovely wonderful daughter was left to the mercy and
justice of her stepmother. They went abroad together and stayed
two years, and now Edith has come to pay me a long visit on the
feeble strength of my relationship to the second Mrs. Dudley. She
will be in Boston most of the winter, first with me, and then
with the Warners. You are the only person to whom I have given a
word of preparation as to what to expect; but you may pass on the
information to those whom it may concern. As usual, my note has
grown into a foreign letter, the gist of which may be summed up in
the refrain, Come early and avoid the rush! November 27th. One day
only!! Beauty and the Beast!!!
Always faithfully your friend,
MARY ELTON (the Beast).
“How exactly like Mary!” the young man exclaimed out loud. “Her voice
gets into her letters in the most extraordinary way, and makes her pen
talk instead of writing. Of course I shall have to go and meet this
siren who has bewitched the most clear-sighted of her sex;” and he
jotted down in his note-book the date of one of the few “teas” he was
not glad to forget.