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THE BEAUTY
_By_ MRS. WILSON WOODROW
_Author of_ The Silver Butterfly, etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
WILL GREFE
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1910
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
[Illustration: Perdita]
CONTENTS
I A BACHELOR'S BRIDE 1
II A FAR WORLD OF DREAMING 14
III PINK AND WHITE EXISTENCE 35
IV OUR LOVING FRIENDS 55
V PERDITA'S TALISMAN 64
VI SIROCCO 75
VII THE GIFT OF FREEDOM 84
VIII FOOLS' LAUGHTER 98
IX A TELEPHONE CALL 114
X OUT OF THE GILDED CAGE 125
XI A DOLL OR A BOX OF CANDY 137
XII FUSCHIA FLEMING 150
XIII SHOCKING THE HEWSTONS 165
XIV PUBLICITY 175
XV A WIDOW'S SMILE 192
XVI FATHER AND DAUGHTER 206
XVII DO YOU LOVE ME? 219
XVIII PLAYING THE GAME 231
XIX HE CALLS ON HIS WIFE 243
XX THE MAGIC WORD 256
XXI TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS 268
XXII HEPWORTH MISUNDERSTANDS 278
XXIII ITS ANCIENT CHARM 289
XXIV WAITING FOR PERDITA 305
XXV WITH MY HEART'S LOVE 316
THE BEAUTY
CHAPTER I
A BACHELOR'S BRIDE
If the proper statistics of bachelorhood were accurately tabulated they
would show that at certain fixed and recurring periods, a confirmed old
bachelor, say one in every ten, casts his dearly-bought experience, his
hard-won knowledge of the world and women to the four winds of heaven,
and chooses for himself a wife; and, as his friends and relatives
invariably protest, a bungling job he makes of it. He may, before the
world, walk soberly, discreetly, advisedly and in the fear of God in
every other respect, but when it comes to selecting a companion for the
rest of his life, he follows, apparently, a predestined leading, some
errant and tricksy impulse, and from a world of desirable and waiting
helpmates, eminently suitable, he will, in nine cases out of ten, fix
his heart upon the one inevitable She who can keep the pot of trouble
ever boiling for him.
This, according to Mr. Cresswell Hepworth's old and intimate friends,
was exactly the course which he had followed; nor was even one voice
upraised in dissent from this opinion, as they frankly discussed the
matter over their champagne and truffled sweetbreads at the breakfast
following the wedding.
It was but natural that they who were rarely in complete agreement on
any subject which commended itself for discussion among them, should
hold a unanimous opinion on this matter which involved the happiness of
their lifelong friend. But although the opinion was unanimous, it was
not unprejudiced. Hepworth had had his distinct niche in their homes and
hearts for many years, and now as they gazed metaphorically at the empty
space, it struck a chill to their affections.
Nevertheless they did not, could not fail to join in the little gasp of
admiration which breathed through the church as the bride swept up the
aisle on the arm of Mr. Willoughby Hewston, the well-known banker and
intimate friend of the bride-groom. She had been stopping, it was
understood, with Mrs. Wilstead, another friend of Hepworth's, for
several weeks.
There were those in the large audience who saw a certain pathos in the
fact that she was given away by one of Hepworth's friends, thus exposing
the lack of either relatives or friends of her own, but there was
nothing in her bearing to indicate that she was conscious of her
isolated position as she advanced, leaning lightly on Mr. Hewston's arm.
The world, Hepworth's world, and it was a large one, was tingling with
curiosity. He was a great figure, looming immense upon the financial
horizon; but no one had ever heard of the bride. The invitations to the
wedding were the first intimation of his impending marriage, and the
bride's name, Perdita Carey, conveyed nothing to anybody. By dint of
careful collection of scraps of information, it gradually became known
that she was young, of southern birth and extremely pretty. Bare facts.
No more.
It was also considered rather an odd reading of the customary
conventions on Hepworth's part, this crowded church wedding exposing the
bride's poverty in relatives, the breakfast to follow, at his town
house, thus making equally plain her homeless state; but when this view
was set before him, sighingly, by Isabel Hewston, and vivaciously by
Alice Wilstead, he became obstinate in the insistence of his plans. He
seemed possessed of some masculine idea of getting things over, of
having all his friends meet his wife en masse, so to speak, and having
the matter settled.
And so it was, "Nice customs curtsy to great kings"--or millionaires.
The audience then of his friends--there was none of hers present, if
indeed she possessed any--sat with heads turned at an aching angle and
awaited, with concealed impatience, the choice of Cresswell Hepworth.
The weight of opinion leaned to a sunburst of a woman, darkly splendid,
opulently graceful, and instead, when the stately strains of the
wedding-march echoed through the church, the guests lifted their
astonished eyes to a brown and slender girl; but no matter what the
expectation had been, each realized that he gazed on a more poetic
loveliness than he had dreamed.
Another unhesitating mental admission. Obscure, unknown she might have
been, but she could never be considered ordinary. It had taken
generations of cultivation to give that pose of the head and shoulders,
that arch of the instep, that taper to her slender wrist. And what
intimation of individuality! Few women could have borne more regally the
weight of heavy and lusterless satin or a diadem of flashing jewels; but
this girlish bride of a millionaire had insisted on being married in the
white muslin her own scanty purse had furnished; and wore as if it were
a crown of diamonds the wreath of white jasmine flowers which held her
long tulle veil close about the cloudy masses of her hair.
For once the entire interest of any occasion which he happened to grace
was not centered on Hepworth, who, with his usual invincible composure,
awaited the bride at the altar, fortified by his best man, Wallace
Martin.
But the owner of millions--unctuous sound--is worth more than a mere
dismissing word. Let the bride continue to advance, he to await her,
while he is presented in a lightning sketch.
Cresswell Hepworth was far from old, not fifty. He had more than three
generations of cultivated ancestry behind him. In type he was American,
approaching the Indian; tall, slightly aquiline of feature, somewhat
granitic and imperturbable. His hair, which had been brown, was almost
white, his eyes were gray, trained to express nothing, but startlingly
penetrating when he chose to lift rather heavy lids with a peculiarly
long droop at the corners.
Emerson says somewhere that "a feeble man can see the farms that are
fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the
possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun
breeds clouds."
Hepworth was a strong man. He saw possible houses and farms,
externalized them and became the acquirer of vast and profitable
tracts of land--a fair map blackly dotted with mines and scrawled
with the angular lines of intersecting railroads. In this yellow
triangle, a great wheat farm. Here, in this square of living green,
irrigated and profitable ranches. He stood, this "Colossus of
Finance"--journalese--with his feet planted firmly on this solid
map-basis, and, with a golden rake, drew toward him from countless
clutching hands securities, stocks, bonds, curios, pictures (he was an
ardent collector), loot of every description, and, it was even whispered
through the church, his young and lovely bride.
But now he stepped forward to meet her with a smile that enlivened his
whole face, even his eyes. The service flowed on. With that air of sulky
geniality which represented his most urbane manner, Willoughby Hewston
gave away the bride. The responses were duly made, and Mr. and Mrs.
Cresswell Hepworth turned to walk through an aisle of smiling and
nodding friends.
At that moment the mellow October sunlight fell through the stained
windows enwrapping Perdita in a regal and impalpable vesture of scarlet
and gold; and again a murmur of admiration rippled and echoed at this
fresh revelation of her beauty. She had been pale as she walked up the
aisle, but now her color had risen and the crimson on her brown cheek
was the hue of a jacqueminot rose. Her hair, a deep chestnut at the
temples, flowed into copper, dark in the hollows, gold where it caught
the light. Her coloring was a harmony of all soft, warm, dusky shades,
and one looked to the eyes to focus these tints in light or darkly rich
topaz; but Perdita's eyes were gray, handed down perhaps from those
Irish kings to whom her father had laughingly traced his descent.
"Lucky girl!" murmured Alice Wilstead an hour later to the group of
Hepworth's intimate friends who sat together at one table during the
breakfast that followed the wedding. "Just think of it. He has no family
encumbrances. Never an 'in-law' will she have to cope with."
It never struck her that Hepworth's little circle of close friends had
gradually assumed about all of the intrusive and proprietary
prerogatives of the nearest and most affectionate relatives.
Alice Wilstead was a widow, dark, slender, piquant, versed in the
secrets of grace and the art of wearing her jewels so that they
accentuated her sparkling eyes and her one precious dimple without
eclipsing them. Warmly sympathetic and impulsive, she had been overcome
by the vision of Perdita's isolation as the girl walked up the aisle on
the grudging arm of Willoughby Hewston; and had pressed her
handkerchief lightly to her eyes, a moment of emotion viewed with
callous interest by a misinterpreting world which regarded it as a last
tear shed for a lost opportunity, a shattered hope.
"Well," said Hewston, finishing his sweetbreads and preparing to begin
on the next course, "it went off very well. I was all right, wasn't I?"
"You were perfect, dear," his wife hastened to assure him, "and it was a
beautiful wedding."
Mrs. Hewston was gray and pink and plump like her husband; and this
morning her grayness and pinkness and plumpness were underlined, thrown
into high relief by a violet gauze gown, heavily spangled in silver.
Isabel Hewston resembled nothing so much as a comfortable, placid,
fireside cat, purry and complacent. If she possessed claws, which is
doubtful, they were always well concealed.
"Yes, a beautiful wedding and a beautiful bride," she murmured, with a
little sighing inflection habitual to her, "so young, so--"
"Humph!" interrupted her husband, with as much of a snort as a mouthful
of game would permit, "I tell you it's a pretty tough thing for all of
us to see old Hepworth looking so happy." He thrust out his lower lip
and wrinkled up his eyes until he bore a grotesque likeness to a baby
about to cry. "Hepworth's my best friend, and to see that look of almost
boyish joy on his face was pretty hard. There are some things you can do
and some you can't; now one of these things that no man can afford to do
is to marry outside his own class. I could have told Cress so."
The other members of this intimate little coterie of friends, five in
all, looked at one another and burst into involuntary laughter.
Wallace Martin, an old young man, a magazine writer, who would fain be a
playwright, gave the single bark of mirth which served him for an
explosion of laughter. It sounded particularly derisive now.
"I would give my little all to have the new Mrs. Hepworth hear you say
that," he chuckled. "Dear old Hewston, she would not in a thousand years
consider any of us in her class. She belonged, let me inform you, to one
of the oldest of southern families. Her mother was a cotton princess of
the loveliest and haughtiest variety. One of the famous belles of her
day. Her father, too, was of the old South."
"Why, what are you talking about?" growled Hewston irascibly. "She
hadn't a dime--was a beautiful cloak model or something of that kind."
"She painted dinky things for a living, if you mean that," said Martin
carelessly, "lamp-shades and menu cards and such."
"If she only had some friends, even one relative," deplored Mrs.
Hewston, "it would look so much--er--nicer, you know. Relatives do add a
background." She shook her head regretfully.
"We'll have to be her relatives," said Maud Carmine, a niece of Mrs.
Hewston and a plain rather faded young woman of pale and indefinite
tints and many angles. Her claim to distinction rested on the fact that
she was a drawing-room musician of--strange anomaly--real musical
feeling. It was her misfortune always to be explained by those who found
her tact, good nature and practical common sense useful, and who drew
heavily on them, as, "not attractive looking, you know; but pure gold,
and one of the most dependable persons," and this damning tribute of
friendship served as an admirable check to further curiosity concerning
her. "Yes, we must be her background." Her glance lingered for a moment
on Wallace Martin, but he returned it briefly and indifferently.
"A young woman who has just married millions needs no family group,"
remarked Alice Wilstead lightly. "The most effective background is her
husband."
"Gad!" Mr. Hewston put down his knife and fork to glare at her. "The
idea of looking at Hepworth as a background. He who has always been in
the front of everything. A background! And for a snub-nosed chit of a
girl!"
"Oh, Willoughby, dear, not snub-nosed," expostulated his wife mildly.
"Snub-nosed, I said," insisted Willoughby. "Didn't I walk up the aisle
with her?"
"Hush, dear, hush," murmured his wife. "Here she comes now."
The bride was leaving. Passing through the handsome, stiff apartments
like a white cloud, to make ready for the journey before her, she
stopped a moment for a word or two with Maud Carmine as she paused at
that table.
Hewston rose reluctantly to his feet. "I once heard of a wedding," he
said confidentially and hopefully to Wallace Martin, "where the bride
went up to change her gown, and never showed up again."
"Where did she go?" asked Wallace with interest.
"Dunno," returned Willoughby. "Old lover. Fourth dimension.
Unexplainable, but fact, I assure you."