SIROCCO
"Good night, Hewston, good night, Alice. Don't go yet, Gresham."
Hepworth laid a detaining hand on the artist's arm. "Sit down and smoke.
We haven't had a moment to discuss this portrait matter yet."
"I think," said Dita, moving toward the door, "that I shall leave you
two to discuss it and go to bed."
"Oh, my dear," her husband detained her with the same light touch with
which he had held Gresham. He pushed an easy chair forward so that she
should be seated between Eugene and himself. "We are going to get all
the details of the portrait settled to-night. A portrait of you and
painted by Gresham is sure to bloom and be admired for a century or two
at any rate."
Dita looked at him quickly as if suspecting him of some intention
beyond the discussion of the contemplated portrait, but meeting the
smiling blankness of his expression, turned away, not in the least
reassured, but more puzzled than ever, and sinking listlessly into the
chair sat staring moodily before her with veiled eyes and compressed
lips.
Eugene glanced at her uneasily, a frown between his brows. He knew her
like a book. She had always, always from childhood, been a creature of
moods. He was perfectly familiar with the various stages of the sirocco,
as he had long ago named her outbursts. She would become restless,
abstracted, absent, and then she would sit and brood as she was doing
now, until finally the sullen and threatening atmosphere would be
cleared by a burst of storm, a swift cyclone of anger.
Gresham gave the faintest of sighs and an almost imperceptible shrug of
the shoulders. This was a situation which he foresaw would require all
his tact and ingenuity.
"Is the picture gallery all right? Did you find it satisfactory?" asked
Hepworth.
"Excellent!" Eugene's brow cleared. He spoke with enthusiasm. "Yes, I
told Perdita that the lighting there will be perfect. I've about decided
to paint her in white. Yes," scrutinizing the indifferent object of the
discussion narrowly and yet remotely, as if he were visualizing his
finished portrait of her, "white velvet, I think, and rather a blare of
jewels. You see I want to bring out the dominating quality of her
beauty, harp on it, you know, so I want to present her eclipsing and
reducing to their proper places all the splendid accessories with which
we can surround her."
Her husband nodded approvingly. "What do you think, Dita?"
"Oh, by all means," she roused herself to answer, but making no effort
to conceal the irony of her tones. "Let Eugene give me all the
distinction and grace he is noted for bestowing on, you observe I do not
say perceiving in, his clients, or patients, or patrons, whatever he may
call them. Make the stones of my tiara and necklace even bigger and
whiter and more sparkling than they are, Eugene. Or better still, I'll
wear my diamond collar and my string of rubies and my rope of sapphires,
all shouting hurrah at once, three cheers for the red, white and blue!
Make me all glittery, Eugene, throw my sables over my shoulders."
"By Jove!" cried Gresham, interrupting her, a white flash of enthusiasm
across his face, "you may not dream it, Dita, but that's it exactly.
You've hit it."
"Yes," she went on satirically, "and present me in the middle of all
this splendor, overcome by the 'burden of an honor into which I was not
born.'"
"But you were born to it," interposed her husband quickly, "no one more
so."
"Perhaps," she sighed a little, her eyes and voice grew softer, "but at
a time when the outward manifestation had vanished."
The glow had lingered, even become intensified in Gresham's face. "By
Jove!" he cried again, "you were trying to be sarcastic and all that,
Dita, but it was a great idea of yours just the same. I will paint your
portrait and it shall be hung side by side with my working girl. They
shall be companions of contrast. You see," explaining his idea to
Hepworth, "I am going to paint my working girl in the city streets just
at twilight on a winter evening, hastening home after the day's long
toil. The lights and colors of the shop windows dance and glitter about
her, blurred by the falling snow. Everything, lights, buildings,
passers-by, are all in that blurred, indistinct atmosphere, and she,
herself, is a part of the blur, looking through it, with her young, worn
face and wistful eyes, craving the beauty and the joy of life."
"No, no!" cried Dita suddenly. Rising, she moved rapidly up and down the
room, her head bent, her finger at her lip. "No!" she cried again, her
voice deeply vibrating. "I reckon you've just missed it, Eugene, it's
too--too conventional. I can imagine something truer than that. My
working girl, if I were painting her, should not be born to toil, not
always have regarded it as the great fact of existence, an inevitable
portion of her days and years from which she has never dreamed of
escape. No, I would picture her delicate, highly nurtured, with
traditions of race and breeding behind her; but poor, oh, very poor. And
she shouldn't look out on life with resigned, wistful eyes, but with
passionate, demanding ones, rebelling that her youth, her wonderful,
beautiful, dreaming youth was passing in a tomb of tradition, a green
and flowery tomb perhaps, maybe an old southern garden, but nevertheless
a place of dead lives, dead memories, dead customs. And she, this girl,
hates it, the dust and must of it. She hears always in her ears the
surges of that mighty ocean of life. And she can't resist it. She can't.
Then because her heart is set on it, she comes to a great city like
this, comes with all her high hopes and her untarnished confidence in
herself; and all this magnificent swirling tide of life, with its
mingled and mingling streams, seems to bear her onward to the highest
crest of the highest wave. Then she begins to hear, at first faintly and
then ever louder and more menacing, the voice of New York, with its
ceaseless reiteration of one theme, 'pay, pay, pay.' She turns
desperately to her little accomplishments, those little, untrained,
unskilful things that she can do, straws on that ocean; and expects them
to save her.
"Ah!" she drew her hand across her brow, her face contracting a moment.
"Then comes the grind between the millstones, the continual
disappointments, the terror by day and night, the rent, that rolls like
a snowball, the dreary evenings which she must spend alone in the dreary
little room, while all the time she hears the mocking invitation of the
great, glittering city to partake of her many feasts.
"And she," again Dita sighed deeply, "she begins to believe herself
doomed to dash her youth and beauty against the walls of a tomb. And she
has to learn so many things, among them the hideous accomplishment of
making both ends meet. What does she know of the use and value of money?
Oh, of course all kinds of cheap, left-handed pleasures are offered her,
because people consider her pretty, but it is an impossibility for her
to accept them. She has been born in the traditions of real lace and
real jewels. And the panic-fear! Ah!--" she broke off abruptly.
"Dear me, Dita. You should have been an orator." For the past five
minutes Eugene had been scarcely able to conceal his irritation,
frowning, biting his lips, twisting in his chair and casting furtive
glances at Hepworth. "I remember you used to be given to those bursts of
eloquence now and then."
"And what finally becomes of her?" asked Hepworth of his wife, ignoring
Eugene's interruption. His voice was low, expressing nothing more than a
polite interest.
"I don't know," said Dita wearily. "A number of things. She may
comfortably die, or marry, poor thing, any one who will have her."
"Very dramatic," said Gresham dryly. "You always did have histrionic
talent, Dita. I've often wondered that you did not attempt the stage."
Perdita opened and closed her eyes once or twice as if she had just
returned from a far country.
"I certainly wasn't much of a success at painting lamp-shades and menus,
was I, Eugene, in spite of your early training?"
He shrugged his shoulders without answering, made a slight, disclaiming
gesture with one hand and rose to his feet. "What!" listening intently
as a clock chimed somewhere. "I had no idea it was so late." His face
cleared. He was evidently relieved at his chance of escape. He shook
hands with Hepworth and then turned to Dita. "Remember that the first
sitting will be at twelve o'clock Wednesday morning, and please don't
keep me waiting. That is a fact that I have to impress on these charming
women," he turned laughingly to Hepworth, "that I am neither their
manicure nor hair-dresser. I am accustomed to keep them waiting if I
choose."
"I'll be ready," she said indifferently, but Eugene noticed with
apprehension, even alarm, that those deep vibrations which spoke of
barely controlled emotion were still existent in her tones. "I'll be
ready, velvet, diamonds, hurrah of jewels, if you wish, sables and all."
Again a gust of wind swept through the room and Hepworth went over to
close a window.
Eugene took quick advantage of the occasion. "For Heaven's sake," he
whispered, "pull yourself together."
His words were too late. Too late by half an hour. The sirocco had done
its work.