OUT OF THE GILDED CAGE
Prompt as Maud was in responding to Dita's plea for her immediate
presence, Dita was equally prompt in hurling herself upon her friend's
sympathetic bosom.
Maud had been shown at once to the sitting-room of Mrs. Hepworth's
personal suite of apartments, and there Dita sat in the dim and
depressing gloaming of the unlighted chamber, a figure of dejection.
She had not even removed her hat, but sat brooding in the twilight until
Maud's entrance roused her and she flung herself across the room and
into the latter's arms with the impetuous rush of a cyclone.
Dita was temperamentally far more given to anger than to tears, but the
strain of the last two days had culminated now in a burst of wild
weeping, and Maud found it necessary to soothe and calm her before she
could venture to inquire into the immediate cause of her friend's very
poignant and unfeigned distress; so she applied herself to the task of
consolation with only vague conjectures as to the cause for grief.
She was able, however, from Dita's almost incoherent statements, to
patch together a fairly accurate idea of what had occurred.
"Just read this letter," Dita thrust the sheets into Maud's hand. "Oh,
you can not, not in this light. Wait a moment," she touched a button and
the room was flooded with a rose-colored radiance. Maud stepped nearer
one of the lamps and gave her most earnest attention to the words
Cresswell Hepworth had written. His utterance through the medium of the
pen, was brief, self-controlled, restrained and to the point. And as
Maud read his well-considered words, something like a feeling of despair
swept over her.
"He has gone, actually gone," cried Dita, as Maud handed the letter back
to her without comment. "Gone," she repeated the words as if the fact in
itself were quite unbelievable. She crushed the letter in her hand and
threw it on the floor. "He will be gone months, looking after his mines
and railroads and I'm to stay here. He never even said good-by to me,
and this," she touched the crumpled ball of paper contemptuously with
her foot, "gives me very plainly to understand that it is a virtual
separation. Oh," she jerked the pins out of her hat and sent that plumey
velvet head-covering spinning across the room, then turned to her calm
and sympathetic friend with a real fear and a real appeal in her eyes.
"What am I going to do? For a few months it will be all right, and then
people will begin to talk like everything. And you know how it will
appear. Every one will say that Cresswell discovered that I was having
an affair with some one, Eugene, of course, and that he, Cresswell, and
I had a row and that he refused to live with me longer, but that he
nevertheless was so chivalrous that he turned over this house and the
country places to me. Oh, dear, why did I have to have a sirocco?"
"Heaven knows," said Maud. "Let it be a lesson to you. Never have
another one. There, there, dear, I didn't mean any reproaches or I
told-you-sos. So stop howling or you'll mar your beauty permanently.
Oh, now, don't lift your head and glare at me indignantly and say you
hope you will, that it's never been anything but a curse to you. I've
been too plain all my life to listen with patience to anything of the
kind. Now, let me think." She sat with finger on lip deeply considering,
while Dita still punctured the silence with loud occasional sobs.
"You will have to travel," she said decisively. "Yup will have to travel
until people begin to talk and then you will have to keep on traveling
until they stop talking. But oh, Dita, can't you try and patch it up?"
Her words gave fresh impetus to Perdita's gradually decreasing sobs.
"You do not know him," she wept, "and to tell the truth, neither do I;
but I have enough of an understanding of him to know that he always
considers a step very thoroughly before he takes it, looks well into the
chasm before he leaps, and it's no use trying to get him to change his
mind when he has decided what course he means to pursue. Anyway, I do
not wish it. I want to be free, but not this way. Oh, was ever a woman
placed in such a position as I? I believe Cresswell would forgive
anything but the sin of not knowing one's own mind and I had to confess
to him last night that I wasn't sure of mine or of my heart either. He
has a contempt for me, of course, and," rising restlessly and moving
about, "I can't and won't accept his contempt, and I can't and won't
continue to live on his money and potter about his old houses. I feel as
if I would rather die."
"But, dearest," cried Maud bewildered. "What else is there for you to
do? What else can you do?"
"Nothing apparently," she said. Her dark gown fell about her in the long
lines of perfect grace. As she stood there, beautiful as the tragic
muse, her great eyes transfixed Maud with her scorn, but the scorn was
not for her friend, but for herself. "What can I do? I am about the most
useless creature on all this green earth. I sit and cry at a situation
which tortures my pride, instead of coming to a decision. I made a
beggardly pittance trying to earn my own living, and I won't go back to
that kind of life, a disgusting, sordid, scrimpy life, which stifled
every generous impulse or spontaneous action. I will not go back, I will
not give up all the things I love and have become accustomed to. I was
born to this. I love it, and will have it, but not on these terms.
"I haven't been utterly futile here, as I was in those other
circumstances. I have made Cresswell Hepworth's upholstery, stiff
houses, 'decorated and furnished by the most expensive and artistic
firms,' look really livable and lovely. Truly, haven't I? Great artists
have raved over them. Oh, I'm not afraid of velvets and tapestries and
embroideries. I have no burgeois reverence for them. Color was always
like clay to me. I always long to take it and mold it into new
combinations. Why, I couldn't keep my hands off a rainbow if I got a
chance at it, even the angels couldn't shoo me away." She was in one of
her swift, mercurial changes of mood, her mouth dimpling, her eyes
sparkling. "I'm not afraid of all the splendor of color or of all the
gorgeously rich materials that God or man ever devised. I ache to take
them and combine them and melt them together and contrast them. I'll
dare any combination to get an effect I want, an effect that haunts me,
and is like music in my consciousness. Isn't it strange that I can do
anything I like with great heavy draperies? I wave my hand at them and
they fall into just the lines I want. I can get all kinds of effects in
a room, but give me a little palette with little gobs of paint on it,
and little, little brushes and I can't do even a decent lamp mat. That
is one reason Eugene and I have always understood each other so well.
He, too, knows the call of color. Oh, stop looking that way, as if I
were going straight to shipwreck just because I mention Eugene. The
important thing to consider now is what I am going to do."
"I've told you once," said Maud, with settled conviction; "travel."
"On Cresswell's money?" bitterly. "Well, I suppose you think it's either
that or huddling into some black hole and attempting to earn my living
again--a phrase that's the synonym for me of a cheap and nasty
experience, but there must be some way out. No, I am utterly wasted,
futile, ineffective. I do not believe, I solemnly do not believe, that I
have one single, solitary gift in this world except being pretty."
"Look at me!" said Maud with a rather whimsical, cynical little smile.
"I think that I'm the living proof of one of your especial gifts. Why,
Dita, my dear, I'm a creation of yours. I'm considered one of the most
stunning women in town and about the best dressed and," Maud's really
soft and attractive smile transfixed her face, "I've won, I am really
beginning to dare to believe it, the interest and I hope the affection
of the only man I ever cared for and who never gave me a glance when I
was just 'that plain Maud Carmine, who is musical, you know.' Oh, I mean
Wallace, of course," blushing. "I haven't got over the wonder of it yet,
I assure you. I'm still mentally pinching myself and saying, 'If this be
I.' Think of it, Dita! I know the treasures of the socially humble, if
any one does. I always had position, but that amounts to very little in
these days, unless one has other things to back it up. It has been
gradually losing importance, pushed to the wall by money, the ability to
entertain, personal charm and good clothes, an air, a flare, a wit;
until now the poor, solemn, superannuated thing, so long unduly revered,
is really trotted back into the corner. Yes, I had position, but not
recognition. The back seats for me, so I rubbed along on my music and
conversation as best I could, poor fool! And then you came, and waved
your magic wand over me, took me in hand, and the world began to
appraise me at your valuation."
"That was nothing," said Dita carelessly. "I just have the knack of
seeing people as they ought to be. I could do what I did for you with
anybody, if they would only let me. You were nice and plastic and put
yourself entirely in my hands."
"Plastic!" echoed Maud. "You mean hopeless! But turn about is fair play.
Take the advice I offer you, and travel. If you say the word we'll start
for Japan to-morrow. And you needn't touch a penny of your husband's
money either, my child. I have enough for both of us."
"Maud, you're a darling." Dita smiled in warm appreciation. "But--"
"But, Dita," Maud's voice held both fear and appeal, "if you do stay
here, you will not, you must not see Eugene Gresham."
Dita smiled at her again, inscrutably. "An idea has come to me," she
said, quite irrelevantly, "a dazzling idea. I really believe that it is
the solution of the whole matter."
She considered this dazzling idea, her eyes growing brighter every
moment.
"Oh, Maud, Maud!" she cried, clasping her hands, "what an inspiration!
I'm going on my own again. Yes, I am. Don't look so horrified. I know
I've grouched and fussed a lot over my past efforts in that direction,
but you see I tried to do things in a small way, cotillion favors and
such, and it didn't suit me. It wasn't my _metier_, not my way. I loathe
detail. I can do things on a big scale or not at all. You know that. And
my present idea means the big scale. When I first came to New York I
regarded it as the great adventure, but then I didn't know how to go
about anything. I was as ignorant as a baby of everything--everything.
The tremendous professional skill required, my own ineptitude, the utter
inadequacy of my poor, amateur accomplishments, my entire ignorance of
business methods, all frightened, dazed, stupefied me, but now, now, I
just believe I'll have another try."
"Oh, what _have_ you got in your head now?" cried Maud in frightened
resignation.
"You see it's like this," Dita ignored the question and continued to
follow her own train of thought. "New York demands one of two things of
the stranger who comes knocking at her gates, either training or a new
idea. She can take care of any trained person, but if she has to conduct
the educational process, she does it with a club. Now I'm going back to
her with my new idea. Oh, I was crushed a bit ago, but now I am really
enjoying myself as I have not done since the first dazzle of marrying
Cresswell and seeing his money turn itself so easily into the beautiful
things I had longed for all my life. But I've been getting tireder and
tireder of being the twittering canary in the gilded cage. Cresswell
opened the door last night and now I'm going to fly put, but in a
totally different direction from the one he expects me to take." She
laughed delightedly. "Oh, do you think New York will listen to my new
idea?"
"She'll listen to Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth," said Maud dryly. "It won't
make much difference about the idea, whether it's new or old." She
thought of a conversation Hepworth's friends had held at the wedding
breakfast and sighed reminiscently. "I'm afraid you're making Cress
rather a background."
"Why not?" said Dita cheerfully and defiantly. "Serves him right, going
away in the fashion he did and putting me in such a position. 'Moses an'
Aaron,' as my old mammy used to say, you needn't try to dissuade me.
You'll be as crazy about the idea as I am when I unfold it to you. The
twittering canary is going to hop out of the gilded cage, and build her
own nest. It's the great adventure. It is to live. Won't Cresswell open
those sleepy eyes of his when he sees this move of mine on the
chessboard? I'm done with failure, this venture of ours is a success
before it's begun."