FUSCHIA FLEMING
Procrastination was a thief that had never succeeded in wresting much
time from Hepworth. He was one of those rare and exemplary natures who
never put off until to-morrow what they can do to-day. Never did he
stand shivering on the edge of his cold bath, but plunged in immediately
without pause for consideration. Obnoxious virtues these--prejudicial to
any popularity among his fellow-beings, therefore it speaks volumes for
him that he was able to overlive them.
This all goes to show that although the duty of keeping an eye on
Fleming's daughter became more repugnant to him the longer it remained
in contemplation, he yet lost no time in looking her up, as he expressed
it to himself. Neither did he waver in his promise to himself fitly to
celebrate Eugene Gresham's departure for other shores, but kept his vow
by selecting the most gaudily decorated and wastefully beribboned box of
sweets he could secure, and armed with it, as a hostage to impertinent
childhood, took himself to the big hotel where Miss Fuschia Fleming was
stopping.
He sent up his name to her and was very shortly informed that Miss
Fleming was in the garden and would be delighted to have him join her
there.
Hepworth curled his lip. What grown-up airs! Naturally, she had lost no
time in turning up her hair and having her gowns lengthened since her
father's departure, and he, Hepworth, would have to play up to this
phase of missishness.
He was dazzled for the moment by the bright sunshine, the brilliant
flowers, and mechanically followed the page, threading his way through
various groups of people. Before a table among the roses sat a young
woman reading. The page stopped; Hepworth stopped; the young woman cast
aside her book and rose.
[Illustration: Before a table sat a young woman reading.]
"How do you do, Mr. Hepworth?" She stretched out her hand with a boyish
gesture, smiling into his eyes, and the sunshine grew dim. "Won't you
sit down? I've just ordered some tea. If you don't drink it, won't you
tell the man to bring you something else when he comes? Father said--"
"But father is surely not Fleming, Jim Fleming," he said, firmly
determined to get this absurd mistake straightened out at once.
"But father just is," she asserted as firmly. "And since you asked for
Miss Fleming, I am she, Fuschia Fleming. That is my ridiculous name."
But Hepworth had so far lost his mental equilibrium that he could not
immediately recover himself.
"Fuschia Fleming is a little girl," he insisted, although this time not
half so positively, "and great Heavens," with one of his quick smiles,
"I've brought you a box of candy and just barely escaped buying you a
doll."
"I wish you had," she said. "I love dolls, especially the kind that you
would bring me." There was undeniably something heady about Fuschia
Fleming's glance. "And as for sweets, they're grateful and comforting to
any age. You'd better give me that box at once, and I'll give you a
practical demonstration of my appreciation."
Fuschia had the curliest mouth. There is no other way to describe it. It
was all in ripples, not small, but looking smaller than it really was
because it turned up quite sharply at the corners, like her father's.
And the lashes that lay on her pale, smooth cheeks were the curliest and
longest Hepworth had ever seen. Her eyes were blue, blue as the sea, and
very cool and gay and inclusive. Without being sharp or speculative or
inquisitive, they yet took in all the details of whatever they rested
upon.
But Hepworth was a keen observer, and he noticed at once that although
her pale face was for the most part alive with laughter, there was yet a
certain worn look about it, as if she had been recently over-taxed and
fatigued. There were faint but undeniable lines about the mouth and eyes
that time had never etched there; and that blythe assured bearing, her
detached, yet ready manner, were not suggestive of the ease of confident
youth. They bespoke training.
Hepworth's eyes, their droop rather more pronounced than usual, were
fastened on an adjacent palm, as if he demanded from it the answer to
this riddle. Getting no response there, he turned his speculating eye
on a tree of magnificent crimson roses as if hoping for some
enlightenment from that quarter.
"Why do you not tell me all about it?" urged Fuschia gently. "What's the
use of trying to puzzle me out unaided? Father has evidently told you a
lot of conflicting things. I really can throw more light on the subject
than any one else."
Her voice was beautiful, soft and full and creamy, with all exquisite
modulations and inflections, and its music cleared Hepworth's befogged
brain. He released the palm and the rose tree from the third degree to
which he had been subjecting them, and leaned back in his chair as if he
relaxed his mind as well as his body, smiling back at her, as confident
now, and as assured as herself.
"I don't have to," he said. "I know. It's just come to me. You see your
father didn't happen to mention that you are studying for the stage."
"Studying for the stage!" she cried, as if to refute him, considered,
and then nodded emphatically. "Of course I am, and expect to be until I
die; but hardly in the sense you mean. My field of study at the present
time includes a good deal of practical experience. I've been on the
stage now for three years, ever since I left school."
"On the stage!" he exclaimed. "But my dear child, under what name?"
"My own," she answered. "Oh, do not look so puzzled. It is the most
unlikely thing in the world that you should ever have heard of me. I'm
far from a star, just one of the humble members of first this and then
that western stock company. You see, my idea was to get my training and
experience before I burst upon New York. But New York is beginning to
seem too iridescent a dream ever to be realized."
There was a fall in her voice, a touch of wistfulness, which Hepworth
found rather touching because its pathos was both uncalculated and
unconscious.
"Why?" he asked in surprise. This note of resignation in her tones, of
acceptance of a disappointing, inevitable circumstance, struck him as
singularly out of character and aroused his curiosity.
"It's been the same thing several times in succession now," said
Fuschia, a touch of superstitious gravity in her expression. "Just as
father is preparing to stake me, and I'm getting a company together to
take New York by storm as Rosalind, why, father loses his last dime on a
dead-sure thing. There's a law about it. The biggest winning proposition
in years, always comes along just as I am ready to cross the Alps and
storm Italy. Uncanny, isn't it?"
"What nonsense!" Hepworth clipped off the end of a cigar as if it were
Fleming's head. "Do not let yourself be affected by such an absurdity.
The only law, and I admit it's a strong and binding one, is Jim's
selfishness and irresponsibility. Now my dear child," Hepworth was
beginning to fancy himself enormously in the role of paternal adviser,
"you make him give you as much as possible."
"I do," she interrupted softly.
"And you lay it all aside, very securely, never touching a penny of
it--"
"What about my clothes?" another interruption.
"Never touching a penny of it," went on Hepworth firmly, ignoring these
asides on her part, "until you have saved enough to finance yourself.
Isn't that reasonable?"
"Ye-s," admitted Fuschia. "It is a very reasonable and sensible
suggestion, Mr. Hepworth, that is," thoughtfully, "if you leave out
father and me. But just get it into your head that at the moment I'd
save a nice little heap, father would be hit with an overwhelming
impulse to back the wrong horse, and, here's something awfully queer
psychologically, Mr. Hepworth, I'd know as sure as I'm Fuschia Fleming
that it was the wrong horse, and yet, I'd get inoculated with the mental
virus before I'd know it, and beg him to let me in on it. And you know
that father is incapable of staking half or even two thirds of his
little all against any proposition he believes in. The only thing that
can satisfy him and make his blood tingle is to stake the whole. No
limit but the blue canopy of heaven. Limits do fret father."
Mr. Hepworth slightly lifted his shoulders. Then he dropped another lump
of sugar into a cup of hot tea she had given him.
"I wish to seem neither irrelevant nor impertinent," he said at last,
"but can you act?"
Miss Fuschia Fleming threw up her white chin and laughter bubbled
unquenchable from her throat, not vain-glorious mirth, as if the fact of
her superlative achievement mocked his crude question, but the
unrestrained laughter of genuine amusement.
"The idea of asking an actress such a question," she said at last,
touching each eye lightly and deftly with a delicate handkerchief. "You
may thank your lucky stars that I don't nearly drown you with
picturesque and highly colored tales of my triumphs and then hurl the
full scrap-book at you. My, but you are a rash man! To ask a
professional if she can act!" Again her full-throated laughter rang out
delightfully and so heartily that it shook the petals from the cluster
of pale golden roses she wore on her breast.
"But look here, seriously now," her laughter died quickly away, her face
assumed a gravity he had not dreamed her mobile features could express,
her gaze fastened upon him with a sort of hungry, passionate eagerness.
"That was a horrible question of yours," she shivered, as if the breeze
blowing over the gardens from the Elysian sea chilled her. "One should
know intuitively, instinctively whether an actress can act or not. Good
Lord!" she brought her hand down on the table. "If you don't feel it,
know it, beyond all argument, why it isn't there, that's all.
"Unless I set you dreaming, unless I suggest in this or that varying
pose or expression, the whole world of women, I'm not a born actress.
Training, study can make a good mechanical nightingale of me, a clever
imitation of the real thing. That's all. But unless I have the chameleon
quality of reflecting my part, the unerring understanding of any type of
woman I may be called upon to represent, how can I be an actress? What
does it profit me to give the public a carefully studied, intellectual
representation of Portia or Nora, or Juliet or Candida, wide apart as
the poles as they may be? I must not only apprehend them, I must be them
in every fibre of my being, in every cell of my brain, in every beat of
my heart, or I'm nothing. Unless I can convince you that Camille and I
are one in emotion and view of life, and then obliterate that
impression when I speak to you as Rosalind, why I'm not an actress, not
the kind I care to be, anyway."
"By Jove, my dear," cried Hepworth, "you need have no doubts on that
score." He had not felt the thrill of such genuine enthusiasm for many a
long day.
He forgot the delicate and uncertain state of his marital affairs,
forgot the censorious world, his ennui and doubt and regret.
"I have a conviction," he said, "that Jim is going to win a lot on this
new proposition of his. If he doesn't, it's all the same anyway. Why
should you waste your youth and your genius in twentieth rate stock
companies?"
In spite of these cheering words, her head continued to droop. Her face
had grown paler, and sad were the eyes she lifted to his.
"But you asked me if I could act. You weren't sure. You didn't see me as
Camille or Rosalind. You just saw Fuschia Fleming all the time."
"Of course I did." His smile was most comfortingly reassuring. "But I
saw Fuschia Fleming as Juliet and Portia and all the others. I merely
asked you if you could act to see what you would say. No, no, my dear,
your future is written so plainly that he who runs may read. No more
one-night stands in dreary little towns, Miss Fuschia Fleming, but long
engagements, crowded houses, enormous box-office receipts, wildly
enthusiastic audiences. Can't you hear and see them? New York, London,
Paris for you!"
"Oh-h!" Fuschia was herself again. She exhaled rapture in an ecstatic
sigh. She rose. It is impossible to sit in moments of such high
exultation. She positively seemed to soar, to tread on clouds. It was
growing late and chill. Almost every one had left the garden, only a few
absorbed groups remained. Fuschia was an actress. Self-expression was a
necessity to her. She rested her hand, a snowflake, gratefully on his
arm, she floated against him, a thistledown, and before he knew it had
lightly, enthusiastically, unconcernedly kissed him on the cheek.
"You dear," she cried, "I'll repay you by showing you what I can do. To
tread the forest of Arden in New York! Oh-h! But you are not going. No,
no, no!"
That was what Hepworth, rather overcome by the unconventional and
unexpected expression of her thanks, was preparing to do. He thought it
best, but his decision was not adamantine, far from it. He always prided
himself upon the open mind, and an ability to see all sides of a
question, so when Fuschia suggested that he return later and dine with
her, it struck him as a possible, even admirable solution of his daily
puzzle how to put in the evening and he accepted without more debate,
with an alacrity, in fact, bordering on gratitude.
He was therefore on time to the minute and Miss Fleming was equally
punctual.
As they sat through a dinner, not elaborate, but as prolonged as if it
were composed of all the courses on the menu, Hepworth was struck by the
positive quality of Fuschia's beauty. It was not always so, evidently.
She was as changeful as the chameleon she had spoken of. In the garden
that afternoon, in her white serge frock, she had at first impressed him
as a pale, rather attractive looking young woman whose charm was
greater than her prettiness; but viewed in the rose-colored lights, and
across the pink blossoms on their small table, she was a very wonderful
creature. She was, in truth, wild with joy and her expression of it was
delightful. Her eyes were blue as the sea when the sun is one vast
sparkle over it, her mouth, made for laughter, grew curlier every
moment. Her white evening gown was a dream.
In addition to her admirable outward appearance, Miss Fuschia Fleming
was a comedienne of unsurpassed gifts. She was also witty, well-read and
sweet-natured, and when she chose to exert herself she could make sixty
minutes seem sixty seconds by any one's watch, even that of the grimmest
old curmudgeon, and Hepworth certainly was not the grimmest old
curmudgeon. He was only a very lonely and sad-hearted man whose days had
been hanging heavily on his hands.
"Good old Jim," he soliloquized as he took his way homeward that
evening. "He believed sufficiently in my friendship to come right to me
when he was in a hole. Made no bones about it. Asked me to keep an eye
on his daughter, sure enough of my affection for him to know I'd do it.
I shouldn't wonder if this Idaho proposition is a good thing if it's
properly financed. Jim's judgment is pretty sound. Well, we'll see,
we'll see."