ITS ANCIENT CHARM
The hour which Dita had set for her appointment with Cresswell Hepworth
was twelve the next morning, consequently she was not only surprised but
perturbed when Eugene's name was brought to her a little after eleven.
He looked haggard, she thought, as if he had not slept, but his eyes
were brighter than usual.
"Good morning, Queen of the May," he cried, coming forward to take both
her hands in his as she came through the doorway. "Did you know, by the
way, that this is May day? Ah," his eyes fastening themselves on the
crystal amulet gleaming against her white gown, "you have it still. That
was what disturbed me and drove slumber from my eyelids during the long
night. He is a strong man, a very able and masterful man and he wants
that amulet and you, Dita, and I feared--oh, you know how things appear
in the dead of night, what monstrous and fantastic ideas come to one."
"You might have saved your fears and your fancies," she answered with a
delicately ironical smile. "He does not want me. He would, I think, like
the amulet. Nevertheless, he declined it."
"Then you offered it to him? Really!"
"Yes," the irony still in her voice. "You were a better prophet than you
dreamed, Eugene, you predicted exactly what happened. I offered it to
him and he declined." Her voice faltered.
"Naturally," laughing, "what else could he do under the circumstances?
Even he, with all a collector's greed, would hardly care for a gift
which is supposed to be invariably accompanied by the heart's love of
the donor. He knew, poor wretch, that all he was getting was the bit of
glass, while the heart's love was mine, for ever and ever mine."
His voice sank to those musical cadences which ever prove so enthralling
to the ear. And Dita, who loved music and beauty and romance, smiled
dreamily. But doubt, like a shadow, lay in her eyes and about her
mouth.
"No," she cried, "oh, I do not know, Eugene. When I am with you, you
throw a glamour over me. I believe that I am just on the eve of loving
you--that any minute you will say the word which will make me fully
realize that I do, but as soon as you leave me, Eugene, the moment
passes."
"It is because you are perplexed, worried about this other matter, that
is all, dearest. When that is settled and you are free, then I will
sweep away at once and for ever all these doubts in your mind, sweep
them away as if they were cobwebs."
"Will you? Perhaps," but she shook her head as if only half convinced.
"Hush! What is that! I think it was the bell of the outer door. You must
go at once, Eugene. Cresswell was to be here at twelve o'clock. It must
be quite that now."
"And I have no desire to meet him." He picked up his hat. "I will step
through the little back room into the hall, and thence out. I dare say
you and he have some final arrangements to make. Is that it, eh?"
She nodded, but without looking at him. Her face had grown very pale and
the hand which she placed on the tall back of a chair to steady herself
trembled a little.
Her ears had not deceived her, it was Hepworth's ring--and the echo of
Eugene's retreating footsteps had barely died away before a maid drew a
curtain and Hepworth crossed the threshold.
If he upon his arrival had at once noticed a subtle but marked change in
Perdita, she now was struck by an equally vital and informing alteration
in him. He had always seemed to her before as one who leaned back in an
automobile and merely dictated the directions the chauffeur was to take,
but now he was the man who was driving his car himself, at unlawful
speed, and keeping quite cool and collected during the performance.
He took the chair opposite the one in which she had seated herself, and
she noticed a flicker of a smile across his face as his eye caught the
amulet hung about her neck, a tender, humorous, sad little smile.
"Yes, I am still wearing it," she said, as if in answer to some question
of his, "and I have had the box containing the others brought down here.
It is there on that table in the corner." She spoke with a bravado
which only half concealed her embarrassment.
He glanced toward it indifferently. "Then we will fasten my new one in
the space left vacant by yours," his swift, delightful smile came and
went, transforming his face for the moment like a gleam of sunlight, but
although brilliant, it was sad, sad as all regret, and Dita, seeing it,
felt some wild, momentary impulse to beseech forgiveness, she could not
tell exactly for what.
The amulet, her old bit of crystal, was swinging at the end of a long
chain, and, a little embarrassed, she lifted it in her hand and gazed at
it mechanically, turning it this way and that to catch the different
reflections of light.
"Did you know that we are lawbreakers, you and I, Dita?" asked Hepworth
with another smile, "meeting to discuss the details of a properly
arranged divorce? Well, my dear, it will not rest particularly heavy on
my conscience if it makes things easier for you in the least degree.
Your lawyers will instruct you just what to do, but there is one matter
which I wish to discuss with you personally, and that is some
settlements.
"Why, Dita," breaking off sharply and starting to his feet, "what is the
matter? Are you ill?"
Indeed he was justified in thinking so. She had grown white as snow. The
color had left even her lips.
"No," she spoke with an effort, but she lifted her head, as if by main
strength of will. "No," and he was infinitely relieved to see a bit of
color creep back into her lips, but the eyes she courageously raised to
his were dark with an emotion which he could only translate as fear or
horror, he could not tell which.
"Have I offended you, then?" he murmured. "Believe me--"
"No, no," she insisted so definitely that he was forced to believe her.
"It was something quite different. Something, something I just
remembered."
She was manifestly so confused and disturbed that he did not press the
point. It would have seemed both unkind and unwise to do so, and then,
although her eyes still retained that curiously shocked, almost
horror-stricken expression, the color had returned to her cheek.
"You were saying?" she began, her voice steady enough now. "Oh, yes, I
remember, about the money." Those deep vibrations of emotion thrilled
her tones. "Well, I won't have it. Won't touch it. I will not hear of
settlements. I can make enough for my needs."
He lifted his eyes and looked at her quickly and then the eyelids almost
closed. Perdita was under very close observation.
"Naturally, I do not for a moment dispute that. It is a fact already
proven, but it is my wish to remove the necessity from you. Your
occupation will then continue to be a source of amusement, of interest
to you, but you will not feel that it is your sole dependence."
She shook her head with a sort of irrevocable gentleness with which he
could not fail to be struck.
"No," she said, "it is really quite useless to discuss the matter.
Truly, Cresswell, I will not even consider it."
"But, Dita," he began, then paused a moment as if to make a choice of
arguments, desirous of using at once the most potent and evidently
preparing to undermine and break down the barriers of her decision if it
took a month.
She forestalled him, however, with a quick flank movement. She rose to
her feet. "Cresswell," she said, "I promised you last night that I would
discuss this matter with you this morning, but now," there was the least
hesitation in her voice, "I am going to ask a favor. I dined with you
last night, now will you dine with me to-night? Will you? There will
only be Miss Fleming and her father, and she will just sit at the table
a few minutes, she never dines before playing; Wallace Martin and Maud,
and they are going somewhere, so you and I will have the leisure of a
long evening to discuss all the pros and cons of this question, your
side and mine. Will you come?"
She was looking at him so earnestly, there was something so strange in
the depths of her dark eyes, that he felt tempted on the moment to beg
an explanation of this postponement. Then, as quickly he relinquished
it.
"I shall be delighted to come," he said heartily. "And if to-night you
are in no mood to talk over dry details, we will put it off again until
a more convenient season."
"No." Her tone was positive. "I am quite sure that we will come to one
decision or another this evening. Good-by."
When the curtain at the door had fallen behind him, Dita sat down again.
She did not seem to be thinking or mentally engaged in any way whatever.
On the contrary, she seemed to be waiting, two or three minutes passed,
five. Still she waited. Ah, a bitter smile hovered for one moment around
her lips. Her whole tense figure relaxed a little as if the moment which
she had so confidently expected had come.
There was the sound of the shutting of the outer door in the small room
to the left, then a halting step across the bare and polished floor.
Eugene's step. He paused a moment in the doorway leading into the larger
room, but as Dita did not turn nor give any sign whatever of having
heard him, he came on.
"Back again, you see," he said. "I saw Hepworth leaving the house just
as I came about the corner up here, so I knew the coast was clear. May I
sit down?"
For the first time Dita looked at him. He was unmistakably not of the
same temper in which he had left her an hour before. The buoyancy and
spring of him had vanished. His eyes were clouded, his mouth depressed,
certain lines on his brow and about his mouth stood out more markedly
than usual. In fact, he seemed to have halted midway in some mood
between dismay and anger. And as Dita observed this, there again played
about her mouth for one instant that same, sad, bitter, secretive smile.
She had leaned back in her chair as if prepared to remain some time, but
she made no effort whatever to carry on a conversation or even to embark
on one.
The frown deepened on Eugene's brow. This attitude on her part was
evidently irritating to him.
"Everything settled, Dita, and satisfactorily?"
"What do you mean by satisfactorily?" she asked, letting a moment or
two lapse between his question and her answer.
"I mean everything arranged in your favor," he replied with a short
laugh. "He is rather sure to do that, you know. He likes to do things
with the grand air."
"Oh, no, Eugene, it is you who like to affect the grand air. With him it
is natural."
He looked up at her quickly. "It sounds, it sounds," he said, "as if you
might possibly be on the verge of a sirocco. Don't Dita, I implore you.
I am off the key myself."
"Why?" she asked.
He lifted his shoulders. "Ah, that I do not know."
"I refused any alimony, Eugene," she said abruptly.
"What! Oh, Dita, you must not! Why, it is the height of folly! My dear
child, it is quixotic to the verge of idiocy." All his moodiness had
vanished. He was arguing her case fervently enough now. "You have had
your head turned by the success you and Maud have enjoyed in this
venture this winter, but that is purely ephemeral. You were a fad, a
novelty. How long do such things last in New York? And here is Hepworth
willing and anxious to endow you with houses and lands. Dita," and never
had she heard him plead his love with such fervor, "Dita, you must not
ruin your whole life by a blind whim. You must listen to advice. You
must be guided by your friends in this matter.
"It is true, of course," he continued, "that I make a very large income,
but I lay nothing by. It is impossible. I must keep up an
appearance--the painter prince, and all that sort of thing. It is
expected of me. It is a part of my stock in trade."
"Then you consider, 'Gene," her voice was calmly, reassuringly
reasonable now, "you consider that fully to enjoy life we must both
possess more than an ordinarily large income?"
"Dearest Dita," he bent forward with his tenderest, most ingratiating
smile, "do not for one moment mistake me. I think, I know we could be
happy without a centime between us, but viewing life as it is lived and
considering your tastes and my tastes, the mode of existence to which we
have accustomed ourselves and all that, I think we, like most other
people, would do well to avoid the perilous experiment of comparative
poverty. Whether we wish to believe it or not, really to invest life
with romance and interest and charm requires more than mere imagination,
of which you and I possess an abundant store, Dita. It also requires
money."
"It would require a great deal more than that for me, Eugene," she rose
to her feet now and stood looking at him as if from mountain heights, so
remote and distant she seemed. "Remember the old legend of my
amulet,"--she lifted it and swung it to and fro as she talked,--"that
sooner or later it would force the one who possessed it to reveal
himself in his true character? Well, it has proved its ancient claim.
You apparently possessed it long enough for it to force you to reveal
your true self; or perhaps that was inevitable under any circumstances."
"What do you mean, Dita?" he, too, had sprung to his feet, and stood
facing her, both fear and chagrin in his eyes.
"This," she flung out her hand with the amulet in it; "while I sat here
talking to Cresswell, I was turning this square bit of crystal this way
and that, watching it catch the light. Suddenly, as I held it between my
thumb and forefinger, I saw you, it reflected you quite clearly. You
thrust your head a little forward from the door, down there," indicating
by a gesture the door at the lower end of the room, "anxious to hear the
better what Cresswell was saying and quite sure from the position of our
chairs that we could not see you. Then I sent him away and waited. I
knew, I knew instinctively, that you would do just as you did, Eugene,
and--so I waited. I knew that I should hear that outer door close, that
I should hear you walk across the floor, I knew it."
The moments pulsed like heartbeats between them.
"I shall not deny it," he said at last, "but Dita, Dita, I did it for
you. I felt that you would follow some quixotic course, which you would
regret for a lifetime. I know so well your mad, impulsive recklessness.
Oh, Dita," he stretched out his arms to her.
There was no responsive movement on her part. She stood mute, immovable,
eyes downcast, as if she could not bear to look upon his humiliation.
The long chain had slipped through her fingers, and the amulet swung at
the end of it, to and fro between herself and him, like the pendulum of
an inflexible fate.
"Dita," his voice was irresistibly appealing, "you will not thrust me
thus out of your heart, oh, not for this!"
"You never had a place in my heart, Eugene, I know that now."
She swept across the floor, but as she put up her hand to pull aside the
curtain before the door, she paused. "I--I'm sorry, Eugene," she
faltered and by an effort of will lifted her eyes to him at last.
But they fell neither on the shamed nor the conquered. His head was
thrown back, his eyes met hers. He was smiling, and his smile held
unfathomable things. It spoke of a spirit eternally young and yet which
had felt the weary weight of all dead and crumbling centuries. It was
sad, disillusioned, yet eagerly joyous. It had tasted all things and
found them vanity, yet pursued an unending quest with infinite zest.
"Dear Dita," he murmured, "never doubt that I loved you, love you still,
but as the artist loves, not the plodder. You or any woman can only be
to him the 'shadow of the idol of his thought,' the mere symbol of
beauty, but what he really loves, Dita, is beauty's self."
[Illustration: Before she knew it, his arms were about her.]
He spoke now with a sincerity almost stern. "You or all the world may
think me false," his head lifted lightly, "it is nothing to me. To the
one thing I know as truth I am eternally true. I really, fundamentally
do not care that," he snapped his fingers, "for the rest of the show. I
have always the dream and before me lies the great achievement. So out
of your house, out of your life, out of your heart I go." He came near
her as he spoke, his voice was like music. Before she knew it, his arms
were about her and he was kissing her hair, where the copper shadows
rippled into gold above her temple. "Beautiful and still loved Perdita!
Good-by."