WAITING FOR PERDITA
Perdita committed an unpardonable social sin that evening. She, the
hostess, was late in her own house. In fact she had sent down word that
they were to begin dinner without her.
The three of them then, Maud, Wallace Martin and Hepworth were sitting
gazing at one another in a rather mournful and embarrassed fashion, when
Mr. and Miss Fleming were announced. Fuschia had stipulated that she was
only to remain with them until the appearance of the roast. That was the
signal for her departure, the definite limit of her stay. She was due at
the theater before eight and it was her custom never to eat anything
before the evening performance. This was the first time any of the group
had seen her since her tremendous success of a few evenings before.
"Hands up!" she called from the doorway, her gay, delicious voice
pealing through the room, "hands up, I say," making an imaginary pistol
of her thumb and forefinger and covering the three. "I don't want either
your money or your life, but I do insist upon seeing who has blisters on
his hands. I shall accept no other proof of friendship."
Hepworth and Martin promptly held up their hands. "I'm entitled to first
honors," said Hepworth, "I've sprained both wrists, can't write my
signature and have to have my food cut up for me."
"My hands," said Wallace Martin proudly, "are trained. They no longer
show wear and tear. You could drive a dagger against them and it would
splinter harmlessly. From long practice in trying to make my own plays
go by virtue of my own applause they have acquired the substance and
fiber of hickory."
"But dear Miss Fleming," cried Maud, "I deserve more credit than they,
for I recklessly sacrificed my most beautiful fan. When the curtain went
down for the last time and we climbed off our seats and stopped howling,
I held in my hand a limp shred of something and discovered that I had
beaten my poor, exquisite, fragile fan to bits."
Fuschia's eyes were full of starry twinkles, her smile was a revelation
of joyousness. She drew a long, ecstatic breath, "Boys and girls, it was
nice, wasn't it?"
"Nice!" exclaimed Hepworth pushing a chair forward for her, "Nice! Is
that the only word you can find to express your pleasure in the fact
that the curtain rose thirty times amid continuous cheers, and New York
simply took you to her heart and hugged you?"
"Good old New York! She knew her own little Fuschia by the strawberry
mark on her left arm, didn't she? I heard Caruso sing for the first time
the other afternoon, and when they asked me afterward how I liked it, I
said I only knew of one thing more heavenly and that was the sound of a
great audience clapping and shouting. There's no music like that."
Dinner was announced, and Maud, with a slightly worried expression,
began explaining to Fuschia that Perdita had been detained; but as they
moved toward the door, Hepworth noticed that Fleming had not stirred
from the remote corner he had sought upon entering the room.
"Jim, what is the matter?" said Hepworth with some concern; "you haven't
interrupted Fuschia once since she came in and you know it's always a
neck and neck race between you to see which can talk the faster?"
"He's been asleep," said Fuschia, taking her seat at the table. "Poor
papa! the gay life, you know!"
Fleming eyed her indignantly across the bank of primroses in the center
of the board. "The gay life! I've had no sleep since I struck New York,
that's true. I've had to keep going, and take these poor little
pick-me-ups of cat-naps whenever I can get them; but why? For a week
before this great first night, I had to sit up with Fuschia and hold her
hand and tell her what an unparalleled success she was going to have and
then that night, after all the excitement and anxiety I suffered as her
father, and the exhaustion incident upon being first _claqueur_, why she
drove me out into the cold, damp, rainy streets with one of your New
York blizzards just setting in, to buy her the first morning papers,
and since then I've had to celebrate her triumph. I'll tell you what it
is, friends, I'm a raveled sleeve of care and no kind sleep to knit me
up."
"Do you know what has really happened?" said Fuschia, in calm
explanation. "Dear papa can't help putting in those Dumas and Poe
touches, but come to me for the straight truth. It's really the funniest
thing about papa. His luck always comes right along with mine. Now what
do you think?"
"He's made a million since he came to New York," said Wallace Martin.
"Lost the other fellow's million, you mean," said Hepworth with feeling.
"Wrong. It's the most unexpected thing you ever dreamed of," Fuschia's
voice was triumphant, "papa's got a social success. Yes," nodding
impressively, "just look at him closely and you'll see that he's lost
his natural, unconscious man-look. He now has a drawing-room-pet
expression and he's wearing his hair differently, and throwing out his
chest. Oh, you needn't laugh, Mr. Hepworth, it's true. 'Hyperion curls,
the front of Jove himself.' When we were coming on I determined that I
would always be very kind to papa. I'd never neglect nor ignore him, no
matter how famous I became; but, of course, he'd just be Fuschia
Fleming's father. But what are the real facts of the case? Father sits
in the seats of the mighty, flattered by great ladies and avoids mention
of his humble actress daughter. King Cophetua and the chorus girl!"
"I had to come to New York to find out that the feminine boycott against
me wasn't complete," said Mr. Fleming with emotion. "I tell you, Hep,
it's a wonderful experience suddenly to realize that the entire crew of
petticoats the world over don't look at you as if they all had glass
eyes in their heads instead of real ones."
"How do you account for it, Jim?" asked Hepworth.
"From camp to court, my boy, has ever been but a step, although
sometimes it's a mighty long one," returned Fleming oratorically. "Now
this is the way I've explained it to myself. You see, I've got that
wild, free, above-timber-line flavor about me that simply locos the type
of woman that keeps husband hobbled to a stake under the big tree by
the back porch where she can keep an eye on him from the kitchen
windows. Now, personally, the catnip and parsley kind of woman never did
appeal to me; but these New York orchids are different. They know how to
appreciate the Rocky Mountain edelweiss, and seem grateful to me for
taking their husbands off their hands now and then. And they're so
interested, too, in the little every-day incidents of an old
prospector's life."
"You just ought to hear papa Othelloize those Ophelias," said Fuschia,
deftly seizing the first opportunity to get into the conversation.
"He'll tell them about being carried down a thousand feet in a mighty
snowslide and escaping unhurt, and of the fabulous properties he's
discovered, and of frequent encounters with enormous grizzlies, where
he'll tap them lightly on the jaw and advise them to hasten home and
then if they get too familiar, he gives them a twist of the wrist that
sends them howling back to the woods."
"Fuschia," said her father sternly, "you talk entirely too much, and
there's a day of reckoning coming for you. Just wait till you get to
London. There you'll be sneaking in at the back door and eating a cold
biscuit in the pantry while you're waiting to do a few recitations for
the ladies and gentlemen; while I'll be sailing in to dinner with a
belted earless on one arm and a tiaraed duchess on the other."
"I'm afraid I see your finish, Jim," sighed Hepworth. "You'll end as a
leader of cotillions. Your head is badly turned."
"There's no denying, Hep, that we are apt to set and undue value on what
we've never had, and these late-blooming feminine smiles are like a
bottle of champagne in the desert."
"Oh, dear, here is the roast," cried Fuschia disconsolately, "and
Cinderella must run away. Is there no hope of seeing Mrs. Hepworth this
evening?" turning to Maud.
Maud hesitated a moment, then, "I really do not know," she confessed
frankly, "she--she has not been particularly well all day." She simply
could not plead for Perdita the conventional bad headache while
Hepworth's steady eyes were fixed upon her.
Fuschia, who happened to be looking at him, saw a quick shade of
disappointment pass over his face, and her impulsive sympathy was roused
by the depth and poignancy of that immediately suppressed emotion. She
threw herself into the breach.
"Oh, I want dreadfully to see her to-night about the gown I am to wear
when I play the scheming adventuress next week. We were to have decided
it to-night. She is thinking of putting me in green instead of the usual
black with touches of scarlet, and the accustomed badge of the
adventuress, high-heeled scarlet slippers. And I am so anxious to know
if Mrs. Hepworth has decided upon green, a wonderful, wicked, dazzling
green, with strange blue lights in the shadows. Oh, may I send a message
and ask her to see me just a moment?"
But before Maud could answer, Perdita entered the room. She pleaded the
usual headache, which Maud had so carefully avoided, and that threadbare
social fiction was for once upheld and substantiated. Dita's appearance
fully bore it out. Her face was pale, her eyes heavy. She promised,
however, to give a full consideration to the question of Fuschia's green
gown the next morning, and the actress who had already overstayed the
limits of the time she had allotted herself prepared to take her
departure.
"Oh," she cried from the door, "I forgot to announce my two important
bits of good news. Mr. Martin is going to write me a comedy and Eugene
Gresham is going to paint my portrait."
A faint smile hovered for one moment about Perdita's lips. "When did
Eugene make his request?" she asked in her usual low tones, although her
head lifted suddenly.
"This afternoon," replied Fuschia, and Dita's smile deepened. "And he is
going to give me a fete in his studio."
"The usual ball in the artist's studio?" laughed Maud looking at Martin.
"Don't you dream it," Fuschia laughed irrepressibly, also; "not the
stage kind with its crowd of maskers. This is to be patterned after an
afternoon among the great artists in Japan. You wear Japanese things and
crawl through a little door into a room with nothing in it but just one
perfect flower in a perfect vase, and we will all sit on the floor and
drink tea."
"It sounds very much like him," said Maud, "but is it true Wallace that
you are really going to do a play for Miss Fleming?"
"It happily is," said Martin, "a comedy."
"Not a problem play?" The light of hope dawned in Miss Carmine's eyes.
"Oh, dear me, no," cried Fuschia; "and he's going to write it just as he
talks."
"I'd very much prefer to have you talk it as I write," said Martin, but
she had already vanished.
In a very few minutes the others followed her example, Fleming leaving
the house with Maud and Wallace.