Vane's dressing-room was a tasteful chamber, cool and light. Its walls,
its furniture, and its hangings told of a wide range of interest. There
was nowhere any obvious bias; the æsthetic was no more insistent than
the sporting. Orson Vane loved red-haired women as Henner painted them,
and he played the aristocratic waltzes of Chopin; but he also valued the
cruel breaking-bit that he had brought home from Texas, and read the
racing-column in the newspaper quite as carefully as he did the doings
of his society. Some hint of this diversity of tastes showed in this,
the most intimate room of his early mornings. There were some of those
ruddy British prints that are now almost depressingly conventional with
men of sporting habits; signed photographs of more or less prominent and
personable personages were scattered pell-mell. All the chairs and
lounges were of wicker; so much so that some of the men who hobnobbed
with Vane declared that a visit to his dressing-room was as good as a
yachting cruise.
The morning was no longer young. On the avenue the advance guard of the
fashionable assault upon the shopping district was already astir. The
languorous heat that reflects from the town's asphalt was gaining in
power momentarily.
Orson Vane, fresh from a chilling, invigorating bath, a Japanese robe of
exquisite coolness his only covering, sat regarding an addition to his
furniture. It had come while he slept. It was proof that the adventure
of the night had not been a mere figment of his dreams.
He touched a bell. To the man who answered the call, he said:
"Nevins, I have bought a new mirror. You are to observe a few simple
rules in regard to this mirror. In the first place, to avoid confusion,
it is always to be called the New Mirror. Is that plain?
"Quite so, sir."
"I may have orders to give about it, or notes to send, or things of that
sort, and I want no mistakes made. In the next place, the cord that
uncovers the mirror is never to be pulled, never to be touched, save at
my express order. Not--under any circumstances. I do not wish the mirror
used. Have you any curiosity left, Nevins?
"None, sir."
"So much the better. In Lord Keswick's time, I think, you still had a
touch of that vice, curiosity. Your meddling got you into something of a
scrape. Do you remember?"
"Oh, sir," said the man, with a little gesture of shame and pain, "you
didn't need reminding me. Have I ever forgotten your saving me from that
foolishness?"
"You're right, Nevins; I think I can trust you. But this is a greater
trust than any of the others. A great deal depends; mark that; a very
great deal. It is not an ordinary mirror, this one; not one of the
others compares with it; it is the gem of my collection. Not a breath is
to touch it, save as I command."
"I'll see to it, sir."
"Any callers, Nevins?"
"Mr. Moncreith, sir, looked in, but left no word. And the postman."
"No duns, Nevins?"
"Not in person, sir."
"Dear me! Is my position on the wane? When a man is no longer dunned his
credit is either too good or too bad; or else his social position is
declining." He picked up the tray with the letters, ran his eye over
them quickly, and said, "Thank the stars; they still dun me by post.
There should be a law against it; yet it is as sweet to one's vanity as
an angry letter from a woman. Nevins, is the day dull or garish?"
"It's what I should call bright, sir."
"Then you may lay out some gloomy clothes for me. I would not add to the
heat wittingly. And, Nevins!"
"Yes sir."
"If anyone calls before I breakfast, unless it happens to be Professor
Vanlief,--Vanlief, Nevins, of the Vanliefs of New Amsterdam--say I am
indisposed."
He dressed himself leisurely, thinking of the wonderful adventures into
living that lay before him. He rehearsed the simple instructions that
Vanlief had given him the night before. It was all utterly simple. As
one looked into the mirror, the spirit of that one lay on the surface,
waiting for the next person that glanced that way. There followed a
complete exodus of the spirit from the one body into the other. The
recipient was himself plus the soul of the other. The exodus left that
other in a state something like physical collapse. There would be, for
the recipient of the new personality, a sense of double consciousness;
the mind would be like a palimpsest, the one will and the one habit
imposed upon the other. The fact that the person whose spirit passed
from him upon the magic mirror was left more or less a wreck was cause
for using the experiment charily, as the Professor took pains to warn
Orson. There was a certain risk. The mirror might be broken; one could
never tell. It would be better to pick one's subjects wisely, always
with a definite purpose. This man might be used to teach that side of
life; that man another. It was not a thing to toy with. It was to be
played with as little as human life itself. Vivisection was a pastime to
this; this implicated the spirit, the other only the body.
Consideration of the new avenues opening for his intelligence had
already begun to alter Vane's outlook on life. Persons who remarked him,
a little later, strolling the avenue, wondered at the brilliance of his
look. He seemed suddenly sprayed with a new youth, a new enthusiasm. It
was not, as some of his conversations of that morning proved, an utter
lapse into optimism on his part; but it was an exchange of the mere
passive side of pessimism for its healthier, more buoyant side. He was
able to smile to himself as he met the various human marionettes of the
avenue; the persons whose names you would be sure to read every Sunday
in the society columns, and who seemed, consequently, out of place in
any more aristocratic air. He bowed to the newest beauty, he waved a
hand to the most perennial of the faded beaux. The vociferous attire of
the actors, who idled conspicuously before the shop-windows, caused him
inward shouts of laughter; a day or so ago the same sight would have
embittered his hour for him.
At Twenty-third street something possessed him to patronize one of the
Sicilian flower-sellers. The man had, happily, not importuned him; he
merely held his wares, and waited, mutely. Orson put a sprig of
lily-of-the-valley into his coat.
Before he left his rooms he had spent an hour or so writing curt notes
to the smartest addresses in town. All his invitations were declined by
him; a trip to Cairo, he had written, would keep him from town for some
time. He took this ruse because he felt that the complications of his
coming experiment might be awkward; it was as well to pave the way.
Certainly he could not hope to fulfil his social obligations in the time
to come. An impression that he was abroad was the best way out of the
dilemma. The riddance from fashionable duties added to his gaiety; he
felt like a school-boy on holiday.
It was in this mood that he saw, on the other side of the avenue, a
figure that sent a flush to his skin. There was no mistaking that
wonderful hair; in the bright morning it shone with a glow a trifle less
garish than under the electric light, but it was the same, the same. To
make assurance surer, there, just under the hat--a hat that no mere male
could have expressed in phrases, a thing of gauze and shimmer--lay a
spray of lilies-of-the-valley. The gown--Vane knew at a glance that it
was a beautiful gown and a happy one, though as different as possible
from the filmy thing she had worn when first he saw her, in the mirror,
at night.
At first unconsciously, and then with quite brazen intent, he found
himself keeping pace, on his side of the street, with the girl opposite.
He knew not what emotion possessed him; no hint of anything despicable
came to him; he had forgotten himself utterly, and he was merely
following some sweet, blind impulse. Orson Vane was a man who had
tasted the froth and dregs of his town no less thoroughly than other
men; there were few sensations, few emotions, he had not tried. Almost
the only sort of woman he did not know was The woman. In the year of his
majority he had made a summer of it on the Sound in his steam yacht, and
his enemies declared that all the harbors he had anchored in were left
empty of both champagne and virtue. Yet not even his bitterest enemy had
ever accused him of anything vulgar, brazen, coarse, conspicuous.
Luke Moncreith was a friend of Vane's, there was no reason for doubting
that. But even he experienced a little shock when he met Vane, was
unseen of him, and was then conscious, in a quick turn of the head, that
Vane's eyes, his entire vitality, were upon a woman's figure across the
avenue.
"The population of the Bowery, of Forty-second street, and of the
Tenderloin," said Moncreith to himself, "have a name for that sort of
thing." He clicked his tongue upon his teeth once or twice. "Poor Orson!
Is it the beginning of the end? Last night he seemed a little mad. Poor
Orson!" Then, with furtive shame at his bad manners, he turned about and
watched the two. Even at that distance the sunlight glowed like a caress
upon the hair of her whom Orson followed. "The girl," exclaimed
Moncreith, "the girl of the mirror." He came to a halt before a
photographer's window, the angle of which gave him a view of several
blocks behind.
Orson Vane, in the meanwhile, was as if there was but one thing in life
for him: a meeting with this radiant creature with the lilies. Once he
thought he caught a sidelong glance of hers; a little smile even hovered
an instant upon her lips; yet, at that distance, he could not be sure.
None of the horrible things occurred to him as possibilities; that she
might be an adventuress, or a mere masquerading shop-girl, or an adroit
soubrette. No tangible intention came to the young man; he had not made
it clear to himself whether he would keep on, and on, and on, until she
came to her own door; whether he would accost her; whether he would
leave all to chance; or whether he would fashion circumstances to his
end.
The girl turned into a little bookshop that, as it happened, was one of
Vane's familiar haunts. It was a place where one could always find the
new French and German things, and where the shopman was not a mere
instrument for selling whatever rubbish publishers chose to shoot at the
public. When Vane entered he found this shopman, who nodded smilingly at
him, busy with a bearded German. The girl stood at a little table,
passing her slim fingers lovingly over the titles of the books that lay
there. It was evident that she had no wish for advice from the assistant
who hovered in the background. She did not so much as glance at him.
Her eyes were all for her friends in print. She did look up, the veriest
trifle, it is true, when Orson came in; it was so swift, so shy a look
that he, in a mist of emotions, could not have sworn to it. As for him,
a boyish boldness took him to the other side of the table at which she
stood; he bent over the books, and his hands almost touched her fingers.
In that little, quiet nook, he became, all of a moment, once more a
youth of twenty; he felt the first shy stirrings of tenderness, of
worship. The names of the volumes swam for him in a mere haze. He saw
nothing save only the little figure before him, the shimmer of rose upon
her face passing into the ruddier shimmer of her hair; the perfume of
her lilies and some yet subtler scent, redolent of fairest linen, most
fragile laces and the utterest purity, came over him like a glow.
And then the marvel, the miracle of her voice!
"Oh, Mr. Vane," he heard her saying, "do help me!" Their eyes met and he
was conscious of a bewildering beauty in hers; it was with quite an
effort that he did not, then and there, do something absurd and stupid.
His hesitation, his astonishment, cost him a second or so; before he
caught his composure again, she was explaining, sweetly, plaintively,
"Help me to make up my mind. About a book."
"Why did you add that?" he asked, his wits sharp now, and his voice
still a little unsteady. "There are so many other things I would like to
help you in. A book? What sort of a book? One of those stories where
the men are all eight feet high, and wear medals, and the women are all
models for Gibson? Or one of those aristocratic things where nobody is
less than a prince, except the inevitable American, who is a newspaper
man and an abomination? Or is it, by any chance," he paused, and dropped
his voice, as if he were approaching a dreadful disclosure, "poetry?"
She shook her head. The lilies in her hair nodded, and her smile came up
like a radiance in that dark little corner. And, oh, the music in her
laugh! It blew ennui away as effectually as a storm whirls away a leaf.
"No," she said, "it is none of those things. I told you I had not made
up my mind."
"It is a thing you should never attempt. Making up the mind is a
temptation only the bravest of us can resist. One should always delegate
the task to someone else."
The girl frowned gently. "If it is the fashion to talk like that," she
said, "I do not want to be in the fashion."
He took the rebuke with a laugh. "It is hard," he pleaded, "to keep out
of the fashion. Everything we do is a fashion of one sort or another."
He glanced at her wonderful hat, at the gown that held her so closely,
so tenderly. "I am sure you are in the fashion," he said.
"If Mr. Orson Vane tells me so, I must believe it," she answered. "But I
wear only what suits me; if the fashion does not suit me, I avoid the
fashion."
"But you cannot avoid beauty," he urged, "and to be fair is always the
fashion."
She turned her eyes to him full of reproach. They said, as plainly as
anything, "How crude! How stupidly obvious!" As if she had really
spoken, he went on, in plain embarassment:
"I beg your pardon. I--I am very silly this morning. Something has gone
to my head. I really don't think I'd better advise you about anything to
read. I--"
"Oh," she interrupted, already full of forgiveness, since it was not in
her nature to be cruel for more than a moment at a time, "but you must.
I am really desperate. All I ask is that you do not urge a fashionable
book, a book of the day, or a book that should be in the library of
every lady. I am afraid of those books. They are like the bores one
turns a corner to avoid."
"You make advice harder and harder. Is it possible you really want a
book to read, rather than to talk about?"
"I really do," she admitted, "I told you I had no thought about the
fashion."
"You are like a figure from the Middle Ages," he said, "with your notion
about books."
"Am I so very wrinkled?" she asked. She put her hand to her veil, with a
gesture of solicitous inquiry. "To be young," she sighed, with a pout,
"and yet to seem old. I am quite a tragedy."
"A goddess," he murmured, "but not of tragedy." He laughed sharply, and
took a book from the table, using it to keep his eyes from the witchery
of her as he continued: "Don't you see why I'm talking such nonsense? If
it meant prolonging the glimpse of you, there's no end, simply no end,
to the rubbish I could talk!"
"And no beginning," she put in, "to your sincerity."
"Oh, I don't know. One still has fits and starts of it! There's no
telling what might not be done; it might come back to one, like
childishness in old age." He put down the book, and looked at her in
something like appeal. "There is such a thing as a sincerity one is
ashamed of, that one hides, and disguises, and that the world refuses to
see. The world? The world always means an individual. In this case the
world is--"
"The world is yours, like _Monte Cristo_," she interposed, "how
embarassed you must feel. The responsibility must be enervating! I have
always thought the clever thing for _Monte Cristo_ to have done was to
lose the world; to hide it where nobody could find it again." She tapped
her boot with her parasol, charmingly impatient. "I suppose," she
sighed, "I shall have to ask that stupid clerk for a book, after all. He
looks as if he would far rather sell them by weight."
"No, no, I couldn't allow that. Consider me all eagerness to aid you. Is
it to be love, or ghosts, or laughter?"
"Love and laughter go well together," she said. "I want a book I can
love and laugh with, not at."
"I know," he nodded. "The tear that makes the smile come after. You want
something charming, something sweet, something that will taste
pleasantly no matter how often you read it. A trifle, and yet--a
treasure. Such a book as, I dare say, every writer dreams of doing once
in his life; the sort of book that should be bound in rose-leaves. And
you expect me to betray a treasure like that to you? And my reward? But
no, I beg your pardon; I have my reward now, and here, and the debt is
still mine. I can merely put you in the way of a printed page; while
you--" He stopped, roving for the right word. His eyes spoke what his
voice could not find. He finished, lamely, and yet aptly enough,
"You--are you."
"I don't believe," she declared, with the most arch elevation of the
darkest eyebrows, "that you know one book from another. You are an
impostor. You are sparring for time. I have given you too much time as
it is. I am going." She picked up her skirts with one slim hand, turned
on a tiny heel, and looked over her shoulder with an air, a
mischievousness, that made Orson ache, yes, simply ache with curiosity
about her. He put out a hand in expostulation.
"Please," he pleaded, "please don't go. I have found the book. I really
have. But you must take my word for it. You mustn't open it till you are
at home." He handed it to the clerk to be wrapped up. "And now," he went
on, "won't you tell me something? I--upon my honor, I can't think where
we met?"
"One hardly expects Mr. Orson Vane to remember all the young women in
society," she smiled. "Besides, if I must confess: I am only just what
society calls 'out.' I have seen Mr. Orson Vane: but he has not seen me.
Mr. Vane is a leader; I am--" She shrugged her shoulder, raised her
eyebrows, pursed up her mouth, oh, to a complete gesture that was the
prettiest, most bewildering finish to any sentence ever uttered.
"Oh," said Orson, "but you are mistaken. I have seen you. No longer ago
than last night. In--"
"In a mirror," she laughed. Then she grew suddenly quite solemn. "Oh,
you mustn't think I didn't know who you were. It was all very rash of
me, and very improper, my speaking to you, just now, but--"
"It was very sweet," he interposed.
"But," she went on, not heeding his remark at all, "I knew you so well
by sight, and I had really been introduced to you once,--one of a bevy
of debutantes, merely an item in a chorus--and, besides, my father--"
"Your father?" repeated Orson, jogging his memory, "you don't mean to
say--"
"My father is Augustus Vanlief," she said.
He took a little time to digest the news. The clerk handed him the book
and the change. He saw, now, whence that charm, that grace, that beauty
came; he recalled that the late Mrs. Vanlief had been one of the
Waddells; there was no better blood in the country. With the name, too,
there came the thought of the wonderful revelations that were presently
to come to him, thanks to this girl's father. A sort of dizziness
touched him: he felt a quick conflict between the wish to worship this
girl, and the wish to probe deeper into life. It was with a very real
effort that he brushed the charm of her from him, and relapsed, again,
into the man who meant to know more of human life than had ever been
known before.
He took out a silver pencil and held it poised above the book.
"This book," he said, "is for you, you know, not for your father. Your
father and I are to be great friends but--I want to be friends, also,
with--" he looked a smiling appeal, "with--whom?"
"With Miss Vanlief," she replied, mockingly. "My other name? I hate it;
really I do. Perhaps my father will tell you."
She had given him the tip of her fingers, her gown had swung perfume as
it followed her, and she was out and away before he could do more than
give her the book, bow her good-bye, and stand in amaze at her
impetuousness, her verve. The thought smote him that, on the night
before, he had seen her, in the mirror, and spurned the notion of her
being other than a sham, a mockery. How did he know, even now, that she
was other than that? Yet, what had happened to him that he had been able
so long to stay under her charm, to believe in her, to wish for her, to
feel that she was hardly mortal, but some strange, sweet, splendid
dream? Was he the same man who, only a few hours ago, had held himself
shorn of all the primal emotions? He beat these questionings back and
forth in his mind; now doubting himself, now doubting this girl. Surely
she had not, in that dining-room, been sitting with her father? Would he
not have seen them together? Perhaps she was with some of her family's
womenfolk? Yes; now he remembered; she had been at a table with several
other ladies, all elderly. He wished he knew the name one might call
her, if ... if....
Luke Moncreith came into the shop. Orson caught a shadow of a frown on
the other's face. Moncreith's voice was sharp and bitter when he spoke.
"Been buying the shop?" he asked.
"No," said Orson, in some wonder. "Only one book."
"Hope you'll like it," said the other, with a manner that meant the very
opposite.
"I? Oh, I read it ages ago. It was for somebody else. You seem very
curious about it?"
"I am. You aren't usually the man to dawdle in bookshops."
"Dawdle?" Orson turned on the other sharply. "What the deuce do you
mean? Are you my keeper, or what? If I choose to, I can _live_ in this
shop, can't I?"
"Oh, Lord, yes! Looks odd, just the same, you trailing in here after a
petticoat, and hanging around for--" he pulled out his watch,--"for a
good half hour."
Orson burst out in a sort of clenched breath of rage. He kept the
phrases down with difficulty. "Better choose your words," he said. "I
don't like your words, and your watch be damned. Since when have my--my
friends taken to timing my actions? It's a blessing I'm going abroad."
He turned and walked out of the shop, fiercely, swiftly. As the fresh
air struck his face, he put his hand to it, and shook his head,
wonderingly. "What's the matter with Moncreith? With me?" He thought of
the title of the book he had just given away. "Are we all as mad as
that?" he asked himself.
The title was "March Hares."