The smart world received the change in Orson Vane with no immediate
wonder. Wonder is, at the outset, a vulgarity; to let nothing astonish
you is part of a smart education. A good many of the smartest hostesses
in town were glad that Vane had emerged from his erstwhile air of
aristocratic aloofness; he took, with them, the place that Reggie Hart's
continuing illness left vacant.
In the regions where Vane had been actually intimate whispers began to
go about, it is true, and it was with no little difficulty that an
occasional story about him was kept out of the gossipy pages of the
papers. Vane was constantly busy seeking notoriety. His attentions to
several of the younger matrons were conspicuous. Yet he was so much of a
stimulating force, in a society where passivity was the rule, that he
was welcome everywhere.
He had become the court fool of the smart set.
To him, the position held nothing degrading. It was, he argued, a
reflection on smart society, rather on himself, that, to be prominent in
it, one must needs wear cap and bells. Moreover his position allowed
him, now and then, the utterance of grim truths that would not have
been listened to from anyone not wearing the jester's license.
At the now famous dinner given by Mrs. Sclatersby, Orson Vane seized a
lull in the conversation, by remarking, in his ladylike lisp:
"My dear Mrs. Sclatersby, I have such a charming idea. I am thinking of
syndicating myself."
Mrs. Sclatersby put up her lorgnettes and smiled encouragement at Orson.
"It sounds Wall Streety," she said, "you're not going to desert us, are
you?"
"Oh, nothing so dreadful. It would be an entirely smart syndicate, you
know; a syndicate of which you would be a member. I sometimes think, you
know, that I do not distribute myself to the best advantage. There have
been little jealousies, now and then, have there not?" He looked, in a
bird-like, perky way, at Mrs. Barrett Weston, and the only Mrs. Carlos.
"I have been unable to be in two places at once. Now a syndicate--a
syndicate could arrange things so that there would be no
disappointments, no clashings of engagements, no waste of opportunity.
"How clever you always are," said a lady at Orson's right. She had
chameleon hair, and her poise was that of a soubrette. The theatre was
tremendously popular as a society model that season. Orson blew a kiss
at her, and went on with his speech.
"Actors do it, you know. Painters have done it. Inventors do it. Why
not I?" He paused to nibble an olive. "To contribute to the gaiety of
our little world is, after all, the one thing worth while. Think how few
picturesque people we have! Eccentricity is terribly lacking in the
town. We have no Whistler; Mansfield is rather a dull imitation. Of
course there is George Francis Train; but he is a trifle, a trifle too
much of the larger world, don't you think?"
"I never saw the man in my life," asserted the hostess.
"Exactly," said Orson, "he makes himself too cheap. It keeps us from
seeing him. But Whistler; think of Whistler, in New York! He would wear
a French hat, fight duels every day, lampoon a critic every hour, and
paint nocturnes on the Fifth avenue pavement! He would make Diana fall
from the Tower in sheer envy. He would go through the Astoria with
monocle and mockery, and smile blue peacock smiles at Mr. Blashfield and
Mr. Simmons. He would etch himself upon the town. We would never let him
go again. We need that sort of thing. Our ambitions and our patience are
cosmopolitan; but we lack the public characters to properly give fire
and color to our streets. Now I--"
He let his eyes wander about the room, a delicate smile of invitation on
his lips.
"Don't you think," said one of the ladies, "that you are quite--quite
bohemian enough?"
Orson shuddered obviously. "My dear lady," he urged, "it is a dreadful
thing to be bohemian. It is no longer smart. If I am considered the one,
I cannot possibly be the other. There is, to be sure, a polite
imitation; but it is quite an art to imitate the thing with just
sufficient indolence. But I really wish you would think the thing over,
Mrs. Sclatersby. I know nobody who would do the thing better than I. Our
men are mostly too fond of fashion, and too afraid of fancy. One must
not be ashamed of being called foolish. Whistler uses butterflies;
somebody else used sunflowers and green carnations; I should
use--lilies, I think, lilies-of-the-valley. Emblematic of the pure folly
of my pose, you know. One must do something like that, you see, to gain
smart applause; impossible hats and improbable hair, except in the case
of actresses, are quite extinct."
A Polish orchestra that had been hitherto unsuccessful against the
shrill monologue of Orson, and the occasional laughter of the ladies,
now sent out a sudden, fierce stream of melody. It was evident that they
did not mean to take the insult of a large wage without offering some
stormy moments in exchange. The diners assumed a patient air, eating in
an abstracted manner, as if their stomachs were the only members of
their bodies left unstunned by the music. The assemblage wore, in its
furtive gluttony, an air of being in a plot of the most delicious
danger. Some rather dowdy anecdotes went about in whispers, and several
of the ladies made passionate efforts to blush. Orson Vane took a sip of
some apricotine, explaining to his neighbor that he took it for the
color; it was the color of verses by Verlaine. She had never heard of
the man. Ah; then of course Mallarmé, and Symons and Francis Saltus were
her gods? No; she said she liked Madame Louise; hers were by far the
most fragile hats purchasable; what was the use of a hat if it was not
fragile; to wear one twice was a crime, and to give one away unless it
was decently crushed was an indiscretion. Orson quite agreed with her.
To his other neighbor he confided that he was thinking of writing a
book. It would be something entirely in the key of blue. He was busy
explaining its future virtues, when an indiscreet lull came in the
orchestral tornado.
"I mean to bring the pink of youth to the sallowest old age," he was
saying, "and every page is to be as dangerous as a Bowery cocktail."
Then the storm howled forth again. Everyone talked to his or her
neighbor at top voice. Now and then pauses in the music left fag ends of
conversation struggling about the room.
"The decadents are simply the people who refuse to write twaddle for the
magazines...."
"The way to make a name in the world is to own a soap factory and ape
William Morris on the side...."
"I can always tell when it is Spring by looking at the haberdashers'
windows. To watch shirts and ties blooming is so much nicer than flowers
and those smelly things...."
"The pleasantest things in the world all begin with a P. Powders,
patches and poses--what should we do without them?..."
This sort of thing came out at loose ends now and then. Suddenly the
music ceased altogether. The diners all looked as if they had been
caught in a crime. The lights went out in the room, and there were
little smothered shrieks. After an interval, a rosy glow lit up the
conservatory beyond the palms; a little stage showed in the distance.
Some notorious people from the music-halls began to do songs and dances,
and offer comic monologues. The diners fell into a sort of lethargy.
They did not even notice that Orson Vane's chair was empty.
Vane was in a little boudoir lent him by the hostess. His nostrils
dilated with the perfume of her that he felt everywhere. He sank into a
silk-covered chair, before which he had arranged a full-length mirror,
and several smaller glasses, with candles glowing all about him. He was
conscious of a cloying sense of happiness over his physical perfections.
He stripped garment after garment from him with a care, a gentleness
that argued his belief that haste was a foe to beauty. He stretched
himself at full length, in epicurean enjoyment of himself. The flame of
life, he told himself, burnt the more steadily the less we wrapped it
up. If we could only return to the pagan life! And yet--what charm there
was in dress! The body had, after all, a monotony, a sameness; the
tenderest of its curves, the rosiest of its surfaces, must pall. But the
infinite variety of clothes! The delight of letting the most delicate
tints of gauze caress the flesh, while to the world only the soberest
stuffs were exposed! The rustle of fresh linen, the perfume that one
could filter through the layers of one's attire!
Orson Vane closed his eyes, lazily, musingly. At that moment his proper
soul was quite in subjection; the ecstasy in the usurping soul was
all-powerful.
He was thinking of what the cheval-glass in that little room must have
seen.
It would be unspeakably fine to be a mirror.
The little crystal clock ticking on the dressing-table tinkled an hour.
It brought him from his reveries with a start. He began gliding into
some shining, silken things of umber tints; they fitted him to the skin.
He was a falconer.
It was a costume to strike pale the idlers at a bathing beach. There was
not a crease, not a fold anywhere. A leathern thong upon a wrist, a
feathered cap upon his head, were almost the only points that rose away
from the body as God had fashioned it. Satisfaction filled him as he
surveyed himself. But there was more to do. Above this costume he put
the dress of a Spanish Queen. When he lifted the massively brocaded
train, there showed the most exquisitely chiseled ankles, the promise of
the most alluring legs. The corsage hinted a bust of the most soothing
softness. He spent fully ten minutes in happy admiration of his images
in the mirrors.
When he proceeded to the conservatory, it was by a secret corridor. The
diners were wearily watching a Frenchwoman who sang with her gloves,
which were black and always on the point of falling down. She was very
pathetic; she was trying to sing rag-time melodies because some idiot
had told her the Newport set preferred that music. A smart young woman
had danced a dance of her own invention; everyone agreed, as they did
about the man who paints with his toes, that, considering her smartness
in the fashionable world, it was not so much a wonder that she danced so
well, as that she danced at all. They were quite sure the professional
managers would offer her the most lavish sums; she would be quite as
much of an attraction as the foreign peer who was trying to be a
gentleman, where they are most needed, on the stage.
At a sign from Orson, the lights went out again, as the Frenchwoman
finished her song. Several of the guests began to talk scandal in the
dark; there are few occupations more fascinating than talking scandal in
the dark. The question of whether it was better to be a millionaire or
a fashionable and divorced beauty was beginning to agitate several
people into almost violent argument, when the lights flared to the full.
The chorus of little "Ohs" and "Ahs," of rapid whispered comment, and of
discreetly patted gloves, was quite fervid for so smart an assemblage.
Except in the rarest cases, to gush is as fatal, in the smart world, as
to be intolerant. There is a smart avenue between fervor and frowning;
when you can find that avenue unconsciously, in the dark, as it were,
you have little more to learn in the code of smartness.
Mrs. Sclatersby herself murmured, quite audibly:
"How sweet the dear boy looks!"
Her clan took the word up, and for a time the sibilance of it was like a
hiss in the room. A man or two in the company growled out something that
his fairer neighbor seemed unwilling to hear. These basso profundo
sounds, if one could formulate them into words at all, seemed more like
"Disgusting fool!" or "Sickening!" than anything else. But the company
had very few men in it; in this, as in many other respects, the room
resembled smart society itself. The smart world is engineered and
peopled chiefly by the feminine element. The male sex lends to it only
its more feminine side.
It is almost unnecessary to describe the picture that Orson Vane
presented on that little stage. His beauty as "Isabella, Queen of
Spain," has long since become public property; none of his later efforts
in suppression of the many photographs that were taken, shortly after
the Sclatersby dinner, have succeeded in quite expunging the portraits.
At that time he gave the sittings willingly. He felt that these
photographs represented the highest notch in his fame, the completest
image of his ability to be as beautiful as the most beautiful woman.
Shame or nervousness was not part of Orson Vane's personality that
night. He sat there, in the skillfully arranged scheme of lights, with
his whole body attuned only to accurate impersonation of the character
he represented. He got up. His motion, as he passed across the stage,
was so utterly feminine, so made of the swaying, undulating grace that
usually implies the woman; the gesture with his fan was so finically
alluring; the poise of his head above his bared shoulders so
coquettish,--that the women watching him almost held their breaths in
admiration.
It was, you see, the most adroit flattery that a man could pay the
entire sex of womankind.
Then the music, a little way off, began to strum a cachuca. The tempo
increased; when finally the pace was something infectious, Orson Vane
began a dance that remains, to this day, an episode in the annals of the
smart. The vigor of his poses, the charm of his skirt-manipulation,
carried the appreciation of his friends by storm. Some of the ladies
really had hard work to keep from rushing to the stage and kissing the
young man then and there. When we are emotional, we Americans--to what
lengths will we not go!
But the surprises were not yet over. A dash of darkness stayed the
music; a swishing and a flapping came from the stage; then the lights.
Vane stood, in statue position, as a falconer. You could almost, under
the umber silk, see the rippling of his veins.
Only a second he stood so, but it was a second of triumph. The company
was so agape with wonder, that there was no sound from it until the
music and the bare stage, following a brief period of blackness,
recalled it to its senses. Then it urged Mrs. Sclatersby to grant a
great favor.
Mr. Vane must be persuaded not take off his falconer's costume; to
mingle, for what little time remained, with the company without resuming
his more conventional attire.
Vane smiled when the message came to him. He nodded his head. Then he
sent for the Sclatersby butler.
"Plenty of Red Ribbon!" he said to that person.
"Plenty, sir."
"Make a note of your commissions; a cheque in the morning."
Then he mingled again with his fellow-guests, and there was much
toasting, and the bonds all loosened a little, and the sparkle came up
out of the glasses into the cheeks of the women. The other men, one by
one, took their way out.
Women crushed one another to touch the hero of the evening. Jealousies
shot savage glances about. Every increase in this emulation increased
the love that Orson Vane felt for himself. He caressed a hand here, a
lock there, with a king's condescension. If he felt a kiss upon his
hand, he smiled a splendid, slightly wearied smile. If he had hot eyes
turned on him, burning so fiercely as to spell out passion boldly, he
returned, with his own glances, the most ineffable promises.
There have been many things written and said about that curious affair
at the Sclatersbys, but for the entire history of it--well, there are
reasons why you will never be able to trace it. Orson Vane is perhaps
the only one who might tell some of the details; and he, as you will
find presently, has utterly forgotten that night.
"Time we went home, girls," said Vane, at last, disengaging himself
gently from a number of warm hands, and putting away, as he moved into
freedom, more than one beautiful pair of shoulders. He needed the fresh
air; he was really quite worn out. But he still had a madcap notion left
in him; he still had a trump to play.
"A pair of hose," he called out, "a pair of hose, with diamond-studded
garters, to the one who will play 'follow' to my 'leader!'"
And the end of that dare-devil scamper did not come until the whole
throng reached Madison Square.
Vane plunged to the knees in the fountain.
That chilled the chase. But one would not be denied. Hers was a dark
type of beauty that needed magnolias and the moon and the South to frame
it properly. She lifted her skirts with a little tinkling laugh, and ran
to where Orson stood, splashing her way bravely through the water.
Vane looked at her and took her hand.
"I envy the prize I offered," he said to her.