It was the fashionable bathing hour at the most exclusive summer resort
on the Atlantic coast. The sand in front of the Surf Club was dotted
with gaudy tents and umbrellas. Persons whom not to know was to be
unknowable were picturesquely distributed about the club verandahs in
wicker chairs and lounges. The eye of an artist would have been
distracted by the beauties that were suggested in the half-lifted skirts
of this beauty, and revealed in the bathing-suit of that one. The little
waves that came politely rippling up the slope of sand seemed to know
what was expected of them; they were in nowise rude. They may have
longed to ruffle this or that bit of feminine frippery, but they
refrained. They may have ached to drown out Orson Vane's voice as he
said "good morning" to everybody in and out of the water; but they
permitted themselves no such luxury.
Orson Vane was a beautiful picture as he entered the water. His suit was
immaculate; a belt prevented the least wrinkle in his jersey; a rakish
sombrero gave his head a sort of halo. He poised a cigarette in one
hand, keeping himself afloat with the other. He bowed obsequiously to
all the pretty women; he invited all the rich ones to tea and toast--"We
always have a little tea and toast at my cottage on Sundays, you know;
you'll meet only nice-looking people, really; we have a jolly time."
Most of the men he was unable to see; the sunlight on the water did make
such a glare.
On the raft Orson Vane found the only Mrs. Carlos.
"If it were not for you, Mrs. Carlos," he assured her, "the ocean would
be quite unfashionable."
Mrs. Carlos smiled amiably. Speeches of that sort were part of the
tribute the world was expected to pay her. She asked him if the yachts
in the harbor were not too pretty for anything.
"No," said Vane, "no. Most melancholy sight. Bring up the wickedness of
man, whenever I look at them. I bought a yacht you know, early in the
summer. Liked her looks, made an offer, bought her. A swindle, Mrs.
Carlos, an utter swindle. A disgraceful hulk. And now I can't sell her.
And my cook is a rascal. Oh--don't mention yachts! And my private car,
Mrs. Carlos, you cannot imagine the trials I endure over that! The
railroads overcharge me, and the mob comes pottering about with those
beastly cameras. Really, you know, I am thinking of living abroad. The
theatre is better supported in Europe. I am thinking of devoting my life
to the theatre altogether. It is the one true passion. It shows people
how life should be lived; it is at once a school of morals and
comportment." He peered into the water near the raft. Then he plunged
prettily into the sea. "I see that dear little Imogene," he told Mrs.
Carlos, as he swam off. Imogene was the little heiress of the house of
Carlos; a mere schoolgirl. It was one of Vane's most deliberate appeals
for public admiration, this worship of the society of children. He
gamboled with all the tots and blossoms he could find. He knew them all
by name; they dispelled his shortsightedness marvelously.
After a proper interval Vane appeared, in the coolest of flannels, on
the verandah of the Club. He bowed to all the women, whether he knew
them or not; he peered under the largest picture hats with an air that
said "What sweet creature is hidden here?" as plainly as words.
Someone asked him why he had not been to the Casino the night before.
"Oh," he sighed, "I was fearfully busy."
"Busy?" The word came in a tone of reproach. A suspicion of any sort of
toil will brand one more hopelessly in the smart set of America than in
any other; one may pretend an occupation but one may not profess it in
actuality.
"Oh, terribly busy," said Vane. "I am writing a comedy. I have decided
that we must make authorship smarter than it has been. I shall sacrifice
myself in that attempt. You've noticed that not one writing-chap in a
million knows anything about our little world except what is not true?
Yes; it's unmistakable. An entirely false impression of us is given to
the world at large. The real picture of us must come from one of
ourselves."
"And you will try it?"
"Yes. I shall do my very best. When it is finished I want you all to
play parts in it. We must do something for the arts, you know. Why not
the arts, as well as tailors and milliners? By the way, I want you all
to come to my little lantern-dance to-night, on the _Beaurivage_. It is
something quite novel. You must all come disguised as flowers. There
will be no lights but Chinese lanterns. I shall have launches ready for
you at the Casino landing. My cook is quite sober to-day, and the yacht
is as presentable as if she were not an arrant fraud. I mean to have a
dance that shall fit the history of society in America. For that reason
the newspapers must know nothing about it. There can be no history where
there are newspapers. I shall invite nobody who knows how to write; I am
the only one whose taste I can trust. Some people write to live, and
some live to write, and the worst class of all are merely dying to
write. They are all barred to-night. We must try and break all the
conventions. Conventions are like the strolling players: made to be
broke."
He rattled on in this way, with painful efforts at brilliance, for quite
a time. His hearers really considered it brilliance and listened
patiently. Summer was not their season for intellectual exertion; it
might be a virtue in others, in themselves it would have been a mistake.
The lantern-dance on Orson Vane's _Beaurivage_ was, as everyone will
remember, an event of exceeding picturesqueness. Mrs. Sclatersby
appeared as a carnation; Mrs. Carlos as a rose. Some of the younger and
divinely figured women appeared as various blossoms that necessitated
imitation of part of Rosalind's costume under the trees. The slender,
tapering stem of one white lily, fragrant and delicious, lingered long
in the memories of the men who were there.
A sensation was caused by the arrival of Mrs. Barrett Weston. She came
in a scow, seated on her automobile. A shriek of delight from the
company greeted her. The weary minds of the elect were really tickled by
this conceit. The automobile was arranged to imitate a crysanthemum.
Just before she alighted Mrs. Barrett Weston touched a hidden lever and
the automobile began to grind out a rag-time tune.
A stranger, approaching the _Beaurivage_ at that moment, might have
fancied himself in the politest ward of the most insane of asylums. But
Orson Vane found it all most delightful. It was the affair of the
season.
"Look," he cried, in the midst of a game of leapfrog in which a number
of the younger guests had plunged with desperate glee, "there is the
moon. How pitably weak she seems, against this brilliance here! It bears
out the theory that art is always finer than nature, and that the
theatre is more picturesque than life. Look at what we are doing, this
moment! We are imitating pleasure. And will you show me any unconscious
pleasure that is so delightful as this?"
By the time people had begun to feel a polite hunger Vane had completed
his scheme of having several unwieldy barges brought alongside the
_Beaurivage_. There were two of the clumsy but roomy decks on either
side of the slender, shapely yacht. Over this now quite wide space the
tables were arranged. While the supper went on, Orson Vane did a little
monologue of his own. Nobody paid any attention, but everyone applauded.
"What a scene for a comedy," he explained, proudly surveying the picture
of the gaiety before him, "what a delicious scene! It is almost real. I
must write a play around it. I have quite made up my mind to devote my
life to the theatre. It is the only real life. It touches the emotions
at all points; it is not isolated in one narrow field of personality.
Have I your permission to put you all in my play? How sweet of you! I
shall have a scene where we all race in automobiles. We will be quite
like dear little children who have their donkey-races. But I think
automobiles are so much more intelligent than donkeys, don't you? And
they have such profound voices! Have you ever noticed the intonation of
the automobiles here? That one of Mrs. Barrett Weston has a delicate
tenor; it is always singing love-songs as if it were tired of life. Then
we have bassos, and baritones, and repulsive falsettos. My automobile
has a voice like a phonograph. When it bubbles along the avenue I can
hear, as plainly as anything, that it is imitating one of the other
automobiles. Some automobiles, I suppose, have the true instinct for the
theatre. Have you noticed how theatric some of the things are, how they
contrive to run away just when everyone is looking?"
"Just like horses," murmured one of his listeners.
"Oh, no; I wouldn't say that. Horses have a merely natural intelligence;
it is nothing like the splendidly artificial reasoning of the
automobile. The poor horse, I really pity him! He has nothing before him
but polo. But how thankful he should be to polo. He was a broncho with
disreputable manners; now he is a polo-pony with a neat tail. In time, I
dare say, the horse can learn some of the higher civilization of the
automobile, just as society may still manage to be as intelligent as the
theatre."
The conclusion of that entertainment marked the height of Orson Vane's
peculiar fame. The radical newspapers caught echoes of it and invented
what they could not transcribe. The young men who owned newspapers had
not been invited by Orson Vane, because, in spite of his theatric mania,
he had no illusions about the decency of metropolitan journalism. He
avowed that the theatre might be a trifle highflavored, but it had, at
the least, nothing of the hypocrisy that smothers the town in lies
to-day and reads it a sermon to-morrow. The most conspicuous of these
newspaper owners went into something like convulsions over what he
called the degeneracy of our society. Himself most lamentably in a state
of table-d'hotage, this young man trumpeted forth the most bitter
editorials against Orson Vane and his doings. He frothed with
anarchistic ravings. Finally, since the world will always listen if you
only make noise loud enough and long enough, the general public began to
believe that Vane was really a dreadful person. He was a leader in the
smart set; he stood for the entire family. His taste for the theater
would debauch all society. His egoisms would spoil what little of the
natural was left in the regions of Vanity Fair. So went the chatter of
the man-on-the-street, that mighty power, whom the most insignificant of
little men-behind-the-pen can move at will.
One may be ever so immersed in affairs that are not of the world and its
superficial doings, yet it is almost impossible to escape some faint
echo of what the world is chattering about. Professor Vanlief, who had
betaken himself and Jeanette, for the summer, to a little place in the
mountains, was finally routed out of his peace by the rumors concerning
Orson Vane. The give and take of conversation, even at a little
farm-house in the hills, does not long leave any prominent subject
untouched. So Augustus Vanlief one morning bought all the morning
papers.
He found more than he had wanted. The editorials against the doings of
the smart set, the reports of the sermons preached against their
goings-on, were especially pregnant that morning.
In another part of the paper he found a line or two, however, that
brought him sharply to a sense of necessary action. The lines were
these:
"Mr. Arthur Wantage is still seriously ill at Framley
Lodge. Unless a decided turn for the better takes place
very shortly, it is doubtful if he can undertake his
starring season at the usual time this year."
Augustus Vanlief saw what no other mortal could have guessed. He saw the
connection between those two newspaper items, the one about Vane and the
one about Wantage.