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Destiny, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been - Chapter 11 |
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_ PART II. THE BOOK OF LIFE - IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHAPTER XI Mary Burton made her way between tall hedgerows of box where an alley of shade ran to a side terrace, and when she had gained her own room her eyes were aglow with a new and rather radiant sort of smile, that also crept to the corners of her lips and hovered happily. It was a vague smile, but if the man who had enticed it there had seen it, he would have felt reassured. The threat of tomorrow's wrath would not have troubled him. When Mary Burton, changed into bedroom attire, had dismissed her maid for the night, she still moved about with a restlessness which did not at once yield to the composure needed for the rigid self-analysis upon which she was resolved. She stood before the mirror and looked gravely into the glass. With the lustrous masses of hair falling braided over her shoulders and the new glow of discovery in her eyes she might have been a girl just budding into womanhood. She seemed in the last hour to have slipped back into the blossom time of her beauty--and though it was a beauty which she had always realized she now felt a new happiness in its possession. Heretofore her pride had been such as one feels for a means of conquest. Now it was different. Her breast rose suddenly and fell to the excitement of a subtly powerful emotion. This beauty had a new value. It might be a prize worth surrendering proudly and as a gift to a man of her choosing. If this rainbow of promised love proved real she would wish herself even lovelier--for his pleasure. It was of course too soon to feel sure--and at that thought a sudden gasp of fear rose in her throat. At all events it was not too early to hope that the night had brought her the thing for which she had yearned--brought the commencement. She gave to the face in the mirror a friendly smile. "This afternoon I rather hated you," she announced gravely. "I gazed at you and a soulless little pig stared back ... but who knows? Maybe down under your vanity and selfishness you have after all the cobwebbed little germ of a soul. If so we must dig it out and brush it off and put it to work." Then she turned out the lights and sank down dreamily in the broad window seat. The moon rode high and bathed the hills in its limpid yet elusive wash of silver and blue and dove grays. Far off like a brush-stroke from a dream palette ran the horizon's margin of hills and nearer at hand tapering poplars stood up like dark sentinels. The lights and music told of the dance still in progress and strolling figures occasionally crossed the silver patches between the shadows. In her own mind she was reviewing all the men who with her had sought to throw off the mantle of the Platonic and invest themselves in the more romantic habiliments of courtship. One lesson had been taught her from the first, and she had learned it thoroughly--too thoroughly! She was no ordinary girl to give way to unwise throbbing of the pulses. Her future must run side by side with brilliant things and brilliant men. It takes experience to teach distrust to those frolicsome playmates, Youth and Buoyancy. She had met with that experience and had learned that fortune-hunters are by no means mythical or extinct. When to the honey-pot of wealth is added the lure of beauty, how can one be sure that any proffered love is free from the taint of greed? Her brother was one of America's most brilliant money-getters. He gathered in and disbursed with a lavish magnificence. She had been called the most beautiful woman in Europe and her gem-like brilliancy had been set in Life's gold and platinum of environment. When Cupid came to her what bill of health could he produce to prove that he was not a sneak-thief in disguise? She had accepted the cynical conclusion that she might never be sure of any man's love and the tenderer little heart-nerves which govern impulse were growing numb. Under a naive freshness and girlish fragrance of personality, lay masked batteries of distrust and hardness. The Duke de Metuan fancied himself genuinely in love with her. Of that she was sure, but should the Duke de Metuan learn tomorrow morning that she had overnight become penniless--she broke off and laughed. And tonight had come the unwarned tumult of feeling against which she possessed no argument. Jefferson Edwardes had looked at her and his eyes were a guarantee of honesty beyond question. She did not even ask to see the Love God's passport. This man was a member of a great family of bankers; a family that had stood for generations among the richest in the country. Ham's magic control of the money tides could not even subconsciously influence his decisions. It was wonderful to sit there in the window, adrift on a tide of elation, and to know that the numbness of her heart was not a permanent paralysis--that she had a soul. It was absurdedly delightful, too, to reflect upon the illogical swiftness with which it had all happened. "Tomorrow," she announced to herself, nodding her head very decisively, "I shall be furious with him. I shall refuse to speak to him. I shall let him realize that such lordly assumption brings swift retribution." Then, low and gaily, she laughed. "After I've punished him I'll be very nice to him, unless--" her lips tightened as she added--"unless he says he's sorry he did it and apologizes. If he does that I'll never speak to him again." * * * * * While Mary was spending so comfortable and pleasing an hour with her reflections and while Jefferson Edwardes was tramping the hills several miles away, a small number of unattached men lingered near the punch-bowl and cigars in the huge living-room of the lodge. One of these refugees from the zone of dancing activities was of more than ordinarily striking appearance. When he stood he towered and even when he sat, as now, morosely lounging and taciturn, he bulked large and wore a countenance of such strength and determination as suited his giant body. In spite of his great physique he carried no superfluous flesh, but tapered to the waist and, notwithstanding his present detachment and a seriousness that verged on sullenness, the face seemed more patterned by nature for the broad grin of good fellowship and clean mirthfulness. Quite obviously Len Haswell, whose laugh ordinarily rang like a fog-horn over the chorus of conversation, would just now have preferred being elsewhere. When their customary joviality left those gray eyes, the man's immensity took on something of an ogre's power. He tinkled the ice in his high-ball glass--a process to which he had devoted himself with unaccustomed repetition this evening and, instead of mellowing into conviviality under his libations, his eyes narrowed a little and the small frowning line between his brows deepened. "The Big Fellow's having a grouch, eh, what? He's getting a bit squiffy, if you ask me," suggested Norvil Thayre to the group centered where the punch-bowl was being administered. Norvil Thayre was not having a grouch. If he had ever had a grouch he had kept his secret well. An American by adoption, he was still aggressively British in speech, dress and eccentricity. Norvil Thayre's chest was always thrust out as cheerily and confidently as a cock-robin's, and his step was as elastic as though he had just come, freshly galvanized, from some electric source of exuberant energy. His clothing escaped the extremes of fashion by the narrowest margin of good taste, and his mustache ends bristled up toward the laughing wrinkles about his wide-awake eyes like exclamation points of alertness. "And," went on Mr. Thayre amiably, "if he hungers for solitude I'm the last chap in the world to intrude on his meditations. I jolly well know myself what it means to hang precariously on the fringe of plutocracy with only a beastly whisper of an income--and by the Lord Harry I'm a bachelor." Several auditors nodded their sympathetic understanding, but a tall youth with viking blond hair and vacant eyes which seemed to proclaim, "I am looking, but I see not," was less judicious. He lounged over and dropped into a chair at Haswell's side. "That singularly frightful little ass, Larry Kirk, is going to cheer him up now," smiled Thayre. "Trust him to make himself a nuisance." "Not dancing much this evening, Len?" suggested Kirk by way of opening the conversation with the silent one. "No." The reply was curt. "I've been wanting to dance with your wife," persisted the other, "but she's as illusive as a wraith." This time Haswell did not vouchsafe even a monosyllable in reply, and the tactless Kirk assumed the double burden of the conversation. "I call it rough treatment when the two truly beautiful women in society come to a dance and proceed, to all intents and purposes, to evaporate. Miss Burton, too, seems to have been converted into thin air. What's the use of struggling to keep up with new steps?" Len Haswell rose stiffly from his chair, and, tossing his cigar through the open window, stalked silently from the room. The blond young man glanced uncomprehendingly after him, and Thayre's laugh broke in a booming peal. "Rather gratuitous, son, wasn't it?" he suggested. "What do you mean?" Larry Kirk put his question blankly. "Nothing, except that you know Len or ought to. He's the present-day Othello, sulking because he can't get a dance with his wife. It's barely conceivable that he's not aching to have it rubbed in." "Can't get a dance?" repeated the empty-eyed youth perplexedly. "Why?" Thayre snorted. "What chance has he--or any one else when Ham Burton's gifted pomeranian sequesters her in some shaded nook and whispers musical nonsense into her coral ear?" "You mean Paul Burton? Gifted pomeranian fits him nicely ... but why should any man be jealous of--him?" "A man may be jealous of any creature that all women pet. Paul Burton can play to them until their golden souls come soaring out to be playmates with his golden soul. You and I, having no wives, may be able to laugh at such things--but Len Haswell has a devilish pretty one--and a devilish foolish one." To young Mr. Kirk the situation seemed simple. "Why doesn't Len just take this pleasing minstrel by the scruff of his neck and say to him, 'Nice little doggy, run away'?" "For two reasons. First, behind the pleasing minstrel stands the Emperor--damn his magnificently audacious soul! Secondly, when you chase a man who has access to the treasure of the Incas ... you take a fairish chance of chasing the lady along with him." "I'm sorry I made Len sore." The blond man spoke contritely. Then his voice snapped into animosity. "He's worth a dozen Paul Burtons, the vapid little piano-player." "Right-o!" Thayre stood with his feet well apart and his baldish head thrown back. "Even that profound gift for reading human nature, which it pleased a Divine Providence to bestow upon me, could hardly have hit more jolly well on the peg." He paused, then added, "But be that as it may--in the habit which has become so prevalent among us money-changers in the temple, of damning the soul of Hamilton Burton--when he is absent--I think we overlook a few patent truths. We hate the man and all his breed simply because he outclasses us at our own game." "You mean he outplunders us," contradicted Kirk. "It comes to much the same thing, young son, though High Finance is a prettier name for the pastime. He gathers in millions to our thousands not only because he is a naughty, wicked man, but because of his greater caliber and range. Brother Paul shines by some of this reflected glory--so it has become the fashion to damn Brother Paul, too." It began to dawn on the fair-haired young man that he was being chaffed. His reply came sulkily. "To my mind Paul Burton is nothing but a hanger-on." "Quite true. So am I. So are you. So are all of us who produce nothing tangible. Paul is a hanger-on by better right than many others who depend directly or indirectly on the energies of this great producing pirate." Kirk had exhausted his line of argument and fell silent, but Jack Staples stepped into the breach. Staples himself was no mean type of financier, holding as he did a commission as one of Malone's chief lieutenants. He was a striking man with a lower jaw which thrust itself aggressively forward and a single white lock over his forehead, though except for that the blackness of his hair bore no touch of gray even at the temples. "I hate the lot of them!" he announced vehemently. "I hate this upstart Cyclops and his conscienceless power. I hate the pampered brother--but Thayre is right. Great God in heaven, gentlemen, it is a family of geniuses. Stop and reflect. Fifteen years ago they were bare-footed--ragged--half-starved, the whole brood. Now consider them. Hamilton is magnificent, ruthless, but almost omnipotent. He is one of the world's few blazing and dazzling figures. As for Paul, in spite of his weakness, he's inspirational. His genius is no less intrinsic. I'm not emotional, but I've heard them all play and that boy can carry me out of myself as can no other artist, professional or amateur, to whom I've ever listened. He is a gifted troubadour. His fingers control the magic of harmony as his brother's control the magic of money. For my part I'd rather be Paul than Hamilton. Hamilton will be hated to death--by men, but Paul will be loved to death--by women." "Well," suggested another member of the group drily, "when one New York family can move as stolid an old cynic as Staples to eulogy, it must be some family." "I tell you," protested Staples hotly, "I hate them, but we gain nothing by belittling our enemies. It sets a man's imagination afire to see a strain of remarkable blood proclaiming itself in so diverse a fashion through members of one household; a household that has come from the pinch of want. Take the girl. Leave her beauty out of the question, because beauty is not genius. But her mind is as trenchant as her brother's. She could reign on any throne in Europe and stand out as conspicuous in brilliant contrast to that colorless royalty as a torch flaming among candles. I'll wager that her courage is as unflinching as his and her gifts as varied and remarkable. Why, even old Tom, the father, is, for all his seeming of pompous emptiness, the craftiest and cagiest old chap in the National Union Club. He plays rotten bridge, but he still has a brain in his old head." "I suppose as far as that goes," commented Mr. Kirk, fortified by the entry of a new disputant into the argument, "that even Nero had his attractive angles of personality." Thayre laughed and lighted a cigarette. Then as he inhaled deeply he nodded and replied. "I hold no brief for Nero, but I dare say he was a bit misunderstood." "Since you've undertaken the modern Nero's defense, suppose you catalogue _his_ good points--aside from a conceded brilliancy in finance," suggested another member of the group. The Englishman nodded, and began his summary. "An unswerving loyalty to his friends--until they are guilty of _lese majeste_; a personal integrity which no man questions; a wit that makes him in his lighter moments a rare companion; a generosity as broad as his fighting ruthlessness is deep; and, finally, a lion-like courage. To me, my lads, those assets seem worth a moment's consideration." * * * * * The gardens and grounds of Haverly Lodge were that night such a terrain as best suits the ambuscading warfare of the small god with the bow and darts. Loraine Haswell was thinking something of the sort as she strolled with Paul Burton away from the dancers, leaving their destination to chance. Kirk had hardly exaggerated when he bracketed the name of this slender and graceful wife of the gigantic broker with that of Mary Burton as the two most beautiful women in society. They were opposite types, for while Mary was a glowing incarnation of color, rich as a golden morning in blossom-time, Loraine, with heavy masses of softly spun jet coiled above her brow, looking out from eyes that were pools of liquid darkness, might have been the queen of night. But her mouth was a carmine blossom. This evening she wore a gown almost barbaric in its richness of color and pattern, and when she walked ahead of Paul Burton where the path narrowed, it seemed to him that some slim and lithe Cleopatra was preceding him. The waltz music came across the short distance, and Loraine Haswell went with a step that captured the rhythm of the measure. When they had come to a corner of the garden where a fountain tinkled in shadow and only a lacey strand or two of moonlight fell on the grass, she halted with her outstretched arms resting lightly on the tall basin, and let her fingers dip into the clear water while she turned to smile on him. "Do you know, Mrs. Haswell," Paul spoke low and with a musical thrill in his voice, "you are the loveliest creature in captivity tonight? Your loveliness is to a man's imagination what Wilde said white hyacinths are to the soul--worth going without bread for." She laughed, but into her mirth there crept, or was injected as the case may be, a note of wistfulness. "In captivity," she repeated, slowly. "I am always in captivity." With most men Paul was diffident and prone to silence, but something in his effete nature gave him confidence with women. He had been flattered into a sort of assurance that they found him irresistible. They thought him clairvoyantly sympathetic--and he was by the very over-refinement of his music and dream-fed temperament. "The other evening when I left you, I went home and closed my eyes and sat alone--thinking of you," he told her. "To me all that is fine beyond words I try to translate into music. Where words--even poetry--fail, notes begin. So at the piano I tried to express something like a portrayal of you--to myself." She seated herself on a stone bench while he stood looking down at her. Her head was for a moment bent and something in the droop of her shoulders intimated unhappiness. "Does my improvising music about you offend?" He put the question very gently. "You know that I go to the piano as another man might go to his prayers." She looked up and shook her head. Then she said softly. "Offend me? No, it makes me very proud.... I was just thinking of something else--that troubled me." "Of what?" Into the two short words Paul Burton put such a sympathy as only voices of women and partly feminine men can express. "Of the word you used just now ... captivity." He seated himself at her side and his hand fell to the edge of the stone bench--where her own fingers lightly rested. The cool satiny touch of the hand his own encountered, which she made no effort to withdraw, affected him as though a clear and silvery note had sounded near him. Paul was one whose senses were exquisitely attuned. "Mrs. Haswell--Loraine," he said, and his voice was seductively tender, "you are unhappy." Slowly she nodded her dark head and her voice was a whisper. "Yes.... Paul, I'm afraid I am just that." It was the first time they had called each other by their first names. It was the first time that the gradually ripening intimacy between them had had a more propitious setting than a table at Sherry's. Paul Burton had awaited this moment patiently, knowing that it must sometime come. Now he bent toward her until her hair brushed his face. "It is your right to find life a thing of joy," he whispered. "Your soul is a flower. It should have the fulness and radiance of sunshine." "Our rights," she said slowly, "are not always the things we get." "But just why are you unhappy?" he insisted. "I guess you summed it up in that one word, Paul ... captivity." Paul Burton, the easily swayed, the facilely led, rose and paced up and down, and after a few moments he halted before her. "Doesn't he--your jailer--appreciate you, Loraine?" She shrugged her lovely shoulders and looked up at him, smiling through lashes that glistened a little. "As much, I suppose, as a man can appreciate a woman whom he fails to understand. It's not his fault." "Of course he--cares for you?" Loraine Haswell shot him a quick inquiring glance. "Yes," she smiled, "he cares enough to persecute me with little jealousies. He cares enough to want me to make love to him when--" she halted and put both hands over her face; through her slight figure ran a faint shudder--"when I can't." The man pressed his tapering fingers to his temples. He must seem agitated and his emotions lay so ready to call that seeming so was almost being so. Yet in the back of his mind was the thought: "She will be in my arms in five minutes." Suddenly she rose from her seat. "I oughtn't to say such things to you," she declared in a voice freighted with self-accusation. "Please forget it, Paul. But it's a thing you can understand. You know the emptiness of a life that deals only with material things." He leaned forward with one knee on the bench and one hand on the fountain basin. She was beautiful and his heart responded to her beauty's challenge. "To me you can say anything. In me you will always find one who has no interest above your interests." He stopped and took her hands, but she shook her head in gentle negation, and, as he obeyed the unuttered mandate and let his own arms fall at his sides, she rewarded him with a smile that thrilled him like an embrace. "Len is fine and big and everybody likes him," went on the wife as though bent on being fair at all costs. "Sometimes I think that's the trouble. It's like being married to a standing army. In times of peace one doesn't need a standing army and in times of war it's me that he makes war on." Loraine rose and started toward the house. Paul followed, her, appraising her beauty with eyes into which a new interest had come. In a moment she turned and halted so suddenly that the man found her face close to his as she spoke. "I don't know what's the matter with me tonight. I feel faint and giddy--and full of undefined longings. I sha'n't sleep--unless--" she looked questioningly up at him--"unless you will play for me, Paul. Will you?" Then she put out both hands and swayed unsteadily. Paul caught her in his arms and pressed her to him. The fragrance of her breath and the velvet coolness of the cheek he found himself kissing were details that brought an exquisite responsiveness to his senses. He did not know whether she had fainted or was still conscious, for she rested there in his embrace limp and unresisting and wordless. "What is the matter, dearest?" he whispered, when the first flush of exultation had passed. "What is the matter?" Slowly the dark fringe of lashes flickered up and the jet eyes gazed languorously into his own. The blossom lips parted over the flashing whiteness of a smile. Still she did not move except to close both her hands tightly on the arms that circled her. "Paul," she told him, "I ought to be unconscious or--or break away, but I'm just--just forgetting my captivity." Her eyes held his, drawing them hypnotically nearer and he lowered his face till his lips met hers and received from them the answer to his kiss. Then Loraine Haswell drew away and straightened up. She was a very lovely picture of contrite confusion as she put up both gleaming arms and rearranged the dark hair he had rumpled. All the way to the house she was silent. _ |
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