CHAPTER VIII — IN WHICH HETTY IS WEIGHED
Booth and Leslie returned to the city on Tuesday. The artist left behind him a "memory sketch" of Sara Wrandall, done in the solitude of his room long after the rest of the house was wrapped in slumber on the first night of his stay at Southlook. It was as sketchily drawn as the one he had made of Hetty, and quite as wonderful in the matter of faithfulness, but utterly without the subtle something that made the other notable. The craftiness of the artist was there, but the touch of inspiration was lacking.
Sara was delighted. She was flattered, and made no pretence of disguising the fact.
The discussion which followed the exhibition of the sketch at luncheon, was very animated. It served to excite Leslie to such a degree that he brought forth from his pocket the treasured sketch of Hetty, for the purpose of comparison.
The girl who had been genuinely enthusiastic over the picture of Sara, and who had not been by way of knowing that the first sketch existed, was covered with confusion. Embarrassment and a shy sense of gratification were succeeded almost at once by a feeling of keen annoyance. The fact that the sketch was in Leslie's possession—and evidently a thing to be cherished—took away all the pleasure she may have experienced during the first few moments of interest.
Booth caught the angry flash in her eyes, preceding the flush and unaccountable pallor that followed almost immediately. He felt guilty, and at the same time deeply annoyed with Leslie. Later on he tried to explain, but the attempt was a lamentable failure. She laughed, not unkindly, in his face.
Leslie had refused to allow the sketch to leave his hand. If she could have gained possession of it, even for an instant, the thing would have been torn to bits. But it went back into his commodious pocket-book, and she was too proud to demand it of him.
She became oddly sensitive to Booth's persistent though inoffensive scrutiny as time wore on. More than once she had caught him looking at her with a fixedness that betrayed perplexity so plainly that she could not fail to recognise an underlying motive. He was vainly striving to refresh his memory: that was clear to her. There is no mistaking that look in a person's eyes. It cannot be disguised.
He was as deeply perplexed as ever when the time came for him to depart with Leslie. He asked her point blank on the last evening of his stay if they had ever met before, and she frankly confessed to a short memory for faces. It was not unlikely, she said, that he had seen her in London or in Paris, but she had not the faintest recollection of having seen him before their meeting in the road.
Urged by Sara, she had reluctantly consented to sit to him for a portrait during the month of June. He put the request in such terms that it did not sound like a proposition. It was not surprising that he should want her for a subject; in fact, he put it in such a way that she could not but feel that she would be doing him a great and enduring favour. She imposed but one condition: the picture was never to be exhibited. He met that, with bland magnanimity, by proffering the canvas to Mrs. Wrandall, as the subject's "next best friend," to "have and to hold so long as she might live," "free gratis," "with the artist's compliments," and so on and so forth, in airy good humour.
Leslie's aid had been solicited by both Sara and the painter in the final effort to overcome the girl's objections. He was rather bored about it, but added his voice to the general clamour. With half an eye one could see that he did not relish the idea of Hetty posing for days to the handsome, agreeable painter. Moreover, it meant that Booth, who could afford to gratify his own whims, would be obliged to spend a month or more in the neighbourhood, so that he could devote himself almost entirely to the consummation of this particular undertaking. Moreover, it meant that Vivian's portrait was to be temporarily disregarded.
Sara Wrandall was quick to recognise the first symptoms of jealousy on the part of her brother-in-law. She had known him for years. In that time she had been witness to a dozen of his encounters in the lists of love, or what he chose to designate as love, and had seen him emerge from each with an unscarred heart and a smiling visage. Never before had he shown the slightest sign of jealousy, even when the affair was at its rosiest. The excellent ego which mastered him would not permit him to forget himself so far as to consider any one else worthy of a feeling of jealousy. But now he was flying an alien flag. He was turning against himself and his smug convictions. He was at least annoyed, if not jealous. Doubtless he was surprised at himself; perhaps he wondered what had come over him.
Sara noted these signs of self-abasement (it could be nothing else where a Wrandall was concerned), and smiled inwardly. The new idol of the Wrandalls was in love, selfishly, insufferably in love as things went with all the Wrandalls. They hated selfishly, and so they loved. Her husband had been their king. But their king was dead, long live the king! Leslie had put on the family crown,—a little jauntily, perhaps,—cocked over the eye a bit, so to speak—but it was there just the same, annoyingly plain to view.
Sara had tried to like him. He had been her friend, the only one she could claim among them all. And yet, beneath his genial allegiance, she could detect the air of condescension, the bland attitude of a superior who defends another's cause for the reason that it gratifies Nero. She experienced a thrill of malicious joy in contemplating the fall of Nero. He would bring down his house about his head, and there would be no Rome to pay the fiddler.
In the train that Tuesday morning, Booth elected to chaff his friend on the progress of his campaign. They were seated opposite to each other in the almost empty parlour car.
"Buck up, old chap," he counselled scoffingly. "Don't look so disconsolate. You're coming out again at the end of the week."
Leslie had been singularly reticent for a matter of ten miles or more after leaving the little station behind. His attention seemed to be engaged strictly in the study of objects beyond the car window.
"What's that?" he demanded curtly.
"I say you're lucky enough to be asked again for the end of the—"
"I've got a standing invitation, if that's what you mean. Sara gives me a meal ticket, as it were. Nothing extraordinary in my going out whenever I like, is there?" His manner was a trifle offish.
Booth laughed. "In spite of your disagreeable remark, I wish you good luck, old man."
"What the devil are you driving at, Brandy?"
"I only meant to cheer you up a bit, that's all."
"Thanks!"
There was another interval of silence. Leslie furtively studied the face of his friend, who had resumed his dreamy contemplation of the roof of the car, his hands clasped behind his head, his legs outstretched.
"I say, Brandy," he ventured at last, a trace of embarrassment in his manner, "if you've nothing better to do, come down and dine with us to-night—en famille. Viv said over the 'phone this morning that we are dining alone in state. Come along, old chap, and wake us up. What say?"
A clever mind-reader could have laid bare the motive in this cordial, even eager invitation. He was seeking to play Vivian against Hetty in the game, which seemed to have taken on a new turn.
Booth was not a mind-reader, although in jest he had posed as one. "I'm quite sure I've nothing better to do," he said. "I'd suggest, however, that you let the invitation come from some one in authority. Your mother, for instance."
"Nonsense," cried the other blithely. "You know you've got a meal ticket at our house, good for a million punches. Still I'll have Vivian call you up this afternoon."
"If she wants me, I'll come," said Booth in the most matter-of-fact way.
Leslie settled down with a secret sigh of relief. He regained his usual loquaciousness. The points of his little moustache resumed their uprightness.
"How do you like Sara?" he asked. It was a casual question, with no real meaning behind it as it was uttered. No sooner had it left his lips, however, than a new and rather staggering idea entered his mind,—a small thing at first but one that grew with amazing swiftness.
"She is splendid," said Booth warmly.
"I thought you'd like her," said Leslie, the idea growing apace: It did not occur to him that he might be nurturing disloyalty to the interests of his own sister. Things of that sort never bothered Leslie. When all was said and done, Vivian had but a slim chance at best, so why champion a faint hope? "Why don't you do a portrait of her? It would be a wonderful thing, old chap."
He sat up a trifle straighter in his chair.
"She hasn't asked me to, which is the best reason in the world.
"Oh, I can fix that." His lively imagination was full of it now.
"Thanks. Don't bother."
"And there's this to be said for a portrait of Sara," went on Leslie, rather too eagerly: "she wouldn't object to having it exhibited in the galleries. 'Gad, it would do you a world of good, Brandy."
The other's eyes narrowed. "I suppose I am to infer that Mrs. Wrandall courts publicity."
"Not at all," cried the other impatiently. "What I mean is this: she's taken a fancy to you, and if her portrait could be the means of helping you—"
"Oh, cut that out, Les,—cut it out," growled Booth coldly.
"Well, in any event, if you want to paint her, I can fix it for you," announced his companion.
"If you don't mind, old chap, I'll tackle Miss Castleton first," said Booth, dismissing the matter with a yawn.
"I hate the word tackle," said Leslie.
On a bright, sunny afternoon two weeks later, Mrs. Redmond Wrandall received her most intimate friend in her boudoir. They were both in ample black. Mrs. Rowe-Martin, it seems, had suffered a recent bereavement—with an aspect of permanency,—in the loss of a four thousand dollar Airdale who had stopped traffic in Fifth Avenue for twenty minutes while a sympathetic crowd viewed his gory remains, and an unhappy but garrulous taxi-cab driver tried to account for his crime. He never even thought of the insanity dodge. The Airdale was given a most impressive funeral and was buried in pomp with all his medals, ribbons, tags, collars and platinum leashes, but minus a few of the uncollected parts of his anatomy. While it had been a complete catastrophe, he was by no means a complete carcass.
Be that as it may, his mistress went into mourning, denying herself so many diversions that not a few of her friends became alarmed and advised her husband to put her in a sanitarium. He was willing, poor chap, but not she. She couldn't see the sense of confining her grief to the four walls of a sanitarium while the four winds of heaven were at her disposal.
The most distressing feature of the great Airdale's taking-off lay in the fact that his descendants—he had several sets of great-grandchildren—appeared to be uncommonly ordinary brutes, without a symptom of good breeding in the lot of them. They were so undeviatingly gauche and middle-class, that already the spiteful tongues of envy had begun to question his right to the medals and ribbons acquired at the bench shows, where Mrs. Rowe-Martin was considered one of the immortals. She could have got a blue ribbon on a yellow dog any time. Of course, in defence of her exotic Airdale, she unblinkingly fell back on the paraphrase: "It's a wise father that knows his own son"; or the other way round, just as you please.
Mrs. Rowe-Martin professedly was middle-aged—that is to say, just rounding fifty. As a woman is always fifty until she is sixty, just as it is nine o'clock until the stroke of ten, there may be some question as to which end of the middle-aged period she was rounding, but as that isn't material to the development of this story, we will give her the benefit of the doubt and merely say that sensibly she dressed in black.
She was Mrs. Wrandall's closest friend and confidante. It was Mrs. Rowe-Martin who rushed over and gave the smelling salts to Mrs. Wrandall when that excellent lady collapsed on hearing that her son Challis was going to marry the daughter of old Sebastian Gooch. It was she who acted as spokeswoman for the distressed mother and told the world—that is to say, THEIR world—that Sara was a scheming, designing creature, whose sole aim in life was to get into the smart set by the easiest way. It was she who comforted Mrs. Wrandall, after the lamentable deed was done, by proclaiming from the house-tops that old man Gooch's daughter should never enter society if she could prevent it, and went so far as to invite Challis to all of her affairs without asking his wife to accompany him, quite as if she didn't know that he had a wife. (In speaking of her to Challis, she invariably alluded to Sara as Miss Gooch, for something over a year after the wedding—and might have gone on for ever had not Mrs. Wrandall, senior, upset everything by giving a reception in honour of her daughter-in-law: a bolt from a clear sky, you may be sure, that left Mrs. Rowe-Martin stunned and bleeding on the battlefield of a mistaken cause.) She never quite got over that bit of treachery on the part of her very best friend, although she made the best of it by slyly confiding to other stupefied persons that Challis's father had taken the bit in his mouth,—God knows why!—and that Mrs. Wrandall thought best to humour him for the time being, at least. And it was she who came to Mrs. Wrandall in her greatest trial and performed the gentlest deeds that one woman can do for another when all the world has gone black and hateful to her. When you put her to the real test, a woman will always rise above herself, no matter how lofty she may have considered herself beforehand.
They were drinking tea, with the lemon left out.
"My dear," said Mrs. Rowe-Martin, "I quite agree with you. Leslie should be thinking of it."
"It means so much to me, Harriet, his getting the right sort of girl. I feel confident that he is interested—very deeply interested in Miss Castleton."
"I am so glad you like her."
"She is a dear."
"My sister has met her in London, and at one or two of the country places. I was inquiring only yesterday. When I mentioned that she is related to Lord Murgatroyd, Frances remembered her quite well. She sees a lot of them, you know, during the season," explained Mrs. Rowe-Martin affably.
Mrs. Wrandall concealed her curiosity. In the most casual way she remarked:
"I must ask Miss Castleton if she remembers Mrs. Roodleigh."
"Oh, I fancy she won't recall her," her friend made haste to say. "Young girls are not likely to remember elderly persons whom they meet—Oh, you might say in passing, for that's what it really is, you know."
"Still, if Frances knows the Murgatroyds so intimately it isn't likely—"
"Did I say she knew them intimately?" protested the other, somewhat plaintively. "How like me! So stupid! As a matter of fact, my dear, I don't believe Frances knows them at all—except as one knows people in a general sort of way. Drawing-rooms, you know, and all that sort of thing. Of course, every one knows Lord and Lady Murgatroyd. Just as they might know the Duke of—well any one of the great dukes, for that matter."
"Or King George," added Mrs. Wrandall softly, without a perceptible trace of spite.
"She has met them, of course," said Mrs. Rowe-Martin defensively. Somehow, a defence was called for; she couldn't sit there and say nothing.
Mrs. Wrandall changed the subject, or at least divided it. She put the chaff aside, for that was what Mrs. Rowe-Martin's revelations amounted to.
"Leslie is such a steady, unimpressionable boy, you see," she said, apropos of nothing.
"And so good looking," added her friend beamingly.
"It wouldn't be like him to make a mistake where his own happiness and welfare are concerned," said the subject's mother, speaking more truth than she knew, but not more than Mrs. Rowe-Martin knew. That lady knew Leslie like a book.
"And he is really devoted to her?"
"I fear so," said her hostess, with a faint sigh. The other sighed also.
"My dear, it would be perfectly lovely. Why do you say that?"
"I suppose it's the way all mothers feel. Of course, I want to be sure that he is to be very, very happy."
"That is perfectly natural. And he WILL be happy."
If either of them recalled the strenuous efforts Mrs. Wrandall had made a couple of years before to get her only daughter married off to a degenerate young English duke, the thought was submerged in the present sea of sentimentality. It speaks well for Vivian's character that she flatly refused to be given in marriage, although it appeared to be the fashion at the time. It was the year of the coronation.
"Miss Castleton is a most uncommon girl," said Mrs. Wrandall, again apropos of nothing that had gone before.
"Most English girls are," agreed her friend, scenting something.
"I mean to say, she is so unlike the girls one sees in society. My husband says she's level-headed. Sound as a rivet, he also says. Nothing silly or flip about her, he adds when he is particularly enthusiastic, and he knows I hate the word 'flip.' Of course he means flippant. He is very much taken with her."
Mrs. Rowe-Martin pondered a moment before risking her next remark.
"I can't quite understand her taking up with Sara Gooch in this fashion. You know what I mean. Sara is the last person in the world you'd think a gently bred person would—" Here she pulled herself up with a jerk. "I mean, of course, a gently bred girl. Naturally she would appeal to men—and gently bred men, at that. But this present intimacy—well, isn't it rather extraordinary?"
Mrs. Wrandall drained her cup, without taking her eyes from the face of her friend.
"You must remember, my dear Harriet, that Miss Castleton looks upon Sara as a Wrandall, not a Gooch. She was the wife of a Wrandall. That covers everything so far as the girl is concerned. I dare say she finds Sara amusing, interesting, and we all know she is kindness itself. It doesn't surprise me that Miss Castleton admires her, or that she loves her. Sara has improved in the last seven or eight years." She said this somewhat loftily.
Mrs. Rowe-Martin was most amiable. "She has, indeed, thanks to propinquity."
"And her own splendid intelligence," added Mrs. Wrandall.
"Isn't it wonderful how superior they are when it comes to intelligence?" cried her friend, almost plaintively. "I've noticed it in shop-girls and manicures, over and over again."
"Perhaps you got the effect by contrast," said Mrs. Wrandall, pouring a little more tea into her friend's cup. Mrs. Rowe-Martin was silent. "Sara deserves a lot of credit. She has made a position for herself, a very decided position. We are all quite proud of her."
Mrs. Rowe-Martin was on very intimate terms with the Wrandall family skeleton. She could afford to be plain spoken.
"It is hard to reconcile your present attitude, my dear, to the position you held a few years ago. Heaven knows you weren't proud of her then. She was dirt beneath your feet."
"My dear Harriet," said Mrs. Wrandall, without so much as the flutter of an eyelid, "I am not saying that I would select her as a daughter-in-law, even to-day. Don't misunderstand me."
"I am not underestimating her splendid intelligence," said Mrs. Rowe-Martin sharply, and her hostess was so long in working it out that it was allowed to pass unresented. "I dare say she will marry again," went on the speaker blandly.
Sara's mother-in-law was startled.
"It's rather early to suggest such a thing, isn't it?" she asked reproachfully.
"Forgive me," cried Mrs. Rowe-Martin, but she did not attempt to unsay the words. She meant them to sink in when she uttered them. It was commonly predicted in society that Challis Wrandall's wife would further elevate herself by wedding the most dependable nobleman who came along, and without any appreciable consideration for the feelings of her late husband's family.
"It is quite natural—and right—that she should marry," said Mrs. Wrandall, after a moment's deliberation. "She is young and beautiful and we sincerely hope she will find some one—But, my dear, aren't we drifting? We were speaking of Leslie."
"And Miss Castleton. You are quite satisfied, then? You don't feel that he would be making a mistake?"
Mrs. Wrandall touched her handkerchief to the corners of her eyes.
"We could not possibly raise any objection to Miss Castleton, if that is what you mean, Harriet," she said.
"I am so glad you feel that way about it, my dear," said her friend, touching her handkerchief to her lips. "It would grieve me more than I can tell you if I thought you would have to go through with another experience like that of—Forgive me! I won't distress you by recalling those awful days. Poor, susceptible Challis!"
"No," said Mrs. Wrandall firmly; "Leslie is safe. We feel quite sure of him."
The visitor was reflective. "I suppose there is no doubt that Miss Castleton will accept him," she mused aloud.
"We are assuming, of course, that Leslie means to ask her," said Leslie's mother, with infinite patience.
"I only mentioned it because it is barely possible she may have other fish to fry."
"Fish?"
"A figure of speech, my dear."
And it set Mrs. Wrandall to thinking.
CHAPTER IX — HAWKRIGHT's MODEL
Brandon Booth took a small cottage on the upper road, half way between the village and the home of Sara Wrandall, and not far from the abhorred "back gate" that swung in the teeth of her connections by marriage. He set up his establishment in half a day and, being settled, betook himself off to dine with Sara and Hetty. All his household cares, like the world, rested snugly on the shoulders of an Atlas named Pat, than whom there was no more faithful servitor in all the earth, nor in the heavens, for that matter, if we are to accept his own estimate of himself. In any event, he was a treasure. Booth's house was always in order. Try as he would, he couldn't get it out of order. Pat's wife saw to that. She was the cook, housekeeper, steward, seamstress, nurse and everything else except the laundress, and she would have been that if Booth hadn't put his foot down on it. He was rather finicky about his bosoms, it seems—and his cuffs, as well.
Pat and Mary had been in the Booth family since the flood, so to speak. As far back as Brandon could remember, the quaint Irishman had been the same wrinkled, nut-brown, merry-eyed comedian that he was to-day, and Mary the same serene, blarneying wife of the man. They were not a day older than they were in the beginning. He used to wonder if Methuselah knew them. When he set up bachelor quarters for himself in New York, his mother bestowed these priceless domestic treasures upon him. They journeyed up from Philadelphia and complacently took charge of his destinies; no matter which way they led or how diversified they may have been in conception, Brandon's destinies always came safely around the circle to the starting point with Pat and Mary atop of them, as chipper as you please and none the worse for erosion.
They stoutly maintained that one never gets too old to learn, a conclusion that Brandon sometimes resented.
He had been obliged to discharge three chauffeurs because Pat did not get on well with them, and he had found it quite impossible to keep a dog for the simple reason that Mary insisted on keeping a cat—a most unamiable, belligerent cat at that. He would have made home a hell for any well-connected dog.
As he swung jauntily down the tree-lined road that led to Sara's portals, Booth was full of the joy of living. Dusk was falling. A soft bronze glowed in the western sky. Over the earth lay the tranquil purple of spent refulgence, the after-glow of a red day, for the sun had shone hot since early morn through a queer, smoky screen of haze. There was a deep stillness over everything. Indolent Nature slept in the shadows, as if at rest after the weary day, with scarcely a leaf stirring. And yet there was a subtle coolness in the air, the feel of a storm that was yet unborn—the imperceptible shudder of a tempest that was drawing its first breath.
Before the night was half gone, the storm would be upon them, to revel for a while and then pass on, leaving behind it the dank smell of a grateful earth.
But Booth had no thought for the thing that was afar off. He was thinking of the quarter-of-an-hour that came next in the wheel of time, whose minutes were to check off the results of a fortnight's anticipation. He had not seen either of the ladies of Southlook in the past two weeks, but he had been under the spell of them so sharply that they were seldom out of his thoughts.
Sara was at the bottom of the terrace, moving among the flower beds in the formal garden. He distinguished her from a distance: a slender, graceful figure in black. A black scarf edged with maribou covered her shoulders, the line of a white neck separating it from the raven hue of her hair. He paused at the lower gate to look. Then his gaze was drawn to the gleaming white figure at the top of the terrace, outlined distinctly against the blue-black sky that hung over the Sound. Hetty stood there, straight and motionless, looking out over the water. So still was the evening wind that not a flutter of her soft gown was noticeable. She was like a statue.
At the sound of his footsteps on the gravel, Sara looked up and instantly smiled her welcome. When Sara smiled the heart of man responded, long in advance of his lips. Hers was the inviting, mysterious smile of the Orient, with the eyes half shaded by drooping, languorous lids: dusky, shadowy eyes that looked at you as through a veil, and yet were as clear as crystal once you lost the illusion.
"It is so nice to see you again," she said, giving him her hand.
"'My heart's in the highlands,'" he quoted, waving a vague tribute to the heavens. "And it's nice of you to see me," he added gracefully. Then he pointed up the terrace. "Isn't she a picture? 'Gad, it's lovely—the whole effect. That picture against the sky—"
He stopped short, and the sentence was never finished, although she waited for him to complete it before remarking:
"Her heart is not in the highlands."
"You mean—something's gone wrong—"
"Oh, no," she said, still smiling; "nothing like that. Her heart is in the lowlands. You would consider Washington Square to be in the lowlands, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, I see," he said slowly. "You mean she's thinking of Leslie."
"Who knows? It was a venture on my part, that's all. She may be thinking of you, Mr. Booth."
"Or some chap in old England, that's more like it," he retorted. "She can't be thinking of me, you know. No one ever thinks of me when I'm out of view. Out of sight, out of mind. No; she's thinking of something a long way off—or some one, if you choose to have it that way."
"In that case, it isn't good for her to be thinking of things so remote. Shall we shout 'halloa the house'?"
He shot a glance at her and responded gallantly: "If she isn't thinking of us, why should we be thinking of her? Is it too near the dinner hour for you to let me sit here and rest before attempting to climb all those steps? And will you sit beside me, as the good Omar might have said?" He was fanning himself with his straw hat.
She searched his face for a second, a smiling but inscrutable expression in her eyes, and then sat down on the rustic bench at the foot of the terrace.
"Why didn't you let me send the motor for you?" she asked, as he took his place beside her.
"I mean to have an appetite in the country," he said, taking a deep, full breath. "Motors don't aid the appetite. Aeroplanes are better. I had a flight with a friend up in Westchester last week. I was very hungry when I came down."
"We'll all be flying before we really know it," said she. "Hetty tried it in France this spring. Have you seen Leslie this week?"
"I've been in Philadelphia for a few days. Is he coming out on Friday?"
"Oh, yes. He comes so often nowadays that we call him a commuter."
"Attractive spot, this," said he, with a significant glance up the terrace.
"So it would appear."
"He's really keen about her?"
She did not reply, but her smile meant more than words.
"I am eager to get at the portrait," said he, after a moment.
"Leslie tells me that you want to do me also," said she carelessly.
He flushed. "Confound him! I suppose it annoys you, Mrs. Wrandall. He shouldn't carry tales."
"But do you?"
"I should say I do," he cried warmly. "For my own pleasure and satisfaction, you understand. There's nothing I'd like better."
"We'll see how successfully you flatter Hetty," said she. "If it is possible to make her prettier than she really is, you may paint me. I shall be the first to fall at your feet and implore you to make me beautiful."
His eyes gleamed. "If I fail in that," said he warmly, "it will be because I am without integrity."
Again she smiled upon him with half-closed, shadowy eyes, and shook her head. Then she arose.
"Let us go in. Hetty is eager to see you again."
They started up the terrace. His face clouded.
"I have had a feeling all along that she'd rather not have this portrait painted, Mrs. Wrandall. A queer sort of feeling that she doesn't just like the idea of being put on canvas."
"Nonsense," she said, without looking at him.
"Of course, I could understand her not caring to give up the time to it. It's a nuisance, I know. But it isn't that sort of feeling I have about her attitude. There's something else. Doesn't she like me?"
"Of course she does," she exclaimed. "How ridiculous. She will love it, once the picture is under way. It is the beginning of it that disturbs her. Isn't that always the way?"
"I am afraid you don't know women," said he banteringly.
"By the way, have you been able to recall where you first saw her, or is your memory still a blank?" she asked suddenly.
"I can't think where it was or when," said he, "but I am absolutely positive I've seen her before. Her face is not the kind one forgets, you know."
"It may come to you unexpectedly."
"It's maddening, not to be able to remember."
The dusk of night hid the look of relief that came into her eyes.
Hetty met them at the top of the steps. The electric porch lights had just been turned on by the butler. The girl stood in the path of the light. Booth was never to forget the loveliness of her in that moment. He carried the image with him on the long walk home through the black night. (He declined Sara's offer to send him over in the car for the very reason that he wanted the half-hour of solitude in which to concentrate all the impressions she had made on his fancy.)
The three of them stood there for a few minutes, awaiting the butler's announcement. Sara's arm was about Hetty's shoulders. He was so taken up with the picture they presented that he scarcely heard their light chatter. They were types of loveliness so full of contrast that he marvelled at the power of Nature to create women in the same mould and yet to model so differently.
They were as near alike in height, figure and carriage as two women could be, and yet there was a subtle distinction that left him conscious of the fact that two vastly different strains of blood ran through their veins. Apart, he would not have perceived this marked difference in them. Hetty represented the violet, Sara the pansy. The distinction may be subtile. However, it was the estimate he formed in that moment of comparison.
The English girl's soft white gown was cut low in the neck, her shapely arms were bare. Sara's black covered her arms and shoulders, even to the slender throat. The hair of both was black and rich and alive with the gloss of health. The eyes of one were blue and velvety, even in the glare of light that fell from above; those of the other were black, Oriental, mysterious.
As they entered the vestibule, a servant came up with the word that Miss Castleton was wanted at the telephone, "long distance from New York."
The girl stopped in her tracks. Booth looked at her in mild surprise, a condition which gave way an instant later to perplexity. The look of annoyance in her eyes could not be disguised or mistaken.
"Ask him to call me up later, Watson," she said quietly.
"This is the third time he has called, Miss Castleton," said the man. "You were dressing, if you please, ma'am, the first time—"
"I will come," she interrupted sharply, with a curious glance at Sara, who for some reason avoided meeting Booth's gaze.
"Tell him we shall expect him on Friday," said Mrs. Wrandall.
"By George!" thought Booth, as she left them. "I wonder if it can be Leslie. If it IS—well, he wouldn't be flattered if he could have seen the look in her eyes."
Later on, he had no trouble in gathering that it WAS Leslie Wrandall who called, but he was very much in the dark as to the meaning of that expressive look. He only knew that she was in the telephone room for ten minutes or longer, and that all trace of emotion was gone from her face when she rejoined them with a brief apology for keeping them waiting.
He left at ten-thirty, saying good-night to them on the terrace. Sara walked to the steps with him.
"Don't you think her voice is lovely?" she asked. Hetty had sung for them.
"I dare say," he responded absently. "Give you my word, though, I wasn't thinking of her voice. SHE is lovely."
He walked home as if in a dream. The spell was on him.
Far in the night, he started up from the easy chair in which he had been smoking and dreaming and racking his brain by turns.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed aloud. "I remember! I've got it! And to-morrow I'll prove it."
Then he went to bed, with the storm from the sea pounding about the house, and slept serenely until Pat and Mary wondered whether he meant to get up at all.
"Pat," said he at breakfast, "I want you to go to the city this morning and fetch out all of the STUDIOS you can find about the place. The old ones are in that Italian hall seat and the late ones are in the studio. Bring all of them."
"There's a divvil of a bunch of thim," said Pat ruefully.
He was not to begin sketching the figure until the following day. After luncheon, however, he had an appointment to inspect Hetty's wardrobe, ostensibly for the purpose of picking out a gown for the picture. As a matter of fact, he had decided the point to his own satisfaction the night before. She should pose for him in the dainty white dress she had worn on that occasion.
While they were going over the extensive assortment of gowns, with Sara as the judge from whom there seemed to be no appeal, he casually inquired if she had ever posed before.
Two ladies' maids were engaged in flinging the costly garments about as if they represented so much rubbish. The floor was littered with silks and satins and laces. He was accustomed to this ruthless handling of exquisite fabrics by eager ladies of wealth: it was one way these pampered women had of showing their contempt for possession. Gowns came from everywhere by the armload; from closets, presses and trunks, ultimately landing in a conglomerate heap on the floor when cast aside as undesirable by the artist, the model and the censor.
He watched her closely as he put the question. She was holding up a beautiful point lace creation for his inspection, and there was a pleading smile on her lips. It must have been her favourite gown. The smile faded away. The hand that dangled the garment before his eyes suddenly became motionless, as if paralysed. In the next instant, she recovered herself, and, giving the lace a quick fillip that sent its odour of sachet leaping to his nostrils, responded with perfect composure.
"Isn't there a distinction between posing for an artist, and sitting for one's portrait?" she asked.
He was silent. The fact that he did not respond seemed to disturb her after a moment or two. She made the common mistake of pressing the question.
"Why do you ask?" was her inquiry. When it was too late she wished she had not uttered the words. He had caught the somewhat anxious note in her voice.
"We always ask that, I think," he said. "It's a habit."
"Oh," she said doubtfully.
"And by the way, you haven't answered."
She was busy with the gown for a time. At last she looked him full in the face.
"That's true," she agreed; "I haven't answered, have I? No, Mr. Booth, I've never posed for a portrait. It is a new experience for me. You will have to contend with a great deal of stupidity on my part. But I shall try to be plastic."
He uttered a polite protest, and pursued the question no farther. Her answer had been so palpably evasive that it struck him as bald, even awkward.
Pat, disgruntled and irritable to the point of profanity,—he was a privileged character and might have sworn if he felt like it without receiving notice,—came shambling up the cottage walk late that afternoon, bearing two large, shoulder-sagging bundles. He had walked from the station,—a matter of half-a-mile,—and it was hot. His employer sat in the shady porch, viewing his approach.
"Have you got them?" he inquired.
Pat dropped the bundles on the lower step and stared, speechless. Then he mopped his drenched, turkey-red face with his handkerchief. He got his breath after a spell of contemptuous snorting.
"Have I got what?" he demanded sarcastically. "The measles?"
"The STUDIOS, Patrick," said Booth reprovingly.
"No, sor," said Pat; "I came absolutely empty-handed, as you may have seen, sor."
"I knew I couldn't be mistaken. I was confident I saw nothing in your hands."
"I kept thim closed, sor, so's you couldn't see what was r'ally in thim. I've been wid you long enough, sor, to know how you hate the sight av blisthers."
"They must be quite a novelty to you, Patrick. I should think you'd be proud of them."
"Where am I to put them, sor?"
"The blisters?"
"Yis, sor."
"On this table, if you please. And you might cut the strings while you're about it."
Pat put the bundles on the wicker table and cut the heavy twine in dignified silence. Carefully rolling it up in a neat ball, he stuck it in his pocket. Then he faced his employer.
"Is there annyt'ing else, sor?"
"I think not, at present."
"Not aven a cup av tea, sor?"
"No, thanks."
"Thin, if you will excuse me, I'll go about me work. I've had a pleasant day off, sor, thanks to ye. It's hard to go back to work afther such a splindid spell of idleness. Heigho! I'd like to be a gintleman av leisure all the time, that I would, sor. The touch I've had av it to-day may be the sp'iling av me. If you're a smart man, Mr. Brandon Booth, ye'll not be letting me off for a holiday like this again very soon."
Booth laughed outright. Pat's face wrinkled into a slow, forgiving grin.
"I love you, Pat," cried the painter, "in spite of the way you bark at me."
"It's a poor dog that don't know his own master," said Pat magnanimously. "Whin you're t'rough wid the magazines, I'll carry thim down to the cellar, sor."
"What's the matter with the attic?"
"Nothing at all, at all. I was only finking they'd be handier for you to get at in the cellar. And it's a dom sight cooler down there."
With that he departed, blinking slyly.
The young man drew a chair up to the table and began the task of working out the puzzle that now seemed more or less near to solution. He had a pretty clear idea as to the period he wanted to investigate. To the best of his recollection, the Studios published three or four years back held the key. He selected the numbers and began to run through them. One after another they were cast aside without result. In any other cause he would have tired of the quest, but in this his curiosity was so commanding that he stuck to the task without complaint. He was positive in his mind that what he desired was to be found inside the covers of one of these magazines. He was searching for a vaguely remembered article on one of the lesser-known English painters who had given great promise at the time it was published but who dropped completely out of notice soon afterward because of a mistaken notion of his own importance. If Booth's memory served him right, the fellow came a cropper, so to speak, in trying to ride rough shod over public opinion, and went to the dogs. He had been painting sensibly up to that time, but suddenly went in for the most violent style of impressionism. That was the end of him.
There had been reproductions of his principal canvases, with sketches and studies in charcoal. One of these pictures had made a lasting impression on Booth: the figure of a young woman in deep meditation standing in the shadow of a window casement from which she looked out upon the world apparently without a thought of it. A slender young woman in vague reds and browns, whose shadowy face was positively illuminated by a pair of wonderful blue eyes.
He came upon it at last. For a long time he sat there gazing at the face of Hetty Castleton, a look of half-wonder, half-triumph in his eyes. There could be no doubt as to the identity of the subject. The face was hers, the lovely eyes were hers: the velvety, dreamy, soulful eyes that had haunted him for years, as he now believed. In no sense could the picture be described as a portrait. It was a study, deliberately arranged and deliberately posed for in the artist's studio. He was mystified. Why should she, the daughter of Colonel Castleton, the grand-niece of an earl, be engaged in posing for what evidently was meant to be a commercial product of this whilom artist?
He remembered the painting itself as he had seen it in the exhibition at the National Academy when this fellow—Hawkright was his name—was at the top of his promise as a painter. He remembered going back to it again and again and marvelling at the subtle, delicate beauty of the thing. Now he knew that it was the face, and not the art of the painter that had affected him so enduringly. The fellow had shown other paintings, but he recalled that none of them struck him save this one. After all, it WAS the face that made the picture memorable.
Turning from this skilfully coloured full page reproduction, he glanced at first casually over the dozen or more sketches and studies on the succeeding pages. Many of them represented studies of women's heads and figures, with little or no attempt to obtain a likeness. Some were half-draped, showing in a sketchy way the long graceful lines of the half-nude figure, of bare shoulders and breasts, of gauze-like fabrics that but illy concealed impressive charms. Suddenly his eyes narrowed and a sharp exclamation fell from his lips. He bent closer to the pages and studied the drawings with redoubled interest.
Then he whistled softly to himself, a token of simple amazement. The head of each of these remarkable studies suggested in outline the head and features of Hetty Castleton! She had been Hawkright's model!
The next morning at ten he was at Southlook, arranging his easel and canvas in the north end of the long living-room, where the light from the tall French windows afforded abundant and well-distributed light for the enterprise in hand. Hetty had not yet appeared. Sara, attired in a loose morning gown, was watching him from a comfortable chair in the corner, one shapely bare arm behind her head; the free hand was gracefully employed in managing a cigarette. He was conscious of the fact that her lazy, half-alert gaze was upon him all the time, although she pretended to be entirely indifferent to the preparations. Dimly he could see the faint smile of interest on her lips.
"By Jove," he exclaimed with sudden fervour, "I wish I could get you just as you are, Mrs. Wrandall. Do you mind if I sketch you in—just to preserve the pose for the future—"
"Never!" she cried and forthwith changed her position. She laughed at the look of disappointment in his face.
"You've no idea how—er—attractive—" he began confusedly, but broke off with a laugh. "I beg your pardon. I couldn't help it."
"The potent appeal of a cigarette," she surmised shrewdly.
"Not at all," he said promptly. He was a bit red in the face as he turned to busy himself with the tubes and brushes. When he glanced at her again, he found that she had resumed her former attitude.
Hetty came in at that moment, calm, serene and lovelier than ever in the clear morning light. She was wearing the simple white gown he had chosen the day before. If she was conscious of the rather intense scrutiny he bestowed upon her as she gave him her hand in greeting, she did not appear to be in the least disturbed.
"You may go away, Sara," she said firmly. "I shall be too dreadfully self-conscious if you are looking on."
Booth looked at her rather sharply. Sara indolently abandoned her comfortable chair and left them alone in the room.
"Shall we try a few effects, Miss Castleton?" he inquired, after a period of constraint that had its effect on both of them.
"I am in your hands," she said simply.
He made suggestions. She fell into the positions so easily, so naturally, so effectively, that he put aside all previous doubts and blurted out:
"You have posed before, Miss Castleton."
She smiled frankly. "But not for a really truly portrait," she said. "Such as this is to be."
He hesitated an instant. "I think I recall a canvas by Maurice Hawkright," he said, and at once experienced a curious sense of perturbation. It was not unlike fear.
Instead of betraying the confusion or surprise he expected, Miss Castleton merely raised her eyebrows inquiringly.
"What has that to do with me, Mr. Booth?" she asked.
He laughed awkwardly.
"Don't you know his work?" he inquired, with a slight twist of his lip.
"I may have seen his pictures," she replied, puckering her brow as if in reflection.
He stared for a second.
"Why do you look at me in that way, Mr. Booth?" she cried, with a nervous little laugh.
"Do you mean to say you—er—that is, you don't know Hawkright's work?"
"Is that so very strange?" she inquired plaintively.
"By Jove," he muttered, quite taken aback. "I don't understand. I'm flabbergasted."
"Please explain yourself," she said stiffly.
"You must have a double somewhere, Miss Castleton," said he, still staring. "Some one who looks enough like you to be—"
"Oh," she cried, with a bright smile of understanding. "I see! Yes, I have a double—a really remarkable double. Have you never seen Hetty Glynn, the actress?"
"I am sure I have not," he said, taking a long breath. It was one of relief, he remembered afterward. "If she is so like you as all that, I COULDN'T have forgotten her."
"She is quite unknown, I believe," she went on, ignoring the implied compliment. "A chorus-girl, or something like that. They say she is wonderfully like me—or was, at least, a few years ago."
He was silent for a few minutes, studying her face and figure with the critical eye of the artist. As he turned to the canvas with his crayon point, he remarked, with an unmistakable note of relief in his voice:
"That explains everything. It must have been Hetty Glynn who posed for all those things of Hawkright's."
"I dare say," said she indifferently.