Part 5 (1/2)
They say that if I do so on my own account I shall have to wait weeks and weeks, there are so many ahead of me; but you've been such an awfully efficient press-agent that she will do anything for you.”
”But her prices! Her dreadful prices!” sighed a plaintive feminine voice from the other side of the table. ”Have you seen her, Mr. Hayden?”
”Indeed I have not,” returned Hayden, ”and I haven't the faintest intention of seeing her. I can't understand why you waste your money on those people. They have absolutely nothing to tell you, and they are fakers and worse, in every instance. You know it, each one of you, and yet you continue to patronize them.”
”Hear him preach!” scoffed his cousin.
”Kitty, you are the source of all our information this evening,” broke in a woman on her left. ”Do tell us if it is true that Marcia Oldham's engagement to Wilfred Ames is really announced.”
Hayden, his eyes on Kitty's face, could positively see it stiffen. ”I really know nothing about it,” she answered coldly.
”But they are together so much.”
”There are always a lot of men about Marcia.” Kitty's tone was ominously curt.
”Oh, it is perfectly useless to try to get either Kitty or Bea Habersham to talk about Marcia,” murmured Edith Symmes in Hayden's ear. ”They simply will not do it, and it is sheer waste of breath to ask them any questions. Now, I happen to know that the engagement is not definitely announced.” Hayden drew a long breath. It was as if some weight had been lifted from him. ”Marcia is odd, you know, awfully odd; but just the same, in that slow, unyielding way of his, Wilfred is determined to marry her, and”--she lifted her eyes--”his mother is crazy, simply crazy about it. For a while she contented herself with merely clawing the air whenever Marcia's name was mentioned; but after her nice, quiet, stupid worm of a Wilfred turned and definitely announced to her his intentions, she hustled herself into her black bombazine and has literally made a house-to-house canvas, telling everywhere her tale of woe. Poor old dame, it is rather hard on her!”
”Why?” asked Hayden, ice in his voice. ”I should think that she would consider her son an especially fortunate man.”
His companion gave a short laugh of irrepressible amus.e.m.e.nt. ”I wish she could hear you say that, and might I be there to see the fun, from a safe corner, mind you! 'The shouting and the tumult' would be worth while, I can a.s.sure you. Oh-h,” with one of her affected little s.h.i.+vers, ”I wish you could hear some of the things she says about Marcia! Of course, one can not exactly blame the poor old soul, for to say the least, Marcia, dear as she is, certainly lays herself open to conjecture.”
Hayden did not reply. He was rudely and unmistakably giving the impression of not having heard a word she said; but this attempt on his part, instead of offending his thin and voluble companion, only seemed to amuse her inordinately.
”Do you know, Kitty,” announced the plaintive-voiced lady across the table, ”that your b.u.t.terflies are really the prettiest ones I've seen, prettier than Mrs. ----,” mentioning the English actress, ”for I got a good look at them at a reception the other day, and yours are quite as lovely as Bea's. Dear me!” in almost weeping envy. ”I wish I could afford a chain of them.”
Edith Symmes had a positive explosion of her noiseless, faintly malicious laughter. ”Did you hear that?” she whispered to Hayden. ”Whine-y Minnie over there is as rich as cream; and yet, she can't afford those dreamy b.u.t.terflies, while Marcia Oldham, who hasn't a cent in the whole world, wears a set which, as usual, surpa.s.ses every other woman's. It is a most amazing and amusing social riddle. Even you, who are evidently one of her admirers, must admit that.”
”I can't really afford anything worth while this year,” sighed the dolorous lady characterized as whine-y Minnie, ”but I must try and get an appointment with that fortune-teller, even if it is hideously expensive.
What did you say her name is, Kitty?”
”An odd name,” mimicked Hayden, catching his cousin's eye and unable to resist a school-boy temptation to tease her. ”An odd name.” He reproduced Kitty's high lisping tones perfectly.
”Bobby, if you mock me, I'll give you something that will make you laugh on the other side of your mouth,” she said rapidly under her breath, and reverting to the phraseology of childhood. ”Did you ask her name, Minnie?
It _is_ an odd name. Mademoiselle Mariposa. Sometimes called 'The Veiled Mariposa.'”
Hayden's laughing face stiffened as if he had received a shock from an electric battery. Mariposa! Mariposa!--the b.u.t.terfly. Horace Penfield's words recurred to him; ”I am willing to bet now that you will hear of The Veiled Mariposa in a very short time, and that, too, from a most unexpected source.”
CHAPTER VI
Hayden had elected to spend one evening at home, a most unusual decision for him, but one which the night fully justified, for a February gale was in full progress and was forcing every citizen whether comfortably housed or uncomfortably out in it, to stand at attention and listen to its shrieking iterations of ”a mad night, my masters.”
But to be quite accurate, the state of the weather had nothing whatever to do with the state of Hayden's mind. Let it be said, by way of explanation, that since his return to New York, he had been going out so steadily, accepting so many invitations, meeting so many people, pursuing the social game so ardently, that the thought of a quiet evening at home, recommended itself very alluringly to his imagination, and by sheer virtue of contrast, a.s.sumed almost the proportions of an exciting diversion.
Tatsu had, as usual, deftly, silently and with incredible rapidity arranged everything for his comfort; and his leisurely dinner completed, Robert settled himself for a long solitary evening undisturbed by any men dropping in to interrupt his meditations, or by any vagrant desires to wander out. The gale precluded both possibilities. It had risen to its height now, and filled the air with the steady roar of artillery. Great dashes of rain spattered sharply against the window panes, and Hayden would lift his head to listen and then sink back more luxuriously than ever into the depths of his easy chair. It was the sort of night to throw, occasionally, another log on the fire and watch the flames dance higher--illuminate with their glowing radiance the dim corridors and the vast and stately apartments of a _Chateau en Espagne_. What an addition those new pictures are to the n.o.ble gallery! And the vast library with the windows opening on the Moorish court! But some of the tapestries need renovating, those priceless tapestries!
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Then, surfeited with gazing on so much beauty and splendor, one turns to more homely comforts, and while the logs sink to a bed of glowing ashes, dreams over one's favorite essays, or skims the cream of the last new novel.