Chapter 24

THE WINGS OF THE BUTTERFLY

John Markham spent an unpleasant evening. He dined alone at a club, wandering afterward aimlessly from library to billiard room and then took to the streets, trusting to physical exercise to clear his head of the tangle that Olga had put into it. Olga, the irrepressible man-hunter, in love with a "fossilized Galahad_." That was ironically amusing, extraordinary, if true, a punishment which fitted her crime, and something of a grim joke on the man-hunter as well as the fossil. Markham tried to view the matter with unconcern, man-like, recalling the many times that Olga's name had been coupled with those of various distinguished foreigners and the frequent reports of her engagement, always denied and forgotten. And yet she worried him. For a brief moment she had given him a glimpse of the shadowy recesses where she hid her naked soul; a glimpse only, like some of those she had given him when he was painting her portrait; but what he had seen now was different--an Olga no longer wistful no longer amenable; a wild, unreasoning thing who purred, cat-like, while he stroked her, sheathing and unsheathing her claws. There was mischief brewing--he felt it in her sudden access of self-control, and in the final jest with which she had left him. He knew her better now. It was when she mocked that Olga was most dangerous. It was clear that she had not believed him when he told her the truth. Her standards forbade it, of course. It was too bad.

But she had not told what she knew--that was the main thing. What if she did tell now? Hermia could deny it, of course, and if necessary he must lie, as Olga had said, like a gentleman. And where were Olga's proofs? Who would confirm her? What evidence, human or documentary could she bring forward here in New York to prove Hermia's culpability, if, as it seemed to be her intention, she insisted on carrying her sweet vengeance to its end? There was no one--he paused, his brow clouding. De Foligny! Had De Folligny learned who Hermia was? Had Olga found out about the companion in his automobile at Verneuil? He waved the thought away. De Folligny was on the other side of the ocean. The psychological moment for Olga's revelation had passed.

Consoling himself with these thoughts he went home and to bed and morning found him early at the studio, awaiting his new sitter, in a more quiescent, if still uncertain, frame of mind.

The portrait of Mrs. Berkeley Hammond on which he had been working sat smugly upon one of his easels, a thing of shreds and patches (though the lady was in pearls and a Drécoll frock), a thing "painty" without being direct, mannered without being elegant, highly colored without being colorful, a streaky thing with brilliant spots, like the work of a promising pupil; a pretty poor Markham, which had pleased the sitter because its face flattered her, and for which she would gladly pay the considerable sum he charged, while Markham's inner consciousness loudly proclaimed that the canvas was not worth as much as the crayon sketch of Madam Daudifret in Normandy which had been the price of a _ragoût_. Really he would have to pain better. He swung the easel around with a kick of the foot and faced a new canvas, primed some days before, and busied himself about his palette and paint tubes.

When Phyllis Van Vorst emerged from the dressing-room a while later into the cool north light, Markham's eyes sparkled with a genuine delight. Here was the sort of thing he could do--white satin with filmy drapery from which rose the fresh-colored flower of girlhood. Without being really pretty, his model created the illusion of beauty by her youth, her abundant health and many little tricks of gesture and expression. Her role was that of the ingénue and she prattled childishly of many things, flitting like a butterfly from topic to topic, grave and gay with a careless grace which added something to the picture she made. Markham let her talk, interjecting monosyllables lulled by the inexhaustible flow, aware, after the first pose or two, that he was painting well, with the careless brush of entire confidence. As Olga had said, he always was at his best when a little contemptuous. In three hours the head was finished and the background laid in, _premier coup_-- the best thing he had done in a year.

He twisted the canvas around to get a better look at it and groped for his pipe, suddenly conscious of the fact that he had painted and that his model had sat steadily for an hour and a half without a rest.

"You poor child," he muttered with compunction, as he helped her down, "that's the penalty of being interesting."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she cried, "You _can_ say nice things, can't you?"

"When I think of them," he laughed.

She stood before the canvas in breathless delight.

"Oh, do I look like that, Mr. Markham, like _Psyche_ with the lamp? It's quite too wonderful for _words_. I'm a _dream_. I've never seen anything quite so flattering in my _life_. Oh, I'm _so_ glad I came to you instead of to Teddy Vincent. You've made my poor nose quite straight--and yet it's _my_ nose, too. How on _earth_ did you do it? You're not going to work any more--?"

"No--" he laughed, "the head is done."

She sat in the chair he brought forward for her and Markham dropped on the divan near her and smoked. She gazed at the head for a while in rapturous silence.

"O Mr. Markham, will you _ever_ forgive me for being so stupid last summer," she said at last, "about that upside-down painting? I've been so humiliated--"

"I'm not really a landscape man, you know," he said cheerfully by way of consolation, "and it was only a sketch."

"Oh, but they made such a lot of fun of me--at Westport. They're not very merciful--that crowd."

Markham's gaze shifted.

"Yes, I know," he said quietly.

"Oh, have you heard?" his companion laughed suddenly.

"About Crosby Downs."

"No."

"He has married Sybil Trenchard."

Markham took a puff at his pipe.

"Really? Why?"

She laughed. And then quickly.

"I don't know. And Hilda and Carol--Carol Gouverneur, you know--engaged. She has wanted him a long time. Everybody thought he'd wiggle out of it somehow, but he didn't or couldn't or something."

He smiled. "Cupid has had a busy summer."

"Oh, yes, quite extraordinary. You see out of all that house party, there are only three or four left." She spoke of this wholesale selection and apportionment as though her topic had been apples.

"Indeed?" Markham stopped smoking. "Who else?" he asked calmly.

"Me," she said blushing prettily. "I mean I--I and Reggie--"

"Reginald Armistead! I thought that he and Miss Challoner--"

"Oh, that's all off," she laughed. "They didn't really care for each other at all--not that way--just as friends you know. Hermia is a good deal like a fellow. Reggie liked her that way. They were pals--had been from childhood, but then one doesn't marry one's pal."

"I'm very glad," said Markham politely, examining her with a new interest. "I shall make it a point at once to offer him my congratulations. I like him."

"He's adorable, isn't he? But I'm horribly frightened about him. He's so dreadfully reckless--flying, I mean. If it hadn't been for Hermia, I'm sure he never would have begun it. But he has promised me to give it up--now. Hermia may break her neck if she likes; that's Mr. Morehouse's affair, but--"

"Morehouse!" Markham broke in, wide-eyed.

She regarded him calmly.

"Where on earth have you been, Mr. Markham?"

"In--France," he stammered. "Do you mean that Hermia--Miss Challoner is--"

"Engaged to Trevvy? Of _course_. It was cabled from Paris--to the _Herald_. But then nobody who knows about things is really very much surprised. Trevvy has been _wild_ about her for years and her family have all wanted it. It's really a _very_ good match. You see Trevvy is so steady and she needs a skid to her wheel--"

She rambled on but to Markham her voice was only a confused chatter of many voices. He rose and turned the easel into a better light, then knocked out his pipe into the fireplace. The room whirled around him and he steadied himself against the mantel, while he tried to listen to what else she was saying. Her loquacity, a moment ago so amusing, had assumed a deeper significance. The phrases purled with diabolical fluidity from her lips, searing like molten metal. Hermia! The girl was mad.

The confusion about him ceased and in the silence he heard her voice.

"Are you ill, Mr. Markham?"

He straightened with a short laugh and faced toward her.

"No--not at all. And I was really very much interested," he said evenly. "Miss Challoner is in Europe?" he asked carelessly.

"Oh, yes,--or was--and Trevvy followed her there. She's home now--came yesterday--of course, with Trevvy at her heels. Oh! he'll keep her in order, no fear about that. It's about time that Hermia settled down. She's _quite_ the wildest thing--perfectly properly, you know, Olga Tcherny says--"

"Olga is home, too?" he interrupted, steadying himself.

She nodded quickly and went on. "Olga says that Hermia disappeared from Paris for over a week and no one knew where she was. Trevvy was _crazy_ with anxiety. But she came back one night in an old gray coat and hat with a bundle--the shabbiest thing imaginable, looking like a tramp. Trevvy was in the hotel and saw her. But they patched things up somehow."

"Did Madame Tcherny learn where she had been?"

"Oh, no," she laughed. "You see Olga was too busy with her own affairs. She has a Frenchman in tow this season--she's brought him here with her--florid, blonde, curled and monocled, the Marquis de Folligny--"

"Pierre de Folligny!"

"You know him?"

"Yes--er--slightly."

She had babbled her gossip so lightly and rapidly that this last piece of information had not given him the start its significance deserved. But its import grew.

"It's an affair of long standing, isn't it?" she asked him.

"I--I don't know, I'm sure," he muttered, his brow clouding.

"Something in his manner made her glance at the clock.

"Half-past one--and Reggie's coming to lunch at two. I'll have to _tear_."

He opened the dressing-room for her and, after she had vanished within, stood glowering at the door like one possessed.

A butterfly that dripped poison! He was drenched with it. How lightly Hermia's name had dropped from her satin wings! He smiled grimly at the thought of his own situation, the central figure in at least one act of this comedy, viewing it from the far side of the proscenium arch, gaping like the rustic in the metropolis who sees himself for the first time depicted upon the stage. What right had she--this little flutter-budget--to know these things--when he was denied them? Hermia--the report of her engagement had been disturbing, but some reason it seemed less important now than the fact that she was here--here in New York within twenty minutes of him--perhaps, upon the very street where he might meet her when he went out. Hermia and Trevvy Morehouse! He simply would not believe it. Hermia might look him in the eyes and tell him so--and then-- But she would not dare. Those eyes--blue--violet--gray--all colors as the mood or the sunlight pleased--honest eyes into whose depths he had peered when they were dark with the shadows of the forest and seen his image dancing. She was his that day--all his. He could have taken her; and he had let her go back to Paris--and the excellent Trevelyan. Hermia, his mad vagabond Hermia, was ready to tie herself for life to that automatic nonentity at Westport who trailed, a patient shadow in Hermia's swirling wake. Hermia and Morehouse! He simply wouldn't believe it.

When his sitter had departed in a rush to keep her engagement, he filled his pipe again and walked the floor smoking furiously, the scenario of Olga's little drama taking a more definite form. He understood now the reasons why she had not told what she had seen. He doubted now whether it was her intention to tell. But she had brought the Frenchman De Folligny over to do the telling for her, reserving her little climax until all her marionettes were properly placed according to her own stage directions, when she would let the situation work itself out to its own conclusion. It was an ingenious plan, one which did her hand much credit. She had realized, of course, that a revelation of Hermia's shortcomings in Alençon, Paris or Trouville would have deprived her vengeance of half its sting. It required a New York background, a quiet drawing-room filled with Hermia's intimates for her "situation" to produce its most telling effect. De Folligny now had the center of the stage and at the proper moment she would pull the necessary wires and the thing would be accomplished.

Something must be done at once. He changed into street clothes and went out, lunched alone on the way uptown and at three was standing at the door of the Challoner house.

The butler showed Markham into the drawing-room and took his card. He did not know whether Miss Challoner was in or not, but he would see. Markham sat and impatiently waited, his eyes meanwhile restlessly roving the splendor of the room in search of some object which would suggest Hermia--mad Hermia of Vagabondia. Opposite him upon the wall was a portrait of her by a distinguished Frenchman, with whose _métier_ he was familiar--an astounding falsehood in various shades of tooth-powder. This Hermia smirked at him like the lady in the fashion page, exuding an atmosphere of wealth and nothing else--a strange, unreal Hermia who floated vaguely between her gilt barriers, neither sprite nor flesh and blood. How could Marsac have known the real Hermia--the heart, the spirit of her as he knew them!

And yet when a few moments later she appeared in the doorway he wondered if he knew her at all. She was dressed for afternoon in some clinging dark stuff which made her figure slim almost to the point of thinness. She wore a small hat with a tall plume and seemed to have gained in stature. Her face was paler and her modulated voice and the studied gesture as she offered him her hand did more to convince him that things were not as they should be.

"_So_ good of you to come, Mr. Markham," he heard her saying coolly. "I was wondering if I'd have the pleasure of seeing you here."

He stood uncertainly at the point of seizing her in his arms when he was made aware of her premeditation. The tepor of her politeness was like a blow between the eyes, and he peered blindly into her face in vain for some sign of the girl he knew.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked, and dumbly he sat. "I hear you were in Normandy," she went on smoothly. "Did you have a good summer? You did leave us rather abruptly at Westport, didn't you? But then you know, of course, I understood that--"

"Hermia," he broke in in a low voice. "What has happened to you? Why didn't you answer my letters. I've been nearly mad with anxiety." He leaned forward toward her, the words falling in a torrent. But she only examined him curiously, a puzzled wrinkle at her brows vying with the set smile she still wore.

"Your letters, Mr. Markham!" she said in surprise. "Oh! You mean the note about the sketch of Thimble Island? I _did_ reply, didn't I? It was awfully nice--"

"Good God!" he muttered, rising. "Haven't you punished me enough now, without this--" with a wave of his hand--"this extravaganza. Haven't I paid? I searched Paris high and low for you, Hermia, haunted your bankers and the hotel where you had been stopping, only returning here at the moment when my engagements in New York made it necessary. Has it been kind of you, or just to ignore my letters and leave me all these weeks in anxiety and ignorance? I've missed you horribly--and I feared--nameless things--that you had forgotten me, that you wanted everything forgotten." As he came forward she rose and took a step toward an inner room, her eyes still narrowed and quizzical, watching him carefully.

"Hermia--Hermia!" He stopped, the tension breaking in a laugh. "Oh, you want to punish me, of course. Don't you think you've paid me well already? See! I'm penitent. What do you want? Shall I go down on my knees to you. I have been on my knees to you for weeks--you must have know it. My letters--"

He paused and then stopped, puzzled, for she had not moved and her gaze surveyed him, coolly critical.

"You got my letters?" he asked anxiously.

She was silent.

"I've written you every day--since you left me--poured my heart out to you. You didn't get them? O Hermia, you must have known what life has been without you. Do you think I could forget what I read in your eyes that day in the forest? Could _you_ forget what you wrote there? Only your lips refused me. Even when they refused me, they were warm with my kisses. They were mine, as you were, body and soul. You loved me, Hermia--from the first. These flimsy barriers you're raising, I'll break them down--and take you--"

As he approached, she reached the curtains, one hand upraised.

"You're dreaming, Mr. Markham," she said, distinctly. "I haven't the least idea what you're talking about."

"You love me--" he stammered.

"_I_?"

Her laughter checked him effectually. He stood, his full gesture of entreaty frozen into immobility. Then slowly his arms relaxed and he stood awkwardly staring, now thoroughly awake. She meant him to understand that Vagabondia was not--that their week in Arcadia had never been.

He gaped at her a full moment before he found speech.

"You wish to deny that you and I--that you were there with me--in Normandy?" he stammered.

"One only denies the possible, Mr. Markham," she said with a glib certitude. "The impossible needs no denial. I was in Paris and in Switzerland this summer. Obviously I couldn't have been in Normandy, too."

"I see," he muttered mechanically. "You were in Switzerland."

"Yes. In Switzerland, Mr. Markham," she repeated.

He turned slowly and walked toward the window, his hands behind him, struggling for control. When his voice came, it was as firm as her own.

"Can you prove that?" he asked coldly.

"Why should I prove it, Mr. Markham?" she asked, "My word should be sufficient, I think."

The even tones of her voice and the repetition of his name inflamed him. There was little doubt of her apostasy. He turned toward her with a change of manner, his eyes dark.

"Perhaps you'll be obliged to prove it," he muttered.

"I? Why?"

He looked her straight in the eyes.

"Monsieur de Folligny is with Olga Tcherny--her in New York."

The plume on her hat nodded back, and her eyes widely opened gave him a momentary glimpse of her terror.

"De Folligny is here--with Olga!"

"Yes. I've just learned it--to-day."

She moved her slender shoulders upward in the gesture she had learned from Olga Tcherny.

"That will be quite pleasant," she resumed, easily. "He will render us a little less prosy, perhaps."

Markham watched her a moment in silence, his wounds aching dully.

"I came here--to warn you of that--danger," he said slowly. "Since you don't feat it, my mission is ended." He took up his hat and stick and moved toward the door. "I shall not question your wisdom or your sense of responsibility to me or to yourself. But I think I understand at last what you would have of me. Whatever you wish, of course, I shall do without question. I was alone in Normandy--or with someone else, if you like. It was my Vagabondia--not yours. There was no Philidor--no Yvonne--no Cleofonte or Stella--no roses of Père Guégou--no roses in my heart. They're withered enough, God knows. You wish to forget them. You want me to remember you as you are--to-day." He laughed. "I think I'll have no difficulty in doing so--or helping by my silence or my cooperation in carrying out any plans you may have, if you should find it necessary to call upon me."

"I thank you," she murmured, her head bent.

He regarded her a moment steadily, but she would not meet his gaze. At the door he paused.

"I have heard of your reported engagement," he finished more slowly. "I'd like you to know that I had too much faith in you to believe it. But I think--indeed I'm sure I'm ready to believe it now--if you tell me it's true."

She did not raise her head, but her lips moved inarticulately. He glanced at her a moment longer and then, with an inclination of the head, passed out into the hall and so to the door.