Chapter 25

CIRCE AND THE FOSSIL

Christmas had come and gone and the city had struck its highest note of winter activity. Those envied mortals who compose society, pausing for a brief moment of air and relaxation in the holidays, plunged again into the arduous treadmill of the daily round, urged by the flying lash of unrest, creatures of a common fate, plodding wearily up the path of preferment, not daring to falter or to rest under the pain of instant oblivion.

Olga Tcherny paused only long enough to catch a deep breath after her momentous interview with John Markham in Washington Square and then plunged into the busy throng with De Folligny after. She had heard with some interest the reports of Hermia Challoner's engagement to Mr. Morehouse, but it had made no very deep impression upon her mind. She only considered it, in fact, with reference to its possible effect upon the mind of John Markham, who she soon learned was avoiding the social scene, as had been his custom, before she had made forcible entry into his studio last year and had dragged him forth into the company of his fellow man.

It was quite evident that Hermia was playing her game rather ruthlessly and, whatever her object, John Markham and she for the present at least were at cross purposes. Olga did not dare to go to see him, and though her door stood open she had no hope that he would enter it without encouragement. But one blithe morning she sent him a note:

What's this I hear? Can it be true that your nymph has fled from the woods of Pan to take shelter under the eaves of a _Morehouse_? And what becomes of the faun? I can't believe it--and yet my rumor comes direct. Do satisfy my craving for veracity, won't you? I'd like awfully to see you, if you'll forgive and forget. I can now give you positive assurances that you will be quite as safe in my drawing-room as in that smudgy place where you immortalize mediocrity. I'll never propose to you again as long as I live. The phantasy has passed, I think. Do you believe me? Come and see--but _'phone_ first. Affectionately, Olga.

To her surprise, he came the following afternoon. She received him with a frank and careless gayety which put him very much at his ease. He marveled at her assurance and the resumption of the little airs of proprietorship to which he had been accustomed before the visit to Westport. She was the Olga of the portrait with the added graces of a not too obtrusive sympathy and a manner which seemed subtly to suggest self-elimination. He accepted the situation without mental reservation, sat in the chair she indicated with a grateful sigh and watched her pretty hands busy about the tea-tray. Whatever their relations and however directly he could trace his present misfortunes to her very door, the illusion of her friendliness was not to be dispelled, and he relinquished himself to its charm with a grateful sense that, for the moment at least, here was sanctuary.

She found him thinner and said so.

"You're working too hard, my dear Markham," she said. "On every hand I hear of people you've painted or are about to paint. A real success--_un success fou_--and in spite of yourself! It's quite wonderful."

"I've painted very badly," he muttered.

"Oh, you're too close to your work to have a perspective. Mrs. Hammond has touted you the length and breadth of the town--you know--and that means there's a pedestal for you in her Hall of Fame. What does Immortality taste like? Sweet?"

He laughed. "Fame in New York--is merely a matter of dollars. My prices are enormous--hence my reputation. If I charged what the things are worth, these people would send me back to Paris."

"And still you refuse to go to their houses? I hear that Mrs. Hammond wanted to give a dinner for you--to all her set--and that's quite extraordinary of her--even for a lion--"

"But I couldn't eat them, you know--"

"But you could let them watch you eat--"

"I wouldn't have eaten. You see, magnificence of that sort takes my appetite away."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I suppose I'm a crank. They speak another language--those people. I don't understand them. I find that no exertion of the legs brings my mind and theirs any closer together. They bore me stiff and I bore them. What's the use?"

"You have no social ambitions?"

"None whatever--in the sense you mean. I like my fellow men stripped to the bone. That's indecent when one dines out."

"And your fellow woman?"

He shrugged and laughed.

"She's a child--adorable always. But then I never understand her--nor she me."

She sipped tea and smiled.

"Woman is at once the woman and the serpent, _mon ami_. All she needs is a man and a Garden of Paradise."

He frowned into his teacup but did not reply.

"Is it true, John?" she asked quietly.

"What is true?"

"That Hermia is to marry Trevvy Morehouse?"

"From whom did you hear that?" he asked.

"From whom have I not heard it? Everyone. Hermia hasn't denied it, has she?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Why should she deny it? It's her own affair."

His tone rebuked her.

"I don't want to be meddlesome, you know. I only thought--"

"Oh, I'm glad you spoke," he murmured. "I--I wanted to talk about her. You know, you and I--when you left me--there in the Park--you gave me the impression that you--er--that you didn't care for Miss Challoner any more--"

"Did I? I'm glad I did. That's the truth. I don't care for her. She cut me very prettily on the street the week after she got back from Europe. Evidently the antipathy is mutual."

He paused, considering.

"I'm sorry she saw fit to do that. That was foolish--very foolish of her."

"Wasn't it? Especially as I had about decided to forget that I'd ever been in Alençon--"

He put his hand over hers and held it there a moment.

"I want you to forget that, Olga," he muttered. "It--it never happened."

She smiled, her gaze on the andirons.

"You're quite positive of that?"

"Yes. I was--er--in Holland last summer."

"Oh, _were_ you?"

"Yes. And Hermia--Miss Challoner was in Switzerland."

"Yes. So I hear. Very interesting. But how does that explain things to Pierre de Folligny? He met her the other day--and remembered her perfectly--"

Markham rose and paced the floor.

"Oh," he heard her saying, "she denied seeing him in France, of course,--but it was quite awkward--for her, I mean."

He took two or three turns, his brows serious, and then came and stood near her at the mantelpiece.

"You must straighten things out, Olga--with De Folligny," he muttered. "It will ruin her, if he speaks--you know what New York is. Gossip like that travels like fire. And she doesn't deserve it--not that. You've told me that you don't believe in her innocence, but at heart I think you do. You must. I swear to you--on the honor of--"

She raised a hand.

"Don't--!" quickly. "I'm willing to assume her innocence. Haven't I told you that I had been prepared to forget the whole incident--when she cut me. Why did she do that? What does that mean?"

"Not guilt surely--wouldn't she be trying to get you on her side?"

Olga waved an expressive hand.

"Oh, that's impossible--and she knows it."

"Why?"

She paused, shielding her eyes with her fingers. He was such an innocent. But she had no notion of enlightening him.

"She has given you up--to marry. That's clear. I told her secret. The simplest way out of her difficulty is to ignore me. Well--let her. I don't mind. I'll survive. But I would give my ears to let Fifth Avenue know--"

"No--no," he put in quickly, "you mustn't do that-- If you've ceased to care for her, you've got your duty to me to consider. Do you hold my honor so lightly--"

"Yours?"

"Yes. She was in my care. I let her go with me. The responsibility was sacred. I was morally pledged to keep her from harm. That responsibility has not ceased because she no longer--because she has made up her mind to--to marry. It's greater even. If you ever told that story--"

"And De Foligny? You forget him--"

He came quickly over and took her hands in his.

"You can seal this secret, if you will, as in a tomb. Do it, Olga. It will be magnificent of you. Give me your word--your promise to keep silent--to keep De Folligny silent--"

She had turned, her chin upon her shoulder, away from him.

"You ask a great deal," she said with reluctance.

"Not more than you can give--not more than you _will_ give. Whatever your--your differences she doesn't deserve this of you. Will it give you pleasure in after years to think of her life embittered--of _his_ life embittered, too, by a piece of gossip, woven out of a tissue of half-truths--that will damn her--as half-truths do?"

"You love her so much as this?" she gasped.

He relinquished her hand--stood a moment looking dumbly at her and then walked the length of the room away. The little clock on the mantel ticked gaily, the fire sparkled and the familiar sounds of the careless city came faintly to their ears. She stirred and he turned toward her.

"Will you promise?" he asked quietly.

"Promise what?"

"Not to speak--of what you saw at Alençon."

"Yes. I promise that," she said slowly at last.

"Or let De Folligny speak?"

Another silence. And then from thinned lips.

"I--I will use my influence--to keep him silent."

The firmness of her tone assured him. He caught up her hands and pressed them softly to his lips.

"I knew you would, Olga. I knew you were bigger than that. I thank you--I will never forget--"

But before he could finish she had snatched her fingers away from him and was laughing softly at the tea-caddy.

"Now, if you please," she said composedly, "we will speak of pleasanter things."

She opened a long silver box on the table and took a cigarette, offering him one.

"The pipe of peace?" he asked.

"If you like."

He drew in the smoke gratefully.

"Olga, you're a trump," he said with a genuine heartiness.

"Thanks," she said dryly. "I know it. And you're playing me quite successfully--aren't you? Hearts? and I'm the 'dummy.' I never liked playing the 'dummy.'"

He laughed.

"I wish I were quite sure in my mind what you _do_ like to play."

Her look questioned coolly.

"I mean, that, as well as I've thought I've know you, I find that I've never known you at all. You're a creature of bewildering transitions. I hear that you're going to marry De Folligny."

"And what if I am?" she flashed at him.

"I'm sure I wish you every happiness. Only--"

He paused.

"Please finish."

"Nothing--except that you will leave me with an unpleasant sense of having been made a fool of."

She rose, flicked her cigarette into the fire and then turned as if about to speak. But thought better of it. There was a long silence.

"Pierre de Folligny and I are friends of long standing," she said at last. "One marries some day. Why not an old friend? The age of madness passes--I am almost thirty and I have lived--much. It is time--" she finished wearily, "time that I married again. We understand each other perfectly." A smile slowly dawned and broke. "What one wants in a husband is not so much a rhapsodist as a rhymester, not so much a lover as a walking-gentleman--Pierre is that, you know."

She sighed again and rose.

"It was very sweet of you to come in, John. Don't misunderstand me again. _That_--" and she paused to give the word emphasis, "is all over. I'm quite safe as a _confidante_. Hermia has treated you very badly, I think. I'd like to tell her so--No? Well, good-bye. Do come in again. I want you to know Pierre better. He really is all that a walking-gentleman should be."

He laughed and kissed her fingers, and in a moment had gone.

Olga Tcherny stood immovable where he had left her, one foot upon the fender, her gaze upon the fire. After a time she stretched forth her fingers to the blaze. All over! She straightened slowly and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror. The firelight gleamed under her brows, brought out with unpleasant sharpness the angle of her jaw and touched the bones of her cheek caressingly. She looked again, the truth compelling her, and then buried her face in her arm. The truth--middle age, had set its first mark upon her. The sallow fingers of Time had touched her lightly, more as a warning than as a prophecy, painted with a reluctant brush a deeper tone into the shadows, a higher note in the lights, had brushed in haltingly the false values that now mocked at her. Time! She seemed to count it by her heart-throbs.

She walked across the room and stood before the portrait John Markham had painted of her. The face gazed out from its shadows, its eyes met hers for a moment, then looked through her and beyond, eyes which looked, yet saw not, eyes deep and inscrutable, seers of visions, bathed in memories which would not sink into oblivion. Her eyes he had painted carefully. For him it seemed the rest of the face had been a blank. The nose, the chin, were hers, and the mouth--the lips, a scarlet smudge of illusiveness. They were hers, too. He had had difficulty with her lips, painting and repainting them. They had puzzled him. "The eyes we are born with," he had said--how well she remembered it now! "The lips are what we make ourselves." At last he had painted them in quickly--almost brutally and let them be. They seemed to mock at her now--to contradict the meaning of the eyes--which would not, could not, smile.

Hermia had scoffed at this portrait because it was not "pretty." There was something bigger than mere prettiness here. He had painted the soul of her, reading with his art what had been hidden from the man, as he had strayed through the labyrinth of her thoughts viewing the blighted blossom of her girlhood and wifehood and the neglected garden of her maturity. As she viewed the portrait now in the light of time and event, she saw, more clearly than ever, her soul and body as Markham had seen it. He had painted her as he would have painted character--an old man or an old woman, searching for shadows rather than lights, seeking the anatomy of sorrow rather than that of joy--had made her the subject of a cool and not too flattering psychological investigation. Was this how he had always seen her? This far-looking, inscrutable, satiated woman of the world, who peered forth into the future, from the dull embers of the past--a being whose physical beauty was rather suggested than expressed--whose loveliness lay in what she might have been rather than in what she was? He had always thought of her thus?

She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Not, not always. She remembered now--he couldn't have painted her as he had painted others--as he had painted a while ago the portrait of Phyllis Van Vorst--carelessly, contemptuously. He had probed deeply--painted form his own deeps. They had been very close together in those hours, mentally, spiritually, and only the barrier she herself had raised prevented their physical nearness. That, too, she could have had?

A mist fell across the canvas and Hermia's vision interposed, rosy and careless, her braggart youth triumphant.

She turned, threw herself upon the couch and buried her head, her fingers clenched, in the pillows. She made no sound and lay so immovable that one might have thought she was sleeping. But her blood was coursing madly and her pulses throbbed a wrist and neck. She had been true to her better self--with Markham--and her idealism had brought her only this void of barren regret. Whichever way she looked into the past or into the future, the vista was empty; behind her only the echoes of voices and a grim shape or two; before her--vacancy. She had bared her soul to Markham, there in the Square, torn away the veil of her pride and let him know the truth. Why, God knew. She had been mad. She had believed the worst of Hermia and of him, and had offered herself to him that he might judge between them--her heart and Hermia's, her mind, her body and Hermia's. Was her own face no longer fair that he should have looked at her so curiously and turned away with Hermia's name on his lips, Hermia's image in his heart? A doubt had crept into her mind and lingered insidiously. Hermia innocent! She was beginning to believe it now. In spite of the damning facts she had discovered, the evidence of Madam Bordier and Monsieur Duchanel, of the peasant women at Tillières and of Pierre de Folligny, the testimony of Hermia's pale face at the shooting lodge at Alençon and of her confession which she had not thought of doubting, the belief had slowly gained force in her mind that Markham had not lied to her. She found confirmation of it in Hermia Challoner's disappearance in France, in her attitude toward Markham and in the announcement of her engagement to another man. Markham could not guess, as she did now, that this was only a _ruse de femme_, born of the access of timidity at the discovery of her indiscretion and the consciousness that she had gone too far with Markham, who must be punished for his share in her downfall. It seemed pitifully clear now.

Olga's bitterness choked and whelmed her. It seemed even worse that Hermia should be innocent. She dared not think of the picture she had made in Markham's mind when she had thrown herself into the scales that he might weigh their frailties and compare them. Hermia innocent! How Olga hated her for it, and for her youth and beauty. They mocked and derided the tender flame that she had nourished, which now glowed ineffectually as in another, a greater light. She hated Hermia for all the things that she herself was not.

Lucidity came to her slowly. After a long while she raised a disordered face and leaned her chin upon her hands, staring at the dying log. She had promised him not to speak. She could not. She had even promised to persuade De Folligny to silence. Had he mentioned the incident already? She did not know. He was not by nature a gossip, but Hermia had not been too tactful and it was a good story--the sanctity of which, upon the mind of a man of De Folligny's temperament, might not be impressive. She would keep her promise to Markham and persuade Pierre to silence. No one should know by word of mouth--

Olga started up, her eyes wide open, staring at the opposite wall, where there hung a colored print of a woodland scene by Morland, and a smile slowly grew at one end of her lips, a crooked smile, that might have been merely quizzical, had not the impression been unpleasantly modified by the narrowing eyes and the tiny wrinkle that suddenly grew between her brows.

"I will do it," she muttered. "It may be amusing."