The Heart Line 31

The Heart Line 31

"Then I am afraid I shall never hear any nice things from you."

 

He was reduced; baffled by her suavity. He sought in vain for a fitting

return. He had the impulse to take advantage of her courtesy, however,

and gratify some portion of his desire to be nearer her. She wore,

suspended from the gold top-button of her "qua," a red silk tassel with

a filigree network of silver threads, containing a gold heart-shaped

scent bottle. He reached to it and tried to remove it from its place,

covering this slight advance jocosely, with the remark:

 

"Is that your heart you have there? It seems to be pure gold."

 

She did not resent what might possibly have been considered a

familiarity, but smiled when she saw that he could not remove the bottle

from the meshes.

 

"I’m afraid you won’t be able to get at it, that way." There was a

touch of playful emphasis in her voice.

 

Their hands met as she assisted him, showing him how to pull up the

sliding ring and open the net. At that contact he became a little giddy.

The blood surged to her cheeks. She took out the bottle and handed it

to him. That moment was tense with feeling. Then she said, as he tried

in vain to unstopper the little jar:

 

"Can you open it, do you think?"

 

He attempted futilely to open the little heart. "I’m afraid I can’t," he

said disconsolately. "Won’t you help me?"

 

"No, you must do it yourself. There is a way—see!"

 

She took it from him and, concealing it in her hand, opened the top and

reached it out for him to smell. He whiffed a penetrating perfume,

disturbingly pungent, then she withdrew it from him and closed the

heart.

 

"May I take it?" he asked.

 

She returned it now, saying, and her smile was more serious than before,

"Learn to open it. There is a way."

 

Granthope took the heart and tried to master its secret. The room had

by this time filled up so that a further tête-à-tête was impossible.

Miss Payson was now besieged by maskers and held court where she sat.

Fernigan, the stout young man with the powdered face, dressed as a

woman, was particularly offensive to Granthope, and especially so

because it could not be denied that his antics and sallies were witty.

 

Granthope arose therefore, and walked about the room looking for some

one whom he might recognize. There was little likelihood of his

succeeding had not his professional capacity given him a clue to follow.

He passed from one group to another, bowing, gesticulating and joking,

as all had now begun to do, keeping his eyes alertly on the hands of

different members of the assembly. It was not long before he suspected

Mrs. Page, and, after reassuring himself by closer inspection, he went

up to her.

 

She was as expensively dressed as Clytie, but without Clytie’s taste.

Mrs. Page’s magnificence was barbaric, untamed to any harmony of color,

though effective in its very violence. She had not left her diamonds at

home. She blazed in them. Tall, dark, well-formed and deep-breasted,

not even the loosely hanging folds of a Chinese costume could hide the

luxuriance with which Nature had endowed her figure. She was laughing

with abandon, reveling in the freedom of the moment, when Granthope

touched her on the shoulder and whispered:

 

"Violet!"

 

She turned to him and stared, puzzled by his well-disguised face.

 

"Who are you?"

 

"I know more about you than any one here!"

 

"Good heavens!" she laughed, "what do you know about me?"

 

"Shall I tell you?"

 

"Not here, for mercy’s sake! Don’t give me away in respectable society,

please. Come out in the hall where we won’t be eavesdropped."

 

She took his arm energetically and romped him out to the staircase. The

masks and costumes had let loose all her folly. She effervesced in

giggles.

 

"Let’s go up-stairs in the library," she proposed. "We have the run of

the house to-night, and nobody’ll be there. I want to see if I can’t

guess who you are. I haven’t the least idea who you are, but I believe

you’re going to be nice."

 

She tapped him on the cheek playfully with her fan, then picked up her

skirts and ran up-stairs, giving him a glance of red silk hose, as she

went. He was still quivering with the excitement of Clytie’s smile,

still warm from her nearness, still full of her, though he would not

share her wholesale glances to her throng of admirers. He was still

rapt with the exhilaration her smile had kindled, he still held her

little perfumed heart. As he followed Mrs. Page up-stairs he smelt

again of the gold bottle. The fragrant odor fired him anew. He grew

perfervid.

 

Mrs. Page, unmasked, was awaiting him in the library.

 

 

When they came down ten minutes later, he made way to where Clytie sat,

talking to the gentleman with the reddish pointed beard and plum-colored

garments. Seeing Granthope approach, she turned to her companion,

saying:

 

"Would you mind getting me a glass of water, Blanchard? This mask is

fearfully warm. I hope we won’t have to keep them on much longer."

 

Cayley left to obey her and Granthope took his place by her chair. She

looked up at him quickly, and said, in a low voice:

 

"I think you had better give me back my scent-bottle, please."

 

A pang smote him. He felt the shock of reproach in her voice, knowing

what she meant immediately, though he rallied to say, faint-heartedly:

 

"Why, I haven’t learned how to open it yet."

 

"I’m afraid you’ll never learn." She did not look at him.

 

"What do you mean?" he asked, summoning all his courage. "I thought you

had given it to me."

 

She kept her eyes away from him. "If I did, I must ask it back, now."

 

Perturbed as he was by this new proof of her intuition, he refused to

admit it. After all, it might have been merely her quick observation.

At any rate, he would make another attempt to pit his cleverness against

her sapience.

 

"Oh, we only went up to see Mr. Maxwell’s books. He has a first edition

of Montaigne there." He was for a moment sure that she was only

jealous.

 

She bent her calm eyes upon him. There was no weakness in her mouth,

though it seemed more lovely in its tremulous distress. The upper lip

quivered uncontrolled; the lower one fell grieving, as she said:

 

"I asked nothing. I want only honesty in what you do tell me."

 

This time he was fairly amazed. The hit was deadly. He dared not

suspect that she had taken a chance shot. He was too humbled to attempt

any denial, knowing how useless it would be in the face of her

discernment. Yet she had showed nothing more than disapproval or

distress. Her reproof could scarcely be called an accusation, and her

chivalry touched him.

 

"I don’t know what you will think of me," he said.

 

"Oh, I’ve heard so much worse of you than that," she said, "and it

hasn’t prevented my wanting to be friends with you. I hope only that

you will never misinterpret that friendliness. You don’t think me bold,

do you?"

 

"I wish you were bolder."

 

"Oh, you don’t know my capacity yet. But, really, do you understand?

It’s that feeling, you know, that in some way we’re connected, that’s

all. It’s unexplainable, and I know it’s silly of me. I’m not trying

to impress you."

 

"But you are!"

 

In answer, she smiled again, and again that flood of delight came over

him rendering him unable, for a moment, to do anything but gaze at her.

Luckily just then Cayley returned with a glass of water; at the same

time, the order was given by Mrs. Maxwell to unmask.

 

Clytie drew off her visor immediately. As Granthope watched her he felt

the quality of his excitement change, transmuted to a higher psychic

level. Somehow, with her whole face revealed, with her serene eyes

shining on him, he was less in the grip of that craving which had held

him prisoner. It fled, leaving him more calm, but with a deepened, more

vital desire. The completed beauty of her face now thrilled him with a

demand for possession, but the single note of passion was richened to a

fuller chord of feeling. The mole on her cheek made her human, and

almost attainable.

 

That feeling gave him a new and potent stimulus, as, under his hostess’

direction, he offered Clytie his arm into the supper-room, and took a

place beside her. It buoyed him with pride when he looked about at the

gaily clad guests and noticed, with a quickened eye, the distinction of

her face and air, comparing her with the others. That dreamy, detached

aspect in which he had seen her before had given way now to a fine glow

of excitement which stirred her blood. How far she responded to his

enthusiasm he could not tell; she was, at least, inspired with the

novelty of the scene—the gaudy dresses, the warm red lights of monstrous

paper lanterns, the odors of burning joss-sticks, the table,

flower-bedecked and set out with strangely decorated dishes, and the monotonous, hypnotic squeak and clang and rattle of a Chinese orchestra half-way up the stairs.