Part 21 (2/2)
Celia had seated herself beside him, a little away. She sat with her head against the wall, and one foot curled under her, and almost faced him.
”I dare say we forced the pace a little,” she remarked, after a pause, looking down at the floor, with the puckers of a ruminating amus.e.m.e.nt playing in the corners of her mouth. ”It doesn't do for a man to get to be a Greek all of a sudden. He must work along up to it gradually.”
He remembered the music. ”Oh, if I only knew how to tell you,” he murmured ecstatically, ”what a revelation your playing has been to me!
I had never imagined anything like it. I shall think of it to my dying day.”
He began to remember as well the spirit that was in the air when the music ended. The details of what he had felt and said rose vaguely in his mind. Pondering them, his eye roved past Celia's white-robed figure to the broad, open doorway beyond. The curtains behind which she had disappeared were again parted and fastened back. A dim light was burning within, out of sight, and its faint illumination disclosed a room filled with white marbles, white silks, white draperies of varying sorts, which shaped themselves, as he looked, into the canopy and trappings of an extravagantly over-sized and sumptuous bed. He looked away again.
”I wish you would tell me what you really mean by that Greek idea of yours,” he said with the abruptness of confusion.
Celia did not display much enthusiasm in the tone of her answer. ”Oh,”
she said almost indifferently, ”lots of things. Absolute freedom from moral bugbears, for one thing. The recognition that beauty is the only thing in life that is worth while. The courage to kick out of one's life everything that isn't worth while; and so on.”
”But,” said Theron, watching the mingled delicacy and power of the bared arm and the shapely grace of the hand which she had lifted to her face, ”I am going to get you to teach it ALL to me.” The memories began crowding in upon him now, and the baffling note upon which the mazurka had stopped short chimed like a tuning-fork in his ears. ”I want to be a Greek myself, if you're one. I want to get as close to you--to your ideal, that is, as I can. You open up to me a whole world that I had not even dreamed existed. We swore our friends.h.i.+p long ago, you know: and now, after tonight--you and the music have decided me. I am going to put the things out of MY life that are not worthwhile. Only you must help me; you must tell me how to begin.”
He looked up as he spoke, to enforce the almost tender entreaty of his words. The spectacle of a yawn, only fractionally concealed behind those talented fingers, chilled his soft speech, and sent a flush over his face. He rose on the instant.
Celia was nothing abashed at his discovery. She laughed gayly in confession of her fault, and held her hand out to let him help her disentangle her foot from her draperies, and get off the divan. It seemed to be her meaning that he should continue holding her hand after she was also standing.
”You forgive me, don't you?” she urged smilingly. ”Chopin always first excites me, then sends me to sleep. You see how YOU sleep tonight!”
The brown, velvety eyes rested upon him, from under their heavy lids, with a languorous kindliness. Her warm, large palm clasped his in frank liking.
”I don't want to sleep at all,” Mr. Ware was impelled to say. ”I want to lie awake and think about--about everything all over again.”
She smiled drowsily. ”And you're sure you feel strong enough to walk home?”
”Yes,” he replied, with a lingering dilatory note, which deepened upon reflection into a sigh. ”Oh, yes.”
He followed her and her candle down the magnificent stairway again. She blew the light out in the hall, and, opening the front door, stood with him for a silent moment on the threshold. Then they shook hands once more, and with a whispered good-night, parted.
Celia, returning to the blue and yellow room, lighted a cigarette and helped herself to some Benedictine in the gla.s.s which Theron had used.
She looked meditatively at this little gla.s.s for a moment, turning it about in her fingers with a smile. The smile warmed itself suddenly into a joyous laugh. She tossed the gla.s.s aside, and, holding out her flowing skirts with both hands, executed a swinging pirouette in front of the gravely beautiful statue of the armless woman.
CHAPTER XX
It was apparent to the Rev. Theron Ware, from the very first moment of waking next morning, that both he and the world had changed over night.
The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he had been laboring blindly so long, was accomplished. He stood forth, so to speak, in a new skin, and looked about him, with perceptions of quite an altered kind, upon what seemed in every way a fresh existence. He lacked even the impulse to turn round and inspect the coc.o.o.n from which he had emerged.
Let the past bury the past. He had no vestige of interest in it.
The change was not premature. He found himself not in the least confused by it, or frightened. Before he had finished shaving, he knew himself to be easily and comfortably at home in his new state, and master of all its requirements.
It seemed as if Alice, too, recognized that he had become another man, when he went down and took his chair at the breakfast table. They had exchanged no words since their parting in the depot-yard the previous evening--an event now faded off into remote vagueness in Theron's mind. He smiled brilliantly in answer to the furtive, half-sullen, half-curious glance she stole at him, as she brought the dishes in.
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