第54章

Thenceforth she and Stanley got on better than ever --apparently.But though she ignored it, she knew the truth--knew her new and deep content was due to her not having challenged his assertion that she loved him.He, believing her honest and high minded, assumed that the failure to challenge was a good woman's way of admitting.But with the day of reckoning--not only with him but also with her own self-respect--put off until that vague and remote time when she should be a successful prima donna, she gave herself up to enjoyment.That was a summer of rarely fine weather, particularly fine along the Jersey coast.They --always in gay parties--motored up and down the coast and inland.Several of the ``musical'' men--notably Richardson of Elberon--had plenty of money;Stanley, stopping with his cousins, the Frasers, on the Rumson Road, brought several of his friends, all rich and more or less free.As every moment of Mildred's day was full and as it was impossible not to sleep and sleep well in that ocean air, with the surf soothing the nerves as the lullaby of a nurse soothes a baby, she was able to put everything unpleasant out of mind.She was resting her voice, was building up her health;therefore the career was being steadily advanced and no time was being wasted.She felt sorry for those who had to do unpleasant or disagreeable things in making their careers.She told herself that she did not deserve her good fortune in being able to advance to a brilliant career not through hardship but over the most delightful road imaginable--amusing herself, wearing charming and satisfactory clothes, swimming and dancing, motoring and feasting.Without realizing it, she was strongly under the delusion that she was herself already rich--the inevitable delusion with a woman when she moves easily and freely and luxuriously about, never bothered for money, always in the company of rich people.The rich are fated to demoralize those around them.The stingy rich fill their satellites with envy and hatred.The generous rich fill them with the feeling that the light by which they shine and the heat with which they are warm are not reflected light and heat but their own.

Never had she been so happy.She even did not especially mind Donald Keith, a friend of Stanley's and of Mrs.Brindley's, who, much too often to suit her, made one of the party.She had tried in vain to discover what there was in Keith that inspired such intense liking in two people so widely different as expansive and emotional Stanley Baird and reserved and distinctly cold Cyrilla Brindley.Keith talked little, not only seemed not to listen well, but showed plainly, even in tete-a-tete conversations, that his thoughts had been elsewhere.

He made no pretense of being other than he was--an indifferent man who came because it did not especially matter to him where he was.Sometimes his silence and his indifference annoyed Mildred; again--thanks to her profound and reckless contentment--she was able to forget that he was along.He seemed to be and probably was about forty years old.His head was beautifully shaped, the line of its profile--front, top, and back--being perfect in intellectuality, strength and symmetry.He was rather under the medium height, about the same height as Mildred herself.He was extremely thin and loosely built, and his clothes seemed to hang awry, giving him an air of slovenliness which became surprising when one noted how scrupulously neat and clean he was.His brown hair, considerably tinged with rusty gray, grew thinly upon that beautiful head.His skin was dry and smooth and dead white.

This, taken with the classic regularity of his features, gave him an air of lifelessness, of one burnt out by the fire of too much living; but whether the living had been done by Keith himself or by his immediate ancestors appearances did not disclose.This look of passionless, motionless repose, like classic sculpture, was sharply and startlingly belied by a pair of really wonderful eyes--deeply and intensely blue, brilliant, all seeing, all comprehending, eyes that seemed never to sleep, seemed the ceaselessly industrious servants of a brain that busied itself without pause.The contrast between the dead white calm of his face, the listlessness of his relaxed figure, and these vivid eyes, so intensely alive, gave to Donald Keith's personality an uncanniness that was most disagreeable to Mildred.

``That's what fascinates me,'' said Cyrilla, when they were discussing him one day.

``Fascinates!'' exclaimed Mildred.``He's tiresome--when he isn't rude.''

``Rude?''

``Not actively rude but, worse still, passively rude.''

``He is the only man I've ever seen with whom I could imagine myself falling in love,'' said Mrs.Brindley.

Mildred laughed in derision.``Why, he's a dead man!'' cried she.

``You don't understand,'' said Cyrilla.``You've never lived with a man.'' She forgot completely, as did Mildred herself, so completely had Mrs.Siddall returned to the modes and thoughts of a girl.``At home--to live with--you want only reposeful things.That is why the Greeks, whose instincts were unerring, had so much reposeful statuary.One grows weary of agitating objects.They soon seem hysterical and shallow.

The same thing's true of persons.For permanent love and friendship you want reposeful men--calm, strong, silent.The other kind either wear you out or wear themselves out with you.''

``You forget his eyes,'' put in Stanley.``Did you ever see such eyes!''

``Yes, those eyes of his!'' cried Mildred.``You certainly can't call them reposeful, Mrs.Brindley.''

Mrs.Brindley did not seize the opportunity to convict her of inconsistency.Said she:

``I admit the eyes.They're the eyes of the kind of man a woman wants, or another man wants in his friend.