第82章 Chapter XXIV The Coming of Stephanie Platow(3)

Because of Stephanie's youth and seeming unimportance, her lack of what might be called compelling rosy charm, Aileen had become reasonably friendly with the girl. Far subtler, even at her years, than Aileen, Stephanie gathered a very good impression of the former, of her mental girth, and how to take her. She made friends with her, made a book-plate for her, made a sketch of her. She confided to Aileen that in her own mind she was destined for the stage, if her parents would permit; and Aileen invited her to see her husband's pictures on their return. She little knew how much of a part Stephanie would play in Cowperwood's life.

The Cowperwoods, having been put down at Goteborg, saw no more of the Platows until late October. Then Aileen, being lonely, called to see Stephanie, and occasionally thereafter Stephanie came over to the South Side to see the Cowperwoods. She liked to roam about their house, to dream meditatively in some nook of the rich interior, with a book for company. She liked Cowperwood's pictures, his jades, his missals, his ancient radiant glass. From talking with Aileen she realized that the latter had no real love for these things, that her expressions of interest and pleasure were pure make-believe, based on their value as possessions. For Stephanie herself certain of the illuminated books and bits of glass had a heavy, sensuous appeal, which only the truly artistic can understand.

They unlocked dark dream moods and pageants for her. She responded to them, lingered over them, experienced strange moods from them as from the orchestrated richness of music.

And in doing so she thought of Cowperwood often. Did he really like these things, or was he just buying them to be buying them?

She had heard much of the pseudo artistic--the people who made a show of art. She recalled Cowperwood as he walked the deck of the Centurion. She remembered his large, comprehensive, embracing blue-gray eyes that seemed to blaze with intelligence. He seemed to her quite obviously a more forceful and significant man than her father, and yet she could not have said why. He always seemed so trigly dressed, so well put together. There was a friendly warmth about all that he said or did, though he said or did little.

She felt that his eyes were mocking, that back in his soul there was some kind of humor over something which she did not understand quite.

After Stephanie had been back in Chicago six months, during which time she saw very little of Cowperwood, who was busy with his street-railway programme, she was swept into the net of another interest which carried her away from him and Aileen for the time being. On the West Side, among a circle of her mother's friends, had been organized an Amateur Dramatic League, with no less object than to elevate the stage. That world-old problem never fails to interest the new and the inexperienced. It all began in the home of one of the new rich of the West Side--the Timberlakes. They, in their large house on Ashland Avenue, had a stage, and Georgia Timberlake, a romantic-minded girl of twenty with flaxen hair, imagined she could act. Mrs. Timberlake, a fat, indulgent mother, rather agreed with her. The whole idea, after a few discursive performances of Milton's "The Masque of Comus," "Pyramus and Thisbe," and an improved Harlequin and Columbine, written by one of the members, was transferred to the realm of the studios, then quartered in the New Arts Building. An artist by the name of Lane Cross, a portrait-painter, who was much less of an artist than he was a stage director, and not much of either, but who made his living by hornswaggling society into the belief that he could paint, was induced to take charge of these stage performances.