A Circle In The Sand

A Circle in the Sand

By Kate Jordan

Author of "The Kiss of Gold" "The Other House" etc. etc.

CHAPTER IX.

One morning late in January Anne opened the sheets of The Citizen and saw this item among the shipping news:

"Among the passengers on the Teutonic, which arrived in port last night, were Mrs. Lansius Ericsson and Miss Olga Ericsson. The latter is the latest of our young countrywomen to return to America with a London reputation for beauty."

Five days later Anne stepped from the raw afternoon into Dr. Ericsson's house. Her aunt had been in charge but a little while, yet the old house under her reign possessed what Anne felt it never could have had without her. A maid who was inoffensive of voice and light of step took up her card, an open fire invited her, the aromatic odor of green things growing in a winter room filled the air, the light was toned to a pale yellow, as if a sunset had happened prematurely. It was evident Mrs. Ericsson had a genius for selecting the salient requisites of an inviting home.

"Anne Garrick, " said a languid voice behind her, "how d'you do?"

She turned to face the aunt she but faintly remembered, a small, nervous woman, pale haired, anxious eyed, so restless she seemed like one half pausing in a hurry before continuing the pursuit of something.

She gave Anne her pale cheek to kiss and exclaimed:

"How like your father. You're a Garrick. You are not a Gerard. "

The inflection was disapproving. Anne felt guilty for not looking like her mother. She commenced an apology for not having called before, but with amazing irrelevancy Mrs. Ericsson darted for the door.

"Olga is up stairs. Come up. We've been waiting lunch for you for 15 minutes. It's all right, only with us every moment is of such importance. All the morning Olga has been trying on hats."

She turned at the top of the stairs, looking like a distracted sparrow.

"She won't have a hat without a brim. Did you ever hear anything like it? Felice came all the way from Madison avenue with ten hats, all close fitting, and we begged her to try one. She wouldn't, not if I went on my knees. Olga can be so set. Try and talk her over to a toque. It's simply madness to insist on a brim when nobody is wearing one."

Again Anne felt like a culprit. The felt and feather creation on her head had a brim. Useless to expect to find favor in her aunt's eyes, since, looking like her father, she came wearing a big hat.

"Here's Anne Garrick at last. " And Mrs. Ericsson entered a big bay windowed room as inviting as fluted swiss curtains and pale green appointments could make it.

A young woman was beside a window, a manicure set spread out on a small table before her, and she was examining a pink nail, much as a jeweler does the springs of a watch.

"You dear thing! How are you?" she said, going to meet Anne, and they kissed each other.

"Let me look at you, Olga, " said Anne, turning her to the light. "I've heard you are beautiful. Mr. Tinkle, our society editor, saw you at the opera last night and has talked about you all the morning."

Olga lifted her head lazily in a challenging way and with a purring laugh.

"Upon my word, fancy, " she said with an English accent as Anne looked at her. "What do you think? Am I?"

"Yes, you are."

Few women could have welcomed criticism in that green toned setting and raw light. The two emphatic qualities of Olga's beauty, etherealness and delicacy, did not suffer. She was extraordinarily white. The skin on supple throat and quiet cheek was of almost silvery pallor. Moonlight seemed bathing her pale blond hair. Her greenish gray eyes were dreamy, the pupils large; her upper lip very short, full and coral pink. "A moonlight maid, " the artists in Paris had called her. There was not a heavy note in her coloring. The blond brilliancy of some Swedish ancestor lived again in her, some "flower of northern snows, " and with it the delicate American features of her mother. She was of average height, and though slight her body had a delicate robustness. She wore a white flannel robe loosely belted, and her hair hung in a plait to her waist.

"You don't mind my going to the table this way? I am lazy, but we are en famille," she said, strolling into the hall. "Mamma hates me to do it, but I simply cannot dress for lunch. I'm as stiff as a German cavalryman all the afternoon and night. I must have a little freedom."

In the dining room they found Dr. Ericsson. He drew Anne to him and gave her a bearlike hug.

"Is this your debut as a family man?" she asked.

"No, my second appearance. I'm getting used to the limelight. I met David Temple coming up town last night and prevailed on him to dine with us."

"What a charming man he is," exclaimed Mrs. Ericsson, and from the commencement of the meal, with short intervals of rest, Anne was put through a catechism by her aunt about David Temple. Her tongue played between her lips restlessly, while David 's position, money, character and possible attachments were inquired after minutely and with an appraiser's air. When the cross examination was finished, Anne had a feeling that David had been ticketed and put away with other ticketed matrimonial possibilities.

The pauses in this research were filled ín by a recital of Olga's past and coming triumphs, what she must and must not do, who was worth her knowing and who was not.

Anne was glad to get back to the green and white room, the door closed, and only Olga there, looking at her with amused eyes.

"Look here, Aune, isn't she harrowing? Do you wonder how I stand it? There ought to be a law for the suppression of uncongenial relations. Mamma is really impossible."

She flung herself into a rocker and took one foot into the embrace of her hand. Suddenly she burst out laughing."

Anne Garrick, you've a very expressive face. You don't envy me, although I'm a beauty and the only daughter of an adoring mother."

She took a thin cigarette from a silver box on the table.

"Have one? You don't smoke? You don't know what a comfort it is."

"But doesn't your mother object?" asked Anne, making herself comfortable among a heap of cushions.

"Of course. What doesn't she object to? She doesn't want me to eat potatoes lest they make me fat nor to take cold baths, because they make me blue. She rubs my nose hard every night, because one little pink vein - see it - shows. She almost cries when I do my hair high and takes to her bed if I insist on more than one cup of coffee. I am not allowed to spend a penny as I please nor to have an original idea about a gown or hat. In fact, I'm my mother's stock in hand, which she is always polishing, preserving, eying. It's very trying. Shall I tell you how I manage to endure this continual censorship mixed with servile worship - for mamma does adore me? A pioneer never regarded a finished cabin, every stick of which had been laid by his own hands, with more satisfaction than she does me. She does not seem to give papa any share in my being at all."

"I think I know what your tactics are," said Anne, scrutinizing her good humoredly. "You're very soft and white. You seem to move in an atmosphere of amiability, but I have not forgotten your early propensity for sticking pins nor the educated way your little nails could scratch. You could scratch still, Olga, if that were necessary, but you have found a surer way of gaining your way. "

"You've hit it. What's the use of continual dispute? Why worry this one little life out of yourself? You want your own way - take it. Be attentive to all the rules laid down for your conduct, then ignore them and smile. When you're found out and reproaches are showered on you, think of something else or go to sleep."

She lit another cigarette with a ruminative expression and clasped her hands behind her head. The look in her eyes was like that of a mild baby trying to diagnose a sunbeam.

"Really, you know, if mamma would only rest her tired little body and head and leave me to myself she'd be very wise. She has nothing to fear from me. I know what's expected of me. We're poor; worse, we're in debt. She lives in perpetual dread of my marrying a poor man. Could anything be more absurd? Nothing in the world will ever be as dear to me as my personal comfort. For a girl to go into business life as you have done, making her own way, working, struggling, is beyond my understanding. Some one must always support me, Anne, and support me well."

"I wonder you came back to America without a title or at least a fortune."

"I could have married money several times, and a lot of it, " said Olga, "but unfortunately I distinctly disliked the men. It wouldn't do to marry a man you couldn't for the life of you be civil to. Would it?"

"Oh, I don't know ! Aren't you oversensitive?"

The laughter in Anne's tone did not disturb Olga. She pursed out her lips and nodded.

"I almost caught a title too. This is the way I missed it. For one thing, mamma's eagerness frightened him. I'm sure he could see her shake as soon as he appeared. I'm sure he saw her nudge me. But that wouldn't have seriously mattered if he hadn't found me out."

Her lips curled in a one sided smile;

"I can laugh now, but really it was provoking at the time. Val - dear thing he was - hated the least touch of unconventionality in a woman and smoking he considered only a little better than swearing. By the way, I'm telling you the truth about myself, Anne. It's such a relief to tell it. I never do except to relatives. With men it's impossible not to pose; they expect so much. Well, my dear, I posed for Val for six long, weary months. I played the little lamb, always with a bit of needlework, practicing the Madonna gaze, taking only one glass of champagne at dinners and declining cigarettes with a shy, reproachful glance. He used to tell me I was his ideal, that it seemed profane to love me, that nature knew what she was about when she fashioned me like an angel, etc. One day he walked into Morley's, where I was having my portrait done, and found me with Mrs. Sutton Vane, a little monkey of a woman with a fast manner, and whom he particularly detested. We had a bet on as to which could blow the roundest rings of smoke. I, his Madonna, his angel, his snow flower, won, while he, unseen by me, watched. Sudden business called him away next day, business so absorbing he never came back. Mamma has sat up nights with her finger to her forehead wondering why. l am all blank amazement when the subject is broached. And here endeth the romance of Lord Valentina Dunwearthy. It went up in smoke."

"You weren't a bit in love with him?"

"In love? No. I never loved anything but this. Listen!"

She went to the mirror and looked into it steadily for a moment, then turned to Anne, her whole expression changed. The laziness of glance vanished. She flung up her head and laughed joyously. To Anne's amaze the lines from "The Merchant of Venice" where Portia decides to masquerade as a man left her lips, at first tenderly, with half bidden laughter, as a schoolgirl confides a secret, then with assurance, a pretty swagger, delighted anticipation.

Anne listened in wonder. The room seemed to fade, the clatter from the street became unreal, and it was not Olga who stood before her. It was Portia glittering iu queenliness and coquetry, the perfume of an Italian garden coming in with the sunset, a minstrel lounging near her, swords distantly clanking as waiting gallants moved. Her voice had power and sweetness. Her awakened face sparkled changefully. She seemed possessed of a soul with wings struggling to be free.

When the last word was spoken, she sank down by Anne's side and seized her hand.

"You liked it. I see you did."

"Oh, where have you had the chance" -

"Didn't you know they went wild in London society over my Constance in 'The Love Chase?' I played it at a dozen houses for various charities. Oh, the stage! That would make poverty endurable. The life calls me, Anne. I know its disadvantages, no one better, but it's a rare lot when you feel your fitness for it. I'll never do more than dabble with it for amusement, but if I could - if I'd been free to do as I pleased, the world would have heard of me. Here's mamma," she broke off, the light leaving her face. "She's coming with hot milk to give me a face bath. By the way, she loathes acting, even my amateur work, but I've already  made arrangements with Mrs. Oswald Morse to do Kate Hardcastle at Tuxedo for the Working Girls' library fund. She'd have palpitation of the heart if she knew it. I'll tell her the day before."

Anne left her in her mother's hands over a basin of steaming milk. The meeting had left a unique and emphatic impression on Anne.

"A woman with a thistle down conscience, a woman to pink the plums from life with soft, businesslike fingers and an indifferent air, 5 feet 5 of radiant selfishness- that's my cousin Olga," she thought as she went down the street, "but I like her." (To be continued)