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Page 8
When Mary asked him what he thought of Polly's playing, an unbidden
contrast leaped to his mind. Mary's music reminded him of church. It was
cold and bare as a Methodist meeting house. But Polly's was like the mad
and lawless ceremonial of some heathen temple where incense arose and
nautch girls writhed.
"She plays like a foreigner," he answered, pleased with the success and
oppositeness of his evasion.
"She is an artist," Mary affirmed solemnly. "She is a genius. When does
she ever practise? When did she ever practise? You know how I have. My
best is like a five-finger exercise compared with the foolishest thing
she ripples off. Her music tells me things--oh, things wonderful and
unutterable. Mine tells me, 'one-two-three, one-two-three.' Oh, it is
maddening! I work and work and get nowhere. It is unfair. Why should she
be born that way, and not I?"
"Love," was Frederick's immediate and secret thought; but before he
could dwell upon the conclusion, the unprecedented had happened and Mary
was sobbing in a break-down of tears. He would have liked to take her in
his arms, after Tom's fashion, but he did not know how. He tried, and
found Mary as unschooled as himself. It resulted only in an embarrassed
awkwardness for both of them.
The contrasting of the two girls was inevitable. Like father like
daughter. Mary was no more than a pale camp-follower of a gorgeous,
conquering general. Frederick's thrift had been sorely educated in the
matter of clothes. He knew just how expensive Mary's clothes were, yet
he could not blind himself to the fact that Polly's vagabond makeshifts,
cheap and apparently haphazard, were always all right and far more
successful. Her taste was unerring. Her ways with a shawl were
inimitable. With a scarf she performed miracles.
"She just throws things together," Mary complained. "She doesn't even
try. She can dress in fifteen minutes, and when she goes swimming she
beats the boys out of the dressing rooms." Mary was honest and
incredulous in her admiration. "I can't see how she does it. No one
could dare those colours, but they look just right on her."
"She's always threatened that when I became finally flat broke she'd set
up dressmaking and take care of both of us," Tom contributed.
Frederick, looking over the top of a newspaper, was witness to an
illuminating scene; Mary, to his certain knowledge, had been primping
for an hour ere she appeared.
"Oh! How lovely!" was Polly's ready appreciation. Her eyes and face
glowed with honest pleasure, and her hands wove their delight in the
air. "But why not wear that bow so and thus?"
Her hands flashed to the task, and in a moment the miracle of taste and
difference achieved by her touch was apparent even to Frederick.
Polly was like her father, generous to the point of absurdity with her
meagre possessions. Mary admired a Spanish fan--a Mexican treasure that
had come down from one of the grand ladies of the Court of the Emperor
Maximilian. Polly's delight flamed like wild-fire. Mary found herself
the immediate owner of the fan, almost labouring under the fictitious
impression that she had conferred an obligation by accepting it. Only a
foreign woman could do such things, and Polly was guilty of similar
gifts to all the young women. It was her way. It might be a lace
handkerchief, a pink Paumotan pearl, or a comb of hawksbill turtle. It
was all the same. Whatever their eyes rested on in joy was theirs. To
women, as to men, she was irresistible.
"I don't dare admire anything any more," was Mary's plaint. "If I do she
always gives it to me."
Frederick had never dreamed such a creature could exist. The women of
his own race and place had never adumbrated such a possibility. He knew
that whatever she did--her quick generosities, her hot enthusiasms or
angers, her birdlike caressing ways--was unbelievably sincere. Her
extravagant moods at the same time shocked and fascinated him. Her voice
was as mercurial as her feelings. There were no even tones, and she
talked with her hands. Yet, in her mouth, English was a new and
beautiful language, softly limpid, with an audacity of phrase and
tellingness of expression that conveyed subtleties and nuances as
unambiguous and direct as they were unexpected from one of such
childlikeness and simplicity. He woke up of nights and on his darkened
eyelids saw bright memory-pictures of the backward turn of her vivid,
laughing face.
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