Youth and the Bright Medusa | Page 9

looking, especially one girl
who went about selling fish and lobsters. About the food there was
nothing remarkable,--except the ripe figs, he liked those. They drank
sour wine, and used goat-butter, which was strong and full of hair, as it
was churned in a goat skin.

"But don't they have parties or banquets? Aren't there any fine hotels
down there?"
"Yes, but they are all closed in summer, and the country people are
poor. It's a beautiful country, though."
"How, beautiful?" she persisted.
"If you want to go in, I'll show you some sketches, and you'll see."
Miss Bower rose. "All right. I won't go to my fencing lesson this
morning. Do you fence? Here comes your dog. You can't move but he's
after you. He always makes a face at me when I meet him in the hall,
and shows his nasty little teeth as if he wanted to bite me."
In the studio Hedger got out his sketches, but to Miss Bower, whose
favourite pictures were Christ Before Pilate and a redhaired Magdalen
of Henner, these landscapes were not at all beautiful, and they gave her
no idea of any country whatsoever. She was careful not to commit
herself, however. Her vocal teacher had already convinced her that she
had a great deal to learn about many things.
"Why don't we go out to lunch somewhere?" Hedger asked, and began
to dust his fingers with a handkerchief--which he got out of sight as
swiftly as possible.
"All right, the Brevoort," she said carelessly. "I think that's a good
place, and they have good wine. I don't care for cocktails."
Hedger felt his chin uneasily. "I'm afraid I haven't shaved this morning.
If you could wait for me in the Square? It won't take me ten minutes."
Left alone, he found a clean collar and handkerchief, brushed his coat
and blacked his shoes, and last of all dug up ten dollars from the
bottom of an old copper kettle he had brought from Spain. His winter
hat was of such a complexion that the Brevoort hall boy winked at the
porter as he took it and placed it on the rack in a row of fresh straw
ones.

IV
That afternoon Eden Bower was lying on the couch in her music room,
her face turned to the window, watching the pigeons. Reclining thus
she could see none of the neighbouring roofs, only the sky itself and the
birds that crossed and recrossed her field of vision, white as scraps of
paper blowing in the wind. She was thinking that she was young and
handsome and had had a good lunch, that a very easy-going,
light-hearted city lay in the streets below her; and she was wondering
why she found this queer painter chap, with his lean, bluish cheeks and
heavy black eyebrows, more interesting than the smart young men she
met at her teacher's studio.
Eden Bower was, at twenty, very much the same person that we all
know her to be at forty, except that she knew a great deal less. But one
thing she knew: that she was to be Eden Bower. She was like some one
standing before a great show window full of beautiful and costly things,
deciding which she will order. She understands that they will not all be
delivered immediately, but one by one they will arrive at her door. She
already knew some of the many things that were to happen to her; for
instance, that the Chicago millionaire who was going to take her abroad
with his sister as chaperone, would eventually press his claim in quite
another manner. He was the most circumspect of bachelors, afraid of
everything obvious, even of women who were too flagrantly handsome.
He was a nervous collector of pictures and furniture, a nervous patron
of music, and a nervous host; very cautious about his health, and about
any course of conduct that might make him ridiculous. But she knew
that he would at last throw all his precautions to the winds.
People like Eden Bower are inexplicable. Her father sold farming
machinery in Huntington, Illinois, and she had grown up with no
acquaintances or experiences outside of that prairie town. Yet from her
earliest childhood she had not one conviction or opinion in common
with the people about her,--the only people she knew. Before she was
out of short dresses she had made up her mind that she was going to be
an actress, that she would live far away in great cities, that she would
be much admired by men and would have everything she wanted.

When she was thirteen, and was already singing and reciting for church
entertainments, she read in some illustrated magazine a long article
about the late Czar of Russia, then just come