CHAPTER VIII.
HERMIA DISCOVERS HERSELF.
Had Hermia been a bride on her wedding-night she could not have felt more trepidation than when she stood on the threshold of her first interview with her new self. She was to meet a strange, potent being, who would unlock for her those doors against which, with fierce, futile longing, she had been wont to cast herself, since woman’s instinct had burst its germ.
She entered her bedroom and locked the door. But she did not go to the mirror at once; she was loath to relinquish pleasurable uncertainty. She sank on a rug before the hearth and locked her hands about her knee in the attitude which had been a habit from childhood. For a few moments she sat enjoying the beauty of the room, the successful embodiment of one of her dearest dreams. The inlaid floor was thick with rugs that had been woven in the looms of the Orient. The walls were hung with cloth of gold, and the ceiling was a splendid picture of Nautch girls dancing in the pleasure palace of an Indian prince. The bed, enameled to represent ivory, stood on a dais over which trailed a wonderful Hindoo shawl. Over the couches and divans were flung rich stuffs, feathered rugs, and odd strips of Indian conceits. The sleeping-room was separated from the boudoir by a row of pillars, and from the unseen apartment came the smell of burning incense.
Hermia leaned back against a pile of cushions, and, clasping her hands behind her head, gazed about her with half-closed eyes. There was a sense of familiarity about it all that cast a shadow over her content. It was a remarkably close reproduction of an ideal, considering that the ideal had been filtered through the practical brain of a nineteenth century decorator—but therein lay the sting. She had dreamed of this room, lived in it; it was as familiar as Bessie’s parlor in Brooklyn, with its tidies and what-nots; it wanted the charm of novelty. She had a protesting sense of being defrauded; it was all very well to realize one’s imaginings, but how much sweeter if some foreign hand had cunningly woven details within and glamour above, of which she had never dreamed. The supreme delight of atmospheric architecture is the vague, abiding sense that high on the pinnacle we have reared, and which has shot above vision’s range, is a luminous apex, divine in color, wondrous in form, a will-o’-the-wisp fluttering in the clouds of imagination.
Hermia sighed, but shrugged her shoulders. Had not life taught her philosophy?
Where the gold-stuffs parted on the wall opposite the pillars, a mirror, ivory-framed, reached from floor to ceiling. Hermia rose and walked a few steps toward the glass without daring to raise her eyes. Then with a little cry she ran to the lamps and turned them out. She flung off her clothes, threw the lace thing she called her night-gown over her head, and jumped into bed. She pulled the covers over her face, and for ten minutes lay and reviled herself. Then, with an impatient and audible exclamation at her cowardice, she got up and lit every lamp in the room.
She walked over to the mirror and looked long at herself, fearfully at first, then gravely, at last smilingly. She was beautiful, because she was unique. Her victory was the more assured because her beauty would be the subject of many a dispute. She had not the delicate features and conventional coloring that women admire, but a certain stormy, reckless originality which would appeal swiftly and directly to variety-loving man. Her eyes, clear and brilliant as they had once been dull and cold, were deep and green as the sea. Her hair, which lay in a wiry cloud about her head and swept her brows, was a shining mass of brazen threads. Her complexion had acquired the clear tint of ivory and was stained with the rich hue of health. The very expression of her face had changed; the hard, dogged, indifferent look had fled. With hope and health and wishes gratified had come the lifting and banishment of the old mask—that crystallization of her spirit’s discontent. Yes, she was a beautiful woman. She might not have a correct profile or a soft roundness of face, but she was a beautiful woman.
She pinched her cheek; it was firm and elastic. She put her hands about her throat; it rose from its lace nest, round and polished as an ivory pillar. She slipped the night-gown from her shoulders; the line of the back of her head and neck was beautiful to see, and a crisp, waved strand of shorter hair that had fallen from its place looked like a piece of gold filigree on an Indian vase. Her shoulders did not slope, but they might have been covered with thickest satin. She raised one arm and curved it slowly, then let it hang straight at her side. She must always have had a well-shaped arm, for it tapered from shoulder to wrist; but health and care alone could give the transparent brilliancy and flawless surface.
Hermia gazed long at herself. She swayed her beautiful body until it looked like a reed in an Indian swamp, blown by a midnight breeze. It was as lithe and limber as young bamboo. She drew the pins from her hair. It fell about her like a million infinitesimal tongues of living flame, and through them her green eyes shone and her white skin gleamed.