“You’re anæmic. You go to a doctor and get a tonic right off. When I get through with your complexion it’ll gleam all right. No powder for you. It improves most women, but you want high lights. I don’t mean shine when I say gleam, either. I mean that you’ve got the kind of skin that when the tan’s off and it’s toned up and is in perfect condition (you’ve got to be that inside, too), sheds a sort of white light. It’s the rarest kind, and I guess it does the most damage.”
“And what good is all this beautifying to do me? And why make me dangerous? Surely you are not counselling that I begin a predatory raid on other women’s husbands, or even on the ‘brownies’?”
“Well, I guess not. I don’t approve of married women lettin’ men make love to them, but I do believe in a woman makin’ the most of herself and gettin’ all the admiration that’s comin’ to her. If you can be a beauty, for the Lord Almighty’s sake be one. Believe me, it’ll make life seem as if it had a lot more to it.”
“I shouldn’t wonder!”
“And you go in right off for deep breathin’ and Swedish exercises night and mornin’. It’s the style to be thin, but you want to develop yourself more. And they keep you limber—don’t forget that. When a woman stiffens up she’s done for. Might as well get fat round her waist. Now shut your eyes, I’m goin’ to massage.”
XV
“I WONDER!” thought Ora, “I wonder!”
It was some four months after her first séance with Miss Ruby Miller. There was no question of the improvement in her looks, owing, perhaps, as much to a new self-confidence as to the becoming arrangement of her hair and the improved tint and texture of her skin. The tonic and a less reckless diet had also done their work; her eyes were even brighter, her lips pink. Moreover, it was patent that the sudden reformation was as obvious to Butte as to herself. Women confessed to a previous fear that the “altitude had got on her nerves or something”; as for the men, they may or may not have observed the more direct results of Miss Miller’s manipulations, but it was not open to doubt that her new interest in herself had revived her magnetism and possibly doubled it.
Ora turned from the mirror in her bedroom, where she had been regarding her convalescing beauty with a puzzled frown, and stared down at the rough red dirt of her half-finished street—she lived far to the west. Her eyes travelled up to the rough elevation upon which stood the School of Mines in its lonely splendour, then down to the rough and dreary Flat. It stretched far to the south, a hideous expanse, with its dusty cemetery, its uninviting but not neglected road houses, its wide section given over to humble dwellings, with here and there a house of more pretensions, but little more beauty. It was in one of these last, no doubt, that her father had kept his mistress, whose children, she was vaguely aware, attended the public schools under his name. These houses, large and small, were crowded together as if pathetically conscious that the human element must be their all, in that sandy, treeless, greenless waste.
There was something pathetic, altogether, thought Ora, in the bright eagerness with which even the wealthy class made the most of their little all. They were so proud of Columbia Gardens, a happy-go-lucky jumble of architectures and a few young trees, a fine conservatory and obese pansies on green checkers of lawn; they patronised its Casino so conscientiously on Friday nights when the weather would permit. During the winter, they skated on their shingled puddle down on The Flat as merrily and thankfully as though it were the West End of London or one of the beautiful lakes in one of the beautiful German “gartens.” They motored about the hideous environs, and hung out of the car to emphasise their rapture at the lonely tree or patch of timid verdure; they entertained royally in their little Club House, out in another desolate waste, or played golf without envy or malice. In short they resolutely made the most of Butte when they were in it; they patted Butte and themselves on the back daily; they loved it and they were loyal to it and they got out of it as often as they possibly could.