Beauty and the Brain (3 page)

But Martin shook his head. “No, I don’t mean
only that she’s beautiful. A blind man could see that. But she’s
got a good heart, too. She’s a fine person.” He tapped his head.
“She’s smart, too.”

He watched Colin as he spoke, making Colin
feel vaguely like a bug pinned to a board. It was as if Martin, a
scientist, was assessing him through a microscope. It was an
uncomfortable feeling.

He also didn’t buy the part about Brenda
Fitzpatrick being smart. Unless Martin meant smart in the ways of
the world, which Colin didn’t doubt for a second.

“Not everyone knows that,” Martin went on
“Few people have the wit to see past her physical beauty to the
beautiful woman underneath.”

Now there, to Colin’s mind, was a tolerably
poetic way of phrasing a basic quality of human nature about which
Colin himself was uninterested. Martin Tafft obviously made his
living in the realms of fiction. “Really?” he said politely.

Martin sighed. “Really”

“I suppose I’ll have to take your word for
it” Colin felt a little small after he said it. While he didn’t
usually find much to interest him in the world around him, except
when he was digging into its history, he always tried to be
polite.

But Martin said, “Oh, I expect you’ll learn
for yourself one of these days.” And he turned and walked away.

Colin, feeling insignificant and
unimportant, decided to go up to his room on the second floor of
the lodge and change for dinner. He had to walk past Brenda
Fitzpatrick and her throng of worshipers to get to the stairs, and
he had the fanciful notion that they were all staring at him with
disfavor. Worse, he was pretty sure they were amused by him, as if
he were some kind of object of fun, like the class pundit or the
teacher’s pet or something.

Never, in his wildest dreams, which
occasionally visited him during especially deep sleeps, would he
have envisioned himself as the man of Brenda Fitzpatrick’s
dreams.

It came as no surprise to Brenda that Colin
Peters considered her a pretty bit of fluff and nothing more. After
all, she’d been cultivating that very image for most of her life.
Exactly half of her life, actually.

At present twenty-four years old, Brenda had
been either modeling or acting, first in various vaudeville milieus
and later on the legitimate Broadway stage, for twelve of those
years, ever since her father died. What’s more, she’d done a darned
good job of re-creating herself, if she did say so herself. Indeed,
she’d enjoyed it since the world seemed more willing to accept
fluff than substance in its female populace. Brenda had been
accepted beyond her wildest expectations.

Usually she was pleased by her success.
Today she wasn’t. Accustomed as she was to conquering men with
little more than a smile or a discreet lowering of her eyelashes,
today she wished her armaments contained more formidable weapons.
For instance, a vast knowledge of American history with which she
might have impressed Colin Peters, would have come in handy.

The fact was that, as odd as the notion
seemed even to her, she’d taken one look at Colin, with his thick
glasses slipping down his patrician nose and his air of having his
head in the clouds, and known without a doubt that she’d just
encountered the man of her dreams.

She frowned inside, never once allowing that
frown to surface. She knew better. Frowns not only caused wrinkles,
but they gave one’s face a forbidding aspect that was death to
models and actresses. “Bother.”

No one, with the exception of a very select
number of family members and friends, knew that Brenda possessed a
hungry and considerable brain. Most people considered her little
more than a gorgeous commodity. A decoration. Window dressing. A
man’s expensive accessory.

The truth of the matter was that Brenda had,
by clever and industrious design, created an image for herself that
allowed her to earn a considerable income, independent of most, of
the restrictions usually placed on women. The good Lord knew, the
world neither wanted nor needed women with brains. Ergo, she’d
created of herself a package of prettiness. An empty shell. Not,
she sometimes thought, unlike one of those Russian eggs that
jewelry fellow, Faberge, designed, the ones that were all
magnificence on the outside and contained nothing but air inside.
One of her admirers had given her a Faberge egg a couple of years
back. It now resided in a bank vault in New York City, along with
hordes of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls, and other pricey
gifts, given to her by licentious men who’d hoped to get into her
drawers by giving her trinkets. None had succeeded.

And now, darn it all to heck—Brenda had
acquired a rather colorful vocabulary during her formative years on
the stage—she’d met a man whom she instinctively knew was the only
man in the world for her, and he’d bought her image. Hook, line,
and sinker, the rat.

Although Brenda wasn’t contemptuous by
nature, she had a cynical thought as she watched Colin march up the
Cedar Lodge stairs.
He
, she thought, would be perfectly
happy with a vapid shell of a woman. He’d probably be proud to have
a porcelain doll on his arm to show off to his friends. She could
probably have him on those terms with a snap of her fingers.

But that wasn’t what Brenda wanted. She was
sick of being an ornament. She craved something more from life,
although, she acknowledged with the deep self-knowledge she’d
acquired over the years, she’d live with this fiction of herself as
long as it worked for her.

She also knew that, when her looks faded,
she’d settle for lots of money and a big house with a huge library
in which to slake her thirst for knowledge, if that was all she
could get. She was not, by temperament, a solitary creature,
however, and if she could find a good man with whom to share her
intellectual—and physical—passions in the big house, she knew she’d
be a lot happier.

That Colin was the man she wanted, and that
she was the woman for him, she discerned in her innermost soul.

Now, how the devil was she supposed to make
him know it? She muttered, “Bother,” again and decided to recruit
Martin in the task.

With her customary skill, she dislodged
herself from her group of admirers—long ago she’d begun to consider
these young hangers-on as akin to a pack of dogs sniffing at a
bitch in heat—and sought out Martin Tafft. Good old Martin. He was
one of the nicest men she knew, as well as one of the smartest. If
he wasn’t so blasted busy all the time, Brenda might have plied
some of her charms on him. She wouldn’t mind being married to a
nice man, especially if he had a lot of money. And Martin, if what
she’d heard was true, was well on his way to becoming one of
America’s new “movie millionaires.”

She found him in the back parlor of the
lounge, deep into a discussion with a man she didn’t recognize.
When she entered the room, the two men turned. Martin smiled in
greeting. The other man’s mouth fell open, and he goggled at her.
She was used to it.

Pasting on her “perky” smile, she moved
toward the men. “Hello, Martin.” She nodded to the man, who didn’t
seem able to control his jaw muscles. They still sagged, revealing
a set of fine choppers. Brenda was impressed.

Martin elbowed the man at his side, who
closed his mouth with a click of those strong teeth. “How-do,
Brenda. May I introduce you to Mr. Septimus Cadwallader, who is
engineering the transport of several Indians from the reservation
in Arizona Territory to work in our picture?”

She held out her hand and gave Mr.
Cadwallader an up-voltage version of her usual friendly smile. This
one generally left men gawking in appreciation, and Brenda always
tried to please her audience. “How do you do, Mr. Cadwallader?
Thank you for your help in our picture.”

“Hoo dow you dew?” Mr. Cadwallader
stuttered, and corrected himself. “I mean, who do you dow? I
mean—’

“She knows what you mean,” Martin
interrupted gently. He often took pity on Brenda’s victims, and she
appreciated him for it.

Because she wasn’t sure of Mr. Cadwallader’s
state but figured he was unfit to entertain a question, she asked
Martin, “When do the Indians arrive?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have a
run-through in the morning, just to get the cast and crew familiar
with the story line. I’ll introduce everyone tomorrow morning, and
then introduce the Indians as soon as, they get here.”

“How many will be coming?” The notion of a
tribe of Indians arriving by truck train tickled Brenda’s ironic
side, although she knew good and well that there wasn’t anything
amusing about what the white men had done to Indians during the
last half-century. While she didn’t have the time to indulge her
intellectual curiosity as much she’d like, she read a lot. What
she’d read about the Indian conflict had left her emotions in
turmoil. She’d absolutely love to discuss the matter with Colin.
Among other things.

“Fifteen. Young men, for the most part.
There’s the part of the Indian maiden, of course, but we’re using a
white girl for that. Heavy makeup.”

“Right.” Which, of course, meant that the
Indian maiden in
Indian Love Song
would look like a white
girl in heavy makeup. Brenda didn’t even sigh. She was used to
that, too, by this time. “Say, Martin,” she said, “when you’re
through with Mr. Cadwallader”—she gave the other man yet another
version of her brilliant smile and had the satisfaction of watching
him swallow convulsively—“may I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure. Be right with you. We’re almost
through here.”

While Martin tried, to get Mr. Cadwallader’s
attention to unstick from Brenda and refocus on the matter under
discussion, Brenda wandered over to a table in a corner,
comfortably set between two of the Cedar Crest’s homey easy
chairs.

She saw several books on the table, among
them an interesting one that looked as though it was made from
birch bark. Brenda knew Indians used to build canoes out of birch
bark, but she’d never known books to be printed on it.

She picked up the book. It contained poems
by a gentleman called Charles F. Lummis, whose name she recognized
from a collection of photographs she’d seen once at an exhibition,
and she commenced leafing through it. She was engrossed in one of
the poems, which concerned the preservation of America’s wildlife,
when the door opened. When she looked up, she beheld Colin Peters
in his evening garb.

Holy cow. While she’d noticed his dark good
looks before, what had at first intrigued her was his brain. Now,
since he didn’t see her standing in the corner, she was able to
observe his physical attributes in more detail.

They were considerable. Brenda, who knew
better than most people how much good looks counted in the
world—far too much—was impressed. While she would have cultivated
his acquaintance even if he’d looked like a toad in order to
satisfy her insatiable craving for knowledge, she knew good and
well it would be more fun to get her education via a source as
handsome as Colin Peters.

“Martin,” Colin said before the door closed,
“I’d like to talk to you about something.” He noticed Mr.
Cadwallader’s presence for the first time and his step hitched. “I
beg your pardon. I didn’t realize you were engaged.”

Brenda, watching, grinned. She’d noticed
before that very intellectual people didn’t pay much attention to
the world around them. She might have anticipated Colin’s social
ineptitude had she been anticipating much of anything.

It was also true, she knew, that men in
general paid little attention to anything beyond their particular
fields of interest. Most men, for instance, wouldn’t have cared
enough about Martin’s conversation with Mr. Cadwallader to hesitate
interrupting them. But she also knew that men like Colin, who lived
in their heads, were especially obtuse. She sighed inside,
wondering why Colin, of all the men in the world, should appeal to
her so blamed much.

“Oh, hello there, Colin,” Martin said in his
customary genial manner. “We’re almost through here. Please allow
me to introduce you to Mr. Cadwallader, who’s going to be importing
our Indians for us.” He chuckled softly.

As much as she liked Martin, Brenda wasn’t
sure she admired his choice of words in this instance. She didn’t
approve of speaking about people, even red Indians, as though they
were mere merchandise. Not that she herself wasn’t merchandise, to
be used and exploited for as long her looks lasted. She sighed, and
decided she and the American Indians—or whatever they were,
according to Colin Peters—had a lot in common.

“Oh. How do you do, Mr. Cadwallader?” Colin
frowned. “Actually, Martin, it’s regarding the Indians that I
wanted to speak to you.”

“Very well, Colin.” Martin turned to Mr.
Cadwallader. “Is there anything else we need to discuss,
Septimus?”

Mr. Cadwallader, who kept darting glances
into the corner where Brenda stood—Colin was as yet oblivious to
her presence—jerked his head toward Martin. “What? I mean, I beg
your pardon?”

Martin, who understood these things, having
worked with Brenda before, said kindly, “Is there anything else we
need to discuss before you leave?”

“Oh.” Mr. Cadwallader shook his head like a
setter emerging from a steam and gulped. “Er, no. I don’t think
so.”

“Actually, I have some questions,” Colin put
in.

Both of the other men looked at him Martin
nodded. “All right, but I don’t think any of your questions have to
do with transportation, do they?”

“Transportation?” Colin frowned more deeply,
giving his face a dark, fierce expression that Brenda hadn’t
anticipated. She found it curious. Perhaps there were untapped
depths of passion inside Colin Peters. On the other hand, he might
well be as dry and dull as he looked. Both possibilities suited
her. She craved his brain.