Produced by Louise Hope, Suzanne Shell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Cardigan A King and a Few Dukes
The Maid-at-Arms The Conspirators
The Reckoning The Cambric Mask
Lorraine The Haunts of Men
Maids of Paradise Outsiders
Ashes of Empire A Young Man in a Hurry
The Red Republic In Search of the Unknown
The King in Yellow In the Quarter
The Maker of Moons The Mystery of Choice
Iole
FOR CHILDREN
Outdoor-Land River-Land
Orchard-Land Forest-Land
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IOLE
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
"The little things," he continued, delicately perforating
the atmosphere as though selecting a diatom.]
IOLE
By
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON & CO.
New York MDCCCCV
[Illustration]
Copyright, 1905, by
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
_Published May, 1905_
TO
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PREFACE
Does anybody remember the opera of _The Inca_, and that heartbreaking
episode where the Court Undertaker, in a morbid desire to increase his
professional skill, deliberately accomplishes the destruction of his
middle-aged relatives in order to inter them for the sake of practise?
If I recollect, his dismal confession runs something like this:
"It was in a bleak November
When I slew them, I remember,
As I caught them unawares
Drinking tea in rocking-chairs."
And so he talked them to death, the subject being "What Really is Art?"
Afterward he was sorry--
"The squeak of a door,
The creak of the floor,
My horrors and fears enhance;
And I wake with a scream
As I hear in my dream
The shrieks of my maiden aunts!"
Now it is a very dreadful thing to suggest that those highly respectable
pseudo-spinsters, the Sister Arts, supposedly cozily immune in their
polygamous chastity (for every suitor for favor is popularly expected to
be wedded to his particular art)--I repeat, it is very dreadful to
suggest that these impeccable old ladies are in danger of being talked
to death.
But the talkers are talking and Art Nouveau rockers are rocking, and the
trousers of the prophet are patched with stained glass, and it is a day
of dinkiness and of thumbs.
Let us find comfort in the ancient proverb: "Art talked to death shall
rise again." Let us also recollect that "Dinky is as dinky does"; that
"All is not Shaw that Bernards"; that "Better Yeates than Clever"; that
words are so inexpensive that there is no moral crime in robbing Henry
to pay James.
Firmly believing all this, abjuring all atom-pickers, slab furniture,
and woodchuck literature--save only the immortal verse:
"And there the wooden-chuck doth tread;
While from the oak trees' tops
The red, red squirrel on thy head
The frequent acorn drops."
Abjuring, as I say, dinkiness in all its forms, we may still hope that
those cleanly and respectable spinsters, the Sister Arts, will continue
throughout the ages, rocking and drinking tea unterrified by the
million-tongued clamor in the back yard and below stairs, where thumb
and forefinger continue the question demanded by intellectual
exhaustion: "L'arr! Kesker say l'arr?"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
I 1
II 12
III 21
IV 32
V 41
VI 48
VII 52
VIII 62
IX 73
X 85
XI 92
XII 100
XIII 104
XIV 111
XV 119
XVI 133
XVII 138
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
"The little things," he continued,
delicately perforating the atmosphere
as though selecting a diatom.
_Frontispiece_
From a drawing by J. C. Leyendecker.
"Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single
blossom against a background of nothing at all"
22
From a drawing by J. C. Leyendecker.
He paused; his six tall and blooming daughters,
two and two behind him
54
From a drawing by Karl Anderson.
Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting
on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted
in a nervous tremor
106
From a drawing by Karl Anderson.
_Decorative drawings by Arthur C. Becker._
[Illustration]
IOLE
I
[Illustration]
"I ain't never knowed no one like him," continued the station-agent
reflectively. "He made us all look like monkeys, but he was good to us.
Ever see a ginuine poet, sir?"
"Years ago one was pointed out to me," replied Briggs.
"Was yours smooth shaved, with large, fat, white fingers?" inquired the
station-agent.
"If I remember correctly, he was thin," said Briggs, sitting down on his
suit-case and gazing apprehensively around at the landscape. There was
nothing to see but low, forbidding mountains, and forests, and a
railroad track curving into a tunnel.
The station-agent shoved his hairy hands into the pockets of his
overalls, jingled an unseen bunch of keys, and chewed a dry grass stem,
ruminating the while in an undertone:
"This poet come here five years ago with all them kids, an' the fust
thing he done was to dress up his girls in boys' pants. Then he went an'
built a humpy sort o' house out of stones and boulders. Then he went to
work an' wrote pieces for the papers about jay-birds an' woodchucks an'
goddesses. He claimed the woods was full of goddesses. That was his way,
sir."
The agent contemplated the railroad track, running his eye along the
perspective of polished rails:
"Yes, sir; his name was--and is--Clarence Guilford, an' I fust seen it
signed to a piece in the Uticy Star. An' next I knowed, folks began to
stop off here inquirin' for Mr. Guilford. 'Is this here where Guilford,
the poet, lives?' sez they; an' they come thicker an' thicker in warm
weather. There wasn't no wagon to take 'em up to Guilford's, but they
didn't care, an' they called it a lit'r'y shrine, an' they hit the pike,
women, children, men--'speshil the women, an' I heard 'em tellin' how
Guilford dressed his kids in pants an' how Guilford was a famous new
lit'r'y poet, an' they said he was fixin' to lecture in Uticy."
The agent gnawed off the chewed portion of the grass stem, readjusted
it, and fixed his eyes on vacancy.
"Three year this went on. Mr. Guilford was makin' his pile, I guess.
He set up a shop an' hired art bookbinders from York. Then he set up
another shop an' hired some of us 'round here to go an' make them big,
slabby art-chairs. All his shops was called "At the sign of" somethin'
'r other. Bales of vellum arrived for to bind little dinky books; art
rocking-chairs was shipped out o' here by the carload. Meanwhile
Guilford he done poetry on the side an' run a magazine; an' hearin' the
boys was makin' big money up in that crank community, an' that the town
was boomin', I was plum fool enough to drop my job here an' be a
art-worker up to Rose-Cross--that's where the shops was; 'bout three
mile back of his house into the woods."
The agent removed his hands from his overalls and folded his arms
grimly.
"Well?" inquired Briggs, looking up from his perch on the suit-case.
"Well, sir," continued the agent, "the hull thing bust. I guess the
public kinder sickened o' them art-rockers an' dinky books without much
printin' into them. Guilford he stuck to it noble, but the shops closed
one by one. My wages wasn't paid for three months; the boys that
remained got together that autumn an' fixed it up to quit in a bunch.
"The poet was sad; he come out to the shops an' he says, 'Boys,' sez he,
'art is long an' life is dam brief. I ain't got the cash, but,' sez he,
'you can levy onto them art-rockers an' the dinky vellum books in stock,
an',' sez he, 'you can take the hand-presses an' the tools an' bales o'
vellum, which is very precious, an' all the wagons an' hosses, an' go
sell 'em in that proud world that refuses to receive my message. The
woodland fellowship is rent,' sez he, wavin' his plump fingers at us
with the rings sparklin' on 'em.
"Then the boys looked glum, an' they nudged me an' kinder shoved me
front. So, bein' elected, I sez, 'Friend,' sez I, 'art is on the bum. It
ain't your fault; the boys is sad an' sorrerful, but they ain't never
knocked you to nobody, Mr. Guilford. You was good to us; you done your
damdest. You made up pieces for the magazines an' papers an' you
advertised how we was all cranks together here at Rose-Cross, a-lovin'
Nature an' dicky-birds, an' wanderin' about half nood for art's sake.
"'Mr. Guilford,' sez I, 'that gilt brick went. But it has went as far as
it can travel an' is now reposin' into the soup. Git wise or eat hay,
sir. Art is on the blink.'"
The agent jingled his keys with a melancholy wink at Briggs.
"So I come back here, an' thankful to hold down this job. An' five mile
up the pike is that there noble poet an' his kids a-makin' up pieces for
to sell to the papers, an' a sorrerin' over the cold world what refuses
to buy his poems--an' a mortgage onto his house an' a threat to
foreclose."
"Indeed," said Briggs dreamily, for it was his business to attend to the
foreclosure of the mortgage on the poet's house.
"Was you fixin' to go up an' see the place?" inquired the agent.
"Shall I be obliged to walk?"
"I guess you will if you can't flutter," replied the agent. "I ain't got
no wagon an' no horse."
"How far is it?"
"Five mile, sir."
With a groan Mr. Briggs arose, lifted his suit-case, and, walking to the
platform's edge, cast an agitated glance up the dusty road.
Then he turned around and examined the single building in
sight--station, water-tower, post-office and telegraph-office all in
one, and incidentally the abode of the station-agent, whose duties
included that of postmaster and operator.
"I'll write a letter first," said Briggs. And this is what he wrote:
ROSE-CROSS P.O.,
_June 25, 1904_.
DEAR WAYNE: Do you remember that tract of land, adjoining your
preserve, which you attempted to buy four years ago? It was held by
a crank community, and they refused to sell, and made trouble for
your patrols by dumping dye-stuffs and sawdust into the Ashton Creek.
Well, the community has broken up, the shops are in ruins, and there
is nobody there now except that bankrupt poet, Guilford. I bought
the mortgage for you, foreseeing a slump in that sort of art, and
I expect to begin foreclosure proceedings and buy in the tract,
which, as you will recollect, includes some fine game cover and the
Ashton stream, where you wanted to establish a hatchery. This is a
God-forsaken spot. I'm on my way to the poet's now. Shall I begin
foreclosure proceedings and fire him? Wire me what to do.
Yours,
BRIGGS.
Wayne received this letter two days later. Preoccupied as he was in
fitting out his yacht for commission, he wired briefly, "Fire poet," and
dismissed the matter from his mind.
The next day, grappling with the problem of Japanese stewards and the
decadence of all sailormen, he received a telegram from Briggs:
"Can't you manage to come up here?"
Irritated, he telegraphed back:
"Impossible. Why don't you arrange to fire poet?" And Briggs replied:
"Can't fire poet. There are extenuating circumstances."
"Did you say exterminating or extenuating?" wired Wayne. "I said
extenuating," replied Briggs.
Then the following telegrams were exchanged in order:
(1)
What are the extenuating circumstances?
WAYNE.
(2)
Eight innocent children. Come up at once.
BRIGGS.
(3)
Boat in commission. Can't go. Why don't you fix things?
WAYNE.
(4)
How?
BRIGGS.
(5)
(Dated NEW LONDON.)
What on earth is the matter with you? Are you going to fix things
and join me at Bar Harbor or are you not?
WAYNE.
(6)
As I don't know how you want me to fix things, I can not join you.
BRIGGS.
(7)
(Dated PORTLAND, MAINE.)
Stuyvesant Briggs, what the devil is the matter with you? It's
absolutely necessary that I have the Ashton stream for a hatchery,
and you know it. What sort of a business man are you, anyhow? Of
course I don't propose to treat that poet inhumanly. Arrange to bid
in the tract, run up the price against your own bidding, and let
the poet have a few thousand if he is hard put. Don't worry me any
more; I'm busy with a fool crew, and you are spoiling my cruise by
not joining me.
WAYNE.
(8)
He won't do it.
BRIGGS.
(9)
_Who_ won't do _what_?
WAYNE.
(10)
Poet refuses to discuss the matter.
BRIGGS.
(11)
Fire that poet. You've spoiled my cruise with your telegrams.
WAYNE.
(12)
(_Marked "Collect."_)
Look here, George Wayne, don't drive me to desperation. You ought to
come up and face the situation yourself. I can't fire a poet with
eight helpless children, can I? And while I'm about it, let me
inform you that every time you telegraph me it costs me five dollars
for a carrier to bring the despatch over from the station; and every
time I telegraph you I am obliged to walk five miles to send it and
five miles back again. I'm mad all through, and my shoes are worn
out, and I'm tired. Besides, I'm too busy to telegraph.
BRIGGS.
(13)
Do you expect me to stop my cruise and travel up to that hole on
account of eight extenuating kids?
WAYNE.
(14)
I do.
BRIGGS.
(15)
Are you mad?
WAYNE.
(16)
Thoroughly. And extremely busy.
BRIGGS.
(17)
For the last time, Stuyve Briggs, are you going to bounce one
defaulting poet and progeny, arrange to have survey and warnings
posted, order timber and troughs for hatchery, engage extra
patrol--or are you not?
WAYNE.
(18)
No.
BRIGGS.
(19)
(_Received a day later by Mr. Wayne._)
Are you coming?
BRIGGS.
(20)
I'm coming to punch your head.
WAYNE.
II
[Illustration]
When George Wayne arrived at Rose-Cross station, seaburnt, angry, and in
excellent athletic condition, Briggs locked himself in the waiting-room
and attempted to calm the newcomer from the window.
"If you're going to pitch into me, George," he said, "I'm hanged if I
come out, and you can go to Guilford's alone."
"Come out of there," said Wayne dangerously.
"It isn't because I'm afraid of you," explained Briggs, "but it's merely
that I don't choose to present either you or myself to a lot of pretty
girls with the marks of conflict all over our eyes and noses."
At the words "pretty girls" Wayne's battle-set features relaxed. He
motioned to the Pullman porter to deposit his luggage on the empty
platform; the melancholy bell-notes of the locomotive sounded, the train
moved slowly forward.
"Pretty girls?" he repeated in a softer voice. "Where are they staying?
Of course, under the circumstances a personal encounter is superfluous.
Where are they staying?"
"At Guilford's. I told you so in my telegrams, didn't I?"
"No, you didn't. You spoke only of a poet and his eight helpless
children."
"Well, those girls are the eight children," retorted Briggs sullenly,
emerging from the station.
"Do you mean to tell me----"
"Yes, I do. They're his children, aren't they--even if they are girls,
and pretty." He offered a mollifying hand; Wayne took it, shook it
uncertainly, and fell into step beside his friend. "Eight pretty girls,"
he repeated under his breath. "What did you do, Stuyve?"
"What was I to do?" inquired Briggs, nervously worrying his short blond
mustache. "When I arrived here I had made up my mind to fire the poet
and arrange for the hatchery and patrol. The farther I walked through
the dust of this accursed road, lugging my suit-case as you are doing
now, the surer I was that I'd get rid of the poet without mercy.
But----"
"Well?" inquired Wayne, astonished.
"But when I'd trudged some five miles up the stifling road I suddenly
emerged into a wonderful mountain meadow. I tell you, George, it looked
fresh and sweet as Heaven after that dusty, parching tramp--a mountain
meadow deep with mint and juicy green grasses, and all cut up by little
rushing streams as cold as ice. There were a lot of girls in pink
sunbonnets picking wild strawberries in the middle distance," he added
thoughtfully. "It was picturesque, wasn't it? Come, now, George,
wouldn't that give you pause?--eight girls in pink pajamas----"
"What!!!"
"And sunbonnets--a sort of dress reform of the poet's."
"Well?" inquired Wayne coldly.
"And there was the 'house beautiful,' mercifully screened by woods,"
continued Briggs. "He calls it the house beautiful, you know."
"Why not the beautiful house?" asked Wayne, still more coldly.
"Oh, he gets everything upside down. Guilford is harmless, you'll see."
He began to whistle Fatinitza softly. There was a silence; then Wayne
said:
"You interrupted your narrative."
"Where was I?"
"In the foreground with eight pink pajamas in the middle distance."
"Oh, yes. So there I was, travel-worn, thirsty, weary, uncertain----"
"Cut it," observed Wayne.
"And a stranger," continued Briggs with dignity, "in a strange
country----"
"Peculiarity of strangers."
Briggs took no notice. "I drank from the cool springs; I lingered to
pluck a delicious berry or two, I bathed my hot face, I----"
"Where," demanded Wayne, "were the eight pink 'uns?"
"Still in the middle distance. Don't interrupt me, George; I'm slowly
drawing closer to them."
"Well, get a move on," retorted Wayne sulkily.
"I'm quite close to them now," explained Briggs; "close enough to remove
my hat and smile and inquire the way to Guilford's. One superb young
creature, with creamy skin and very red lips----"
Wayne halted and set down his suit-case.
"I'm not romancing; you'll see," said Briggs earnestly. "As I was
saying, this young goddess looked at me in the sweetest way and said
that Guilford was her father. And, Wayne, do you know what she did?
She--er--came straight up to me and took hold of my hand, and led me up
the path toward the high-art house, which is built of cobblestones!
Think! Built of cobble----"
"Took you by the hand?" repeated Wayne incredulously.
"Oh, it was all right, George! I found out all about that sort of
innocent thing later."
"Did you?"
"Certainly. These girls have been brought up like so many guileless
speckled fawns out here in the backwoods. You know all about Guilford,
the poet who's dead stuck on Nature and simplicity. Well, that's the man
and that's his pose. He hasn't any money, and he won't work. His
daughters raise vegetables, and he makes 'em wear bloomers, and he
writes about chippy-birds and the house beautiful, and tells people to
be natural, and wishes that everybody could go around without clothes
and pick daisies----"
"Do _they_?" demanded Wayne in an awful voice. "You _said_ they wore
bloomers. Did you say that to break the news more gently? Did you!"
"Of course they are clothed," explained his friend querulously; "though
sometimes they wade about without shoes and stockings and do the nymph
business. And, George, it's astonishing how modest that sort of dress
is. And it's amazing how much they know. Why, they can talk
Greek--_talk_ it, mind you. Every one of them can speak half a dozen
languages--Guilford is a corker on culture, you know--and they can play
harps and pianos and things, and give me thirty at tennis, even
Chlorippe, the twelve-year-old----"
"Is that her name?" asked Wayne.
"Chlorippe? Yes. That bat-headed poet named all his children after
butterflies. Let's see," he continued, telling off the names on his
fingers; "there's Chlorippe, twelve; Philodice, thirteen; Dione,
fourteen; Aphrodite, fifteen; Cybele, sixteen; Lissa, seventeen; Iole,
eighteen, and Vanessa, nineteen. And, Wayne, never have the Elysian
fields contained such a bunch of wholesome beauty as that mountain
meadow contains all day long."
Wayne, trudging along, suit-case firmly gripped, turned a pair of
suspicious eyes upon his friend.
"Of course," observed Briggs candidly, "I simply couldn't foreclose on
the father of such children, could I? Besides, he won't let me discuss
the subject."
"I'll investigate the matter personally," said Wayne.
"Nowhere to lay their heads! Think of it, George. And all because a
turtle-fed, claret-flushed, idle and rich young man wants their earthly
Paradise for a fish-hatchery. Think of it! A pampered, turtle-fed----"
"You've said that before," snapped Wayne. "If you were half decent you'd
help me with this suit-case. Whew! It's hot as Yonkers on this
cattle-trail you call a road. How near are we to Guilford's?"
An hour later Briggs said: "By the way, George, what are you going to do
about the matter?"
Wayne, flushed, dusty, perspiring, scowled at him.
"What matter?"
"The foreclosure."
"I don't know; how can I know until I see Guilford?"
"But you need the hatchery----"
"I know it."
"But he won't let you discuss it----"
"If," said Wayne angrily, "you had spent half the time talking business
with the poet that you spent picking strawberries with his helpless
children I should not now be lugging this suit-case up this mountain.
Decency requires few observations from _you_ just now."
"Pooh!" said Briggs. "Wait till you see Iole."
"Why Iole? Why not Vanessa?"
"Don't--that's all," retorted Briggs, reddening.
Wayne plumped his valise down in the dust, mopped his brow, folded his
arms, and regarded Briggs between the eyes.
"You have the infernal cheek, after getting me up here, to intimate that
you have taken the pick?"
"I do," replied Briggs firmly. The two young fellows faced each other.
"By the way," observed Briggs casually, "the stock they come from is as
good if not better than ours. This is a straight game."
"Do you mean to say that you--you are--seriously----"
"Something like it. There! Now you know."
"For Heaven's sake, Stuyve----"
"Yes, for Heaven's sake and in Heaven's name don't get any wrong ideas
into your vicious head."
"What?"
"I tell you," said Briggs, "that I was never closer to falling in love
than I am to-day. And I've been here just two weeks."
"Oh, Lord----"
"Amen," muttered Briggs. "Here, give me your carpet-bag, you brute.
We're on the edge of Paradise."
III
[Illustration]
"Before we discuss my financial difficulties," said the poet, lifting
his plump white hand and waving it in unctuous waves about the veranda,
"let me show you our home, Mr. Wayne. May I?"
"Certainly," said Wayne politely, following Guilford into the house.
They entered a hall; there was absolutely nothing in the hall except a
small table on which reposed a single daisy in a glass of water.
"Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single blossom against a background
of nothing at all. You follow me, Mr. Wayne?"
"Not--exactly----"
The poet smiled a large, tender smile, and, with inverted thumb,
executed a gesture as though making several spots in the air.
"The concentration of composition," he explained; "the elimination of
complexity; the isolation of the concrete in the center of the abstract;
something in the midst of nothing. It is a very precious thought, Mr.
Wayne."
"Certainly," muttered Wayne; and they moved on.
"This," said the poet, "is what I call my den."
Wayne, not knowing what to say, sidled around the walls. It was almost
bare of furniture; what there was appeared to be of the slab variety.
"I call my house the house beautiful," murmured Guilford with his large,
sweet smile. "Beauty is simplicity; beauty is unconsciousness; beauty is
the child of elimination. A single fly in an empty room is beautiful to
me, Mr. Wayne."
"They carry germs," muttered Wayne, but the poet did not hear him and
led the way to another enormous room, bare of everything save for eight
thick and very beautiful Kazak rugs on the polished floor.
[Illustration:
"Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single blossom against
a background of nothing at all."]
"My children's bedroom," he whispered solemnly.
"You don't mean to say they sleep on those Oriental rugs!" stammered
Wayne.
"They do," murmured the poet. The tender sweetness of his ample smile
was overpowering--like too much bay rum after shaving. "Sparta, Mr.
Wayne, Sparta! And the result? My babes are perfect, physically,
spiritually. Elimination wrought the miracle; yonder they sleep,
innocent as the Graces, with all the windows open, clothed in moonlight
or starlight, as the astronomical conditions may be. At the break of
dawn they are afield, simply clothed, free limbed, unhampered by the
tawdry harness of degenerate civilization. And as they wander through
the verdure," he added with rapt enthusiasm, "plucking shy blossoms,
gathering simples and herbs and vegetables for our bountiful and natural
repast, they sing as they go, and every tremulous thrill of melody falls
like balm on a father's heart." The overpowering sweetness of his smile
drugged Wayne. Presently he edged toward the door, and the poet
followed, a dreamy radiance on his features as though emanating from
sacred inward meditation.
They sat down on the veranda; Wayne fumbled for his cigar-case, but his
unnerved fingers fell away; he dared not smoke.
"About--about that business matter," he ventured feebly; but the poet
raised his plump white hand.
"You are my guest," he said graciously. "While you are my guest nothing
shall intrude to cloud our happiness."
Perplexed, almost muddled, Wayne strove in vain to find a reason for the
elimination of the matter that had interrupted his cruise and brought
him to Rose-Cross, the maddest yachtsman on the Atlantic. Why should
Guilford forbid the topic as though its discussion were painful to
Wayne?
"He always gets the wrong end foremost, as Briggs said," thought the
young man. "I wonder where the deuce Briggs can be? I'm no match for
this bunch."
His thoughts halted; he became aware that the poet was speaking in a
rich, resonant voice, and he listened in an attitude of painful
politeness.
"It's the little things that are most precious," the poet was saying,
and pinched the air with forefinger and thumb and pursed up his lips as
though to whistle some saccharine air.
"The little things," he continued, delicately perforating the atmosphere
as though selecting a diatom.
"Big things go, too," ventured Wayne.
"No," said the poet; "no--or rather they _do_ go, in a certain sense,
for every little thing is precious, and therefore little things are
big!---big with portent, big in value. Do you follow me, Mr. Wayne?"
Wayne's fascinated eyes were fixed on the poet. The latter picked out
another atom from the atmosphere and held it up for Mr. Wayne's
inspection; and while that young man's eyes protruded the poet rambled
on and on until the melody of his voice became a ceaseless sound, a
vague, sustained monotone, which seemed to bore into Wayne's brain until
his legs twitched with a furious desire for flight.
When he obtained command of himself the poet was saying, "It is my hour
for withdrawal. It were insincere and artificial to ask your
indulgence----"
He rose to his rotund height.
"You are due to sit in your cage," stammered Wayne, comprehending.
"My den," corrected the poet, saturating the air with the sweetness of
his smile.
Wayne arose. "About that business--" he began desperately; but the
poet's soft, heavy hand hovered in mid-air, and Wayne sat down so
suddenly that when his eyes recovered their focus the poet had
disappeared.
A benumbed resentment struggled within him for adequate expression;
he hitched his chair about to command a view of the meadow, then sat
motionless, hypnotized by the view. Eight girls, clad in pink blouses
and trousers, golden hair twisted up, decorated the landscape. Some were
kneeling, filling baskets of woven, scented grasses with wild
strawberries; some were wading the branches of the meadow brook,
searching for trout with grass-woven nets; some picked early peas; two
were playing a lightning set at tennis. And in the center of everything
that was going on was Briggs, perfectly at ease, making himself
agreeably at home.
The spectacle of Briggs among the Hamadryads appeared to paralyze Wayne.
Then an immense, intense resentment set every nerve in him tingling.
Briggs, his friend, his confidential business adviser, his indispensable
_alter ego_, had abandoned him to be tormented by this fat, saccharine
poet--abandoned him while he, Briggs, made himself popular with eight of
the most amazingly bewitching maidens mortal man might marvel on! The
meanness stung Wayne till he jumped to his feet and strode out into the
sunshine, menacing eyes fastened on Briggs.
"Now wouldn't that sting you!" he breathed fiercely, turning up his
trousers and stepping gingerly across the brook.
Whether or not Briggs saw him coming and kept sidling away he could not
determine; he did not wish to shout; he kept passing pretty girls and
taking off his hat, and following Briggs about, but he never seemed to
come any nearer to Briggs; Briggs always appeared in the middle
distance, flitting genially from girl to girl; and presently the
absurdity of his performance struck Wayne, and he sat down on the bank
of the brook, too mad to think. There was a pretty girl picking
strawberries near-by; he rose, took off his hat to her, and sat down
again. She was one of those graceful, clean-limbed, creamy-skinned
creatures described by Briggs; her hair was twisted up into a heavy,
glistening knot, showing the back of a white neck; her eyes matched the
sky and her lips the berries she occasionally bit into or dropped to the
bottom of her woven basket.
Once or twice she looked up fearlessly at Wayne as her search for
berries brought her nearer; and Wayne forgot the perfidy of Briggs in
an effort to look politely amiable.
Presently she straightened up where she was kneeling in the long grass
and stretched her arms. Then, still kneeling, she gazed curiously at
Wayne with all the charm of a friendly wild thing unafraid.
"Shall we play tennis?" she asked.
"Certainly," said Wayne, startled.
"Come, then," she said, picking up her basket in one hand and extending
the other to Wayne.
He took the fresh, cool fingers, and turned scarlet. Once his glance
sneaked toward Briggs, but that young man was absorbed in fishing for
brook trout with a net! Oh, ye little fishes! with a _net_!
Wayne's brain seemed to be swarming with glittering pink-winged thoughts
all singing. He walked on air, holding tightly to the hand of his
goddess, seeing nothing but a blur of green and sunshine. Then a
clean-cut idea stabbed him like a stiletto: was this Vanessa or Iole?
And, to his own astonishment, he asked her quite naturally.
"Iole," she said, laughing. "Why?"
"Thank goodness," he said irrationally.
"But why?" she persisted curiously.
"Briggs--Briggs--" he stammered, and got no further. Perplexed, his
goddess walked on, thoughtful, pure-lidded eyes searching some
reasonable interpretation for the phrase, "Briggs--Briggs." But as Wayne
gave her no aid, she presently dismissed the problem, and bade him
select a tennis bat.
"I do hope you play well," she said. Her hope was comparatively vain;
she batted Wayne around the court, drove him wildly from corner to
corner, stampeded him with volleys, lured him with lobs, and finally
left him reeling dizzily about, while she came around from behind the
net, saying, "It's all because you have no tennis shoes. Come; we'll
rest under the trees and console ourselves with chess."
Under a group of huge silver beeches a stone chess-table was set
embedded in the moss; and Iole indolently stretched herself out on one
side, chin on hands, while Wayne sorted weather-beaten basalt and marble
chess-men which lay in a pile under the tree.
She chatted on without the faintest trace of self-consciousness the
while he arranged the pieces; then she began to move. He took a long
time between each move; but no sooner did he move than, still talking,
she extended her hand and shoved her piece into place without a fraction
of a second's hesitation.
When she had mated him twice, and he was still gazing blankly at the
mess into which she had driven his forces, she sat up sideways,
gathering her slim ankles into one hand, and cast about her for
something to do, eyes wandering over the sunny meadow.
"We had horses," she mused; "we rode like demons, bareback, until
trouble came."
"Trouble?"
"Oh, not trouble--poverty. So our horses had to go. What shall we
do--you and I?" There was something so subtly sweet, so exquisitely
innocent in the coupling of the pronouns that a thrill passed completely
through Wayne, and probably came out on the other side.
"I know what I'm going to do," he said, drawing a note-book and a pencil
from his pocket and beginning to write, holding it so she could see.
"Do you want me to look over your shoulder?" she asked.
"Please."
She did; and it affected his penmanship so that the writing grew wabbly.
Still she could read:
(_Telegram_)
TO SAILING MASTER, YACHT THENDARA, BAR HARBOR:
Put boat out of commission. I may be away all summer.
WAYNE.
"How far is it to the station?" asked Wayne, turning to look into her
eyes.
"Only five miles," she said. "I'll walk with you if you like. Shall I?"
IV
[Illustration]
"Wealth," observed the poet, waving his heavy white hand, "is a figure
of speech, Mr. Wayne. Only by the process of elimination can one arrive
at the exquisite simplicity of poverty--care-free poverty. Even a single
penny is a burden--the flaw in the marble, the fly in the amber of
perfection. Cast it away and enter Eden!" And joining thumb and
forefinger, he plucked a figurative copper from the atmosphere, tossed
it away, and wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.
"But--" began Wayne uneasily.
"Try it," smiled the poet, diffusing sweetness; "try it. Dismiss all
thoughts of money from your mind."
"I do," said Wayne, somewhat relieved. "I thought you meant for me to
chuck my securities overboard and eat herbs."
"Not in your case--no, not in your case. _I_ can do that; I have done
it. No, your sacred mission is simply to forget that you are wealthy.
That is a very precious thought, Mr. Wayne--remain a Croesus and forget
it! Not to eliminate your _wealth_, but eliminate all _thought_ of it.
Very, very precious."
"Well, I never think about things like that except at a directors'
meeting," blurted out the young fellow. "Perhaps it's because I've never
had to think about it."
The poet sighed so sweetly that the atmosphere seemed to drip with the
saccharine injection.
"I wish," ventured Wayne, "that you would let me mention the subject of
business"--the poet shook his head indulgently--"just to say that I'm
not going to foreclose." He laid a packet of legal papers in the poet's
hand.
"Hush," smiled Guilford, "this is not seemly in the house beautiful....
_What_ was it you said, Mr. Wayne?"
"I? I was going to say that I just wanted--wanted to stay here--be your
guest, if you'll let me," he said honestly. "I was cruising--I didn't
understand--Briggs--Briggs--" He stuck.
"Yes, Briggs," softly suggested the poet, spraying the night air with
more sweetness.
"Briggs has spoken to you about--about your daughter Vanessa. You see,
Briggs is my closest friend; his happiness is--er--important to me.
I want to see Briggs happy; that's why I want to stay here, just to see
Briggs happy. I--I love Briggs. You understand me, don't you, Mr.
Guilford?"
The poet breathed a dulcet breath. "Perfectly," he murmured. "The
contemplation of Mr. Briggs' happiness eliminates all thoughts of self
within you. By this process of elimination you arrive at happiness
yourself. Ah, the thought is a very precious one, my young friend, for
by elimination only can we arrive at perfection. Thank you for the
thought; thank you. You have given me a very, very precious thought to
cherish."
"I--I have been here a week," muttered Wayne. "I thought--perhaps--my
welcome might be outworn----"
"In the house beautiful," murmured the poet, rising and waving his heavy
white hand at the open door, "welcome is eternal." He folded his arms
with difficulty, for he was stout, and one hand clutched the legal
papers; his head sank. In profound meditation he wandered away into the
shadowy house, leaving Wayne sitting on the veranda rail, eyes fixed on
a white shape dimly seen moving through the moonlit meadows below.
Briggs sauntered into sight presently, his arms full of flowers.
"Get me a jug of water, will you? Vanessa has been picking these and she
sent me back to fix 'em. Hurry, man! She is waiting for me in the
garden." Wayne gazed earnestly at his friend.
"So you have done it, have you, Stuyve?"
"Done what?" demanded Briggs, blushing.
"It."
"If you mean," he said with dignity, "that I've asked the sweetest girl
on earth to marry me, I have. And I'm the happiest man on the footstool,
too. Good Heaven, George," he broke out, "if you knew the meaning of
love! if you could for one second catch a glimpse of the beauty of her
soul! Why, man of sordid clay that I was--creature of club and claret
and turtle--like you----"
"Drop it!" said Wayne somberly.
"I can't help it, George. We were beasts--and _you_ are yet. But my base
clay is transmuted, spiritualized; my soul is awake, traveling, toiling
toward the upward heights where hers sits enthroned. When I think of
what I was, and what you still are----"
Wayne rose exasperated:
"Do you think your soul is doing the only upward hustling?" he said
hotly.
Briggs, clasping his flowers to his breast, gazed out over them at
Wayne.
"You don't mean----"
"Yes, I do," said Wayne. "I may be crazy, but I know something," with
which paradox he turned on his heel and walked into the moonlit meadow
toward that dim, white form moving through the dusk.
"I wondered," she said, "whether you were coming," as he stepped through
the long, fragrant grass to her side.
"You might have wondered if I had not come," he answered.
"Yes, that is true. This moonlight is too wonderful to miss," she added
without a trace of self-consciousness.
"It was for you I came."
"Couldn't you find my sisters?" she asked innocently.
He did not reply. Presently she stumbled over a hummock, recovered her
poise without comment, and slipped her hand into his with unconscious
confidence.
"Do you know what I have been studying to-day?" she asked.
"What?"
"That curious phycomycetous fungus that produces resting-spores by the
conjugation of two similar club-shaped hyphæ, and in which conidia also
occur. It's fascinating."
After a silence he said:
"What would you think of me if I told you that I do not comprehend a
single word of what you have just told me?"
"Don't you?" she asked, astonished.
"No," he replied, dropping her hand. She wondered, vaguely distressed;
and he went on presently: "As a plain matter of fact, I don't know much.
It's an astonishing discovery for me, but it's a fact that I am not your
mental, physical, or spiritual equal. In sheer, brute strength perhaps I
am, and I am none too certain of that, either. But, and I say it to my
shame, I can not follow you; I am inferior in education, in culture, in
fine instinct, in mental development. You chatter in a dozen languages
to your sisters: my French appals a Paris cabman; you play any
instrument I ever heard of: the guitar is my limit, the fandango my
repertoire. As for alert intelligence, artistic comprehension, ability
to appreciate, I can not make the running with you; I am
outclassed--hopelessly. Now, if this is all true--and I have spoken the
wretched truth--_what_ can a man like me have to say for himself?"
Her head was bent, her fair face was in shadow. She strayed on a little
way, then, finding herself alone, turned and looked back at him where he
stood. For a moment they remained motionless, looking at one another,
then, as on some sweet impulse, she came back hastily and looked into
his eyes.
"I do not feel as you do," she said; "you are very--good--company. I am
not all you say; I know very little. Listen. It--it distresses me to
have you think I hold you--lightly. Truly we are _not_ apart."
"There is but one thing that can join us."
"What is that?"
"Love."
Her pure gaze did not falter nor her eyes droop. Curiously regarding
him, she seemed immersed in the solution of the problem as he had
solved it.
"Do you love me?" she asked.
"With all my soul--such as it is, with all my heart, with every thought,
every instinct, every breath I draw."
She considered him with fearless eyes; the beauty of them was all he
could endure.
"You love me?" she repeated.
He bent his head, incapable of speech.
"You wish me to love you?"
He looked at her, utterly unable to move his lips.
"_How_ do you wish me to love you?"
He opened his arms; she stepped forward, close to him.
Then their lips met.
"Oh," she said faintly, "I did not know it--it was so sweet."
And as her head fell back on his arm about her neck she looked up at him
full of wonder at this new knowledge he had taught her, marvelous,
unsuspected, divine in its simplicity. Then the first delicate blush
that ever mounted her face spread, tinting throat and forehead; she drew
his face down to her own.
The poet paced the dim veranda, arms folded, head bent. But his glance
was sideways and full of intelligence as it included two vague figures
coming slowly back through the moon-drenched meadow.
"By elimination we arrive at perfection," he mused; "and perfection is
success. There remain six more," he added irrelevantly, "but they're
young yet. Patience, subtle patience--and attention to the little
things." He pinched a morsel of air out of the darkness, examined it and
released it.
"The little things," he repeated; "that is a very precious thought....
I believe the sea air may agree with me--now and then."
And he wandered off into his "den" and unlocked a drawer in his desk,
and took out a bundle of legal papers, and tore them slowly, carefully,
into very small pieces.
V
[Illustration]
The double wedding at the Church of Sainte Cicindella was pretty and
sufficiently fashionable to inconvenience traffic on Fifth Avenue.
Partly from loyalty, partly from curiosity, the clans of Wayne and
Briggs, with their offshoots and social adherents, attended; and they
saw Briggs and Wayne on their best behavior, attended by Sudbury Grey
and Winsted Forest; and they saw two bridal visions of loveliness,
attended by six additional sister visions as bridesmaids; and they saw
the poet, agitated with the holy emotions of a father, now almost
unmanned, now rallying, spraying the hushed air with sweetness. They saw
clergymen and a bishop, and the splendor of stained glass through which
ushers tiptoed. And they heard the subdued rustling of skirts and the
silken stir, and the great organ breathing over Eden, and a single
artistically-modulated sob from the poet. A good many other things they
heard and saw, especially those of the two clans who were bidden to the
breakfast at Wayne's big and splendid house on the southwest corner of
Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue.
For here they were piped to breakfast by the boatswain of Wayne's big
seagoing yacht, the _Thendara_--on which brides and grooms were
presently to embark for Cairo via the Azores--and speeches were said and
tears shed into goblets glimmering with vintages worth prayerful
consideration.
And in due time two broughams, drawn by dancing horses, with the azure
ribbons aflutter from the head-stalls, bore away two very beautiful and
excited brides and two determined, but entirely rattled, grooms. And
after that several relays of parents fraternized with the poet and six
daughters, and the clans of Briggs and of Wayne said a number of
agreeable things to anybody who cared to listen; and as everybody did
listen, there was a great deal of talk--more talk in a minute than the
sisters of Iole had heard in all their several limited and innocently
natural existences. So it confused them, not with its quality, but its
profusion; and the champagne made their cheeks feel as though the soft
peachy skin fitted too tight, and a number of persistent musical
instruments were being tuned in their little ears; and, not yet
thoroughly habituated to any garments except pink sunbonnets and
pajamas, their straight fronts felt too tight, and the tops of their
stockings pulled, and they balanced badly on their high heels, and
Aphrodite and Cybele, being too snugly laced, retired to rid themselves
of their first corsets.
The remaining four, Lissa, now eighteen; Dione, fifteen; Philodice,
fourteen, and Chlorippe, thirteen, found the missing Pleiads in the
great library, joyously donning their rose-silk lounging pajamas, while
two parlor maids brought ices from the wrecked feast below.
So they, too, flung from them crinkling silk and diaphanous lace,
high-heel shoon and the delicate body-harness never fashioned for
free-limbed dryads of the Rose-Cross wilds; and they kept the electric
signals going for ices and fruits and pitchers brimming with clear cold
water; and they sat there in a circle like a thicket of fluttering
pale-pink roses, until below the last guest had sped out into the
unknown wastes of Gotham, and the poet's heavy step was on the stair.
The poet was agitated--and like a humble bicolored quadruped of the
Rose-Cross wilds, which, when agitated, sprays the air--so the poet,
laboring obesely under his emotion, smiled with a sweetness so
intolerable that the air seemed to be squirted full of saccharinity to
the point of plethoric saturation.
"My lambs," he murmured, fat hands clasped and dropped before him as
straight as his rounded abdomen would permit; "my babes!"
"Do you think," suggested Aphrodite, busy with her ice, "that we are
going to enjoy this winter in Mr. Wayne's house?"
"Enjoyment," breathed the poet in an overwhelming gush of sweetness, "is
not in houses; it is in one's soul. What is wealth? Everything!
Therefore it is of no value. What is poverty? Nothing! And, as it is the
little things that are the most precious, so nothing, which is less than
the very least, is precious beyond price. Thank you for listening; thank
you for understanding. Bless you."
And he wandered away, almost asphyxiated with his emotions.
"I mean to have a gay winter--if I can ever get used to being laced in
and pulled over by those dreadful garters," observed Aphrodite,
stretching her smooth young limbs in comfort.
"I suppose there would be trouble if we wore our country clothes on
Broadway, wouldn't there?" asked Lissa wistfully.
Chlorippe, aged thirteen, kicked off her sandals and stretched her
pretty snowy feet: "They were never in the world made to fit into
high-heeled shoes," she declared pensively, widening her little rosy
toes.
"But we might as well get used to all these things," sighed Philodice,
rolling over among the cushions, a bunch of hothouse grapes suspended
above her pink mouth. She ate one, looked at Dione, and yawned.
"I'm going to practise wearing 'em an hour a day," said Aphrodite,
"because I mean to go to the theater. It's worth the effort. Besides, if
we just sit here in the house all day asking each other Greek riddles,
we will never see anybody until Iole and Vanessa come back from their
honeymoon and give teas and dinners for all sorts of interesting young
men."
"Oh, the attractive young men I have seen in these few days in New
York!" exclaimed Lissa. "Would you believe it, the first day I walked
out with George Wayne and Iole, I was perfectly bewildered and enchanted
to see so many delightful-looking men. And by and by Iole missed me, and
George came back and found me standing entranced on the corner of Fifth
Avenue; and I said, "Please don't disturb me, George, because I am only
standing here to enjoy the sight of so many agreeable-looking men." But
he acted so queerly about it." She ended with a little sigh. "However,
I love George, of course, even if he does bore me. I wonder where they
are now--the bridal pairs?"
"I wonder," mused Philodice, "whether they have any children by this
time?"
"Not yet," explained Aphrodite. "But they'll probably have some when
they return. I understand it takes a good many weeks--to----"
"To find new children," nodded Chlorippe confidently. "I suppose they've
hidden the cunning little things somewhere on the yacht, and it's like
hunt the thimble and lots and lots of fun." And she distributed six
oranges.
Lissa was not so certain of that, but, discussing the idea with Cybele,
and arriving at no conclusion, devoted herself to the large juicy orange
with more satisfaction, conscious that the winter's outlook was bright
for them all and full of the charming mystery of anticipations so
glittering yet so general that she could form not even the haziest ideas
of their wonderful promise. And so, sucking the sunlit pulp of their
oranges, they were content to live, dream, and await fulfilment under
the full favor of a Heaven which had never yet sent them aught but
happiness beneath the sun.
[Illustration]
VI
[Illustration]