undergraduates at Harvard and now twin nobodies in the employment of the
great Occidental Fidelity and Trust Company--neither of these young men,
I say, had any particular business at the New Arts Theater that
afternoon.
For the play was Barnard Haw's _Attitudes_, the performance was private
and intensely intellectual, the admission by invitation only, and
between the acts there was supposed to be a general _causerie_ among the
gifted individuals of the audience.
Why Stanley West, president of the Occidental Trust, should have
presented to his two young kinsmen the tickets inscribed with his own
name was a problem, unless everybody else, including the elevator boys,
had politely declined the offer.
"That's probably the case," observed Lethbridge. "Do we go?"
"Art," said Harrow, "will be on the loose among that audience. And if
anybody can speak to anybody there, we'll get spoken to just as if we
were sitting for company, and first we know somebody will ask us what
Art really is."
"I'd like to see a place full of atmosphere," suggested Lethbridge.
"I've seen almost everything--the Café Jaune, and Chinatown, and--you
remember that joint at Tangier? But I've never seen atmosphere. I don't
care how thin it is; I just want to say that I've seen it when the next
girl throws it all over me." And as Harrow remained timid, he added: "We
won't have to climb across the footlights and steal a curl from the
author, because he's already being sheared in England. There's nothing
to scare you."
Normally, however, they were intensely afraid of Art except at their
barbers', and they had heard, in various ways as vague as Broad Street
rumors, something concerning these gatherings of the elect at the New
Arts Theater on Saturday afternoons, where unselfish reformers produced
plays for Art's sake as a rebuke to managers who declined to produce
that sort of play for anybody's sake.
"I'll bet," said Harrow, "that some thrifty genius sent Stanley West
those tickets in a desperate endeavor to amalgamate the aristocracies of
wealth and intellect!--as though you could shake 'em up as you shake a
cocktail! As though you'd catch your Uncle Stanley wearing his richest
Burgundy flush, sitting in the orchestra and talking _Arr Noovo_ to a
young thing with cheek-bones who'd pinch him into a cocked hat for a
contribution between the acts!"
"Still," said Lethbridge, "even Art requires a wad to pay its license.
Isn't West the foxy Freddie! Do you suppose, if we go, they'll sting us
for ten?"
"They'll probably take up a collection for the professor," said Harrow
gloomily. "Better come to the club and give the tickets to the janitor."
"Oh, that's putting it all over Art! If anybody with earnest eyes tries
to speak to us we can call a policeman."
"Well," said Harrow, "on your promise to keep your mouth shut I'll go
with you. If you open it they'll discover you're an appraiser and I'm a
broker, and then they'll think we're wealthy, because there'd be no
other reason for our being there, and they'll touch us both for a brace
of come-ons, and----"
"Perhaps," interrupted the other, "we'll be fortunate enough to sit next
to a peach! And as it's the proper thing there to talk to your neighbor,
the prospect--er--needn't jar you."
There was a silence as they walked up-town, which lasted until they
entered their lodgings. And by that time they had concluded to go.
[Illustration]
VII
[Illustration]
So they went, having nothing better on hand, and at two o'clock they
sidled into the squatty little theater, shyly sought their reserved
seats and sat very still, abashed in the presence of the massed
intellects of Manhattan.
When Clarence Guilford, the Poet of Simplicity, followed by six healthy,
vigorous young daughters, entered the middle aisle of the New Arts
Theater, a number of people whispered in reverent recognition:
"Guilford, the poet! Those are his daughters. They wear nothing but pink
pajamas at home. Sh-sh-h-h!"
Perhaps the poet heard, for he heard a great deal when absent-minded.
He paused; his six tall and blooming daughters, two and two behind him,
very naturally paused also, because the poet was bulky and the aisle
narrow.
Those of the elect who had recognized him had now an opportunity to view
him at close range; young women with expressive eyes leaned forward,
quivering; several earnest young men put up lorgnettes.
It was as it should have been; and the poet stood motionless in dreamy
abstraction, until an usher took his coupons and turned down seven
seats. Then the six daughters filed in, and the poet, slowly turning to
survey the house, started slightly, as though surprised to find himself
under public scrutiny, passed a large, plump hand over his forehead, and
slowly subsided into the aisle-seat with a smile of whimsical
acquiescence in the knowledge of his own greatness.
"Who," inquired young Harrow, turning toward Lethbridge--"who is that
duck?"
"You can search me," replied Lethbridge in a low voice, "but for
Heaven's sake _look_ at those girls! Is it right to bunch such beauty
and turn down Senators from Utah?"
Harrow's dazzled eyes wandered over the six golden heads and snowy
necks, lovely as six wholesome young goddesses fresh from a bath in the
Hellespont.
"The--the one next to the one beside you," whispered Lethbridge, edging
around. "I want to run away with her. Would you mind getting me a
hansom?"
"The one next to me has them all pinched to death," breathed Harrow
unsteadily. "Look!--when she isn't looking. Did you ever see such eyes
and mouth--such a superb free poise----"
"Sh-sh-h-h!" muttered Lethbridge, "the bell-mule is talking to them."
"Art," said the poet, leaning over to look along the line of fragrant,
fresh young beauty, "Art is an art." With which epigram he slowly closed
his eyes.
His daughters looked at him; a young woman expensively but not smartly
gowned bent forward from the row behind. Her attitude was almost
prayerful; her eyes burned.
[Illustration:
He paused; his six tall and blooming daughters two and two
behind him.]
"Art," continued the poet, opening his heavy lids with a large, sweet
smile, "Art is above Art, but Art is never below Art. Art, to be Art,
must be artless. That is a very precious thought--very, very precious.
Thank you for understanding me--thank you." And he included in his large
smile young Harrow, who had been unconsciously bending forward,
hypnotized by the monotonous resonance of the poet's deep, rich voice.
Now that the spell was broken, he sank back in his chair, looking at
Lethbridge a little wildly.
"Let me sit next--after the first act," began Lethbridge, coaxing;
"they'll be watching the stage all the first act and you can look at 'em
without being rude, and they'll do the same next act, and I can look at
'em, and perhaps they'll ask us what Art really is----"
"Did you hear what that man said?" interrupted Harrow, recovering his
voice. "_Did_ you?"
"No; what?"
"Well, listen next time. And all I have to say is, if that firing-line,
with its battery of innocent blue eyes, understands him, you and I had
better apply to the nearest night-school for the rudiments of an
education."
"Well, what did he say?" began the other uneasily, when again the poet
bent forward to address the firing-line; and the lovely blue battery
turned silently upon the author of their being.
"Art is the result of a complex mental attitude capable of producing
concrete simplicity."
"Help!" whispered Harrow, but the poet had caught his eye, and was
fixing the young man with a smile that held him as sirup holds a fly.
"You ask me what is Art, young sir? Why should I not heed you? Why
should I not answer you? What artificial barriers, falsely called
convention, shall force me to ignore the mute eloquence of your
questioning eyes? You ask me what is Art. I will tell you; it is
_this_!" And the poet, inverting his thumb, pressed it into the air.
Then, carefully inspecting the dent he had made in the atmosphere, he
erased it with a gesture and folded his arms, looking gravely at Harrow,
whose fascinated eyes protruded.
Behind him Lethbridge whispered hoarsely, "I told you how it would be in
the New Arts Theater. I told you a young man alone was likely to get
spoken to. Now those six girls know you're a broker!"
"Don't say it so loud," muttered Harrow savagely. "I'm all right so far,
for I haven't said a word."
"You'd better not," returned the other. "I wish that curtain would go up
and stay up. It will be my turn to sit next them after this act, you
know."
Harrow ventured to glance at the superb young creature sitting beside
him, and at the same instant she looked up and, catching his eye, smiled
in the most innocently friendly fashion--the direct, clear-eyed advance
of a child utterly unconscious of self.
"I have never before been in a theater," she said; "have you?"
"I--I beg your pardon," stammered Harrow when he found his voice, "but
_were_ you good enough to speak to _me_?"
"Why, yes!" she said, surprised but amiable; "shouldn't I have spoken to
you?"
"Indeed--oh, indeed you should!" said Harrow hastily, with a quick
glance at the poet. The poet, however, appeared to be immersed in
thought, lids partially closed, a benignant smile imprinted on his heavy
features.
"_What_ are you doing?" breathed Lethbridge in his ear. Harrow calmly
turned his back on his closest friend and gazed rapturously at his
goddess. And again her bewildering smile broke out and he fairly blinked
in its glory.
"This is my first play," she said; "I'm a little excited. I hope I shall
care for it."
"Haven't you ever seen a play?" asked Harrow, tenderly amazed.
"Never. You see, we always lived in the country, and we have always been
poor until my sister Iole married. And now our father has come to live
with his new son-in-law. So that is how we came to be here in New York."
"I am _so_ glad you _did_ come," said Harrow fervently.
"So are we. We have never before seen anything like a large city. We
have never had enough money to see one. But now that Iole is married,
everything is possible. It is all so interesting for us--particularly
the clothing. Do you like my gown?"
"It is a dream!" stammered the infatuated youth.
"Do you think so? I think it is wonderful--but not very comfortable."
"Doesn't it fit?" he inquired.
"Perfectly; that's the trouble. It is not comfortable. We never before
were permitted to wear skirts and all sorts of pretty fluffy frills
under them, and _such_ high heels, and _such_ long stockings, and _such_
tight lacing--" She hesitated, then calmly: "But I believe father told
us that we are not to mention our pretty underwear, though it's hard not
to, as it's the first we ever had."
Harrow was past all speech.
"I wish I had my lounging-suit on," she said with a sigh and a hitch of
her perfectly modeled shoulders.
"W--what sort of things do you usually dress in?" he ventured.
"Why, in dress-reform clothes!" she said, laughing. "We never have worn
anything else."
"Bloomers!"
"I don't know; we had trousers and blouses and sandals--something like
the pink pajamas we have for night-wear now. Formerly we wore nothing at
night. I am beginning to wonder, from the way people look at us when we
speak of this, whether we were odd. But all our lives we have never
thought about clothing. However, I am glad you like my new gown, and I
fancy I'll get used to this tight lacing in time.... What is your name?"
"James Harrow," he managed to say, aware of an innocence and directness
of thought and speech which were awaking in him faintest responsive
echoes. They were the blessed echoes from the dim, fair land of
childhood, but he did not know it.
"James Harrow," she repeated with a friendly nod. "My name is Lissa--my
first name; the other is Guilford. My father is the famous poet,
Clarence Guilford. He named us all after butterflies--all my
sisters"--counting them on her white fingers while her eyes rested on
him--"Chlorippe, twelve years old, that pretty one next to my father;
then Philodice, thirteen; Dione, fourteen; Aphrodite, fifteen; Cybele,
the one next to me, sixteen, and almost seventeen; and myself,
seventeen, almost eighteen. Besides, there is Iole, who married Mr.
Wayne, and Vanessa, married to Mr. Briggs. They have been off on Mr.
Wayne's yacht, the _Thendara_, on their wedding trip. Now you know all
about us. Do you think you would like to know us?"
"_Like_ to! I'd simply love to! I----"
"That is very nice," she said unembarrassed.
"I thought I should like you when I saw you leaning over and listening
so reverently to father's epigrams. Then, besides, I had nobody but my
sisters to talk to. Oh, you can't imagine how many attractive men I see
every day in New York--and I should like to know them all--and many _do_
look at me as though they would like it, too; but Mr. Wayne is so queer,
and so are father and Mr. Briggs--about my speaking to people in public
places. They have told me not to, but I--I--thought I would," she ended,
smiling. "What harm can it do for me to talk to you?"
"It's perfectly heavenly of you----"
"Oh, do you think so? I wonder what father thinks"--turning to look;
then, resuming: "He generally makes us stop, but I am quite sure he
expected me to talk to you."
The lone note of a piano broke the thread of the sweetest, maddest
discourse Harrow had ever listened to; the girl's cheeks flushed and she
turned expectantly toward the curtained stage. Again the lone note,
thumped vigorously, sounded a staccato monotone.
"Precious--very precious," breathed the poet, closing his eyes in a sort
of fatty ecstasy.
VIII
[Illustration]
Harrow looked at his program, then, leaning toward Lissa, whispered:
"That is the overture to _Attitudes_--the program explains it: 'A series
of pale gray notes'--what the deuce!--'pale _gray_ notes giving the
value of the highest light in which the play is pitched'--" He paused,
aghast.
"I understand," whispered the girl, resting her lovely arm on the chair
beside him. "Look! The curtain is rising! _How_ my heart beats! Does
yours?"
He nodded, unable to articulate.
The curtain rose very, very slowly, upon the first scene of Barnard
Haw's masterpiece of satire; and the lovely firing-line quivered, blue
batteries opening very wide, lips half parted in breathless
anticipation. And about that time Harrow almost expired as a soft,
impulsive hand closed nervously over his.
And there, upon the stage, the human species was delicately vivisected
in one act; human frailty exposed, human motives detected, human desire
quenched in all the brilliancy of perverted epigram and the scalpel
analysis of the astigmatic. Life, love, and folly were portrayed with
the remorseless accuracy of an eye doubly sensitive through the stimulus
of an intellectual strabismus. Barnard Haw at his greatest! And how he
dissected attitudes; the attitude assumed by the lover, the father, the
wife, the daughter, the mother, the mistress--proving that virtue, _per
se_, is a pose. Attitudes! How he flayed those who assumed them. His
attitude toward attitudes was remorseless, uncompromising, inexorable.
And the curtain fell on the first act, its gray and silver folds swaying
in the half-crazed whirlwind of applause.
Lissa's silky hand trembled in Harrow's, her grasp relaxed. He dropped
his hand and, searching, encountered hers again.
"_What_ do you think of it?" she asked.
"I don't think there's any harm in it," he stammered guiltily, supposing
she meant the contact of their interlaced fingers.
"Harm? I didn't mean harm," she said. "The play is perfectly harmless,
I think."
"Oh--the play! Oh, that's just _that_ sort of play, you know. They're
all alike; a lot of people go about telling each other how black white
is and that white is always black--until somebody suddenly discovers
that black and white are a sort of greenish red. Then the audience
applauds frantically in spite of the fact that everybody in it had
concluded that black and white were really a shade of yellowish yellow!"
She had begun to laugh; and as he proceeded, excited by her approval,
the most adorable gaiety possessed her.
"I _never_ heard anything half so clever!" she said, leaning toward him.
"I? Clever!" he faltered. "You--you don't really mean that!"
"Why? Don't you know you are? Don't you know in your heart that you have
said the very thing that I in my heart found no words to explain?"
"Did I, really?"
"Yes. Isn't it delightful!"
It was; Harrow, holding tightly to the soft little hand half hidden by
the folds of her gown, cast a sneaking look behind him, and encountered
the fixed and furious glare of his closest friend, who had pinched him.
"Pig!" hissed Lethbridge, "do I sit next or not?"
"I--I can't; I'll explain----"
"_Do_ I?"
"You don't understand----"
"I understand _you_!"
"No, you don't. Lissa and I----"
"Lissa!"
"Ya--as! We're talking very cleverly; _I_ am, too. Wha'd'you wan' to
butt in for?" with sudden venom.
"Butt in! Do you think I want to sit here and look at tha' damfool play!
Fix it or I'll run about biting!"
Harrow turned. "Lissa," he whispered in an exquisitely modulated voice,
"what would happen if I spoke to your sister Cybele?"
"Why, she'd answer you, silly!" said the girl, laughing. "Wouldn't you,
Cybele?"
"I'll tell you what I'd like to do," said Cybele, leaning forward: "I'd
like very much to talk to that attractive man who is trying to look at
me--only your head has been in the way." And she smiled innocently at
Lethbridge.
So Lissa moved down one. Harrow took her seat, and Cybele dropped gaily
into Harrow's vacant place.
"_Now_," she said to Lethbridge, "we can tell each other all sorts of
things. I was so glad that you looked at me all the while and so vexed
that I couldn't talk to you. _How_ do you like my new gown? And what is
your name? Have you ever before seen a play? I haven't, and my name is
Cybele."
"It is per--perfectly heavenly to hear you talk," stammered Lethbridge.
Harrow heard him, turned and looked him full in the eyes, then slowly
resumed his attitude of attention: for the poet was speaking:
"The Art of Barnard Haw is the quintessence of simplicity. What is the
quintessence of simplicity?" He lifted one heavy pudgy hand, joined the
tips of his soft thumb and forefinger, and selecting an atom of air,
deftly captured it. "_That_ is the quintessence of simplicity; _that_ is
Art!"
He smiled largely on Harrow, whose eyes had become wild again.
"_That!_" he repeated, pinching out another molecule of atmosphere, "and
_that_!" punching dent after dent in the viewless void with inverted
thumb.
On the hapless youth the overpowering sweetness of his smile acted like
an anesthetic; he saw things waver, even wabble; and his hidden clutch
on Lissa's fingers tightened spasmodically.
"Thank you," said the poet, leaning forward to fix the young man with
his heavy-lidded eyes. "Thank you for the precious thoughts you inspire
in me. Bless you. Our mental and esthetic commune has been very precious
to me--very, very precious," he mooned bulkily, his rich voice dying to
a resonant, soothing drone.
Lissa turned to the petrified young man. "Please be clever some more,"
she whispered. "You were so perfectly delightful about this play."
"Child!" he groaned, "I have scarcely sufficient intellect to keep me
overnight. You must know that I haven't understood one single thing your
father has been kind enough to say."
"What didn't you understand?" she asked, surprised.
"'_That!_'" He flourished his thumb. "What does '_That!_' mean?"
"Oh, that is only a trick father has caught from painters who tell you
how they're going to use their brushes. But the truth is I've usually
noticed that they do most of their work in the air with their thumbs....
What else did you not understand?"
"Oh--Art!" he said wearily. "What is it? Or, as Barnard Haw, the higher
exponent of the Webberfield philosophy, might say: 'What it iss? Yess?'"
"I don't know what the Webberfield philosophy is," said Lissa
innocently, "but Art is only things one believes. And it's awfully hard,
too, because nobody sees the same thing in the same way, or believes the
same things that others believe. So there are all kinds of Art. I think
the only way to be sure is when the artist makes himself and his
audience happier; then that is Art.... But one need not use one's thumb,
you know."
"The--the way you make me happy? Is _that_ Art?"
"Do I?" she laughed. "Perhaps; for I am happy, too--far, far happier
than when I read the works of Henry Haynes. And Henry Haynes _is_ Art.
Oh, dear!"
But Harrow knew nothing of the intellectual obstetrics which produced
that great master's monotypes.
"Have you read Double or Quits?" he ventured shyly. "It's a humming Wall
Street story showing up the entire bunch and exposing the trading-stamp
swindle of the great department stores. The heroine is a detective
and--" She was looking at him so intently that he feared he had said
something he shouldn't. "But I don't suppose that would interest you,"
he muttered, ashamed.
"It does! It is _new_! I--I never read that sort of a novel. Tell me!"
"Are you serious?"
"Of course. It is perfectly wonderful to think of a heroine being a
detective."
"Oh, she's a dream!" he said with cautious enthusiasm. "She falls in
love with the worst stock-washer in Wall Street, and pushes him off a
ferry-boat when she finds he has cornered the trading-stamp market and
is bankrupting her father, who is president of the department store
trust----"
"Go on!" she whispered breathlessly.
"I will, but----"
"What is it? Oh--is it my hand you are looking for? Here it is; I only
wanted to smooth my hair a moment. Now tell me; for I never, never knew
that such books were written. The books my father permits us to read are
not concerned with all those vital episodes of every-day life. Nobody
ever _does_ anything in the few novels I am allowed to read--except,
once, in _Cranford_, somebody gets up out of a chair in one chapter--but
sits down again in the next," she added wearily.
"_I'll_ send you something to make anybody sit up and stay up," he said
indignantly. "Baffles, the Gent Burglar; Love Militant, by Nora Norris
Newman; The Crown-Snatcher, by Reginald Rodman Roony--oh, it's simply
ghastly to think of what you've missed! This is the Victorian era; you
have a right to be fully cognizant of the great literary movements of
the twentieth century!"
"I love to hear you say such things," she said, her beautiful face
afire. "I desire to be modern--intensely, humanly modern. All my life I
have been nourished on the classics of ages dead; the literature of the
Orient, of Asia, of Europe I am familiar with; the literature of
England--as far as Andrew Bang's boyhood verses. I--all my
sisters--read, write, speak, even think, in ten languages. I long for
something to read which is vital, familiar, friendly--something of my
own time, my own day. I wish to know what young people do and dare; what
they really think, what they believe, strive for, desire!"
"Well--well, I don't think people really do and say and think the things
that you read in interesting modern novels," he said doubtfully. "Fact
is, only the tiresome novels seem to tell a portion of the truth; but
they end by overdoing it and leave you yawning with a nasty taste in
your mouth. I--I think you'd better let your father pick out your
novels."
"I don't want to," she said rebelliously. "I want _you_ to."
He looked at the beautiful, rebellious face and took a closer hold on
the hidden hand.
"I wish you--I wish I could choose--everything for you," he said
unsteadily.
"I wish so, too. You are exactly the sort of man I like."
"Do--do you mean it?"
"Why, yes," she replied, opening her splendid eyes. "Don't I show the
pleasure I take in being with you?"
"But--would you tire of me if--if we always--forever----"
"Were friends? No."
"Mo-m-m-more than friends?" Then he choked.
The speculation in her wide eyes deepened. "What do you mean?" she asked
curiously.
But again the lone note of the thumped piano signaled silence. In the
sudden hush the poet opened his lids with a sticky smile and folded his
hands over his abdomen, plump thumbs joined.
"_What_ do you mean?" repeated Lissa hurriedly, tightening her slender
fingers around Harrow's.
"I mean--I mean----"