sideways:
"You--you are--ah--convinced that my two lost lambs need dread no bodily
vicissitudes----"
"Cybele and Lissa?"
"Ah--yes----"
"Lethbridge will have money to burn if he likes the aroma of the smoke.
Harrow has burnt several stacks already; but his father will continue to
fire the furnace. Is _that_ what you mean?"
"No!" said the poet softly, "no, George, that is not what I mean. Wealth
is a great thing. Only the little things are precious to me. And the
most precious of all is absolutely nothing!" But, as he wandered away
into the great luxurious habitation of his son-in-law, his smile grew
sweeter and sweeter and his half-closed eyes swam, melting into a
saccharine reverie.
"The little things," he murmured, thumbing the air absently--"the little
things are precious, but not as precious as absolutely nothing. For
nothing is perfection. Thank you," he said sweetly to a petrified
footman, "thank you for understanding. It is precious--very, very
precious to know that I am understood."
[Illustration]
XII
[Illustration]
By early springtide the poet had taken an old-fashioned house on the
south side of Washington Square; his sons-in-law standing for it--as
the poet was actually beginning to droop amid the civilized luxury of
Madison Avenue. He missed what he called his own "den." So he got it,
rent free, and furnished it sparingly with furniture of a slabby variety
until the effect produced might, profanely speaking, be described as
dinky.
His friends, too, who haunted the house, bore curious conformity to the
furnishing, being individually in various degrees either squatty, slabby
or dinky; and twice a week they gathered for "Conferences" upon what he
and they described as "L'Arr Noovo."
L'Arr Noovo, a pleasing variation of the slab style in Art, had
profoundly impressed the poet. Glass window-panes, designed with tulip
patterns, were cunningly inserted into all sorts of furniture where
window-glass didn't belong, and the effect appeared to be profitable;
for up-stairs in his "shop," workmen were very busy creating
extraordinary designs and setting tulip-patterned glass into everything
with, as the poet explained, "a loving care" and considerable glue.
His four unmarried daughters came to see him, wandering unconcernedly
between the four handsome residences of their four brothers-in-law and
the "den" of the author of their being--Chlorippe, aged thirteen;
Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen, and Aphrodite, sixteen--lovely,
fresh-skinned, free-limbed young girls with the delicate bloom of sun
and wind still creaming their cheeks--lingering effects of a life lived
ever in the open, until the poet's sons-in-law were able to support him
in town in the style to which he had been unaccustomed.
To the Conferences of the poet came the mentally, morally, and
physically dinky--and a few badgered but normal husbands, hustled
thither by wives whose intellectual development was tending toward the
precious.
People read poems, discussed Yeats, Shaw, Fiona, Mendes, and L'Arr
Noovo; sang, wandered about pinching or thumbing the atmosphere under
stimulus of a cunningly and unexpectedly set window-pane in the back of
a "mission" rocking-chair. And when the proper moment arrived the poet
would rise, exhaling sweetness from every pore of his bulky entity, to
interpret what he called a "Thought." Sometimes it was a demonstration
of the priceless value of "nothings"; sometimes it was a naive
suggestion that no house could afford to be without an "Art"-rocker with
Arr Noovo insertions. Such indispensable luxuries were on sale
up-stairs. Again, he performed a "necklace of precious sounds"--in other
words, some verses upon various topics, nature, woodchucks, and the
dinkified in Art.
And it was upon one of these occasions that Aphrodite ran away.
Aphrodite, the sweet, the reasonable, the self-possessed--Aphrodite ran
away, having without any apparent reason been stricken with an
overpowering aversion for civilization and Arr Noovo.
[Illustration]
XIII
[Illustration]
At the poet's third Franco-American Conference that afternoon the room
was still vibrating with the echoes of Aphrodite's harp accompaniment to
her own singing, and gushing approbation had scarcely ceased, when the
poet softly rose and stood with eyes half-closed as though concentrating
all the sweetness within him upon the surface of his pursed lips.
A wan young man whose face figured only as a by-product of his hair
whispered "Hush!" and several people, who seemed to be more or less out
of drawing, assumed attitudes which emphasized the faulty draftsmanship.
"La Poésie!" breathed the poet; "Kesker say la poésie?"
"La poésie--say la vee!" murmured a young woman with profuse teeth.
"Wee, wee, say la vee!" cried several people triumphantly.
"Nong!" sighed the poet, spraying the hushed air with sweetness, "nong!
Say pas le vee; say l'Immortalitay!"
After which the poet resumed his seat, and the by-product read, in
French verse, "An Appreciation" of the works of Wilhelmina Ganderbury
McNutt.
And that was the limit of the Franco portion of the Conference; the
remainder being plain American.
Aphrodite, resting on her tall gilded harp, looked sullenly straight
before her. Somebody lighted a Chinese joss-stick, perhaps to kill the
aroma of defunct cigarettes.
"Verse," said the poet, opening his heavy lids and gazing around him
with the lambent-eyed wonder of a newly-wakened ram, "verse is a
necklace of tinted sounds strung idly, yet lovingly, upon stray tinseled
threads of thought.... Thank you for understanding; thank you."
The by-product in the corner of the studio gathered arms and legs into a
series of acute angles, and writhed; a lady ornamented with cheek-bones
well sketched in, covered her eyes with one hand as though locked in
jiu-jitsu with Richard Strauss.
Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings,
suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor; a low twang echoed the
involuntary reflex with a discord.
A young man, whose neck was swathed in a stock à la d'Orsay, bent close
to her shoulder.
"I feel that our souls, blindfolded, are groping toward one another,"
he whispered.
"Don't--don't talk like that!" she breathed almost fiercely; "I am
tired--suffocated with sound, drugged with joss-sticks and sandal.
I can't stand much more, I warn you."
"Are you not well, beloved."
"Perfectly well--physically. I don't know what it is--it has come so
suddenly--this overwhelming revulsion--this exasperation with scents and
sounds.... I could rip out these harp-strings and--and kick that chair
over! I--I think I need something--sunlight and the wind blowing my hair
loose----"
[Illustration:
Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings,
suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor.]
The young man with the stock nodded. "It is the exquisite pagan athirst
in you, scorched by the fire of spring. Quench that sweet thirst at the
fount beautiful----"
"What fount did you say?" she asked dangerously.
"The precious fount of verse, dear maid."
"No!" she whispered violently. "I'm half drowned already. Words, smells,
sounds, attitudes, rocking-chairs--and candles profaning the sunshine--I
am suffocated, I need more air, more sense and less incense--less sound,
less art----"
"Less--_what_?" he gasped.
"Less art!--what you call 'l'arr'!--yes, I've said it; I'm sick! sick of
art! I know what I require now." And as he remained agape in shocked
silence: "I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Frawley, but I also require less
of you.... So much less that father will scarcely expect me to play any
more accompaniments to your 'necklaces of precious tones'--so much less
that the minimum of my interest in you vanishes to absolute negation....
So I shall not marry you."
"Aphrodite--are--are you mad?"
Her sulky red mouth was mute.
Meanwhile the poet's rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an
agreeable and rambling monotone:
"Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse;
sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires
nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense,
modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding,
thank you for a thought--very, very precious, a thought beautiful."
He smeared the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who
rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back,
made a mechanical pinch at an atmospheric atom.
"If--if you do that again--if you dare to recite those verses about me,
I shall go! I tell you I can't stand any more," breathed Aphrodite
between her clenched teeth.
The young man cast his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a
moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed,
for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul,"
and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere
once more, and began, mousily:
ALL
A tear a year
My pale desire requires,
And that is all.
Enlacements weary, passion tires,
Kisses are cinder-ghosts of fires
Smothered at birth with mortal earth;
And that is all.
A year of fear
My pallid soul desires
And that is all--
Terror of bliss and dread of happiness,
A subtle need of sorrow and distress
And you to weep one tear, no more, no less,
And that is all I ask--
And that is all.
People were breathing thickly; the poet unaffectedly distilled the
suggested tear; it was a fat tear; it ran smoothly down his nose,
twinkled, trembled, and fell.
Aphrodite's features had become tense; she half rose, hesitated. Then,
as the young man in the stock turned his invalid's eyes in her direction
and began:
Oh, sixteen tears
In sixteen years----
she transfixed her hat with one nervous gesture sprang to her feet,
turned, and vanished through the door.
"She is too young to endure it," sobbed the by-product to her of the
sketchy face. And that was no idle epigram, either.
[Illustration]
XIV
[Illustration]
She had no definite idea; all she craved for was the open--or its
metropolitan substitute--sunshine, air, the glimpse of sanely
preoccupied faces, the dull, quickening tumult of traffic. The tumult
grew, increasing in her ears as she crossed Washington Square under the
sycamores and looked up through tender feathery foliage at the white
arch of marble through which the noble avenue flows away between its
splendid arid chasms of marble, bronze, and masonry to that blessed
leafy oasis in the north--the Park.
She took an omnibus, impatient for the green rambles of the only
breathing-place she knew of, and settled back in her seat, rebellious of
eye, sullen of mouth, scarcely noticing the amused expression of the
young man opposite.
Two passengers left at Twenty-third Street, three at Thirty-fourth
Street, and seven at Forty-second Street.
Preoccupied, she glanced up at the only passenger remaining, caught the
fleeting shadow of interest on his face, regarded him with natural
indifference, and looked out of the window, forgetting him. A few
moments later, accidentally aware of him again, she carelessly noted his
superficially attractive qualities, and, approving, resumed her idle
inspection of the passing throng. But the next time her pretty head
swung round she found him looking rather fixedly at her, and
involuntarily she returned the gaze with a childlike directness--a gaze
which he sustained to the limit of good breeding, then evaded so amiably
that it left an impression rather agreeable than otherwise.
"I don't see," thought Aphrodite, "why I never meet that sort of man.
He hasn't art nouveau legs, and his features are not by-products of his
hair.... I have told my brothers-in-law that I am old enough to go out
without coming out.... And I am."
The lovely mouth grew sullen again: "I don't wish to wait two years and
be what dreadful newspapers call a 'bud'! I wish to go to dinners and
dances _now_!... Where I'll meet that sort of man.... The sort one feels
almost at liberty to talk to without anybody presenting anybody.... I've
a mind to look amiable the next time he----"
He raised his eyes at that instant; but she did not smile.
"I--I suppose that is the effect of civilization on me," she
reflected--"metropolitan civilization. I felt like saying, 'For
goodness' sake, let's say something'--even in spite of all my sisters
have told me. I can't see why it would be dangerous for me to _look_
amiable. If he glances at me again--so agreeably----"
He did; but she didn't smile.
"You see!" she said, accusing herself discontentedly; "you don't dare
look human. Why? Because you've had it so drummed into you that you can
never, never again do anything natural. Why? Oh, because they all begin
to talk about mysterious dangers when you say you wish to be natural....
I've made up my mind to look interested the next time he turns.... Why
shouldn't he see that I'm quite willing to talk to him?... And I'm so
tired of looking out of the window.... Before I came to this curious
city I was never afraid to speak to anybody who attracted me.... And I'm
not now.... So if he does look at me----"
He did.
The faintest glimmer of a smile troubled her lips. She thought: "I _do_
wish he'd speak!"
There was a very becoming color in his face, partly because he was
experienced enough not to mistake her; partly from a sudden and complete
realization of her beauty.
"It's so odd," thought Aphrodite, "that attractive people consider it
dangerous to speak to one another. I don't see any danger.... I wonder
what he has in that square box beside him? It can't be a camera.... It
_can't_ be a folding easel! It simply _can't_ be that _he_ is an artist!
a man like that----"
"_Are_ you?" she asked quite involuntarily.
"What?" he replied, astonished, wheeling around.
"An--an artist. I can't believe it, and I don't wish to! You don't look
it, you know!"
For a moment he could scarcely realize that she had spoken; his keen
gaze dissected the face before him, the unembarrassed eyes, the oval
contour, the smooth, flawless loveliness of a child.
"Yes, I am an artist," he said, considering her curiously.
"I am sorry," she said, "no, not sorry--only unpleasantly surprised. You
see I am so tired of art--and I thought you looked so--so wholesome----"
He began to laugh--a modulated laugh--rather infectious, too, for
Aphrodite bit her lip, then smiled, not exactly understanding it all.
"Why do you laugh?" she asked, still smiling. "Have I said something I
should not have said?"
But he replied with a question: "Have you found art unwholesome?"
"I--I don't know," she answered with a little sigh; "I am so tired of it
all. Don't let us talk about it--will you?"
"It isn't often I talk about it," he said, laughing again.
"Oh! That is unusual. Why don't you talk about art?"
"I'm much too busy."
"D--doing what? If that is not _very_ impertinent."
"Oh, making pictures of things," he said, intensely amused.
"Pictures? You don't talk about art, and you paint pictures!"
"Yes."
"W--what kind? Do you mind my asking? You are so--so very unusual."
"Well, to earn my living, I make full-page pictures for magazines; to
satisfy an absurd desire, I paint people--things--anything that might
satisfy my color senses." He shrugged his shoulders gaily. "You see, I'm
the sort you are so tired of----"
"But you _paint_! The artists I know don't paint--except _that_ way--"
She raised her pretty gloved thumb and made a gesture in the air; and,
before she had achieved it, they were both convulsed with laughter.
"You never do that, do you?" she asked at length.
"No, I never do. I can't afford to decorate the atmosphere for nothing!"
"Then--then you are not interested in art nouveau?"
"No; and I never could see that beautiful music resembled frozen
architecture."
They were laughing again, looking with confidence and delight upon one
another as though they had started life's journey together in that
ancient omnibus.
"_What_ is a 'necklace of precious tones'?" she asked.
"Precious stones?"
"No, _tones_!"
"Let me cite, as an example, those beautiful verses of Henry Haynes,"
he replied gravely.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
I'd rather be a Could Be,
If I can not be an Are;
For a Could Be is a May Be,
With a chance of touching par.
I had rather be a Has Been
Than a Might Have Been, by far;
For a Might Be is a Hasn't Been
But a Has was _once_ an Are!
Also an Are is Is and Am;
A Was _was_ all of these;
So I'd rather be a Has Been
Than a Hasn't, if you please.
And they fell a-laughing so shamelessly that the 'bus driver turned and
squinted through his shutter at them, and the scandalized horses stopped
of their own accord.
"Are you going to leave?" he asked as she rose.
"Yes; this is the Park," she said. "Thank you, and good-by."
He held the door for her; she nodded her thanks and descended, turning
frankly to smile again in acknowledgment of his quickly lifted hat.
"He _was_ nice," she reflected a trifle guiltily, "and I had a good
time, and I really don't see any danger in it."
[Illustration]
XV
[Illustration]
She drew a deep, sweet breath as she entered the leafy shade and looked
up into the bluest of cloudless skies. Odors of syringa and lilac
freshened her, cleansing her of the last lingering taint of joss-sticks.
The cardinal birds were very busy in the scarlet masses of Japanese
quince; orioles fluttered among golden Forsythia; here and there an
exotic starling preened and peered at the burnished purple grackle,
stalking solemnly through the tender grass.
For an hour she walked vigorously, enchanted with the sun and sky and
living green, through arbors heavy with wistaria, iris hued and scented,
through rambles under tall elms tufted with new leaves, past fountains
splashing over, past lakes where water-fowl floated or stretched
brilliant wings in the late afternoon sunlight. At times the summer wind
blew her hair, and she lifted her lips to it, caressing it with every
fiber of her; at times she walked pensively, wondering why she had been
forbidden the Park unless accompanied.
"More danger, I suppose," she thought impatiently.... "Well, what is
this danger that seems to travel like one's shadow, dogging a girl
through the world? It seems to me that if all the pleasant things of
life are so full of danger I'd better find out what it is.... I might as
well look for it so that I'll recognize it when I encounter it.... And
learn to keep away."
She scanned the flowery thickets attentively, looked behind her, then
walked on.
"If it's robbers they mean," she reflected, "I'm a good wrestler, and I
can make any one of my four brothers-in-law look foolish.... Besides,
the Park is full of fat policemen.... And if they mean I'm likely to get
lost, or run over, or arrested, or poisoned with soda-water and
bonbons--" She laughed to herself, swinging on in her free-limbed,
wholesome beauty, scarcely noticing a man ahead, occupying a bench half
hidden under the maple's foliage.
"So I'll just look about for this danger they are all afraid of, and
when I see it, I'll know what to do," she concluded, paying not the
slightest heed to the man on the bench until he rose, as she passed him,
and took off his hat.
"You!" she exclaimed.
She had stopped short, confronting him with the fearless and charming
directness natural to her. "What an amusing accident," she said frankly.
"The truth is," he began, "it is not exactly an accident."
"Isn't it?"
"N--no.... Are you offended?"
"Offended? No. Should I be? Why?... Besides, I suppose when we have
finished this conversation you are going the _other_ way."
"I--no, I wasn't."
"Oh! Then you are going to sit here?"
"Y--yes--I suppose so.... But I don't want to."
"Then why do you?"
"Well, if I'm not going the _other_ way, and if I'm not going to remain
here--" He looked at her, half laughing. She laughed, too, not exactly
knowing why.
"Don't you really mind my walking a little way with you?" he asked.
"No, I don't. Why should I? Is there any reason? Am I not old enough to
know why we should not walk together? Is it because the sun is going
down? Is there what people call 'danger'?"
He was so plainly taken aback that her fair young face became seriously
curious.
"_Is_ there any reason why you should not walk with me?" she persisted.
The clear, direct gaze challenged him. He hesitated.
"Yes, there is," he said.
"A--a reason why you should not walk with me?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
And, as he did not find words to answer, she studied him for a moment,
glanced up and down the woodland walk, then impulsively seated herself
and motioned him to a place beside her on the bench.
"Now," she said, "I'm in a position to find out just what this danger is
that they all warn me about. _You_ know, don't you?"
"Know what?" he answered.
"About the danger that I seem to run every time I manage to enjoy
myself.... And you _do_ know; I see it by the way you look at me--and
your expression is just like their expression when they tell me not to
do things I find most natural."
"But--I--you----"
"You _must_ tell me! I shall be thoroughly vexed with you if you don't."
Then he began to laugh, and she let him, leaning back to watch him with
uncertain and speculative blue eyes. After a moment he said:
"You are absolutely unlike any girl I ever heard of. I am trying to get
used to it--to adjust things. Will you help me?"
"How?" she asked innocently.
"Well, by telling me"--he looked at her a moment--"your age. You look
about nineteen."
"I am sixteen and a half. I and all my sisters have developed our bodies
so perfectly because, until we came to New York last autumn, we had
lived all our lives out-of-doors." She looked at him with a friendly
smile. "Would you really like to know about us?"
"Intensely."
"Well, there are eight of us: Chlorippe, thirteen; Philodice, fourteen;
Dione, fifteen; Aphrodite, sixteen--I am Aphrodite; Cybele, seventeen,
married; Lissa, eighteen, married; Iole, nineteen, married, and Vanessa,
twenty, married." She raised one small, gloved finger to emphasize the
narrative. "All our lives we were brought up to be perfectly natural, to
live, act, eat, sleep, play like primitive people. Our father dressed us
like youths--boys, you know. Why," she said earnestly, "until we came to
New York we had no idea that girls wore such lovely, fluffy
underwear--but I believe I am not to mention such things; at least they
have told me not to--but my straight front is still a novelty to me, and
so are my stockings, so you won't mind if I've said something I
shouldn't, will you?"
"No," he said; his face was expressionless.
"Then _that's_ all right. So you see how it is; we don't quite know what
we may do in this city. At first we were delighted to see so many
attractive men, and we wanted to speak to some of them who seemed to
want to speak to us, but my father put a stop to that--but it's absurd
to think all those men might be robbers, isn't it?"
"Very." There was not an atom of intelligence left in his face.
"So _that's_ all right, then. Let me see, what was I saying? Oh, yes,
I know! So four of my sisters were married, and we four remaining are
being civilized.... But, oh--I wish I could be in the country for a
little while! I'm so homesick for the meadows and brooks and my pajamas
and my bare feet in sandals again.... And people seem to know so little
in New York, and nobody understands us when we make little jests in
Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, and nobody seems to have been very well
educated and accomplished, so we feel strange at times."
"D--d--do you _do_ all those things?"
"What things?"
"M--make jests in Arabic?"
"Why, yes. Don't you?"
"No. What else do you do?"
"Why, not many things."
"Music?"
"Oh, of course."
"Piano?"
"Yes, piano, violin, harp, guitar, zither--all that sort of thing....
Don't you?"
"No. What else?"
"Why--just various things, ride, swim, fence, box--I box pretty
well--all those things----"
"Science, too?"