"It's a rotten rhyme," attested the Political Economist, and strode over
to the mantelpiece, where he began to hunt for a long piece of twine.
"Miss Gaudette," he continued, "is downstairs in the parlor now
entertaining a caller--some resurrected beau, I believe. Anyway, she
left her overshoes outside my door to get when she comes up again, and
I'm going to tie one end of this string to them and the other end to my
wrist, so that when she picks up her shoes a few hours later it will
wake me from my nap, and I can make one grand rush for the hall and--"
"Propose then and there?" quizzed the Poet.
"No, not exactly. But I'm going to ask her if she'll let me fall in love
with her."
The Poet sniffed palpably and left the room.
But the Political Economist lay back in his chair and went to sleep with
a great, pleasant expectancy in his heart.
When he woke at last with a sharp, tugging pain at his wrist the room
was utterly dark, and the little French clock had stopped aghast and
clasped its hands at eleven.
For a second he rubbed his eyes in perplexity. Then he jumped to his
feet, fumbled across the room and opened the door to find Noreen staring
with astonishment at the tied overshoes.
"Oh, I wanted to speak to you," he began. Then his eyes focused in
amazement on a perfectly huge bunch of violets which Noreen was clasping
desperately in her arms.
"Good Heavens!" he cried. "Is anybody dead?"
But Noreen held the violets up like a bulwark and commenced to laugh
across them.
"He did propose," she said, "and I accepted him! Does it look as though
I had chosen to be engaged with violets instead of a ring?" she
suggested blithely. "It's only that I asked him if he would be apt to
send me violets, and when he said: 'Yes, every week,' I just asked if I
please couldn't have them all at once. There must be a Billion dollars'
worth here. I'm going to have a tea-party to-morrow and invite the
Much-Loved Girl." The conscious, childish malice of her words twisted
her lips into an elfish smile. "It's Mr. Ernest Dextwood," she rattled
on: "Ernest Dextwood, the Coffee Merchant. He's a widower now--with
three children. Do--you--think--that--I--will--make--a--good--stepmother?"
The violets began to quiver against her breast, but her chin went higher
in rank defiance of the perplexing _something_ which she saw in the
Political Economist's narrowing eyes. She began to quote with playful
recklessness Byron's pert parody:
"There is a tide in the affairs of women
Which taken at its flood leads--God Knows Where."
But when the Political Economist did not answer her, but only stared
with brooding, troubled eyes, she caught her breath with a sudden
terrifying illumination. "Ouch!" she said. "O-u-c-h!" and wilted
instantly like a frost-bitten rose under heat. All the bravado, all the
stamina, all the glint of her, vanished utterly.
"Mr. Political Economist," she stammered, "Life--is--too--hard--for--me.
I am not Rhoda Hanlan with her sturdy German peasant stock. I am not
Ruth MacLaurin with her Scotch-plaited New Englandism. Nationality
doesn't count with me. My Father was a Violinist. My Mother was an
Actress. In order to marry, my Father swapped his music for discordant
factory noises, and my Mother shirked a dozen successful roles to give
one life-long, very poor imitation of Happiness. My Father died of too
much to drink. My Mother died of too little to eat. And I was bred, I
guess, of very bitter love, of conscious sacrifice--of thwarted
genius--of defeated vanity. Life--is--too--hard--for--me--_alone_. I can
not finance it. I can not safeguard it. I can not weather it. _I am not
seaworthy!_ You might be willing to risk your _own_ self-consciousness,
but when the dead begin to come back and clamor in you--when you laugh
unexpectedly with your Father's restive voice--when you quicken
unexplainably to the Lure of gilt and tinsel--" A whimper of pain went
scudding across her face, and she put back her head and grinned--"You
can keep my overshoes for a souvenir," she finished abruptly. "I'm not
allowed any more to go out when it storms!" Then she turned like a flash
and ran swiftly up the stairs.
When he heard the door slam hard behind her, the Political Economist
fumbled his way back through the darkened room to his Morris chair, and
threw himself down again. Ernest Dextwood? He knew him well, a
prosperous, kindly, yet domestically tyrannical man, bright in the
office, stupid at home. Ernest Dextwood! So much less of a girl would
have done for him.
A widower with three children? The eager, unspent emotionalism of
Noreen's face flaunted itself across his smoky vision. All that hunger
for Life, for Love, for Beauty, for Sympathy, to be blunted once for all
in a stale, misfitting, ready-made home? A widower with three children!
God in Heaven, was she as tired as that!
It was a whole long week before he saw Noreen again. When he met her at
last she had just come in from automobiling, all rosy-faced and out of
breath, with her thin little face peering almost plumply from its heavy
swathings of light-blue veiling, and her slender figure deeply wrapped
in a wondrous covert coat.
Rhoda Hanlan and Ruth MacLaurin were close behind her, much more
prosaically garnished in golf capes and brown-colored mufflers. The
Political Economist stood by on the stairs to let them pass, and Noreen
looked back at him and called out gaily:
"It's lots of fun to be engaged. We're all enjoying it very much. It's
bully!"
The next time he saw her she was on her way downstairs to the parlor, in
a long-tailed, soft, black evening gown that bothered her a bit about
managing. Her dark hair was piled up high on her head, and she had the
same mischievous, amateur-theatrical charm that the blue chiffon veil
and covert coat had given her.
Quite frankly she demanded the Political Economist's appreciation of her
appearance.
"Just see how nice I can look when I really try?" she challenged him,
"but it took me all day to do it, and my work went to smash--and my
dress cost seventy dollars," she finished wryly.
But the Political Economist was surly about his compliment.
"No, I like you better in your little business suit," he attested
gruffly. And he lied, and he knew that he lied, for never before had he
seen the shrewd piquancy of her eyes so utterly swamped by just the
wild, sweet lure of girlhood.
Some time in May, however, when the shop windows were gay with women's
luxuries, he caught a hurried glimpse of her face gazing rather
tragically at a splurge of lilac-trimmed hats.
Later in the month he passed her in the Park, cuddled up on a bench,
with her shabby business suit scrunched tight around her, her elbows on
her knees, her chin burrowed in her hands, and her fiercely narrowed
eyes quaffing like some outlawed thing at the lusty new green grass, the
splashing fountain, the pinky flush of flowering quince. But when he
stopped to speak to her she jumped up quickly and pleaded the haste of
an errand.
It was two weeks later in scorching June that the biggest warehouses on
the river caught fire in the early part of the evening. The day had been
as harsh as a shining, splintery plank. The night was like a gray silk
pillow. In blissful, soothing consciousness of perfect comfort every one
in the boarding-house climbed up on the roof to watch the gorgeous,
fearful conflagration across the city. The Landlady's voice piped high
and shrill discussing the value of insurance. The Old Maids scuttled
together under their knitted shawls. The Much-Loved Girl sat amiably
enthroned among the bachelors with one man's coat across her shoulders,
another man's cap on her yellow head, and two deliciously timid hands
clutched at the coat-sleeves of the two men nearest her. Whenever she
bent her head she trailed the fluff of her hair across the enraptured
eyelids of the Poet.
Only Noreen Gaudette was missing.
"Where is Miss Gaudette?" probed the Political Economist.
The Masseuse answered vehemently: "Why, Noreen's getting ready to go to
the fire. Her paper sent for her just as we came up. There's an awful
row on, you know, about the inefficiency of the Fire Department, and
there's no other person in all the city who can make people look as
silly as Noreen can. If this thing appeals to her to-night, and she gets
good and mad enough, and keeps her nerve, there'll be the biggest
overhauling of the Fire Department that _you_ ever saw! But I'm sorry it
happened. It will be an all-night job, and Noreen is almost dead enough
as it is."
"An 'all-night job'?" The Much-Loved Girl gasped out her startled sense
of propriety, and snuggled back against the shoulder of the man who sat
nearest to her. She was very genuinely sorry for any one who had to be
improper.
The Political Economist, noting the incident in its entirety, turned
abruptly on his heel, climbed down the tremulous ladder to the
trunk-room floor and knocked peremptorily at Noreen's door.
In reply to the answer which he thought he heard, he turned the handle
of the door and entered. The gas jet sizzled blatantly across the room,
and a tiny blue flame toiled laboriously in a cooking lamp beneath a pot
of water. The room was reeking strong with the smell of coffee, the rank
brew that wafted him back in nervous terror to his college days and the
ghastly eve of his final examinations. A coat, a hat, a mouse-gray
sweater, a sketch-book, and a bunch of pencils were thrown together on
the edge of the divan. Crouched on the floor with head and shoulders
prostrate across her easel chair and thin hands straining at the
woodwork was Noreen Gaudette. The startled face that lifted to his was
haggard with the energy of a year rallied to the needs of an hour.
"I thought you told me to come in," said the Political Economist. "I
came down to go to the fire with you."
Noreen was on her feet in an instant, hurrying into her hat and coat,
and quaffing greedily at the reeking coffee.
"You ought to have some one to look after you," persisted the man.
"Where's Mr. Dextwood?"
Noreen stood still in the middle of the floor and stared at him.
"Why, I've broken my engagement," she exclaimed, trying hard to speak
tamely and reserve every possible fraction of her artificial energy.
"Oh, yes," she smiled wanly, "I couldn't afford to be engaged! I
couldn't afford the time. I couldn't afford the money. I couldn't afford
the mental distraction. I'm working again now, but it's horribly hard to
get back into the mood. My drawing has all gone to smash. But I'll get
the hang of it again pretty soon."
"You look in mighty poor shape to work to-night," said the Political
Economist. "What makes you go?"
"What makes me go?" cried Noreen, with an extravagant burst of
vehemence. "What makes me go?--Why, if I make good to-night on those
Fire-Department Pictures I get a Hundred Dollars, as well as the
assurance of all the Republican cartooning for the next city election.
It's worth a lot of money to me!"
"Enough to kill yourself for?" probed the Man.
Noreen's mouth began to twist. "Yes--if you still owe for your
automobile coat, and your black evening gown, and your room rent and a
few other trifles of that sort. But come on, if you'll promise not to
talk to me till it's all over." Like a pair of youngsters they scurried
down the stairs, jumped into the waiting cab, and galloped off toward
the river edge of the city.
True to his promise, the Political Economist did not speak to her, but
he certainly had not promised to keep his eyes shut as well as his
mouth. From the very first she sat far forward on the seat where the
passing street-lights blazed upon her unconscious face. The Man, the
cab, love-making, debt-paying, all were forgotten in her desperate
effort to keep keyed up to the working-point. Her brain was hurriedly
sketching in her backgrounds. Her suddenly narrowed eyes foretold the
tingling pride in some particular imagining. The flashing twist of her
smile predicted the touch of malice that was to make her pictures the
sensation of--a day.
The finish of the three-mile drive found her jubilant, prescient,
pulsing with power. The glow from the flames lit up the cab like a room.
The engine bells clanged around them. Sparks glittered. Steam hissed.
When the cabman's horse refused to scorch his nose any nearer the
conflagration, Noreen turned to the Political Economist with some
embarrassment. "If you really want to help me," she pleaded, "you'll
stay here in the cab and wait for me."
Then, before the Political Economist could offer his angry protest, she
had opened the door, jumped from the step, and disappeared into the
surging, rowdy throng of spectators. A tedious hour later the cab door
opened abruptly, and Noreen reappeared.
Her hat was slouched down over her heat-scorched eyes. Her shoulders
were limp. Her face was dull, dumb, gray, like a Japanese lantern robbed
of its candle. Bluntly she thrust her sketch-book into his hands and
threw herself down on the seat beside him.
"Oh, take me home," she begged. "Oh, take me home _quick_. It's no use,"
she added with a shrug, "I've seen the whole performance. I've been
everywhere--inside the ropes--up on the roofs--out on the waterfront.
The Fire Department Men are not 'inefficient.' They're simply _bully_!
_And I make no caricatures of heroes!_"
The lurch of the cab wheel against a curbstone jerked a faint smile into
her face. "Isn't it horrid," she complained, "to have a Talent and a
Living that depend altogether upon your _getting mad_?" Then her eyes
flooded with worry. "What _shall_ I do?"
"You'll marry me," said the Political Economist.
"Oh, no!" gasped Noreen. "I shall never, never marry any one! I told you
that I couldn't afford to be engaged. It takes too much time, and
besides," her color flamed piteously, "I didn't like being engaged."
"I didn't ask you to be engaged," persisted the Political Economist. "I
didn't ask you to serve any underpaid, ill-fed, half-hearted
apprenticeship to Happiness. I asked you to be married."
"Oh, no!" sighed Noreen. "I shall never marry any one."
The Political Economist began to laugh. "Going to be an old maid?" he
teased.
The high lights flamed into Noreen's eyes. She braced herself into the
corner of the carriage and fairly hurled her defiance at him.
Indomitable purpose raged in her heart, unutterable pathos drooped
around her lips. Every atom of blood in her body was working instantly
in her brain. No single drop of it loafed in her cheeks under the flimsy
guise of embarrassment.
"I am not an 'Old Maid!' I am not! No one who creates anything is an
'Old Maid'!"
The passion of her mood broke suddenly into wilful laughter. She shook
her head at him threateningly.
"Don't you ever dare to call me an 'Old Maid' again.--But I'll tell you
just what you can call me--Women are supposed to be the Poetry of Life,
aren't they--the Sonnet, the Lyric, the Limerick? Well--I am blank
verse. _That_ is the trouble with me. I simply _do not rhyme_.--That is
all!"
"Will you marry me?" persisted the Political Economist.
Noreen shook her head. "No!" she repeated. "You don't seem to
understand. Marriage is not for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I
am _Talent_, and I do not _rhyme_ with Love. I am _Talent_ and I do not
rhyme with _Man_. There is no place in my life for you. You can not come
into my verse and rhyme with me!"
"Aren't you a little bit exclusive?" goaded the Political Economist.
Noreen nodded gravely. "Yes," she said, "I am brutally exclusive. But
everybody isn't. Life is so easy for some women. Now, the Much-Loved
Girl is nothing in the world except 'Miss.' She rhymes inevitably with
almost anybody's kiss.--_I_ am not just '_Miss_.' The Much-Loved Girl is
nothing in the world except 'Girl.'--She rhymes inevitably with 'Curl.'
_I_ am not just '_Girl_.' She is 'Coy' and rhymes with 'Boy.' She is
'Simple' and rhymes with 'Dimple.' _I am none of those things!_ I
haven't the Lure of the Sonnet. I haven't the Charm of the Lyric. I
haven't the Bait of the Limerick. At the very best I am 'Brain' and
rhyme with 'Pain.' And I wish I was _dead_!"
The Political Economist's heart was pounding like a gong smothered in
velvet. But he stooped over very quietly and pushed the floor cushion
under her feet and snuggled the mouse-gray sweater into a pillowed roll
behind her aching neck. Then from his own remotest corner he reached out
casually and rallied her limp, cold hand into the firm, warm clasp of
his vibrant fingers.
"Of course, you never have rhymed," he said. "How could you possibly
have rhymed when--_I am the missing lines of your verse_?" His clasp
tightened. "Never mind about Poetry to-night, Dear, but _to-morrow_
we'll take your little incomplete lonesome verse and quicken it into a
Love-Song that will make the Oldest Angel in Heaven sit up and
carol!"