"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,'" Simonoff intoned dreamily. "But
there's a story connected with it."
"I suspected it," I said quietly. "When a school teacher consents to
part with a perfectly good dollar for a dozen wilted roses, there must
be an esoteric reason."
"Materialist," he laughed.
The dancing and the scurry of pattering feet had both ceased. The
sounds of the night were now more soothing, more harmoniously blended.
The earliest arrivals of the theatre crowd were besieging the sidewalk
ticket office of the burlesque house opposite. Simonoff launched into
his narrative.
* * *
I was sitting here one evening all alone. The day had been particularly
trying. I had been visited by my district superintendent, a perfect
paragon of stupidity. He had squatted in my class room until I wished
him and his bulk on the other side of the Styx. When it was all over I
came here, glad to shake off the chalk dust and the pompous
inconsequence of my official superior. Suddenly I was startled out of my
brooding.
"You are unhappy," I heard a voice murmur ever so softly. It seemed like
the sighing of a night wind through the tree tops.
I looked up. Before me stood a young man with deep blue eyes, blond
hair, exquisite daintiness of feature and unnaturally pale complexion.
He was dressed in soft gray tweeds. In the crook of his left elbow he
carried roses. Their fragrance permeated the cafe and, for once, the
odor of stale tobacco was not dominant.
"You are unhappy," he repeated mildly as if it were the most natural
thing in the world for him to say.
"I am," I answered frankly. "The world is a stupid place to live in."
"You must not say that," he reproached quietly. "It is we who are
stupid. The world is beautiful. Won't you accept a rose?" Like a prince
in a fairy story he bowed grandly and offered me an American Beauty
still moist with the mock dews of the florist.
"But why do you honor me thus?" I asked, taking the flower and inhaling
its fragrance.
He looked a bit put out as if I were asking the obvious thing. "You were
sad, of course, and a thing of beauty----"
"Is a joy forever," I concluded.
He flushed with pleasure.
"I am so glad you have read my Endymion," he exclaimed delightedly.
"Suppose we walk out together and preach the gospel of beauty to those
who like yourself forget the eternal in the trivial. I have some
powerful sermons here." He caressed his roses as a mother would stroke
the head of a child.
Along the avenue we were followed by hordes of little girls with starved
eyes. My good samaritan picked the poorest and the most wistful for his
largesse of roses. And to each one as he handed the flower he repeated
the famous line from the work of the great romantic poet.
"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.'"
Soon there were only two left. These my friend was inclined to withhold
from the clamoring tots who assailed us.
"After all they are young," he said. "Their sad moments vanish like the
mists. But the sorrows of the years of discretion are not thrown off so
easily. They persist like scars long after the original bruise has
healed."
We entered a hallway to escape our little friends. From a door ajar on
the first story a man's voice floated down to us. It was high pitched
and strident, as if a relentless lawyer were arraigning a criminal.
"My friends," we heard, "how long are you going to remain blind to your
condition? The interests of capital and labor are diametrically opposed
to each other. You are the producers of the world's wealth and yet you
submit to exploitation by the class of parasites who fatten upon your
ignorance and your unwillingness to unite. Workingmen of the world, you
have nothing to lose but your chains."
"Slavinsky, the great agitator, probably rehearsing his speech for the
party rally at Cooper Union tomorrow," I explained.
"Agitator?" questioned the apostle of beauty. "He is agitated, indeed,
and unhappy. I shall give him a rose."
Slavinsky sputtered with amazement when the rose was offered to him.
"A joy forever!" he mocked. "It isn't such a joy to work for starvation
wages, to be bled by profiteers, to be flayed alive by plutes. I tell
you, Mister--"
"You are addressing Keats, John Keats."
"I tell you, Mister Keats, there ain't no beauty when you're up against
it. I tell you--"
"Won't you accept this rose?"
"I'll take it," growled Slavinsky with unnecessary fierceness. "It ain't
Nature's fault. She don't go in for profiteering." The agitator's
conversational style was more colloquial though no less vehement than
his platform manner.
"Did you note the omission?" Keats inquired when we were again on the
avenue.
"It isn't impoliteness," I replied. "Men of his class are too stirred by
cosmic problems to say 'Thank you.'"
"It is a beautiful thing to say, nevertheless, and the world needs it."
I thought the eyes of John Keats--a fitting name for such a fantastic
personality--were filling with tears.
My companion held his rose before him as if it were a charm against the
sordidness about him. He had a way of peering at the people we passed as
if he were looking for someone he had lost in the crowd. At Sixteenth
Street we turned into the small park at the right of the avenue, which
with its neighbor on the left keeps alive the memory of green and
growing things among the dwellers of the tenements.
It was at the fountain that he first saw her. John Keats had an abrupt
manner, for all his gentleness, of proceeding along the path of his
desires.
"At last I have found you," he said to the tall girl who was watching a
group of youngsters at play near the gushing waters. In the darkness I
could see only a pair of flashing eyes under a broad-brimmed straw and a
cape of soft blue hanging gracefully from her shoulders.
She scrutinized both of us with the intuitive glance of one who has
learned to tread warily amid dangerous surroundings. Apparently her
preliminary examination was satisfactory. She put us into the
non-poisonous class. Keats had flattened the palm of his right hand
against his breast and was offering the last rose to her with the other.
His manner was of the stage but not offensively so.
"At last I have found you," repeated my curious acquaintance. "For all
your laughter you are unhappy. You are consumed with yearning, even as I
am. Pray accept a rose."
With a murmured repetition of his formula he gave he his last flower.
His manner was earnest and the girl had immediately rejected the
assumption that we were mocking her.
"This is a mistake," she explained, hesitating about the rose. "I don't
think you know who I am."
"A lady of high degree, I am sure," responded Keats gallantly. There was
a peculiar quaintness about his English, which like his name, took me
back to the early nineteenth century. The coincidence of his name did
not strike me as unusual, because the telephone directory is full of
such parallels.
"No high degree about me," laughed the girl. "I'm a saleslady at
Marmelstein's, that's all. What you said about being unhappy is true
sometimes. When you came up I was just thinking."
Her voice with its overtone of sadness sounded in the semi-darkness like
the faint tremolo of mandolins serenading in the distance.
"But there need be no unhappiness," contended Keats. "We must shut out
from our sight everything but beauty, pure beauty. At this moment I am
supremely happy."
He looked at her. There was an unreality about him for which I could not
account. Like a mirage of the park he seemed. In a twinkle of the
incandescents, I thought, he might vanish. The girl from Marmelstein's
looked at him as if fascinated. Romance had come and touched her heart
with a magic wand. She sniffed at the rose pensively.
"I couldn't just tell you why I was feeling queer. Marmelstein's is a
nice place, honest. You see all sorts of people during the day and it's
interesting to work there. But there's something missing--I don't know
what."
"Beauty, my lady, beauty," declared Keats.
Out of the shadows a fourth form had materialized, a thickset man who
approached us with a firm stride. He patted my friend gently on the
shoulder.
"You're a bad boy, John," he reproached, "giving me the slip that way. I
had the time of my life looking for you. The moment my back was turned
you vamoosed from the waiting room. That wasn't kind. If I hadn't a
known how fond you wuz of roses, I would a been stumped, stumped for
good. I trailed you by them roses."
The girl sensed that there was something wrong.
"Lady, farewell," said Keats.
With a little moan she saw him being led off.
"What's wrong?" I asked the intruder.
"Bugs on beauty, that's all. Thinks he's a guy named John Keats who
wrote poems. Harmless case. Wouldn't hurt a fly. I was bringing him over
to see his mother when he give me the slip. Gee, but I can breathe easy
now."
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever," declared the spirit of Keats.
"Sure, sure," said the attendant, lighting a cigar.
When I turned to leave the park the girl from Marmelstein's came up to
me.
"What happened?" she inquired. Her fists were clenched and she was
breathing heavily.