Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Part 31

"Some one has called for Miss Dutcher." Every one shook hands with her cordially; they received her as an equal, that was evident.

Isabel went in with Rose to help her put on her things.

"My dear, you've pleased them all and I've just fallen in love with you.

I'm going to have you at the Woman's Club. You must come and see me.

Come often, won't you?"

"I shall be glad to," Rose said simply, but her face was flushed and her eyes shining with joy.

Owen was outside in the hall alone.

"Didn't Mary come too?"

"No, she concluded it would look awkward if she came and stood outside the door."

They walked along side by side. Taylor considered it an affectation to offer a strong young woman his arm, except at critical pa.s.sages of the street.

"Did you have a good time?"

"O splendid!" she said, the joy of her social success upon her. "It was lovely! I never met such fine people. Everything was so full of fun and they were intellectual, too. Dr. Herrick is wonderful! Mr. Mason, too."

"What Mr. Mason?"

"Warren Mason, I think they call him."

"Is that so? Warren Mason is considered one of the finest newspaper men in the city. All the fellows look up to him."

"I'm glad I met him. O, now I see! Dr. Herrick invited him there to hear me read. I made a failure, I'm afraid."

She thought so more and more as the rose color of her little triumph grew gray. She ended by tossing to and fro on her bed, raging to think how foolishly she had acted. The long poem was bad, she saw it now. It was involved and twisted and dull. She saw Mason's face darken again, and it seemed now it wore a look of disgust.

And the whistling! Good heavens, was there no limit to her folly, her childishness?

So she writhed and groaned, her hopes all pathetically trampled and dust-covered now. Everybody would hear of her idiocy. She had been so determined to do something worth while, and she had read her worst lines, and whistled--whistled like a cow-boy.

The houses of the Lake Sh.o.r.e seemed like impenetrable castles in the deep of her despair, and Mason's words about the city grew each moment deeper in meaning.

After Rose left, Dr. Herrick came back into the room radiant.

"There, what do you think of her? Am I crazy or not? I claim to have discovered a genius."

"My dear, seems to me Thatcher has a prior claim."

"Well, anyhow, she _is_ a genius. Don't you think so, Warren?"

"She can whistle."

"O, don't be so enigmatical, it is out of place. She's got power. You can't deny that."

"Time enough to say what she can do when she finds out what polly-rot she is writing now. The whistling interested me," he added, malevolently.

Isabel's face darkened a little.

"I understand, this is one of your prank nights. But I shall not allow it to affect me. You cannot sneer down that beautiful girl."

"I'm not sneering her down. I am merely indicating where she needs help.

She is a glorious creature physically and she's keen mentally--morally, no doubt, she's well instructed--after the manner of country girls--but esthetically she's in a sorrowful way. Taste is our weak point in America, and in the rural regions--well, there isn't any taste above that for shortcake, dollar chromos and the New York _Repository_."

"He's started, he's off!" said Roberts. "Now, I like the girl's verses; they are full of dignity and fervor, it seems to me."

"Full of fever, you mean. You specialists in nerve diseases and spotted bugs wouldn't know a cra.s.s imitation of Tennyson if you had it in a gla.s.s vial. It's such poor creatures as you who keep these young writers imitating successes. The girl has a fine roll of voice and a splendid curve of bust, and that made the stuff she read, poetry--to impressionable persons."

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" chorused the young people.

"Roberts, you are a sensualist," Sanborn interposed gravely.

Mason imperturbably proceeded.

"The girl has power of some sort. I rather suspect it to be dramatic, but that's mimetic and of a low order, anyway. Her primary distinction, with me, consists in something quite other than these. The girl has character, and that's saying a good deal about a woman, especially a girl. She has departed widely from the conventional type without losing essential womanliness."

"Ah, now we are coming at it!" they all exclaimed, as they drew around him, with exaggerated expressions of interest.

"The girl is darkly individual, and very attractive because of it; but you make of her a social success, as I can see Isabel is planning to do, and get her to wearing low-necked dresses and impoverishing her people, and you'll take all the charm out of her."

"I don't believe it!" said Isabel.

"It hasn't hurt Dr. Herrick," put in Roberts. "I must say I'd like to see the girl in a low-necked dress"--he waved his hand to hold them in check. "Now, hold on! I know that sounds bad, but I mean it all right."

"Oh, no doubt!" They laughed at his embarra.s.sment.

Mason interposed. "Roberts' long stay among the Wallapi and Tlinkit wigwams has perverted his naturally moral nature."

Roberts shook his hands in deprecation, but made no further protest.

Sanborn said: "It's a serious thing to advise a girl like that. What do you intend to do, Isabel? Is a social success the thing the girl needs?"

"It won't do her any harm to meet nice people--of course, she ought not to go out too much if she's going to write."

"You amuse me," Mason began again, in his measured way. "First because you a.s.sume that the girl can go where she pleases--"

"She can, too, if she's got the quality we think she has. Chicago society isn't the New York four hundred. We're all workers here."

"Workers and thieves," Mason went on; "but if the girl has the quality I think she has, she will map out her own career and follow it irresistibly. The question that interests me is this--how did the girl get here? Why didn't she stay on the farm like Susan, and Sally, and Ed and Joe? How did she get through college without marrying Harry or Tommy? These are the vital questions."

"I don't know," replied Isabel. "I thought of those things, but of course I couldn't ask her on first acquaintance."