The Bacillus of Beauty Part 26

Roystering farm-hands checked their drunken songs at the little maid's approach, but no wild thing feared her. Birds and squirrels came at her call and fed from her hand.

And so it went. Chapters II and III described with brilliant inaccuracy my University life and made me a piquant mixture of devotee of science and favourite of fashion. Ah, well, it was all as accurate as Pa's name or Mother's beauty or her love of dancing--she thinks it's as wicked as playing cards.

Before I had read half the papers, between dread of Father and John and the absurdity of it all, I was in a gale of tears and laughter. More than once Milly crept to the door, or I heard in the hall the uneven step of lame little Ethel. But I wouldn't open. I was swept by a pa.s.sion of----

Not grief, not anger, not concern, not fear of anything on earth; but-- Joy!

Joy in my beauty, about which a million men and women had that morning read for the first time! Joy in the fame of my beauty which should last forever! Joy in my full and rapturous life!

What did I care for the spelling of a name or the bald prose about my college course? What concern was it of mine how my photographs had been obtained? Trifles; trifles all! Here were the essential facts set broadly forth, speeding to every part of the country--why, to every part of the world! Cadge or Pros. Reid now--any one who knows how such things are done--might note the hours as they pa.s.sed, and say: "Now two millions have seen her beauty, have read of her; now three; now five; now ten millions."

And the story would spread! In ever widening circles, men warned by telegraph of the new wonder would tear open the damp sheets; and pen and pencil and printing press would hurry to reproduce those marvellous lines--to-morrow in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Montreal; next day in Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta; and so on to Denver, Galveston and the Golden Gate.

The picture--_mine_;--_my picture_!--would be spread on tables in the low cabins of pilot boats and fishing smacks; it would be nailed to the log walls of Klondike mining huts; soldiers in the steaming trenches around Manila would pa.s.s the torn sheets from hand to hand, and for a moment forget their sweethearts while they read of me.

And the ships! The swiftest of them all would carry these pages to London, Paris, Vienna, there to be multiplied a thousand fold and sent out again in many tongues. Blue-eyed Gretchen, Giuseppina, with her bare locks and rainbow-barred ap.r.o.n, slant-eyed O Mimosa San, all in good time would dream over the fair face on the heralding page; women shut in the zenanas of the unchanging East would gossip from housetop to housetop of the wonderful Feringhe beauty; whipped slaves in midmost Africa would carry my picture in their packs into regions where white men have never trod, and dying whalers in the far North would look at my face and forget for a little while their dooming ice floes.

The wealth of all the earth was at my command. Railroad train and ocean grayhound, stage and pony cart, spurring horseman and naked brown runner sweating through jungle paths under his mail bags, would bear the news of me East and West, until they met in the antipodes and put a girdle of my loveliness right round the world!

Never before had I realised what a great thing a newspaper is!

My heart was beating with a terrible joy. And so--prosaic detail--I threw the papers down in a heap on the floor, combed my hair in a great loose knot, put a rose at my belt, and went down to smile at my Aunt's anxieties. I even went with my cousins to supper with Aunt Marcia. And in the early evening Mr. Hynes came to walk with us home. I knew his step, and my heart jumped with fright. What would he, so fastidious as he was, think of that poster?

But his look leaped to mine as he entered, and I--oh, it seemed as if there had never been such a night; never the snow, the delight of the cold and dark and the far, wise stars! I couldn't tell what joy elf possessed me as we walked homeward. I wanted to run like a child. Yet I couldn't bear to reach the house.

"Why, Helen," said Ethel; "you're not wearing your veil."

"Will the reporters git me ef I don't--watch--out?" I laughed. How could I m.u.f.fle myself like a grandmother?

"We'll keep away the goblins," he said; and--it's a little thing to write down--he walked beside me instead of Milly. We would pa.s.s through the shadows of the trees, and then under the glare of an electric lamp, and then again into blackness; and I felt in his quickened breath an instant response to my mood; as if newspapers had never existed, and we were playing at goblins.

I hope he didn't think me childish.

Of course John had come before we reached home, and of course he had been all day fuming over the papers, as if that would do any good; but I had drunk too deep of the intoxicating air to be disturbed by his surprised look when Mr. Hynes and I entered the library; can't I go without his guarding even to Aunt Marcia's?

I like the library--bookshelves, not too high, all about it, and the glow of the open fire and the smiling faces. Sometimes I grow impatient of Aunt's fussy kindness, and of the slavish worship of limp and characterless Milly and Ethel; but last night I was glad to be walled about with cousins, barricaded from the big, curious world. I could have hugged Boy, who lay curled on the hearth, deep in the adventures of Mowgli and the Wolf Brethren. I did hug little Joy, who climbed into my lap, lisping, as she does every night: "Thing, Cothin Nelly."

I looked shyly at Mr. Hynes, who had stooped to pat the cat that purred against his leg, muttering something about a "fine animal." I knew--I begin to understand him so well--just how he felt the charm of everything.

"Thing," Joy insisted, putting up a baby hand until it touched my cheek and twined itself in my hair, "Thing, Cothin Nelly." And I crooned while breathlessly all in the room listened:--

"Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the Western sea--

"He'll be a bad man, won't he, Joy," I broke off, as John came to my corner, "if he scolds a poor girl who has had to stand on the floor all day for the scholars to look at, and get no good mark on her deportment card?"

"I am no longer a schoolmaster, Nelly," said John so icily that Aunt looked up at him, surprised. "Come, Joy," she said, "Cousin Nelly can't be troubled with a great big girl. Why, Mr. Burke, she's cried herself ill, fairly, over those dreadful newspapers. I do so hope they'll leave her in peace now. But of course we tell her it's all meant as a tribute."

"Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow-- Blow him again to me, While my little Joy, while my pretty Joy sleeps."

"Thing more about your little Joy! More about me."

The sleepy child cuddled closer and, as I continued to sing, I knew that at least one person in the room understood that a creature so blessed as I could never cry herself ill.

"Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the West--"

"Milly and I have tributes, too," laughed Ethel. "The _Trumpet_ says we're just as charming girls as our wonderful cousin. And the _Record_ prints snapshots at Joy and her nursemaid. Aren't newspapers funny?"

"Some one of us should be running for office," said Uncle Timothy. "It seems gratuitous to subject an unambitious private family to the treatment expected by a candidate or a multi-millionaire. Yet I have seldom had occasion to complain of the press. In its own perhaps headlong manner, it pursues such matters as are of greatest public importance. A household, to avoid its attentions, should be provided with good, plain, durable countenances. The difficulty with this family is its excess of attraction."

He patted Aunt's hand affectionately, while I sang:--

"--Under the silver moon Sleep, my little Joy, sleep, my pretty Joy, sleep--"

"--but, Uncle, what shall I do?"

"Nothing. In a shorter time than now seems possible, another topic will supersede you. Then, as one of our Presidents has aptly said, you will sink into 'innocuous desuetude.'"

But of course I sha'n't!

As I rose to carry Joy to her bed, I felt from all in the room a look that said I was like a great, glorious Madonna, and I bent lower over the sleeping child's still face; it is good to have everybody admire me.

Oh, I do wish John were more reasonable. Not satisfied with seeing me Sat.u.r.day and yesterday, he came again to-day and asked me to marry him at once. He's so ridiculous!

"Perhaps I'm selfish to wish to mould your brilliant life to my plodding one," he said wistfully, as if he were reading my thoughts. "But I don't mean to be selfish. I love you--and--you're drifting away from me."

"What a goose you are, John!" I said, laughing impatiently. "I'm just the same that I always was; the trouble is, I'm not a bit sentimental."

John _is_ selfish. He'd hide me somewhere outside the city, he'd bury alive the most lovely of women. He prosed to me about a "home"; as if I could now endure a Darby and Joan existence!

To-night his ring distracts--torments me. I pull it off and put it back and it galls my finger, as if it rubbed a wound. I used to go to sleep with it against my lips--I love the opal, gem of the beautiful women. I wonder if it's really unlucky.

I suppose John's talk to-day annoyed me because I'm in such a restless mood--waiting for the barriers to fall, for the glorious life ahead of me to open. How could he expect me to feel as in the days when we were boy and girl, when we dreamed foolish dreams about each other, and were romantic, and young? I have changed since then, I have a thousand things to think about in which he doesn't sympathize; if I answered his words at random it was because I couldn't fix my mind upon them. I drew a long breath when he left me--when I escaped the tender, perplexed question of his eyes.

It's true; I'm not a bit sentimental. I used to think I was, but now I feel sure that I could never love any one as John loves me.

But I mustn't drift away from him. I remember so many things that tie us together, here in this strange, stormy city. What happy times we used to have! He'll understand better by and by, and be less exacting.

But I can't marry; I must be free to enjoy the victories of my beauty; I told him at Christmas that I can't marry for a long, long time.

CHAPTER VII.

LOVE is ALL!

Thursday, Jan. 30.

I've been trying to read, but I can't. Pale heroines in books are so dull!