The Bacillus of Beauty Part 48

Kitty is a good fellow.

"Why, cert.," she said when I begged her last Wednesday to take care of Helen. "Married! Did you say married? Oh, Cadge, quit pegging shoes!"

Jumping up from the drawing table, Kitty left streams of India ink making her beastesses all tigers while she called to Miss Bryant, who was pounding viciously upon a typewriter:--

"Cadge, did you hear? Cadge! The Princess is going to be married. 'Course you remember, Mr. Burke, Cadge is going to be married herself Sat.u.r.day."

"Don't be too sure of it," returned Miss Bryant, "and do let me finish this sentence. Ten to one Pros. or I'll be grabbed off for an a.s.signment Sat.u.r.day evening 'fore we can be married. But the Princess is different; she has leisure. Burke, shake!"

She sprang up to take my hand, her eyes shining with excitement.

Kitty hurried with me to the Nicaragua, where she pounced upon Helen, her red curls madly bobbing.

"What a bride you'll make!" she cried fondly. "Going to be married from the den, aren't you? Oh, I'm up to my eyes in weddings; Cadge simply won't attend to anything. But what have you been doing to yourself? Come here, Helen."

She pushed the proud, pale beauty into a chair, smothering her with kisses and the piles of cushions that seem to add bliss to women's joys and soften all their griefs.

"Tired, aren't you?" she purred. "Needed me. Now just you sit and talk with Mr. Burke and I'll pack up your brittle-brae in three no-times.

Clesta,--where's that imp?"

She called to the little combination maid and model who had accompanied us.

"Clesta's afraid of you, Helen. 'Why'd ye fetch me 'long?' she whimpers.

'Miss Kitty, why'd ye fetch me 'long?' Huh, I 'member how you used to have his picture with yours in a white and gold frame!"

Helen scarcely replied to Kitty's raptures. She laid her head back half- protestingly among her cushions, showing her long, exquisite throat. For an instant she let her shadowy lashes droop over the everchanging l.u.s.tre of her eyes. I couldn't help thinking of a great, glorious bird of heaven resting with broken wing.

"Poor little Princess!" said Kitty, who hardly comes to Helen's shoulder.

Then we all laughed.

Kitty stayed at the Nicaragua that night, and when I came Thursday afternoon she stopped me outside the door, to say:--

"I wouldn't let Helen talk too much; she's nervous."

"Can you tell me what is the matter with her?" I asked. "I don't think she's well."

"Oh, nothing. You know--she's been worrying." Then loyal Kitty spoke purposely of commonplaces. "General must have danced her off her feet.

Darmstetter's death upset her terribly, too. She never will speak of it.

But she'll be as right as right with me. Bring her 'round as soon as the man comes for the trunks. You've only to head up a barrel of dishes, quick, 'fore Clesta gets in any fine work smashing 'em."

As I pa.s.sed through the hall, littered with trunks and packing cases, to the dismantled parlour, Helen looked up from a ma.s.s of old letters and dance cards.

"I'm sorting my--souvenirs," she said.

The face she lifted was white, only the lips richly red, with a shade of fatigue under the haunting eyes. The graceful figure in its close-fitting dress looked a trifle less round than it had done earlier in the winter, and one fair arm, as it escaped from its flowing sleeve, was almost thin.

"Dear," I said wistfully, for something in her drooping att.i.tude smote me to remorse and inspired me with tenderness; "will you really trust your life to me?"

She leaned towards me, and beauty breathed about her as a spell. I bent till my lips caressed her perfumed hair; and then--I saw among the rubbish on her desk something that made me interrupt the words we might have spoken.

"What's that?" I asked. "Not--p.a.w.n tickets?"

"For a necklace," she said; "and this--this must be my diamond--"

"p.a.w.ned and not paid for!"

She offered me the tickets, only half understanding, her great eyes as innocent as they were lovely.

"I had forgotten," she said. "I only found them when I came to--"

She brushed the rubbish of her winter's triumphs and disappointments to the floor, and turned from it with a little, disdainful movement.

"I had to pay the maids," she said simply.

"Nelly, why--why didn't you come to me sooner?"

With a b.u.mp against the door, Clesta sidled into the room awestruck and s.m.u.tched, bearing a tray.

"Miss Kitty said," she stammered, "as how I should make tea." And as soon as she had found a resting place for her burden, the frightened girl made a dash for the door.

Before Helen had finished drinking, there was a stir in the hall, and then the sound of a familiar voice startled us.

"Wa-al, Helen 'Lizy," it said. "How ye do, John? Don't git up; I can set till ye're through."

And Mr. Winship himself stood before us, stoop-shouldered, roughly dressed from the cattle cars, his kindly old eyes twinkling, his good face all glorified by the honest love and pride shining through its plainness.

"Why, Father!" cried Helen with a start.

She looked at him with a nervous repugnance to his appearance, which she tried to subdue. He did not seem to notice it.

"Wa'n't lookin' for me yit-a-while, was ye?" he asked. "Kind o' thought I'd s'prise ye. Did s'prise the man down in the hall. Didn't want to let me in till I told him who I was. Little gal in the entry says ye're movin'; ye do look all tore up, for a fac'."

Mr. Winship has grown old within the year. His hair has whitened and his bushy eyebrows; but the grip of his hand, the sound of his homely speech, seemed to wake me from some ugly dream. Here we were together again in the wholesome daylight, Father Winship, little Helen 'Lizy and the Schoolmaster, and all must yet be well.

Mr. Winship sighed with deep content as he sank into a chair, his eyes scarcely leaving Helen. He owned himself beat out and glad of a dish of tea; but when Clesta had served him in her scuttling crab fashion, he would stop in the middle of a sentence, with saucer half lifted, to gaze with perplexed, wistful tenderness at his stately daughter.

She is the child of his old age; I think he must be long past sixty, and fast growing feeble. The instinct of father love has grown in him so refined that he sees the soul and not the envelope. Grand and beautiful as she is to others, to him she is still his little Nelly.

He would not even own that he thought her altered.

"I d'know," he said, a shade of anxiety blending with the old fond pride.

"Fust-off, Sis didn't look jes' nat'ral, spite of all the picters she's sent us; but that was her long-tailed dress, mebbe. W'en she's a young one, Ma was all for tyin' back her ears and pinchin' her nose with a clo'espin--to make it straight or so'thin'; but I says to Ma, w'en Helen 'Lizy lef' home, 'don't ye be one mite afeard,' I says, 'but what them bright eyes'll outshine the peaked city gals.' Guess they have, sort o', eh, Sis; f'om what John's been writin'?"

"I don't know, Father."

"Don't ye--don't ye want t' hear 'bout the folks? Brought ye heaps o'

messages. Frenchy, now--him that worked for us--druv over f'om the Merriam place to know 'f 'twas true that city folks made a catouse over ye. He'd heard the men readin' 'bout ye in the papers.