The Bacillus of Beauty Part 6

I thought at first that city folks had no manners, but presently began to wonder that Helen escaped so easily. She had drawn down a sc.r.a.p of a veil that scarcely obscured her glow and colour and, as the train gathered headway, our neighbours settled in their places almost as unconcernedly as if no marvel of beauty and youth were present. Indeed, most of them had never looked up. The two young girls continued to eye Helen with envy; and I was conscious of an absurd feeling of resentment that they were the only ones. I wanted to get up and cry out: "Don't you people know that this car contains a miracle?"

Why, when Helen lifted to her knee a child that tugged at the skirts of the stout German hausfrau in the next seat, the mother vouchsafed hardly a glance.

"How old are you?" asked Helen.

"Sechs yahre," was the shy answer.

"Such a big girl for six!"

"So grosse! So grosse!"

The little thing measured her height by touching her forehead.

"Shump down," admonished the mother stolidly, while Helen bent over the child, wasting upon her the most wonderful smile of the everlasting years.

"It was long ago, wasn't it," Nelly asked, when the child had slid from her lap, "that Uncle promised to take you into his office?"

"Yes," I said. "When Father died, the Judge told me that when I had practised three years--long enough to admit me to the New York bar--he'd have a place for me. It was because the three years were nearly up, you know, that I dared last June to ask you--"

"You'd dare anything," she interrupted hastily. "Remember how, when I was a Freshman, you raced a theologue down the church aisle one Sunday night after service, and slammed the door from the outside? 'Miss Winship,' you said--I had sat near the door and was already in the entry--'may I see you home?'--"

"The theologue and the congregation didn't get out till you said yes, I remember! They howled and hammered at the door in most unchristian rage?"

"I _had_ to say yes; why, I had to walk with you even when we quarrelled; it would have made talk for either of us to be seen alone."

She breathed a sigh that ended in rippling laughter.

"You'll have to say yes again."

But at that she changed the subject, and we talked about her work at Barnard until we left the train at Fourteenth Street, where we met the flood tide of Christmas surging into the shops and piling up against gaily decked show windows.

Street hawkers jingled toy harnesses, shouted the prices of bright truck for tree ornaments, and pushed through the crowd, offering holly and mistletoe. Circles formed around men exhibiting mechanical turtles or boxing monkeys. From a furry sledge above a shop door, Santa Claus bowed and gesticulated, shaking the lines above his prancing reindeer. I had never seen such a spectacle.

"What a jam!" cried Helen, her cheeks flooded with colour. "Come, let's hurry!"

Indeed, as we threaded our way in and out among the throng, her beauty made an instant impression.

"There she goes!"

"Where? Where? I don't see her."

"There! The tall one, with the veil--walking with that jay!"

Not only did I hear such comments; I felt them. Yet even here there were many who did not notice; and again I sensed that odd displeasure that people could pa.s.s without seeing my darling.

It was a relief to leave the neighbourhood of Sixth Avenue and cross to the open s.p.a.ce of Union Square.

The east side of the little park was quiet.

"All right?" I asked.

"All right."

Her breath came quickly as if she had been frightened.

"But see," she said a moment later, "there comes Kitty trundling her bicycle down Madison Avenue. You'd better come in, and be on your best behaviour; yesterday Kitty thought we were quarrelling."

"Sorry I'm wanted only to vindicate--is it your character or mine that would stand clearing? And will you tell me----"

A little old Frenchman, with a wooden leg, who was singing the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" from door to door, approached, holding out his hat.

"Merci, M'sieu', Madame," he said, carelessly pocketing a nickel; then, as he fairly caught sight of the face that Helen of old might have envied, he started back in amazement, slowly whispering:--

"Pardon! Mon dieu! Une Ange!"

We left him muttering and staring after us.

"I'll really have to get a thicker veil," said Helen hastily; "stuffy thing! I like to breathe and see. At first it was--oh, delightful to be looked at like that--or almost delightful; for if no had one noticed, how was I to be sure that--that New York was agreeing vit' me? But now they begin to----"

"Then New York hasn't always agreed vit' you? Aren't you going to tell me----"

"Oh, I've been well," she interrupted, "ever since I came. But here's Kitty. Any adventures, Goldilocks?"

"A minute ago a tandem cuffed my back wheel," said Miss Reid, coming up.

"My heart jumped into my mouth and--and I'm nibbling little scallops out of it right now."

And then we trooped upstairs together.

CHAPTER V.

A HIGH-CLa.s.s CONCERT.

I stayed for supper, over which Kitty's big Angora cat presided; Kitty herself, her red curls in disorder, whimsical, shrewd, dipping from jest to earnest, teased Helen and waited on her, wholly affectionate and, I guessed, half afraid.

The little den was cosy by the light of an open fire--for it seemed to be one function of the tall, pink-petticoated lamp to make much darkness visible; and Nelly was almost like the Nelly I had known, with her eager talk of home folks and familiar scenes.

She asked about my mother's illness and death that had held me so long in the West, and her great eyes grew dim and soft with tears, and she looked at me like a G.o.ddess grieving; until, sweet as was her sympathy, I forced myself to speak of other topics. And then we grew merry again, talking of college mates and the days when I first knew her, when I was a Soph.o.m.ore teaching in Hannibal and she was my best scholar--only twelve years old, but she spelled down all the big, husky boys.

"I didn't know what I was doing, did I," I said, "when your father used to say: 'Bright gal, ain't she? I never see the beat of Helen Lizy;' and I would tell him you ought to go to the State University?"

"Think of it!" cried Helen. "If I hadn't gone to college, I shouldn't have come to New York, and, oh, if--but how you must have worked, teaching and doubling college and law school! Why, you were already through two years of law when I entered, only three years later."

"Well, it's been easy enough since, even with tutoring and shorthanding; six lawyers to every case--"

"Wasn't tutoring Helen your main occupation?" asked Kitty Reid audaciously. "I have somehow inferred that--"