The Bacillus of Beauty | Page 7

me!" I begged, hoarsely.
For just a fraction of a second she hesitated. Then the merriment of coquetry again sparkled in her smile.
"Ah, but I'm afraid--" she mocked.
Her eyes danced with mischief as she drew away from me.
"I'm afraid of a man who's going to be a great city lawyer. And then--oh, listen!"
Hurried, ostentatiously heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. They stopped at the door, and some one fumbled noisily at the knob. There was a stage cough, and Kitty plunged into the room, carefully unnoticing.
"Such an idea for--a hippopotamus comic," she panted; "a darling! Sent drawings down--messenger--rushed back to sketch--"
Here she paused to take breath.
"--lest I forget."
Snatching off her gloves she resumed her place at the big table, and began making wild strokes with a crayon on a great sheet of cardboard.
"I just had to do it," said she apologetically over her shoulder; "but--don't mind me."
CHAPTER III.
THE HORNETS' NEST.
It was dusk when I left Helen. My head was buzzing.
Out of her presence what I had seen was unthinkable, unbelievable. I could do nothing but walk, walk--a man in a dream.
I rushed ahead, jostling people in silly haste; I dawdled. I carefully set my feet across the joinings of paving blocks; I zigzagged; I turned corners aimlessly. Once a policeman touched me as I blinked into the roaring torches of a street-repairing gang. Once I found myself on Brooklyn Bridge, looking down at big boats shaped like pumpkin seeds, with lights streaking from every window. Once I woke behind a noisy group under the coloured lights of a Bowery museum.
It rained, for horses were rubber-blanketed, and umbrellas dripped on me as I passed. I was hungry, for I smelled the coffee a sodden woman drank at the side of a night lunch wagon. But how could I believe myself awake or sane?
Again and again I found my way back to the bench on Union Square, from which I could gaze at Helen's window, now dark and forbidding. Across an open space was a garish saloon. When the door swung open, I saw the towels hanging from the bar. Two men reeled across the street and sat down by me.
"Oo-oo!" one gurgled.
"Dan's goin' t' kill 'imself 'cause 'is wife's gone," blubbered the other. "Tell 'm not ter, can't ye, matey? Tell 'im' t's 'nough fer one t' die!"
"Oo-oo!" bellowed Dan.
I walked away in the darkness, but I felt better. Drunkenness was no miracle: I was awake and sane, sane and awake in a homely world of sorrow and folly and love and mystery.
I went to bed thinking of Cleopatra, "brow-bound with burning gold"; of Fair Rosamond; Vivien, who won Merlin's secret; of Lilith and strange, shining women--not one of them like the goddess the glory of whose smile had dazzled me. At last I slept, late and heavily.
Next morning I was again first at the office; and by daylight in the bustling city, things took a different complexion. I had gone to my sweetheart tired by a long journey, and I felt sure, or tried to feel sure, that my impressions of change in her were fantastic and exaggerated.
Judge Baker, on his arrival, installed me in Hynes's room, behind the library, between the corridor and one of the courts that light the inner offices. In his own room, to the left, he detained me for some business talk, after which he said, carefully rubbing his glasses:
"I trust that you will not find yourself altogether a stranger in the city. My wife will wish to see you, and my sister, Miss Baker, cherishes pleasant recollections of your mother. I believe you are already acquainted with Mrs. Baker's young cousin, Miss Winship. You know that, since graduation, she has come to New York for the purpose of pursuing post-graduate studies in Barnard?"
"Yes."
I drew a breath of relief. There was nothing in the Judge's manner to give significance to his mention of Helen. I must have deceived myself.
"A most charming young lady."
He glanced at the letters on his desk and methodically cut open an envelope. Then he dropped the paper knife, raising his bushy brows, a gesture that indicates his most genial humour, as he continued with more than usual deliberateness:--
"You knew her, no doubt, as an intelligent student; you may be surprised to learn that she has developed extraordinary--the word is not too strong--extraordinary beauty."
"Always a lovely girl," I muttered.
"From her childhood Nelly has been a favourite with me;" the Judge leaned back in his big chair, seeming to commit himself to an utterance; "but her attractions were rather those of mind and heart, I should have said, than of personal appearance. The change to which I have alluded is more than the not uncommon budding of a plain girl into the evanescent beauty of early womanhood; it is the most remarkable thing that