Chapter 4

"_I'll_ send you something to make anybody sit up and stay up," he said indignantly. "Baffles, the Gent Burglar; Love Militant, by Nora Norris Newman; The Crown-Snatcher, by Reginald Rodman Roony--oh, it's simply ghastly to think of what you've missed! This is the Victorian era; you have a right to be fully cognizant of the great literary movements of the twentieth century!"

"I love to hear you say such things," she said, her beautiful face afire. "I desire to be modern--intensely, humanly modern. All my life I have been nourished on the classics of ages dead; the literature of the Orient, of Asia, of Europe I am familiar with; the literature of England--as far as Andrew Bang's boyhood verses. I--all my sisters--read, write, speak, even think, in ten languages. I long for something to read which is vital, familiar, friendly--something of my own time, my own day. I wish to know what young people do and dare; what they really think, what they believe, strive for, desire!"

"Well--well, I don't think people really do and say and think the things that you read in interesting modern novels," he said doubtfully. "Fact is, only the tiresome novels seem to tell a portion of the truth; but they end by overdoing it and leave you yawning with a nasty taste in your mouth. I--I think you'd better let your father pick out your novels."

"I don't want to," she said rebelliously. "I want _you_ to."

He looked at the beautiful, rebellious face and took a closer hold on the hidden hand.

"I wish you--I wish I could choose--everything for you," he said unsteadily.

"I wish so, too. You are exactly the sort of man I like."

"Do--do you mean it?"

"Why, yes," she replied, opening her splendid eyes. "Don't I show the pleasure I take in being with you?"

"But--would you tire of me if--if we always--forever----"

"Were friends? No."

"Mo-m-m-more than friends?" Then he choked.

The speculation in her wide eyes deepened. "What do you mean?" she asked curiously.

But again the lone note of the thumped piano signaled silence. In the sudden hush the poet opened his lids with a sticky smile and folded his hands over his abdomen, plump thumbs joined.

"_What_ do you mean?" repeated Lissa hurriedly, tightening her slender fingers around Harrow's.

"I mean--I mean----"

He turned in silence and their eyes met. A moment later her fingers relaxed limply in his; their hands were still in contact--but scarcely so; and so remained while the _Attitudes_ of Barnard Haw held the stage.

IX

There was a young wife behind the footlights explaining to a young man who was not her husband that her marriage vows need not be too seriously considered if he, the young man, found them too inconvenient. Which scared the young man, who was plainly a purveyor of heated air and a short sport. And, although she explained very clearly that if he needed her in his business he had better say so quick, the author's invention gave out just there and he called in the young wife's husband to help him out.

And all the while the battery of round blue eyes gazed on unwinking; the poet's dewlaps quivered with stored emotion, and the spellbound audience breathed as people breathe when the hostess at table attempts to smooth over a bad break by her husband.

"Is _that_ life?" whispered Cybele to Lethbridge, her sensitive mouth aquiver. "Did the author actually know such people? Do _you_? Is conscience really only an attitude? Is instinct the only guide? Am _I_--really--bad----"

"No, no," whispered Lethbridge; "all that is only a dramatist's attitude. Don't--don't look grieved! Why, every now and then some man discovers he can attract more attention by standing on his head. That is all--really, that is all. Barnard Haw on his feet is not amusing; but the same gentleman on his head is worth an orchestra-chair. When a man wears his trousers where other men wear their coats, people are bound to turn around. It is not a new trick. Mystes, the Argive comic poet, and the White Queen, taught this author the value of substituting 'is' for 'is not,' until, from standing so long inverted, he himself forgets what he means, and at this point the eminent brothers Rogers take up the important work.... Please, please, Cybele, _don't_ take it seriously!... If you look that way--if you are unhappy, I--I----"

A gentle snore from the poet transfixed the firing-line, but the snore woke up the poet and he mechanically pinched an atom out of the atmosphere, blinking at the stage.

"Precious--very, very precious," he murmured drowsily. "Thank you--thank everybody--" And he sank into an obese and noiseless slumber as the gray and silver curtain slowly fell. The applause, far from rousing him, merely soothed him; a honeyed smile hovered on his lips which formed the words "Thank you." That was all; the firing-line stirred, breathed deeply, and folded twelve soft white hands. Chlorippe, twelve, and Philodice, thirteen, yawned, pink-mouthed, sleepy-eyed; Dione, fourteen, laid her golden head on the shoulder of Aphrodite, fifteen.

The finger-tips of Lissa and Harrow still touched, scarcely clinging; they had turned toward one another when the curtain fell. But the play, to them, had been a pantomime of silhouettes, the stage, a void edged with flame--the scene, the audience, the theater, the poet himself as unreal and meaningless as the shadowy attitudes of the shapes that vanished when the phantom curtain closed its folds.

And through the subdued light, turning noiselessly, they peered at one another, conscious that naught else was real in the misty, golden-tinted gloom; that they were alone together there in a formless, soundless chaos peopled by shapes impalpable as dreams.

"_Now_ tell me," she said, her lips scarcely moving as the soft voice stirred them like carmine petals stirring in a scented breeze.

"Tell you that it is--love?"

"Yes, tell me."

"That I love you, Lissa?"

"Yes; that!"

He stooped nearer; his voice was steady and very low, and she leaned with bent head to listen, clear-eyed, intelligent, absorbed.

"So _that_ is love--what you tell me?"

"Yes--partly."

"And the other part?"

"The other part is when you find you love me."

"I--do. I think it must be love, because I can't bear to have you go away. Besides, I wish you to tell me--things."

"Ask me."

"Well--when two--like you and me, begin to love--what happens?"

"We confess it----"

"I do; I'm not ashamed.... Should I be? And then?"

"Then?" he faltered.

"Yes; do we kiss?... For I am curious to have you do it--I am so certain I shall adore you when you do.... I wish we could go away somewhere together.... But we can't do that until I am a bride, can we? Oh--do you really want me?"

"Can you ask?" he breathed.

"Ask? Yes--yes.... I love to ask! Your hand thrills me. We can't go away now, can we? It took Iole so long to be permitted to go away with Mr. Wayne--all that time lost in so many foolish ways--when a girl is so impatient.... Is it not strange how my heart beats when I look into your eyes? Oh, there can be no doubt about it, I am dreadfully in love.... And so quickly, too. I suppose it's because I am in such splendid health; don't you?"

"I--I--well----"

"Oh, I _do_ want to get up at once and go away with you! _Can't_ we? I could explain to father."

"Wait!" he gasped, "he--he's asleep. Don't speak--don't touch him."

"How unselfish you are," she breathed. "No, you are not hurting my fingers. Tell me more--about love and the blessed years awaiting us, and about our children--oh, is it not wonderful!"

"Ex--extremely," he managed to mutter, touching his suddenly dampened forehead with his handkerchief, and attempting to set his thoughts in some sort of order. He could not; the incoherence held him speechless, dazed, under the magic of this superb young being instinct with the soft fire of life.

Her loveliness, her innocence, the beautiful, direct gaze, the childlike fulness of mouth and contour of cheek and throat, left him spellbound. The very air around them seemed suffused with the vital glow of her youth and beauty; each breath they drew increased their wonder, till the whole rosy universe seemed thrilling and singing at their feet, and they two, love-crowned, alone, saw Time and Eternity flowing like a golden tide under the spell of Paradise.

"Jim!"

The hoarse whisper of Lethbridge shook the vision from him; he turned a flushed countenance to his friend; but Cybele spoke:

"We are very tired sitting here. We would like to take some tea at Sherry's," she whispered. "What do you think we had better do? It seems so--so futile to sit here--when we wish to be alone together----"

"You and Henry, too!" gasped Harrow.

"Yes; do you wonder?" She leaned swiftly in front of him; a fragrant breeze stirred his hair. "Lissa, I'm desperately infatuated with Mr. Lethbridge. Do you see any use in our staying here when I'm simply dying to have him all to myself somewhere?"

"No, it is silly. I wish to go, too. Shall we?"

"You need not go," began Cybele; then stopped, aware of the new magic in her sister's eyes. "Lissa! Lissa!" she said softly. "_You_, too! Oh, my dear--my dearest!"

"Dear, is it not heavenly? I--I--was quite sure that if I ever had a good chance to talk to a man I really liked something would happen. And it has."

"If Philodice might awaken father perhaps he would let us go now," whispered Cybele. "Henry says it does not take more than an hour----"

"To become a bride?"

"Yes; he knows a clergyman very near----"

"Do you?" inquired Lissa. Lethbridge nodded and gave a scared glance at Harrow, who returned it as though stunned.

"But--but," muttered the latter, "your father doesn't know who we are----"

"Oh, yes, he does," said Cybele calmly, "for he sent you the tickets and placed us near you so that if we found that we liked you we might talk to you----"

"Only he made a mistake in your name," added Lissa to Harrow, "for he wrote 'Stanley West, Esq.' on the envelope. I know because I mailed it."

"Invited West--put _you_ where you could--good God!"

"What is the matter?" whispered Lissa in consternation; "have--have I said anything I should not?" And, as he was silent: "What is it? Have I hurt you--I who----"

There was a silence; she looked him through and through and, after a while, deep, deep in his soul, she saw, awaking once again, all he had deemed dead--the truth, the fearless reason, the sweet and faultless instinct of the child whose childhood had become a memory. Then, once more spiritually equal, they smiled at one another; and Lissa, pausing to gather up her ermine stole, passed noiselessly out to the aisle, where she stood, perfectly self-possessed, while her sister joined her, smiling vaguely down at the firing-line and their lifted battery of blue, inquiring eyes.

The poet--and whether he had slumbered or not nobody but himself is qualified to judge--the poet pensively opened one eye and peeped at Harrow as that young man bent beside him with Lethbridge at his elbow.

"In sending those two tickets you have taught us a new creed," whispered Harrow; "you have taught us innocence and simplicity--you have taught us to be ourselves, to scorn convention, to say and do what we believe. Thank you."

"Dear friend," said the poet in an artistically-modulated whisper, "I have long, long followed you in the high course of your career. To me the priceless simplicity of poverty: to you the responsibility for millions. To me the daisy, the mountain stream, the woodchuck and my Art! To you the busy mart, the haunts of men, the ship of finance laden with a nation's wealth, the awful burden of millions for which you are answerable to One higher!" He raised one soft, solemn finger.

The young men gazed at one another, astounded. Lethbridge's startled eyes said, "He still takes you for Stanley West!"

"Let him!" flashed the grim answer back from the narrowing gaze of Harrow.

"Daughters," whispered the poet playfully, "are you so soon tired of the brilliant gems of satire which our master dramatist scatters with a lavish----"

"No," said Cybele; "we are only very much in love."

The poet sat up briskly and looked hard at Harrow.

"Your--your friend?" he began--"doubtless associated with you in the high----"

"We are inseparable," said Harrow calmly, "in the busy marts."

The sweetness of the poet's smile was almost overpowering.

"To discuss this sudden--ah--condition which so--ah--abruptly confronts a father, I can not welcome you to my little home in the wild--which I call the House Beautiful," he said. "I would it were possible. There all is quiet and simple and exquisitely humble--though now, through the grace of my valued son, there is no mortgage hanging like the brand of Damocles above our lowly roof. But I bid you welcome in the name of my son-in-law, on whom--I should say, _with_ whom--I and my babes are sojourning in this clamorous city. Come and let us talk, soul to soul, heart to heart; come and partake of what simples we have. Set the day, the hour. I thank you for understanding me."

"The hour," replied Harrow, "will be about five P.M. on Monday afternoon.... You see, we are going out now to--to----"

"To marry each other," whispered Lissa with all her sweet fearlessness. "Oh, dear! there goes that monotonous piano and we'll be blocking people's view!"

The poet tried to rise upon his great flat feet, but he was wedged too tightly; he strove to speak, to call after them, but the loud thumping notes of the piano drowned his voice.

"Chlorippe! Dione! Philodice! Tell them to stop! Run after them and stay them!" panted the poet.

"_You_ go!" pouted Dione.

"No, I don't want to," explained Chlorippe, "because the curtain is rising."

"I'll go," sighed Philodice, rising to her slender height and moving up the aisle as the children of queens moved once upon a time. She came back presently, saying: "Dear me, they're dreadfully in love, and they have driven away in two hansoms."

"Gone!" wheezed the poet.

"Quite," said Philodice, staring at the stage and calmly folding her smooth little hands.

X

When the curtain at last descended upon the parting attitudes of the players the poet arose with an alacrity scarcely to be expected in a gentleman of his proportions. Two and two his big, healthy daughters--there remained but four now--followed him to the lobby. When he was able to pack all four into a cab he did so and sent them home without ceremony; then, summoning another vehicle, gave the driver the directions and climbed in.

Half an hour later he was deposited under the bronze shelter of the porte-cochère belonging to an extremely expensive mansion overlooking the park; and presently, admitted, he prowled ponderously and softly about an over-gilded rococo reception-room. But all anxiety had now fled from his face; he coyly nipped the atmosphere at intervals as various portions of the furniture attracted his approval; he stood before a splendid canvas of Goya and pushed his thumb at it; he moused and prowled and peeped and snooped, and his smile grew larger and larger and sweeter and sweeter, until--dare I say it!--a low smooth chuckle, all but noiseless, rippled the heavy cheeks of the poet; and, raising his eyes, he beheld a stocky, fashionably-dressed and red-faced man of forty intently eying him. The man spoke decisively and at once:

"Mr. Guilford? Quite so. I am Mr. West."

"You are--" The poet's smile flickered like a sickly candle. "I--this is--are you Mr. _Stanley_ West?"

"I am."

"It must--it probably was your son----"

"I am unmarried," said the president of the Occidental tartly, "and the only Stanley West in the directory."

The poet swayed, then sat down rather suddenly on a Louis XIV chair which crackled. Several times he passed an ample hand over his features. A mechanical smile struggled to break out, but it was not _the_ smile, any more than glucose is sugar.

"Did--ah--_did_ you receive two tickets for the New Arts Theater--ah--Mr. West?" he managed to say at last.

"I did. Thank you very much, but I was not able to avail myself----"

"Quite so. And--ah--do you happen to know who it was that--ah--presented your tickets and occupied the seats this afternoon?"

"Why, I suppose it was two young men in our employ--Mr. Lethbridge, who appraises property for us, and Mr. Harrow, one of our brokers. May I ask why?"

For a long while the poet sat there, eyes squeezed tightly closed as though in bodily anguish. Then he opened one of them:

"They are--ah--quite penniless, I presume?"

"They have prospects," said West briefly. "Why?"

The poet rose; something of his old attitude returned; he feebly gazed at a priceless Massero vase, made a half-hearted attempt to join thumb and forefinger, then rambled toward the door, where two spotless flunkies attended with his hat and overcoat.

"Mr. Guilford," said West, following, a trifle perplexed and remorseful, "I should be very--er--extremely happy to subscribe to the New Arts Theater--if that is what you wished."

"Thank you," said the poet absently as a footman invested him with a seal-lined coat.

"Is there anything more I could do for you, Mr. Guilford?"

The poet's abstracted gaze rested on him, then shifted.

"I--I don't feel very well," said the poet hoarsely, sitting down in a hall-seat. Suddenly he began to cry, fatly.

Nobody did anything; the stupefied footman gaped; West looked, walked nervously the length of the hall, looked again, and paced the inlaid floor to and fro, until the bell at the door sounded and a messenger-boy appeared with a note scribbled on a yellow telegraph blank:

"Lethbridge and I just married and madly happy. Will be on hand Monday, sure. Can't you advance us three months' salary?

"HARROW."

"Idiots!" said West. Then, looking up: "What are you waiting for, boy?"

"Me answer," replied the messenger calmly.

"Oh, you were told to bring back an answer?"

"Ya-as."

"Then give me your pencil, my infant Chesterfield." And West scribbled on the same yellow blank:

"Checks for you on your desks Monday. Congratulations. I'll see you through, you damfools.

"WEST."

"Here's a quarter for you," observed West, eying the messenger.

"T'anks. Gimme the note."

West glanced at the moist, fat poet; then suddenly that intuition which is bred in men of his stamp set him thinking. And presently he tentatively added two and two.

"Mr. Guilford," he said, "I wonder whether this note--and my answer to it--concerns you."

The poet used his handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun breaking through a drizzle--like the glory of a search-light dissolving a sticky fog, _the_ smile of smiles illuminated everything: footmen, messenger, financier.

"Thank you," he said thickly; "thank you for your thought. Thought is but a trifle to bestow--a little thing in itself. But it is the little things that are most important--the smaller the thing the more vital its importance, until"--he added in a genuine burst of his old eloquence--"the thing becomes so small that it isn't anything at all, and then the value of nothing becomes so enormous that it is past all computation. That is a very precious thought! Thank you for it; thank you for understanding. Bless you!"

Exuding a rich sweetness from every feature the poet moved toward the door at a slow fleshy waddle, head wagging, small eyes half closed, thumbing the atmosphere, while his lips moved in wordless self-communion: "The attainment of nothing at all--that is rarest, the most precious, the most priceless of triumphs--very, very precious. So"--and his glance was sideways and nimbly intelligent--"so if nothing at all is of such inestimable value, those two young pups can live on their expectations--_quod erat demonstrandum_."

He shuddered and looked up at the façade of the gorgeous house which he had just quitted.

"So many sunny windows to sit in--to dream in. I--I should have found it agreeable. Pups!"

Crawling into his cab he sank into a pulpy mound, partially closing his eyes. And upon his pursed-up lips, unuttered yet imminent, a word trembled and wabbled as the cab bounced down the avenue. It may have been "precious"; it was probably "pups!"

XI

But there were further poignant emotions in store for the poet, for, as his cab swung out of the avenue and drew up before the great house on the southwest corner of Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, he caught a glimpse of his eldest daughter, Iole, vanishing into the house, and, at the same moment, he perceived his son-in-law, Mr. Wayne, paying the driver of a hansom-cab, while several liveried servants bore houseward the luggage of the wedding journey.

"George!" he cried dramatically, thrusting his head from the window of his own cab as that vehicle drew up with a jolt that made his stomach vibrate, "George! I am here!"

Wayne looked around, paid the hansom-driver, and, advancing slowly, offered his hand as the poet descended to the sidewalk. "How are you?" he inquired without enthusiasm as the poet evinced a desire to paw him. "All is well here, I hope."

"George! Son!" The poet gulped till his dewlap contracted. He laid a large plump hand on Wayne's shoulders. "Where are my lambs?" he quavered; "where are they?"

"Which lambs?" inquired the young man uneasily. "If you mean Iole and Vanessa----"

"No! My ravished lambs! Give me my stolen lambs. Trifle no longer with a father's affections! Lissa!--Cybele! Great Heavens! Where are they?" he sobbed hoarsely.

"Well, _where_ are they?" retorted his son-in-law, horrified. "Come into the house; people in the street are looking."

In the broad hall the poet paused, staggered, strove to paw Wayne, then attempted to fold his arms in an attitude of bitter scorn.

"Two penniless wastrels," he muttered, "are wedded to my lambs. But there are laws to invoke----"

An avalanche of pretty girls in pink pajamas came tumbling down the bronze and marble staircase, smothering poet and son-in-law in happy embraces; and "Oh, George!" they cried, "how sunburned you are! So is Iole, but she is too sweet! Did you have a perfectly lovely honeymoon? When is Vanessa coming? And how is Mr. Briggs? And--oh, do you know the news? Cybele and Lissa married two such extremely attractive young men this afternoon----"

"Married!" cried Wayne, releasing Dione's arms from his neck. "_Whom_ did they marry?"

"Pups!" sniveled the poet--"penniless, wastrel pups!"

"Their names," said Aphrodite coolly, from the top of the staircase, "are James Harrow and Henry Lethbridge. I wish there had been three----"

"Harrow! Lethbridge!" gasped Wayne. "When"--he turned helplessly to the poet--"when did they do this?"

Through the gay babble of voices and amid cries and interruptions, Wayne managed to comprehend the story. He tried to speak, but everybody except the poet laughed and chatted, and the poet, suffused now with a sort of sad sweetness, waved his hand in slow unctuous waves until even the footmen's eyes protruded.

"It's all right," said Wayne, raising his voice; "it's topsyturvy and irregular, but it's all right. I've known Harrow and Leth--For Heaven's sake, Dione, don't kiss me like that; I want to talk!--You're hugging me too hard, Philodice. Oh, Lord! _will_ you stop chattering all together! I--I--Do you want the house to be pinched?"

He glanced up at Aphrodite, who sat astride the banisters lighting a cigarette. "Who taught you to do that?" he cried.

"I'm sixteen, now," she said coolly, "and I thought I'd try it."