Chapter 10

THE GODDESS AND THE MOB.

As we descended the stairway and passed groups of students in front of the bulletin boards in the hall, Helen said:--

"I am afraid you shouldn't have called for me. It isn't usual here."

"We'll introduce the custom. How could I help coming--after yesterday? Helen--"

"Have you seen Grant's tomb?" she inquired hastily. "It's just beyond the college buildings, hidden by them. You mustn't miss it, after coming so far."

We had issued on the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of the stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at her brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and feather boa.

The sun's rays, striking across the river, played hide-and-seek in her shimmering hair, warming it to gold and touching the rose of her cheeks to a clear radiance. Her eyes were scintillant with changing, flashing lights.

"Well?" she challenged at last, half daring, half afraid. "You know me to-day?"

"You are a sun goddess. Helen, what does it mean?"

"New York agrees vit' me," Her laugh was irresistible--low and sweet, a laugh that made the glad day brighter. "How not? It is vun fine large city."

We laughed together to the memory of _Actinia_.

"I am a goot organism. T'e bat organisms vish to scratch me; but t'ey are not so fery bat. In time ve may teach t'em gootness."

"If Darmstetter doesn't think you a perfect organism, he must be hard to satisfy. He's a peculiar organism himself. Has he true loves among sand stars or jelly fish, or does he confine his affections to sea anemones?"

"Prof. Darmstetter is a great biologist. It's a shame he has to teach. Don't you think such a man should be free to devote himself to original work? He might in England, you know, if he were a fellow of a University. But we're proud of him at Barnard; and the laboratory--oh, it's the most fascinating place!"

We came slowly down the Boulevard, looking out at the sweep of the Hudson, while she talked of her studies and her college mates, trying, I thought, to keep me from other topics.

I scarcely noticed her words; her voice was in my ears, fresh and musical. The new grace of her shining head and wondrous, swaying figure, the beauty and spirit of her carriage, filled my consciousness. A schooner with a deck load of wood drifted with the tide, her sails flapping; I saw her in a blur. When I turned from the sheen of the river, the bicyclists whizzing past left streaks of light. A man cutting brush in a vacant lot leaned on his axe to look after us. The sudden stopping of his "chop, chop"--he too was staring at the vision of beauty before his eyes--brought me out of my revery.

"Nelly," I said, "your father will expect a letter from me. What shall I say?"

"Tell him I am studying hard and like the city."

"But about us--about you and me?"

"Must we talk of that here--on the street?"

She spoke almost pleadingly, with the same soft clouding of her loveliness that I had seen the day before?

"But I must speak," I said. "You were right yesterday, I won't ask anything of you until I have made a start; but I must know that you still love me; that will be enough. I can wait. I won't hurry you. That is all, Helen. Everything shall be as you wish; but--you do love me?"

"Oh, you great tease! Why, I suppose I do; but--so much has happened, I don't know myself now; you didn't know me when you first saw me here. Why can't you wait and--don't you hope New York vill agree vit' you?"

She laughed with tantalizing roguery. "You _do_ love me!" I cried. "And we shall be so happy with all our dreams come true--happy to be together and here! If you knew how I have looked forward to coming, and now--yesterday I thought myself insane, but I wasn't! You are the most marvellous--"

"Am I? Oh, I'm glad! So glad!"

I was confused, overjoyed at her sudden sparkle; the soft, flashing light of her was fire and dew. She made visible nature sympathize with her moods. The sky smiled and was pensive with her.

"But see," she cried with another of her bewildering changes; "we're at Columbia."

We had left the Boulevard, and were approaching the white-domed library.

"Look at the inscription," Helen said, as students carrying notebooks began to pass us. "'KING'S COLLEGE FOUNDED UNDER GEORGE II.' Doesn't that seem old after the State University? Ours, I mean."

Our inspection was brief. Before the open admiration of the students Helen seemed, like a poising creature of air and sunshine, fairly to take wing for flight.

"Tell me about yourself," she commanded, when we were beyond the flights of terraced steps. "You are really in Judge Baker's office? You--you _won't_ say anything more?"

"You--darling! You have almost said you love me; do you know that? Well, I'll be considerate. I will work and I will wait and I will believe--no, I'll be certain that some day a woman more beautiful than the Greeks imagined when they dreamed of goddesses who loved mortal men will come to me and, because it is true, will quite say 'I love you.' But I may not always be patient; for you do. After all, you are Nelly!"

I was almost faint with love of her and wonder; I adored her the more for the earnestness with which she lifted her flushed, smiling, innocent face to say:

"But tell me about the office, _please_. You wouldn't want me to say--would you, if I wasn't sure? Isn't the Judge the most delightful man? So--not pompous, you know; but so good. Don't you like Judge Baker?"

"I love you! Oh, yes, the Judge says, 'if we are confronted with an ugly duckling we must congratulate the swan.' Were you ever an ugly duckling? I'm sure you love me, Helen."

"Did he say that? Well, even when I last saw him why that was nearly two weeks ago--I--oh, I was an ugly duckling!"

We laughed like children. In the sunshine of her joy-lit eyes I forgot the miracle of it, forgot everything except that I had reached New York and Nelly, and that the world was beautiful when she looked upon it.

We came down from Cathedral Heights; and as we boarded a train on the elevated, eyes peered around newspapers. An old gentleman wiped his glasses and readjusted them, his lips forming the words, "most extraordinary," and again, "most extraordinary!" A thin, transparent-looking woman followed the direction of his glance and querulously touched his elbow. Two slender girls looked and whispered.

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 scrap 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 pass without seeing my darling.

It was a relief to leave the neighbourhood of Sixth Avenue and cross to the open space 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 "Marseillaise" 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.