Chapter 21

SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK.

Jan. 10.

To-day has been heaven!

There was a famous lawyer among Aunt's guests and a United States Senator and a real author, a woman who has written books; but people brushed past them all for a word with me!

And I'm going to the Opera! I shall sit in a box. Mrs. Van Dam says I'll make the sensation of the season! I'm going to the Opera!

When men came this morning with palms and flowers to decorate the house, I ran off to the Park. I did almost run, really. There was a song at my lips: "Gladdest, oh, gladdest, most beautiful in the world; blessed, most blessed, most beautiful in the world!" and the "tap-tap" of horses' feet on the asphalt, the "b-r-r-r-rp" of the cable cars and the rattle of elevated trains kept time, until all the city seemed ringing with my joy.

I know it's foolish; if I had been beautiful from my childhood; if I could have grown up to think of it as a matter of course; if I had been used to the awe of men and women's envy, I might think less about it, might even fancy that I would have preferred learning or wealth--for we all love what we have not. But now--it is so new, so marvellous!

I had plenty of things to think about when I could calm myself. Only yesterday I'd had a long talk with Prof. Darmstetter.

"The experiment is not yet complete," he declared. He had asked me to stay for--but that is a part of the secret which is to pass with this record from me to all women.

"You are beautiful," he said; "mein Gott, yes! More beautiful t'an any ot'er voman since t'e appearance of man on eart'. But perfectly beautiful? I do not know; I t'ink not yet. Who can tell for v'at ultimate perfection Nature destined t'e human body? But we shall see. T'at perfection you shall reach. In a veek, a mont', t'ree mont's--I cannot tell. Ve must vait and experiment and still vait, but success is assured--absolute success. I shall gif it. I do not know if t'e human type is t'e highest t'at eart' is capable of supporting, but it is t'e highest present type, and it shall be my vork to gif it t'at for v'ich it has hungered and t'irsted, and towards v'ich slowly it has groped its vay; it shall be my vork to gif humanity beauty and perfection."

The light that illumined his yellow, wrinkled face made me cry out:--

"All the world will bless you! All women will be grateful as I am grateful--"

"Ach!" he snapped with a sudden change of countenance. "I shall be von more name and date to make harter t'e student's lessons and longer t'e tables--t'at is gratitude! Vit' t'e vorld we haf at present no concern. For t'is, indeed, you bless me--t'at I am not a quack to make public an incomplete discofery, for ot'er quacks to do mischief. You are glad t'at it is vit' you alone I concern myself. But you are not grateful; you are happy because I say t'at you shall be yet more beautiful; t'at is not gratitude. You might--"

At the eager shrillness of his voice I drew a step away.

"Indeed I'm grateful, whether you believe it or not!" I cried. "You think all women so selfish! Of course I'm glad that I alone am in the secret, but you proposed it yourself, and I rejoice as much as you do that some day--by and by--other women will be happy as I am happy--"

"Yes--by and by! You emphasize t'at," he snapped mockingly, but then he recovered himself and his queer new deference. "And you haf t'e right; I vish you to rechoice in your own lofeliness. Ve haf engaged toget'er in t'is great vork, and it is vell t'at we bot' haf our revards--I t'at I aggomblish somet'ing for t'e benefit of my kind, and you--since vomen cannot lofe t'eir kind, but only intifiduals--you haf t'e happy lofe t'at is necessary to a voman."

His eyes rested on my ring.

I couldn't tell him--proud as I am of it--that John had loved me before I ever heard of the Bacillus. But I could punish his gibes.

"Oh, by the way--I'm not coming to-morrow," I said. "My Aunt is to give a tea."

Strange to see him struggle with his disappointment like a grieving child! But he bravely rallied.

"T'at is goot," he said, "you shall tell me v'at people t'ink of you. You vish to go about--to be admired; you vish to gif up science; not so?"

"Oh, no! I couldn't be a doll, for men to look at and then tire of me. I must study the harder--to be worthy--"

The look of his face, of the thin, straight-lipped mouth, the keen old eyes, stopped me.

"You vill not gif up study now, at least," he sneered; "not until you haf t'e perfect beauty. You haf need of me."

Prof. Darmstetter is so irritating! Why, he has just as much need of me! He himself said I was the best subject he could find for the experiment. But even if he had finished his work with the Bacillus, he'd rather teach me, a despised woman, all the science I could master than develop the budding talent of the brightest Columbia boy. The sight of my beauty is a joy to him. Really, I pity the poor man. He makes the great discovery when he's himself too old to profit by it; the Bacillus will not work against Nature. It has brought him only a hopeless longing--

But I shall study. He shall see! Not in the laboratory, of course; that is hardly fitting now. I wouldn't go there again except for the lure of promised beauty--can more loveliness be possible? But I do feel the responsibility of beauty. The wisest and best will crowd about me, and they must find my words worthy the lips that shape them and the voice that utters. And I shall learn from their wisdom.

"There was Hypatia; she was both beautiful and learned," I found myself confiding to a gray squirrel in the Park, and then I laughed and ran home to make my last preparations.

Ethel arranged my hair to-day, though I could hardly yield her the delight of its shining, long undulations. Then she did Milly's as nearly like mine as possible, and Milly did hers. The girls wore white like me, and my aunt was in black. The house was full of flowers; as if it had plunged into seas of them, it dripped with an odourous rosy foam. John sent a box--the extravagant boy!--and there were big American Beauty roses, with stems as long as walking sticks from Pros. and Cadge. Milly had flowers, too, from Mr. Hynes.

At first I wasn't a bit afraid, while acquaintances were dropping in one by one--Mrs. Magoun, Mrs. Crosby, the wife of the managing clerk in Uncle's office, Aunt Marcia--all allies.

Then there came a stir at the door, the magnetic thrill that foreruns a Somebody. And there upon the threshold stood a tall, dashing girl, superbly turned out; not handsome, but fine-looking, dark, decisive, vital--a creature born to command.

I knew her at the first glance. She was the General!

I was for a moment surprised to see her so young and girlish, though I might have known; for she was Milly's schoolmate. I doubt if she's two years my senior, but in social arts and finesse--ah, the difference!

The house seemed to belong to her from the moment she entered. She moved like a whirlwind--a well-mannered and exquisitely dressed whirlwind, of course--with an air of abounding vigour and vitality, up to where we stood, and there stopped short.

"How d'y'do?" she said, in the clipped New York fashion, looking at me with the confidence of one who is never at a loss--and then--

Oh, the joy! For all her _savoir faire_, it was her turn to be confused. For a moment she peered at me with a short-sighted squint; then after a little hesitation, she put up her lorgnette, making an impatient gesture, as if to say: "I can't help it; I _must_"--and stared.

Her eyes grew big as she gazed; but at last she drew a long breath, and put down the quizzing-glass with an effect of self-denial. When she spoke there was little to remind me of her momentary loss of self-command.

"Are you enjoying New York?" she demanded.

"Milly tells me you've never been in the city before; that you are studying at Barnard."

"Yes."

I knew that I had impressed this strong, splendid woman, but I was a little afraid of her.

Quite herself again, she began asking questions about myself, my home, my studies; quick, probing, confusing questions, while in my cheeks the awkward colour came and went. But it would never have occurred to me to parry her queries. I could not help liking her, though when at last she left me and began a progress through the rooms, I drew a breath of relief, like one who has passed with credit a stiff examination.

At the door of the dining-room she paused again, judging through her glass the table and its dainty decorations.

"Those flowers are rather high," she declared, and calling upon Milly for help, she began rearranging the roses, and laying the twigs of holly upon the cloth in bolder patterns. She seemed to take charge, to adopt me with the house, to accept and audit and vouch for us.

Then people began coming all at once, all together, and I had to take my place beside Mrs. Baker and Aunt Marcia in the reception room.

I can't tell anything about the next hour; it's a blur. But I wouldn't have missed a minute. I had never before seen a reception, except at the University where sometimes I used to serve as an usher, pouncing upon people as they entered and leading them up to the row of Professors and Professors' wives backed against the wall. But now I had to stand up myself and meet people. And oh, that was different!

At first two or three women would approach, putting out their hands at an absurd height, and start to say: "How d' you--" or "I'm so--"

And Aunt would make some excited, half-coherent remark and look at me, anxiously but proudly, and say my name.

But they never heard her! As they really saw me, each in turn would start, and, wide-eyed, look again. And as the awe and wonder grew in their faces--as there came the little stop, the gasp, that told how their reserve was for once overthrown, then, to the utmost, I tasted the sweet of power and felt the thrill of ecstasy.

Red spots burned in Aunt's cheeks; she talked fast in her company voice, and somehow the lace at her throat got awry. Aunt Marcia was as calm and stately in her soft black velvet as if nothing were happening. And really there was little to disturb one's composure. New Yorkers aren't like our whole-souled, emotional Western folks. Not one of these women but would have suffered torture rather than betray her surprise beyond that first irrepressible gasp of amazement. After that one victory of human nature, they would make talk about the weather, or the newest book, and then get away to discuss me in undertones in the hall or drawing room.

Quickly the sixth sense of a strange agitation went through the house. I knew what they were all talking about, thinking about. Subtle waves of thought seemed to catch up each new comer so that she felt, without being told, that something extraordinary was happening. Women now approached not unprepared; but for all their bracing against the shock, not one could be quite nonchalant at the first sight of my superb, compelling beauty.

My eyes flashed, my pulse rioted as I felt the vibrant excitement of the gathering, the tiptoe eagerness to reach our neighbourhood, the hush that fell upon the circle immediately around me, the reaction of overgay laugh and chatter in the far corners.

Oh, it was lovely, lovely! No girl could have been quite unmoved to feel that all those soft lights were glowing in her honour, those masses of flowers blooming, all that warmth and perfume of elegance and luxury wafted as incense to her nostrils. And the undercurrent of suppressed excitement, the sensation of Her!

At times I grew impatient of conventionality. How was it possible for these people to look so quietly, eye to eye, upon the most vitally perfect of living beings? How could they turn from me to orange frappé or salted almonds?

Once or twice I caught some faint echo of the talk about us.

"Where is she?" asked one voice, made by curiosity more penetrating than its owner realised.

"Julia's seen her; she's talked and talked till I had to come."

"And she's still studying?"--Another voice--"How can she? Great beauty and great scientist--bizarre combination!"

How that would amuse Prof. Darmstetter!

By and by I saw John towering above the others while he bobbed about helplessly in the sea of women's heads that filled the rooms and even rose upon the "bleachers," as he calls the stairs. There were not really so very many people, but he didn't know how to reach us, he is so awkward. When he had steered his course among the women and had spoken to my Aunt, his face was radiant as he turned to me.

"I knew _you_ wouldn't fail us, Mr. Burke," Aunt said hurriedly. "Mrs. Marshall--so glad--this is--Nelly, dear--"

Behind John was a lady waiting to meet me.

"--So glad you've come," I said to him; and the words sounded curiously to me because in my excitement I also had spoken in my "company voice."

But I had no time to say another word to him, as I turned to greet Mrs. Marshall.

He mumbled something, flushing, while his eyes devoured my beauty in one dumb, worshipping look. Then he dropped quickly out of our group. I was sorry, but he'll understand that I was flurried. He ought to learn self-control, though; he shouldn't look at me before so many people with all his heart in his eyes.

And I was so vexed about his clothes, too! His old, long, black coat, such as lawyers wear in the West, would have been pretty nearly right--something like what the other men wore--but he seemed to think it was not good enough, and had put on a brand new business suit. Of course there wasn't another man there so clad, but he never seemed to notice how absurd he was.

The Viewing of the Pack didn't last long. Before my cheeks had ceased flaming, before I had grown used to standing there to be looked at, people seemed to go, all at once, as suddenly as they had arrived.

Just as the last ones were leaving, some instinct told me that Mr. Hynes had come. Before I saw him, I felt his gaze upon me, a wondering, glad look, as if I were Eve, the first and only woman.

Milly brought him to me and left us together, but at first he was almost curt in his effort to hide his sensibility to my beauty--as if that were a weakness!--and I was furiously shy, and felt somehow that I must hold him at still greater distance.

"Am I never again to hear you sing?" he asked. "Sweet sounds that have given a new definition to music are still vibrating in my memory."

I knew he was thinking of Christmas!

"I don't often sing, except for Joy," I mumbled; "I've had so few lessons."

"Joy doesn't know her joys; but--wouldn't she share them?"

"Sometime--perhaps--"

I couldn't answer him, for hot and cold waves of shyness and pleasure were running over me. Oh, I hope, for Milly's sake, he doesn't dislike me. He seems to feel so intensely, to be so alive!

When he had gone, I went to the dining-room with Aunt Marcia, and found there Ethel and the General and Peggy Van Dam, the General's cousin, a pale girl, all eyes and teeth. Kitty was with them, and she darted towards me, but Mrs. Van Dam was before her.

"Sit down, both of you," she commanded.

She fairly put us into chairs, and brought us cups of something--I don't know what.

Aunt Marcia breathed a little sigh of relief.

"Helen," she said, "you haven't been standing too long?"

"It wasn't an instant! I could stand all day!"

Mrs. Van Dam smiled, and I felt _gauche_, like a schoolgirl. I am so impulsive!

"It was all delightful!" cried Kitty; "and yet--while you were my chum, Helen, I _did_ think you rather good-looking!"

"You find yourself mistaken?" the General inquired.

"Oh, no-o-o; not exactly; a beautiful girl, certainly; but--oh, I could have made pincushions of some of those pudgy women, nibbling wafers, and delivering themselves of lukewarm appreciations! 'Too tall'--'too short'--'too dark'--'too light'; 'I like your height bettah, my deah.' Helen, you dairymaid, powder! Plaster over that 'essentially improbable' colour."

Mrs. Van Dam broke out laughing at Kitty's mimicry. I wish the child wouldn't let her hair straggle in front of her ears and look so harum-scarum.

"I doubt if we have had many harsh critics," said Miss Baker.

"Not a thing to criticise," cried Aunt Frank, entering just then and catching the last word. "Everybody so interested in Nelly! Bake, if you'd only come earlier, I'd have been perfectly satisfied."

They say that Uncle Timothy can never be coaxed home to one of his wife's receptions, but he answered with great solemnity, as he loomed up behind the little woman:--

"I am privileged to be here, even at the eleventh hour. I could not wholly deny myself the sight of so much youth and bloom."

"Don't be hypocritical, Judge," said the General reprovingly. "You're too big and honest to achieve graceful deceit. But before I go--I've seats for the Opera Monday night in Mother's box. Miss Winship must come, and--" her glance deliberated briefly--"and Milly."

Milly cried, "How delightful, Meg!" But my tongue tripped and my cheeks flamed as I tried to say that I had never seen an opera and to thank my new friend.

Little she heeded my lack of words. Gazing at me once again as she had upon first seeing me, she exclaimed:--

"You great, glorious creature! They sha'n't hive you in a schoolroom; you must come out and show yourself; why, you'll set New York in a furore!"

I think she's splendid.

No sooner was she gone than I was summoned to the reception-room, and Cadge rushed to meet me. She looked much smarter than Kitty, with her black hair curled and her keen eyes shining with excitement.

"All over but the shouting?" she asked. "Meant to get here in season to see you knock 'em in the Old Kent Road, but woman proposes, Big Tom disposes. Shall I turn in a paragraph? Just--did you have music? What's your dress--in the Sunday society slush, of course, not the daily; 'fraid the _Star_ won't take over a stick--. Greek a little bit? M-m-m--not modistic exactly, but--but--."

Her abrupt sentences grew slower, paused, dropped to an awestruck whisper, as she looked upon me. She added in her gravest manner: "Say, you're the loveliest ever happened! The--very--limit!"

But awe and Cadge could not long live together. In a moment her mouth took a comically benevolent quirk.

"And 'among those present'--" she asked; "who was that leaving just as I got here?"

"Mrs. Robert Van Dam, schoolmate of my cousins. But you're not writing me up, Cadge?"

Cadge whistled.

"Van Dam! How calmly the giddy child says it! Does your youngest cousin make mud pies with duchesses? Say, she comes pretty near being one of the '400.' But I'm off; a grist of copy to grind--talk of raving beauties, you'll be the only one that won't rave!"

Of course Cadge wouldn't have talked just like that before the others, if she had come earlier.

At bedtime Milly and Ethel ran to my room to talk things over, and my Aunt came to shoo them off to bed, but she stayed and talked, too; and I've no business to be writing at this shocking time of night, except, of course I couldn't sleep and so I might as well.

"Everybody thinks you resemble your cousins," Aunt said; "and really there _is_ a family likeness."

Poor Aunt! Ethel and Milly are washed out copies of me, in dress and hair, if that constitutes resemblance; and they imitate even my mannerisms.

I should think Mr. Hynes would be too critical to admire Milly.

I had a partial engagement for Monday with John; but he'll let me off, to go to the Opera.