Chapter 8

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD.

Both girls ran to the window. Miss Reid laughed teasingly. "I see nobody--or all the world; it's much the same," she said; "but you have a caller."

I rose from behind the desk with some confused, trivial thought that I ought to have spent part of the afternoon getting my hair cut.

I had had but a glimpse of the new comer in her flight across the floor; I knew she had scarlet lips and shining eyes; that youth and joy and unimagined beauty had entered with her like a burst of sunlight and flooded the room. I felt, rather than saw, that she had turned from the window and was looking at me, curiously at first, then smiling. Her smile had bewildered me when she opened the door; it was a soft, flashing light that shone from her face and blessed the air. She seemed surrounded by an aureole.

But she--how could this wonderful girl know me?--she surely was smiling! She was coming towards me. She was putting out her hands. That glorious voice was speaking.

"John! Is it you? I'm so glad!" it said.

Had I read about her? Had I seen her picture? Had Helen described her in a letter? Was she Cadge? No; not altogether a stranger; somewhere before I had seen--or dreamed--

"John," she persisted. "Why didn't you write? I thought you were coming next week. Did you plan to surprise me?"

Miss Reid must have made a mistake, I felt; I must explain that I was waiting for Helen. But I could not speak; I could only gape, choking and giddy. I did not speak when the bright vision seemed to take the hands I had not offered. I could feel the blood beat in my neck. I could not think; and yet I knew that a real woman stood before me, albeit unlike all the other women that ever lived in the world; and that something surprised and perplexed her. The smile still curved her lips; I felt myself grin in idiotic imitation.

"What is the matter?" the radiant stranger persisted. "You act as if--"

The smile grew sunnier; it rippled to a laugh that was merriment set to music.

"John! John Burke!" she said, giving my hands a little, impatient shake, just as Nelly used to do. "It isn't possible! Don't you--why, you goose! Don't you know me?"

"Helen!"

Of course! I had known her from the beginning! A man couldn't be in the same room with Nelly Winship and feel just as if she were any other girl. But she was not Helen at all--that radiant impossibility! And yet she was. Or she said so, and my heart agreed. But when I would have drawn her to me, she stepped back in lovely confusion, with a fluttered question:--

"How long have you been here, John?"

That voice! Sweet, fresh; full of exquisite cadences such as one might hear in dreams and ever after yearn for--from the first it had baffled me more than the beautiful face. It was not Helen's. What a blunder!

I gazed at her, still giddy. Who was she? I could not trust the astounding recognition. She returned the look, bending towards me, seeking as eagerly, I saw with confused wonderment, to read my thought as I to fathom hers. Then, as some half knowledge grew to certainty, the light of her beauty became a glory; she seemed transfigured by a mighty joy such as no other woman could ever have felt.

An instant she stood motionless, the sunshine of her eyes still on me. Then, drawing a long breath, she turned away, pulling the pins out of her feathered hat with hands that trembled.

I watched the process with the strained attention one gives at crucial moments to nothings. I laughed out of sheer inanity; every pulse in my body was throbbing. She lifted the hat from her shining head. She put it down. She unfastened her coat. In a minute she would turn again, and I should once more see that face imbued with light and fire. I waited for her voice.

"I'm sure of it!" she cried, wheeling about of a sudden, with a laugh like caressing music, and confronting me again. "You didn't know me, John; did you?"

"Why didn't I know you?" I gasped. "Why are you glad I don't know you? What does it all mean, Helen?"

Instead of answering she laughed again. It was the happiest joy-song in the world. A mirthful goddess might have trilled it--a laugh like sunshine and flowers and chasing cloud shadows on waving grass.

"Helen Winship, stop it! Stop this masquerade!" I shouted, not knowing what I did.

"But I--I'm afraid I can't, John."

The glorious face brimmed with mischief. In vain the Woman Perfect struggled to subdue her mirth to penitence.

"I--I'm so glad to see you, John. Won't you--won't you sit down and let Kitty give you some tea?"

Tea! At that moment!

Clattering little blue and white cups and saucers, Miss Reid recalled herself to my remembrance. I had forgotten that she was in the room. I suspect that she dared not lift her head for fear I might see the laughter in her eyes.

"I've made it extra strong, Mr. Burke," she managed to say, "because I'm starting for the _Star_ office to find the photo-engravers routing the noses and toeses off all my best beastesses."

"Kitty thinks all photo-engravers the embodiment of original sin," said the Shining One. "They clip her bears' claws."

"Well," returned Miss Reid, making a flat parcel of her drawings, "this is the den of Beauty and the beasts, and the beasts must be worthy of Beauty. Mr. Burke, don't you know from what county of fairyland Helen hails? Is she the Maiden Snow-white--but no; see her blush--or the Princess Marvel? And if she's Cinderella, can't we have a peep at the fairy godmother? Cadge will call her nothing but 'H. the M.'--short for 'Helen the Magnificent.' And--and--oh, isn't she!"

"Kathryn!"

Before that grieved organ-tone of reproach, Kitty's eyes filled. I could have wept at the greatness and the beauty of it, but the little artist laughed through her tears.

"Helen Eliza, I repent," she said. "Time to be good, Mr. Burke, when she says 'Kathryn.'"

Adjusting her hat before a glass, Kitty hummed with a voice that tried not quaver:--

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, Am I most beautiful of all?

"Queen, thou art not the fairest now; Snow-white over the mountain's brow A thousand times fairer is than thou.

"Poor Queen; poor all of us. I'm good, Helen," she repeated, whisking out of the room.

"Such a chatterbox!" the goddess said. "But, John, am I really so much altered? Is it true that--just at first, you know, of course--you didn't know me?"

She bent on me the breathless look I had seen before. In her eagerness, it was as if the halo of joy that surrounded her were quivering.

"I know you now; you are my Helen!"

Again I would have caught her in my arms; but she moved uneasily.

"Wait--I--you haven't told me," she stammered; "I--I want to talk to you, John."

She put out a hand as if to fend me off, then let it fall. A sudden heart sickness came upon me. It was not her words, not the movement that chilled me, but the paling of the wonderful light of her face, the look that crept over it, as if I had startled a nymph to flight. I was angry with my clumsy self that I should have caused that look, and yet--from my own Helen, not this lovely, poising creature that hardly seemed to touch the earth--I should have had a different greeting!

I gazed at her from where I stood, then I turned to the window. The rattle of street cars came up from below. A child was sitting on the bench where I had sat and feasted my eyes upon the flutter of Helen's curtains. My numb brain vaguely speculated whether that child could see me. The sun had gone, the square was wintry.

After a long minute Helen followed me.

"John," she said, "I am so glad to see you; but I--I want to tell you. Everything here is so new, I--I don't--"

It must all be true; I remember her exact words. They came slowly, hesitated, stopped.

"Are you--what do you mean, Helen?"

"Let me tell you; let me think. Don't--please don't be angry."

Through the fog that enveloped me I felt her distress and smarted from the wrong I did so beautiful a creature.

"I--I didn't expect you so soon," the music sighed pleadingly. "I--we mustn't hurry about--what we used to talk of. New York is so different!--Oh, but it isn't that! How shall I make you understand?"

"I understand enough," I said dully; "or rather--Great Heavens!--I understand nothing; nothing but that--you are taking back your promise, aren't you? Or Helen's promise; whose was it?"

I could not feel as if I were speaking to my sweetheart. The figure before me wore her pearl-set Kappa key--the badge of her college fraternity; it wore, too, a trim, dark blue dress--Helen's favourite colour and mine--but there resemblance seemed to stop.

Confused as I still was by the glory I gazed on, I began painfully comparing the Nelly I remembered and the Helen I had found. My Helen was not quite so tall, but at twenty girls grow. She did not sway with the yielding grace of a young white birch; but she was slim and straight, and girlish angles round easily to curves. Though I felt a subtle and wondrous change, I could not trace or track the miracle.

My Helen had blue-gray eyes; this Helen's eyes might, in some lights, be blue-gray; they seemed of as many tints as the sea. They were dark, luminous and velvet soft as they watched my struggle. A few minutes earlier they had been of extraordinary brilliancy.

My Helen had soft brown hair, like and how unlike these fragrant locks that lay in glinting waves with life and sparkle in every thread!

My Helen's face was expressive, piquantly irregular. The face into which I looked lured me at moments with a haunting resemblance; but the brow was lower and wider, the nose straighter, the mouth more subtly modelled. It was a face Greek in its perfection, brightened by western force and softened by some flitting touch of sensuousness and mysticism.

My Helen blushed easily, but otherwise had little colour. This Helen had a baby's delicate skin, with rose-flushed cheeks and red, red lips. When she spoke or smiled, she seemed to glow with an inner radiance that had nothing to do with colour. And, oh, how beautiful! How beautiful!

I don't know how long I gazed.

I was trying to study the girl before me as if she had been merely a fact--a statue, a picture. But here was none of the calm certainty of art; I was in the grip of a power, a living charm as mighty as elusive, no more to be fixed in words than are the splendours of sunset. Yet I saw the vital harmonies of her figure, the grace of every exquisite curve--the firm, strong line of her white throat, the gracious poise of her head, her sweeping lashes.

I looked down at her hands; they were of marvellous shape and tint, but I missed a little sickle-shaped scar from the joint of the left thumb. I knew the story of that scar. I had seen the child Nelly run to her mother when the knife slipped while she was paring a piece of cocoanut for the Saturday pie-baking. That scar was part of Helen; I loved it. I felt a sudden revolt against this goddess who usurped little Nelly's place, and said that she had changed. Why was she looking at me? What did she want?

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said a choked voice that I hardly recognised as my own.

Instantly the joy light shone again from her face, bathing me in its sunshine, and the world was fair. She started forward impulsively, holding out her hands.

"Then it's true! Oh, it's true!" she cried. "How can I believe it? I--Nelly Winship--am I really--"

"Ah--you are Nelly! My Nelly!"

What happened is past telling!

With that jubilant outburst, as naive as a child's, she was my own love again, but dearer a thousand times. Would I have given her up if her hair were blanched by pain or sorrow, her cheeks furrowed, her face grown pale in illness? Need I look upon her coldly because she had become radiant, compellingly lovely? Why, she was enchanting!

And she was Helen. A miracle had been worked, but Helen's self was looking at me out of that goddess-like face as unmistakably as from an unfamiliar dress. It was seeing her in a marvellous new garb of flesh.

"Oh, I'm so happy! I'm the happiest girl on earth; I'm--am I really beautiful?"

The rich, low, brooding, wondering voice was not Helen's, but in every sentence some note or inflection was as familiar as were her tricks of manner, her impulsive gestures. Yes, she was Helen; warm-breathing, flushed with joy of her own loveliness, her perfect womanhood--the girl I adored, the loveliest thing alive!

I seized the hands she gave me; I drew her nearer.

"Helen," I cried, "you are indeed the most beautiful being God ever created, and--last June you kissed me--"

"I didn't!"

"--Or I kissed you, which is the same thing--after the Commencement reception, by the maple trees, in front of the chapter house; and----"

"And thence in an east-southeasterly direction; with all the hereditaments and appurtenances--Oh, you funny Old Preciseness!"

"And now I'm going to----" The words were brave, but there was something in the pose and poise of her--the wonder of her beauty, the majesty--perhaps the slightest withdrawal, the start of surprise--that awed me. Lamely enough the sentence ended:

"Helen, kiss 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."