Chapter 9

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 has ever come under my observation. I am getting to be an elderly man, Burke, and I have been a respectful admirer of many, many fair women, but I have never seen a girl like Miss Winship; she is phenomenal."

"You--you think so?"

It was true, then!

"I have ceased to think; I am nonplussed. Witchcraft, though not in the older sense of the word, is still no doubt exercised by young ladies, and there are certain improvement commissions that undertake, for a suitable consideration, the--ah--redecoration of feminine architecture, or even the partial restoration of human antiques. But this is a different matter."

"I saw Miss Winship yesterday."

"You will not then accuse me of overstatement?"

"She is indeed beautiful."

The restraint with which I spoke evidently puzzled him. He continued to look at me curiously, as he said slowly:--

"From a young man I should have expected more enthusiasm. At times I suspect that the youth of today are less susceptible than were those of twenty-five years ago. But this affair has perhaps occupied my thoughts more than otherwise it might, because Helen is in a measure my ward during her stay in the East, and because of my daughters' affection--"

"Judge, I had supposed you aware of an engagement between Helen and myself."

"Ah, that accounts for much. To you, no doubt, she is little altered. Your eyes have seen the budding of that beauty which but now becomes visible to those less partial. I believe Mrs. Baker did hint at something between you, but it had escaped my mind."

The Judge's bright eyes that contradict so pleasantly the heavy cast of his features began to twinkle. Little lines of geniality formed at their corners and rayed out over his cheeks. He beamed kindliness, as he continued:--

"Accept my congratulations. A most excellent family. Mrs. Winship is Mrs. Baker's cousin. Ah, time flies; time flies! It seems but yesterday that my little girls were running about with Nelly, pigtailed, during their visits in the West."

"Does Mrs. Baker also think Nelly--changed?"

"Only on Tuesday my wife returned from nursing an ailing relative. She has not seen Helen in some time. I believe we are to have her with us at Christmas. We must have you also. But I cannot altogether admit that the change is a matter of my opinion. It has been commented upon by my daughters in terms of utmost emphasis."

"She is the most beautiful woman in the world!"

"There we shall not disagree. To Nelly herself the riddle of nature that we seek to read is doubtless also a mystery, but one for whose unraveling she is happy to wait. My daughters have a picture of her, taken at the age, possibly, of six, which gives inartistic prominence to 'Grandpa Winship's ears'--the left larger than the right. You know the family peculiarity owned by the eldest child in each generation? The loss of this inheritance may not be, to a young lady, matter for regret; but as a mark of identification and descent, the Winship ears might have entitled her to rank among the Revolutionary Daughters. However, she is a poor woman who has not a club to spare."

"Judge, how long is it since this--transformation took place? You speak of it as recent."

"Nelly comes to me," said the Judge, "with--ah--natural punctuality for monthly remittances from her father. In November I was struck with the fact that New York agreed with her; yet even then I did not miss the family nose--a compromise of pug and Roman. But ten days ago, when I saw her last, I recognised her with difficulty. For more precise information you must ask my daughters."

"Then it was only ten days ago that you saw anything wrong--?"

"Wrong! My dear young friend, if Nelly's case obtained publicity, would not the world, which loves beauty, be divided between a howling New York and a wilderness?"

The Judge glanced up at me, slipping his paper knife end over end through his fingers.

"I have spoken of myself as nonplussed," he said more seriously, "and I am. I was never more so; but I see no occasion for anxiety. Since when has it been thought necessary to call priest or physician because of a young lady's growing charm? Confronted by an ugly duckling, we must congratulate the swan."

"Judge, how much money does one need to marry on in New York?"

"All that a man has; all that he can get; often more. But--ah--is the question imminent? Nelly is in school; you have come out of the West, as I understand it, to attack New York. Conquer it, Sir; conquer New York before you speak of marriage to a New York woman."

"Helen is not a New York woman."

"We naturalize them at the docks and stations."

"But you--" I repressed a movement of impatience. "Didn't you marry young?"

"Mrs. Baker and I began our married life in one room; cooked over the gas jet, in tin pails. And if little Nelly is the equal of other women of her family--but that is practice versus principle, my young friend; practice versus principle."

He turned again to his letters, and I understood that the interview was closed.

Right after lunch I started for Barnard. Helen has written so much about the college that as soon as I struck the Boulevard I knew the solid brick building with its trimmings of stone fasces. I turned into the cloistered court on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street and paused a minute, looking up at its Ionic porticoes and high window lettered "Millbank Hall."

Then I entered, and a page, small, meek and blue-uniformed, trotted ahead of me through a beautiful hall, white with marble columns and mosaics, sumptuous with golden ceiling, dazzling with light and green with palms, to the curtained entrance of a dainty reception room.

"Stop a minute, Mercury," I said as he turned to leave; "where is Miss Winship?"

He reappeared from an office beyond, replying:--

"Biol'gy lab'r'tory. What name?"

Instead of waiting until Nelly could be summoned, I followed the mildly disapproving boy up a great, white stairway, past groups of girls, some in bright silk waists and some in college gowns. Even in the farthest corner remote from the hubbub, a musical echo blent of gay talk and laughter filled the air; a light body of sound that the walls held and gave out as a continuous murmur.

A second time piping, "What name, Sir?" Mercury opened the door of a large room with many windows. At the far corner my eyes sought out Helen in conversation with a keen-eyed, weazened little man, at sight of whom the boy took to his heels.

Three women besides Helen were in the room, bunched at a table that ran along two sides under the windows. They wore big checked aprons, and one of them squinted into her microscope under a fur cap. Wide-mouthed jars, empty or holding dirty water, stood on other tables ranged up and down the middle of the room, and there was a litter of porcelain-lined trays, test tubes, pipettes, glass stirring-rods and racks for microscope slides.

Against the wall to the left were cabinets with sliding doors, showing retorts, apparatus, bottles of drugs, jars of specimens and large, coloured models of flowers and of the lower marine forms. Against the right hand wall were sinks, an incubator and, beyond, a door leading into a drug closet. There was the usual laboratory smell, in which the penetrating fume of alcohol, the smokiness of creosote and carbolic acid, the pungency of oil of clove and the aroma of Canada balsam struggled for the mastery.

In her college gown Helen looked more like herself than the day before and less so, the familiar dress accentuating every difference. Against the flowing black her loveliness shone fair and delicate as a cameo, I thought of the Princess Ida,

Liker to the inhabitant Of some far planet close upon the sun Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head, And so much grace and power-- Lived through her to the tips of her long hands And to her feet.

She had not noticed my entrance, but as I stepped forward, she turned, and I was again lost in wonder at her marvellous grace. Her beauty seemed a harmony so vitally perfect that the sight of it was a joy approaching pain.

I had not been mistaken! She was the rarest thing in human form on this earth. I was awed and frightened anew at her perfection.

"Why, how did you find your way out here?" she asked with girlish directness. "I'm not quite ready to go; I must finish my sections for Prof. Darmstetter."

The Professor--I had guessed his identity--joined us, glancing at me inquisitively. His spare figure seemed restless as a squirrel's, but around the pupils of his eyes appeared the faint, white rim of age.

"You are friendt of Mees Veensheep?" he asked. "Looks she not vell? New York has agreed vit' her; not so?"

At my awkward, guarded assent, I thought that something of the same surprise Judge Baker had voiced at my moderation flitted over the old man's face.

"I find you kvite right; kvite right," he said, "New York has done Mees Veensheep goot; she looks fery vell."

He whisked into the drug closet, and Helen seated herself before a microscope next that of the fur-capped woman.

"Do you care for slides?" she said. "I'll get another microscope and while I draw you may look at any on my rack. But be careful; most of the things are only temporarily mounted--just in glycerine. Here is the sweetest longitudinal section of the tentacle of an _Actinia_, and here--look at these lovely transverse sections of the plumule of a pea; you can see the primary groups of spiral vessels. They've taken the carmine stain wonderfully! But my work is not advanced; I wish you could see that of the other girls."

"I mustn't interfere with your task; I'll look about until you are ready."

Her shining head was already bent over the microscope; her pencil was moving, glad to respond to the touch of that lovely hand.

I picked up a book, the same little volume I had noticed the day before, on "Imbedding, Sectioning and Staining." Near it lay a treatise on histology. I opened to the first chapter, on "Protoplasm and the Cell," but I couldn't fix my thoughts on _Bathybius_ or the _Protomoeba_. I walked toward an aquarium, flanking which stood a jar half-filled with water in which floated what seemed a big cup-shaped flower of bright brown jelly with waving petals of white and rose colour.

While I looked, thinking only of the curve of Helen's lips and the dancing light in her eyes, and the glowing colour of her soft flesh, Prof. Darmstetter's thin, high-pitched voice grated almost at my ear.

"T'at is _Actinia_--sea anemone."

"I come from the West; I have never seen the sea forms living," I answered with an effort, fearing that he meant to show me about the laboratory.

"It is fery goot sea anemone; fery strong, fery perfect; a goot organism."

He bent over the jar, rubbing his hands. His parchment face crackled with an almost tender complacency. For a full minute he seemed to gloat over the flower-like animal.

"Very pretty," I said, carelessly.

"Fery pretty, you call it? T'e prettiness is t'e sign of t'e gootness, t'e strengt', t'e perfection. You know t'at?"

To his challenging question, in which I saw the manner of a teacher with his pupils, I replied:

"In your estimation goodness and beauty go together?"

"T'ey are t'e same; how not? See t'is way."

He shook his lean, reproving forefinger at a shapeless, melting mass that lay at the bottom of a second jar, exuding an ooze of viscid strings.

"T'at,"--he spat the word out--"is also sea anemone. It is diseased; it is an ugly animal."

"The poor thing's dying," said Helen, coming to his side. "There ought to have been some of the green seaweed, Ulva, in the water. Wouldn't that have saved it?"

"Ugliness,"--Darmstetter disregarded the question--"is disease; it is bat organism; t'e von makes t'e ot'er. T'e ugly plant or animal is diseased, or else it is botched, inferior plant or animal. It is t'e same vit' man and voman; t'ey are animals. T'e ugly man or voman is veak, diseased or inferior. On t'e ot'er hand,"--I felt what was coming by the sudden oiling of his squeak--"t'e goot man or voman, t'e goot human organism, mus' haf beauty. Not so?" Again he rubbed his hands.

Helen glanced mischievously at me, as a half-repressed snort interrupted his dissertation.

The woman in the fur cap, who might have been a teacher improving odd hours, had knocked up the barrel of her microscope; she gazed through the window at the dazzling Hudson. Next her a thin, sallow girl, whose dark complexion contrasted almost weirdly with her yellow hair, slashed at a cake of paraffine, her deep-set eyes emitting a spark at every fall of the razor. The other student, a young woman with the heavy figure of middle age, went steadily on, dropping paraffine shavings into some fluid in a watch crystal. With a long-handled pin she fished out minute somethings left by the dissolving substance, dropping these upon other crystals--some holding coloured fluids--and finally upon glass slides. She worked as if for dear life, but every quiver of her back told that she was listening.

"You agree vit' me?"

"It seems reasonable; the subject is one that you have deeply studied."

"Ach so! T'e perfect organism must haf t'e perfect beauty. T'e vorld has nefer seen a perfectly beautiful man or voman. Vat vould it say to von, t'ink you? But perfection, you vill tell me, is far to seek," he went on, without waiting for a reply. "Yet people haf learned t'at many diseases are crimes. By-and-by, we may teach t'em t'at bat organism is t'e vorst of crimes; beautiful organism t'e first duty. V'at do you say?"

The fur-capped girl pushed back her chair.

"Prof. Darmstetter," she said, "will you be good enough to look at my sections?"

"He's stirred up the hornets' nest," whispered Helen. "But come; perhaps they will show us. Those girls are so clever; they're sure to have something interesting."