The Bacillus of Beauty Part 33

"But, Nelly, what will you do?" he said at last.

His tone was as level as if he were discussing some trivial matter. He had given up the fight, and, paying no heed to my unkindness, had fallen back upon the old habit, the instinct of looking out for me, smoothing my way after his own fas.h.i.+on that is so irritating.

"You can't stay among these--these strangers, can you?" he continued. "Are you going home?"

"To the farm? Never, I hope. Mrs. Van Dam, my chaperon, has many plans for me--better form than talking things over with a man. In the spring we may go abroad."

He tried--poor, foolish fellow--to read from my face the riddle of a woman's heart before he answered:--

"I'm afraid I don't altogether understand you, Nelly."

Presently he left me, wondering, even as I wonder now: Why don't I care for John? He's a strong man and he loves me. Just another of Nature's sorry jests, isn't it?

It was all so hopeless, so tangled. I leaned against the mantel, relieved by his going, but unutterably lonely. Just for a moment I feared the brilliant future that stretched in vista--without love, it looked an endless level of tedium and weariness. My bitterness towards John melted and the years we had known each other unrolled themselves before me-- happy, innocent years. I felt his strength and gentleness, and of a sudden something clutched at my throat. Sob followed sob; I shook in a tearless convulsion.

Only for an instant. Then I, too, turned to leave the room, but fate or instinct had brought John back and I was startled by his voice:--

"Nelly, tell me!"

He did not come near me. There was no gust of pa.s.sion in his tone, yet I felt as never before the depth of his tenderness. He had not come back to woo, but as the old friend, ambitious of helpfulness.

"Helen," he said, "how can I leave you, who need protection more than any other woman, so terribly alone?"

I didn't fear I might be tempted, but I quavered out:--

"John, go away. I've wronged you enough. I never loved you; I've no faith in love. I never loved you at all, and--you must have seen, lately, that I have changed--that I've become a very--a very mercenary woman. I can't afford to marry a poor man."

My lips quivered, for this was the cruelest lie of all; I have changed, but I'm not money loving. And I couldn't deceive him. He smiled queerly, but he must have thought time his ally, for he only said:--

"Money can buy you nothing; you might leave gewgaws to other women. But you are less mercenary than you think yourself; and you will always know that I love you; let it rest with that, for now."

So he went away the second time, leaving me with my hands clenched and my teeth set--so fierce had been my fight to seem composed. As I sank breathless into a chair, and my tense fingers relaxed, out from my right hand rolled the little opal ring. I hadn't returned it, after all; had been gripping it all the time, unknowing. At sight of it, I burst into hysterical laughter.

And that madly merry laughter is the end. I should go crazy if I yielded to love that I can't return, and I should despise him if he accepted. A husband not too impa.s.sioned, a fair bargain--beauty bartered for position, power, for a name in history--that is all there is left to me, now that love has vanished.

The farm! I couldn't go back, to isolation and dull routine! I told John I might go abroad. Why not? I might see the great capitals, and in the splendour of palaces find a fitting frame for my beauty. There may be salve for heartache in the smile of princes. At any rate, the seas would flow between me and Ned Hynes.

I had forgotten my ambitions. I'd have said to Ned: "Whither thou goest I will go;" but if what he feels for me is not love--if in his heart he hates me for the witchery I've put upon him--

I could go abroad with a t.i.tle, if I chose. If love lies not my way, there is Strathay.

How listless I am, turning from my sorrow to write of what to most girls would be a delight--of that pathetic little figure, toadied and flattered, but keeping a good heart through it all; of his marked attentions, which I permit because they keep other men away; of his efforts to see me--for the Van Dams' position isn't what I imagined it, and we are not invited to many houses where I could meet him; of Meg's rejoicings over a few of the cards we do receive.

Oh, I win her triumphs, triumphs in plenty! Because the Earl admires me, hasn't she once sat at the same table with Mrs. Sloane Schuyler, who refuses to meet intimately more than a hundred New York women; and hasn't she twice or thrice talked "autos" with Mrs. Fredericks; and isn't she envied by all the women of her own set because the Earl and his cousin s.h.i.+ne refulgent from her box at the Opera?

Triumphs, certainly; doesn't Mrs. Henry wrangle with Meg over my poor body, demanding that I sit in her box, and that I join Peggy's Badminton club, and bring the Earl, who would bring the youths and maidens who would bring the prestige that would, some day, make a Newport cottage socially feasible?

That's her dream, Meg's is Mayfair; she thinks of nothing but how to invest me in London and claim her profit when I am Strathay's Countess, or mistress of some other little great man's hall. Oh, I understand them; Mrs. Henry's the worst; oily!

I wonder if London is less petty than New York; if I should be out of the tug and scramble there. But I mustn't judge New York, viewing it through the Van Dams' eyes. If I did, I should see a curious pyramid.

At the top, a sole and unapproachable figure, the twelfth Earl of Strathay, just out of school;

Next a society, two-thirds of whose daughters will marry abroad, and to all of whose members an Earl's lack of a wife is a burning issue;

Hanging by their skirts a thousand others, like the General and Mrs.

Henry, available for big functions, pus.h.i.+ng to get into the little ones;

Hanging by these in turn, ten thousand others outside the pale, but flinging money right and left in charity or prodigality to catch the eyes of those who catch the eyes of those who nod to Earls;

And after them n.o.body!

And the problem: "How high can we climb?"

Why, there are twenty thousand families in New York rich enough to be Elect, if wealth were all. I could almost marry Strathay to save him from the ugly millioned girls! How they hate me!

I know what love is like, now; Strathay means to speak. If Ned would only--but three weeks--three long, long weeks, and he doesn't--oh, I won't believe that, deep in his heart he does not love me. It's not time-- not time, yet, to think about the little Earl!

At any rate I won't be flung at his head; last night I taught Meg a lesson she'll remember. She meant to bring him home to supper after the Opera, where, in spite of my first experience, we're constant now in attendance; but, to her surprise, then dismay, then almost abject remonstrance, I prepared to go out before dinner to inspect the new studio Kitty and Cadge have taken.

"Be back in good season?" she pleaded. "How _could_ you make an engagement for the night when Strathay.--Not wait for you! Why Helen, you can't--what would Strathay think if I allowed you to arrive alone at the Opera?"

"Then can't you and Peggy entertain him?"

"Peggy?" She looked at me with blank incredulity. "You wouldn't stay away when Strathay--why, Helen, you didn't mean that. Drive straight to the Metropolitan when you leave your--those people, if you don't wish to come back for me. Where do they live?" she groaned despairingly.

"Top of a business block in West Fourteenth Street."

I thought she would have refused me the carriage for such a trip, but she didn't venture quite so far as that; and the hour I spent with the girls was a blessed breathing spell.

"What a barn!" I cried, when I had climbed more stairs than I could count to the big loft where I found them. "Girls, how came you here?"

"Behold the prodigal daughter! Shall we kill the fatted rarebit?" And Kitty threw herself upon me; while Cadge, waving her arms proudly at the Navajo rugs, stuffed heads of animals and vast canva.s.ses of Indian braves and ponies that made the weird place more weird, replied to my query:--

"Borrowed it of an artist who's wintering in Mexico; cheap; just as it stands."

Then they installed me under a queer tepee, and we had one of the old time picked-up suppers, and for an hour my troubles were pushed into the background. The girls are in such frightful taste that I really should drop them, but they're loyal and so proud of me!

"Princess," said Cadge, "time you were letting contracts for the building of fresh worlds to s.h.i.+ne in. You're the most famous person in this, with all the women thirsting for your gore; and you've a real live Lord for a 'follower.'"

"That's nothing."

Cadge thinks me still betrothed to John, so she affected to misunderstand.

"Nearly nothing, for a fact," she said; "it isn't ornamental, but we seldom see specimens and mustn't judge hastily. And it is a Lord.--See the hand-out he gave me for last Sunday--full-page interview: 'Earl of Strathay Discusses American Society?'

"Some English won't stand for anything but a regular pie-faced story, but Strathay's a real good little man."

"You said he had sixty-nine pairs of shoes," said Kitty reminiscently.