CHAPTER III.
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. Icould do nothing but walk, walk--a man in a dream.
I rushed ahead, jostling people in silly haste; I dawdled. I carefullyset my feet across the joinings of paving blocks; I zigzagged; I turnedcorners aimlessly. Once a policeman touched me as I blinked into theroaring torches of a street-repairing gang. Once I found myself onBrooklyn Bridge, looking down at big boats shaped like pumpkin seeds,with lights streaking from every window. Once I woke behind a noisygroup under the coloured lights of a Bowery museum.
It rained, for horses were rubber-blanketed, and umbrellas dripped onme as I passed. I was hungry, for I smelled the coffee a sodden womandrank at the side of a night lunch wagon. But how could I believemyself awake or sane?
Again and again I found my way back to the bench on Union Square, fromwhich I could gaze at Helen's window, now dark and forbidding. Acrossan open space was a garish saloon. When the door swung open, I saw thetowels hanging from the bar. Two men reeled across the street and satdown by me.
"Oo-oo!" one gurgled.
"Dan's goin' t' kill 'imself 'cause 'is wife's gone," blubbered theother. "Tell 'm not ter, can't ye, matey? Tell 'im' t's 'nough fer onet' die!"
"Oo-oo!" bellowed Dan.
I walked away in the darkness, but I felt better. Drunkenness was nomiracle: I was awake and sane, sane and awake in a homely world ofsorrow and folly and love and mystery.
I went to bed thinking of Cleopatra, "brow-bound with burning gold"; ofFair Rosamond; Vivien, who won Merlin's secret; of Lilith and strange,shining women--not one of them like the goddess the glory of whosesmile had dazzled me. At last I slept, late and heavily.
Next morning I was again first at the office; and by daylight in thebustling city, things took a different complexion. I had gone to mysweetheart tired by a long journey, and I felt sure, or tried to feelsure, that my impressions of change in her were fantastic andexaggerated.
Judge Baker, on his arrival, installed me in Hynes's room, behind thelibrary, between the corridor and one of the courts that light theinner offices. In his own room, to the left, he detained me for somebusiness talk, after which he said, carefully rubbing his glasses:
"I trust that you will not find yourself altogether a stranger in thecity. My wife will wish to see you, and my sister, Miss Baker,cherishes pleasant recollections of your mother. I believe you arealready acquainted with Mrs. Baker's young cousin, Miss Winship. Youknow that, since graduation, she has come to New York for the purposeof pursuing post-graduate studies in Barnard?"
"Yes."
I drew a breath of relief. There was nothing in the Judge's manner togive 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 anenvelope. Then he dropped the paper knife, raising his bushy brows, agesture that indicates his most genial humour, as he continued withmore than usual deliberateness:--
"You knew her, no doubt, as an intelligent student; you may besurprised to learn that she has developed extraordinary--the word isnot too strong--extraordinary beauty."
"Always a lovely girl," I muttered.
"From her childhood Nelly has been a favourite with me;" the Judgeleaned back in his big chair, seeming to commit himself to anutterance; "but her attractions were rather those of mind and heart, Ishould have said, than of personal appearance. The change to which Ihave alluded is more than the not uncommon budding of a plain girl intothe evanescent beauty of early womanhood; it is the most remarkablething that has ever come under my observation. I am getting to be anelderly man, Burke, and I have been a respectful admirer of many, manyfair women, but I have never seen a girl like Miss Winship; she isphenomenal."
"You--you think so?"
It was true, then!
"I have ceased to think; I am nonplussed. Witchcraft, though not in theolder sense of the word, is still no doubt exercised by young ladies,and there are certain improvement commissions that undertake, for asuitable consideration, the--ah--redecoration of feminine architecture,or even the partial restoration of human antiques. But this is adifferent 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 tolook at me curiously, as he said slowly:--
"From a young man I should have expected more enthusiasm. At times Isuspect that the youth of today are less susceptible than were those oftwenty-five years ago. But this affair has perhaps occupied my thoughtsmore than otherwise it might, because Helen is in a measure my wardduring her stay in the East, and because of my daughters' affection--"
"Judge, I had supposed you aware of an engagement between Helen andmyself."
"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 becomesvisible to those less partial. I believe Mrs. Baker did hint atsomething between you, but it had escaped my mind."
The Judge's bright eyes that contradict so pleasantly the heavy cast ofhis features began to twinkle. Little lines of geniality formed attheir corners and rayed out over his cheeks. He beamed kindliness, ashe continued:--
"Accept my congratulations. A most excellent family. Mrs. Winship isMrs. Baker's cousin. Ah, time flies; time flies! It seems but yesterdaythat my little girls were running about with Nelly, pigtailed, duringtheir visits in the West."
"Does Mrs. Baker also think Nelly--changed?"
"Only on Tuesday my wife returned from nursing an ailing relative. Shehas not seen Helen in some time. I believe we are to have her with usat Christmas. We must have you also. But I cannot altogether admit thatthe change is a matter of my opinion. It has been commented upon by mydaughters 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 naturethat we seek to read is doubtless also a mystery, but one for whoseunraveling she is happy to wait. My daughters have a picture of her,taken at the age, possibly, of six, which gives inartistic prominenceto 'Grandpa Winship's ears'--the left larger than the right. You knowthe family peculiarity owned by the eldest child in each generation?The loss of this inheritance may not be, to a young lady, matter forregret; but as a mark of identification and descent, the Winship earsmight 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 speakof it as recent."
"Nelly comes to me," said the Judge, "with--ah--natural punctuality formonthly remittances from her father. In November I was struck with thefact that New York agreed with her; yet even then I did not miss thefamily nose--a compromise of pug and Roman. But ten days ago, when Isaw her last, I recognised her with difficulty. For more preciseinformation 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, wouldnot the world, which loves beauty, be divided between a howling NewYork and a wilderness?"
The Judge glanced up at me, slipping his paper knife end over endthrough his fingers.
"I have spoken of myself as nonplussed," he said more seriously, "and Iam. I was never more so; but I see no occasion for anxiety. Since whenhas it been thought necessary to call priest or physician because of ayoung lady's growing charm? Confronted by an ugly duckling, we mustcongratulate 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 thequestion imminent? Nelly is in school; you have come out of the West,as I understand it, to att
ack New York. Conquer it, Sir; conquer NewYork 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 marryyoung?"
"Mrs. Baker and I began our married life in one room; cooked over thegas jet, in tin pails. And if little Nelly is the equal of other womenof 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 wasclosed.
Right after lunch I started for Barnard. Helen has written so muchabout the college that as soon as I struck the Boulevard I knew thesolid brick building with its trimmings of stone fasces. I turned intothe cloistered court on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street and paused aminute, looking up at its Ionic porticoes and high window lettered"Millbank Hall."
Then I entered, and a page, small, meek and blue-uniformed, trottedahead of me through a beautiful hall, white with marble columns andmosaics, sumptuous with golden ceiling, dazzling with light and greenwith palms, to the curtained entrance of a dainty reception room.
"Stop a minute, Mercury," I said as he turned to leave; "where is MissWinship?"
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 mildlydisapproving boy up a great, white stairway, past groups of girls, somein bright silk waists and some in college gowns. Even in the farthestcorner remote from the hubbub, a musical echo blent of gay talk andlaughter filled the air; a light body of sound that the walls held andgave out as a continuous murmur.
A second time piping, "What name, Sir?" Mercury opened the door of alarge room with many windows. At the far corner my eyes sought outHelen in conversation with a keen-eyed, weazened little man, at sightof whom the boy took to his heels.
Three women besides Helen were in the room, bunched at a table that ranalong two sides under the windows. They wore big checked aprons, andone of them squinted into her microscope under a fur cap. Wide-mouthedjars, empty or holding dirty water, stood on other tables ranged up anddown the middle of the room, and there was a litter of porcelain-linedtrays, test tubes, pipettes, glass stirring-rods and racks formicroscope slides.
Against the wall to the left were cabinets with sliding doors, showingretorts, apparatus, bottles of drugs, jars of specimens and large,coloured models of flowers and of the lower marine forms. Against theright hand wall were sinks, an incubator and, beyond, a door leadinginto a drug closet. There was the usual laboratory smell, in which thepenetrating fume of alcohol, the smokiness of creosote and carbolicacid, the pungency of oil of clove and the aroma of Canada balsamstruggled for the mastery.
In her college gown Helen looked more like herself than the day beforeand less so, the familiar dress accentuating every difference. Againstthe flowing black her loveliness shone fair and delicate as a cameo, Ithought 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 beautyseemed a harmony so vitally perfect that the sight of it was a joyapproaching pain.
I had not been mistaken! She was the rarest thing in human form on thisearth. I was awed and frightened anew at her perfection.
"Why, how did you find your way out here?" she asked with girlishdirectness. "I'm not quite ready to go; I must finish my sections forProf. Darmstetter."
The Professor--I had guessed his identity--joined us, glancing at meinquisitively. His spare figure seemed restless as a squirrel's, butaround the pupils of his eyes appeared the faint, white rim of age.
"You are friendt of Mees Veensheep?" he asked. "Looks she not vell? NewYork has agreed vit' her; not so?"
At my awkward, guarded assent, I thought that something of the samesurprise Judge Baker had voiced at my moderation flitted over the oldman's face.
"I find you kvite right; kvite right," he said, "New York has done MeesVeensheep goot; she looks fery vell."
He whisked into the drug closet, and Helen seated herself before amicroscope next that of the fur-capped woman.
"Do you care for slides?" she said. "I'll get another microscope andwhile I draw you may look at any on my rack. But be careful; most ofthe things are only temporarily mounted--just in glycerine. Here is thesweetest longitudinal section of the tentacle of an _Actinia_, andhere--look at these lovely transverse sections of the plumule of a pea;you can see the primary groups of spiral vessels. They've taken thecarmine stain wonderfully! But my work is not advanced; I wish youcould see that of the other girls."
"I mustn't interfere with your task; I'll look about until you areready."
Her shining head was already bent over the microscope; her pencil wasmoving, glad to respond to the touch of that lovely hand.
I picked up a book, the same little volume I had noticed the daybefore, on "Imbedding, Sectioning and Staining." Near it lay a treatiseon histology. I opened to the first chapter, on "Protoplasm and theCell," but I couldn't fix my thoughts on _Bathybius_ or the_Protomoeba_. I walked toward an aquarium, flanking which stood a jarhalf-filled with water in which floated what seemed a big cup-shapedflower of bright brown jelly with waving petals of white and rosecolour.
While I looked, thinking only of the curve of Helen's lips and thedancing 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," Ianswered with an effort, fearing that he meant to show me about thelaboratory.
"It is fery goot sea anemone; fery strong, fery perfect; a gootorganism."
He bent over the jar, rubbing his hands. His parchment face crackledwith an almost tender complacency. For a full minute he seemed to gloatover 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 teacherwith 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 massthat lay at the bottom of a second jar, exuding an ooze of viscidstrings.
"T'at,"--he spat the word out--"is also sea anemone. It is diseased; itis an ugly animal."
"The poor thing's dying," said Helen, coming to his side. "There oughtto have been some of the green seaweed, Ulva, in the water. Wouldn'tthat have saved it?"
"Ugliness,"--Darmstetter disregarded the question--"is disease; it isbat organism; t'e von makes t'e ot'er. T'e ugly plant or animal isdiseased, or else it is botched, inferior plant or animal. It is t'esame vit' man and voman; t'ey are animals. T'e ugly man or voman isveak, diseased or inferior. On t'e ot'er hand,"--I felt what was comingby the sudden oiling of his squeak--"t'e goot man or voman, t'e goothuman organism, mus' haf beauty. Not so?" Again he rubbed his hands.
Helen glanced mischievously at me, as a half-repressed snortinterrupted his dissertation.
The woman in the fur cap, who might have been a teacher improving oddhours, had knocked up the barrel of her microscope; she gazed throughthe window at the dazzling Hudson. Next her a thin, sallow girl, whosedark complexion contrasted almost weirdly with her yellow hair, slashedat a cake of paraffine, her deep-set eyes emitting a spark at everyfall of the razor. The other student, a young woman with the heavyfigure of middle age, went steadily on, dropping paraffine shavingsinto some fluid in a watch
crystal. With a long-handled pin she fishedout minute somethings left by the dissolving substance, dropping theseupon other crystals--some holding coloured fluids--and finally uponglass slides. She worked as if for dear life, but every quiver of herback 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 vorldhas nefer seen a perfectly beautiful man or voman. Vat vould it say tovon, t'ink you? But perfection, you vill tell me, is far to seek," hewent on, without waiting for a reply. "Yet people haf learned t'at manydiseases are crimes. By-and-by, we may teach t'em t'at bat organism ist'e vorst of crimes; beautiful organism t'e first duty. V'at do yousay?"
The fur-capped girl pushed back her chair.
"Prof. Darmstetter," she said, "will you be good enough to look at mysections?"
"He's stirred up the hornets' nest," whispered Helen. "But come;perhaps they will show us. Those girls are so clever; they're sure tohave something interesting."
Bacillus of Beauty: A Romance of To-day Page 3