CHAPTER V.
A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT.
I stayed for supper, over which Kitty's big Angora cat presided; Kittyherself, her red curls in disorder, whimsical, shrewd, dipping fromjest to earnest, teased Helen and waited on her, wholly affectionateand, I guessed, half afraid.
The little den was cosy by the light of an open fire--for it seemed tobe one function of the tall, pink-petticoated lamp to make muchdarkness visible; and Nelly was almost like the Nelly I had known, withher eager talk of home folks and familiar scenes.
She asked about my mother's illness and death that had held me so longin the West, and her great eyes grew dim and soft with tears, and shelooked at me like a Goddess grieving; until, sweet as was her sympathy,I forced myself to speak of other topics. And then we grew merry again,talking of college mates and the days when I first knew her, when I wasa Sophomore teaching in Hannibal and she was my best scholar--onlytwelve years old, but she spelled down all the big, husky boys.
"I didn't know what I was doing, did I," I said, "when your father usedto say: 'Bright gal, ain't she? I never see the beat of Helen Lizy;'and I would tell him you ought to go to the State University?"
"Think of it!" cried Helen. "If I hadn't gone to college, I shouldn'thave come to New York, and, oh, if--but how you must have worked,teaching and doubling college and law school! Why, you were alreadythrough two years of law when I entered, only three years later."
"Well, it's been easy enough since, even with tutoring andshorthanding; six lawyers to every case--"
"Wasn't tutoring Helen your main occupation?" asked Kitty Reidaudaciously. "I have somehow inferred that--"
But there was a sound of hurrying feet on the stairs, and she sprang tothe door, crying:--
"Cadge and Pros.! They said they were coming."
On the threshold appeared a lank girl with shining black hair andquick, keen, good-humoured eyes.
"Howdy?" she asked with brisk cordiality; "angel children, hope I seeyou well."
In her wake was a tall, quiet-looking young man with a reddish-brownbeard.
"Salute; salaam," he said; "all serene, Kitty? And you, Miss Winship?"
Then as the two became accustomed to the light, I saw what I hadnervously expected. There was a little start, an odd moment ofembarrassment. They gazed at Helen with quick wonder at her loveliness,then turned away to hide their surprise.
It was as if in the few days since they had seen her--for the newcomers were Kitty's brother and the Miss Bryant of whom everyone speaksas "Cadge"--Helen's beauty had so blossomed that at fresh sight of herthey struggled with incredulous amazement almost as a stranger mighthave done.
Talking rapidly to mask embarrassment, they joined us round the fire,Reid dropped a slouch hat and an overcoat that seemed all pocketsbulging with papers, while Miss Bryant and Kitty began a rapid fire oftalk about "copy," "cuts," "the black," "the colour" and othermysteries.
"Wish you could have got me a proof of the animal page," said Kittyfinally; "if they hurry the etching again, before my poor dear littlebears have been half an hour on the presses, they'll fill with ink andprint gray. I'll--I'll leave money in my will to prosecutephoto-engravers."
"Oh, don't fret," said Miss Bryant. "Magazine'll look well this week.Big Tom's the greatest Sunday editor that ever happened; and I've gotin some good stuff, too."
"Of course your obbligato'll be all right," Kitty sighed; "but--oh,those etchers and----Yes, Big Tom'll do; I never see him fretting theArt Department, like the editor before last, to sketch a one-columnearthquake curdling a cup of cream."
"How _could_ anybody do that?" cried Helen.
"Just what the artist said."
Miss Bryant looked slightly older than Helen; in spite of her brusque,careless sentences, I suspected that she was a girl of some knowledge,vast energy and strength of will. And suspicion grew to certainty thatshe and Reid were lovers.
I might have read it in his tone when in the course of the evening heasked her to sing.
"Then give me a baton," she responded, springing to her feet.
Rolling up a newspaper and seizing a bit of charcoal from the drawingtable, she beat time with both hands, launching suddenly into an airwhich she rendered with dramatic expression as rare as her abandon.
"Applaud! Applaud!" she cried, clapping her own hands at the end of abrilliant passage, her colourless, irregular face alive withenthusiasm, her black eyes snapping. "If you don't applaud, how do youexpect me to sing? _Vos plaudite!_"
"I'll applaud when you've surely stopped," said Kitty Reid demurely;"but before we begin an evening of grand opera, I want you to hear thePrincess. Helen, you know you promised."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Helen, colouring at the title, "I can't singbefore Cadge; but if you like, I'll play for you. See if I'm notimproving in my tremolo."
Helen did not sing in the old days, so that I was not surprised at herrefusal. Taking her mandolin, she tinkled an air that I have oftenheard her play, but neither I nor any one else had ears for it, soabsorbed was the sense of sight.
Her long lashes swept her cheeks as she bent forward in the firelight,her vivid colouring subdued by the soft, playing glow to an elusivecharm. At one moment, as the flames flickered into stronger life, herbeauty seemed to grow fuller and to have an oriental softness andwarmth; the next, the light would die away, and in the cooler, grayer,fainter radiance, her perfect grace of classic outline made her seem astatue--Galatea just coming to life, more beautiful than the daughtersof men, her great loveliness delicately spiritualized.
If I were a beautiful woman, I'd learn to play a mandolin.
"Sing, Helen," begged Kitty in a whisper.
In a voice that began tremulously, low and faltering, and slowly gainedcourage, she sang the ballad she had been playing. It was easy to seethat she was not a musician; but, as she forgot her listeners, weforgot everything but her.
Miss Bryant put down the compasses and scale rule she had beenrestlessly fingering, and her keen eyes softened and dilated. Kittydropped on the floor at Helen's feet; the hush in the room wasbreathless. Reid sat in the dark, still as a statue; I clenched myhands and held silence.
The words were as simple as the air. But the voice, so clear, so sweet,so joyous, like Helen's own loveliness--to hear it was an ecstasy. Wewere listening to the rarest notes that ever had fallen on humanears--unless the tale of the sirens be history.
As the last note died, the fire leaped, dropped and left us in dusk andsilence. Kitty buried her face against Helen's dress. My heart waspounding until in my own ears it sounded like an anvil chorus. I don'tknow whether I was very happy or very miserable. I would have died tohear that voice again. It is the truth!
With a sudden sob and a sniffing that told of tears unashamed, MissBryant found frivolous words to veil our emotion.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she quavered, "this is a high-class concert;three dollars each for tickets, please. Helen, you don't know how tosing, but--don't learn! Come Pros."--the big drops ran down her cheeks;"I've got to look up a story in the morning."
"Wait a minute," said Reid, his long, delicately shaped fingerstrembling. "Let me recover on something."
Picking up Kitty's banjo, he smote the strings uncertainly and halfsang, half declaimed:--
"'With my Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul! Oh, the green that thunders aft along the deck! Are you sick of towns and men? You must sign and sail again, For it's Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!'
"By Jove! Kipling's right; nothing like a banjo, is there? Now then,Young Person, I'm with you. Good night; good night!"
While his voice was still echoing down the stairway, Miss Bryant camerunning up again.
"Say, got a photograph of yourself, Helen?" she asked.
She had apparently quite recovered from her emotion, and her toneexpressed an odd mixture of business and affection.
"I believe if I showed Big Tom a picture of you," she explained, "he'drun a story--there's your science, you know, and
your music--on theSociety page, maybe."
"But I haven't any picture; at least, any that you'd want--only a fewtaken months ago, for my father."
"Show me those; why won't they do?"
"Oh, they aren't good; they--they don't look like me. Besides, I reallycouldn't let you print my picture, Cadge."
"All right. Good night, then; good night, Kitty."
"Perhaps I was just the least bit homesick; I'm glad you've come,"Helen said to me at good-by.
She did not withdraw the hand I pressed. She was still under theexcitement of the music; the song had left on her face a dreamytenderness.
"Don't you like Cadge?" she asked, checking with shy evasiveness thewords I would have spoken. "She can do anything--sing, talk modernGreek and Chinese--Cadge is wonderful."
"I know some one more wonderful. Helen, when did you begin to sing?"
"I don't sing; to-night was the first time I ever tried before any onebut Kitty. Did I sing well?"
"I can't believe you're real! I can't--"
"Don't! Don't!" she laughed. "Remember your promise."
And with that she ran away from the door where I stood, and I camedirectly home. Home, to set down these notes; to wonder; to doubt; topinch myself and try to believe that I am alive.
I am alive. This that I have written is the truth! This is what I haveseen and heard since a common, puffing railroad train brought me fromthe West and set me down in the land of miracles.
It is the truth; but out of that magic presence I cannot--I am aspowerless to believe as I am powerless to doubt.
God help me--it is the truth!
BOOK II.
THE BIRTH OF THE BUTTERFLY.
(_From the Autobiography of Helen Winship_.)
Bacillus of Beauty: A Romance of To-day Page 5