Half an hour later he was deposited under the bronze shelter of the porte-cochère belonging to an extremely expensive mansion overlooking the park; and presently, admitted, he prowled ponderously and softly about an over-gilded rococo reception-room. But all anxiety had now fled from his face; he coyly nipped the atmosphere at intervals as various portions of the furniture attracted his approval; he stood before a splendid canvas of Goya and pushed his thumb at it; he moused and prowled and peeped and snooped, and his smile grew larger and larger and sweeter and sweeter, until — dare I say it! — a low smooth chuckle, all but noiseless, rippled the heavy cheeks of the poet; and, raising his eyes, he beheld a stocky, fashionably-dressed and red-faced man of forty intently eying him. The man spoke decisively and at once:
“Mr. Guilford? Quite so. I am Mr. West.”
“You are—” The poet’s smile flickered like a sickly candle. “I — this is — are you Mr. Stanley West?”
“I am.”
“It must — it probably was your son — —”
“I am unmarried,” said the president of the Occidental tartly, “and the only Stanley West in the directory.”
The poet swayed, then sat down rather suddenly on a Louis XIV chair which crackled. Several times he passed an ample hand over his features. A mechanical smile struggled to break out, but it was not the smile, any more than glucose is sugar.
“Did — ah — did you receive two tickets for the New Arts Theater — ah — Mr. West?” he managed to say at last.
“I did. Thank you very much, but I was not able to avail myself — —”
“Quite so. And — ah — do you happen to know who it was that — ah — presented your tickets and occupied the seats this afternoon?”
“Why, I suppose it was two young men in our employ — Mr. Lethbridge, who appraises property for us, and Mr. Harrow, one of our brokers. May I ask why?”
For a long while the poet sat there, eyes squeezed tightly closed as though in bodily anguish. Then he opened one of them:
“They are — ah — quite penniless, I presume?”
“They have prospects,” said West briefly. “Why?”
The poet rose; something of his old attitude returned; he feebly gazed at a priceless Massero vase, made a half-hearted attempt to join thumb and forefinger, then rambled toward the door, where two spotless flunkies attended with his hat and overcoat.
“Mr. Guilford,” said West, following, a trifle perplexed and remorseful, “I should be very — er — extremely happy to subscribe to the New Arts Theater — if that is what you wished.”
“Thank you,” said the poet absently as a footman invested him with a seal-lined coat.
“Is there anything more I could do for you, Mr. Guilford?”
The poet’s abstracted gaze rested on him, then shifted.
“I — I don’t feel very well,” said the poet hoarsely, sitting down in a hall-seat. Suddenly he began to cry, fatly.
Nobody did anything; the stupefied footman gaped; West looked, walked nervously the length of the hall, looked again, and paced the inlaid floor to and fro, until the bell at the door sounded and a messenger-boy appeared with a note scribbled on a yellow telegraph blank:
“Lethbridge and I just married and madly happy. Will be on hand Monday, sure. Can’t you advance us three months’ salary?
“Harrow.”
“Idiots!” said West. Then, looking up: “What are you waiting for, boy?”
“Me answer,” replied the messenger calmly.
“Oh, you were told to bring back an answer?”
“Ya-as.”
“Then give me your pencil, my infant Chesterfield.” And West scribbled on the same yellow blank:
“Checks for you on your desks Monday. Congratulations. I’ll see you through, you damfools.
“West.”
“Here’s a quarter for you,” observed West, eying the messenger.
“T’anks. Gimme the note.”
West glanced at the moist, fat poet; then suddenly that intuition which is bred in men of his stamp set him thinking. And presently he tentatively added two and two.
“Mr. Guilford,” he said, “I wonder whether this note — and my answer to it — concerns you.”
The poet used his handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun breaking through a drizzle — like the glory of a search-light dissolving a sticky fog, the smile of smiles illuminated everything: footmen, messenger, financier.
“Thank you,” he said thickly; “thank you for your thought. Thought is but a trifle to bestow — a little thing in itself. But it is the little things that are most important — the smaller the thing the more vital its importance, until” — he added in a genuine burst of his old eloquence— “the thing becomes so small that it isn’t anything at all, and then the value of nothing becomes so enormous that it is past all computation. That is a very precious thought! Thank you for it; thank you for understanding. Bless you!”
Exuding a rich sweetness from every feature the poet moved toward the door at a slow fleshy waddle, head wagging, small eyes half closed, thumbing the atmosphere, while his lips moved in wordless self-communion: “The attainment of nothing at all — that is rarest, the most precious, the most priceless of triumphs — very, very precious. So” — and his glance was sideways and nimbly intelligent— “so if nothing at all is of such inestimable value, those two young pups can live on their expectations — quod erat demonstrandum.”
He shuddered and looked up at the façade of the gorgeous house which he had just quitted.
“So many sunny windows to sit in — to dream in. I — I should have found it agreeable. Pups!”
Crawling into his cab he sank into a pulpy mound, partially closing his eyes. And upon his pursed-up lips, unuttered yet imminent, a word trembled and wabbled as the cab bounced down the avenue. It may have been “precious”; it was probably “pups!”
XI
ut there were further poignant emotions in store for the poet, for, as his cab swung out of the avenue and drew up before the great house on the southwest corner of Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, he caught a glimpse of his eldest daughter, Iole, vanishing into the house, and, at the same moment, he perceived his son-in-law, Mr. Wayne, paying the driver of a hansom-cab, while several liveried servants bore houseward the luggage of the wedding journey.
“George!” he cried dramatically, thrusting his head from the window of his own cab as that vehicle drew up with a jolt that made his stomach vibrate, “George! I am here!”
Wayne looked around, paid the hansom-driver, and, advancing slowly, offered his hand as the poet descended to the sidewalk. “How are you?” he inquired without enthusiasm as the poet evinced a desire to paw him. “All is well here, I hope.”
“George! Son!” The poet gulped till his dewlap contracted. He laid a large plump hand on Wayne’s shoulders. “Where are my lambs?” he quavered; “where are they?”
“Which lambs?” inquired the young man uneasily. “If you mean Iole and Vanessa — —”
“No! My ravished lambs! Give me my stolen lambs. Trifle no longer with a father’s affections! Lissa! — Cybele! Great Heavens! Where are they?” he sobbed hoarsely.
“Well, where are they?” retorted his son-in-law, horrified. “Come into the house; people in the street are looking.”
In the broad hall the poet paused, staggered, strove to paw Wayne, then attempted to fold his arms in an attitude of bitter scorn.
“Two penniless wastrels,” he muttered, “are wedded to my lambs. But there are laws to invoke — —”
An avalanche of pretty girls in pink pajamas came tumbling down the bronze and marble staircase, smothering poet and son-in-law in happy embraces; and “Oh, George!” they cried, “how sunburned you are! So is Iole, but she is too sweet! Did you have a perfectly lovely honeymoon? When is Vanessa coming? And how is Mr. Briggs? And — oh, do you know the news? Cybele a
nd Lissa married two such extremely attractive young men this afternoon — —”
“Married!” cried Wayne, releasing Dione’s arms from his neck. “Whom did they marry?”
“Pups!” sniveled the poet— “penniless, wastrel pups!”
“Their names,” said Aphrodite coolly, from the top of the staircase, “are James Harrow and Henry Lethbridge. I wish there had been three — —”
“Harrow! Lethbridge!” gasped Wayne. “When” — he turned helplessly to the poet— “when did they do this?”
Through the gay babble of voices and amid cries and interruptions, Wayne managed to comprehend the story. He tried to speak, but everybody except the poet laughed and chatted, and the poet, suffused now with a sort of sad sweetness, waved his hand in slow unctuous waves until even the footmen’s eyes protruded.
“It’s all right,” said Wayne, raising his voice; “it’s topsyturvy and irregular, but it’s all right. I’ve known Harrow and Leth — For Heaven’s sake, Dione, don’t kiss me like that; I want to talk! — You’re hugging me too hard, Philodice. Oh, Lord! will you stop chattering all together! I — I — Do you want the house to be pinched?”
He glanced up at Aphrodite, who sat astride the banisters lighting a cigarette. “Who taught you to do that?” he cried.
“I’m sixteen, now,” she said coolly, “and I thought I’d try it.”
Her voice was drowned in the cries and laughter; Wayne, with his hands to his ears, stared up at the piquant figure in its pink pajamas and sandals, then his distracted gaze swept the groups of parlor maids and footmen around the doors: “Great guns!” he thundered, “this is the limit and they’ll pull the house! Morton!” — to a footman— “ring up 7 — 00 — 9B Murray Hill. My compliments and congratulations to Mr. Lethbridge and to Mr. Harrow, and say that we usually dine at eight! Philodice! stop that howling! Oh, just you wait until Iole has a talk with you all for running about the house half-dressed — —”
“I won’t wear straight fronts indoors, and my garters hurt!” cried Aphrodite defiantly, preparing to slide down the banisters.
“Help!” said Wayne faintly, looking from Dione to Chlorippe, from Chlorippe to Philodice, from Philodice to Aphrodite. “I won’t have my house turned into a confounded Art Nouveau music hall. I tell you — —”
“Let me tell them,” said Iole, laughing and kissing her hand to the poet as she descended the stairs in her pretty bride’s traveling gown.
She checked Aphrodite, looked wisely around at her lovely sisters, then turned to remount the stairs, summoning them with a gay little confidential gesture.
And when the breathless crew had trooped after her, and the pad of little, eager, sandaled feet had died away on the thick rugs of the landing above, the poet, clasping his fat white hands, thumbs joined, across his rotund abdomen, stole a glance at his dazed son-in-law, which was partly apprehensive and partly significant, almost cunning. “An innocent saturnalia,” he murmured. “The charming abandon of children.” He unclasped one hand and waved it. “Did you note the unstudied beauty of the composition as my babes glided in and out following the natural and archaic yet exquisitely balanced symmetry of the laws which govern mass and line composition, all unconsciously, yet perhaps” — he reversed his thumb and left his sign manual upon the atmosphere— “perhaps,” he mused, overflowing with sweetness— “perhaps the laws of Art Nouveau are divine! — perhaps angels and cherubim, unseen, watch fondly o’er my babes, lest all unaware they guiltlessly violate some subtle canon of Art, marring the perfect symmetry of eternal preciousness.”
Wayne’s mouth was partly open, his eyes hopeless yet fixed upon the poet with a fearful fascination.
“Art,” breathed the poet, “is a solemn, a fearful responsibility. You are responsible, George, and some day you must answer for every violation of Art, to the eternal outraged fitness of things. You must answer, I must answer, every soul must answer!”
“A-ans — answer! What, for God’s sake?” stammered Wayne.
The poet, deliberately joining thumb and forefinger, pinched out a portion of the atmosphere.
“That! That George! For that is Art! And Art is justice! And justice, affronted, demands an answer.”
He refolded his arms, mused for a space, then stealing a veiled glance sideways:
“You — you are — ah — convinced that my two lost lambs need dread no bodily vicissitudes — —”
“Cybele and Lissa?”
“Ah — yes — —”
“Lethbridge will have money to burn if he likes the aroma of the smoke. Harrow has burnt several stacks already; but his father will continue to fire the furnace. Is that what you mean?”
“No!” said the poet softly, “no, George, that is not what I mean. Wealth is a great thing. Only the little things are precious to me. And the most precious of all is absolutely nothing!” But, as he wandered away into the great luxurious habitation of his son-in-law, his smile grew sweeter and sweeter and his half-closed eyes swam, melting into a saccharine reverie.
“The little things,” he murmured, thumbing the air absently— “the little things are precious, but not as precious as absolutely nothing. For nothing is perfection. Thank you,” he said sweetly to a petrified footman, “thank you for understanding. It is precious — very, very precious to know that I am understood.”
XII
y early springtide the poet had taken an old-fashioned house on the south side of Washington Square; his sons-in-law standing for it — as the poet was actually beginning to droop amid the civilized luxury of Madison Avenue. He missed what he called his own “den.” So he got it, rent free, and furnished it sparingly with furniture of a slabby variety until the effect produced might, profanely speaking, be described as dinky.
His friends, too, who haunted the house, bore curious conformity to the furnishing, being individually in various degrees either squatty, slabby or dinky; and twice a week they gathered for “Conferences” upon what he and they described as “L’Arr Noovo.”
L’Arr Noovo, a pleasing variation of the slab style in Art, had profoundly impressed the poet. Glass window-panes, designed with tulip patterns, were cunningly inserted into all sorts of furniture where window-glass didn’t belong, and the effect appeared to be profitable; for up-stairs in his “shop,” workmen were very busy creating extraordinary designs and setting tulip-patterned glass into everything with, as the poet explained, “a loving care” and considerable glue.
His four unmarried daughters came to see him, wandering unconcernedly between the four handsome residences of their four brothers-in-law and the “den” of the author of their being — Chlorippe, aged thirteen; Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen, and Aphrodite, sixteen — lovely, fresh-skinned, free-limbed young girls with the delicate bloom of sun and wind still creaming their cheeks — lingering effects of a life lived ever in the open, until the poet’s sons-in-law were able to support him in town in the style to which he had been unaccustomed.
To the Conferences of the poet came the mentally, morally, and physically dinky — and a few badgered but normal husbands, hustled thither by wives whose intellectual development was tending toward the precious.
People read poems, discussed Yeats, Shaw, Fiona, Mendes, and L’Arr Noovo; sang, wandered about pinching or thumbing the atmosphere under stimulus of a cunningly and unexpectedly set window-pane in the back of a “mission” rocking-chair. And when the proper moment arrived the poet would rise, exhaling sweetness from every pore of his bulky entity, to interpret what he called a “Thought.” Sometimes it was a demonstration of the priceless value of “nothings”; sometimes it was a naive suggestion that no house could afford to be without an “Art”-rocker with Arr Noovo insertions. Such indispensable luxuries were on sale up-stairs. Again, he performed a “necklace of precious sounds” — in other words, some verses upon various topics, nature, woodchucks, and the dinkified in Art.
And it was upon one of these occasions that Aphrodite ran away.
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Aphrodite, the sweet, the reasonable, the self-possessed — Aphrodite ran away, having without any apparent reason been stricken with an overpowering aversion for civilization and Arr Noovo.
XIII
t the poet’s third Franco-American Conference that afternoon the room was still vibrating with the echoes of Aphrodite’s harp accompaniment to her own singing, and gushing approbation had scarcely ceased, when the poet softly rose and stood with eyes half-closed as though concentrating all the sweetness within him upon the surface of his pursed lips.
A wan young man whose face figured only as a by-product of his hair whispered “Hush!” and several people, who seemed to be more or less out of drawing, assumed attitudes which emphasized the faulty draftsmanship.
“La Poésie!” breathed the poet; “Kesker say la poésie?”
“La poésie — say la vee!” murmured a young woman with profuse teeth.
“Wee, wee, say la vee!” cried several people triumphantly.
“Nong!” sighed the poet, spraying the hushed air with sweetness, “nong! Say pas le vee; say l’Immortalitay!”
After which the poet resumed his seat, and the by-product read, in French verse, “An Appreciation” of the works of Wilhelmina Ganderbury McNutt.
And that was the limit of the Franco portion of the Conference; the remainder being plain American.
Aphrodite, resting on her tall gilded harp, looked sullenly straight before her. Somebody lighted a Chinese joss-stick, perhaps to kill the aroma of defunct cigarettes.
“Verse,” said the poet, opening his heavy lids and gazing around him with the lambent-eyed wonder of a newly-wakened ram, “verse is a necklace of tinted sounds strung idly, yet lovingly, upon stray tinseled threads of thought.... Thank you for understanding; thank you.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 259