"The precious fount of verse, dear maid."
"No!" she whispered violently. "I"m half drowned already. Words, smells, sounds, att.i.tudes, rocking-chairs--and candles profaning the sunshine--I am suffocated, I need more air, more sense and less incense--less sound, less art----"
"Less--_what_?" he gasped.
"Less art!--what you call "l"arr"!--yes, I"ve said it; I"m sick! sick of art! I know what I require now." And as he remained agape in shocked silence: "I don"t mean to be rude, Mr. Frawley, but I also require less of you.... So much less that father will scarcely expect me to play any more accompaniments to your "necklaces of precious tones"--so much less that the minimum of my interest in you vanishes to absolute negation....
So I shall not marry you."
"Aphrodite--are--are you mad?"
Her sulky red mouth was mute.
Meanwhile the poet"s rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an agreeable and rambling monotone:
"Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse; sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense, modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding, thank you for a thought--very, very precious, a thought beautiful."
He smeared the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back, made a mechanical pinch at an atmospheric atom.
"If--if you do that again--if you dare to recite those verses about me, I shall go! I tell you I can"t stand any more," breathed Aphrodite between her clenched teeth.
The young man cast his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed, for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul,"
and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere once more, and began, mousily:
ALL
A tear a year My pale desire requires, And that is all.
Enlacements weary, pa.s.sion tires, Kisses are cinder-ghosts of fires Smothered at birth with mortal earth; And that is all.
A year of fear My pallid soul desires And that is all-- Terror of bliss and dread of happiness, A subtle need of sorrow and distress And you to weep one tear, no more, no less, And that is all I ask-- And that is all.
People were breathing thickly; the poet unaffectedly distilled the suggested tear; it was a fat tear; it ran smoothly down his nose, twinkled, trembled, and fell.
Aphrodite"s features had become tense; she half rose, hesitated. Then, as the young man in the stock turned his invalid"s eyes in her direction and began:
Oh, sixteen tears In sixteen years----
she transfixed her hat with one nervous gesture sprang to her feet, turned, and vanished through the door.
"She is too young to endure it," sobbed the by-product to her of the sketchy face. And that was no idle epigram, either.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XIV
[Ill.u.s.tration]
She had no definite idea; all she craved for was the open--or its metropolitan subst.i.tute--sunshine, air, the glimpse of sanely preoccupied faces, the dull, quickening tumult of traffic. The tumult grew, increasing in her ears as she crossed Washington Square under the sycamores and looked up through tender feathery foliage at the white arch of marble through which the n.o.ble avenue flows away between its splendid arid chasms of marble, bronze, and masonry to that blessed leafy oasis in the north--the Park.
She took an omnibus, impatient for the green rambles of the only breathing-place she knew of, and settled back in her seat, rebellious of eye, sullen of mouth, scarcely noticing the amused expression of the young man opposite.
Two pa.s.sengers left at Twenty-third Street, three at Thirty-fourth Street, and seven at Forty-second Street.
Preoccupied, she glanced up at the only pa.s.senger remaining, caught the fleeting shadow of interest on his face, regarded him with natural indifference, and looked out of the window, forgetting him. A few moments later, accidentally aware of him again, she carelessly noted his superficially attractive qualities, and, approving, resumed her idle inspection of the pa.s.sing throng. But the next time her pretty head swung round she found him looking rather fixedly at her, and involuntarily she returned the gaze with a childlike directness--a gaze which he sustained to the limit of good breeding, then evaded so amiably that it left an impression rather agreeable than otherwise.
"I don"t see," thought Aphrodite, "why I never meet that sort of man.
He hasn"t art nouveau legs, and his features are not by-products of his hair.... I have told my brothers-in-law that I am old enough to go out without coming out.... And I am."
The lovely mouth grew sullen again: "I don"t wish to wait two years and be what dreadful newspapers call a "bud"! I wish to go to dinners and dances _now_!... Where I"ll meet that sort of man.... The sort one feels almost at liberty to talk to without anybody presenting anybody.... I"ve a mind to look amiable the next time he----"
He raised his eyes at that instant; but she did not smile.
"I--I suppose that is the effect of civilization on me," she reflected--"metropolitan civilization. I felt like saying, "For goodness" sake, let"s say something"--even in spite of all my sisters have told me. I can"t see why it would be dangerous for me to _look_ amiable. If he glances at me again--so agreeably----"
He did; but she didn"t smile.
"You see!" she said, accusing herself discontentedly; "you don"t dare look human. Why? Because you"ve had it so drummed into you that you can never, never again do anything natural. Why? Oh, because they all begin to talk about mysterious dangers when you say you wish to be natural....
I"ve made up my mind to look interested the next time he turns.... Why shouldn"t he see that I"m quite willing to talk to him?... And I"m so tired of looking out of the window.... Before I came to this curious city I was never afraid to speak to anybody who attracted me.... And I"m not now.... So if he does look at me----"
He did.
The faintest glimmer of a smile troubled her lips. She thought: "I _do_ wish he"d speak!"
There was a very becoming color in his face, partly because he was experienced enough not to mistake her; partly from a sudden and complete realization of her beauty.
"It"s so odd," thought Aphrodite, "that attractive people consider it dangerous to speak to one another. I don"t see any danger.... I wonder what he has in that square box beside him? It can"t be a camera.... It _can"t_ be a folding easel! It simply _can"t_ be that _he_ is an artist!
a man like that----"
"_Are_ you?" she asked quite involuntarily.
"What?" he replied, astonished, wheeling around.
"An--an artist. I can"t believe it, and I don"t wish to! You don"t look it, you know!"
For a moment he could scarcely realize that she had spoken; his keen gaze dissected the face before him, the unembarra.s.sed eyes, the oval contour, the smooth, flawless loveliness of a child.
"Yes, I am an artist," he said, considering her curiously.
"I am sorry," she said, "no, not sorry--only unpleasantly surprised. You see I am so tired of art--and I thought you looked so--so wholesome----"
He began to laugh--a modulated laugh--rather infectious, too, for Aphrodite bit her lip, then smiled, not exactly understanding it all.
"Why do you laugh?" she asked, still smiling. "Have I said something I should not have said?"
But he replied with a question: "Have you found art unwholesome?"