"James Harrow," she repeated with a friendly nod. "My name is Lissa--my first name; the other is Guilford. My father is the famous poet, Clarence Guilford. He named us all after b.u.t.terflies--all my sisters"--counting them on her white fingers while her eyes rested on him--"Chlorippe, twelve years old, that pretty one next to my father; then Philodice, thirteen; Dione, fourteen; Aphrodite, fifteen; Cybele, the one next to me, sixteen, and almost seventeen; and myself, seventeen, almost eighteen. Besides, there is Iole, who married Mr.
Wayne, and Vanessa, married to Mr. Briggs. They have been off on Mr.
Wayne"s yacht, the _Thendara_, on their wedding trip. Now you know all about us. Do you think you would like to know us?"
"_Like_ to! I"d simply love to! I----"
"That is very nice," she said unembarra.s.sed.
"I thought I should like you when I saw you leaning over and listening so reverently to father"s epigrams. Then, besides, I had n.o.body but my sisters to talk to. Oh, you can"t imagine how many attractive men I see every day in New York--and I should like to know them all--and many _do_ look at me as though they would like it, too; but Mr. Wayne is so queer, and so are father and Mr. Briggs--about my speaking to people in public places. They have told me not to, but I--I--thought I would," she ended, smiling. "What harm can it do for me to talk to you?"
"It"s perfectly heavenly of you----"
"Oh, do you think so? I wonder what father thinks"--turning to look; then, resuming: "He generally makes us stop, but I am quite sure he expected me to talk to you."
The lone note of a piano broke the thread of the sweetest, maddest discourse Harrow had ever listened to; the girl"s cheeks flushed and she turned expectantly toward the curtained stage. Again the lone note, thumped vigorously, sounded a staccato monotone.
"Precious--very precious," breathed the poet, closing his eyes in a sort of fatty ecstasy.
VIII
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Harrow looked at his program, then, leaning toward Lissa, whispered: "That is the overture to _Att.i.tudes_--the program explains it: "A series of pale gray notes"--what the deuce!--"pale _gray_ notes giving the value of the highest light in which the play is pitched"--" He paused, aghast.
"I understand," whispered the girl, resting her lovely arm on the chair beside him. "Look! The curtain is rising! _How_ my heart beats! Does yours?"
He nodded, unable to articulate.
The curtain rose very, very slowly, upon the first scene of Barnard Haw"s masterpiece of satire; and the lovely firing-line quivered, blue batteries opening very wide, lips half parted in breathless antic.i.p.ation. And about that time Harrow almost expired as a soft, impulsive hand closed nervously over his.
And there, upon the stage, the human species was delicately vivisected in one act; human frailty exposed, human motives detected, human desire quenched in all the brilliancy of perverted epigram and the scalpel a.n.a.lysis of the astigmatic. Life, love, and folly were portrayed with the remorseless accuracy of an eye doubly sensitive through the stimulus of an intellectual strabismus. Barnard Haw at his greatest! And how he dissected att.i.tudes; the att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the lover, the father, the wife, the daughter, the mother, the mistress--proving that virtue, _per se_, is a pose. Att.i.tudes! How he flayed those who a.s.sumed them. His att.i.tude toward att.i.tudes was remorseless, uncompromising, inexorable.
And the curtain fell on the first act, its gray and silver folds swaying in the half-crazed whirlwind of applause.
Lissa"s silky hand trembled in Harrow"s, her grasp relaxed. He dropped his hand and, searching, encountered hers again.
"_What_ do you think of it?" she asked.
"I don"t think there"s any harm in it," he stammered guiltily, supposing she meant the contact of their interlaced fingers.
"Harm? I didn"t mean harm," she said. "The play is perfectly harmless, I think."
"Oh--the play! Oh, that"s just _that_ sort of play, you know. They"re all alike; a lot of people go about telling each other how black white is and that white is always black--until somebody suddenly discovers that black and white are a sort of greenish red. Then the audience applauds frantically in spite of the fact that everybody in it had concluded that black and white were really a shade of yellowish yellow!"
She had begun to laugh; and as he proceeded, excited by her approval, the most adorable gaiety possessed her.
"I _never_ heard anything half so clever!" she said, leaning toward him.
"I? Clever!" he faltered. "You--you don"t really mean that!"
"Why? Don"t you know you are? Don"t you know in your heart that you have said the very thing that I in my heart found no words to explain?"
"Did I, really?"
"Yes. Isn"t it delightful!"
It was; Harrow, holding tightly to the soft little hand half hidden by the folds of her gown, cast a sneaking look behind him, and encountered the fixed and furious glare of his closest friend, who had pinched him.
"Pig!" hissed Lethbridge, "do I sit next or not?"
"I--I can"t; I"ll explain----"
"_Do_ I?"
"You don"t understand----"
"I understand _you_!"
"No, you don"t. Lissa and I----"
"Lissa!"
"Ya--as! We"re talking very cleverly; _I_ am, too. Wha"d"you wan" to b.u.t.t in for?" with sudden venom.
"b.u.t.t in! Do you think I want to sit here and look at tha" damfool play!
Fix it or I"ll run about biting!"
Harrow turned. "Lissa," he whispered in an exquisitely modulated voice, "what would happen if I spoke to your sister Cybele?"
"Why, she"d answer you, silly!" said the girl, laughing. "Wouldn"t you, Cybele?"
"I"ll tell you what I"d like to do," said Cybele, leaning forward: "I"d like very much to talk to that attractive man who is trying to look at me--only your head has been in the way." And she smiled innocently at Lethbridge.
So Lissa moved down one. Harrow took her seat, and Cybele dropped gaily into Harrow"s vacant place.
"_Now_," she said to Lethbridge, "we can tell each other all sorts of things. I was so glad that you looked at me all the while and so vexed that I couldn"t talk to you. _How_ do you like my new gown? And what is your name? Have you ever before seen a play? I haven"t, and my name is Cybele."
"It is per--perfectly heavenly to hear you talk," stammered Lethbridge.
Harrow heard him, turned and looked him full in the eyes, then slowly resumed his att.i.tude of attention: for the poet was speaking:
"The Art of Barnard Haw is the quintessence of simplicity. What is the quintessence of simplicity?" He lifted one heavy pudgy hand, joined the tips of his soft thumb and forefinger, and selecting an atom of air, deftly captured it. "_That_ is the quintessence of simplicity; _that_ is Art!"
He smiled largely on Harrow, whose eyes had become wild again.
"_That!_" he repeated, pinching out another molecule of atmosphere, "and _that_!" punching dent after dent in the viewless void with inverted thumb.