Book 3 — CHAPTER VI.

LOVE IS NOTHING!

Monday, Jan. 20.

Dear me! Beauty is a responsibility! Such troubles, such trials about nothing! It's photographs this time!

Last Wednesday—the day after the papers published so much about me—a strange man called in Mrs. Baker's absence and begged me to let him take my photograph—as a service to Art. If Aunt had been at home I wouldn't have been permitted to see him. But the man was pleasant and gentlemanly, and so sincere in his admiration that he won the way to my heart. I'm afraid devotion is still so new to me that it's the surest road to my good graces. He hesitated and stammered, blinking before my shining loveliness as if blinded, as he offered to take the pictures for nothing, if he might exhibit them afterwards; and at last I went to his studio, though I said that his work must be for me only, and that I must pay for it.

I wonder at myself for yielding, for I didn't mean to have any photographs until the experiment was quite finished—to mortify me in future with their record of imperfection; but I'm so nearly perfect now that, really, it's time I had something to tell me how I do look. Of course, as fast as I can lay hands on them, I'm destroying every likeness of the old Nelly. At the studio it was such a revelation—the care and intelligence the man displayed, the skill of the posing—that when I got home full of the subject and found Cadge waiting, I had to tell her all about it.

"H'm!" she said after I had finished; "what sort of looking chap?"

When I had described him, she sat silent at least a third of a minute, establishing for herself a new record. Then she said:—

"Princess, I'll have to take back every word I said yesterday about letting you off from being interviewed. I agreed to wait, but it's up to you. Every rag in town'll have some kind of feature about you next Sunday, and you wouldn't ask me to see the Star beaten? You'd better come right now to the Star photographer, or—see last night's papers?—you'll wish you'd never been born. I tell you the situation's out of my control."

"Well, come on then, before Aunt Frank gets back."

So we started out again. The sun and air made me so drunken with pure joy of living that I didn't mind the scolding sure to follow—though it certainly has proved an annoyance ever since to have Aunt's fidgetty oversight of me redoubled, and to be shut up, as I have been, closer than ever, like a Princess in a fairy book, just as my splendid triumphs were beginning.

Worst of all, almost, Mrs. Baker told the tale of my misdeeds to John.

"Why, Helen," he said at once, "no photographer of standing goes about soliciting patronage; the man who came here wants pictures of you to sell."

"Like the great ladies' photographs in England?" I asked flippantly, though I was really a little disturbed.

"Just what I told her!" groaned Aunt Frank. "Bake must see the man; or—Mr. Burke, why can't you find out about him? Perhaps it's all right," she added weakly; "from her accounts he didn't flatter Nelly one bit; simply raved over her."

"Yes, I'll run in and converse with the art lover," John grimly agreed; but just then in came Milly with the General, and the subject was changed.

Indeed, though I don't know just how she managed it, from the moment the brilliant woman of the world entered the room, poor clumsy John was made to seem clumsier than ever, and before long, without quite knowing why, he went away. I'm pretty sure that Mrs. Van Dam dislikes to see us together.

John was wrong and yet not wrong about the photographer; his threatened interposition came to nothing, for the very next morning—only yesterday, long ago as it seems—I was enlightened as to the cheap and silly trick that had been played upon me.

"Thee, Cothin Nelly; pwetty, pwetty!" cried Joy, running towards me and holding up a huge poster picture from the Sunday Echo.

"Isn't it—why—give it to me!" I almost snatched the sheet from her baby hands.

My portrait! I knew it in spite of crude colour and cheap paper. It was my portrait, and it was labelled: "HELEN WINSHIP, MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD. POSED BY MISS WINSHIP ESPECIALLY FOR—"

And then—the insolence of the man!—there followed the name of the bashful stranger whose devotion to Art had drawn him to my door! The fellow had practised upon my credulity to obtain my likeness for publication.

I threw down the sheet, quivering with anger. I felt that I should never again dare look at a paper; but half an hour later I sent Boy out to buy them all, and, locked into my room, I shook all about me a snowstorm of bulky supplements and magazines.

Having posed for Cadge, I knew, of course, that the Star would print my picture, perhaps several of them. But at any other time I should have been overcome to find a "special section" of four pages filled with half-tone likenesses of me, cemented together by an essay on "Beauty," signed by a novelist of repute, and by articles from painters, sculptors, dressmakers and gymnasts, all from their respective standpoints extolling my perfections. Cadge had written an interview headed "How It Feels to be Beautiful."

But the Echo! Besides the poster which Joy had shown me, it published two pages of portraits framed in medallion miniatures of celebrated beauties with whom it compared me, making me surpass the loveliest women of history and legend, from Helen of Troy to the reigning music hall performer. And, with a shock of surprise, I not only saw in the pictures the dress I had worn and the theatrical things the deferential artist had loaned me to pose in, but in the article appeared every word I had said to him; and the skill with which fact, fiction, clever conjecture and picturesque description had been stirred into the sweetened batter that Cadge calls a "first-rate delirious yellow style" was maddening.

This is the beginning of the stuff:—

CHAPTER I.

A PRAIRIE BUD.

A Western Wild Rose!

As sweet! As perfect!

By all who have seen her, Helen Winship is pronounced the most beautiful of women.

Last Monday night, at the Opera House, a great audience paid her such spontaneous tribute as never before was offered human being.

At the sight of a young girl, trembling and blushing, staid citizens were lifted to their feet by an irresistible wave of enthusiasm.

Not for anything this girl has done, though Science will hear from her; not for her voice, though no nightingale sings so melodiously; but for a face more glorious than that other Helen's, "Whose beauty summoned Greece to arms and drew a thousand ships to Tenedos."

This modern Helen is a niece of Judge Timothy Baker, at whose residence, No. — East Seventy-second Street, she is staying.

The Judge and his family are reticent concerning their lovely guest, of whom the Echo presents the first authentic picture.

Miss Winship cannot be described.

Artists say that by their stern canons she is a perfect woman. Her beauty is that of flawless health and a hitherto unknown physical perfection.

She is cast in Goddess mould. The loose, flowing robe of her daily wear is of classic grace and dignity.

Tall as the Venus of Milo, she incarnates that noble figure with a lightness and a purity virginal and modern.

She is neither blonde nor brunette; of a type essentially American, she has glorious eyes and for her smile a man would lose his head.

It is a fact for students of heredity and environment to consider that Miss Winship is not a product of the cities. Jasper M. Winship, her father, is a bonanza farmer. Mrs. Winship was in her youth the belle of prairie dances, and still has remarkable beauty.

Born of pioneer stock, baby Helen was reared to a life of freedom; learning what she knew of grandeur from the sky and of luxury from the lap of Mother Earth. Child of the sunshine and sweet air, she danced with the butterflies, as innocent as they of cramping clothing that would distort her body, or of city conventionalities that might warp her mind.

Year by year she grew, a brown-faced cherub, strong-limbed and supple. Springtime after springtime her marvellous beauty budded, unnoted save by the passing traveller, who put aside the bright, wind-blown hair to gaze long into her fathomless eyes.

Roystering farm-hands checked their drunken songs at the little maid's approach, but no wild thing feared her. Birds and squirrels came at her call and fed from her hand.

And so it went. Chapters II and III described with brilliant inaccuracy my University life and made me a piquant mixture of devotee of science and favourite of fashion. Ah, well, it was all as accurate as Pa's name or Mother's beauty or her love of dancing—she thinks it's as wicked as playing cards.

Before I had read half the papers, between dread of Father and John and the absurdity of it all, I was in a gale of tears and laughter. More than once Milly crept to the door, or I heard in the hall the uneven step of lame little Ethel. But I wouldn't open. I was swept by a passion of——

Not grief, not anger, not concern, not fear of anything on earth; but—Joy!

Joy in my beauty, about which a million men and women had that morning read for the first time! Joy in the fame of my beauty which should last forever! Joy in my full and rapturous life!

What did I care for the spelling of a name or the bald prose about my college course? What concern was it of mine how my photographs had been obtained? Trifles; trifles all! Here were the essential facts set broadly forth, speeding to every part of the country—why, to every part of the world! Cadge or Pros. Reid now—any one who knows how such things are done—might note the hours as they passed, and say: "Now two millions have seen her beauty, have read of her; now three; now five; now ten millions."

And the story would spread! In ever widening circles, men warned by telegraph of the new wonder would tear open the damp sheets; and pen and pencil and printing press would hurry to reproduce those marvellous lines—to-morrow in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Montreal; next day in Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta; and so on to Denver, Galveston and the Golden Gate.

The picture—mine;—my picture!—would be spread on tables in the low cabins of pilot boats and fishing smacks; it would be nailed to the log walls of Klondike mining huts; soldiers in the steaming trenches around Manila would pass the torn sheets from hand to hand, and for a moment forget their sweethearts while they read of me.

And the ships! The swiftest of them all would carry these pages to London, Paris, Vienna, there to be multiplied a thousand fold and sent out again in many tongues. Blue-eyed Gretchen, Giuseppina, with her bare locks and rainbow-barred apron, slant-eyed O Mimosa San, all in good time would dream over the fair face on the heralding page; women shut in the zenanas of the unchanging East would gossip from housetop to housetop of the wonderful Feringhe beauty; whipped slaves in midmost Africa would carry my picture in their packs into regions where white men have never trod, and dying whalers in the far North would look at my face and forget for a little while their dooming ice floes.

The wealth of all the earth was at my command. Railroad train and ocean grayhound, stage and pony cart, spurring horseman and naked brown runner sweating through jungle paths under his mail bags, would bear the news of me East and West, until they met in the antipodes and put a girdle of my loveliness right round the world!

Never before had I realised what a great thing a newspaper is!

My heart was beating with a terrible joy. And so—prosaic detail—I threw the papers down in a heap on the floor, combed my hair in a great loose knot, put a rose at my belt, and went down to smile at my Aunt's anxieties. I even went with my cousins to supper with Aunt Marcia. And in the early evening Mr. Hynes came to walk with us home. I knew his step, and my heart jumped with fright. What would he, so fastidious as he was, think of that poster?

But his look leaped to mine as he entered, and I—oh, it seemed as if there had never been such a night; never the snow, the delight of the cold and dark and the far, wise stars! I couldn't tell what joy elf possessed me as we walked homeward. I wanted to run like a child. Yet I couldn't bear to reach the house.

"Why, Helen," said Ethel; "you're not wearing your veil."

"Will the reporters git me ef I don't—watch—out?" I laughed. How could I muffle myself like a grandmother?

"We'll keep away the goblins," he said; and—it's a little thing to write down—he walked beside me instead of Milly. We would pass through the shadows of the trees, and then under the glare of an electric lamp, and then again into blackness; and I felt in his quickened breath an instant response to my mood; as if newspapers had never existed, and we were playing at goblins.

I hope he didn't think me childish.

Of course John had come before we reached home, and of course he had been all day fuming over the papers, as if that would do any good; but I had drunk too deep of the intoxicating air to be disturbed by his surprised look when Mr. Hynes and I entered the library; can't I go without his guarding even to Aunt Marcia's?

I like the library—bookshelves, not too high, all about it, and the glow of the open fire and the smiling faces. Sometimes I grow impatient of Aunt's fussy kindness, and of the slavish worship of limp and characterless Milly and Ethel; but last night I was glad to be walled about with cousins, barricaded from the big, curious world. I could have hugged Boy, who lay curled on the hearth, deep in the adventures of Mowgli and the Wolf Brethren. I did hug little Joy, who climbed into my lap, lisping, as she does every night: "Thing, Cothin Nelly."

I looked shyly at Mr. Hynes, who had stooped to pat the cat that purred against his leg, muttering something about a "fine animal." I knew—I begin to understand him so well—just how he felt the charm of everything.

"Thing," Joy insisted, putting up a baby hand until it touched my cheek and twined itself in my hair, "Thing, Cothin Nelly." And I crooned while breathlessly all in the room listened:—

"Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the Western sea—

"He'll be a bad man, won't he, Joy," I broke off, as John came to my corner, "if he scolds a poor girl who has had to stand on the floor all day for the scholars to look at, and get no good mark on her deportment card?"

"I am no longer a schoolmaster, Nelly," said John so icily that Aunt looked up at him, surprised. "Come, Joy," she said, "Cousin Nelly can't be troubled with a great big girl. Why, Mr. Burke, she's cried herself ill, fairly, over those dreadful newspapers. I do so hope they'll leave her in peace now. But of course we tell her it's all meant as a tribute."

"Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow— Blow him again to me, While my little Joy, while my pretty Joy sleeps."

"Thing more about your little Joy! More about me."

The sleepy child cuddled closer and, as I continued to sing, I knew that at least one person in the room understood that a creature so blessed as I could never cry herself ill.

"Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the West—"

"Milly and I have tributes, too," laughed Ethel. "The Trumpet says we're just as charming girls as our wonderful cousin. And the Record prints snapshots at Joy and her nursemaid. Aren't newspapers funny?"

"Some one of us should be running for office," said Uncle Timothy. "It seems gratuitous to subject an unambitious private family to the treatment expected by a candidate or a multi-millionaire. Yet I have seldom had occasion to complain of the press. In its own perhaps headlong manner, it pursues such matters as are of greatest public importance. A household, to avoid its attentions, should be provided with good, plain, durable countenances. The difficulty with this family is its excess of attraction."

He patted Aunt's hand affectionately, while I sang:—

"—Under the silver moon Sleep, my little Joy, sleep, my pretty Joy, sleep—"

"—but, Uncle, what shall I do?"

"Nothing. In a shorter time than now seems possible, another topic will supersede you. Then, as one of our Presidents has aptly said, you will sink into 'innocuous desuetude.'"

But of course I sha'n't!

As I rose to carry Joy to her bed, I felt from all in the room a look that said I was like a great, glorious Madonna, and I bent lower over the sleeping child's still face; it is good to have everybody admire me.

Oh, I do wish John were more reasonable. Not satisfied with seeing me Saturday and yesterday, he came again to-day and asked me to marry him at once. He's so ridiculous!

"Perhaps I'm selfish to wish to mould your brilliant life to my plodding one," he said wistfully, as if he were reading my thoughts. "But I don't mean to be selfish. I love you—and—you're drifting away from me."

"What a goose you are, John!" I said, laughing impatiently. "I'm just the same that I always was; the trouble is, I'm not a bit sentimental."

John is selfish. He'd hide me somewhere outside the city, he'd bury alive the most lovely of women. He prosed to me about a "home"; as if I could now endure a Darby and Joan existence!

To-night his ring distracts—torments me. I pull it off and put it back and it galls my finger, as if it rubbed a wound. I used to go to sleep with it against my lips—I love the opal, gem of the beautiful women. I wonder if it's really unlucky.

I suppose John's talk to-day annoyed me because I'm in such a restless mood—waiting for the barriers to fall, for the glorious life ahead of me to open. How could he expect me to feel as in the days when we were boy and girl, when we dreamed foolish dreams about each other, and were romantic, and young? I have changed since then, I have a thousand things to think about in which he doesn't sympathize; if I answered his words at random it was because I couldn't fix my mind upon them. I drew a long breath when he left me—when I escaped the tender, perplexed question of his eyes.

It's true; I'm not a bit sentimental. I used to think I was, but now I feel sure that I could never love any one as John loves me.

But I mustn't drift away from him. I remember so many things that tie us together, here in this strange, stormy city. What happy times we used to have! He'll understand better by and by, and be less exacting.

But I can't marry; I must be free to enjoy the victories of my beauty; I told him at Christmas that I can't marry for a long, long time.