Iole Part 4

"For Heaven's sake, Stuyve----"

"Yes, for Heaven's sake and in Heaven's name don't get any wrong ideas into your vicious head."

"What?"

"I tell you," said Briggs, "that I was never closer to falling in love than I am to-day. And I've been here just two weeks."

"Oh, Lord----"

"Amen," muttered Briggs. "Here, give me your carpet-bag, you brute.

We're on the edge of Paradise."

III

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Before we discuss my financial difficulties," said the poet, lifting his plump white hand and waving it in unctuous waves about the veranda, "let me show you our home, Mr. Wayne. May I?"

"Certainly," said Wayne politely, following Guilford into the house.

They entered a hall; there was absolutely nothing in the hall except a small table on which reposed a single daisy in a gla.s.s of water.

"Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single blossom against a background of nothing at all. You follow me, Mr. Wayne?"

"Not--exactly----"

The poet smiled a large, tender smile, and, with inverted thumb, executed a gesture as though making several spots in the air.

"The concentration of composition," he explained; "the elimination of complexity; the isolation of the concrete in the center of the abstract; something in the midst of nothing. It is a very precious thought, Mr.

Wayne."

"Certainly," muttered Wayne; and they moved on.

"This," said the poet, "is what I call my den."

Wayne, not knowing what to say, sidled around the walls. It was almost bare of furniture; what there was appeared to be of the slab variety.

"I call my house the house beautiful," murmured Guilford with his large, sweet smile. "Beauty is simplicity; beauty is unconsciousness; beauty is the child of elimination. A single fly in an empty room is beautiful to me, Mr. Wayne."

"They carry germs," muttered Wayne, but the poet did not hear him and led the way to another enormous room, bare of everything save for eight thick and very beautiful Kazak rugs on the polished floor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single blossom against a background of nothing at all."]

"My children's bedroom," he whispered solemnly.

"You don't mean to say they sleep on those Oriental rugs!" stammered Wayne.

"They do," murmured the poet. The tender sweetness of his ample smile was overpowering--like too much bay rum after shaving. "Sparta, Mr.

Wayne, Sparta! And the result? My babes are perfect, physically, spiritually. Elimination wrought the miracle; yonder they sleep, innocent as the Graces, with all the windows open, clothed in moonlight or starlight, as the astronomical conditions may be. At the break of dawn they are afield, simply clothed, free limbed, unhampered by the tawdry harness of degenerate civilization. And as they wander through the verdure," he added with rapt enthusiasm, "plucking shy blossoms, gathering simples and herbs and vegetables for our bountiful and natural repast, they sing as they go, and every tremulous thrill of melody falls like balm on a father's heart." The overpowering sweetness of his smile drugged Wayne. Presently he edged toward the door, and the poet followed, a dreamy radiance on his features as though emanating from sacred inward meditation.

They sat down on the veranda; Wayne fumbled for his cigar-case, but his unnerved fingers fell away; he dared not smoke.

"About--about that business matter," he ventured feebly; but the poet raised his plump white hand.

"You are my guest," he said graciously. "While you are my guest nothing shall intrude to cloud our happiness."

Perplexed, almost muddled, Wayne strove in vain to find a reason for the elimination of the matter that had interrupted his cruise and brought him to Rose-Cross, the maddest yachtsman on the Atlantic. Why should Guilford forbid the topic as though its discussion were painful to Wayne?

"He always gets the wrong end foremost, as Briggs said," thought the young man. "I wonder where the deuce Briggs can be? I'm no match for this bunch."

His thoughts halted; he became aware that the poet was speaking in a rich, resonant voice, and he listened in an att.i.tude of painful politeness.

"It's the little things that are most precious," the poet was saying, and pinched the air with forefinger and thumb and pursed up his lips as though to whistle some saccharine air.

"The little things," he continued, delicately perforating the atmosphere as though selecting a diatom.

"Big things go, too," ventured Wayne.

"No," said the poet; "no--or rather they _do_ go, in a certain sense, for every little thing is precious, and therefore little things are big!---big with portent, big in value. Do you follow me, Mr. Wayne?"

Wayne's fascinated eyes were fixed on the poet. The latter picked out another atom from the atmosphere and held it up for Mr. Wayne's inspection; and while that young man's eyes protruded the poet rambled on and on until the melody of his voice became a ceaseless sound, a vague, sustained monotone, which seemed to bore into Wayne's brain until his legs twitched with a furious desire for flight.

When he obtained command of himself the poet was saying, "It is my hour for withdrawal. It were insincere and artificial to ask your indulgence----"

He rose to his rotund height.

"You are due to sit in your cage," stammered Wayne, comprehending.

"My den," corrected the poet, saturating the air with the sweetness of his smile.

Wayne arose. "About that business--" he began desperately; but the poet's soft, heavy hand hovered in mid-air, and Wayne sat down so suddenly that when his eyes recovered their focus the poet had disappeared.

A benumbed resentment struggled within him for adequate expression; he hitched his chair about to command a view of the meadow, then sat motionless, hypnotized by the view. Eight girls, clad in pink blouses and trousers, golden hair twisted up, decorated the landscape. Some were kneeling, filling baskets of woven, scented gra.s.ses with wild strawberries; some were wading the branches of the meadow brook, searching for trout with gra.s.s-woven nets; some picked early peas; two were playing a lightning set at tennis. And in the center of everything that was going on was Briggs, perfectly at ease, making himself agreeably at home.

The spectacle of Briggs among the Hamadryads appeared to paralyze Wayne.

Then an immense, intense resentment set every nerve in him tingling.

Briggs, his friend, his confidential business adviser, his indispensable _alter ego_, had abandoned him to be tormented by this fat, saccharine poet--abandoned him while he, Briggs, made himself popular with eight of the most amazingly bewitching maidens mortal man might marvel on! The meanness stung Wayne till he jumped to his feet and strode out into the suns.h.i.+ne, menacing eyes fastened on Briggs.

"Now wouldn't that sting you!" he breathed fiercely, turning up his trousers and stepping gingerly across the brook.

Whether or not Briggs saw him coming and kept sidling away he could not determine; he did not wish to shout; he kept pa.s.sing pretty girls and taking off his hat, and following Briggs about, but he never seemed to come any nearer to Briggs; Briggs always appeared in the middle distance, flitting genially from girl to girl; and presently the absurdity of his performance struck Wayne, and he sat down on the bank of the brook, too mad to think. There was a pretty girl picking strawberries near-by; he rose, took off his hat to her, and sat down again. She was one of those graceful, clean-limbed, creamy-skinned creatures described by Briggs; her hair was twisted up into a heavy, glistening knot, showing the back of a white neck; her eyes matched the sky and her lips the berries she occasionally bit into or dropped to the bottom of her woven basket.

Once or twice she looked up fearlessly at Wayne as her search for berries brought her nearer; and Wayne forgot the perfidy of Briggs in an effort to look politely amiable.