The Bacillus of Beauty Part 25

Why, John's absurd! He would have liked to find me--not ill, of course, but overcome by the Opera experience, dependent on him, ready to be s.h.i.+elded, hidden, petted, comforted. He can not see me as I am--a strong, splendid woman, ready to accept the responsibilities of my beauty.

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 s.h.i.+ning 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, establis.h.i.+ng 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 WINs.h.i.+P, MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD. POSED BY MISS WINs.h.i.+P 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 surpa.s.s 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.

So fair that, had you Beauty's picture took, It must like her or not like Beauty look.

--ALEYN'S HENRY VII.

A Western Wild Rose!

As sweet! As perfect!

By all who have seen her, Helen Wins.h.i.+p is p.r.o.nounced 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 blus.h.i.+ng, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 Wins.h.i.+p 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 G.o.ddess mould. The loose, flowing robe of her daily wear is of cla.s.sic grace and dignity.

Tall as the Venus of Milo, she incarnates that n.o.ble 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 Wins.h.i.+p is not a product of the cities. Jasper M. Wins.h.i.+p, her father, is a bonanza farmer. Mrs. Wins.h.i.+p 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 suns.h.i.+ne and sweet air, she danced with the b.u.t.terflies, 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 pa.s.sing traveller, who put aside the bright, wind-blown hair to gaze long into her fathomless eyes.