The Bacillus of Beauty Part 41

"Needs Keeley cure. Good natured cuss; wonder if the Wins.h.i.+p'll get him."

"Lay ye three to one--say twenties--that he gets away, like that Strathay--"

I addressed some smiling speech to the wretches, but through the whole evening my cheeks did not cease to burn.

When the last guest had gone, tired and hysterical as she was, Mrs.

Whitney began a long tirade.

"It must be stopped! It must be stopped!" she cried, pacing back and forth.

The blaze of anger improved her. She must have been a handsome woman once--tall and slender, with fine dark eyes that roll about dramatically.

"I don't see what there is to stop," I said, perversity taking possession of me, though at heart I quite agreed with her estimate of the evening.

"The object of an entertainment being to entertain, why shouldn't the men I know come to ours? If they stayed away, you'd be disappointed; but when they come, as they did to-night, you're frightened, or pretend to be."

"I'm not frightened; I'm appalled. I don't mean Mr. Burke, though he's a detrimental--and, by the way, he was as much distressed to-night as I was.

I mean the men who have families--wives and daughters! Why didn't they bring 'em--or stay away?"

"I'd thank John Burke to mind his own business," I cried hotly. "He doesn't have to come here unless he wants to."

"There is only one way," she went on, as if speaking to herself, pacing the floor and fanning herself violently--for her face, and especially her nose, was as red as a beet; she really laces disgracefully--"there's only one way; I must fall ill at once. I must have nervous prostration, or-- it's nearly June. I shall leave town. Heavens! What a night!"

"You're a.s.suming a great deal. Our arrangements were made by two, and are hardly to be broken by one. You can't agree to matronize me--let me buy furniture for you, and then abandon me, cut off my social opportunities-- leave me--"

"Social opportunity! Social collapse! Disgrace! Why, your prospects were really extraordinary. But now! Where was Meg to-night? Where was Mrs.

Marmaduke? Why did my own sister-in-law stay away?"

"I don't know; do you?"

Her harangue begun, she couldn't stop. "Where's Strathay?" she demanded.

"Gone; and no announcement--what was the matter? Needn't tell me you refused him! And why is the letter box always full of duns? Can't you pay your bills? Why didn't you say so earlier? Would have saved us both a deal of trouble!"

"I didn't tell you I had money."

"You played the part, ordering dresses fit for a d.u.c.h.ess, and things for the flat. You spent enough on a wedding gift for Peggy--or was it a promise to spend?--to support a family a month--peace offering because you'd abused her!--Of course if you'd made the great success everybody expected, you'd be on the top wave, and so should I. I don't deny I thought of that. But now--an evening like this--no women worth counting and a horde of men--well, it's bad enough for me, but it's worse for you.

No one'll say I brought 'em."

"Oh, no," I a.s.sented.

"It comes to this, then," she went on at full heat, flus.h.i.+ng and fanning herself still more violently; "either you or I must leave this house, and at once."

"Well, I sha'n't."

And so she did!

Whose fault was it that we were left in such a predicament--that of the inexperienced girl, or the chaperon's? What is a chaperon for? Mrs.

Whitney has treated me shamefully, shamefully! Here I am all by myself, and I don't know what to do.

Ah, well, I must play my own hand. She shall regret this night's work, if I marry rank or money.

It is so strange how every one prospers except poor, baffled, loveless me, who have the greatest gift of all. I wonder if it is really Nature's law that the very beautiful must suffer; if this is her way of equalizing the lot of the poor and plain and lowly; her law of compensation to make the splendid creatures walk lonely and in sorrow all their days while plain ones coo and are happy. Was Uncle Tim right about the little brown partridges?

If I were superst.i.tious or easily disheartened, I should say--but I am neither! I shall succeed. I will take my place by right of beauty or die fighting! If I see Lord Strathay again, he shall marry me within a week.

They shall call it "one of those romantic weddings."

I can't live here alone. I have nothing to fall back upon; nothing but a father who doesn't answer my letters, and Judge Baker who lectures me in polysyllables, and John Burke--poor old John; what a good fellow he is!-- who simply loves me; and Mrs. Van Dam, who was my friend as long as she hoped to rise by my beauty to higher place, but who has headaches now; and Mrs. Marmaduke--

I don't understand her desertion.

Ah--yes, there is another, my constant companion now.

He is an old man, thin and sallow. He lies p.r.o.ne on the floor, staring at me with dead, sightless eyes. He whispers from muted lips "Delilah!" and the sound of it is in my ears day and night; day and night!

My G.o.d! It will drive me mad!

CHAPTER VII.

LETTERS AND SCIENCE.

May 29.

I've revised my opinion of the newspapers. The Star has done me a good turn, a great service.

I had tried to borrow money of Cadge, for the third time, and she told me she had none--which was true, or she would have let me have it. Then she said:--

"Why don't you sell a story to some paper--either something very scientific, or else, 'Who's the Handsomest Man in New York?' or--"

"I think I ought to get something from them, after all the stuff they've printed; but how? To whom do I go?"

"n.o.body! Heavens!" cried Cadge. "Want to create an earthquake on Park Row?

You're a disturber of traffic. Let me manage. I know the ropes and it helps me at the office to bring in hot features. They might give you fifty for it, too."

And I actually did get $50 for digging out of the text books an essay on Rats as Disseminators of Bubonic Plague; they only used a little of it, but the pictures and the signature and the nonsense about me as a scientist were the real thing, Cadge said.

The money, the money, the money was the real thing to me! It has given me a breathing spell--. that and the hundred for signing a patent medicine testimonial; but I had to sacrifice more than half I got from both sources to pacify greedy creditors. And a month between remittances, and so little when they come! Father _can't_ refuse to mortgage; why doesn't he write to me?

The day I took the article to Cadge I had a long talk with her and with Pros. Reid, who spends at the eyrie every hour he can spare. One must have some society or go crazy, though perhaps they aren't exactly what I'd choose if my kingdom had opened to me.

Pros. has shrewd eyes that inspire confidence--gray eyes with the tired night work look in them. He talks amazing slang at times, at others not at all; and I wish every one might be as kind and thoughtful.

I could think of nothing all the evening but my bills, and at last I was moved to ask him abruptly:--

"What can a girl do to get money, Pros.?"

"'Pends on the girl."

"This girl; a somewhat educated person; and grasping. One who wants much money and wants it right now."