The Bacillus of Beauty Part 7

But there was a sound of hurrying feet on the stairs, and she sprang to the door, crying:--

"Cadge and Pros.! They said they were coming."

On the threshold appeared a lank girl with s.h.i.+ning black hair and quick, keen, good-humoured eyes.

"Howdy?" she asked with brisk cordiality; "angel children, hope I see you well."

In her wake was a tall, quiet-looking young man with a reddish-brown beard.

"Salute; salaam," he said; "all serene, Kitty? And you, Miss Wins.h.i.+p?"

Then as the two became accustomed to the light, I saw what I had nervously expected. There was a little start, an odd moment of embarra.s.sment. They gazed at Helen with quick wonder at her loveliness, then turned away to hide their surprise.

It was as if in the few days since they had seen her--for the new comers were Kitty's brother and the Miss Bryant of whom everyone speaks as "Cadge"--Helen's beauty had so blossomed that at fresh sight of her they struggled with incredulous amazement almost as a stranger might have done.

Talking rapidly to mask embarra.s.sment, they joined us round the fire, Reid dropped a slouch hat and an overcoat that seemed all pockets bulging with papers, while Miss Bryant and Kitty began a rapid fire of talk about "copy," "cuts," "the black," "the colour" and other mysteries.

"Wish you could have got me a proof of the animal page," said Kitty finally; "if they hurry the etching again, before my poor dear little bears have been half an hour on the presses, they'll fill with ink and print gray. I'll--I'll leave money in my will to prosecute photo- engravers."

"Oh, don't fret," said Miss Bryant. "Magazine'll look well this week. Big Tom's the greatest Sunday editor that ever happened; and I've got in some good stuff, too."

"Of course your obbligato'll be all right," Kitty sighed; "but--oh, those etchers and----Yes, Big Tom'll do; I never see him fretting the Art Department, like the editor before last, to sketch a one-column earthquake curdling a cup of cream."

"How _could_ anybody do that?" cried Helen.

"Just what the artist said."

Miss Bryant looked slightly older than Helen; in spite of her brusque, careless sentences, I suspected that she was a girl of some knowledge, vast energy and strength of will. And suspicion grew to certainty that she and Reid were lovers.

I might have read it in his tone when in the course of the evening he asked her to sing.

"Then give me a baton," she responded, springing to her feet.

Rolling up a newspaper and seizing a bit of charcoal from the drawing table, she beat time with both hands, launching suddenly into an air which she rendered with dramatic expression as rare as her abandon.

"Applaud! Applaud!" she cried, clapping her own hands at the end of a brilliant pa.s.sage, her colourless, irregular face alive with enthusiasm, her black eyes snapping. "If you don't applaud, how do you expect me to sing? _Vos plaudite!_"

"I'll applaud when you've surely stopped," said Kitty Reid demurely; "but before we begin an evening of grand opera, I want you to hear the Princess. Helen, you know you promised."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Helen, colouring at the t.i.tle, "I can't sing before Cadge; but if you like, I'll play for you. See if I'm not improving in my tremolo."

Helen did not sing in the old days, so that I was not surprised at her refusal. Taking her mandolin, she tinkled an air that I have often heard her play, but neither I nor any one else had ears for it, so absorbed was the sense of sight.

Her long lashes swept her cheeks as she bent forward in the firelight, her vivid colouring subdued by the soft, playing glow to an elusive charm. At one moment, as the flames flickered into stronger life, her beauty seemed to grow fuller and to have an oriental softness and warmth; the next, the light would die away, and in the cooler, grayer, fainter radiance, her perfect grace of cla.s.sic outline made her seem a statue--Galatea just coming to life, more beautiful than the daughters of men, her great loveliness delicately spiritualized.

If I were a beautiful woman, I'd learn to play a mandolin.

"Sing, Helen," begged Kitty in a whisper.

In a voice that began tremulously, low and faltering, and slowly gained courage, she sang the ballad she had been playing. It was easy to see that she was not a musician; but, as she forgot her listeners, we forgot everything but her.

Miss Bryant put down the compa.s.ses and scale rule she had been restlessly fingering, and her keen eyes softened and dilated. Kitty dropped on the floor at Helen's feet; the hush in the room was breathless. Reid sat in the dark, still as a statue; I clenched my hands and held silence.

The words were as simple as the air. But the voice, so clear, so sweet, so joyous, like Helen's own loveliness--to hear it was an ecstasy. We were listening to the rarest notes that ever had fallen on human ears--unless the tale of the sirens be history.

As the last note died, the fire leaped, dropped and left us in dusk and silence. Kitty buried her face against Helen's dress. My heart was pounding until in my own ears it sounded like an anvil chorus. I don't know whether I was very happy or very miserable. I would have died to hear that voice again. It is the truth!

With a sudden sob and a sniffing that told of tears unashamed, Miss Bryant found frivolous words to veil our emotion.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she quavered, "this is a high-cla.s.s concert; three dollars each for tickets, please. Helen, you don't know how to sing, but-- don't learn! Come Pros."--the big drops ran down her cheeks; "I've got to look up a story in the morning."

"Wait a minute," said Reid, his long, delicately shaped fingers trembling.

"Let me recover on something."

Picking up Kitty's banjo, he smote the strings uncertainly and half sang, half declaimed:--

"'With my Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul!

Oh, the green that thunders aft along the deck!

Are you sick of towns and men? You must sign and sail again, For it's Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!'

"By Jove! Kipling's right; nothing like a banjo, is there? Now then, Young Person, I'm with you. Good night; good night!"

While his voice was still echoing down the stairway, Miss Bryant came running up again.

"Say, got a photograph of yourself, Helen?" she asked.

She had apparently quite recovered from her emotion, and her tone expressed an odd mixture of business and affection.

"I believe if I showed Big Tom a picture of you," she explained, "he'd run a story--there's your science, you know, and your music--on the Society page, maybe."

"But I haven't any picture; at least, any that you'd want--only a few taken months ago, for my father."

"Show me those; why won't they do?"

"Oh, they aren't good; they--they don't look like me. Besides, I really couldn't let you print my picture, Cadge."

"All right. Good night, then; good night, Kitty."

"Perhaps I was just the least bit homesick; I'm glad you've come," Helen said to me at good-by.

She did not withdraw the hand I pressed. She was still under the excitement of the music; the song had left on her face a dreamy tenderness.

"Don't you like Cadge?" she asked, checking with shy evasiveness the words I would have spoken. "She can do anything--sing, talk modern Greek and Chinese--Cadge is wonderful."

"I know some one more wonderful. Helen, when did you begin to sing?"

"I don't sing; to-night was the first time I ever tried before any one but Kitty. Did I sing well?"

"I can't believe you're real! I can't--"