Bacillus of Beauty: A Romance of To-day

by Harriet Stark

  Produced by Suzanne Shell, Richard Prairie and DistributedProofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines.

  BACILLUS

  OF

  BEAUTY

  _A Romance of To-day_

  _BY_

  HARRIET STARK

  CONTENTS.

  CHAPTER

  Book I: _The Broken Chrysalis:_

  I. THE METAMORPHOSIS II. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD III. THE HORNETS' NEST IV. THE GODDESS AND THE MOB V. A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT

  Book II: _The Birth of the Butterfly:_

  I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT II. A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON III. THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE IV. GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST V. THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS VI. THE GREAT CHANGE VII. THE COMING OF THE LOVER

  Book III: _The Joy of the Sunshine:_

  I. CHRISTMAS II. A LOOKING OVER BY THE PACK III. SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK IV. IN THE INTERESTS OF MUSIC V. A PLAGUE OF REPORTERS VI. LOVE IS NOTHING VII. LOVE IS ALL VIII. A LITTLE BELATED EARL

  BOOK IV: _The Bruising of the Wings:_

  I. THE KISS THAT LIED II. THE IRONY OF LIFE III. THE SUDDENNESS OF DEATH IV. SOME REMARKS ABOUT CATS V. THE LOVE OF LORD STRATHAY VI. LITTLE BROWN PARTRIDGES VII. LETTERS AND SCIENCE VIII. A CHAPERON ON A CATTLE TRAIN IX. A BURST OF SUNLIGHT X. PLIGHTED TROTH

  BOOK V: _The End of the Beginning:_

  I. THE DEEDS OF THE FARM II. CADGE'S ASSIGNMENT III. "P.P.C."

  BOOK I.

  THE BROKEN CHRYSALIS.

  _(From the Shorthand Notes of John Burke.)_

  THE BACILLUS OF BEAUTY

  CHAPTER I.

  THE METAMORPHOSIS.

  NEW YORK, Sunday, Dec. 16.

  I am going to set down as calmly and fully as I can a plain statementof all that has happened since I came to New York.

  I shall not trim details, nor soften the facts to humour my ownamazement, nor try to explain the marvel that I do not pretend tounderstand.

  I begin at the beginning--at the plunge into fairy tale and miraclethat I made, after living twenty-five years of baldest prose, when Imet Helen Winship here.

  Why, I had dragged her to school on a sled when she was a child. Iwatched her grow up. For years I saw her nearly every day at the StateUniversity in the West that already seems so unreal, so far away, Iloved her.

  Man, I knew her face better than I knew my own! Yet when I met herhere--when I saw my promised wife, who had kissed me good-by only lastJune--I did not recognise her. I looked full into her great eyes andthought she was a stranger; hesitated even when she called my name.It's a miracle! Or a lie, or a wild dream; or I am going crazy. Thething will not be believed. And yet it's true.

  This is my calmness! If I could but think it might be a tremendousblunder out of which I would sometime wake into verity! But there hasbeen no mistake; I have not been dreaming unless I am dreaming now.

  As distinctly as I see the ugly street below, I remember everythingthat has befallen me since my train pulled into Jersey City lastThursday morning. I remember as one does who is served by sharpenedsenses. Only once in a fellow's lifetime can he look upon New York forthe first time--and to me New York meant Helen. Everything was vividlyimpressed upon my mind.

  I crossed the Cortlandt Street ferry and walked up Broadway, wonderingwhat Helen would say if I called before breakfast. I could scarcelywait. I stopped in front of St. Paul's Church, gaping up at atwenty-six story building opposite; a monstrous shaft with a gouge outof its south side as if lightning had rived off a sliver. I went overto it and saw that I had come to Ann Street, where Barnum's museum usedto stand. The Post Office, the City Hall, the restaurant where I atebreakfast, studying upon the wall the bible texts and signs bidding mewatch my hat and overcoat; the _Tribune_ building, just as it looks onthe almanac cover--all these made an instant, deep impression. Not inthe least like a dream.

  By the statue of Horace Greeley I stood a moment irresolute. I knewthat, before I could reach her, Helen would have left her rooms forBarnard College; breakfast had been a mistake. Then I noticed thatNassau Street was just opposite; and, in spite of my impatience to beat her door, I constrained myself to look up Judge Baker.

  Between its Babel towers narrow Nassau Street was like a canyon. Thepavements were wet, for folks had just finished washing windows, thoughit was eight o'clock in the forenoon. Bicycles zipped past and fromsomewhere north a freshet of people flooded the sidewalk and roadway.

  Down a steep little hill and up another--both thronged past belief--andin a great marble maze of lawyers' offices I found the sign of Baker &Magoun.

  The boy who alone represented the firm said that I might have to waitsome minutes, and turned me loose to browse in the big, high-ceiledouter room or library of the place where I am to work. After the dimcorridors it was a blaze of light. On all sides were massivebookshelves; the doorways gave glimpses of other rooms, fine with rugsand pictures and heavy desks, different enough from the plain fittingsof the country lawyers' workshops I had known. The carpet sank under myfeet as I went to the window.

  I stood looking at the Jersey hills, blue and fair in the distance, anddreaming of Helen, who was to bless and crown my good fortune, when Iheard a step at the door and a young man came in--a tall, blonde,supple fellow not much older than I. Then the Judge appeared,ponderous, slow of tread, immaculate of dress; the same, unless hisiron-gray locks have retreated yet farther from his wall of a brow,that I have remembered him from boyhood.

  "Burke!" he said, "I am glad to see you. Welcome to New York and tothis office, my boy!"

  The grasp of his big warm hand was as good as the words and the eyesbeneath his heavy gray brows were full of kindness as, holding both myhands in his, he drew me toward the young man who had preceded him.With a winning smile the latter turned.

  "Hynes," said the Judge, with a heartiness that made one forget hisformal manner, "you have heard me speak of Burke's father, the boyhoodcompanion with whom, when the finny tribes were eager, I sometimesstrayed from the strait and narrow path that led to school. Burke,Hynes is the sportsman here--our tiger-slayer. He beards in their lairsthose Tammany ornaments of the bench whom the flippant term 'necessityJudges,' because of their slender acquaintance with the law."

  "Glad to see you, Burke," said Hynes, as dutifully we laughed togetherat the time-honoured jest.

  I knew from the look of him that he was a good fellow, and he had anhonest grip; though out where I come from we might call him a dude. AllNew Yorkers seem to dress pretty well.

  Presently Managing Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusqueand mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few wordswith them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a greatlump rose in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank himfor all his great kindness.

  "Consider, if it pleases you," he said, to put me quite at my ease,"that I have proposed our arrangement, not so much on your own accountas because I loved your father and must rely upon his son. It bringsback my youth to speak his name--your name, Johnny Burke!"

  Yes, I remember the words, I remember the tremour in the kind voice andthe mist of unshed tears through which he looked at me. I'm notdreaming; sometimes I wish I were, almost.

  When I left the Judge, of course I pasted right up to Union Square,though I felt sure that Helen would be at college. No. 2 proved to be adingy brick building
with wigs and armour and old uniforms and grimypictures in the windows, and above them the signs of a "dental parlour"and a school for theatrical dancing.

  It seemed an odd place in which to look for Nelly, but I pounded up theworn stairs--dressmakers' advertisements on every riser--until Ireached the top floor, where a meal-bag of a woman whose head was tiedup in a coloured handkerchief confronted me with dustpan and broom.

  "I'm the new leddy scrubwoman, and not afther knowin' th' names av th'tinants," she said, "but av ut's a gir-rul ye're seekin', sure they'stwo av thim in there, an' both out, I'm thinkin'."

  I pushed a note for Nelly under the door she indicated--it bore thecards of "Miss Helen Winship" and "Miss Kathryn Reid"--and hurried awayto look up this gem of a hall bedroom where I am writing; you couldwear it on a watch chain, but I pay $3 a week for it. The landladywould board me for $8, but regular dinners at restaurants are onlytwenty-five cents; good, too. And anybody can breakfast for fifteen.

  Then I went back to Union Square, where I hung about, looking at thestatues. Once I walked as far as Tammany Hall and rushed back again towatch Helen's door. Finally I sat down on a bench from which I couldsee her windows; and there in the brief December sunlight, with thelittle oasis around me green even in winter, and the roar of Dead Man'sCurve just far enough away, I suppose I spent almost the happiestmoments of my life.

  I was looking at Nelly's picture, taken in cap and gown just before shegraduated last June. My Nelly! Nelly as she used to be before thisstrange thing happened; eager-eyed, thin with over-study and rapidgrowth. Nelly, whose bright face, swept by so many lights and shadowsof expression, sensitive to so many shifting moods, I loved and yearnedfor. Nearly six months we'd been apart, but at last I had followed toNew York to claim her. As I sat smiling at the dream pictures the dearface evoked, my brain was busy with thoughts of the new home we wouldtogether build. I'd hoard every penny, I planned; I'd walk to savecar-fare, practice all economies--

  Wasn't that a face at her window?

  I reached the top landing again, three steps at a time; but the voicethat said "Come!" was not Helen's and the figure that turned frompulling at the shades was short and rolypoly and crowned by flaming redhair.

  "Miss Winship?" said the voice, as its owner seated herself at a bigtable. "Can't imagine what's, keeping her. Are you the John Burke I'veheard so much about? And--perhaps Helen has written to you of KittyReid?"

  Without waiting for a reply, she bent over the table, scratching with aknife at a sheet of bold drawings of bears.

  "You won't mind my keeping right on?" she queried briskly, lifting arosy, freckled face. "This is the animal page of the Sunday _Star_ andCadge is in a hurry for it, to do the obbligato."

  I suppose I must have looked the puzzlement I felt, for she addedhastily:--

  "The text, you know; a little cool rill of it to trickle down throughthe page like a fine, thin strain of music that--that helps out thesong--tee-e-e-um; tee-e-e-um--" She lifted her arm, sawing with a longruler at a violin of air,--"but you don't have to listen unless youwish--to the obbligato, you know."

  "Doesn't the writer think the pictures the unobtrusive embroidery ofthe violin, and the writing the magic melody one cannot choose buthear?"

  I thought that rather neat for my first day in New York, but the shrewdblue eyes opened wide at the heresy.

  "Why, no; of course Cadge knows it's the pictures that count; everybodyknows that."

  A writing-table jutted into the room from a second window, backingagainst Miss Reid's. On its flap lay German volumes on biology and alittle treatise in English about "Advanced Methods of Imbedding,Sectioning and Staining." The window ledge held a vase of willow andalder twigs, whose buds appeared to be swelling. Beside it was a glassof water in which seeds were sprouting on a floating island of cottonwool.

  "Admiring Helen's forest?" came the voice from the desk. "I'm afraidthere's only second growth timber left; she carried away the greatredwoods and all the giants of the wilderness this morning. Are youinterested in zoology? Sometimes, since I have been living with Helen,I have wished more than anything else to find out, What is protoplasm?Do you happen to know?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Neither does Helen--nor any one else."

  Miss Reid's merry ways are infectious. I'm glad Helen is rooming with anice girl.

  The place was shabby enough, with cracked and broken ceiling, marredwoodwork and stained wall paper; but etchings, foreign photographs,sketches put up with thumb tacks and bright hangings made it odd andattractive. On a low couch piled with cushions lay Helen's mandolin anda banjo. A plaster cast of some queer animal roosted on the mantel,craning its neck down towards the fireplace.

  "That's the Notre Dame devil," Miss Reid said, following my glance;"the other is the Lincoln Cathedral devil." She nodded at awide-mouthed imp, clawing at a door-top. "Don't you just adoregargoyles?"

  "Yes; that is--very much," I stammered, wandering back to Helen's desk.And then!

  And then I heard quick steps outside. They reached the door and paused.I looked up eagerly. "There's Helen now," said Miss Reid; "or elseCadge."

  A tall girl burst into the room, dropping an armful of books, andsprang to Miss Reid.

  "Kitty! Kitty!" she cried, in a voice of wonderful music. "Two camerafiends! One in front of the college, the other by the elevated station;waiting for me to pass, I do believe! And such crowds! They followedme! Look! Look! Down in the Square!"