Chambers Robert William
Iole
III
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 glass 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.
“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 attitude 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 grasses with wild strawberries; some were wading the branches of the meadow brook, searching for trout with grass-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 sunshine, 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 passing 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.
Presently she straightened up where she was kneeling in the long grass and stretched her arms. Then, still kneeling, she gazed curiously at Wayne with all the charm of a friendly wild thing unafraid.
“Shall we play tennis?” she asked.
“Certainly,” said Wayne, startled.
“Come, then,” she said, picking up her basket in one hand and extending the other to Wayne.
He took the fresh, cool fingers, and turned scarlet. Once his glance sneaked toward Briggs, but that young man was absorbed in fishing for brook trout with a net! Oh, ye little fishes! with a net!
Wayne’s brain seemed to be swarming with glittering pink-winged thoughts all singing. He walked on air, holding tightly to the hand of his goddess, seeing nothing but a blur of green and sunshine. Then a clean-cut idea stabbed him like a stiletto: was this Vanessa or Iole? And, to his own astonishment, he asked her quite naturally.
“Iole,” she said, laughing. “Why?”
“Thank goodness,” he said irrationally.
“But why?” she persisted curiously.
“Briggs—Briggs—” he stammered, and got no further. Perplexed, his goddess walked on, thoughtful, pure-lidded eyes searching some reasonable interpretation for the phrase, “Briggs—Briggs.” But as Wayne gave her no aid, she presently dismissed the problem, and bade him select a tennis bat.
“I do hope you play well,” she said. Her hope was comparatively vain; she batted Wayne around the court, drove him wildly from corner to corner, stampeded him with volleys, lured him with lobs, and finally left him reeling dizzily about, while she came around from behind the net, saying, “It’s all because you have no tennis shoes. Come; we’ll rest under the trees and console ourselves with chess.”
Under a group of huge silver beeches a stone chess-table was set embedded in the moss; and Iole indolently stretched herself out on one side, chin on hands, while Wayne sorted weather-beaten basalt and marble chess-men which lay in a pile under the tree.
She chatted on without the faintest trace of self-consciousness the while he arranged the pieces; then she began to move. He took a long time between each move; but no sooner did he move than, still talking, she extended her hand and shoved her piece into place without a fraction of a second’s hesitation.
When she had mated him twice, and he was still gazing blankly at the mess into which she had driven his forces, she sat up sideways, gathering her slim ankles into one hand, and cast about her for something to do, eyes wandering over the sunny meadow.
“We had horses,” she mused; “we rode like demons, bareback, until trouble came.”
“Trouble?”
“Oh, not trouble—poverty. So our horses had to go. What shall we do—you and I?” There was something so subtly sweet, so exquisitely innocent in the coupling of the pronouns that a thrill passed completely through Wayne, and probably came out on the other side.
“I know what I’m going to do,” he said, drawing a note-book and a pencil from his pocket and beginning to write, holding it so she could see.
“Do you want me to look over your shoulder?” she asked.
“Please.”
She did; and it affected his penmanship so that the writing grew wabbly. Still she could read:
(Telegram)
To Sailing Master, Yacht Thendara, Bar Harbor:
Put boat out of commission. I may be away all summer.
Wayne.
“How far is it to the station?” asked Wayne, turning to look into her eyes.
“Only five miles,” she said. “I’ll walk with you if you like. Shall I?”
IV
WEALTH,” observed the poet, waving his heavy white hand, “is a figure of speech, Mr. Wayne. Only by the process of elimination can one arrive at the exquisite simplicity of poverty—care-free poverty. Even a single penny is a burden—the flaw in the marble, the fly in the amber of perfection. Cast it away and enter Eden!” And joining thumb and forefinger, he plucked a figurative copper from the atmosphere, tossed it away, and wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.
“But—” began Wayne uneasily.
“Try it,” smiled the poet, diffusing sweetness; “try it. Dismiss all thoughts of money from your mind.”
“I do,” said Wayne, somewhat relieved. “I thought you meant for me to chuck my securities overboard and eat herbs.”
“Not in your case—no, not in your case. I can do that; I have done it. No, your sacred mission is simply to forget that you are wealthy. That is a very precious thought, Mr. Wayne—remain a Crœsus and forget it! Not to eliminate your wealth, but eliminate all thought of it. Very, very precious.”
“Well, I never think about things like that except at a directors’ meeting,” blurted out the young fellow. “Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had to think about it.”
The poet sighed so sweetly that the atmosphere seemed to drip with the saccharine injection.
“I wish,” ventured Wayne, “that you would let me mention the subject of business”—the poet shook his head indulgently—“just to say that I’m not going to foreclose.” He laid a packet of legal papers in the poet’s hand.
“Hush,” smiled Guilford, “this is not seemly in the house beautiful.... What was it you said, Mr. Wayne?”
“I? I was going to say that I just wanted—wanted to stay here—be your guest, if you’ll let me,” he said honestly. “I was cruising—I didn’t understand—Briggs—Briggs—” He stuck.
“Yes, Briggs,” softly suggested the poet, spraying the night air with more sweetness.
“Briggs has spoken to you about—about your daughter Vanessa. You see, Briggs is my closest friend; his happiness is—er—important to me. I want to see Briggs happy; that’s why I want to stay here, just to see Briggs happy. I—I love Briggs. You understand me, don’t you, Mr. Guilford?”
The poet breathed a dulcet breath. “Perfectly,” he murmured. “The contemplation of Mr. Briggs’ happiness eliminates all thoughts of self within you. By this process of elimination you arrive at happiness yourself. Ah, the thought is a very precious one, my young friend, for by elimination only can we arrive at perfection. Thank you for the thought; thank you. You have given me a very, very precious thought to cherish.”
“I—I have been here a week,” muttered Wayne. “I thought—perhaps—my welcome might be outworn–”
“In the house beautiful,” murmured the poet, rising and waving his heavy white hand at the open door, “welcome is eternal.” He folded his arms with difficulty, for he was stout, and one hand clutched the legal papers; his head sank. In profound meditation he wandered away into the shadowy house, leaving Wayne sitting on the veranda rail, eyes fixed on a white shape dimly seen moving through the moonlit meadows below. Briggs sauntered into sight presently, his arms full of flowers.
“Get me a jug of water, will you? Vanessa has been picking these and she sent me back to fix ’em. Hurry, man! She is waiting for me in the garden.” Wayne gazed earnestly at his friend.
“So you have done it, have you, Stuyve?”
“Done what?” demanded Briggs, blushing.
“It.”
“If you mean,” he said with dignity, “that I’ve asked the sweetest girl on earth to marry me, I have. And I’m the happiest man on the footstool, too. Good Heaven, George,” he broke out, “if you knew the meaning of love! if you could for one second catch a glimpse of the beauty of her soul! Why, man of sordid clay that I was—creature of club and claret and turtle—like you–”
“Drop it!” said Wayne somberly.
“I can’t help it, George. We were beasts—and you are yet. But my base clay is transmuted, spiritualized; my soul is awake, traveling, toiling toward the upward heights where hers sits enthroned. When I think of what I was, and what you still are–”
Wayne rose exasperated:
“Do you think your soul is doing the only upward hustling?” he said hotly.
Briggs, clasping his flowers to his breast, gazed out over them at Wayne.
“You don’t mean–”
“Yes, I do,” said Wayne. “I may be crazy, but I know something,” with which paradox he turned on his heel and walked into the moonlit meadow toward that dim, white form moving through the dusk.
“I wondered,” she said, “whether you were coming,” as he stepped through the long, fragrant grass to her side.
“You might have wondered if I had not come,” he answered.
“Yes, that is true. This moonlight is too wonderful to miss,” she added without a trace of self-consciousness.
“It was for you I came.”
“Couldn’t you find my sisters?” she asked innocently.
He did not reply. Presently she stumbled over a hummock, recovered her poise without comment, and slipped her hand into his with unconscious confidence.
“Do you know what I have been studying to-day?” she asked.
“What?”
“That curious phycomycetous fungus that produces resting-spores by the conjugation of two similar club-shaped hyphæ, and in which conidia also occur. It’s fascinating.”
After a silence he said:
“What would you think of me if I told you that I do not comprehend a single word of what you have just told me?”
“Don’t you?” she asked, astonished.
“No,” he replied, dropping her hand. She wondered, vaguely distressed; and he went on presently: “As a plain matter of fact, I don’t know much. It’s an astonishing discovery for me, but it’s a fact that I am not your mental, physical, or spiritual equal. In sheer, brute strength perhaps I am, and I am none too certain of that, either. But, and I say it to my shame, I can not follow you; I am inferior in education, in culture, in fine instinct, in mental development. You chatter in a dozen languages to your sisters: my French appals a Paris cabman; you play any instrument I ever heard of: the guitar is my limit, the fandango my repertoire. As for alert intelligence, artistic comprehension, ability to appreciate, I can not make the running with you; I am outclassed—hopelessly. Now, if this is all true—and I have spoken the wretched truth—what can a man like me have to say for himself?”
Her head was bent, her fair face was in shadow. She strayed on a little way, then, finding herself alone, turned and looked back at him where he stood. For a moment they remained motionless, looking at one another, then, as on some sweet impulse, she came back hastily and looked into his eyes.
“I do not feel as you do,” she said; “you are very—good—company. I am not all you say; I know very little. Listen. It—it distresses me to have you think I hold you—lightly. Truly we are not apart.”
“There is but one thing that can join us.”
“What is that?”
“Love.”
Her pure gaze did not falter nor her eyes droop. Curiously regarding him, she seemed immersed in the solution of the problem as he had solved it.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
“With all my soul—such as it is, with all my heart, with every thought, every instinct, every breath I draw.”
She considered him with fearless eyes; the beauty of them was all he could endure.
“You love me?” she repeated.
He bent his head, incapable of speech.
“You wish me to love you?”
He looked at her, utterly unable to move his lips.
“How do you wish me to love you?”
He opened his arms; she stepped forward, close to him.
Then their lips met.
“Oh,” she said faintly, “I did not know it—it was so sweet.”
And as her head fell back on his arm about her neck she looked up at him full of wonder at this new knowledge he had taught her, marvelous, unsuspected, divine in its simplicity. Then the first delicate blush that ever mounted her face spread, tinting throat and forehead; she drew his face down to her own.
The poet paced the dim veranda, arms folded, head bent. But his glance was sideways and full of intelligence as it included two vague figures coming slowly back through the moon-drenched meadow.
“By elimination we arrive at perfection,” he mused; “and perfection is success. There remain six more,” he added irrelevantly, “but they’re young yet. Patience, subtle patience—and attention to the little things.” He pinched a morsel of air out of the darkness, examined it and released it.
“The little things,” he repeated; “that is a very precious thought.... I believe the sea air may agree with me—now and then.”
And he wandered off into his “den” and unlocked a drawer in his desk, and took out a bundle of legal papers, and tore them slowly, carefully, into very small pieces.
