Chapter XVII The Bronze Baby
Somebody says that we only really live when we do not know that time is passing. If that be true, Miss Berry lived intensely during the period she passed in the gallery of the Electricity Building that afternoon.
“I wonder how late it is!” she asked herself at last with a start. “The folks’ll think I’m lost. I must hurry home directly.”
But she sighed as she said it. To “hurry home” from this city of magnificent distances was but a form of words.
“If I could only borrow the wings off ’n some o’ those angels!” she murmured as she hastened down the nearest flight of stairs; but doubtful as she was of the lateness of the hour, she could not keep her mind from straying back to the strange scenes in the miniature world she had been watching. Next the incubator had been a little sandy inclosure in the midst of which stood a small curtained house where the young chickens could be brooded at will, and across whose front ran the defiant legend, “Who cares for mother now!”
“I wonder how soon electricity’ll take the place o’ folks,” she mused. “Seems if ’t won’t take long. Yes, yes,” she went on in answer to a faint peeping that came from beneath her wrap, “we’ll get home some time to-night,” and she hurried faster still, a pleased smile breaking over her face; for Aunt Love was not alone. She had at the present moment one of those emancipated chicks in a pasteboard box pressed to her side.
“I believe I’ll take the Internal Road, and then the cars,” she said to herself. “There’ll be an awful crowd at Sixtieth Street, but I can stand consid’able squeezin’. I know I’m late.”
She was late. Not that it mattered. She was to dine in solitary state that evening in any case; but she had meant to reach the house in time to carry the information of Mr. Page’s arrival and his plan to meet his friends; and in this she was disappointed. Only Blitzen was left at home to give her his customary boisterous greeting, and she had before her the difficult task of explaining and introducing to him her ball of yellow fluff and impressing its sacredness upon his volatile mind.
Jack was the first to arrive at the rendezvous that evening, and to his satisfaction Mildred was second. She sauntered up to the steps accompanied by a young army officer at whom Jack stared down from his post on the balcony. He had, however, sufficient self-control to swallow his discontent. Mildred had somehow taught him this self-control in the short space of a week, and he managed to walk to meet her with an air of nonchalance suited to that with which she slowly mounted the steps after dismissing her escort.
“Who is the military?” he asked lightly.
“A cousin of Helen Eames. He has been showing us over the Battle Ship.”
“Indeed? I was there this afternoon too.”
“Were you? It is awfully stuffy down below in that museum, isn’t it? Our party was glad to retreat to a private room and have a sherry cobbler. Everything is beginning to be crowded now.”
“What interests me,” said Jack, placing a chair by one of the tables for Mildred as he spoke, “is to know how soon you are going to give me a day.”
“Oh, any time,” returned the girl as she seated herself.
“Any time! That is what you always say, but when I try to pin you down you slip away.”
“Wouldn’t anybody?” smiled the other. There was something about the curves at the corners of Mildred’s upper lip and its downward dip in the middle that made her smile more provoking than other girls’.
“There! You are slipping away again.”
“No, indeed. I am far too tired and this is too comfortable.”
“You have had an engagement every day since I have been here. You can’t deny it. What sort of a way is that to treat a guest?”
“You aren’t my guest, you are Clover’s.”
“Clover is a daisy and always was,” exclaimed Jack, regardless of paradox. “She is the sweetest girl in the world.”
“Of course,” returned Mildred, raising a glass of water to her lips as coolly as though she liked this.
“I ought to have gone with you that first evening,” said Van Tassel gloomily.
Mildred set down her glass and looked at the speaker with an unfathomable expression as she spoke slowly:—
“‘There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to’”—
“Would it, Mildred?” Jack broke in with a sort of earnest excitement. “Would it have led on to fortune?”
The girl colored under the glowing gaze.
“If I had gone with you, would you have had fewer engagements and more time for me since then?”
“How can I tell?” she returned, with a low laugh of enjoyment. Jack was fairly dramatic. He was really entertaining.
“I didn’t know exactly what my feeling was then; but I knew afterward,” he went on. “Ogden wasn’t any part of our past. I didn’t want to share you with him that night.”
“He didn’t want to share me with you either, so you were both satisfied,” returned Mildred demurely.
“Was he satisfied?” asked Van Tassel savagely. “Methinks not. I notice that whatever your engagements have been this week, he has not been in them.”
“How observing you are!”
“Yes. He is done for. It would be interesting to know how many scalps that makes, Mildred.”
“Look here, Jack,” the girl was not smiling, and her eyes darkened as she met his; “if you will practice conservation of energy now, I will give you a capital opportunity to air your talents in amateur theatricals next winter. You are the very man we have been looking for.”
“Can I make love to you?”
“That depends on your versatility.”
“Or my patience in standing in line. I’ve been standing in line all the week. Don’t you think it is about time I got there?”
“What do you call this?” Mildred gave him a tantalizing glance from under her half-dropped lids. “I arrive early at the rendezvous. We sit tête-à-tête, and how do you make use of the time?”
Color flashed all over Jack’s face.
“I am a fool,” he agreed.
“That must be why you always speak the truth so indiscreetly. I never thought of that as the reason, really. Now let us decide what to order before Clover comes. What can make her so late?”
The fact was that Clover, wanting to stop a minute to look at some pieces of old china and silver in the Louisiana house, had had the usual curious experience in World’s Fair minutes. In a city of enchantment, how could it be expected that sixty seconds should be of the conventional length? She had set aside plenty of time also just to walk through the middle of the Art Building; and as every woman knows, it was always impossible to pass so near “The Young Athlete” without pausing, if but for a brief acknowledgment.
Gorham Page had just been admiring the bronze, and had stepped aside to look at the photographs on a neighboring table when Clover advanced. He was short-sighted, and she wore an Eton suit and a sailor hat, the garb of ninety-nine out of every hundred women in the summer of ’93; but he knew her at once, and paused. After a moment’s watching he approached her.
She colored faintly with surprise as she returned his greeting.
“The subtle differences in the nature of man and woman are more interesting than the obvious ones,” he said.
“What are you leading up to now?” she asked. “I expected your first words to be an explanation or an apology, or both. How does it happen that this is the place where we first meet?”
“You were very, very kind, Mrs. Van Tassel, and I hope I assured you of my appreciation in my letter; but I found I could get a room at the hotel near you, and then affairs taking a favorable turn I left Boston suddenly, and none too soon; none too soon; I have been here all day. How stupendous it is! You are on your way to the Marine Café. May I go with you?”
“Oh, you have seen Jack, or my sister.”
“No.”
“Then how comes it that you are so well informed?”
“Happily for me, I ran across Aunt Love.”
“Oh, that explains her prolonged absence perhaps. Usually it is hard for us to persuade her to spend a whole day down here. We must hurry a little, I think.” Clover laughed. “Hurrying is the normal condition of people who try to keep appointments at the Fair.”
They threaded their way amid groups and figures in plaster and marble, and emerged from the southern entrance.
“What I started to speak of when I first met you was the contrast of a man’s and woman’s way of approaching that bronze,” said Page. “I went up to it and especially noticed the muscles and veins of the man’s hand and the truthful way the fingers sink into the flesh of the baby it supports. You approached it and took hold of the baby’s hand and patted his leg. Now why didn’t I want to pat that little fellow’s fat leg?”
“I give it up,” laughed Clover. “I can only say you had very poor taste.”
“No, there is a deep reason for the difference. Of course it is a woman’s nature to pet a baby.”
“What a deep discovery! I congratulate you on the result of your explorations. Do you think you shall write a book about it?”
“I amuse you, Mrs. Van Tassel.”
“Yes, you do, I won’t deny it.” Clover was a trifle ashamed of having been caught in her loving ebullition toward the soft bronze, and was willing to laugh it away.
“Still it is interesting,” Page went on musingly, “to observe how affection is outward with women and inward with men.”
“That doesn’t sound complimentary to us, Mr. Page. I hope you mean well.”
Gorham’s pensive eyes met her merry ones. “Yes. I revere the wise arrangement by which it takes a man and a woman to make one complete being; and the more I observe and understand refined human nature, the more I think I see the possibilities, and what it was intended that marriage should be. You are a good walker, Mrs. Van Tassel.”
“Yes; I am thinking how impatient Mildred and Jack will be with me. I will give you a subject for your analytical mind. Make a record of the broken appointments at the World’s Fair and discover the reasons for them. You would have a psychological study of absorbing interest.”
“All phases of human nature are interesting.”
“Even that where vials of righteous wrath are poured out upon you for delinquency when you know you haven’t any defense to offer? You are my defense this time.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t trust you to say anything. I am morally certain that you would tell the truth.”
“That isn’t so very damaging, is it?”
“Why, certainly. You would tell them that I stopped to make love to the bronze baby; and if Mildred heard that, hungry as she is by this time, you would soon have to formulate exceptions to your rule that women are all affection outwardly. By the way, what a fortunate experience yours must have been.”
Page smiled philosophically, and looked approvingly at his light-footed companion.
They arrived at the café shortly after Mildred had directed her companion’s attention to the menu, and the apparition of the unexpected guest entirely diverted from Clover any comment upon her tardiness.
The cordiality of his welcome pleased Page. He could not know the reason for the nervous energy of his cousin’s greeting. The four sat for an hour at table and then took their way by boat to the Court of Honor, where they remained in the launch during the playing of the fountains. Clover, sitting next Page, watched his attitude toward this first view of the evening’s spectacle with some curiosity.
He caught her amused gaze once as it rested upon him.
“Sumptuous! Delicate! Wonderful!” he said, breaking a long, absorbed silence.
“What?” returned Clover. “But you haven’t suggested yet going down beneath the electric fountains to find out the why and the how of it all; and I am sure you will not rest until you have been on the roof of the Manufactures Building and made friends with the man who manipulates the search light.”
“No.” Page smiled vaguely and shook his head. “I do not want to go behind the scenes.”
“Then the Court of Honor is a wonderful place,” said Clover.
“Poetical! Marvelous!” gasped Page.
A gondola decked with soft lanterns stole by. One gondolier swept his oar lazily through the water, the other stood with his hand caught in his bright sash, and poured forth the “Dammi encor” from “Faust” with true musical intensity.
Again Clover and Page looked into one another’s eyes, but there was no badinage this time in her glance. It was a place of dreams. Showers of golden mist fell beneath the stars. The massive buildings softened away into distant shadowy suggestion. The sculptors’ creations shone out thrillingly.
In heavenly beauty stood the Agricultural Hall with its foreground of gleaming water, the pure white of its columns defined against the tempered rose-color of its inner wall,—a vision glowing and pure; as far above its sister palaces in beauty as its use was set apart from theirs; for here were displayed the works of God rather than the imperfect marvels of man’s handiwork.
Amid the majestic splendor of the night rolled the passionate appeal of the gondoliers’ love-song, become an impersonal voice now as the boats drifted apart. Little wonder that Page forgot to be abstractly analytical, and that the soft spontaneous sympathy of his companion’s eyes exercised enchantment borrowed from the environment. He smiled upon her with a bright tenderness which transfigured his thoughtful face.
For a long time they were silent, but when he gave her his hand as she stepped from the launch, he spoke out of the depths of his enjoyment:—
“That was a never-to-be-forgotten experience for me.”
“I think no one ever forgets his first evening in the Court of Honor,” returned Clover.
“Well, what are we going to do now?” asked Mildred, as they ascended the steps. “My! How the wind has sprung up from the lake. They will hardly dare to have the fireworks.”
“Then let us take a brisk constitutional home,” proposed Jack.
“Come, children. Follow your leader,” commanded Mildred, turning and addressing Clover and her companion.
“Hurry her by the chocolate houses, Jack,” said Clover; “that is, if you can.”
“He can’t,” returned Mildred. “I have my eye on Baker’s now.”
She insisted that they all stop and partake of the cup, more potent than tea to cheer when the east wind blows, served by the pretty, uniformed girls, who by this time in the evening were inclined to be pessimistic and severe, small blame to them. They must easily believe that the human body is largely liquid.
Leaving the little circular temple, the quartette started up the lake shore on the stone walk. The dark waves were tumbling and dashing, tipped with foam in the sudden gale. The battle-ship and large excursion boats were gay with electric lights.
“Oh, Mrs. Van Tassel!” exclaimed Page. “See the search light on the Quadriga.” They turned to view the group with its mounted heralds and champing, prancing horses, distinct and unearthly fair in the surrounding blackness.
“Could we walk home backward, do you think?” he asked.
“No,” replied Clover. “I can answer with certainty, for I’ve tried it more than once.”
“I suppose we do in course of time get past the Manufactures Building? What an incomprehensible, colossal thing it is.”
“Yes, a good deal more so to me now than it was a month ago.”
“Have mercy!” exclaimed Page with a groan.
Mildred and Jack were walking in front of them.
“Isn’t this like old times, Mildred?” asked the latter with a relish, clapping his hat on tighter as the sweep of the wind threatened it.
“Just about as unlike as we could imagine. Sorry to disagree with you, Jack.”
“Don’t mention it. You don’t disagree with me, my child. I have enjoyed this first evening with you immensely.”
“First evening is pretty good, isn’t it?” suggested the girl, and they both laughed. “You didn’t use to quarrel for my society,” she added.
“I want you to understand that I wasn’t quarreling with you there, a few hours back, at the Marine Café.”
“Oh!”
“No, I was merely making the excusable protest of an old friend,—speaking in a brotherly way, you know.”
“Oh, it won’t do, Jack.” He knew exactly how she was smiling in the darkness. “It is my unalterable rule never to be a sister to any of them. I can’t break over it for you.”
“Them!” ejaculated her companion. “I don’t thank you to class me with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and the rest of these late arrivals. Remember, I was the first-comer into your friendship.”
“You were a pretty good sort of fellow.”
“Yes; you probably can’t conceive of what a healing thought it is to me now that I have snubbed you many a time, young lady. I had to. Your attentions were so persistent in those days. Yes, mademoiselle, I had to hold you off, or I should never have had any peace of my life. I remember it well. Perhaps you don’t.”
“Oh yes, I do, perfectly,” sighed Mildred. “Wasn’t the Flirt the stanchest little dear that ever spread a sail; and to think that is all over! I don’t feel nearly so much elation over going with Mr. Eames on that yacht party to-morrow as I used to in nagging you into consent that I should sail the Flirt.”
“Is that the infantry officer?”
“Yes; and he is very nice. I should like you to meet him. If I knew him a little better I would have procured you an invitation. You should remember that virtue is its own reward. If you had not preferred smoking in the hammock to coming into the parlor and making yourself agreeable the other evening when Helen Eames and her mother were calling, they would surely have asked you to join the party. ‘If you would be loved, be lovely.’ That is what my mother used to tell me.” Mildred laughed to herself.
“Then why don’t you obey her?” returned Jack curtly.
“I don’t want to be loved,” returned the spoiled girl. “I’m loved too much already.”
After this they marched in silence for a time, their springy steps carrying them by the foreign buildings, Ceylon, France with its green, fountain-sprayed court, Spain, and Germany. It was not until they turned beside Iowa’s pavilion and left behind them the waves dashing on the sea-wall that Mildred spoke again.
“It gives me the blues, Jack, every time I see our boathouse stranded high and dry behind that nightmare of a Spectatorium.”
“I don’t see how you can call anything dry that is as full of beer as that is.”
“Oh,” exclaimed the girl indignantly, “what a fall from its old estate! To think of our playhouse being turned into a saloon! Do you remember the dance it was christened with? I was allowed to go, and you made me perfectly happy by waltzing with me once.”
“Humph!” returned the other. “And now it is a great question whether you would make me perfectly happy by waltzing with me once.”
“Oh, Jack,” Mildred laughed out now, “don’t be cross. Don’t grudge a girl her ‘little brief authority.’ My observation of life has taught me that her queenship is brief enough. She blossoms out of awkward childhood into an attractive womanhood, and then after a little space yields up her sweet liberty to some lord of creation whom she has to pacify and wait on ever afterward. Moral: Let her keep her authority as long as possible.”
“You seem to have been rather unfortunate in your married masculine acquaintance,” returned Van Tassel drily.
A sudden thought sent the color flying to Mildred’s face, and her customary complacent poise was shaken.
“There was one exception,” she said, so timidly and meekly that her companion was struck by the change; but she had not the courage to be more specific, and there was no need. Jack understood her.
When the four reached home they found Miss Berry in the sitting-room reading by the light of a lamp.
Blitzen was sitting on a rug, and did not, as usual, run to meet them. On a chair reposed a bird-cage with some white stuff in it.
“What is this, Aunt Love?” asked Clover. “Have you some new pets?”
“I’ve got one,” returned Miss Berry, smiling placidly. “I’ll give you all three guesses. It’s a World’s Fair souvenir.”
“Tell us, Blitzen,” said Mildred, kneeling on the rug beside the small dog and shaking his tousled head; but Blitzen, as soon as he could free himself, withdrew in unwonted dignity. Evidently there was that within him to-night which could not brook flippancy.
“A live souvenir?” asked Clover, perplexed.
“Mr. Gorham can guess,” remarked Miss Lovina, glancing again down the columns of her newspaper, and shaking in a comfortable silent laugh.
“I?” said Page; then, after a moment’s cogitation, “You surely didn’t bring home one of those chickens?”
“I did. In that cage, my dears, there is an electric chicken.” Miss Berry looked over her spectacles impressively. “The same power that runs the inter-internal railroad and shines in the rainbow fountains, don’t disdain to hatch a chicken. If you doubt it, there’s the chicken.”
She gestured toward the bird-cage.
“I brought it home in a box; and I said to myself that most everybody had an old cage, so I went up garret, and there I found that one. On Blitzen’s account I thought best to use a cage to-night.” Her gaze descended on the terrier, whose head descended beneath it.
“Blitzen,” asked Jack with deliberate, stern solemnity, “what do you think of the chicken?”
Blitzen rose with a crushed air, and slowly, as one who would not attract attention, crept across the room and retired under a remote sofa.
A shout of laughter followed his unostentatious disappearance.
“We’ve had some words,” explained Aunt Love. “He barked cruel at the poor little thing when he first saw me with it.”
“Have it out, have the chicken out,” said Mildred; and Miss Berry, yielding to the general urgency, produced her prize from the depths of the cotton wool. It began to struggle and peep vigorously as soon as its beady eyes saw the light, and there came a muffled howl from under the sofa.
“What are you going to name it?” asked Clover.
“I don’t know what name would be good enough for such a smart critter.”
“Why, Electra, of course,” remarked Jack. “Nothing less for such a star among chickens.”
“Sounds well and suitable,” observed Miss Berry placidly, “whether it means anything or not.”
“I wonder if it has any unusual springs,” said Mildred. “If I should touch the button do you suppose it would give us a rest?” She advanced a finger toward one of the bright eyes, but Miss Berry removed her squeaking prize from harm, and tucked it away again in the cotton from which it struggled several times before finally settling down with a diminuendo of peeps.