The Cords of Vanity Part 15

She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. "I sleep very soundly," said she, "and we did both museums and six churches and the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry today,--and the cries awakened me,--and I reckon Mamma lost her head."

"And left you," thought I, "left you--to save a canary-bird! Good Lord!

And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well."

"And you?" she asked.

"Ah--oh, yes, me!" I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to see them. "I was writing--and I thought that Russian woman had a few friends to supper,--and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you," I concluded, with a fine coherence.

She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this interesting feat. "Verses?" said she, considering my slippers in a new light.

"Yes," I admitted, guiltily--"of Helen."

She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly spoken. "Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena."

"Late of Troy Town," said I, in explanation.

"Oh!" The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. "I should think,"

said my compatriot, "that live women would be more--inspiring"

"Surely," I a.s.sented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. "But, you see, she is alive--to me." And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word.

"One would gather," said she, meditatively, "that you have an unrequited attachment for Helen of Troy."

I sighed a melancholy a.s.sent. The great eyes opened to their utmost.

The effect was as disconcerting as that of a s.h.i.+p firing a broadside at you, but pleasanter. "Tell me all about it," said she, coaxingly.

"I have always loved her," I said, with gravity. "Long ago, when I was a little chap, I had a book--_Stories of the Trojan War_, or something of the sort. And there I first read of Helen--and remembered. There were pictures--outline pictures,--of quite abnormally straight-nosed warriors, with flat draperies which amply demonstrated that the laws of gravity were not yet discovered; and the pictures of slender G.o.ddesses, who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their dressing. Oh, the book was full of pictures,--and Helen's was the most manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew--I knew, even then, of her beauty, of that flawless beauty which made men's hearts as water and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for the woman at sight of whom they had put away all memories of distant homes and wives; that flawless beauty which buoyed the Trojans through the ten years of fighting and starvation, just with delight in gazing upon Queen Helen day by day, and with the joy of seeing her going about their streets.

For I remembered!" And as I ended, I sighed effectively.

"I know," said she.

"'Or ever the knightly years had gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave.'"

"Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you--er--I mean, there goes the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought of the trap-door. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled inward like a house of cards; "they are splas.h.i.+ng, actually splas.h.i.+ng, like waves over a breakwater!"

I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness.

She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard some laughing words of hers in pa.s.sing, and I treasured them as men treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps--oh, day of days!--to me, in a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien speech. I remembered--even as a boy, I remembered."

She cast back her head and laughed merrily. "I reckon," said she, "you are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met."

"No," I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, "that tale about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen--and the G.o.ds be praised for it!--can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she

"Abides the symbol of all loveliness, Of beauty ever stainless in the stress Of warring l.u.s.ts and fears.

"For she is to each man the one woman that he might have loved perfectly. She is as old as youth, she is more old than April even, and she is as ageless. And, again like youth and April, this Helen goes about the world in varied garments, and to no two men is her face the same. Oh, very often she trans.m.u.tes her fleshly covering. But through countless ages I, like every man alive, have followed her, and fought for her, and won her, and have lost her in the end,--but always loving her as every man must do. And I prefer to think that some day--" But my voice here died into a whisper, which was in part due to emotion and partly to an inability to finish the sentence satisfactorily. The logic of my verses when thus paraphrased from memory, seemed rather vague.

"Yes--like Pythagoras" she said, a bit at random. "Oh, I know. There really must be something in it, I have often thought, because you actually do remember having done things before sometimes."

"And why not? as the March Hare very sensibly demanded." But now my voice was earnest. "Yes, I believe that Helen always comes. Is it simply a proof that I, too, am qualified to sit next to the Hatter?" I spread out my hands in a helpless little gesture. "I do not know. But I believe that she will come,--and by and by pa.s.s on, of course, as Helen always does."

"You will know her?" she queried, softly.

Now I at last had reached firm ground. "She will be very tall," I said, "very tall and exquisite,--like a young birch-tree, you know, when its new leaves are whispering over to one another the secrets of spring.

Yes, that is a ridiculous sounding simile, but it expresses the general effect of her--the _coup d'oeil_, so to speak,--quite perfectly.

Moreover, her hair will be a miser's dream of gold; and it will hang heavily about a face that will be--quite indescribable, just as the dawn yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black, good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks."

But now I could not see her eyes.

"No," I conceded, "I was wrong. For when men talk to her as--as they cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, almost like smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a great fire, such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and the slain bodies were soft under her stumbling feet, as she fled through flaming Troy Town. And then I shall know her."

My companion sighed; and the woes of centuries weighed down her eyelids obstinately. "It is bad enough," she lamented, "to have lost all one's clothes--that new organdie was a dream, and I had never worn it; but to find yourself in a dressing-gown--at daybreak, on a strange roof--and with an unintroduced lunatic--is positively terrible!"

The unintroduced lunatic rose to his feet and waved his hand toward the east. The dawn was breaking in angry scarlet and gold that spread like fire over half the visible horizon; the burning hotel shut out the remaining half with tall flames, which shouldered one another monotonously, and seemed l.u.s.treless against the pure radiance of the sky. Chill daylight showed in melting patches through the clouds of black smoke overhead.

It was a world of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of dawn and the grim splendour of the s.h.i.+fting, roaring conflagration; and at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell crackling among apple-blossoms.

"Ilium is ablaze," I quoted; "and the homes of Pergamos and its towering walls are now one sheet of flame."

She inspected the scene, critically. "It does look like Ilium," she admitted. "And that," peering over the eaves into the deserted by-street, "looks like a milkman."

I was unable to deny this, though an angry concept crossed my mind that any milkman, with commendable tastes and feelings, would at this moment be gaping at the fire at the other end of the block, rather than prosaically measuring quarts at the Councillor's side-entrance. But there was no help for it, when chance thus unblus.h.i.+ngly favoured the proprieties; in consequence I clung to a water-pipe, and explained the situation to the milkman, with a fretted mind and King's College French.

I turned to my companion. She was regarding the burning hotel with an impersonal expression.

"Now I would give a deal," I thought, "to know just how long you would prefer that milkman to take in coming back."

12.

_He Faces Himself and Remembers_

Into the lobby of the Hotel d'Angleterre strolled, an hour later, a tall young man, in a green dressing-gown, and inquired for Charteris.

The latter, in evening dress, was mournfully breakfasting in his new quarters.

Charteris sprang to his feet. I saw, with real emotion, that he had been weeping; but now he was all flippancy. "My dear boy! I have just torn my hair and the rough drafts of several cablegrams on your account! Sit down at once, and try the bacon, since, for a wonder, it is not burnt--and, in pa.s.sing, I had thought of course that you were."

Instead, I took a drink, and went to sleep upon the nearest sofa.

2

I was very tired, but I awakened about noon and managed to procure enough clothes to make myself not altogether unpresentable to the public eye. Charteris had gone already about his own affairs, and I did not regret it, for I meant, without delay, to follow up my adventure of the night before.

But when I had come out of the Rue de la Casquette, and was approaching the statue of Gretry, I came upon a very ornately-dressed woman, who was about to enter en open carriage. I stared; and preposterous as it was, I knew that I was not mistaken. And I said aloud, "Signorina!"

It was a long while before she said, "Don't--don't ever call me that again!" And since the world in general appeared just then to be largely flavoured with the irresponsibility of dreams, it did not surprise me that we were presently alone in somebody's sitting-room.