The Sick-a-Bed Lady/Heart of the City
THE dining-room was green, as green could be. Under the or- ange-colored candle-light, the walls, rugs, ceiling, draperies, ferns, glowed verdant, mysterious, intense, like night woods arch- ing round a camp fire. Into this fervid, pastoral verdure the round white table, sparkling with silver, limpid with wine-lights, seemed to roll forth re splendent and incongruous as a huge, tinseled snow ball.
Outside, like fire engines running on velvet wheels, the automobiles went humming along the pavement. Inside, the soft, narrow, ribbony voice of a violin came whimpering through the rose- scented air.
It was the midst of dinner-party time. In the oak-paneled hallway a shadowy, tall clock swallowed gutturally on the verge of striking nine.
The moment was distinctly nervous. The entrée course was late, and the Hostess, gesticulating tragically to her husband, had slipped one chalky white shoulder just a fraction of an inch too far out of its jeweled strap. The Host, conversing every second with exaggerated blandness about the squirrels in Central Park, was striving frantically all the while with a desperately surreptitious, itchy gesture to signal to his mate. Worse than this, a, prominent Sociologist was audibly discussing the American penal system with a worried-looking lady whose brother was even then under indictment for some banking fraud. Some one, trying to kick the Sociologist's ankle bone, had snagged his own foot gashingly through the Woodland Girl's skirt ruffle, and the Woodland Girl, blush-blown yet with coun- try breezes, clear-eyed as a trout pool, sweet- breathed as balsam, was staring panic-stricken around the table, trying to locate the particular man's face that could possibly connect boot-wise with such a horridly profane accident. The sud- den, grotesque alertness of her expression attracted the laggard interest of the young Journalist at her left.
"What brought you to New York? "the Jour- nalist asked abruptly. "You re the last victim in from the country, so you must give an account of yourself. Come fess up! What brought you to New York?"
The Journalist s smile was at least as conscien- tious as the smile of daylight down a city airshaft, and the Woodland Girl quickened to the brighten- ing with almost melodramatic delight, for all pre- vious conversational overtures from this neighbor had been about actors that she had never heard of, or operas that she could not even pronounce, and before the man's scrutinizing, puzzled amazement she had felt convicted not alone of mere rural ig- norance, but of freckles on her nose.
"What brought me to New York?" she re- peated with vehement new courage. "Do you really want to know ? It's quite a speech. What brought me to New York? Why, I wanted to see the heart of the city. I'm twenty years old, and I've never in all my life been away from home be fore. Always and always I've lived in a log bung- alow, in a wild garden, in a pine forest, on a green island, in a blue lake. My father is an invalid, you know, one of those people who are a little bit short of lungs but inordinately long of brains. And I know Anglo-Saxon and Chemistry and Hin- doo History and Sunrises and Sunsets and Moun- tains and Moose, and such things. But I wanted to know People. I wanted to know Romance. I wanted to see for myself all this 'heart of the city' that you hear so much about the great, blood-red, eager, gasping heart of the city. So I came down here last week to visit my uncle and aunt." Her mouth tightened suddenly, and she lowered her voice with ominous intensity. "But there is n't any heart to, your city no ! there is no .cart at all at the center of things-just a silly, pretty, very much decorated heart-shaped box filled with candy. If you shake it hard enough, it may rattle, but it won't throb. And I hate-hate hate your old city. It's utterly, hopelessly, irremedia- bly jejune, and I m going home to-morrow! "As she leaned toward the Journalist, the gold locket on her prim, high-necked gown swung precipitously forth like a wall picture in a furious little earth- quake.
The Journalist started to laugh, then changed his mind and narrowed his eyes speculatively to- ward something across the room. "heart?" he queried. "No Romance?"
The Woodland Girl followed his exploring gaze. Between the plushy green portieres a dull, cool, rose-colored vista opened forth refreshingly, with a fragment of bookcase, the edge of a stained glass window, the polished gleam of a grand piano, and then lithe, sinuous, willowy, in the shaded lamplight the lone, accentuated figure of a boy violinist. In the amazing mellow glow that smote upon his face, the Woodland Girl noted with a crumple at her heart the tragic droop of the boy's
dark head, the sluggish, velvet passion of his eyes, 
"The lone, accentuated figure of a boy violinist"
burrowed away against his vibrant instrument. And the music that burst suddenly forth was like scalding water poured on ice seething with an- guish, shuddering with ecstasy, flame at your heart, frost at your spine.
The Girl began to shiver. "Oh, yes, I know," she whispered. "He plays, of course, as though he knew all sorrows by their first names, but that's Genius, is n't it, not Romance ? He s such a little lad. He can hardly have experienced much really truly emotion as yet beyond a stomach ache or the loss of a Henty book."
"A stomach ache! A Henty book!" cried the Journalist, with a bitter, convulsive sort of mirth. "Well, I'm ready to admit that the boy is scarcely eighteen. But he happens to have lost a wife and a son within the past two months ! While some of us country-born fellows of twenty-eight or thirty were asking our patient girls at home to wait even another year, while we came over to New York and tried our fortunes, this little youngster of scarcely eighteen is already a husband, a father, and a widower.
" He's a Russian Jew you can see that
and one of our big music people picked him up
jabberingly to America. But the invitation did n't
over there a few months ago and brought him
17 seem to include the wife and baby genius and family life are n't exactly guaranteed to develop very successfully together and right there on the dock at the very last sailing moment the little chap had to choose between a small, wailing family and a great big, clapping New York just tem- porarily, you understand, a mere matter of im- mediate expediency ; and families are supposed to keep indefinitely, you know, and keep sweet, too, while everybody knows that New York can go sour in a single night, even in the coldest weather. And just as the youngster was trying to decide, wavering first one way and then the other, and calling on high every moment to the God of all the Russias, the old steamer whistle began to blow, and they rustled him on board, and his wife and the kid pegged back alone to the province where the girl's father lived, and they got snarled up on the way with a band of Cossack soldiers, and the little chap has n't got any one now even as far off as Russia to hamper his musical career. So he's playing jig-tunes to people like us that are trying to forget our own troubles, such as how much we owe our tailors or our milliners. But sometimes they say he screams in the night, and twice he has fainted in the midst of a concert.
"No heart in the city ? No Romance ? Why, my dear child, this whole city fairly teems with Romance. The automobiles throb with it. The great, roaring elevated trains go hustling full of it. There's Romance-Romance-Romance from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn again. The sweetness of the day-blooming sunshine, the mad ness of the night-blooming electric lights, the crowds, the colors, the music, the perfume why, the city is Romance-mad! If you stop anywhere for even half an instant to get your breath, Ro mance will run right over you. It's whizzing past you in the air. It's whizzing past you in the street. It's whizzing past you in the sensuous, ornate the aters, in the jaded department stores, in the calm, gray churches. Romance ? Love ?
"The only trouble about New York Romance lies just in the fact that it is so whizzingly prema- ture. You've simply got to grab Love the minute before you've made up your mind because the minute after you've made up your mind, it won't be there. Grab it or lose it. Grab it or lose it. That s the whole Heart-Motto of New York. Sinner or Saint RUSH RUSH RUSH like Hell!"
"Grab-it or lose it. Grab it, or l-o-s-e it." Like the impish raillery of a tortured devil, the vio- lin s passionate, wheedling tremolo seemed to catch up the phrase, and mouth it and mock it, and tear it and tease it, and kiss it and curse it-and SMASH it at last into a great, screeching crescendo that rent your eardrums like the crash of steel rails.
With strangely parched lips, the Woodland Girl stretched out her small brown hand to the fragile, flower-stemmed glass, and tasted for the first time in her life the sweety-sad, molten-gold magic of champagne. "Why, what is it? "she asked, with the wonder still wet on her lips. "Why, what is it?"
The Journalist raised his own glass with staler fingers, and stared for a second through narrow- ing eyes into the shimmering vintage. "What is it? "he repeated softly. "This particular brand? The Italians call it 'Lacryma; Christi.'! So even in our furies and our follies, in our cafes and ca rousals, in our love and all our laughter we drink you see the Tears of Christ. He reached out suddenly and covered the Girl s half- drained glass with a quivering hand. "Excuse me," he stammered. "Maybe our thirst is partly of the soul ; but 'Lacryma Christi' was never meant for little girls like you. Go back to your woods!"
Scuttle as it might, the precipitate, naked passion in his voice did not quite have time to cover itself with word-clothes. A little gasping breath es- caped. And though the Girl s young life was as shiningly empty as an unfinished house, her brain- cells were packed like an attic with all the inherent experiences of her mother's mother's mother, and she flinched instinctively with a great lurch of her heart.
"Oh, let s talk about something dressy," she begged. "Let s talk about Central Park. Let s talk about the shops. Let s talk about the sub way. "Her startled face broke desperately into a smile. "Oh, don't you think the subway is per- fectly dreadful, "she insisted. "There s so much underbrush in it ! "Even as she spoke, her shoul- ders hunched up the merest trifle, and her head pushed forward, after the manner of people who walk much in the deep woods. The perplexity in her eyes spread instantly to her hands. Among the confusing array of knives and forks and spoons at her plate, her fingers began to snarl nervously like a city man's feet through a tangle of black berry vines.
With a good-natured shrug of his shoulders, the Journalist turned to his more sophisticated neigh- bor, and left her quite piteously alone once more. An enamored-looking man and woman at her right were talking transmigration of souls, but whenever she tried to annex herself to their conversation they trailed their voices away from her in a sacred, aloof sort of whisper. Across the table the people were discussing city politics in a most clandestine sort of an undertone. Altogether it was almost half an hour before the Journalist remembered to smile at her again. The very first flicker of his lips started her red mouth mumbling inarticulately.
"Were you going to say something?" he asked.
She shook her head drearily. "No," she stammered. "I've tried and tried, but I can't think of anything at all to say. I guess I don't know any secrets."
The Journalist's keen eyes traveled shrewdly for a second round the cautious, worldly-wise table, and then came narrowing back rather quizzically to the Woodland Girl's flushing, pink and white face.
"Oh, I don't know," he smiled. "You look to me like a little girl who might have a good many secrets."
She shook her head. "No," she insisted, "in all the whole wide world I don't know one single thing that has to be whispered."
"No scandals?" teased the Journalist.
"No!"
"No love affairs?"
"No!"
The Journalist laughed. "Why, what do you think about all day long up in your woods?" he quizzed.
"Anglo-Saxon and Chemistry and Hindoo His- tory and Sunsets and Mountains and Moose" she repeated glibly.
"Now you re teasing me," said the Journalist.
She nodded her head delightedly. "I m trying to !" she smiled.
The Journalist turned part way round in his chair, and proffered her a perfectly huge olive as though it had been a crown jewel. When he spoke again, his voice was almost as low as the voice of the man who was talking transmigration of souls. But his smile was a great deal kinder. "Don't you find any Romance at all in your woods?" he asked a bit drawlingly.
"said the Girl; "that s the trouble. Of course, when I was small it did n t make any dif- ference; indeed, I think that I rather preferred it lonesome then. But this last year, somehow, and this last autumn especially oh, I know you 11 think I'm silly but two or three times in the woods I've hoped and hoped and hoped at the turn of a trail, or the edge of a brook, or the scent of a camp fire that I might run right into a real, live Hunter or Fisherman. And one night I really prayed about it and the next morn- ing I got up early and put on my very best little hunting suit all coats and leggings and things just like yours, you know and I stayed out all day long tramping tramping tramping, and I never saw any one. But I did get a fox. Yes! and then"
"And then what?" whispered the Journalist very helpfully.
The Girl began to smile, but her lips were quite as red as a blush. "Well and then, "she con- tinued softly, "it occurred to me all of a sudden that the probable reason why the Man-Who-Was- Meant-for-Me did n t come was because he- didn t know I was there!" She began to laugh, toying all the while a little bit nervously with her ice-cream fork. "So I thought that perhaps if I came down to New York this winter and then went home again, that maybe not prob- ably you know, but just possibly some time in the spring or summer I might look up sud- denly through the trees and he would be there! But I've been ten days in New York and I have n t seen one single man whom I d exactly like to meet in the woods in my little hunting suit."
"Wouldn't you be willing to meet me?" pried the Journalist injudiciously.
The Girl looked up and faltered. "Why, of course," she hurried, "I should be very glad to see you but I had always sort of hoped that the man whom I met in the woods wouldn't be bald."
The Journalist choked noisily over his salted almonds. His heightened color made him look very angry.
"Oh, I trust I was n't rude," begged the Wood land Girl. Then as the Journalist s galloping laughter slowed down into the gentlest sort of a single- foot smile, her eyes grew abruptly big and dark with horror. "Why, I never thought of it," she stammered, "but I suppose that what I have just said about the man in the woods and my com- ing to New York is husband hunting.
The Journalist considered the matter very care fully. " N o," he answered at last, " I don't think I should call it husband hunting, nor yet, exactly, the search for the Holy Grail ; but, really now, I think on the whole I should call it more of a sacrament than a sport"
"O h," whispered the Girl with a little sigh of relief.
It must have been fully fifteen minutes before the Journalist spoke to her again. Then, in the midst of his salad course, he put down his fork and asked quite inquisitively: "Are n't there any men at all up in your own special Maine woods?"
"Oh, yes," the Girl acknowledged with a little crinkle of her nose, "there's Peter."
"Who s Peter? "he insisted.
"Why, Peter," she explained, "is the Philadelphia boy who tutors with my father in the sum- mers."
Her youthfulness was almost as frank as fever, and, though taking advantage of this frankness seemed quite as reprehensible as taking advantage of any other kind of babbling delirium, the Journalist felt somehow obliged to pursue his investigations.
"Nice boy?" he suggested tactfully.
The Girl's nose crinkled just a little bit tighter.
The Journalist frowned. "I'll wager you two dozen squirrels out of Central Park," he said," that Peter is head over heels in love with you!"
The Girl's mouth twisted a trifle, but her eyes were absolutely solemn. " I suppose that he is," she answered gravely, "but he's never taken the trouble to tell me so, and he's been with us three summers. I suppose lots of men are made like that. You read about it in books. They want to sew just as long long long a seam as they possibly can without tying any knot in the thread. Peter, I know, wants to make perfectly Philadel- phia-sure that he won't meet any girl in the winters whom he likes better."
"I think that sort of thing is mighty mean, "in- terposed the Journalist sympathetically.
"Mean?" cried the Girl. "Mean?" Her tousley yellow hair seemed fairly electrified with as- tonishment, and her big blue eyes brimmed suddenly Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/297 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/298 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/299 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/300 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/301 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/302 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/303 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/304 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/305 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/306 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/307 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/308 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/309 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/310 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/311 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/312 Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/313 For a second the Woodland Girl stood staring into his dreadful, chaotic face, then she squared her shoulders and turned to meet the wrathful, con- temptuous surprise in her uncle s and aunt s fea- tures.
"So it was you," sneered the uncle, "embroil- ing our decent household in a common, vulgar in trigue ?"
"So it was you," flamed her aunt, "you who have been posing all these days as an Innocent?"
Frantic with perplexity, muddled with fear, torn by conflicting chivalries, the Woodland Girl stared back and forth from Adele Reitzen's agonized plea to the grim, inscrutable gleam in Brian Baird's eyes. As though every living, moving verb had been ripped out of that night s story, and all the inflexible nouns were printing themselves slam-bang one on top of another Roses, Wine, Music, Silver, Dia- monds, Fir-Balsam telescoped each other in her senses.
"Your father sent you down here," persisted her aunt brutally, "on the private plea to me that he was planning to be married again but I can read ily see that perhaps no one would exactly want you."
The Woodland Girl's heart began to pound.
"We are waiting," prodded her uncle's icy voice. Suddenly the Girl s memory quickened. Once, long ago, her father had said to her: "Little Daughter, if you are ever in fear and danger by sea or land or city, which is neither sea nor land- turn always to that man, and to that man only, whom you would trust in the deep woods. Put your imagination to work, not your reason. You have no reason!"
Desperately she turned to Peter. His face, robbed utterly of its affection, was all a-shock with outraged social proprieties, merging the merest bit unpleasantly into the racy appreciation of a unique adventure. Panic-stricken, she turned to the Jour- nalist. Already across the Journalist's wine-flushed face the pleasant, friendly smile was souring into worldly skepticism and mocking disillusionment.
She shut her eyes. "O Big Woods, help me!" she prayed. "O Cross Storm, warn me! O Rough Trail, guide me!"
Behind her tightly scrunched lids her worried brain darkened like a jumbled midnight forest. Jaded, bedraggled, aching with storm and terror, she saw herself stumbling into the sudden dazzling splurge of a stranger's camp fire. Was it a man like Peter? Was it the Journalist? She began to shiver. Then her heart gave a queer, queer jump, and she opened her eyes stark wide and searched deep into Brian Baird s livid face. One of his hands still strained at the wooden mantel. The other still bruised the pungent balsam tip between its restive fingers. His young hair was too gray about his temples. His shoulders were too tired with life s pack burdens. His eyes had probably grown more bitter that night than any woman's lips could ever sweeten again. And yet-
Down from the far-away music room floated the quavering, passionate violin wail of the boy who had dared to temporize with Fate. Up from the close- nudging street crashed the confusing slap of hoofs and the mad whir of wheels racing not so much for the Joy of the Destination as for the Thrill of the Journey. She gave a little gasping sob, and Brian Baird stooped forward incredulously, as though from the yellow glare of his camp fire he had only just that instant sensed the faltering footfall of a wayfarer in acute distress, and could scarcely dis tinguish even yet through the darkness the detailed features of the apparition.
For a second, startled eyes defied startled eyes, and then suddenly, out of his own meager ration of faith or fortune or immediate goodness, the man straightened up, and smiled the simple, honest, unquestioning camp-fire smile the smile of food and blanket, the smile of welcome, the smile of shel- ter, the signal of the gladly-shared crust and the Woodland Girl gave a low, wild cry of joy, and ran across the room to him, and wheeled back against him, close, tight, with her tousled hair grazing his haggard cheek and her brown hands clutching hard at the sweep of his arms along the mantel.
"Adele Reitzen is right," she cried out trium- phantly. "This is my man !"