Phases of an Inferior Planet. Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
a copy of the Evening Post spread out upon his knees, looked up languidly.
"We are becoming unpleasantly personal," he remarked. "Personalities in conversation should be avoided as sedulously as onions in soup. They are stimulating, but vulgar."
Mr. Paul seized the bait of the unconscious thrower with avidity.
"Vulgarity," he announced, with ringing emphasis, "is the most prominent factor in the universe. It is as essential to our existence as the original slime from which we and it emanated. If there is one thing more vulgar than nature, it is civilization. Whatever remnant of innocence nature left in the mind of man civilization has wiped out. It has debased the human intellect – "
"And deformed the human figure," interpolated Mr. Nevins, with a sigh. "Oh, for the days of Praxiteles!"
The emotionless tones of Mr. Paul flowed smoothly on.
"And if there is one thing more vulgar than civilization, it is art."
Mr. Nevins retorted in a voice of storm.
"Sir," he cried, "art is my divinity!"
"A vulgar superstition," commented Mr. Paul, calmly; and he pointed to a poster beside Mr. Nevins's plate. "You call that art, I suppose?"
Mr. Nevins colored, but met him valiantly. "No," he returned; "I call that bread and meat."
As the girl next him rose from her chair she bestowed upon him an approving smile, which he returned with sentimental interest.
"You haven't finished," he remonstrated, in an aside. "My posters aren't only bread and meat; they are pie – principally pie."
The girl laughed and shook her head.
"And principally pumpkin," she returned. "No, thank you!"
She left the dining-room and mounted the stairs to the fourth landing. Her room was in the front of the house, and the way to it lay through a long and dimly lighted corridor, the floor of which was covered with figured oil-cloth.
As she slipped the key into the lock the door swung back, and a blast of damp air from the open window blew into her face. She crossed the room and stood for a moment with her hand upon the sash, looking down into the street. A train upon the elevated road was passing, and she saw the profiles of the passengers dark against the lighted interior. Clouds of white smoke, blown rearward by the engine's breath, hovered about the track, too light to fall. Then, as the wind chased westward, the clouds were torn asunder, and stray wreaths, deepening into gray, drifted along the cross street leading to the river.
The girl reached out and drew in a can of condensed milk from the fire-escape. Then she lowered the window and turned on the steam-heater in the corner, which set up a hissing monotone.
The room was small and square. There was a half-worn carpet upon the floor, and the walls were covered with cheap paper, the conspicuous feature of which was a sprawling design in green and yellow cornucopias. In one corner stood a small iron bedstead, partially concealed by a Japanese screen, which extended nominal protection to the wash-stand as well. On the wall above the screen an iron hook was visible, from which hung a couple of bath-towels and a scrubbing-brush suspended by a string. Nearer the window there was an upright piano, with a scarf of terra-cotta flung across it and a row of photographs of great singers arranged along the ledge. Here and there on the furniture vivid bits of drapery were pinned over barren places.
But with the proof of a sensuous craving for color a latent untidiness was discernible. Her slippers lay upon the hearth-rug where she had tossed them when dressing for the street; a box of hair-pins had been upset upon the bureau, and a half-open drawer revealed a tangled mass of net veiling.
Throwing her hat and coat upon the bed, the girl turned up the lights, selected a score of "Lucia" from a portfolio under the piano, and, seating herself at the music-stool, struck the key-board with sudden fervor. The light soprano notes rang out, filling the small room with a frail yet penetrating sweetness. It was a clear and brilliant voice, but it was a voice in miniature, of which the first freshness was marred – and it was not the voice for Lucia.
With quick dismay the girl realized it, and rising impatiently, tossed the score upon the carpet and left the piano.
Standing before the long mirror on the wall, she slipped off her walking-gown, letting it fall in a black heap to her feet. Then stepping over it, she kicked it aside and stood with gleaming arms and breast in the flickering gas-light. She loosened her heavy hair, drawing the pins from it one by one, until it fell in a brown mane upon her shoulders.
Doffing her conventional dress, she doffed conventionality as well. She was transformed into something seductive and subtle – something in woman's flesh as ethereal as sea-foam and as vivid as flame.
She smiled suddenly. Then to a humming accompaniment she twirled upon her toes, her steps growing faster and faster until her figure was obscured in the blur of action and her hair flew about her face like the hair of a painted witch.
The words of the air she hummed came with a dash of bravado from between her lips:
" – Ange ou diable,
Écume de la mer?"
Still smiling, she sank in an exhausted heap upon the floor.
Then she went to bed and fell asleep, lamenting that her head rested upon a cotton pillow-slip.
CHAPTER II
In time long past, when the Huguenots were better known, if less esteemed, an impecunious gentleman of France left his native land for the sake of faith and fortune.
Lured by that blatant boast of liberty which swelled the throats of the Western colonies, even while their hands were employed in meting out the reward of witchcraft and in forging the chains of slavery, he directed his way towards American soil.
His mission failed, and, in search of theological freedom, he only succeeded in weaving matrimonial fetters. Amid an unassorted medley of creeds and customs he came upon the red-cheeked daughter of a Swiss adventurer – an ambitious pioneer who lived upon the theory that the New World having been created for the service of its foreign invaders, the might of the sword was the right of possession.
The gentleman of France, deciding to found a farm and family in the land of his adoption, awoke suddenly to the knowledge that, to insure the success of such an enterprise, feminine intervention is a necessary evil.
Accordingly, he set about his preparations with an economic industry. Casting his eye upon a tract of land upon a Southern river, he acquired it for certain services rendered in an unguarded moment to the Swiss adventurer, who had acquired it in a manner that concerned himself alone.
The next step of the French gentleman was to build beside the Southern river a family mansion, whose door he promptly closed upon the Swiss adventurer, since virtue consists not so much in refusing to benefit by vice as in refusing to acknowledge the benefit. Not without a sense of nervous perturbation, he then proceeded to cast his gaze upon the most promising feminine pledges of progeny. From among a dozen or so of his fair neighbors he selected, with the experienced eye of a woman-fancier, the blooming specimen of Swiss buxomness, and, the adventurer coming to terms, the marriage had been celebrated without the retarding curtain-raiser of a romantic prelude.
The gentleman's name was Marcel Musin de Biencourt; the lady's has no place in the following history.
For a period matters progressed in natural sequence. The land was tilled, the cotton picked, and the lady installed in the best bedroom of the newly erected mansion. Had she played the part for which nature and her lord intended her, there is reason to suppose that she would have become a serviceable instrument in the preservation of the species.
But the gentleman had reckoned without Providence. With the ending of the year of her bridehood the roses in the lady's cheeks grew waxen, and she turned with a sigh of relief from the labor of travail to the rest of the little church-yard upon the hill.
The aspens shivered above her, the river purled between level fields far down below, and from the uprooted furrows around the dutiful corn put forth tender sprouts; but the lady had shirked her mission in