The Political Economist, noting the incident in its entirety, turned abruptly on his heel, climbed down the tremulous ladder to the trunk-room floor and knocked peremptorily at Noreen's door.

In reply to the answer which he thought he heard, he turned the handle of the door and entered. The gas jet sizzled blatantly across the room, and a tiny blue flame toiled laboriously in a cooking lamp beneath a pot of water. The room was reeking strong with the smell of coffee, the rank brew that wafted him back in nervous terror to his college days and the ghastly eve of his final examinations. A coat, a hat, a mouse-gray sweater, a sketch-book, and a bunch of pencils were thrown together on the edge of the divan. Crouched on the floor with head and shoulders prostrate across her easel chair and thin hands straining at the woodwork was Noreen Gaudette. The startled face that lifted to his was haggard with the energy of a year rallied to the needs of an hour.

"I thought you told me to come in," said the Political Economist. "I came down to go to the fire with you."

Noreen was on her feet in an instant, hurrying into her hat and coat, and quaffing greedily at the reeking coffee.

"You ought to have some one to look after you," persisted the man.

"Where's Mr. Dextwood?"

Noreen stood still in the middle of the floor and stared at him.

"Why, I've broken my engagement," she exclaimed, trying hard to speak tamely and reserve every possible fraction of her artificial energy.

"Oh, yes," she smiled wanly, "I couldn't afford to be engaged! I couldn't afford the time. I couldn't afford the money. I couldn't afford the mental distraction. I'm working again now, but it's horribly hard to get back into the mood. My drawing has all gone to smash. But I'll get the hang of it again pretty soon."

"You look in mighty poor shape to work to-night," said the Political Economist. "What makes you go?"

"What makes me go?" cried Noreen, with an extravagant burst of vehemence. "What makes me go?--Why, if I make good to-night on those Fire-Department Pictures I get a Hundred Dollars, as well as the a.s.surance of all the Republican cartooning for the next city election.

It's worth a lot of money to me!"

"Enough to kill yourself for?" probed the Man.

Noreen's mouth began to twist. "Yes--if you still owe for your automobile coat, and your black evening gown, and your room rent and a few other trifles of that sort. But come on, if you'll promise not to talk to me till it's all over." Like a pair of youngsters they scurried down the stairs, jumped into the waiting cab, and galloped off toward the river edge of the city.

True to his promise, the Political Economist did not speak to her, but he certainly had not promised to keep his eyes shut as well as his mouth. From the very first she sat far forward on the seat where the pa.s.sing street-lights blazed upon her unconscious face. The Man, the cab, love-making, debt-paying, all were forgotten in her desperate effort to keep keyed up to the working-point. Her brain was hurriedly sketching in her backgrounds. Her suddenly narrowed eyes foretold the tingling pride in some particular imagining. The flashing twist of her smile predicted the touch of malice that was to make her pictures the sensation of--a day.

The finish of the three-mile drive found her jubilant, prescient, pulsing with power. The glow from the flames lit up the cab like a room.

The engine bells clanged around them. Sparks glittered. Steam hissed.

When the cabman's horse refused to scorch his nose any nearer the conflagration, Noreen turned to the Political Economist with some embarra.s.sment. "If you really want to help me," she pleaded, "you'll stay here in the cab and wait for me."

Then, before the Political Economist could offer his angry protest, she had opened the door, jumped from the step, and disappeared into the surging, rowdy throng of spectators. A tedious hour later the cab door opened abruptly, and Noreen reappeared.

Her hat was slouched down over her heat-scorched eyes. Her shoulders were limp. Her face was dull, dumb, gray, like a j.a.panese lantern robbed of its candle. Bluntly she thrust her sketch-book into his hands and threw herself down on the seat beside him.

"Oh, take me home," she begged. "Oh, take me home _quick_. It's no use,"

she added with a shrug, "I've seen the whole performance. I've been everywhere--inside the ropes--up on the roofs--out on the waterfront.

The Fire Department Men are not 'inefficient.' They're simply _bully_!

_And I make no caricatures of heroes!_"

The lurch of the cab wheel against a curbstone jerked a faint smile into her face. "Isn't it horrid," she complained, "to have a Talent and a Living that depend altogether upon your _getting mad_?" Then her eyes flooded with worry. "What _shall_ I do?"

"You'll marry me," said the Political Economist.

"Oh, no!" gasped Noreen. "I shall never, never marry any one! I told you that I couldn't afford to be engaged. It takes too much time, and besides," her color flamed piteously, "I didn't like being engaged."

"I didn't ask you to be engaged," persisted the Political Economist. "I didn't ask you to serve any underpaid, ill-fed, half-hearted apprenticeship to Happiness. I asked you to be married."

"Oh, no!" sighed Noreen. "I shall never marry any one."

The Political Economist began to laugh. "Going to be an old maid?" he teased.

The high lights flamed into Noreen's eyes. She braced herself into the corner of the carriage and fairly hurled her defiance at him.

Indomitable purpose raged in her heart, unutterable pathos drooped around her lips. Every atom of blood in her body was working instantly in her brain. No single drop of it loafed in her cheeks under the flimsy guise of embarra.s.sment.

"I am not an 'Old Maid!' I am not! No one who creates anything is an 'Old Maid'!"

The pa.s.sion of her mood broke suddenly into wilful laughter. She shook her head at him threateningly.

"Don't you ever dare to call me an 'Old Maid' again.--But I'll tell you just what you can call me--Women are supposed to be the Poetry of Life, aren't they--the Sonnet, the Lyric, the Limerick? Well--I am blank verse. _That_ is the trouble with me. I simply _do not rhyme_.--That is all!"

"Will you marry me?" persisted the Political Economist.

Noreen shook her head. "No!" she repeated. "You don't seem to understand. Marriage is not for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I am _Talent_, and I do not _rhyme_ with Love. I am _Talent_ and I do not rhyme with _Man_. There is no place in my life for you. You can not come into my verse and rhyme with me!"

"Aren't you a little bit exclusive?" goaded the Political Economist.

Noreen nodded gravely. "Yes," she said, "I am brutally exclusive. But everybody isn't. Life is so easy for some women. Now, the Much-Loved Girl is nothing in the world except 'Miss.' She rhymes inevitably with almost anybody's kiss.--_I_ am not just '_Miss_.' The Much-Loved Girl is nothing in the world except 'Girl.'--She rhymes inevitably with 'Curl.'

_I_ am not just '_Girl_.' She is 'Coy' and rhymes with 'Boy.' She is 'Simple' and rhymes with 'Dimple.' _I am none of those things!_ I haven't the Lure of the Sonnet. I haven't the Charm of the Lyric. I haven't the Bait of the Limerick. At the very best I am 'Brain' and rhyme with 'Pain.' And I wish I was _dead_!"

The Political Economist's heart was pounding like a gong smothered in velvet. But he stooped over very quietly and pushed the floor cushion under her feet and snuggled the mouse-gray sweater into a pillowed roll behind her aching neck. Then from his own remotest corner he reached out casually and rallied her limp, cold hand into the firm, warm clasp of his vibrant fingers.

"Of course, you never have rhymed," he said. "How could you possibly have rhymed when--_I am the missing lines of your verse_?" His clasp tightened. "Never mind about Poetry to-night, Dear, but _to-morrow_ we'll take your little incomplete lonesome verse and quicken it into a Love-Song that will make the Oldest Angel in Heaven sit up and carol!"

THE HAPPY-DAY

IT was not you, yourself, who invented your Happy-day. It was your Father, long ago in little-lad time, when a Happy-Day or a Wooden Soldier or High Heaven itself lay equally tame and giftable in the cuddling, curving hollow of a Father's hand.

Your Father must have been a very great Genius. How else could he have invented any happy thing in the black-oak library?

The black-oak library was a cross-looking room, dingy, lowering, and altogether boggy. You could not stamp your boot across the threshold without joggling the heart-beats out of the gaunt old clock that loomed in the darkermost corner of the alcove. You could not tiptoe to the candy box without plunging headlong into a stratum of creakiness that puckered your spine as though an electric devil were pulling the very last basting thread out of your little soul. Oh, it must have been a very, very aged room. The darkness was abhorrent to you. The dampness reeked with the stale, sad breath of ancient storms. Worst of all, blood-red curtains clotted at the windows; rusty swords and daggers hung most imminently from the walls, and along the s.m.u.tted hearth a huge, moth-eaten tiger skin humped up its head in really terrible ferocity.

Through all the room there was no lively spot except the fireplace itself.

Usually, white birch logs flamed on the hearth with pleasant, crackling cheerfulness, but on this special day you noted with alarm that between the gleaming andirons a soft, red-leather book writhed and bubbled with little gray wisps of pain, while out of a charry, smoochy ma.s.s of nothingness a blue-flowered muslin sleeve stretched pleadingly toward you for an instant, shuddered, blazed, and was--gone.

It was there that your Father caught you, with that funny, strange sniff of havoc in your nostrils.

It was there that your Father told you his news.

When you are only a little, little boy and your Father s.n.a.t.c.hes you suddenly up in his arms and tells you that he is going to be married again, it is very astonishing. You had always supposed that your Father was perfectly married! In the dazzling sunshine of the village church was there not a thrilly blue window that said quite distinctly, "Clarice Val Dere" (that was your Mother) "Lived" (_Lived_, it said!) "June, 1860--December, 1880"? All the other windows said "Died" on them. Why should your Father marry again?

In your Dear Father's arms you gasped, "Going to be _married_?" and your two eyes must have popped right out of your head, for your Father stooped down very suddenly and kissed them hard--whack, whack, back into place.