were all in the surrey and Aconite had the reins in hand, his whip poised, and his lips pursed for the initiatory chirrup, when there put his foot on the hub the Hired Man, who looked the part and presently explained that he worked on farms as a regular thing, and who was to be number eight. "If this seven business is eatin' yeh so bad," said he, "kain't I make a quadrille of it? I never pay fare, nowheres; but I kin cook, 'n drive, 'n rustle firewood, 'n drive tent-pins – an' you seem to have an empty seat. What say?" Aconite looked back into the faces of his load. All looked at the Bride as commander-in-chief – the Bride nodded. "Shore!" said Aconite. "Hop in!"
They rolled through the great arch at the entrance, and bowled along the road in breath-taking style as they crossed bridge after bridge, the walls of Gardiner Cañon towering on each side with its left-hand copings crumbling into pinnacles like ruined battlements, on which sat fishing-eagles as sentinels, their eyes scanning the flashing stream below. The wild roses were still in sparse bloom; the cottonwood groves showed splotches of brilliant yellow; the cedars gloomed in steady and dependable green. Autumn leaves and spring flowers, and over all a sky of ultramarine.
"See there!" exclaimed the Bride, pointing at the huge stream of hot water where Boiling River bursts from its opening in the rocks, and falls steaming into the Gardiner. "What in the world is it – a geyser?"
"That there little spurt," said Aconite, "is where the sink-pipe dreens off from Mammoth Hot Springs. Don't begin bein' surprised at things like them!"
The Professor made notes. Colonel Baggs asserted that hot water is hot water, no matter where found or in whatever quantities, and couldn't be considered much of a wonder. The Professor took up the gage of battle, while the carriage wound up the hill, away from the river; but even he forbore discourse, when the view opened, as the afternoon sun fell behind the hills, on the steaming terraces and boiling basins of Mammoth Hot Springs.
They scattered to the near-by marvels, and returned to camp where Aconite, assisted by the Hired Man, had prepared camp fare for the party. The Bride and Groom announced their intention to take pot luck with the rest, though the great hotel was ready for their reception.
"We are honored, I am sure," said Colonel Baggs. "Would that we had a troupe of performing nightingales to clothe the night with charm fit for so lovely a member of the party."
"Oh, thank you ever so much," said the Bride, "but I've just proposed to Billy a plan that will be better than any sort of troupe. We can make this trip a regular Arabian Nights' entertainment. Tell them, Billy!"
"We're to make a hat pool," said Billy, "and the loser tells a story."
"Good thought!" said the Poet
"I don't understand," protested the Professor.
"Well, then, here you are!" said Billy. "I write all our names on these slips of paper – Driver, Poet, Artist, Professor – and the rest of us. I mix them in this Stetson. I pass them to the most innocent of the party, and one is drawn – "
"Well, let me draw, then!" said the Bride.
"Not on your life!" said Billy. "Here, Professor!"
Amid half-hidden chuckling, the Professor took a slip from the hat and handed it to the Groom.
"On this ballot," said he, "is written 'The Poet.' That gentleman will now favor the audience, ladies and gentlemen, with a story."
The moon was climbing through the lodge-pole pines, and the camp was mystic with the flicker of the firelight on the rocks and trees. The Poet looked about as if for an inspiration. His eyes fell on the Bride, so sweet, so cuddleable, so alluring.
"I will tell you a story that occurred to me as we drove along," said he. "If you don't like tragedy, don't call on a poet for entertainment in a tragic moment."
A TELEPATHIC TRAGEDY
He sat reading a magazine. Chancing upon a picture of the bronze Sappho which, if you have luck, you will find in the museum at Naples, he began gazing at it, first casually, then intently, then almost hypnotically. The grand woman's head with its low masses of hair; the nose so high as to be almost Roman, so perfect in chiseling as to be ultra-Greek; the mouth eloquent of divinest passion; the neck, sloping off to strong shoulders and a bust opulent of charm – it shot through him an unwonted thrill. It may have arisen from memories of Lesbos, Mytilene, and the Leucadian Rock. It may have been the direct influence from her peep-hole on Olympus of Sappho's own Aphrodite. Anyhow, he felt the thrill.
Possibly it was some subtle effluence from things nearer and more concrete than either, for as he closed the magazine that he might rarefy and prolong this pulsing wave of poetry by excluding the distracting pages from his sight, his vision, resting for an instant upon the ribbon of grass and flowers flowing back beside the train, swept inboard and was arrested by a modish hat, a pile of ruddy hair, a rosy ear, the creamy back and side of a round neck, and the curve of a cheek. A most interesting phenomenon in wave-interference at once took place. The hypnotic vibrations of the Sapphic thrill were affected by a new series, striking them in like phases. The result was the only possible one. The vibrations went on, in an amplitude increased to the height of their superimposed crests. No wonder things happened: it is a matter of surprise that the very deuce was not to pay.
For the hair combined with the hat in a symmetrical and harmonious whole, in an involved and curvilinear complexity difficult to describe; but the effect is easy to imagine – I hope. The red-brown coils wound in and out under a broad brim which drooped on one side and on the other curled jauntily up, as if consciously recurving from the mass of marvelous bloom and foliage under it. Dark-red tones climbed up to a climax of quivering green and crimson in a natural and, indeed, inevitable inflorescence. But, engrossed by sundry attractive details below it, his attention gave him a concept of the millinery vastly more vague and impressionistic than ours.
The sunburst of hair was one of the details. It radiated from a core of creamy skin from some mystic center concealed under fluffy laciness. The ear, too, claimed minute attention. It was a marvel of curves and sinuosities, ivory here, pearl-pink there, its lines winding down to a dainty lobe lit by a sunset glow, a tiny flame from the lambent furnace of the heart. Cold science avers that these fairy convolutions are designed for the one utilitarian purpose of concentrating the sound-waves for a more efficient impact upon the auditory nerve; but this is crudely false. They are a Cretan labyrinth for the amazing of the fancy that the heart may be drawn after – and they are not without their Minotaur, either!
"Pshaw!" said he to himself. "What nonsense! I'll finish my magazine!"
This good resolution was at once acted upon. He turned his eyes back along the trail by which they had so unwarrantably wandered – along the line of coiffure, window, landscape, page, Sappho; describing almost a complete circle – or quite. As he retraced this path so virtuously, the living picture shifted and threw into the problem – for a problem it had now become – certain new factors which seemed to compel a readjustment of plans. These were a fuller view of the cheek, a half profile of the nose, and just the tiniest tips of the lips and chin. He forgot all about Sappho, but the Sapphic vibrations went on increasingly.
The profile – the new one – was, so far, Greek, also. It was still so averted that there was no danger in amply verifying this conclusion by a prolonged gaze.
No danger?
Foolhardy man, more imminent peril never put on so smooth a front! Read history, rash one, and see thrones toppled over, dungeons filled with pale captives, deep accursed tarns sending up bubbling cries for vengeance, fleets in flames, plains ravaged, city walls beaten down, palaces looted, beauty dragged at the
