The Goblin Girl7

“There’s Mr. Tams with that creature!”

Nelly Fay bit her bright lip, clenched her small hand, overturned her chair, and, abandoning her mother and the veranda, rushed into the house, not omitting to slam the door.

Beyond, on the road, a motor freighted with youth and beauty had shot like a comet. Mrs. Fay blinked at it. Then, rising, she sneezed and followed her daughter.

Nelly at the moment was staring unseeingly at a tall mirror which showed back her lemon-colored frock, her slim figure, and her face, which even in anger was delicious. It takes a very pretty girl to look appetizing when she is furious, yet in that, and without trying to in the least, she succeeded. She had the loveliest features, amber hair, and eyes big and blue, blue as the sea and bluer.

But now, conscious of her mother’s approach, she turned on her.

“I do wish you wouldn’t wear that ridiculous shawl! It gives me the fidgets!”

The hall, high and wide, gravely furnished, led to the dining room. Nelly, her mother in leash, went on and into this room, where already luncheon was ready, and where Fred, her brother, a good-looking lad in admirably cut clothes, presently followed.

Sarah, a maid, whom Mrs. Fay openly treasured, served them. The midday meal began. Fred ate with quiet ferocity, Mrs. Fay uncomplainingly, Nelly not at all. But she drank. She took a whole glass of water at a gulp.

Fred, eying her, interrupted himself and laughed.

“Did you see Tams and his secretary? A hummer from Hummersville, eh?”

Nelly gave him one look. Immediately, like a beautiful whirlwind, she had gone. Surprisedly, Fred turned to his patient mother.

“I say! What’s wrong now?”

If Mrs. Fay knew, she omitted to tell. As for Nelly, if she had tried, she would have failed. She herself did not know. That she was quivering with anger, she was aware. But as will sometimes happen to angered people, she did not know what she was angry at. The week previous, she had been subjected to a grave affront. The memory of it still rankled. But it was not that. Then what was it?

In her bedroom, to which she had flown, darkly she wondered. Then, precisely as you may have seen in a moving picture, before her stood Tams.

Tams was an inventor. He had discovered a process whereby you could⁠—one of these days⁠—telephone along a shaft of light. He had discovered tamsar, that explosive of which the dynamics exceed the potentialities of trinitrotoluol. He had in process of completion an aeroplane that would serve as a rocking-chair and on which you could fly out of the window. Recently he had been occupied with a theatrical device which Goldburg, the showman, intended to produce in “The Goblin Girl,” a musical comedy that was to delight Broadway.

For the rest, Tams was a virile, resolute man, with eyes that, while blue, were not the blue of the sea or of the sky, but of steel. They were very determined. So, too, was his jaw. He gave the impression of getting what he wanted. At the time when this drama began, he wanted two things, neither of which he ever mentioned. There was the theatrical device. He wanted it to be a go. But first and foremost and over and beyond everything else, he wanted Nellie Fay.

In the Long Island village where, during the summer and the better part of the autumn, the Fays resided, Tams had a bungalow and a workshop. In town he had an office and presumably a clerk. In any event, during the past week he had apparently acquired a secretary, a young woman with whom he motored about and with whom, through the bungalow’s wide-open windows, he was seen at table.

Previously, of an evening, he had looked in on the Fays. Fred liked him, Mrs. Fay liked him, so did Nelly. Moreover, of an afternoon, when he could get off early enough, he and Nelly had gone for a ride.

Nelly always looked well, but she looked best astride. Her togs were perfect and perhaps a bit heady. In these togs, one green afternoon, when riding through the woods with Tams, her cob picked a stone. The immediate limp had made that so obvious that both had stopped and dismounted. In the process of extracting the stone from the hoof, they had collided. A moment later, he had got a crack on the head.

Meanwhile, he had caught her, held her, kissed her, and would have kissed her again, but she had fought free and hit out, slashing him with her crop as hard as she could across the face. It had made quite a welt. Then, in a jiffy, she had been on and off.

Tams had rubbed his face, held a hand to it, jumped on, hurried after, overtaken the girl, and apologized.

Nelly, her cheeks aflame, her nose in the air, to all intents deaf and blind, had ridden on, first at a run, then at a gallop, then at a canter. The village had been reached. There, spotting a girl, she had waved at her, hopped off and, bridle in hand, walked along to the girl’s house, where she had tied the cob and entered.

At that, Tams, whose apologies had not ceased until she had dismounted, had gritted his teeth, wheeled, and vanished.

Since then, except with that creature, Nelly had not seen him nor had she wished to. The memory of his offense was too recent. It rankled, and not at all because she had not been kissed before, for she had been. Yet, after such kisses as she had previously received, her pulse had registered normal. That woodland kiss had been different. Unwarranted and unawaited, it had hurt and alarmed her.

The hurt had passed; the alarm had subsided; only anger remained, and its persistence perplexed, for she was angry in spite of herself, angry with an anger that was akin to a fever that you cannot shake off, but that does shake you. She was quivering with it. It parched her throat, flushed her face, and she wondered if she were going to die.

The possibility was not unwelcome. She had nothing to live for. She felt not only ill, but old, and not only old, but haggard. Hitherto, wherever she had gone, she had drawn the eyes of men. She had trailed admiration as a torch trails smoke. It had all been myrrh and cassia to her. But now its savor had gone, and this girl who had the charm and the caress of spring in her face, decided that she had nothing to live for.

Then, precisely as a moment before she had evoked Tams, now she evoked “that creature.”

She had had but one good look at her. That had been at the post office. He had tooted up, got out, and gone in just as Nelly had approached. He had not seen her nor, apparently, had his companion deigned to. The latter had sat in the car staring indifferently at nothing.

It was then that Nelly had had the one good look. It had frozen her. In none of the picture galleries of romance, in the museums of history, had she seen or imagined such a face. The quality of its beauty⁠—coldly austere, as true beauty ever is⁠—was unearthly. The eyes were stars, and in the carriage of the head, the cameo features, the glowing skin, the brilliantly invincible mouth, there were suggestions polar and dazzling. It was as if flesh and blood had achieved the impossible ability to detain and display some glory of the arctic aurora.

Before it Nelly had shrunk. In her own face was the loveliness of the lily, but before that other face she had felt it wither. A moment only. She had rallied at once.

“She isn’t a gentlewoman,” she had instantly and arrogantly decided. “And she’s common.”

The latter attenuation had been induced by the lady’s dress, which, though evidently a Fifth Avenue production, had been in coloring too pronounced for good taste and consequently unbecoming. Beauty, when fulgurant, should be soberly attired. This costume, the latest revival of a mid-Victorian mode, had been as gaudy as a peacock’s tail, and the gaudiness of it had dimmed her beauty, which had been otherwise diminished by a necklace of coral. But her face was supernal.

These details, however long in the telling, Nelly, with feminine ability, had summarized in that one good look, which had consumed hardly more than a second and amounted to but a glance.

Next to the post office was a shop, with that odor of having everything in it which village shops contrive to exhale. Nelly had turned and strolled in, turned and looked out.

Tams had issued from the post office, approached the car, said some word to the young woman, got in beside her, and they had driven off.

At that Nelly had vacated the shop. Then, in passing the post office, she had noticed a little crowd that had gathered, and, as she had moved on, she had overheard detached philosophies:

“Well, I never!” “And the airs of her!” “A ballet girl, I’ll bet.” “One of those Russians.”

Nelly knew better. Through her brother, she knew that, whatever the creature’s nationality might be, she was not a dancer, but Tams’ secretary and probably respectable, though certainly vulgar, and poignantly she wondered whether the awful costume had been his selection⁠—which, she later discovered, it had.

But that afterward. At the time, dismissing the costume, she had wondered, and still more poignantly, whether Tams was to marry the person who wore it. The mere idea had made her sick.

Since then several days had intervened, days punctured by the spectacle of the creature shooting by, as she had on this high noon, like a comet. It was a little too much.

Now, in her bedroom which gave on the lawn and the road, Nelly seated herself at the window. There, as she sat, as sits Durer’s image of Melancholy⁠—only much better dressed⁠—something from without or within vibrated.

Before her the man again appeared, but not the one she had known. Another had come, a new one, composed of prowesses and powers hitherto ignored, and at once the form invisible and undefined that inevitably resides in the heart of a girl, and which is but the unincarnated soul of him who is destined to rule it, took substance. Then, as a weed of the sea, loosened and detached, rises slowly, stayed by one eddy, deflected by another, before achieving its gradual, yet assured ascent, a revelation, arrested by a tremor, again by a blush, from the depths of her being.

“But I love him!” she cried.

There is magic in those words. No sooner were they uttered than an exterior force seemed to lift from herself. Her mind became a rendezvous of apparitions. He appeared in countless phases⁠—as she had seen him first, as she had seen him last, in all the changes of their acquaintance⁠—and a shudder seized her at the knowledge of this love, of which she had been unconscious, and which had been tossed into existence by the sight of that creature.

That was it. She stood up and confronted it. That was the solution of the riddle of her anger. She was in love and she was jealous, and she could not be jealous unless she loved, and she could not love without being jealous.

Then immediately the exterior force that had lifted her from herself threw her back on that chair.

“I love him,” she stranglingly repeated, “and he is in love with another!”

Like a flying picture, torn from the cinematograph of memory, the wonder of that other’s face flashed by.

The picture fainted, succeeded by another⁠—the green depths of the wood, the surprise, the kiss, the lash⁠—that lash which now, consoled as he was, he never would forgive, and that kiss which now never would be repeated.

Despairingly she turned, threw a glance out of the window, and wished she could follow it.

Instead of anything so dramatic, she stared. Her hand clenched as it had on the veranda; her face flamed as it had when she had fled from the wood.

At the gate a motor had stopped and from it he and that creature were alighting.

Dumbfounded at the audacity, conscious that if he were capable of that he was capable of anything, and, through one of the sudden somersaults of the emotions, conscious also that it was no longer love that she had for him, but hate, she turned, hurried to the door, and locked it.

But it was impossible, she told herself. She had become the plaything of her own imagination and, to assure herself of the mistake, she hurried back from the door to the window.

Mistake indeed! There they were, actually walking up the path, she leaning on his arm and he talking lowly to her. It was more than flesh could bear. Nelly began to cry.

Her tears⁠—tears of anger, of humiliation, of sheer helplessness⁠—fell swiftly like the ripple of the rain. Not to stay them, for she could not, but in an effort to get away from herself, she flung herself face downward on the sofa.

What should she do, she plaintively wondered. What could she do? To whom could she turn? Long since her brother, as was his custom, must have gone to town, where he would remain until late, and her mother, as was her custom, was certainly asleep.

Well, there was comfort in that, she decided. There would be no one to receive them. In the consolation of it, she sat up and, reflecting, perhaps sagely, that there is no use in spoiling one’s looks, she dabbed at her slackening tears.

But now who was this? There was someone on the stair, someone at her door, someone who rapped, someone who spoke:

“Miss Nelly, Mr. Tams and a lady.”

The effrontery of that! Why, she wouldn’t even deign to answer!

“Miss Nelly, are you out?”

Tentatively a hand turned the resisting knob. Then presently she heard Sarah redescend the stair.

Now they would go, she told herself. They would have to, and when they had, she would put on her things and get her cob and have a good run. She did not care any more, not for anything or anybody.

At that reflection, finding herself crying again, she bit her lip. But to the soul that is sinking, hope throws always a straw. Perhaps, she told herself, some day, some time, her heart would be at peace. Perhaps. And fortified by the tolerably vague possibility, she stood up, went to the window again, and looked out.

There he was, strolling along to the motor, but alone.

Nelly craned a bit to see if that creature could be lagging behind. But no, he was really alone, and at once the partially appeasing idea occurred to her that, before presuming to get more than a bit beyond the gate, he had at least had the decency to pack that person off.

Yes, he must have, she decided, for now he was in the motor; now, with a toot, he had gone.

Assured of this, Nelly contemplated her lemon-colored frock, changed leisurely from it into her perfect togs, washed her face in sweet waters, took her crop and her gloves, unlocked the door, and went down.

But in the hall below, voices from the veranda arrested her. For a moment, her head drawn back in that attitude which a deer has when surprised, uncertainly she stood. Who could be out there? A sneeze informed her. That sneeze she recognized. Her mother was there. But, filled with wild surmise, she shook her crop. Could that creature be there, too?

Yet now, from the other end of the hall, a faint clatter of dishes came. A-tiptoe she went toward it. In the dining room Sarah was busying herself. At sight of the girl, she put down a tray.

“I thought you was out, miss.”

Nelly lifted a finger.

“Who is on the veranda?”

“Mr. Tams and a lady and your mother.”

“Mr. Tams! I saw him go.”

“Yes, miss, while your mother was dressing, he went to the post office. He came back a minute ago. The lady waited for him. She⁠—”

Sarah took up the tray.

“Well?”

“Nothing, miss. I asked her would she have a cup of tea, and she just looked at me, like that!” Sarah bulged her eyes. “A foreigner, I’m thinking.”

Nelly, meditating escape by the back door, switched her crop and might have gone, but from the veranda a wave of laughter rolled richly like a flood of wine.

To her overwrought nerves, it was a bugle blast. With an uplift of the chin, she straightened. No back door, no cowardice for her! She would march out, her head in the air and good day to them, but civilly, for this was her house and, however insulted, she would not be betrayed into anything petty, though if that creature were a foreigner, perhaps she might be beneficently inspired to say to her something⁠—well, something pleasant and acid, in French.

To that end a reconnaissance was needful⁠—the lay of the land, the position of the enemy, the advantage or disadvantage of an abrupt sortie.

“Give me a drink of water, please,” she said to Sarah.

It was the stirrup cup, and, having drunk it, she went on, this time not in the hall where she might be seen, but into the sitting room, which gave on the veranda and through the latticed windows of which she could peer.

“Yes,” Tams was saying as, noiselessly, she approached. “But she limps.”

Mrs. Fay, in a shawl, had her back to the window. Opposite, leaning against the railing, was Tams. Beyond, in a chair, sat the creature.

“And, oddly enough, only in one leg⁠—the left. There’s something wrong with it.”

Mrs. Fay sneezed.

“I hadn’t noticed it. But you say she sings?”

Tams nodded.

“Anything⁠—duets, trios, a whole chorus⁠—whatever you like.”

Mrs. Fay sneezed again.

“It does seem wonderful.”

Tams, leaning forward, took the young woman by the hand. At the touch, slowly she turned her head and covered him with her starlike eyes.

Nelly clutched at her crop. She could have struck them.

Mrs. Fay made a queer little noise⁠—not a sneeze or a laugh, just a splutter⁠—and, in reference evidently to something that had gone before, inquired:

“What do they say?”

Tams, releasing the girl’s hand, shifted.

“Well, you see the idea is so brand new that they don’t know whether they are in for rotten eggs or the biggest hit ever.”

“Dear me!”

“Yesterday, Goldburg, who is odiously familiar, clapped me on the back and said: ‘Make it dance, old boy, make it dance. That’s the stunt that’ll get ’em!’ ”

Patiently Mrs. Fay put in: “I should think so.”

“May I smoke?” Tams asked. “And somebody will,” he resumed as he got out a cigarette. “Somebody will do it, That’s inevitable. There’s barely an invention that hasn’t been bettered, There isn’t one that couldn’t be. Just now I’m ahead of this game, but though I can patent the process, I can’t patent the idea.”

Mrs. Fay, to whom that perhaps was Greek, exclaimed, “Oh, can’t you?”

Tams puffed.

“No, and moreover it’s all so simple. Not the machinery of course⁠—that is a bit intricate⁠—but the phonograph is mere a, b, c, and so is the rest of it.”

“Including the gown?”

“What gown?” thought Nelly. “What on earth are they talking about? And why does that creature sit there like a bump on a log? I could bite a tenpenny nail in two!”

Tams spilled his ashes.

“Don’t you like it? Why, I selected it myself. I saw it in a window.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Fay feebly protested, “I don’t mean but what it shows a great deal of taste⁠—”

“And all of it bad,” Tams laughingly cut in. “Well, no doubt you are right. Whatever else I may be, I’m not a⁠—what do you call him?⁠—a Poiret. But that’s just it. I would have liked a suggestion or two from your daughter, whose taste is faultless, but, it appears, she isn’t in, and I have got to turn Gloria over tomorrow. She takes the title role.”

“Gloria?” Nelly indignantly repeated. “Is that that creature?”

Tams threw away his cigarette. “ ‘The Goblin Girl’ is billed for the tenth of next month.”

As he spoke, leaning forward once more, he again took the young woman’s hand.

“Come, my beauty, we must go.”

But his beauty made no reply, no movement even. Her head had not turned, as it previously had, slowly upward to him.

“Hello!” he exclaimed and dropped the hand, which fell limply. “She’s run down!”

“What does he mean?” thought Nelly. “What on earth is he doing?”

Tams, who had extracted a key from his pocket, was poking it at the peacock girdle. He was turning it there. Then he moved closer, masking the creature. But almost at once he turned, and Nelly saw the lips part, saw the teeth, the point of the tongue, and heard the opening sol bémol of a cavatina.

A moment only. Tams fumbled at her again. Abruptly the mouth closed, the aria ceased. It was as if he had bewitched her.

Mrs. Fay nodded applaudingly.

“It is certainly wonderful. I never could have believed that a doll could be made to go on like that. And you say they want it to dance?”

A doll! Amazedly Nelly wondered whether she were going mad or only becoming sane. She could have screamed and, lest scream she might, she clapped a hand to her mouth.

A doll! The bewilderment of it made her dizzy. Without conscious effort, she saw the creature as she had that noon, shooting by like a comet; she saw her as she had at the post office, looking as if the ground were not fit for her to tread on; and she saw her as she had in that fancy ball of the imagination, taking him away.

Then at once an overwhelming relief poured balm all over her.

But in complex emotions the first to assert itself is humiliation. The relief passed, ousted by a sense of shame that she had been tricked into betraying her feelings even to herself.

For it was a trick, she indignantly told herself, and, even otherwise, he ought to have known better. It was disgusting of him to have paraded that thing about like a joy forever and to have acted as if it were alive!

But she could act, too. She would show him and pretty quick!

Her crop under her arm, her head in the air, buttoning a glove as she went, out on the veranda she sailed.

“How do you do, Mr. Tams.” With a little nod, a nod remote and quite infinitesimal, she threw at him those five small words and caressingly, in her most sugary way, smiled at her mother. “Don’t catch more cold, dearest.”

Across the veranda she sailed, floated over the steps, and on and up the path. There was a bit of wind, she noticed. She noticed, too, that the sun was going down. With her crop she decapitated a flower and, stooping, stuck it in her coat.

As she straightened, Tams was beside her.

“Nelly, I love you with all my heart and soul!”

Nelly looked up. The sky was a tent of various colors.

“Nelly, will you marry me?”

The wind sang about her like a flute.

A little later, when together they returned to the house, they found Mrs. Fay at the tea table.

Offering Tams a cup, the old lady said patiently:

“When you are quite ready, I hope you will take your beauty away. She’s uncanny.”

Tams smiled.

“There’s somebody else that I’m going to take away.”

Mrs. Fay, thinking, or affecting to think, of her treasure, started.

“Not Sarah?”

“Your daughter,” Tams with fitting gravity replied. “Your daughter has promised to be my wife.”

“Has she?” Mrs. Fay with amused, but affectionate interest, remarked.

“One lump or two? Well, I can’t honestly say that I didn’t suspect it. When is it to be?”

Nelly, contentedly helping herself to a caviar sandwich, answered for him:

“The day after the first production of ‘The Goblin Girl.’ ”