The Red Book Magazine/Volume 13/Number 2/The Greek God (Futrelle)

BY JACQUES FUTRELLE

EGINALD de COURCEY VINCENT was as handsome as a Greek god, but that was the only thing that ailed him. He was a square built, up-standing young chap whose physical perfections came near to realizing all the chaste, unearthly beauty of a clothing advertisement. The dainty flush of the ripening peach was in his velvet cheeks; his hair clustered in crisp curls about temples that might have been fashioned from Satin-grained marble by the cunning hand of genius; his nose was cast in the same mold as Apollo Belvedere’s and was, if anything, an improvement upon that classic nasal organ. His mouth was curving as a Cupid’s bow, scarlet, compassionate, tenderly poetic; and every time he smiled it looked like a special pose for a new dentifrice. And he had eyes like a gazelle.

When women saw him they drew a long breath and said, “Oh!” Their age mattered not, nor their station, nor their previous condition of servitude—they always drew a long breath and said “Oh!”

Now it happens that the man who is so handsome he makes Apollo Belvedere look like a misshapen dummy in front of a clothing store can not have the disposition of the shrinking violet, even if he would. He simply can not. It is just as impossible for him as it is for the rich man to crawl through the eye of a camel. People wont let him shrink. As a rule men detest him, and rather like to be seen in his company; women rave about him and besiege him with invitations. He is pawed over, and dragged about, and pointed out, and flattered willy-nilly. Egotism is superimposed upon him like frosting on a cake; he becomes a standard of comparison by which other men are shown their physical shortcomings.

Mr. Vincent, familiarly Rex, was no exception to the rule. However unhappy the knowledge made him, he could not deny, even to himself, that he was just about the prettiest man he had ever come across. Standing in front of his mirror, gazing into the limpid depths of the gazelle eyes, studying the curves of the Cupid’s bow mouth, and gazing upon the supernatural perfection of his nose he was simply overwhelmed by the utter hopelessness of combating popular opinion. So enveloped in despair was he that at times he felt like sitting down in a quiet corner somewhere, far from the madding adulation, and weeping in his hat. It was terrible!

But every swallow-tail has a silken lining. So one faint gleam of promise percolated his pall of misery. He knew—he knew—that when the time came and the virgin heart within him was aroused to the glory of the adoration, the world was his to choose from; no woman there was who would not be happy and proud to bend the knee to him in surrender and submission. From the very beginning he had been made to understand this. Doting mothers, loving aunts, scheming match-makers had conspired to keep him informed of the overpowering influence of his beauty upon the heart feminine. Sometimes it had been done subtly, at other times clumsily, but it had always been done, and he came to understand it. All he had to do, when the time came, was to lift a finger, then raise his guard to stay the rush.

And at last he met his Fate.

Many words might be used to palliate the facts in the case. For instance, it might be said that this girl—this wonder-girl—was unhandsome, disbeauteous, mispretty, or even plain. But none of these would fully express it. As a matter of fact she was ugly, much—so ugly that one’s first impression was that some frightful accident had befallen her. Surely Nature had not been so unkind as to purposely group all those features into one homogeneous whole and call it a face? And yet, after scrutiny, one could not believe otherwise because it was all connected up in the regular way—nothing was missing.

For one long, tense instant Rex stood transfixed, staring, staring at her with adoration blazing in the gazelle eyes, and the awakened heart pounding to suffocation within him. Finally she turned, as if in acknowledgement of his burning gaze, and her eyes met his squarely; whereupon she drew a long breath and said “Oh!” They always did. And then Rex was enveloped in a sort of ecstasy. Mute, motionless he basked in the full flood of it while her eyes lingered; then she looked away and the magic spell was broken, leaving him limp and cold and quivering.

He sought out his hostess.

“Who—who is the girl over there?” he queried with a strange quaver in his voice.

Mrs. van Benthuysen turned her regal head and glanced in the direction indicated.

“The little chick of a thing with the splendid gold hair?” she asked in turn. “Isn’t she perfectly delicious? Just like a French doll—all dimples, and curves and smiles. Come over here; I want you to meet her.”

Even in his rapt condition Rex couldn’t quite fit that description to the wonder-girl.

“You and I are not talking about the same person,” he told her. “I mean the slender girl sitting down?”

“Oh, that!” exclaimed Mrs. van Benthuysen with a sort of excuse-me-I-have-tasted-a-pickle expression about her mouth. “Isn’t it awful?”

“Who is she?” Rex insisted.

Mrs. van Benthuysen regarded him sharply.

“She is the daughter of one of my husband’s business associates in the West, visiting New York,” she explained. “Charming enough, I daresay, but isn’t she awful? Poor thing!”

In the splendor of her own mature beauty Mrs. van Benthuysen could well afford to pity almost any woman of the younger generation.

“What’s her name?”

“Pike.”

“Pike!” he breathed softly.

“Martha Pike.”

“Martha Pike!”

It was almost a caress. Pike—Martha Pike! Was there ever music so sweet as that? "Twas like a lingering strain of a mighty melody by Mendelssohn. Martha Pike! His entranced senses reeled at the sheer beauty of that name; it was a symphony in itself. Martha Pike!

“Rex, what’s the matter with you?” demanded Mrs. van Benthuysen in sudden anxiety.

“Nothing,” he assured her absently, and he stole a glance at the wonder-girl. “Nothing,” he repeated. “Please introduce me.”

Mrs. van Benthuysen was frankly alarmed.

“Introduce you to—to her?” she gasped. “Of course you'll meet her, but—but—Rex,” she asked suspiciously, “this isn’t any joke to make that poor girl feel uncomfortable, or look foolish, is it? I know you so well.”

Rex turned those lusterful, gazelle eyes full upon her, and there was deep reproach in them.

“How can you ask, Mrs. Van?” he wanted to know. “Who is my dinner-partner?”

“Miss Anstruther, the stunning English girl there. She’s perfectly gorgeous. Every man I’ve seen is crazy about her.”

Rex turned and listlessly appraised a splendid, brilliant, Junoesque creature, and then, true as the needle to the pole, his eyes sought again the enthralling face of the wonder-girl.

“Can’t I swap Miss Anstruther for Miss Pike?”

“Swap her for Miss Pike?” exclaimed Mrs. van Benthuysen in amazed horror. “That for that? Why, Rex Vincent!”

“Now, Mrs. Van,” he pleaded, “just this once. You know I’ve done you lots of favors. I’ve made love to every lonesome little débutante that you have ever taken under your wing just to give her a sort of standing, as a personal kindness to you. Now reward the faithful. I want to swap ’em. Please let me?”

“But—but I promised Miss Anstruther that her partner at dinner was to be the handsomest man in New York?” Mrs. van Benthuysen protested.

“Oh, work off Wilson on her,” Rex suggested. “Maybe she wont know the difference.”

Mrs. van Benthuysen stared at him coldly.

“Are you doing it on a bet?” she queried.

Tragically Rex shook his head.

Reason and recollection and a moderate degree of sanity returned to him as he was bending over a frail white hand which Miss Pike extended to him with true Western hospitality. He liked women who shook hands. Speechlessly he collapsed into a seat beside her.

“Treat him kindly, Miss Pike,” Mrs. van Benthuysen requested with a gracious, indulgent smile. “He’s utterly spoiled.”

Miss Pike’s lips curled a little in amusement, and a glint of mischief flashed in her eyes. She favored Rex with one side-long glance that anchored him right in his chair. Mrs. van Benthuysen glared at him and went away.

“You must be awfully lonesome, Mr. Vincent,” the wonder-girl began demurely.

Her voice was all right, anyway; low, well modulated, soothing. The melody of it partially aroused Rex from his trance-like condition.

“Why?” he murmured feebly.

“One of a kind is usually lonesome,” she explained enigmatically.

“One of a kind?” he repeated.

“As a general thing it finds itself in the discard,” she went on.

Rex sat up straight and gazed into eyes now frankly quizzical. He wasn’t quite sure whether she was leading up to a discussion of poker, or—or what.

“Did you ever read Musset’s ‘Story of a White Blackbird?’” she asked with uplifted brows.

He shook his head wonderingly.

“There was only one made,” she elucidated, “then they broke the mold.”

It was dawning upon Rex slowly that he was out of the conversation. She was asking riddles, and he didn’t know the answer. He sought for it vainly in eyes grown demure again.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

She laughed, and she did have beautiful teeth.

“It must be a dreadful thing, really, to be the handsomest man in New York,” she said solemnly. “One must feel so—so by himself when he has that reputation.”

Rex felt the color mounting to his velvet cheeks, and he closed his teeth with a snap. Then he grinned sheepishly.

“Oh!” he said.

“I can sympathize with you because I have that same lonesome feeling myself,” she went on smiling again. “Except mine is on the reverse.”

Her tone of raillery and self-mockery prevented Rex from rushing in with a denial. It would have been the proper thing to do, of course, but that amused glint in the wonder-girl’s eyes stopped him in his tracks. He only stuttered and stammered and feverishly fished for the reasonable thing to say.

“Don’t excite yourself,” she advised laughingly. “No one has ever found the right combination of words to deny it.”

“Oh, but—” he floundered.

“My position is, if anything, calculated to make me even more lonesome than you,” she interrupted. “You are only the handsomest man in New York; I am the ugliest woman in the world.”

There are lots of words in the English language. Rex pawed them all over in a desperate effort to find one or two that he could use, then he drew a long breath and nervously ran his fingers through the clustering crisp curls.

“I despise handsome people,” he burst out.

Those were the only four words he could lay hand to at the moment.

“Between us, we cover the map thoroughly then,” she put in gayly. “I despise ugly ones.”

And so a tentative bond of sympathy was established.

“You find it rather hard to talk to me, don’t you?” Miss Pike broke the silence frankly, and shot another tantalizing sidelong glance at him.

“On the contrary,” he denied gallantly, and knew it didn’t ring true. “That is, I mean—”

“Oh! That accounts for your verbosity then? I wondered.”

“You're the sort of a woman with whom mere words are not necessary.”

At last Rex was coming to form. She laughed.

“You see, if I'd been pretty, as pretty for instance as Miss Anstruther there, we would have had a subject of conversation in the beginning,” she said. “You would have started with my eyes, and by this time we would have been wonderfully well advanced. As it is, you can’t think of a word to say. It is an awful handicap, I know.” She was thoughtful a moment. “There’s the weather,” she suggested. “We haven’t touched upon that.”

“I despise handsome people,” said Rex again, irrelevantly.

“And I despise ugly ones. But we’ve gone over that ground.”

“Pretty people are shallow.”

“Ugly ones are hard to look at.”

“Pretty people are insipid.”

“Ugly ones are acrid.”

“Pretty people are always seeking adulation.”

“Ugly ones are grouchy because they can’t get it.”

“Pretty people are domineering, merciless, inconsiderate.”

“Ugly ones are high-tempered, sharp-tongued, petty.”

“Pretty people are—are—”

And he vainly thought for some abusive sockdolager that would end the controversy.

She laughed again.

“You and I are in the same boat, Mr. Vincent. You know what always happens to the little boy when he eats too much sugar? You, the handsomest man in New York, have eaten too much sugar; I, the ugliest woman in the world, have eaten too many pickles. Shall we call it quits?”

Dinner was announced. Rex arose and offered her his arm.

“But you are not my dinner-partner,” she protested, as she, too, arose. “Mr. Wilson is my partner.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Rex, and he bowed low before her. “I am your partner.”

For an instant some vaguely veiled perplexity was in her eyes, and then she smiled.

“What’s the matter?” she inquired. “Couldn’t Mr. Wilson stand it?”

“I am your partner,” said Rex again.

“But why? How did it happen?”

“I was to take Miss Anstruther in,” he explained. “As a personal favor to me Mrs. van Benthuysen juggled the cards and assigned you to me. It was done at my request.”

She stared at him for a moment.

“Opposites do attract, don’t they?” she remarked naively, as she took his arm.

Now, Helen of Troy, in her day and generation, was quite widely regarded as the ultima Thule of feminine loveliness. Even the women in her own set couldn’t deny it, albeit there were those who did say, and mayhap with justice, that Helen was—but that’s another story. Anyway, when Paris made love to Helen of Troy he had a substantial working basis; a limitless field of poetic comparison. He didn’t have to strain his imagination unduly when he likened her eyes to yon star, and her lips to the scarlet budding rose, and her cheeks to the tender pink of earliest dawn. Then there was her hair, and the arch of her brows, and all the rest. It was easy for Paris.

But, if Helen of Troy had been named Pike—Martha Pike—and had been ugly to a point just beyond the field of credulity, and had been fully aware of the fact that she was ugly; and had, in addition, a keen, breezy sense of humor, one wonders just where Paris would have begun, supposing that he had begun at all.

She did have beautiful teeth, did Miss Pike, and a voice that was alluring in its sweetness. But an ardent young man needs something more tangible than a voice and a set of teeth to rave about. He wants to get a good grip on some poetic fantasy, and work it out in detail. And when that young man is desperately, madly in love it hardly seems just and right that his verbal extravagances should be so limited. And Reginald de Courcey Vincent loved Martha Pike! Beside this all-consuming passion of his life, that little affair between Helen of Troy and Paris was an airy, summer flirtation, an idle peccadillo. That’s how Rex felt about it.

Days had passed, many days, since that first meeting at Mrs. van Benthuysen’s. And each of those days Rex had spent in devising some new thing to please this wonder-girl. He was adept at it: flowers, bon-bons, luncheons, dinners, automobile excursions, he had crowded them upon her. Haunts that knew him once now knew him not at all, for the lure of love was upon him. And yet when he was with her he was dumb as to the reason for it all. Banal trivialities made up his conversation. For instance:

“Reginald de Courcey Vincent!” he exclaimed once. “Isn’t that an awful name to fasten upon an innocent child?”

“But they call you ‘Rex,’” she expostulated, “and I like that. And think, oh, think, of the sheer horror of Martha—Martha Pike!”

“Rex!” he growled. “Why, Mrs. van Benthuysen has a pug dog named Rex. I believe I could have been perfectly happy if my name had only been Peter. Pete! Isn’t that bully? Pete?”

“And I could have realized the fullness of life if I had only been Doris,” said she.

“Or Uriah,” said he.

“Or Evelyn,” said she.

“Or Peleg.”

“Or Cicely.”

“Or Abijah.”

“Or Edna.”

“Or Caleb.”

“Or Miriam.”

“Or Joab,” he went on, “or Pat, or Mike, or Izzy, or Eliphalet—anything but Reginald de Courcey.” He pronounced the name as if he were swearing. “Pete Joab Vincent! Now that would have been something like.”

And on another occasion: “What merit is there in merely being good looking?” he asked.

“That is a point on which I am least qualified to speak,” replied the wonder-girl. “It’s more in your line.”

“There isn’t any.” Rex answered his question. “People merely stare at one, and point one out, and make remarks about one; and one has to be absolutely certain that his coat fits. No one ever worries about the fit of a coat if it is on a pug-nosed man; they don’t notice it if his trousers bag at the knees, or if he wears a brilliant red necktie that matches his brilliant red nose.”

“True, beauty has its obligations,” mused the wonder-girl.

Lambent flames of amusement played in her eyes, and crinkles appeared on her nose.

“Now, if some one would tell me I was the best ditch-digger in New York,” Rex went on, “why I should positively love him—her—it, whoever said it.”

“Did you ever dig a ditch?” inquired Miss Pike. demurely.

“No,” he admitted despondently.

“Too bad,” she commented.

Rex was dense; it passed.

“I can do things,” he went on vehemently. “I would like people to know I can do things, and tell me that I do ’em well instead of—instead of—”

“Pray go on,” she taunted.

“Instead of always telling me I’m handsome, particularly old ladies,” he continued shamelessly. “I despise old ladies. They take advantage of their age and sex to impose upon one. I know I’m handsome; I don’t want to be told about it.”

Miss Pike lifted her brows just a fraction.

“You know you are handsome?” she repeated.

“Lord, how can I help but know it?” he demanded. “I’ve never been allowed to forget it. They’ve pounded it into me ever since I was a little shaver. All the boys in school used to call me ‘Beaut,’ and teacher called me Cutey.”

“Poor boy!” the wonder-girl sympathized.

Pause.

“If it would please you to know it,” she said at last slowly, “I don’t think you are handsome.”

“You don’t?”

A great joy beamed in the gazelle eyes, and Rex impulsively reached for one of the frail white hands, which was discreetly placed in a position of greater security.

“No, I don’t think you are handsome,” the wonder-girl repeated, demurely. “I think you are positively beautiful.”

Then she laughed; and he couldn't strike a woman, you know.

There is no mystery whatever about what happened next. Reginald de Courcey Vincent told Martha Pike he loved her. Of course you thought all along he was going to tell her. Well, far be it from me to disappoint you—he told her. It happened several days later. He groveled at her feet, and turned loose a flood of adjectives that hadn’t been used before all summer. He idolized her, he adored her, he worshiped her; she was the light of his life, the queen of his heart, the oasis in his desert of existence; he would give his life for her, his soul for her, his wealth for her; a future without her would be a desolate waste, a bleak wilderness, a perpetual night; and, please, would she deign to accept his unworthy heart and hand, would she marry him, would she become his wife?

And did Martha Pike hang her head shyly, and murmur a faint assent?

No.

Martha Pike laughed, albeit there was a singular little quaver in the trill of it. She began to laugh along in the middle somewhere when Rex inadvertently dragged into his declaration some anatomical references, and in an impetuous burst of enthusiasm began to fling off poetic things about eyes as soft as a star-haze, whatever that is; and lips like the bursting heart of a rose; and hair that held enmeshed the lure of the dying sun. He hadn’t intended to go into those details, they were hardly germane, but once in, over his head, he plunged on to destruction. He had captured one of the frail white hands in the mêlée, and crushed it fiercely.

“You will be mine,” he pleaded tensely. “You will! You will!”

She withdrew her hand.

“Don’t be absurd, Rex,” she said, gently.

“Say yes? Yes? Yes?”

She shook her head.

“Please, like a good fellow now,” she coaxed, “set up from there and sit here beside me. No, not so close. Now.”

“Say you will?” he insisted desperately.

“No,” she replied.

“I wont take that answer,” he declared hotly. “You must say yes.”

“No.”

It was all working out differently, somehow, from that finger lifting episode he had pictured. She was perfectly serious now. Her clear, sane eyes met his squarely and lingered until the blaze of hope was all but extinguished, and shadows of uncertainty came. Her lips trembled a little, ever so little, and for a time they were silent.

“You know I love you, don’t you?” Rex began again.

“Rex, please don’t,” she urged.

“You know I love you, don’t you?”

“I think you do, and yet—yet—”

“You know it?”

“Yes,” wearily, “I know it.”

“And you?”

He was eager again; the blaze within his eyes.

“And you?” he demanded the second time.

“Why do you love me?” she asked curiously.

“Why do I love you?” he echoed. “Why does the sun shine, and the birds sing, and—”

And Rex began to rave again. She listened patiently to the end.

“You have given no reason,” she said. “Why do you love me?”

“Because—because you are you,” he answered.

She drew away a little and turned to face him.

“It has pleased you to weave a little tragedy about yourself,” she said dispassionately, “a little comic tragedy. A man who is handsome and is unhappy because he is too handsome deserves about as much sympathy as the man who wants a million and is unhappy because he gets two millions. But did it ever occur to you that there is a tragedy, a real tragedy, in every ugly girl you meet? Just as you have been made self-conscious by constant reference to your good looks, she has been made self-conscious by her ugliness. Can you imagine what they called me in school?”

“Angel?” he ventured.

“‘Ugly-Mug,’” she went on in a strained little voice, “corrupted later on into ‘Mug,’ and finally into ‘Muggins.’ There was the beginning of a tragedy, you see. I used to weep my heart out because I was not pretty like other little girls, and the taunt was forever flung into my face. It is to this day. All my girl friends call me ‘Muggins’ now—innocently it is true, and yet—yet it stings. You know the thing that a woman lives for is admiration, flattery, appreciation in the eyes of those who are dear to her. It is nothing against her that this is true. And your ugly girl gets none of those. I have passed the supersensitive period,” and a smile was growing about her lips again. “I don’t even mind people staring at me now, but sometimes I wonder—I wonder how it must feel to be beautiful, and know you are beautiful!” There was infinite longing in the voice.

“Well, speaking from experience—” Rex began.

“And now, why do love me?” she interrupted. “Why should I, above all others in the world, attract you, the very last man whom I might hope to attract?”

Rex was on his knees again.

“I love you,” he said simply. “Say yes? Yes?”

“No,” she said firmly, “always no, no, no!”

“Why?” he demanded abruptly.

“Why?” she echoed. “Aren’t these things I have been telling you sufficient to make you see?”

“But I don’t understand.”

“The contrast between us? Don’t you see it?” One white hand rested for an instant on the crisply curling hair. “It would make me ridiculous; you would grow to be ashamed of me.”

Rex arose and stared at her grimly.

“You don’t mean that?” he declared masterfully.

“Perhaps not just that,” she admitted, “but they—they would call us ‘Beauty and the Beast.’”

“They!” he growled savagely.

He had a trick of crowding dire imprecation into a single word like that at times.

“As I understand it,” he went on after a moment, “your sole objection to marrying me is that I am too beautiful?”

“Isn’t it perfectly absurd?”

A dreary little smile curled the corners of her mouth.

“Well, wont you be brave and marry me in spite of my beauty?” He was pleading now. “We'll try to bear it together?”

She shook her head.

“Beauty and the Beast,” she murmured faintly.

“Couldn’t I—couldn’t I cultivate a stoop, or have my nose broken, or lose an eye or something?” he suggested frantically.

Again the head shook.

“And is there no hope for me?”

“None. Nothing in this world could induce me to become your wife. I have tried to make you understand.”

He took both the frail white hands and brought her to her feet; eyes challenged eyes.

“Do you love me?” he whispered.

“Oh, if it were only that!”

Suddenly his arms closed around her, and their lips met. She struggled free, with face averted.

“It is the end,” she said sadly. “Go now!”

Of course you understood right along that every woman reserves the right to change her mind. A week passed, the luster faded from Rex’s gazelle eyes and sinister shadows grew beneath them; another week and the peach-glow fled from the velvet cheeks; a third week and lines of suffering appeared about the Cupid’s bow mouth; a fourth week and Reginald de Courcey was only a haggard shadow of himself. At the end of the sixth week he passed under the care of a specialist, his health shattered, a sacrifice to the torture of unrequited affection. At the end of the eighth week Martha Pike changed her mind; it was the only way to preserve his beauty.

And so they were married and lived happily ever after.