XII
By early springtide the poet had taken an old-fashioned house on thesouth side of Washington Square; his sons-in-law standing for it--asthe poet was actually beginning to droop amid the civilized luxury ofMadison Avenue. He missed what he called his own "den." So he got it,rent free, and furnished it sparingly with furniture of a slabby varietyuntil the effect produced might, profanely speaking, be described asdinky.
His friends, too, who haunted the house, bore curious conformity to thefurnishing, being individually in various degrees either squatty, slabbyor dinky; and twice a week they gathered for "Conferences" upon what heand they described as "L'Arr Noovo."
L'Arr Noovo, a pleasing variation of the slab style in Art, hadprofoundly impressed the poet. Glass window-panes, designed with tulippatterns, were cunningly inserted into all sorts of furniture wherewindow-glass didn't belong, and the effect appeared to be profitable;for up-stairs in his "shop," workmen were very busy creatingextraordinary designs and setting tulip-patterned glass into everythingwith, as the poet explained, "a loving care" and considerable glue.
His four unmarried daughters came to see him, wandering unconcernedlybetween the four handsome residences of their four brothers-in-law andthe "den" of the author of their being--Chlorippe, aged thirteen;Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen, and Aphrodite, sixteen--lovely,fresh-skinned, free-limbed young girls with the delicate bloom of sunand wind still creaming their cheeks--lingering effects of a life livedever in the open, until the poet's sons-in-law were able to support himin town in the style to which he had been unaccustomed.
To the Conferences of the poet came the mentally, morally, andphysically dinky--and a few badgered but normal husbands, hustledthither by wives whose intellectual development was tending toward theprecious.
People read poems, discussed Yeats, Shaw, Fiona, Mendes, and L'ArrNoovo; sang, wandered about pinching or thumbing the atmosphere understimulus of a cunningly and unexpectedly set window-pane in the back ofa "mission" rocking-chair. And when the proper moment arrived the poetwould rise, exhaling sweetness from every pore of his bulky entity, tointerpret what he called a "Thought." Sometimes it was a demonstrationof the priceless value of "nothings"; sometimes it was a naivesuggestion that no house could afford to be without an "Art"-rocker withArr Noovo insertions. Such indispensable luxuries were on saleup-stairs. Again, he performed a "necklace of precious sounds"--in otherwords, some verses upon various topics, nature, woodchucks, and thedinkified in Art.
And it was upon one of these occasions that Aphrodite ran away.
Aphrodite, the sweet, the reasonable, the self-possessed--Aphrodite ranaway, having without any apparent reason been stricken with anoverpowering aversion for civilization and Arr Noovo.