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On the forenoon of the following Sunday—a fresh September morning that came cool at the end of a hot week—Don and she rode to Central Park together, on top of a Fifth Avenue stage. The street was busy with its "church parade," with its holiday traffic, with its throngs of sightseers and visitors to town; the bus was as crowded as an excursion boat; and the wind that blew down the clean pavement—newly washed with rain—floated the lashes of the cabbies' whips, fluttered laces and feathers and the extravagant veils of "Fall millinery," tossed black coat-tails, caught at top hats, and moulded over feminine small knees the flowing draperies of clinging skirts. Under the glinting sunlight, it gave movement and animation to the solemnity of Sunday finery and curiosity's slow stare. It sparkled like a breeze on water. It rocked the church bells in a continuous chime.
She leaned back against the back of their seat, looking down on the bravery of fashion inscrutably, her face made more beautiful by the softening blur of her brown veil. Don clung to his perch, bending forward, in all ungraceful angles, his head continually turning, and clutching at his hat. The hollow rumble of the bus axles, jolting in their hubs, thrilled him with the return of a childish excitement; for it was the sound that the circus waggons had made, passing in a street parade which he had seen when he had been no taller than the glittering spokes of the gilded waggon wheels. And although he did not recall any conscious memory of that gala day, the magic of the sound made the world poetical again, made every woman's face beautiful to him, every couple in a hansom cab a pair of smiling lovers, every glimpse of the lives around him the enticing illustration of a story-book of romances of which the pages were being turned so rapidly that he could not read.
"This is the way I'd like to go through life," he cried. "Wouldn't you?" And when she did not seem to understand, he explained, with a wave of the hand: "Up above it all, where nobody notices you—looking down at it as you go by."
She nodded, content to humour him in whatever he said.
"I wouldn't like to climb down into it—even into one of those carriages." A liveried coachman and footman, like sentinels on their box, drove past with a bored couple in an open landau. "Imagine living under guard, like that!" he laughed. A butler stood at attention beside a door which he had opened for an old lady whom a footman was escorting solemnly down the steps. "In a brownstone prison like that!" An automobile came slowly toward them, quivering impatiently with the pulse of its checked engine, crawling among the cabs and carriages, a stout man beside the chauffeur shaking corpulently with the vibration of the machine. "Though I should rather like that!" The man looked up at the roof seats of the stage, as if in a habit of observation which nothing escaped; and for the appreciable moment of passing, Don returned a stare that seemed suddenly to focus on him, and stay set, as if waiting for a nod of recognition.
The machine shot forward into an opening between, the two streams of carriages; the man, still staring, disappeared with a backward jerk of the head that brought his hand up to the brim of his hat. Don said: "He thought he knew me!" But as soon as he had said it, he saw that it had been she at whom the stare had been directed; and he saw, too, that the recognition had not been welcome. He scrutinized the memory of the man's face—a clean-shaven plump face with protruding eyeballs that were round under skinny eyelids, like a bird's. He wondered to what scenes of her unknown past this unexpected apparition belonged.
She did not speak. He felt that she was separated from him by her thoughts, and he amused himself with the faces he saw and the houses he passed,—wilfully fixing his attention, with a microscopic intensity, on the intricate design of a lace curtain in a window, on the twisted scroll-work of an iron gate, on a child in a blue reefer and brown leather gaiters, on a policeman with a swollen nose that shone in the sunlight—picking out details as if with a search-light and seeing them so brilliantly that it seemed he had never seen such things before. This game carried him to the end of their ride; and when they had climbed down from the driver's box, over the rim and hub of the wheel, he stood beside her on the curbstone, stiff, and with a strange sensation of having lost his outlook and reduced his height. He looked down at his legs. "They feel so short," he said. "I feel as if I had been cut off at the knees."
When he returned his thoughts to her, a little ashamed of his whimsicality, he found her drawn back from the approach of an automobile in which he recognised the man who had stared at her. The chauffeur stopped the machine beside them. The man raised his hat, smiling familiarly. "Jump in and have a ride."
She replied, in her coldest tones: "No, thank you."
"What are you doing now?"
"Mr. Gregg," she said, "this is Mr. Polk."
Polk merely nodded. "Yes. How d'you do?" He passed his eyes over Don—from the faded band of his hat to the worn hem of his trouser legs—with the same absent-minded observation which Don had noticed in him before. He said: "Been in to see Jimmy lately? He's making up a couple of road companies. How've you been, eh? You're looking tip-top."
"Mr. Gregg is from Canada, too," she said, turning to Don with the politest smile.
"On the stage?"
"Yes. It was such a beautiful morning we couldn't resist the top seat on it."
Polk blinked rapidly. "Oh? Yes. Well Go ahead, Jack. See you later."
The automobile coughed, exploded and kicked forward with a jerk. Polk waved his hand indifferently—and was gone again.
Don looked after him bewildered, by this unexpected arrival, this absurd conversation and this abrupt departure. "Why! . . . He must have followed us!"
"This is our gate, isn't it?" She stepped down into the roadway. "Is the Museum open on Sunday mornings?"
He followed her. "Who is he?"
"Peter Polk."
Don had seen the name on the bill boards. "The play-writer?"
"If you wish to call them plays."
"You've"
She interrupted: "I would sooner talk of something pleasant—if you don't mind." As they turned into a by-path, she added apologetically: "I don't want the thought of him to spoil our morning." She raised her veil, tying it round the crown of her hat, took off her gloves, tucked them into her belt and opened her parasol over herself and Don as if deliberately conferring on him the intimacy of smiles and friendship which she had refused to Polk. "Isn't this jolly!"
She was strikingly dressed in shades of brown—even to her parasol, her veil and her russet shoes—and every passer-by paid her the tribute of an admiring stare. She appeared so unconscious of this that Don was free to enjoy it for her, to be flattered for her, and to enjoy also the feeling it gave him of passing, distinguished but indifferent, above the gaze of the world. With the graceful carriage of a stage beauty, she walked untiringly, through the shady windings of the paths, under tall elms, among grey beeches of which the leaves were yellowing, between the reddening hedges of underbrush from which the squirrels peeped. She was amused by his knowledge of the paths to be taken. She admired every little view of wood and water which he pointed out. She gave herself up to the simple pleasures of the moment with a charming unreserve that was like a continual compliment to him.
He had never seen her so light-hearted before, and never so uncritically friendly in her acceptance of his opinions and his points of view. Although she said nothing of that part of her life to which Polk belonged, she recalled almost wistfully her past in Coulton, including Don in her memories and astonishing him again by the vividness of her recollection of his small doings. She had been in that photograph of the Sunday-school picnic in which he had been posed among so many little girls that "Miss Margaret" had been jealous of them; she remembered, from the teasing he had suffered in school, how he had given that picture to a girl who had destroyed it; and she confessed that she had hated "the little wretch." When he was somewhat blushingly surprised that she had been so interested in him, even so long ago, she said: "Oh, Edith used to come home and talk at the table about the queer little boy she was teaching. I knew all about you long before I ever met you. We used to wonder what you would be when you grew up."
"I'm afraid. . . I'm rather a disappointment."
"You are—in some ways," she replied lightly. "In other ways you're not."
"What ways?"
"Oh, now," she laughed, "that would be telling."
He joined in her amusement. "I know," he said, "I'm an awful ass. I've tried to change—really, I have—but I can't do it. I wake up next morning and find myself back where I began. Your sister—my father—Bert Pittsey—everyone has tried to help me, but they can't. I'll get into trouble, some day, I know."
"We all do that."
"Yes, but you try to avoid it. I seem to walk right into it with my eyes shut."
"Never mind. Don't let us worry about it."
"I don't!" he said. "That's the trouble!"
"Well," she sighed, "some days I think you're right. You are on a morning like this, anyway!"
She even accepted his invitation to have luncheon at the "Terrace," and protected him from extravagance by giving a ridiculous order of oysters and ice-cream—making a joke of it, enjoying with him the amazement of the waiter, ignoring the curiosity of the people about her and devoting her eyes to Don as if they two were alone in a solitary holiday of sunshine and autumn trees.
"Now what shall we do?" he asked, while the waiter was gone for his change.
"Get a package of cigarettes," she whispered, as if proposing a forbidden wickedness, "and we'll go where you can have a quiet smoke."
He laughed. "I know the very place!—as good as a hay-loft!"
It was around an arm of the lake, at the foot of an unfrequented path that led to the water's edge and ended beside a clump of syringa bushes and a rustic bench. "The very place," she agreed. "Isn't it lovely to be out among real trees, instead of painted stage imitations! And the ducks, too!" She sat down, making herself comfortable, as if for a long tête-a-tête. "Now light up and talk to me. . . Tell me—tell me why you left college?"
She turned toward him, sideways in the seat, her back against the arm of it, studying him unobserved, with an expression of face that might have put him on his guard if he had seen it.
He drew the first contented puffs of his cigarette and replied: "I don't believe I can. It was all mixed up. I felt I was wasting my time there. I wanted to be at work. Conroy and Pittsey were leaving together, coming to New York. I had quarrelled with my father about not studying law. Then besides" He stopped, confused. "There were other things. I thought someone Oh, I couldn't tell you. It was all mixed up. I misunderstood, I guess. I made a mistake."
At his "I thought someone"—her eyes widened on him, unwinking, with the almost painful eagerness of a sportsman who has seen the stirring of his game. She waited so.
He smoked in a silent embarrassment that was, in itself, a confession of the truth. He was thinking of that parting on the steps of the Kimball porch, of his blank despair, and of Margaret sobbing in the darkness.
She said, at last: "Your father didn't wish to send you to college, did he?"
"No. . . . I had failed on my entrance exams."
"I remember. . . . Yes. That was the spring that Miss—what was her name? I remember seeing you, often, on Park Street with her."
"Miss Richardson!"
She did not appear to notice his surprise. She seemed indifferently interested in the toe of her shoe, which she was prodding with the point of her parasol. "What became of her?"
"She's in Germany—studying music. Did you know her?"
"No. I knew the family she was stopping with—next door to your aunt's. ... Is she going to be abroad long?"
"I—I don't know. I suppose so. If they can stay. I think they've been rather unfortunate—about money."
She said gently: "She seemed such a sweet girl."
She raised to him again that penetrating and watchful scrutiny. He was unaware of it, gazing out at the water. Her tone, as if speaking only of the past—"She was such a sweet girl"—had recalled to him all the dear tremors of those days that seemed so far away, that were so hopelessly ended. In a flash of thought, he saw himself, now, drifting in a life that promised him no future, a "super," earning 75 cents a night, without any prospect of advancement and resigned to his failure in this city that had no work for him. The interval that had passed since he had left her, had not brought them nearer together; it had separated them by every unsuccessful effort that he had made to earn the right to love her. He saw her as the impossible prize of a contest in which he had been a loser. He saw her, surrounded by a light of lost dreams, immeasurably beyond him, a hope that was past.
His face twitched with a twinge that seemed to strike from his heart. To Miss Morris, it was the face of a boy who had been disappointed in love, who had thrown away his career and left college because "someone" had taken the young hope out of his future and left him merely "living now"—as he had said—without plan, without ambition. She smiled, but tenderly, at the folly of it. How like him it was!
He was startled by the touch of her hand on his arm—the hand in which she held her gloves. He thought that she was giving them to him, and he took them absent-mindedly. "Put them in your pocket for me," she said. "I'm afraid I'll lose them."
He wondered why she was blushing.
He was to wonder at her again when they parted at the door of Mrs. Kahrle's boarding-house. "I've had such a good time," she said. "Have you? Have you been happy?" And when he assured her that he had been, she added: "That's good. I enjoyed myself so much." She shook hands, lingering with a manner of having something still unspoken. "Don't worry-about things—you know. They'll all come out right, won't they?"
"I hope so," he replied, puzzled.
"That's right," she said. "Good-bye." Her smile dwelt on him as if she were trying to say with her eyes some encouragement which she had, apparently, not put into words. "Good-bye—till to-morrow."