A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories Part 5

He walked beside her in silence.

"I also am going north to-morrow," she said, politely.

He did not answer.

Every day since her widowhood, every day for three years, she had decided to make that pilgrimage ... some time. And now, crossing Union Square on that lovely afternoon late in April, she knew that the time had come. Not that there was any reason for haste. ... At the vague thought her brown eyes rested a moment on the tall young man beside her....

Yes ... she would go ... to-morrow.

A vender of violets shuffled up beside them; Langham picked up a dewy bundle of blossoms, and their perfume seemed to saturate the air till it tasted on the tongue.

She shook her head. "No, no, please; the fragrance is too heavy."...

"Won't you accept them?" he inquired, bluntly.

Again she shook her head; there was indecision in the smile, a.s.sent in the gesture. However, he perceived neither.

She took a short step forward. The wind whipped the fountain jet, and a fanlike cloud of spray drifted off across the asphalt. Then they moved on together.

Presently she said, quietly, "I believe I will carry a bunch of those violets;" and she waited for him to go back through the fountain spray, find the peddler, and rummage among the perfumed heaps in the basket.

"Because," she added, cheerfully, as he returned with the flowers, "I am going to the East Tenth Street Mission, and I meant to take some flowers, anyway."

"If you would keep that cl.u.s.ter and let me send the whole basket to your mission--" he began.

But she had already started on across the wet pavement.

"I did not know you were going to give my flowers to those cripples," he said, keeping pace with her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I MEANT TO TAKE SOME FLOWERS, ANYWAY'"]

"Do you mind?" she asked, but she had not meant to say that, and she walked a little more quickly to escape the quick reply.

"I want to ask you something," he said, after a moment's brisk walking.

"I wish--if you don't mind--I wish you would walk around the square with me--just once--"

"Certainly not," she said; "and now you will say good-bye--because you are going away, you say." She had stopped at the Fourth Avenue edge of the square. "So good-bye, and thank you for the beautiful dog, and for the violets."

"But you won't keep the dog, and you won't keep the violets," he said; "and, besides, if you are going north--"

"Good-bye," she repeated, smiling.

"--besides," he went on, "I would like to know where you are going."

"That," she said, "is what I do not wish to tell you--or anybody."

There was a brief silence; the charm of her bent head distracted him.

"If you won't go," she said, with caprice, "I will walk once around the square with you, but it is the silliest thing I have ever done in my entire life."

"Why won't you keep the bull-terrier?" he asked, humbly.

"Because I'm going north--for one reason."

"Couldn't you take His Highness?"

"No--that is, I could, but--I can't explain--he would distract me."

"Shall I take him back, then?"

"Why?" she demanded, surprised.

"I--only I thought if you did not care for him--" he stammered. "You see, I love the dog."

She bit her lip and bent her eyes on the ground. Again he quickened his pace to keep step with her.

"You see," he said, searching about for the right phrase, "I wanted you to have something that I could venture to offer you--er--something not valuable--er--I mean not--er--"

"Your dog is a very valuable champion; everybody knows that," she said, carelessly.

"Oh yes--he's a corker in his line; out of Empress by Ameer, you know--"

"I might manage ... to keep him ... for a while," she observed, without enthusiasm. "At all events, I shall tie my violets to his collar."

He watched her; the roar of Broadway died out in his ears; in hers it grew, increasing, louder, louder. A dim scene rose unbidden before her eyes--the high gloom of a cathedral, the great organ's first unsteady throbbing--her wedding-march! No, not that; for while she stood, coldly transfixed in centred self-absorption, she seemed to see a shapeless ma.s.s of wreaths piled in the twilight of an altar--the dreadful pomp and panoply and circ.u.mstance of death--

She raised her eyes to the man beside her; her whole being vibrated with the menace of a dirge, and in the roar of traffic around her she divined the imprisoned thunder of the organ pealing for her dead.

She turned her head sharply towards the west.

"What is it?" he asked, in the voice of a man who needs no answer to his question.

She kept her head steadily turned. Through Fifteenth Street the sun poured a red light that deepened as the mist rose from the docks. She heard the river whistles blowing; an electric light broke out through the bay haze.

It was true she was thinking of her husband--thinking of him almost desperately, distressed that already he should have become to her nothing more vital than a memory.

Unconscious of the man beside her, she stood there in the red glow, straining eyes and memory to focus both on a past that receded and seemed to dwindle to a point of utter vacancy.

Then her husband's face grew out of vacancy, so real, so living, that she started--to find herself walking slowly past the fountain with Langham at her side.

After a moment she said: "Now we have walked all around the square. Now I am going to walk home; ... and thank you ... for my walk, ... which was probably as wholesome a performance as I could have indulged in--and quite unconventional enough, even for you."

They faced about and traversed the square, crossed Broadway in silence, pa.s.sed through the kindling shadows of the long cross-street, and turned into Fifth Avenue.

"You are very silent," she said, sorry at once that she had said it, uncertain as to the trend his speech might follow, and withal curious.

"It was only about that dog," he said.

She wondered if it was exactly that, and decided it was not. It was not.

He was thinking of her husband as he had known him--only by sight and by report. He remembered the florid gentleman perfectly; he had often seen him tooling his four; he had seen him at the traps in Monte Carlo, dividing with the best shot in Italy; he had seen him riding to hounds a few days before that fatal run of the Shadowbrook Hunt, where he had taken his last fence. Once, too, he had seen him at the Sagamore Angling Club up state.