Meanwhile Charles-Norton was not having such a good time either. Starting
off swaggeringly, he had halted three times on his way to the station,
and three times had taken at least two steps back toward the flat which
he felt desolate behind him. And now in his glass cage, a weight was at
his stomach, a constant weight like an indigestible plum-pudding. At
regular intervals, as he bent over his books, he felt his heart descend
swiftly to the soles of his feet; he paled at the sight of a telegraph
messenger, at the sound of the telephone bell. He had visions of
hospitals--of a white cot to which he was brought, a white cot about
which grave men stood hopelessly, and on the pillow of which spread a
cascade of golden hair. Too imaginative, this Charles-Norton, too
imaginative altogether!
He did not know that after a while Dolly had risen, and a bit wearily,
with heavy sighs, had washed the dishes; that after this she had put the
little flat in order; that during this operation, in spite of her best
efforts, she had felt her woe slowly oozing from her; that the
provisioning tour in the street and stores gay with gossipy, bargaining
young matrons, had almost completed this process; and that a providential
peep in a milliner's window, which had suddenly solved for her the
harassing problem of the spring hat (she had seen one she liked and with
a flash of inspiration had seen how she could make one just like it out
of her old straw and some feathers long at the bottom of her trunk) had
sent her bounding back up her five flights of stairs with a song purring
in her heart.
So that when, returning in the evening, Charles-Norton opened the door
with bated breath, to find Dolly humming happily in the kitchen, he was
struck by something like disappointment. "She's shallow," he thought;
"doesn't feel." He did not mean by this, of course, that he wished she
had in despair done something catastrophic. He meant merely--well, he did
not know what he meant. He was disillusioned, that was all. This was but
a prosy world after all. Few Heroics here!
And immediately a warning knocked at his consciousness. He must be
careful if he were to hold what advantage he had gained in the day. He
turned from the kitchen threshold and silently slunk back into the room
which was both dining and sitting-room, and isolated himself behind the
spread pages of the evening paper. He was curt and cold the entire
evening. And in the morning he again left with calculated
violence--breakfastless and unsheared.
This time, Dolly did not weep. She sat long on the edge of her bed,
thinking silently; then a silver rocket of sound broke the sepulchral
quiet of the flat. Dolly had had a vision of what must inevitably happen;
and Dolly was laughing.
It took just ten days to happen--ten days which were rather disagreeable,
of course, but which Dolly, sure of the trumps in her little hands, bore
with jolly fortitude. All that time, Charles-Norton glowered constantly.
He was monosyllabic and ostentatiously unhappy. This more than was
necessary, and very deliberate. It had to be deliberate; for, as a matter
of fact, on the outside Charles was not having at all a bad time.
The exaltation of the ante-clipping days had returned--returned
heightened, and was still growing day by day. A constant joyous babbling,
as of some inexhaustible spring, lay at the bottom of his soul. His
senses were singularly acute. He thrilled to a leaf, to a bud, to a patch
of blue sky; and the thrill remained long, a profound satisfaction within
him, after the stimulant had gone. With the resolution of a roue plunging
back into his vice after an enforced vacation, he had brought a large
sketch book; and he passed much time drawing lines into it--rapid beauty
streaks that gave him a sensation of birds. He saw often, now, a land
which was as a pool of gold beneath a turquoise sky; and a boy in the
wild oats watching a circling hawk. At such times his lungs filled deep
with the spring, and his arms were apt to beat at his sides in rapid
tattoo. This, in fact made up solely his morning exercises now. Standing
with legs close together, a-tip-toe, head back and chest forward, placing
his hands beneath his shoulders he waved his arms up and down in a beat
that rose in fervid crescendo, till his eyes closed and there went
through him a soaring ecstasy that threatened at times to lift him from
the floor.
All this, of course, was not without its disadvantage. Vaguely he felt
that in some subtle way he was gaining the disapproval of his fellows.
Men were apt to look at him askance, half doubtful, half-indignant. They
tread on his toes in the Elevated. His work, too, was going to pot; he
could not stick to his figures. His chief, an old fragile-necked
book-keeper, had spoken to him once.
"Mr. Sims," he had said, after a preliminary little cough; "Mr. Sims, you
ought to take care of your health. You are not well."
"Oh, yes I am," answered Charles-Norton, absent-mindedly. His eyes were
on the ceiling, where a fly was buzzing. "I'm all right!"
"You should--er--you should consult--a specialist, Mr. Sims. Don't you
know--your shoulders, your back--you should consult a spine-specialist,
Mr. Sims."
"Oh, that's all right," said Charles-Norton, easily. "Don't worry." And
thus he had sent back the old gentleman baffled to his high stool.
And then came Dolly's day.
"Dolly! Dolly! Dolly!"
It was morning, before breakfast. Charles-Norton was in the bedroom;
Dolly was setting the table in the living-room. She paused, and stood
very still, while a little knowing smile parted her lips.
"Dolly! Dolly! Dolly!" Again came the call, unmistakable, music to
Dolly's ear. She tip-toed to the door. From within sounded a threshing
noise, as of a whale caught in shallows. "Yes. What is it?" she called
back melodiously, mastering her desire to rush in.
"Come here, Dolly," said the male voice. "Come here."
"I'm coming," said Dolly, and went in with a slightly bored expression.
"Help me, Dolly," said the perspiring and be-ruffled gentleman within. "I
can't--can't--get my coat on."
"Why, Goosie; of course I'll help you."
But the help, although almost sincere, was powerless. The coat would not
go on. The sleeves rose to the elbows smoothly, half way to the
shoulders with more effort--but here they stuck, refusing to slide over
the top of the shoulders. On each side of the spine, almost cracking the
shirt, a protuberance bulged which the coat could not leap.
He stood there puffing, his hair mussed up, his eyes wrathful. "Well," he
growled at length; "why don't you go get your scissors."
"Shall I?" she said doubtfully--and at the same time bounced out like a
little rabbit. "Take off your shirt, Goosie," she said, returning with
the gleaming instruments, now symbolical of her superior common-sense.
She aided him. She took off his collar and tie, unfastened the buttons,
and then she was tugging at the shirt. It slid down, uncovering the
shoulders. There was a dry, crackling sound, as of a fan stretched
open--and Dolly sat down on the floor. "Oh-oh-oh," she cried,
"Go-oo-oo-ssie-ie!"
He stood there, looking out of the corner of his eye at his reflection in
the mirror, red-faced and very much abashed. For with the slipping of the
shirt, on his shoulders there had sprung, with the movement of a
released jack-in-the-box, two vibrant white things.
Two gleaming, lustrous, white things that were----
"They're wings," said Dolly, still on the floor. "_They are wings_," she
repeated, in the tone of one saying, _He is dead_. "Now, Goosie, you
_have_ done it!"
But a change had come in Charles-Norton. The blush had left his brow, the
foolish expression his face; he was pivoting before the mirror like a
woman with a new bonnet.
"I _like_ them," he said.
And then, "Just look at them, Dolly. Just look at the curve of them.
Isn't it a beautiful curve! And the whiteness of them, Dolly--like a
baby's soul. And how downy--soft like you, Dolly. Look at them gleam.
And they move, Dolly, they move! Dolly, oh, look!"
The wings were gently breathing; their slender tips struck his waist at
each oscillation. The movement quickened, became a beat, a rapid
palpitation. A soft whirring sound filled the room; the newspaper on the
bed, dislodged, eddied to the floor; the wings were a mere white blur.
Suddenly Charles-Norton's feet left the floor, and he rose slowly into
the air. "Look, look, Dolly," he cried, as he went up, hovering above
her up-tilted nose and her wide eyes, as she sat there, paralyzed, upon
the ground; "Dolly, look!"
The humming sound took a higher note; a picture crashed down; the room
was a small cyclone. "Dolly, watch me; look!"
And with a sudden leap, Charles-Norton slanted up toward the ceiling and
lit, seated, on the edge of the shelf that went along the four walls.
"Look," he said with triumph, balancing smilingly on his perch.
But immediately his expression changed to one of concern, and he sprang
down quickly and quietly. Dolly was now stretched full-length along the
carpet; her face was in her arms. He turned it to the light. Her eyes
were closed.
Dolly had fainted.