"But I can't," she said; ... "and thank you so much for asking me."
For a moment his expression touched her, but she could not permit
expressions of men's faces to arouse her compunction, so she turned her
eyes resolutely ahead towards the spire of the marble church.
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, assent 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 cluster 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.
[Illustration: "'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
mass of wreaths piled in the twilight of an altar--the dreadful pomp and
panoply and circumstance 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,
passed 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.
"When are you going?" he said, suddenly.
"To-morrow."
"I am not to know where?"
"Why should you?" and then, a little quickly: "No, no. It is a
pilgrimage."
"When you return--" he began, but she shook her head.
"No, ... no. I do not know where I may be."
In the April twilight the electric lamps along the avenue snapped
alight. The air rang with the metallic chatter of sparrows.
They mounted the steps of her house; she turned and swept the dim avenue
with a casual glance.
"So you, too, are going north?" she asked, pleasantly.
"Yes--to-night."
She gave him her hand. She felt the pressure of his hand on her gloved
fingers after he had gone, although their hands had scarcely touched at
all.
And so she went into the dimly lighted house, through the drawing-room,
which was quite dark, into the music-room beyond; and there she sat down
upon a chair by the piano--a little gilded chair that revolved as she
pushed herself idly, now to the right, now to the left.
Yes, ... after all, she would go; ... she would make that pilgrimage to
the spot on earth her husband loved best of all--the sweet waters of the
Sagamore, where his beloved club lodge stood, and whither, for a month
every year, he had repaired with some old friends to renew a bachelor's
love for angling.
She had never accompanied him on these trips; she instinctively divined
a man's desire for a ramble among old haunts with old friends, freed for
a brief space from the happy burdens of domesticity.
The lodge on the Sagamore was now her shrine; there she would rest and
think of him, follow his footsteps to his best-loved haunts, wander
along the rivers where he had wandered, dream by the streams where he
had dreamed.
She had married her husband out of awe, sheer awe for his wonderful
personality. And he was wonderful; faultless in everything--though not
so faultless as to be in bad taste, she often told herself. His
_entourage_ also was faultless; and the general faultlessness of
everything had made her married life very perfect.
As she sat thinking in the darkened music-room, something stirred in the
hallway outside. She raised her eyes; the white bull-terrier stood in
the lighted doorway, looking in at her.
A perfectly incomprehensible and resistless rush of loneliness swept her
to her feet; in a moment she was down on the floor again, on her silken
knees, her arms around the dog, her head pressed tightly to his head.
"Oh," she said, choking, "I must go to-morrow--I must--I must.... And
here are the violets; ... I will tie them to your collar.... Hold
still!... He loves you; ... but you shall not have them--do you
hear?... No, no, ... for I shall wear them, ... for I like their odor;
... and, anyway, ... I am going away."...