Tennant entered his studio and closed the door. In the mellow light the
smile faded from his face. Perhaps he was thinking of the unsuccessful,
from whose crowded ranks he had risen--comrades preordained to
mediocrity, foredoomed to failure--industrious, hopeful, brave young
fellows, who must live their lives to learn the most terrible of all
lessons--that bravery alone wins no battles.
"What luck I have had!" he said, aloud, to himself, walking over to the
table and seating himself before the drawing. For an hour he studied it;
touched it here and there, caressing outlines, swinging masses into
vigorous composition with a touch of point or a sweeping erasure.
Strength, knowledge, command were his; he knew it, and he knew the
pleasure of it.
Having finished the drawing, he unpinned the pencil studies, replacing
each by its detail in color--charming studies executed with sober
precision, yet sparkling with a gayety that no reticence and self-denial
could dim. He dusted the drawing, tacked on tracing-paper, and began to
transfer, whistling softly as he bent above his work.
Sunlight fell across the corner of the table, glittering among glasses,
saucers of porcelain, crystal bowls in which brushes dipped in brilliant
colors had been rinsed. To escape the sun he rolled the table back a
little way, then continued, using the ivory-pointed tracing-stylus. He
worked neither rapidly nor slowly; there was a leisurely precision in
his progress; pencil, brush, tracer, eraser, did their errands surely,
steadily. Yet already he had the reputation of being the most rapid
worker in his craft.
During intervals when he leaned back to stretch his muscles and light a
cigarette his eyes wandered towards a window just across the court,
where sometimes a girl sat. She was there now, rocking in a dingy
rocking-chair, stitching away by her open window. Once or twice she
turned her head and glanced across at him. After an interval he laid his
cigarette on the edge of a saucer and resumed his work. In the golden
gloom of the studio the stillness was absolute, save for the delicate
stir of a curtain rustling at his open window. A breeze moved the hair
on his temples; his eyes wandered towards the window across the court.
The window was so close that they could have conversed together had they
known each other.
In the court new grass was growing; grimy shrubbery had freshened into
green; a tree was already in full leaf. Here and there cats sprawled on
sun-warmed roofs, sparrows chirked under eaves from whence wisps of
litter trailed, betraying hidden nests.
Below his window, hanging in heavy twists, a wistaria twined, its long
bunches of lilac-tinted blossoms alive with bees.
His eyes followed the flight of a shabby sparrow. "If I were a bird," he
said, aloud, "I'd not be idiot enough to live in a New York back yard."
And he resumed his work, whistling.
But the languor of spring was in his veins, and he bent forward again,
sniffing the mild air. The witchery of spring had also drawn his
neighbor to her window, where she leaned on the sill, cheeks in her
hands, listlessly watching the flight of the sparrows.
The little creatures were nest-building; from moment to moment a bird
fluttered up towards the eaves, bearing with it a bit of straw, a
feather sometimes, sometimes a twisted end of string.
"It's spring-fever," he yawned, passing one hand over his eyes. "I feel
like rolling on the grass--there's a puppy in that yard doing it now--"
He washed a badger brush and dried it. Perfume from the wistaria filled
his throat and lungs; his very breath, exhaling, seemed sweetened with
the scent.
"There's that girl across the way," he said, aloud, as though making the
discovery for the first time.
Sunshine now lay in dazzling white patches across his drawing. He
blinked, washed another brush, and leaned back in his chair again,
looking across at his neighbor. Youth is in itself attractive; and she
was young--a white-skinned, dark-eyed girl, a trifle colorless, perhaps,
like a healthy plant needing the sun.
"They grow like that in this town," he reflected, drumming idly on the
table with his pencil. "Who is she? I've seen her there for months, and
I don't know."
The girl raised her dark eyes and gave him a serene stare.
"Oh yes," he muttered, "I see your eyes, but they tell me nothing about
you. You're all alike when you look at us out of the windows called
eyes. What's behind those eyes? Nobody knows. Nobody knows."
He dropped his hand on the table and began tracing arabesques with his
pencil-point. Then his capricious fancy blossomed into a sketch of his
neighbor--a rapid idealization, which first amused, then enthralled him.
And while his pencil flew he murmured lazily to himself: "You don't know
what I'm doing, do you? I wonder what you'd do if you did know?... Thank
you, ma belle, for sitting so still. Won't you smile a little? No?...
Who are you? What are you?--with your dimpled white hands framing your
face.... I had no idea you were half so lovely! ... or is it my fancy
and my pencil which endow you with qualities that you do not possess?...
There! you moved. Don't let it occur again."...
He passed a soft eraser over the sketch, dimming its outline; picked out
a brush and began in color, rambling on in easy, listless
self-communion: "I've asked you who you are and you haven't told me. Pas
chic, ca. There are thousands and thousands of dark-eyed little things
like you in this city. Did you ever see the streets when the shops
close? There are thousands and thousands like you in the throng;--some
poor, some poorer; some good, some better; some young, some younger; all
trotting across the world on eager feet. Where? Nobody knows. Why?
Nobody knows. Heigh-ho! Your portrait is done, little neighbor."
He hovered over the delicate sketch, silent a moment, under the spell of
his own work. "If you were like this, a man might fall in love with
you," he muttered, raising his eyes.
The development of ideas is always remarkable, particularly on a sunny
day in spring-time. Sunshine, blue sky, and the perfume of the wistaria
were too much for Tennant.
"I'm going out!" he said, abruptly, and put on his hat. Then he drew on
his gloves, lighted a cigarette, and glanced across at his neighbor.
"I wish you were going, too," he said.
His neighbor had risen and was now standing by her window, hands clasped
behind her, gazing dreamily out into the sunshine.
"Upon my word," said Tennant, "you are really as pretty as my sketch!
Now isn't that curious? I had no idea--"
A rich tint crept into his neighbor's face, staining the white skin with
carmine.
"The sun is doing you good," he said, approvingly. "You ought to put on
your hat and go out."
She turned, as though she had heard his words, and picked up a big,
black straw hat, placing it daintily upon her head.
"Well!--if--that--isn't--curious!" said Tennant, astonished, as she
swung nonchalantly towards an invisible mirror and passed a long,
gilded pin through the crown of her hat.
"It seems that I only have to suggest a thing--" He hesitated, watching
her.
"Of course it was coincidence," he said; "but--suppose it wasn't?
Suppose it was telepathy--thought transmitted?"
His neighbor was buttoning her gloves.
"I'm a beast to stand here staring," he murmured, as she moved leisurely
towards her window, apparently unconscious of him. "It's a shame," he
added, "that we don't know each other! I'm going to the Park; I wish you
were--I want you to go--because it would do you good! You must go!"
Her left glove was now buttoned; the right gave her some difficulty,
which she started to overcome with a hair-pin.
"If mental persuasion can do it, you and I are going to meet under the
wistaria arbor in the Park," he said, with emphasis.
To concentrate his thoughts he stood rigid, thinking as hard as a young
man can think with a distractingly pretty girl fastening her glove
opposite; and the effort produced a deep crease between his eyebrows.
"You--are--going--to--the--wistaria--arbor--in--the Park!" he repeated,
solemnly.
She turned as though she had heard, and looked straight at him. Her face
was bright with color; never had he seen such fresh beauty in a human
face.
Her eyes wandered from him upward to the serene blue sky; then she
stepped back, glanced into the mirror, touched her hair with the tips of
her gloved fingers, and walked away, disappearing into the gloom of the
room.
An astonishing sense of loneliness came over him--a perfectly
unreasonable feeling, because every day for months he had seen her
disappear from the window, always viewing the phenomenon with
disinterested equanimity.
"Now I don't for a moment suppose she's going to the wistaria arbor," he
said, mournfully, walking towards his door.
But all the way down in the elevator and out on the street he was
comforting himself with stories of strange coincidences; of how,
sometimes, walking alone and thinking of a person he had not seen or
thought of for years, raising his eyes he had met that person face to
face. And a presentiment that he should meet his neighbor under the
wistaria arbor grew stronger and stronger, until, as he turned into the
broad, southeastern entrance to the Park, his heart began beating an
uneasy, expectant tattoo under his starched white waist-coat.
"I've been smoking too many cigarettes," he muttered. "Things like that
don't happen. It would be too silly--"
And it was rather silly; but she was there. He saw her the moment he
entered the wistaria arbor, seated in a rustic recess. It may be that
she was reading the book she held so unsteadily in her small, gloved
fingers, but the book was upside down. And when his footstep echoed on
the asphalt, she raised a pair of thoroughly frightened eyes.
[Illustration: "HE SAW HER THE MOMENT HE ENTERED THE WISTARIA ARBOR"]
His expression verged on the idiotic; they were a scared pair, and it
was only when the bright flush of guilt flooded her face that he
recovered his senses in a measure and took off his hat.
"I--I hadn't the slightest notion that you would come," he stammered.
"This is the--the most amazing example of telepathy I ever heard of!"
"Telepathy?" she repeated, faintly.
"Telepathy! Thought persuasion! It's incredible! It's--it's a--it was a
dreadful thing to do. I don't know what to say."
"Is it necessary for you to say anything to--me?"
"Can you ever pardon me?"
"I don't think I understand," she said, slowly. "Are you asking pardon
for your rudeness in speaking to me?"
"No," he almost groaned; "I'll do that later. There is something much
worse--"
Her cool self-possession unnerved him. Composure is sometimes the
culmination of fright; but he did not know that, because he did not know
the subtler sex. His fluency left him; all he could repeat was, "I'm
sorry I'm speaking to you--but there's something much worse."
"I cannot imagine anything worse," she said.
"Won't you grant me a moment to explain?" he urged.
"How can I?" she replied, calmly. "How can a woman permit a man to speak
without shadow of excuse? You know perfectly well what convention
requires."
Hot, uncomfortable, he looked at her so appealingly that her eyes
softened a little.
"I don't suppose you mean to be impertinent to me," she said, coldly.
He said that he didn't with so much fervor that something perilously
close to a smile touched her lips. He told her who he was, and the
information appeared to surprise her, so it is safe to assume she knew
it already. He pleaded in extenuation that they had been neighbors for a
year; but she had not, apparently, been aware of this either; and the
snub completed his discomfiture.
"I--I was so anxious to know you," he said, miserably. "That was the
beginning--"
"It is a perfectly horrid thing to say," she said, indignantly. "Do you
suppose, because you are a public character, you are privileged to speak
to anybody?"
He attempted to say he didn't, but she went on: "Of course that is not a
palliation of your offence. It is a dreadful condition of affairs if a
woman cannot go out alone--"
"Please don't say that!" he cried.
"I must. It is a terrible comment on modern social conditions," she
repeated, shaking her pretty head. "A woman who permits it--especially a
woman who is obliged to support herself--for if I were not poor I should
be driving here in my brougham, and you know it!--oh, it is a hideously
common thing for a girl to do!" Opening her book, she appeared to be
deeply interested in it. But the book was upside down.
Glancing at him a moment later, she was apparently surprised to find him
still standing beside her. However, he had noted two things in that
moment of respite: she held the book upside down, and on the title-page
was written a signature that he knew--"Marlitt."
"Under the circumstances," she said, coldly, "do you think it decent to
continue this conversation?"
"Yes, I do," he said. "I'm a decent sort of fellow, or you would have
divined the contrary long ago; and there is a humiliating explanation
that I owe you."
"You owe me every explanation," she said, "but I am generous enough to
spare you the humiliation."
"I know what you mean," he admitted. "I hypnotized you into coming here,
and you are aware of it."
Pink to the ears with resentment and confusion, she sat up very straight
and stared at him. From a pretty girl defiant, she became an angry
beauty. And he quailed.
"Did you imagine that you hypnotized me?" she asked, incredulously.
"What was it, then?" he muttered. "You did everything I wished for--"
"What did you wish for?"
"I--I thought you needed the sun, and as soon as I said that you ought
to go out, you--you put on that big, black hat. And then I wished I knew
you--I wished you would come here to the wistaria arbor, and--you came."
"In other words," she said, disdainfully, "you deliberately planned to
control my mind and induce me to meet you in a clandestine and horrid
manner."
"I never looked at it in that way. I only knew I admired you a lot,
and--and you were tremendously charming--more so than my sketch--"
"_What_ sketch?"
"I--you see, I made a little sketch," he admitted--"a little picture of
you--"
Her silence scared him.
"Do you mind?" he ventured.
"Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!" she said.
"Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway--"
"That," she observed, "would have been the very height of impertinence."
Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the most
exquisite profile he had ever dreamed of.
She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despised
himself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared to
him in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "there's nothing criminal in me. I never
imagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I'll
go. There's no use in hoping for pardon. I'll go."
Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, "I am
offended--deeply hurt--but--"
He waited anxiously.
"But I am sorry to say that I am not as deeply offended as I ought to
be."
"That is very, very kind of you," he said, warmly.
"It is very depraved of me," she retorted, turning a page.