There was a divine fragrance in the air. Fairfax stopped to gather a few
anemones and handed them to his silent companion.
"Since you have grown so pale in the collar factory, Miss Molly, you
look like these flowers."
He stretched out his, arms, bared his head, flung it up and looked
toward the woodland up the slope and saw the snow-white stones on the
hill, above the box borders and the cedar borders of the burial place:
above, the sky was blue as a bird's wing.
"Let me help you." He put his hand under her arm and walked with her up
the hill. They breathed together; the sweet air with its blossomy scent
touched their lips, and the ancient message of spring spoke to them. He
was on Molly's left side; beneath his arm he could feel her fluttering
heart and his own went fast. At the hill top they paused at the entrance
to a pretentious lot, with high white shafts and imposing columns,
broken by the crude whiteness of a single marble cross. Brightly it
stood out against the air and the dark green of cedar and box.
"This is the most perfect monument," he said aloud, "the most
harmonious; indeed, it is the only relief to the eye."
On every grave were Easter garlands, crosses and wreaths; the air was
heavy with lilac and with lily.
Except for a few monosyllables Molly said nothing, but now, as they
paused side by side, she murmured--
"It's beautiful quiet after the racket of the shops; it's like heaven!"
Fairfax's glance wandered over the acres of monuments, marking the
marble city, and came back to the living girl at his side.
"It's a strange place for two young people to stroll about in, Miss
Molly."
Molly Shannon stood meekly, her work-stained hands clasped loosely
before her and in her form were the beauties of youth, virginity,
chastity, promise of life and fecundity, and, for Fairfax, of passion.
"Ah, I don't know," she answered him slowly, "I think it's lovely and
quiet here. Back in Troy next week when we work overtime and the boss
gets mad, I'll think of it likely, I guess."
He talked to her as they strolled, realizing his need of companionship,
and his pent-up heart poured itself forth as they walked between the
graves, and he told the Irish girl of Bella and little Gardiner, and of
his grief.
"I don't know what I did that day," he finished. "I was a brute to my
aunt and to the little girl. I laid him down on his bed and rushed out
like a crazy man; the house seemed to haunt me. I must have been ill
then. I recall that my aunt called to me and that Bella hung on my arm
and that I shook her off. I recall that my uncle followed me downstairs
and stood by me while I got into my overcoat, but I was too savage and
too miserably proud to answer him. I left him talking to me and the
little girl crying on the stairs."
She asked him timidly, "What had they done to make you hate them so?"
She told herself in her humility that he was a gentleman and not for
her.
He continued, carried away by the fact of a good listener, and, although
she listened, she understood less than Benvenuto Cellini, less, even,
than the children. He came up against so many things that were
impossible to tell her that he stopped at length, laughing.
"You see how a chap runs on when he has a friend by him, Miss Molly. Why
do you go back to the collar factory?"
He stopped short, remembering what Sanders had said, and that Nut Street
had shut its doors against her. They had come down through the cemetery
to the main avenue that stretched, spacious and broad, between the
dwellings of the dead. They sauntered slowly side by side, an
incongruous, appealing couple. He saw her worn shoes, the poor skirt,
the hands discoloured as were his, through toil, and his glance
followed up the line of her form and his artistic sense told him that it
was lovely. Under her coarse bodice the breast gently swelled with her
breath, her eyes were downcast, and there was an appealing charm about
her that a young man in need of love could not gainsay. Pity for her had
been growing long in Fairfax--since the first day he saw her in the
coffee house, since the time when he had decided to go elsewhere for his
meals.
She stopped at the foot of the avenue and said something was beautiful,
and he looked up. The marble figure of an angel on a grey pedestal rose
at the gate, a colossal figure in snowy marble, with folded wings and
one uplifted hand. There was a solemn majesty in the creation, a fine,
noble, holy majesty, and the sculptor halted before it so long, his face
grave and his eyes absorbed, that when Molly sighed, he started. Along
the base ran the words--
"_Why seek ye the living among the dead?_"
"Come," he said brusquely to his companion; "come. This is no place for
us." And he hurried her out of the grounds.
On the way home his silence was not flattering to his companion, who was
too meek to be offended. Already the pleasure of being by his side was
well-nigh too much for her swelling heart to bear. The lengthening
twilight filled Nut Street as they turned into it, and very nearly every
member of the little working colony was out of doors, including the
Sheedys and the new tenants of Sanders' old room. Walking alongside of
Molly Shannon, Fairfax understood what his promenade would mean. He
glanced at his companion and saw her colour, and she raised her head
with a dignity that touched him, and as they passed the Sheedys he said
"Good-evening" in his pleasant Southern voice, lifting his hat as though
they had been of his own kind. He drew the Irish girl's arm within his
own.
For Molly, she walked a gamut of misery, and the sudden realization of
the solemnity of the thing he was doing made the young man's heart beat
heavily.