“Now for another Luxembourg Garden,” said Hamilton as they left the
Claridge.
“It’s not exactly the same thing, but perhaps Central Park might do,”
suggested Dorothy. “I go there once in a while, when I wish to escape
from--from myself. We might go there for a while. As long as you get me
back by five.”
They boarded a Fifth Avenue bus and dismounted at Fifty-ninth Street.
Spring had scarce come and only the first buds and the boldest
blades of grass appeared, but it was warm in the sunshine. Overhead
innumerable birds proclaimed their faith in the coming of another
summer. And the women on horseback along the bridle-paths or afoot wore
bright, spring clothes. Hamilton’s thoughts flew back to Georgia. There
the trees must be thick with foliage, green leaves and sweet-scented
magnolia blossoms, and roses must be in bloom.
How long they walked together Hamilton did not know. Nor did he know of
what they spoke. In fact he said little, leaving the burden of their
conversation to Dorothy. His mind was flying back and forth between the
present and the future. He was sensing the passing moments, perhaps his
last with the woman who walked at his side, with such eagerness that he
somehow missed their details. It was as though he were saying: “This
moment, this position of her head, this touch of the sunlight upon her
face, all these are precious and will not return.” And in the meantime
the moment had melted into another and he had lost the thread of their
common talk.
Dorothy’s mind was everywhere--the war, its effect on art, on
literature, on morals, on conceptions of democracy. The thread of their
conversation was being broken and picked up.
They had seated themselves on a bench when Hamilton suddenly became
aware of the lateness of the hour. In a few minutes they would be
riding home and there were so many things to tell her. It seemed to him
that she, too, was waiting for something, something that had sprung up
between them and to which he must give voice.
“You know,” he said at length, “I’m engaged.”
It was not what he had wished to say, and the knowledge that he had
said it for a single moment appalled him. He was glad in a way and
proud that he had told her. In another way he feared that he had been
presumptuous. Was that a tremor of her lip, or simply the play of
light and shadow? Or was it his imagination? No, her eyes were still
sparkling, happy. He was right. They were only friends. They could
be nothing else. And, though their friendship was fated for nothing
deeper; still it was right that he had told her. He had done the right
thing. It was not a conflicting love, but the faint possibility of
disloyalty even in thought to the woman whom he had already chosen,
that he had shut out.
“No, I didn’t know, exactly,” she smiled. “For a time I thought--I
suppose it is the faithful little Southern girl you left behind you,
the one whose letters I used to bring you.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, yes, once when you were delirious you even paid me the compliment
of saying that I looked like her.”
For a fleeting instant Hamilton had an impression that Dorothy was
laughing at him--trying to laugh or trying not to laugh, he could not
tell which.
“I did say that--and I do. It was not delirium.”
She rose and Hamilton knew that his afternoon had come to an end.
“No, don’t take me home. Just see me to the bus line. I’d rather leave
you that way,” she was smiling.
“This afternoon,” he said, “I shall always remember. It’s been--” from
somewhere a phrase popped into his head--“‘a sheaf of golden moments.’”
Dorothy darted a quick look of surprise.
“‘With here and there,’” she continued, “‘a scarlet memory.’”
Hamilton suddenly remembered where he had heard that phrase. The memory
gave him a queer shock. It seemed as though he had suddenly intruded
upon something. And yet, she had said that McCall had not called on her
before returning home.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked. “I picked it up somewhere in
Paris, in the hospital.”
“I don’t remember,” he replied.
They had reached the street and a bus was approaching. Dorothy held out
her hand.
“We shall always be friends, I hope.” Were her eyes a bit wistful?
“Yes, friends.”
She was climbing into the bus, her face flushed, little ends of brown
hair blowing free from under her turban. Hamilton remembered their last
leave-taking in the Luxembourg gardens. Through the window he caught a
glimpse of her walking forward to a seat, smiling as he had seen her
smiling in the hospital, when caring for the wounded.
He wondered if there were tears on her lashes.