A PANTOMIME.
It chanced one evening about this time--the vernal equinox had just
passed--that from some small cause Richling, who was generally detained
at the desk until a late hour, was home early. The air was soft and
warm, and he stood out a little beyond his small front door-step,
lifting his head to inhale the universal fragrance, and looking in
every moment, through the unlighted front room, toward a part of the
diminutive house where a mild rattle of domestic movements could be
heard, and whence he had, a little before, been adroitly requested to
absent himself. He moved restlessly on his feet, blowing a soft tune.
Presently he placed a foot on the step and a hand on the door-post, and
gave a low, urgent call.
A distant response indicated that his term of suspense was nearly over.
He turned about again once or twice, and a moment later Mary appeared in
the door, came down upon the sidewalk, looked up into the moonlit sky
and down the empty, silent street, then turned and sat down, throwing
her wrists across each other in her lap, and lifting her eyes to her
husband's with a smile that confessed her fatigue.
The moon was regal. It cast its deep contrasts of clear-cut light and
shadow among the thin, wooden, unarchitectural forms and weed-grown
vacancies of the half-settled neighborhood, investing the matter-of-fact
with mystery, and giving an unexpected charm to the unpicturesque. It
was--as Richling said, taking his place beside his wife--midspring in
March. As he spoke he noticed she had brought with her the odor of
flowers. They were pinned at her throat.
"Where did you get them?" he asked, touching them with his fingers.
Her face lighted up.
"Guess."
How could he guess? As far as he knew neither she nor he had made an
acquaintance in the neighborhood. He shook his head, and she replied:--
"The butcher."
"You're a queer girl," he said, when they had laughed.
"Why?"
"You let these common people take to you so."
She smiled, with a faint air of concern.
"You don't dislike it, do you?" she asked.
"Oh, no," he said, indifferently, and spoke of other things.
And thus they sat, like so many thousands and thousands of young pairs
in this wide, free America, offering the least possible interest to
the great human army round about them, but sharing, or believing they
shared, in the fruitful possibilities of this land of limitless bounty,
fondling their hopes and recounting the petty minutiae of their daily
experiences. Their converse was mainly in the form of questions from
Mary and answers from John.
"And did he say that he would?" etc. "And didn't you insist that he
should?" etc. "I don't understand how he could require you to," etc.,
etc. Looking at everything from John's side, as if there never could be
any other, until at last John himself laughed softly when she asked why
he couldn't take part of some outdoor man's work, and give him part of
his own desk-work in exchange, and why he couldn't say plainly that his
work was too sedentary.
Then she proposed a walk in the moonlight, and insisted she was not
tired; she wanted it on her own account. And so, when Richling had gone
into the house and returned with some white worsted gauze for her head
and neck and locked the door, they were ready to start.
They were tarrying a moment to arrange this wrapping when they found it
necessary to move aside from where they stood in order to let two
persons pass on the sidewalk.
These were a man and woman, who had at least reached middle age. The
woman wore a neatly fitting calico gown; the man, a short pilot-coat.
His pantaloons were very tight and pale. A new soft hat was pushed
forward from the left rear corner of his closely cropped head, with
the front of the brim turned down over his right eye. At each step he
settled down with a little jerk alternately on this hip and that, at the
same time faintly dropping the corresponding shoulder. They passed. John
and Mary looked at each other with a nod of mirthful approval. Why?
Because the strangers walked silently hand-in-hand.
It was a magical night. Even the part of town where they were, so devoid
of character by day, had become all at once romantic with phantasmal
lights and glooms, echoes and silences. Along the edge of a wide
chimney-top on one blank, new hulk of a house, that nothing else could
have made poetical, a mocking-bird hopped and ran back and forth,
singing as if he must sing or die. The mere names of the streets they
traversed suddenly became sweet food for the fancy. Down at the first
corner below they turned into one that had been an old country road,
and was still named Felicity.
Richling called attention to the word painted on a board. He merely
pointed to it in playful silence, and then let his hand sink and rest
on hers as it lay in his elbow. They were walking under the low boughs
of a line of fig-trees that overhung a high garden wall. Then some gay
thought took him; but when his downward glance met the eyes uplifted to
meet his they were grave, and there came an instantaneous tenderness
into the exchange of looks that would have been worse than uninteresting
to you or me. But the next moment she brightened up, pressed herself
close to him, and caught step. They had not owned each other long enough
to have settled into sedate possession, though they sometimes thought
they had done so. There was still a tingling ecstasy in one another's
touch and glance that prevented them from quite behaving themselves when
under the moon.
For instance, now, they began, though in cautious undertone, to sing.
Some person approached them, and they hushed. When the stranger had
passed, Mary began again another song, alone:--
"Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?"
"Hush!" said John, softly.
She looked up with an air of mirthful inquiry, and he added:--
"That was the name of Dr. Sevier's wife."
"But he doesn't hear me singing."
"No; but it seems as if he did."
And they sang no more.
They entered a broad, open avenue, with a treeless, grassy way in the
middle, up which came a very large and lumbering street-car, with
smokers' benches on the roof, and drawn by tandem horses.
"Here we turn down," said Richling, "into the way of the Naiads." (That
was the street's name.) "They're not trying to get me away."
He looked down playfully. She was clinging to him with more energy than
she knew.
"I'd better hold you tight," she answered. Both laughed. The nonsense of
those we love is better than the finest wit on earth. They walked on in
their bliss. Shall we follow? Fie!
They passed down across three or four of a group of parallel streets
named for the nine muses. At Thalia they took the left, went one square,
and turned up by another street toward home.
Their conversation had flagged. Silence was enough. The great earth was
beneath their feet, firm and solid; the illimitable distances of the
heavens stretched above their heads and before their eyes. Here was Mary
at John's side, and John at hers; John her property and she his, and
time flowing softly, shiningly on. Yea, even more. If one might believe
the names of the streets, there were Naiads on the left and Dryads on
the right; a little farther on, Hercules; yonder corner the dark
trysting-place of Bacchus and Melpomene; and here, just in advance,
the corner where Terpsichore crossed the path of Apollo.
They came now along a high, open fence that ran the entire length
of a square. Above it a dense rank of bitter orange-trees overhung the
sidewalk, their dark mass of foliage glittering in the moonlight. Within
lay a deep, old-fashioned garden. Its white shell-walks gleamed in many
directions. A sweet breath came from its parterres of mingled hyacinths
and jonquils that hid themselves every moment in black shadows of
lagustrums and laurestines. Here, in severe order, a pair of palms, prim
as mediaeval queens, stood over against each other; and in the midst of
the garden, rising high against the sky, appeared the pillared veranda
and immense, four-sided roof of an old French colonial villa, as it
stands unchanged to-day.
The two loiterers slackened their pace to admire the scene. There was
much light shining from the house. Mary could hear voices, and, in a
moment, words. The host was speeding his parting guests.
"The omnibus will put you out only one block from the hotel," some one
said.
* * *
Dr. Sevier, returning home from a visit to a friend in Polymnia street,
had scarcely got well seated in the omnibus before he witnessed from its
window a singular dumb show. He had handed his money up to the driver as
they crossed Euterpe street, had received the change and deposited his
fare as they passed Terpsichore, and was just sitting down when the only
other passenger in the vehicle said, half-rising:--
"Hello! there's going to be a shooting scrape!"
A rather elderly man and woman on the sidewalk, both of them extremely
well dressed, and seemingly on the eve of hailing the omnibus, suddenly
transferred their attention to a younger couple a few steps from them,
who appeared to have met them entirely by accident. The elderly lady
threw out her arms toward the younger man with an expression on her face
of intensest mental suffering. She seemed to cry out; but the deafening
rattle of the omnibus, as it approached them, intercepted the sound.
All four of the persons seemed, in various ways, to experience the most
violent feelings. The young man more than once moved as if about to
start forward, yet did not advance; his companion, a small, very shapely
woman, clung to him excitedly and pleadingly. The older man shook a
stout cane at the younger, talking furiously as he did so. He held the
elderly lady to him with his arm thrown about her, while she now cast
her hands upward, now covered her face with them, now wrung them,
clasped them, or extended one of them in seeming accusation against the
younger person of her own sex. In a moment the omnibus was opposite the
group. The Doctor laid his hand on his fellow-passenger's arm.
"Don't get out. There will be no shooting."
The young man on the sidewalk suddenly started forward, with his
companion still on his farther arm, and with his eyes steadily fixed on
those of the elder and taller man, a clenched fist lifted defensively,
and with a tense, defiant air walked hurriedly and silently by within
easy sweep of the uplifted staff. At the moment when the slight distance
between the two men began to increase, the cane rose higher, but stopped
short in its descent and pointed after the receding figure.
"I command you to leave this town, sir!"
Dr. Sevier looked. He looked with all his might, drawing his knee under
him on the cushion and leaning out. The young man had passed. He still
moved on, turning back as he went a face full of the fear that men show
when they are afraid of their own violence; and, as the omnibus
clattered away, he crossed the street at the upper corner and
disappeared in the shadows.
"That's a very strange thing," said the other passenger to Dr. Sevier,
as they resumed the corner seats by the door.
"It certainly is!" replied the Doctor, and averted his face. For when
the group and he were nearest together and the moon shone brightly
upon the four, he saw, beyond all question, that the older man was his
visitor of a few evenings before and that the younger pair were John and
Mary Richling.