He went.
The city burned indeed. But as he traversed it--slowly to preserve his
neatness--he knew that he was proof against such fire. As he approached
the hotel, his thoughts veered altogether backward. His thoughts were a
feeble countercurrent to the great part of him that propelled so swiftly
forward as to encumber his feet and place a straining awkwardness upon
his effort to go slowly. Thought of what lay before him was altogether
wanting. He was thinking of what he had said to his mother. He had lied
to her. All of his life he could recall no lie to teach him how to utter
this one. Yet he had lied glibly--and with success. He was almost proud
of this--that little part of him which could pay heed, at such a moment,
to any past. He had spoken of a college friend in town for a few
days--one his mother knew nothing of.
“You will be back to-night?” she had said.
And then, strangely, so callous did this one falsehood seem to have made
him, that he had answered: “I can’t be sure. Better not expect me.”
Why this gratuitous blow to his mother’s faith? He knew he would be
back. What could keep him in New York? Surely, not a summer “show”? Only
his desire to fend off his mother, a perverse consequence of lying to
her, could explain his answer. Well: that was settled. A falsehood did
not wait long ere it sowed its poison seed.
But now, he found his heart beating hard and painfully against his
throat. It knew, before his eyes, that the hotel was there!
A dark, cool lobby, after the street’s glare--a monster with many eyes,
that he must pass. It was filled with moving, mumbling creatures--each
one an eye. And an eye upon a pivot that touched him and soiled him and
then brushed on. It seemed to stir nervously at his intrusion, to demand
his secret as indemnity for its disturbance. It was cynical and real. It
must be warded off without a contact. For a contact would leave him
spotted. An elevator hurled him up, from its vaporous presence.
The hall, also, lived. The soft carpet held back his feet perversely.
The dark doors set in the bright grey walls marked a mocking rhythm to
his interminable progress. Each turn in the passage was a mute thrust
against his carefully reckoned gait. The silence of two chambermaids who
had been chatting was a badge on him, and the thud of his feet also was
a comment. Then, the door opened before he had to knock.
She did not smile--any more than had the vision. Such visions are
serious. So was she, now, in reality. Her hand meant nothing. She took
this hat. And her voice caressed him with all the firmness and mastery
of her hand, that last evening of the kiss.
“You were kind to come. Take your coat off. Look--I have a cool drink
ready for you. You like orange, don’t you?”
He sat at a little table, near the window, and sipped the beverage.
Opposite, was she. Heavy blinds warded away the heat and the sharp
clamor of the city. The room was cool and shaded. Julia sat watching
him. She wore a housegown of pongee--the color of parched violets. Her
hair stood in coils over her ears.
“I am not warm,” she said. “I have stayed in, during the heat.”
His eyes had questioned if she, too, was thirsty.
“It is deliciously comfortable here.”
Her head tossingly measured the room. Quincy did not see it. But he felt
its cool, fresh walls and the white wood and the cane furniture. It was
a sitting room. Two heavy doors in a dark varnish gave accent to its
breezy tidiness.
She chatted gaily. Allusions to his abstention from her while he was
still at college shafted to him and inflamed him. But she laughed at his
excuses.
“I am not exacting,” she declared.
And then, once more, she was serious. It had been so long, she was not
sure now, that she still knew him. What, all this time, had happened to
him? His answers showed his discomfort. Julia arose and stood over him.
“What is wrong?” she said. Her hand went to his brow. “Why is that
ruffled?” And then, with the other hand beneath his chin, she turned his
head upward.
A veil went over Quincy’s eyes.
“Is it my turn,” she spoke softly, “to be kind to you?”
And in reply, he wrenched his head from her grasp and bent it so low
that she could not see his face. He felt her hands lifting his
shoulders. And in this way, he came to his feet.
“Big boy, why do you hang your head?”
He raised it. In a flash, she lay in his arms. But he did not touch her.
“I want you,” he cried and then was silent.
Julia stepped away from him. A joy was in her face that he could not
mistake.
And then, she took his hand. And she seated herself. And somehow, Quincy
was at her feet with his head upon her lap. This seemed exquisitely
right. Yet, though he thrilled with joy and the near warmth of her body
intoxicated him, he sobbed. She held his head and his shoulders as if he
needed sustenance until this ecstasy of relief was over. And so he
remained, until his eyes were dry and his heart spoke dear within him,
like a bell.
* * * * *
She held him until the morrow. She nursed him and cherished him as if he
had been sick. She hid him while the unknowing waiter brought food into
the sitting-room. And then, laughing with her joke, she shut out the
world once more, which had been permitted to intrude with the staid
dress and visage of the lackey, and served him herself.
Avid for sleep, the big boy slumbered in her arms all of the night--a
sleep broken with jewel-like gleams of consciousness wherein, waking
from dreamless rest to a dream-like reality, he could clasp his fantasy
and breathe her breath and feel the murmurous rhythm of her body against
his and, twining his fingers through her vagrant hair, slumber afresh.
When she let him go, she took his hand and held it under her heart.
“Will your mother have worried at your absence?” She felt the worry, as
if she had been the mother she had never met.
“Why, no!” he cried. “That’s funny. I told her I should not be back!”
But there was no need of fearing lest Julia misunderstand. For a brief
moment, perhaps, the doubt pricked her about the boy’s sincerity. And
then, she saw. Women understand these mystic intuitions, for women reap
the harvest of them. She was elated at the chance impulse that made
Quincy warn his mother, lest her worrying bring a flaw to their true
holiday.
And then, she sent him back.