A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories Part 46

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 gla.s.ses, 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, st.i.tching 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 gra.s.s 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, pa.s.sing one hand over his eyes. "I feel like rolling on the gra.s.s--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.

Suns.h.i.+ne 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? n.o.body knows. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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? n.o.body knows. Why?

n.o.body 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. Suns.h.i.+ne, 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 suns.h.i.+ne.

"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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.toning 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 b.u.t.toned; 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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!"