The Empty Sack Part 59

"It's day!"

They were both on their feet.

"Yes, Jennie; it's day-again. Let's go out."

They went as they were, bareheaded like children, into the purity of morning. Pansy, disturbed by the many strange auras in the house, scampered ahead of them, relieved by the escape. The street was still asleep, empty, clean, with every lawn patch and garden bed drenched with dew. Only the birds and the flowers were waking to the light.

Turning toward the cliffs and the river, their talk became more practical. Bob suggested to Jennie what his father had suggested to him.

Mr. Huntley was going to Europe in connection with some new European loan. The proposal was that Bob should go with him. The trip might last six months.

"And if I go," he added, "we both go. We should have a few weeks to settle things finally here-"

"Oh, but, Bob-how could I go and-and leave the two girls? They need me more than ever now. I'm not only their sister, but their mother."

"Why shouldn't they come with us? I'd love having them. Six months over there would make a break with what they've been through here; and when we come back, Edith has things she's going to suggest-"

"That would be heavenly, Bob; but-but the money?"

"The money's all right. In my new job at the bank I've a bigger salary-five thousand; and now that dad's giving Edith ten thousand a year as allowance, he's giving me the same. That's a pretty good income to begin with, besides which, dad-you'll have to know dad, Jennie-he doesn't want me to spare any money while we're-we're pa.s.sing through this-this crisis."

"And your mother's lovely. I know _that_."

"Yes; mother's splendid, too. So's Edith. You'll find that they all want-want to make up to you-and to the girls-for-"

But he didn't say for what because they came to where they saw above the cloud-wrapt city the glory of chrysoprase, turquoise, and topaz which precedes the sunrise and takes the breath away.

"Oh, look!"

"Oh, look!"

Instinctively they clasped hands as they stood on the edge of the flowery precipice, watching the chrysoprase yellow into saffron, and the turquoise melt into sapphire, while the topaz became light.

Then silently, above the wraithlike towers and cubes and battlements, slipped the rim of gold.

"There it is, Bob!"

He drew her to him, holding her close.

"Yes; there it is again, Jennie-always coming back to us! The last time we were here we had only the moonrise; and now it is the sun-the sun!"

Her head lay against his shoulder; and as the rim became an orb the cloud-built vision of Manhattan was touched with flecks of fire. Within its heart lay Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and the Bowery, shops, churches, brothels, and banks, all pa.s.sions, hungers, yearnings, and ambitions, all national impulses worthy and detestable, all human instincts holy and unclean, all loveliness, all l.u.s.t, all charity, all cupidity, all secret and suppressed desire, all shameless exposure on the housetops, all sorrow, all sin, all that the soul of man conceives of as evil and good-and yet, with no more than these few miles of perspective, and this easy play of light, translated into beauty, uplifting, unearthly, and ineffable.

THE END