Читать книгу Bread - Charles G. Norris - Страница 19

That he would meet her on the Avenue next morning she felt was almost certain. She said to herself a hundred times it would be much wiser for her to take the elevated train, or at least to walk down another street and avoid the possibility of such an encounter. If she were not to permit herself to become further interested, it was obvious she must see him as little as possible. But when morning came it was into Fifth Avenue she turned.... She felt so sure of herself; she wanted to see if he would really be there.

Once or twice she thought she recognized his distant figure coming toward her. Each time her heart came into her throat. She stopped and made a pretense of studying a milliner’s window, while she wrestled with herself. She was mad, she was a fool, she had no business to let herself play with fire this way! At the next corner she would turn eastward, and go down Fourth Avenue. But when she reached the cross street she decided to walk just one more block, and in that interval he stepped from a doorway where he had been watching for her, and joined her.

“Good-morning.”

“Oh—hello!”

The sudden sight of him, the sound of his voice affected her like fright. She hurried on, trying to still the pounding in her breast, turning her face toward the traffic in the street to hide her confusion.

“What’s the hurry?” he laughed. “It isn’t half past eight yet.”

“I have a personal letter to type before office hours,” Jeannette said abstractedly, but she lessened her pace.

“I love these early walks on the Avenue,” he said.

“I always walk down if I have time,” she replied. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.” She gave him a quick inspection. He was insignificant,—he had a weak, effeminate expression,—his features were small and lacked resolution. And yet it was the same face with its blue eyes, always brightly alight, its twisted mouth and thin lips stretched tightly over his small, glittering, even teeth when he smiled, that haunted her through the day, pursued her to her home, gleamed at her from the blackness of her room after she had gone to bed, visited her in her dreams, and greeted her with its irresistible charm when she awoke in the mornings. She loved that irresolute face, with all its weakness, its curious eccentricities; she loved the grace of that slight boyish figure with its square, bony shoulders, its tapering, slim waist; she loved those thin, almost emaciated white wrists, and those long chalk-hued hands and attenuated fingers. She loved the way he bore himself, the poise of his figure, the lithesomeness and suppleness of his young body. And she despised herself for loving, and hated him for the emotion he stirred in her. She wanted to kiss him, she wanted to kill him, she wanted him in her arms, she wanted never to see him again; she wanted him to be madly, desperately in love with her, and she wanted herself to be coldly indifferent.

The spring sunlight flooded the Avenue gloriously; the green omnibuses, dragged by three horses harnessed abreast, rambled up and down; cabs teetered on their high wheels, and weaved their way through the traffic at a smart clip-clap; hurrying women, with the trimming of their flowered hats nodding to their energetic gait bustled upon their early morning errands; stores were being opened, shirt-sleeved porters were noisily folding the iron gates before the doors back into their daytime positions; shop-girls, and stenographers, briskly on their way to their offices, half smiled at one another as they passed.

It was impossible not to respond to the infectious quality that was in the air. Jeannette laughed happily into her companion’s face, and he gazed at her eagerly, his eyes shining, his mouth twisted into its whimsical smile. They were exhilarated, they were enthralled, they were oblivious to everything in the world except themselves.

He stopped her abruptly, a block from the office.

“I think perhaps ... I believe you would prefer it, Miss Sturgis, if—if you and I ... if you were not seen entering the building, with—with an escort. It might be easier, pleasanter for you, if I....”

He hesitated, floundering helplessly. They stood still a moment facing one another, each thinking of impossible things to say. Then Beardsley murmured: “Well ...” lifted his hat, and she put her hand in his. He held it tightly in the firm grip of his thin white fingers, until she had to free it. She laughed shakily, as she turned away.

“That was really very nice of him,” she thought as she hurried on. “That was really very nice. I shan’t mind walking with him occasionally, if it doesn’t set the office gossiping.”