Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 11

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It's a long walk to take under an umbrella, but how else can one attain a semblance of seclusion in the very center of the pedestrian traffic? Of course there are taxicabs, but if one wishes real excitement, umbrellas offer better chances.

It was Ross who broke the silence, in a low, toneless voice which didn't mislead him at all. He saw that, though he had for a fortunate minute or two made her forget, she was now back at the hospital.

"I think I'd better cross over to Lexington and take the sub down," she said. "I'm really not a bit good company, and I oughtn't to take more time for walking."

"Oh, please!" cried David. "Please don't. Try me a few blocks farther. I know you're absorbed in your anxiety--I do hope to God you'll keep your friend, if you want him so much. But the fresh air is what you need. We won't even talk, if you don't want to--or until you want to."

His hand gently guided her past Ninety-first Street, and she accepted his will. He breathed more freely. Before they should reach Eighty-third he must somehow get her to stop noticing where they were in relation to the detestable subway stations.

As they walked on they couldn't keep pace, he couldn't possibly bring his long stride down to her short one without looking absurd. This was unfortunate because it's much more comradely to be swinging along at the same gait.

"I wonder," he suggested presently, "if we couldn't get into step, somehow. Could you lengthen just a bit, while I shorten? Or can't it be done?"

Trying to do it took up a full block, but they finally arrived at a possible medium in which neither was doing a too-exaggerated gait. The effort had made her smile a little.

"This snow," said David suddenly, "is turning into a rain. We must have an umbrella. Wait a minute."

Now of course there are no shops on Fifth Avenue above Fifty-ninth Street, and the two pedestrians were still in the Seventies. To procure an umbrella at that particular point one must be a person of resource.

He hailed a taxi. "If you don't mind?" he urged. "I want to buy an umbrella, and then we'll get out and walk again. You know this fresh air is doing you good."

"How eccentric you are," murmured Ross Collins. But she submitted. She might as well let this extraordinary young man have his way; he might give her an idea. And the chilly air was doing her good. She felt as though Jimmy might have a fighting chance--she was surer of it than when she left the hospital. And she wasn't as tired.

The taxi took them down to the first shop where David might buy his umbrella. He came out with it, inwardly exulting, and dismissed the taxi. Just to get her under an umbrella with him would help a good deal. The rain was not yet heavy, but the skies were growing darker; almost a twilight was to be had under the umbrella. The crowds were becoming thicker on the sidewalks, too. That proved to be a great help, for after they had been nearly separated two or three times by scurrying people who had no umbrellas, David said casually:

"Would you mind taking my arm? We could walk so much better, and now and then it's rather difficult keeping this over your head."

She took his arm. Truth told, she had been wishing she could do that. A comfortable arm to reach up and cling to on such a walk in the rain isn't at all a bad thing.

"Of course," she said suddenly, as they now swung along all by themselves, as far as the other people on the street were concerned, "it's perfectly ridiculous not to take a bus or the sub or even a Madison Avenue surface car, if we must stay together. Nobody but a man from the country would insist on walking in the rain. I'm getting my ankles quite wet."

He looked down at the ankles in sudden anxiety. "If you put it that way," he gave in, "we'll have another taxi in two seconds. I didn't think it was raining hard enough yet to wet ankles. Mine feel dry. But if you say the word----"

"I don't. I like walking in the rain, and I can dry my ankles when I get home. I was just pointing out that we were ridiculous to be doing this. But never mind, since you've bought the umbrella. Why don't we cross over to Park Avenue? There'll be fewer people."

"I doubt it. But we'll cross." This was at Fifty-second Street.

It was at Fiftieth Street that they really began to talk. By great luck he brought up a subject which interested her--as it had long interested him. It was a matter of mob psychology, and he had just had a queer experience which illustrated a certain phase of the subject. He took as long as possible to tell it, and made the telling as graphic as he could--and he was no untrained expressionist. When he had finished they began to discuss it. Right through the frightful traffic around the Terminal and across Forty-second Street they kept it up. As they marched down Fourth Avenue Ross's face was showing a hint of color, her eyes glanced up at him every so often, as his looked down, and the glitter of the now early lighted streets in the gloom showed him just what was happening to her. She was forgetting everything except the interest of the meeting of two keen minds. He had done it!

But he had still another idea in the back of his head. It might or might not be a good one, but it seemed to him worth trying. He wanted to get as far as he possibly could into her consciousness, so that she wouldn't forget him the moment he was out of sight.

At Twenty-ninth Street he said suddenly: "We're so far along down toward Twentieth, would you take the time to come a little out of your way? I'd like to take you somewhere, a place I very much like to go. Maybe you know it much better than I do, but if you don't----"

She looked up at the street number. Then she stood still under the umbrella. "If anybody had told me I'd walked almost four miles in the rain this afternoon with an entire stranger----"

"Entire? Now? Not quite that, am I?"

"No, not quite that--now," she admitted. "Well, where is it you want to go?"

He took her two blocks to the Little Church Around the Corner. Thousands of New Yorkers probably knew it better than Ross Collins. It was faintly lighted; a few people, as always, were wandering about it or sitting silently in the pews, here and there. At the doorway of the most picturesque and dramatic small church in the great city she paused.

"Yes, I've been here for the funerals of actors," she whispered. "To get the eternal copy. Why did you want to come?"

He led her down a side aisle to a corner in the transept where they were out of sight of everybody. "Let's sit here, just a few minutes," he said quietly.

So they sat still and silent, for the few minutes. Ross at first was wondering. Was he "religious," then? She wasn't. He hadn't been talking like a preacher; he had been quite as modern and straightforward as she in their discussion. He had grown to seem to her sturdier and sturdier, until now, as he sat beside her in the dim light, she had the sudden feeling come upon her of being in the care of a person who was immeasurably stronger than she in just about every way. But why should he want to come and sit in this dim church with her?

Her thoughts leaped back to Jimmy French. Poor Jimmy! What was going to save him? If she believed in a God who cared anything about human beings and their suffering she'd say a prayer for Jimmy, right now, in this church. But of course she didn't believe He--if He existed--did care a straw whether Jimmy or anybody else lived or died. These other people, kneeling, probably did believe in Him; they were saying prayers to Him at this minute, asking Him to spare them this or that beloved friend, or to get them out of trouble. What was the use in her saying such a prayer? She wouldn't. Jimmy would live--or more probably he would die. Nothing could be done about it.

She turned to David. "Shall we go?"

He assented. They went out, treading noiselessly, not to disturb the others.

When they were well away, and almost down to the park where the Cheneys lived, and her room and her typewriter and all the rush and weariness of her work were waiting for her, she said--it was the first word spoken since they had left the church:

"Please tell me why you wanted to go in there?"

He smiled down at her. "I don't suppose I could tell you. Perhaps sometime I can. It's a peaceful place, though, isn't it?"

"Why should you care for peaceful places, if that is one. You look as if you could never be tired in the world, you have so much vitality. But even if you were tired--or unhappy--quiet and dimness don't always make peaceful places. I thought of all sorts of disturbing things while we sat there."

"So did I."

"Then why----"

"Please let that wait. You've had a long walk, and the little rest before we finish won't have hurt you. For the rest of the way I want to plan how and when I may see you again--provided you are willing to see me."

"Wouldn't it," suggested Ross, "be quite perfect if we didn't see each other again?" And at the look he gave her, as though she had struck him a blow, she added quickly: "I mean--a thing like this ought to stand by itself. It's a unique experience. If we met again it might be spoiled. We might quarrel--might detest each other."

"That," offered David sternly, when he could adjust himself to so erratic a point of view, "is sheer bluff on your part. You don't mean it. You may think you enjoy fancying it--stinging me with it--but good lord, Ross Collins, do you know that our minds have fitted together as though they were dovetailed, ever since we left Fiftieth Street? See here: do you in the least remember crashing through the traffic at Forty-second, in front of the Terminal?"

"No. Did we come that way?"

"Don't ask me. We were on Park--we were then, sometime after, on Fourth. Unless we went around Robin Hood's Barn--which isn't done in New York--we got there by coming through the worst congestion in the city. I have no recollection of it. Neither have you. Well, then, do you think such utter absorption in each other's thoughts means nothing--nothing--in a world of misfits? And would you throw that away by agreeing not to see each other again?"

This passionate inquiry went where he meant it to--into her full recognition of what might be worth holding onto.

"All right," she said, with a strange little sparkle between those narrow lids. "If you want to take the risk, the next time you come to town----"

"I'll write you about that," said David, "in the first mail after I can make my plans."

As she went up in the lift she discovered that her ankles were indeed very wet. For the last few squares it must have been pouring--a chill, New York, December rain, than which there can be nothing wetter. It certainly was odd that she hadn't noticed it.