Читать книгу Our Square and the People in It - Samuel Hopkins Adams - Страница 6

“Don't let go of my hand,” she whispered faintly.

His big, reassuring clasp tightened. “We got away before the crowd came,” he said. “You have wonderful nerve. I thought you were gone.”

“Don't speak of it,” she shuddered. “I can't stand it.”

Not until, after a slow, silent walk, they were seated on a bench in Our Square could she gather her resolution for the dreadful question. “Did you kill him?”

“Good Lord, no!”

Whirled her up out of a pit of blackness, and supported her through a reeling world.

“But—but—you shot him!”

“Yes, with this.” He thrust his hand in his pocket, and again, as she closed her eyes against the sight, she caught faintly the pungent stimulus that had revived her.

“What is it?”

“Ammonia-pop. Model of my own.” Her eyes flew open, the color flooded into her cheeks, but receded again. “He might have killed you!” she exclaimed. “I thought when you turned away and I saw the dagger that— Oh, how could you take such a desperate chance?”

“Just fool-in-the-head, I guess. I supposed he was through. Don't know that breed, you see. But for you, he'd have got me.”

“But for you,” she retorted, “I don't know what might have happened to me. How came you to be down in that slum?”

“Oh,” said he carelessly, “I prowl.”

“As far away as that?” She looked at him, sidelong.

“All around. I know that neighborhood like a book.”

“What's the name of that alley?”

“Alley? Er—what alley?”

“Mr. Cyrus Murphy, how long have you been following me about?”

He turned an unpicturesque, dull red. “Well, that's no place for a girl alone,” he growled.

“You know, one evening I thought I saw you, down near Avenue C, but I couldn't be sure. Was it?”

“It might have been,” he grudged. “Avenue C is a public thoroughfare.”

“And you've been guarding me,” she murmured.

Her eyes brooded on him, and the color was rising in her face to match his. But, while Cyrus blushed like a brick, the Bonnie Lassie blushed like the hue of flying clouds after sunset.

“Why don't you take a policeman?” he blurted out. “If anything should happen to you—It isn't safe,” he concluded lamely.

“Not even when I'm chaperoned with an ammonia popgun?” she smiled. “Why do you carry that?”

“For dogs. Dogs don't always like me. It's my clothes, I suppose.”

“Any dog who wouldn't like and trust you on sight,” she pronounced with intense conviction, “is an imbecile.”

He smiled his acknowledgment. At that her face altered.

“There you go, smiling once more,” she said fretfully. “You do it very seldom, but—”

“I'm always smiling, deep inside me, at you,” he said quietly.

“But when you smile outside, it makes you so different. And I find I've done you all wrong.”

“Are you still sculping me?” he asked in surprise.

“I—I have been, but I stopped.” She paused, trying again to think of him as merely a model, and found, to her discomfiture, that it caused a queer, inexplicable little pang deep inside her heart. Nevertheless, the artist rose overpoweringly within her at his next question.

“Do you want me to sit for you again?”

“Oh, would you? Now?”

He glanced at the church clock. “I've forty-seven minutes,” he said.

Much may be accomplished in forty-seven minutes. In the studio she sprang to her work with a sort of contained fury. And as the eager, intent eyes regarded him with an ever-increasing impersonality, a pain was born in his heart and grew and burned, because to this woman who had clung to him in the abandonment of mortal weakness but an hour before, whose pulses had leaped and fluttered for his peril, he had become only a subject for exploitation, something to further her talent, wax to her deft hand.

Perhaps he had been that since the first. Well, what right had he to expect anything more?

Nothing of this reached the absorbed worker. She was intent upon her model's mouth and chin, whereon she had caught the sense of significant changes. Had she but once come forth from her absorption to see and interpret the man's eyes, she might have known. For only in the eyes does a brave man's suffering show; the rest of his face he may control beyond betrayal. Something happily restrained her from offering payment as usual, when she finally threw the cloth over the unfinished sketch.

“You spoke of dogs not liking your clothes,” she said lightly. “Do you always sleep in them?”

“Oh, no. They sleep on the floor at the foot of my bed and keep watch. May I have them pressed?”

“It would be an interesting change. But why ask my permission?”

“Because you told me once to come as is.'”

“So I did,” she laughed. “But that was before you were an honest workingman. Go and get pressed out.”

“No more use for me as a model?”

“Oh, I don't say that.”

“But I'm to see you sometimes?” he persisted.

“How could it be otherwise, with you doing patrol duty in front of my door?” she twinkled.

With unnecessary emphasis she shut the door upon the retiring form of Cyrus the Gaunt. But his double, already inalienable, returned to the studio with her and formed a severely accusative third party to her dual self-communion. Said the woman within her, woefully: “I mustn't see him again. I mustn't! I mustn't!” Said the sculptor within her, exultingly: “I've got him. I've got what I wanted. It's there and I've fixed it forever.” Which was a mistake of the sculptor's, however nearly right or wrong the woman may have been.

Thenceforward, it appeared to Cyrus the Gaunt, the Bonnie Lassie exhibited an increasing tendency toward invisibility. When he did see her, there were sure to be other people about, and she seemed subdued and distrait. Presently the suspicion dawned upon Cyrus that she was avoiding him. Being a simple, direct person, he laid his theory before her. She denied it with unnecessary heat; but that didn't go far toward rehabilitating the old cheerful and friendly status. Cyrus the Gaunt, despite a wage which assured three excellent meals per day, began to grow gaunter. Our Square commented upon it with concern.

There came a time when, for ten consecutive days, Cyrus the Gaunt never set eyes upon the Bonnie Lassie, nor did his ear so much as catch a single lilt of her laughter. At the end of that period, strolling moodily past his now flavorless job full two hours early, he beheld mounting the steps of the funny little mansion a heavy male figure, clad from head to foot in what had a grisly suggestion of professional black. The sight sent a chill to Cyrus's heart. The chill froze solid when on a nearer approach to the house he heard the sound of voices within, joined in a slow chant. Half-blind and shaking, he made his way to the rail and clung there. Slowly the words took form and meaning, and this was their solemn message:—

The Good Man,

When-he-falleth-in-Love

And-getteth-Snubbed,

Breaketh Forth In-to Tears:

But-the-Ungawdly Careth Notta Damn!

For Woman,

She-is-but-Vanity

Ay, Verily, and False-Curls.

And-the-Wooing Thereof Is Bitterness.

For-he-Wasteth-his-Substance-Upon-Her,

Taking-her-Pic-nics and Balls.

And she Danceth with some

Other Feller.

Oh-hh SLUSH!!!

A window-shade floated sideways, revealing to the peerer's gaze a gnome with blue ears beating out the tempo with the fire-tongs for a quartette, consisting of an aeroplane, a Salvation Army captain, a white rabbit, and an Apache, while a motley crowd circulated around them. In the intensity of his relief, Cyrus the Gaunt took a great resolve: “Invited or not invited, I'm going to that party.”

MacLachan's “Home of Fashion” on the corner was long since dark, but Cyrus's pedal fantasia on the panels brought forth the indignant proprietor.

“What have you got for me to go to a fancy party in, Mac?” demanded his disturber.

“Turnverein or Pansy Social Circle?” inquired the practical tailor.

“Neither. A dead swell party.”

“Go as ye are-rr, ye fule!” said the Scot, and slammed the door.

“Perfectly simple,” said Cyrus the Gaunt. “I'll do it.”

He hastened around to Schwartz's to wash his hands and smut his face artistically.