A LADY IN THE DUSK
Halfway between the turbid currents of the lower city and the more swiftly running streams to the northward sits Washington Square, an isle of rest amid the tides of humanity which lap its shores.
Here is the true gateway to the city—below it the polyglot of Europe; above, the amalgam which makes America. It is a neighborhood of traditions which speak in the aspect of the solidly built row of houses facing to the south, breasting the living surge, its front unbroken. This park, with its stretch of green, its dusky maples and shaded benches, afforded asylum to Markham, the painter, who liked to come when the day's work was over and watch the shadows fall across the square, creeping slowly up the walls of the Arch, bringing into higher relief the rosy tints on cornice and medallion which remained animate a moment against the purple filigree beyond, a thing of joy and of beauty, a symbol of eternal freedom. He was never sure whether it was more wonderful then, or when a moment later the golden glory gone from its cap, it stood silent amid the roar of the city wrapped in pallid dignity at the end of the glittering Avenue. That Avenue was a symbol, too. It meant the world to which Markham had returned after his glimpse of Elysium, a world not too kind, already laughing perhaps at his secret and Hermia's.
His problem still puzzled him. He had had no word from Olga Tcherny, though he had sought her in Alençon and Trouville. She had gone to Paris, he had been informed, but he had not been able to find her there in her usual haunts.
Nor had he succeeded in finding Hermia, though he had left no stone unturned in the search. He had watched the hotel registers, inquired at her bankers, and scanned the sailing lists in vain. Had the earth engulfed them both they could not have more mysteriously disappeared.
Cables to New York had been unavailing, and at last, his time growing short, he had sailed from Cherbourg, a sadder but no wiser man. A call at the Challoner house at the upper end of the Avenue had only produced the information that the person he so eagerly sought had not yet returned, and that, in default of instructions to the contrary, her mail was forwarded, as before, to Paris. There was nothing for it but to wait, and Markham became aware that love, in addition to being all the things that he and Hermia had described it, was a grievous hunger which would feed upon no food but itself. He was quite wretched, painted abominably by day and prowled in the streets by night, his disembodied spirit off among the highways of Vagabondia.
November came, and still no letter nor any word of her. He was desperate. Her silence, at first only disappointing, now became ominous. Whatever their misunderstandings in the last hour of their pilgrimage, he deserved something better of her than this. Here in New York it already seemed difficult to visualize her. He could see nothing but the belled cap and coarse stockings of Yvonne, the "woman orchestra." They filled his eye as her essence filled his heart. The broadcloth and beaver of her metropolitan sisters puzzled and dismayed him. He had only seen her once in town and then she had resembled nothing so much as a flippant cherub in skirts—an example of how New York taught the young female idea to shoot. It hadn't been the kind of shooting he had liked. Thimble Island had individualized her—differently; Westport had given her color; but it was Normandy that had completed the human document. She was Hermia, that was all! But here in New York, with Vagabondia but a memory, he was not sure that he would know her. The Avenue was full of young female ideas in the process of shooting, all dressed very much alike, all flippant, all cherubic, and he scanned them with a new interest, wondering at the lapse of circumstance which somehow could not be bridged. Yvonne tailor made! The thing was impossible.
And yet he found it necessary to realize that here in New York it was to be no Yvonne that he would find. Her silence, too, now advised him that she was to be upon the defensive, all her armor bristling with commonplace, against which the flight of his quiver of memorabilia might be dented in vain. How was she thinking of him yonder? In what terms? Did she think of him at all? His questions had even descended to that low condition. He had had such a little share in her life after all, her real life in the cities, which laid its impress with such certainty on those who were its children. He saw the marks of it all about him, the thing one called "good form," the undercurrent of strife for social honor, the corrugated brow of envy, the pomp and circumstance of spilled riches—ah! here was where his shoe would pinch him the most. For Hermia Challoner was wealthy beyond the touch of Midas. If the Westport house or her taste in automobiles had not been green in his memory, it only remained to him to view the stately splendor of the Challoner mansion up town to be reminded that his vagabond companion of a week rightfully belonged to another world in which he was only a reluctant and somewhat captious visitor. Her riches bewildered him. They obtruded unbearably, proclaiming their importance in terms which there was no denying. Vagabondia, it seemed, was a forgotten country.
Had Hermia forgotten? Was his idyl, the one dream of his life, to end in waking? Was Hermia's mad excursion but another item in the long list of entertainments by means of which she exacted from life payment in diversion which she considered her due? Had he, Markham, been but an incident in this entertainment, a humble second-liner like Luigi Fabiani, who broke stones upon his mighty brother and caught the infant Stella when she was hurled at him? The thought was unpleasant to him, and did his lady no honor—so he dismissed it with reservations. But, whatever unction he laid to his soul, the truth would not be downed that two months had elapsed since that parting in the railway station at Sées during which time he had neither heard from nor of her.
One comfort he had when hope was at low ebb—the vision of a pale face at a trap-door, its eyes wide in concern—Hermia's face when Olga's fowling piece was discharged; two comforts—the memory of the roses of Père Guégou! Both gave him joy—and reconciled him to her present intolerance which time and an ardor which knew no abating must wipe away. If it hadn't been for Olga!