Ewing's Lady

by Harry Leon Wilson

The next day, while he was saying, "To-night I shall see her—actually see her...." there had come another note in her careless, scrawled writing: "I find, after all, that I shall be engaged to-night. Can you not come to-morrow night instead? I am eager for a talk with you."

"Could" he come! He laughed as he put the thing tenderly away. Could he come, indeed! Could he stay away?

But early in the evening of that same forbidden day he walked to Ninth Street, entering that thoroughfare furtively. He might not see her for another day, but at least he could look fondly at the door by which she had entered, and gaze on the stanch house that enfolded her, even on the steps that must have felt her light, quick tread, perhaps within the hour.

These things would help him to believe in her actuality—she had so come to seem but a dream lady to him.

Thrice he passed the house on the opposite side of the street. A dim light glowed through the curtained windows. Beyond them, he thought, she would be talking; laughing, perhaps; perhaps even thinking of him at that very moment as she gazed absently at some speaker who thought to have her attention. If only she, too, could be counting the hours! But that was too unlikely. He warned himself not to imagine that. He recalled some of Teevan's speeches about women—"Shallow, pretty fools, for man's amusing—the Oriental alone, my boy, has a sane theory of women; creatures to be kept as choice cabinet bits—under lock and key." Poor Teevan, not to have known the one woman who could have illumined his darkness! Poor Teevan, indeed! He idly wondered if his affair—that troublesome affair of which the little man had spoken so feelingly—had been "broken off."

He slowly walked once more past the Bartell house, beholding a splendid vision of himself as he would leap up those steps the next evening. Then he continued on past Teevan's house, regarding that, also, with great kindness. He stopped a little beyond this, meaning to return. As he did so the door opened and a woman came out. He thought there was something furtive in her glance up and down the street as she paused to gather up her skirts. Then something familiar in the feminine grace of that movement chained him. Surely, but one person had ever done the thing in just that way. There could be no other. He stood staring while she came down the steps and into the light of a street lamp. It was Mrs. Laithe, walking briskly now, toward her own home. He could not mistake that free-swinging, level, deliberate stride, with the head so finely up.

He almost cried out to her in his gladness. He felt as a lost child who wildly claims its own again in some crowded street. He walked back quickly, watching her until her own door swallowed her up.

He felt a lively rejoicing. The unpromising evening had done well by him after all. Thinking but to look tenderly at a house front he had veritably seen his lady—watched her with secret, unrestrained fondness. He had an impulse to follow now and demand her at the door. But he remembered in time; she would be engaged and he would see her soon. That long look was adventure enough for one night.

But he could ring Teevan's bell. That would be a fine thing to do, for Teevan had seen her. Teevan would speak of her, little knowing how his words were hungered for. He was admitted and found the little man on the hearth rug in the library, talking to himself with great animation. He showed surprise, but his welcome was warmer than usual, Ewing thought. He seated his guest and proffered him brandy, pouring a glass for himself from a decanter almost empty. As he drank he beamed shrewdly on Ewing—kindly but shrewdly. "He must have seen her—he must have seen her ..." the little man was saying. Then a vagrant, elfish vanity smote him. He smiled inscrutably on Ewing—Ewing, who had been waiting to say lightly, "I happened to see Mrs. Laithe leaving...." But he did not say this, for the little man's smile came to life in speech.

"Gad! my boy—I'm deuced glad you came. You can make me forget a most distressing half hour I've just gone through."