"Tommy refers to this calmly as his carriage, Miss Carstairs. See what a week of New York has done for him. Where did he disappear to—did you notice? A great day it has been"—in the rising inflection of farewell—"hasn't it?"
Came out of space in answer, like a fluttering bird from nowhere, a voice that had once seemed music in his ears:
"I sent him … to look for you. They said that you were … ill.
Perhaps you would let us drive you to the river?"
"And make you miss the speech?" continued this easy and agreeable young man, whom Laurence Varney, a great distance off, stood dumbly and watched from the swirling void with a certain remote admiration. "Of course not. I was never better in my life and the walk will be pleasant on so nice an afternoon. But thank you very much."
Again his tone held the faint inflection of finality, of leave-taking.
Came again the voice like tossed chimes out of space:
"Then … won't you stay and hear the end? It would please Mr. Hare.
From this carriage … you can see and hear everything very well."
"Thank you," said the debonair spirit, rather carelessly—while
Laurence Varney, off in another world, clutched at the invitation,
fought for it, lied, thieved, prayed, lived and died for it—"I'm afraid
I must go on now."
"There is something I wanted to say. And … a message."
A shuffling of the cosmos, a shrieking readjustment of the universe, and he found himself sitting on a blue upholstered seat staring at two great golden moons, which later on turned out to be, after all, mere burnished buttons upon a coachman's purple back.
So, not for the first time, the sudden meeting with a lady knocked from the young man's head all recollection of his enemy. And if their parting had taken place in the entire privacy of a country road, their re-meeting, certainly, was in the fullest view of the many. Only, luckily, nobody chanced to be looking, or within eavesdropping distance; and even the coachman presently removed himself to stand at his horses' restive heads. Tommy's carriage happened to be the last one in the line. Behind it the street was a desert. Before it was nothing but a packed army of backs.