Out of the Air

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

The car was threading now the narrow ways of Greenwich Village. It stopped; Susannah stepped off. The rest seemed for a long time to be just wandering. But that curious sense of duality had vanished. She was one person again. She did not find Washington Square easily; but then, it made no difference whether she ever found it. For New York and the world were so amusing when once you were free! You could laugh at everything—the passing crowds, surging as though business really mattered; the Carbonado Mining Company; the grisly old fool in their toils, and Susannah Ayer. You could laugh even at the climate—for sometimes it seemed very hot, which was right in summer, and sometimes cold, which wasn’t right at all. You could laugh at the headache, when it tied ridiculous knots in your forehead. There was the Arch—Washington Square at last.

But it wasn’t time to sleep in Washington Square yet. The birds hadn’t gone to bed. Sparrows were still pecking and squabbling along the borders of the flower-beds. Besides, New York was still flowing, on its homeward surge from office and workshop, down the paths. Susannah sat down on a bench and considered. She had a disposition to stay there—why was she so weak? Oh, of course she hadn’t eaten. People always had dinner before going to bed. She must eat—and she had money. She shook out her pocketbook into her lap. A ten-dollar bill, a one-dollar bill, and some small change. She must dine gloriously—free creatures always did that when they had money. Besides, she was never going to pay any more room rent. Susannah rose, strolled up Fifth Avenue. The crowd was thinning out. That was pleasant, too. She disliked to get out of the way of people. She was crossing Twenty-third Street now; and now she was before the correct, white façade of the Hague House. A proper and expensive place for dinner.

Susannah found it very hard to speak to the waiter. It was like talking to someone through a partition. It seemed difficult even to move her lips; they felt wooden.

“A petite marmite, please; then I’ll see what more I want,” she heard herself saying at last.

But when the petite marmite came, steaming in its big, red casserole, she found herself quite disinclined to eat—almost unable to eat. She managed only two or three mouthfuls of the broth; then dallied with the beef. Perhaps it was because instantly—and for no reason whatever—she had become two people again. Perhaps it was because she had been drinking so much ice-water. It couldn’t be because H. Withington Warner was sitting at the next table to the right. It couldn’t be that—because she had told him, when first she saw him sitting there, that she was no longer afraid of the Carbonado Company. And indeed, when she turned to the left and saw him sitting there also—when by degrees she discovered that there was one of him at every table in the room, she thought of Alice in the Trial Scene in Wonderland, and became as contemptuous as Alice. “After all,” she said, “you’re only a pack of cards.”

With a flourish, the waiter set the dinner-card before her, asking: “What will you have next, Madame?” Oh yes, she was dining!

“I think I can’t eat any more—the bill, please,” she heard one of her selves saying. That self, she discovered, took calm cognizance of everything about her; listened to conversation. As the waiter turned his back, that half of her saw that Mr. Warner wasn’t there any more; neither at the table on her right, nor anywhere. But when she had paid the bill, tipped, and risen to go, the other self discovered that he was back again at every table; and that with every Warner was a Byan and an O’Hearn. “I am snapping my fingers at them, though nobody sees it,” she said to both her selves. “I can’t imagine how they ever troubled me so much. They don’t know what I’m doing! I’m sleeping out of doors; they can find me only in rooms!” As though staggered by her complete composure, not one of this triplicate multitude of enemies followed her outside.

“Now I’ll go to Washington Square,” she said, realizing that her personalities had merged again. “The birds must be in bed.” She took a bus; and sank into languor and that curious, impersonal headache until the conductor, calling “All out,” at the south terminus, recalled to her that she was going somewhere. “I must have been asleep,” she thought. “Isn’t this a wonderful world?”

The long, early summer twilight was just beginning to draw about the world. The day lingered though—in an exquisite luminousness. All around her the city was grappling tentatively with oncoming dusk. On a few of the passing limousines, the front lamps struck a garish note. Near, the Fifth Avenue lights were like slowly burning bonfires in the trees; in the distance, seemingly suspended by chains so delicate that they were invisible, they diminished to pots of gold. The six-o’clock rush had long ago ceased. Now everyone sauntered; for everyone was freshly caparisoned for the wonderful night glories of midsummer Manhattan.

Susannah sat down on a bench in Washington Square and surveyed this free world. Though her eyes burned, they saw crystal-clear. All about her Italian-town mixed democratically with Greenwich Village; made contrasting color and noise. Fat Italian mothers, snatching the post-sunset breezes, chattered from bench to bench while they nursed babies. On other benches, lovers clasped hands. Children played over the grass. The birds twittered and the trees murmured. Every color darted pricklingly distinct to Susannah’s avid eyes, burning and heavy though it was. Every sound came distinct to her avid ears, though it sounded through a ringing.