“What,” you will say, “that gaunt old spectre in his attic with his books, his tobacco, and his three flower-pots! He would not know that there is such a word as love, did he not encounter it now and then in his reading.”
True, I have divided my days between the books in a rich man's counting-room and those in my attic. True, again, I have never been more than merely passable to look at, even in my best days.
Yet I have loved a woman.
During the five years when my elder brother lay in a hospital across the river, where he died, it was my custom to visit him every Sunday. I enjoyed the afternoon walk to the suburbs, when the air has more of nature in it, especially that portion of the walk which lay upon the bridge. More life than was usual upon the bridge moved there on Sunday. Then the cars were crowded with people seeking the parks. Many crossed on foot, stopping to look idly down at the dark and sluggish water.
One afternoon, as I stood thus leaning over the parapet, the sound of woman's gentle laugh caused me to turn and ocularly inquire its source. The woman and a man were approaching. At the side of the woman walked soberly a handsome dog, a collie. There was that in their appearance and manner which plainly told me that here were husband and wife, of the middle class, intelligent but poor, out for a stroll. That they were quite devoted to each other was easily discoverable.
The man looked about thirty years of age, was tall, slender, and was neither strong nor handsome, but had an amiable face. He was doubtless a clerk fit to be something better. The woman was perhaps twenty-four. She was not quite beautiful, yet she was more than pretty. She was of good size and figure, and the short plush coat that she wore, and the manner in which she kept her hands thrust in the pockets thereof, gave to her a dauntless air which the quiet and affectionate expression of her face softened.
She was a brunette, her eyes being large and distinctly dark brown, her face having a peculiar complexion which is most quickly affected by any change in health.
The colour of her cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the other indefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance that I had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity came over me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion. Perhaps in the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental suffering; perhaps a subtle mark that death had already set there.
Neither the woman nor her husband noticed me as they passed. The dog regarded me cautiously with the corner of his eye. I probably would never have thought of the three again had I not seen them upon the bridge, under exactly the same circumstances, on the next Sunday.
So these young and then happy people walked here every Sunday, I thought. This, perhaps, was an event looked forward to throughout the week. The husband, doubtless, was kept a prisoner and slave at his desk from Monday morning until Saturday night, with respite only for eating and sleeping. Such cases are common, even with people who can think and have some taste for luxury, and who are not devoid of love for the beautiful.