XVII
“Now for another Luxembourg Garden,” said Hamilton as they left the Claridge.
“It’s not exactly the same thing, but perhaps Central Park might do,” suggested Dorothy. “I go there once in a while, when I wish to escapefrom—from myself. We might go there for a while. As long as you get me back by five.”
They boarded a Fifth Avenue bus and dismounted at Fifty-ninth Street. Spring had scarce come and only the first buds and the boldest blades of grass appeared, but it was warm in the sunshine. Overhead innumerable birds proclaimed their faith in the coming of another summer. And the women on horseback along the bridle-paths or afoot wore bright, spring clothes. Hamilton’s thoughts flew back to Georgia. There the trees must be thick with foliage, green leaves and sweet-scented magnolia blossoms, and roses must be in bloom.
How long they walked together Hamilton did not know. Nor did he know of what they spoke. In fact he said little, leaving the burden of their conversation to Dorothy. His mind was flying back and forth between the present and the future. He was sensing the passing moments, perhaps his last with the woman who walked at his side, with such eagerness that he somehow missed their details. It was as though he were saying: “This moment, this position of her head, this touch of the sunlight upon her face, all these are precious and will not return.” And in the meantime the moment had melted into another and he had lost the thread of their common talk.
Dorothy’s mind waseverywhere—the war, its effect on art, on literature, on morals, on conceptions of democracy. The thread of their conversation was being broken and picked up.
They had seated themselves on a bench when Hamiltonsuddenly became aware of the lateness of the hour. In a few minutes they would be riding home and there were so many things to tell her. It seemed to him that she, too, was waiting for something, something that had sprung up between them and to which he must give voice.
“You know,” he said at length, “I’m engaged.”
It was not what he had wished to say, and the knowledge that he had said it for a single moment appalled him. He was glad in a way and proud that he had told her. In another way he feared that he had been presumptuous. Was that a tremor of her lip, or simply the play of light and shadow? Or was it his imagination? No, her eyes were still sparkling, happy. He was right. They were only friends. They could be nothing else. And, though their friendship was fated for nothing deeper; still it was right that he had told her. He had done the right thing. It was not a conflicting love, but the faint possibility of disloyalty even in thought to the woman whom he had already chosen, that he had shut out.
“No, I didn’t know, exactly,” she smiled. “For a time Ithought—I suppose it is the faithful little Southern girl you left behind you, the one whose letters I used to bring you.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, yes, once when you were delirious you even paid me the compliment of saying that I looked like her.”
For a fleeting instant Hamilton had an impression that Dorothy was laughing athim—trying to laugh or trying not to laugh, he could not tell which.
“I did saythat—and I do. It was not delirium.”
She rose and Hamilton knew that his afternoon had come to an end.
“No, don’t take me home. Just see me to the bus line. I’d rather leave you that way,” she was smiling.
“This afternoon,” he said, “I shall always remember. It’s been—” from somewhere a phrase popped into his head—“‘a sheaf of golden moments.’”
Dorothy darted a quick look of surprise.
“‘With here and there,’” she continued, “‘a scarlet memory.’”
Hamilton suddenly remembered where he had heard that phrase. The memory gave him a queer shock. It seemed as though he had suddenly intruded upon something. And yet, she had said that McCall had not called on her before returning home.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked. “I picked it up somewhere in Paris, in the hospital.”
“I don’t remember,” he replied.
They had reached the street and a bus was approaching. Dorothy held out her hand.
“We shall always be friends, I hope.” Were her eyes a bit wistful?
“Yes, friends.”
She was climbing into the bus, her face flushed, little ends of brown hair blowing free from under her turban. Hamilton remembered their last leave-taking in the Luxembourg gardens. Through the window he caught a glimpse of her walking forward to a seat, smiling as he had seen her smiling in the hospital, when caring for the wounded.
He wondered if there were tears on her lashes.