David Malcolm Part 14

"You need not," I replied, laughing. "In June I am coming to take you to a little house on a green hill, with a veranda where we can sit on my holidays, you painting tulips on black plaques, and I--well, I with you, just thinking how wonderful it all is and----"

"How wonderful it will be in June!" said Gladys Todd.

CHAPTER XIV

Fifth Avenue was in those days a favorite resort of mine. Every morning I plunged into the rush downtown I dived from the elevated railway station into the tatterdemalion life of Park Row, and when I raised my head above that ragged human maelstrom and climbed to the editorial room of _The Record_ it seemed as though I lifted my body out of a little muddy stream and plunged my mind into a Charybdis which embraced the whole world. Its centre was the same desk which I had so often approached with trembling in the days when I was breaking spears with the ancient office-boy and Mr. Hanks. I was fixed now in a chair opposite Mr. Hanks. I had become an editor. But I was not hurling my spears against the devils that possess poor man. My princ.i.p.al daily task was to read the newspapers with a microscopic eye, to glean from them every hint of news to come and to be covered, to present the clippings to Mr. Hanks ready for his easy perusal, and though in our province we had to do only with events of a local character, the life of the city was so interwoven with that of the whole world that to me our desk seemed a high lookout tower from which we kept an eye on the very corners of the globe. Did I look from the s.m.u.tted window at my side, it was into the struggling throng on the pavement below or, over the line of push-carts displaying tawdry wares, into the park where the riff-raff seemed to reign, because the riffraff was always there, dozing on the benches. Did I look to the other hand, it was through the great murky room, through air charged with tobacco smoke and laden heavily with the fumes of ink, molten lead, and paper which filtered from the floors below through every open door. In a distant corner, a gloomy figure in the light of a single lamp, I could see the keeper of the "morgue" cutting his way through piles of papers, filing away his printed references to Brown, or Jones, or Robinson, against that day when Brown might die, Jones commit some crime, or Robinson, perchance, do something virtuous. I could see, in nearer prospect, the rows of little desks and the reporters at them, some writing, some reading, some smoking wearily; some young men fresh from college and keyed high with ambition; some old men shabbily dressed and carelessly groomed who had spent their lives at those little desks and asked nothing more than the privilege of ending them there; some of more corpulent minds, like the great Bob Carmody, who were happy in the attainment of a life's ambition to become authorities on base-ball, foot-ball, or rowing.

Wherever I looked I seemed to see nothing but the t.i.tanic tread-mill and to hear the clatter of its cogs: within, where the presses rumbled deep in the ground below me, where the telegraph clicked in the adjoining room and overhead the typesetting-machines rattled incessantly; without, in the medley of the street, the cries of the hawkers, the clang of car gongs, and the never-ending shuffle of feet.

Uptown life seemed on its surface to be lighter, and the curse of Adam to rest more easily on the shoulders of his children.

Of Fifth Avenue this was especially true. It was not a canyon of brick and stone in those days. Trade had just begun its invasion and had gained a foothold only in the few blocks above and below Twenty-third Street, and for the rest it was still a street of homes, where people moved in a more leisurely fashion than in the crowded thoroughfares downtown. The very air was charged with a healthier life, and here amid the opulence one could forget the near presence of the squalid alley. So it had become a habit of mine always to begin my day with a walk uptown, as a gentle tonic for my body and to give my mind a brief but more cheerful outlook than through the s.m.u.tted office windows. I never tired of the life which I saw about me. And it was about me and I not of it, for though I might pause at a tailor's to examine his fabrics, it was always through his plate-gla.s.s window; beyond the window I could afford to go only in the cheaper Na.s.sau Street; and I might stop in front of a picture-shop, but only to o select prints for that dream-land house on the hill, set on the bit of green. Smart carriages rolled by me, manned by immaculate, haughty servants, drawn by horses stepping high in time with the jingle of their harness. At one time I had planned an equipage such as these for myself; but now, computing, from past experience, my future possibilities in finance, I saw them fascinating as ever, yet as far from me as though they dashed through some Martian city, and their occupants as removed from my ken as the inhabitants of the farthest planets. Indeed, even in the commoner throng about me I knew no one. It was seldom that I was called on to doff my hat, and then to some of the queer old women who were moulding away in the corners of Miss Minion's boarding-house or to Miss Tucker hurrying to her school.

One morning in May, as was my custom, I set out for work by my circuitous route, with the intention of walking to Fifty-eighth Street and taking an elevated train downtown. The day was one of the loveliest of spring. The brightest of suns swept the Avenue. In Madison Square the fresh green had burst from the trees overnight, and I should have liked to drop down on one of the benches there, to look upward through the branches into the clouds and forget the enclosing wall of buildings and the tumultuous streets. But I was late, and I had no mind to hurry on such a day. The languor of the spring was in my veins, and I strolled on, almost unconscious of the life about me.

Ahead, at the crest of Murray Hill, the city seemed to end, and I to look through a great gate-way into the blue sky, and I fancied myself standing there in that gate-way, with the valley lying at my feet, my valley awakened from its winter's sleep, its hill-sides decked with blossoming orchards, its mountains carpeted with the soft shadows of the clouds. I saw the ridge, its green slope slashed by the white winding road which crossed it. That was the same road up which I had climbed on a May morning long ago, when I hurried to the Professor's aid, and I followed it now to the clearing; I saw the clearing with the Professor leaning on his hoe studying a fleck of cloud, and Penelope watching him silently, fearing to disturb his important meditations.

In these busy years Penelope had been rarely in my thoughts; if at all, it was as a little girl with a blue ribbon in her hair, the companion of a few brief weeks of my boyhood. I dared not picture her as growing up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had always a.s.sociated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a tw.a.n.g and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this morning, when the far-borne freshness of the woods and fields was in the air, and I longed to feel the soft earth beneath my feet, to break from the enclosing walls and to stride over the open fields, I recalled days like this when the wine of spring was in my veins and I had run through the meadows in a wasteful riot of energy; and then a particular day like this when Penelope and I had ridden out of the woods, had come to the ridge-top and looked over the smiling valley. I seemed to feel Penelope's arms drawn tightly around me as I pointed across the friendly land and promised to take care of her. I had had no fear then that she would ever grow corpulent and florid, and now I found myself asking if my boyish intuition might not have been right, and she fulfilled entirely the promise of her girlhood, defying the insidious generosity of time and the vulgar influence of Rufus Blight. Should I ever know? Should I ever see her?

I must have been looking at the clouds as I asked myself these questions, for I walked right into an elderly woman, a tall, buxom woman who carried in her arms a tiny Pomeranian. The force of our collision made her drop her pet, and for an instant he hung suspended by the leash and choking. I apologized humbly, bowing; but my victim--for such she seemed to think herself--the victim of my premeditated brutality, lifted the frightened dog back to the refuge of her arms, glared at me, turned, and swept on to a modiste's door. Her haughtiness angered me. I held the fault as much hers as mine, for the pavement was not crowded and she seemed to have risen from it just to obstruct my pa.s.sage. I looked about me to discover whence she had come so suddenly, and in a carriage standing at the curb I found an explanation. I said to myself that if she had emerged from so smart an equipage I had indeed committed _lese-majeste_, for it was such a turnout as I had dreamed of in my days of opulent dreaming; it was such a turnout as a poor poet could have used without offending his sense of the beauty of simplicity. The high-headed horses with their shining harness, the smart brougham, so spotless that it was hard to imagine its wheels ever touching the street, the men in their un.o.btrusive livery, spoke of unostentation in its most perfect and most expensive form. The woman of the Pomeranian, I said to myself, must be surely some _grande-dame_, a leader in that mysterious circle which I knew only by its name "society." My view of that circle in those days was tinged with the cynicism of one who knew nothing of it; and though at the boarding-house table I was p.r.o.ne to rail at it, secretly I had to admit that my raillery was born of envy. So now it was with a mind filled half with awe and half with envy that I turned to look after the imposing woman with the dog.

For the first time I noticed that she had a companion. First, the companion was but a slender figure in black, smartly clad. I could see only her back, and yet as I carried my eye from the dainty boot which rested on the lowest step to the small gloved hand on the railing, to the small black hat with its blue wings airily poised, I found myself making comparisons between this daintiness and the untidy loveliness of Gladys Todd. I was almost angry with Gladys Todd because she did not dress with such simplicity, not knowing that all her wardrobe cost hardly as much as this un.o.btrusive gown, this masterpiece of a tailor's art.

Gladys Todd was not long in my mind. It was as though the memory of her was swept away by the turn of the blue wings on which my eyes rested. They moved with a majesty that sent my thoughts hurling down into the past to match them. I matched them with a bit of blue ribbon.

It had moved as majestically as they. I almost laughed outright. It was absurd to compare the forlorn child of the clearing with this smartly groomed young woman, and remembering Nathan, the white mule, I looked again to the perfectly turned-out carriage at the curb. You must suspect that there was in my mind, born of a wild hope, a suspicion that I was seeing Penelope Blight. True. But from Nathan, the white mule, to this perfect carriage with the haughty footman at the door was so far a cry that I was about to go on. The girl had turned also, and I found myself halted and staring at her. I was sure that she had been studying my back at that moment when I was looking at the carriage, but being discovered in such interest she gave a start, recovered herself, and with an angry toss of her head sprang up the steps and through the door.

In that moment when our eyes met I was sure that I was face to face with Penelope Blight.

The old Florentine writer, Firenzuola, commends nut-brown as the loveliest color for a woman's eyes, declaring that it gives to them a soft, bright, clear and kindly gaze and lends to their movement a mysteriously alluring charm. These eyes were blue, but in that fraction of an instant when I looked into them, their light was soft and bright, clear and kindly; I was sure that they were the same mysteriously alluring eyes that I had first known years before when I had crawled, wet and cold, from the depths of the mountain brook.

Knowing no more I should have spoken her name, my hand was rising to my hat, but the soft and kindly light changed suddenly to hostility, and she was gone.

I hesitated, not knowing what step to take next. With hesitation doubt came. I began to argue. The hostile flash of her eyes angered me.

She had tacitly charged me with impertinence, with the manners of a common Broadway lounger. Then I said, had this really been Penelope she must have recognized me, for twelve years could not have obliterated all outward traces of the boy whom she had once known as her only friend. Remembering that time, remembering the forlorn cabin in the mountains and the brown, barefooted girl, remembering the promise of later days given by the sleek vulgarity of Rufus Blight, I said that she could not have grown to this faultless picture of young womanhood. Yet the forlorn hope that I might be mistaken would have held me there awaiting her return had it not been for the haughty footman by the carriage door. He had been a silent observer of what had pa.s.sed, and seeing me now loitering, staring at the modiste's shop, he cast off his expressionless mask and a.s.sumed a very threatening and scowling appearance. Evidently he, too, thought me a street lounger who, not satisfied with nearly killing madam, was bent on thrusting his impertinent attentions on the young mistress. I could not explain to him that I had known the young mistress years ago when she lived in a log hut in a mountain valley. His own perfection as a servant made such an explanation the more incredible; and though loath to abandon the opportunity to convince myself that I was mistaken, I saw nothing left for me but to go my way downtown.

As I sat at my desk I was so distrait that Mr. Hanks accused me of being in love, speaking as though I were the victim of a mental derangement which unfitted me for serious labor. After the way of men, I boldly denied his charge. He paid no attention to my protest, but expressed himself freely on the unwisdom of a man allowing himself to fall under the influence of delusions which cost him his mental poise and might disarrange his whole life. Hearing Mr. Hanks, it was difficult for me to believe that he had ever been in love himself.

Watching him at his work, with his sharp, restless eyes always alert, and listening to his voice as incisive as his shears, he seemed a man whose whole mind was possessed by the pursuit of news, a man whose brain and body worked with such machine-like accuracy that he could never fall into the puerile errors of his fellows. Now when he was misusing his authority to browbeat me into what he termed sanity, I found comfort in recalling that after all he had once in a moment of forgetfulness confessed to having a home at Mentone Park, with a wife and four daughters of whose accomplishments he spoke almost with boasting. So I troubled no longer with denials, but sat listening to him with a smiling face. Whereupon he brought his fist down on the desk and called me a soft-brained idiot.

"Of course, Malcolm," he said, "I don't know who she is, but my advice to you is, whoever she is and whatever she is, get her out of your mind."

At that very moment Malcolm's mind was occupied with just these questions: Who was she? What was she?

With a sense of duty to Gladys Todd I strove hard to put Penelope Blight out of my thoughts, but I could not. Sometimes I would recall the face of the girl whom I had seen in the morning, and every feature would bring back the child of the mountains. Then I went to directories and searched them for the name of Rufus Blight, but I could get no trace of him. I evolved a theory that Penelope was the guest of the woman with the Pomeranian. The carriage must belong to either the elder or the younger woman. Granting that the younger was Penelope, then the elder could not be her mother. As I had examined many directories and found none that gave her uncle's name as living in the city, I had to conclude that the owner of the Pomeranian was her hostess and that I was the victim of a trick of fate which had allowed her to flash across my path and disappear, which had allowed me to have but this tantalizing glimpse. Then I found consolation in the thought that after all a glimpse was enough for my peace of mind. Indeed, if this really were Penelope, then it had been best that I had never seen her at all, grown to such loveliness.

Considering myself as I sat in my shirt-sleeves amid grimy workaday surroundings, remembering the frayed environment of my life uptown, this Penelope, stepping, daintily booted and gloved, out of that perfect equipage, was indeed a being who moved in higher airs than I.

Here was an insuperable difficulty. In the valley, David Malcolm, with the blood of the McLaurins in his veins, might look with contempt on the Blights and their kind. But we were no longer in the valley, and a Blight driving down the Avenue in a brougham, drawn by high-headed horses and manned by haughty servants, would see me not as the head of a wealthy patrician house, but as a young man on his way from his boarding-house to labor for a petty wage. Such a reversal of our relative conditions was so incredible that I found myself arguing that I could not have seen Penelope Blight, and I tried to return to loyal devotion to Gladys Todd.

We were to be married in June. There was no reason why we should not be married in June if we were content to begin our venture in a modest five-room flat in Harlem, abandoning for a while the house on the bit of green. Gladys was not only contented but was enthusiastic over the prospect. In my pocket was her last night's letter asking if I had yet rented the apartment. She had already planned it in her mind--here the piano on which she would play soft accompaniments while I sang "The Minute Guns at Sea"; there by the window her easel, and near it the table where her brilliant husband was to sit at night writing novels and plays and poems which would carry us not only to the green hill but to the Parna.s.sian heights. When in the quiet of my room I had first read her letter, I had been lifted on the wave of her ardor, but now, struggle though I might to look forward to June with contentment, down in my heart I had to confess a strange uneasiness. It seemed to me that we were rushing into matrimony. With my mind revolving such problems over and over, was it a wonder that Mr. Hanks noticed my distraction and pounded the desk and spoke cuttingly of the effect of love on a man's mental balance! All that day I neglected my tasks for the study of my own engrossing business, but when evening came and I started home I was able to say to myself that I had reached a definite and unchanging conclusion--I loved Gladys Todd; like all of us, she had her peccadilloes, and yet I was not worthy of her, but I would try to be; the girl with the blue wings bobbing so majestically in her hat was not Penelope Blight.

Having reached this unchangeable decision, the very next morning, and every morning after that, I walked up Fifth Avenue with but one thought in my mind, and this was to see again a small black hat with blue wings. I became argus-eyed. I peered boldly into pa.s.sing carriages, watched the foot traffic on both sides of the street, scanned the windows of dwelling-houses, and even developed a habit of looking behind me at fixed intervals that my vigilance might be still more effective. One day I went boldly into the shop which I had seen the stranger enter that day with the woman of the Pomeranian, and asked if I could have Miss Blight's address. A saleswoman, a very blond and very sinuous person who was standing by the door revolving a large hat about on one hand while she caressed its plumes daintily, replied that no Miss Blight was known there. I described her hat with the blue wings, her companion with the Pomeranian, the very hour of her visit, but my persistence brought only the information that hundreds of the shop's patronesses wore blue wings and thousands carried Pomeranians.

The sinuous young woman became so cold and biting in her tone that I was sure that she believed that I had been fascinated by her own charms and was using a ruse for the pleasure of this brief interview, so I made a hasty retreat. My only clew to the owner of the blue-winged hat had failed me, and all that was left to me was to patrol the Avenue day after day, forever hoping and forever being disappointed.

June came. The five-room flat was still unrented. My daily letter from Harlansburg breathed devotion and happiness over the approach of a day as yet unset--unset because I had been rather procrastinating about arranging leave of absence from the office. Doctor and Mrs. Todd had wanted a college wedding in the chapel. They had even gone so far as to suggest appropriate music by the glee club and the seniors as ushers, but when that proposal was made to me I had found to my distress that I could not leave New York before the summer vacation had begun. June brought me, too, the very last good fortune I should have asked at that moment, an unexpected increase in my salary, and unless I lowered myself by an act of despicable cunning I could not withhold news of such good import from the future companion of my joys and sorrows. So I went uptown one night struggling hard to imagine myself supremely happy. I knew my duty--it was to be supremely happy. I should write that night to Gladys Todd and announce my coming on the 29th; to-morrow I should find the flat; the next day I should order new clothes and look at diamond pins.

I opened Miss Minion's front door with my pa.s.s-key, and as I climbed to my room I seemed to emphasize with my feet the fact that I loved Gladys Todd and was in an ecstasy of happiness. I slammed my hat down on the bureau as I vowed again that I loved Gladys Todd. Then I drew back and stared at my pin-cushion. The usual corpulent letter was not leaning there; its place had been taken by an emaciated telegram.

"Do not rent flat. Have written explanation." Such was the message to me that day.

At that moment I loved Gladys Todd, and I did not have to stamp the floor to prove it. I was sure that I had lost her, and it was the sense of my loss that made my love well up from unfathomable depths to overwhelm me. I was angry. My pride was hurt. I counted over the years of my untiring devotion to her, and they seemed to sum up the best years of my life. That the telegram foreran a more explicit statement there could be no doubt. After all she had written about the flat, her instructions that the furniture which she had inherited from her aunt must fit in, that my table must be near her easel--after all these evidences of her thought--her command could mean only that our romance was at an end and our dreams dissipated into air. There was some other man, I thought--perhaps Boller of '89--and remembering him, his picturesque garb and ridiculous pose, my own vanity was deeply cut.

Until late that night I sat smoking violently and turning over in my mind the problem and all its dreadful possibilities. In bed, Sleep, the friend of woe, was long coming with her kindly ministrations, and yet held me so long under her beneficent influence that when I awoke I found lying beside my bed, tossed there through a crack in the door, the corpulent letter addressed in the tall, angular hand.

The first line rea.s.sured me. Strangely enough, being rea.s.sured, knowing that all the night's fears were silly phantasies born of a jealous mind, I fell back on my pillow and, holding the letter above my eyes, read as I had read a hundred of its fellows. Strangely enough, I said over and over to myself with grim determination that I loved Gladys Todd. From what she had written it was evident that I need have no fear that her love was not altogether mine. She believed that where two persons loved as we did, two persons who possessed each other in such perfect happiness, it was our duty to sacrifice ourselves a little for those less blessed than we were. As we gave so we received, and in giving up our summer of happiness for the happiness of others our winter would be doubly bright. I must confess that while I agreed with her as to the duty of self-sacrifice I was a little irritated when I found that our happiness must be deferred for Judge Bundy's sake. He was the last person in the world whom I had expected could have any influence on a matter so personal as the date of my marriage. Now Gladys called to my mind the recent death of his wife, and she spoke of his being ill, inconsolable, and miserably lonely. His life was at stake unless he could have a change of air and scene. His physicians had ordered for him three months' travel abroad, and he simply would not go unless Doctor and Mrs. Todd went with him. Unfortunately, Doctor and Mrs. Todd could not go without their daughter. Surely David, always self-denying, would understand. On one side was her own happiness; on the other her duty to her parents to whom had come this opportunity to see Europe, their life dream, as guests of this generous friend. It was very hard for her to have to choose. David knew, of course, what she would say were she really free to choose, but, after all, it was only for four months, and all that time I should know that, though she was far away, her eyes were turned over-sea.

I did not read the last five pages. They fluttered to the floor from my listless fingers, and I turned again to my pillow and sought the friend of woe, and again Sleep came to me with her kindly ministrations. And again I walked the Avenue, and by a modiste's door I saw a slender figure, a little, spotless, booted foot upon the step, a little, spotless, gloved hand on the rail, and a small black hat with long blue wings moving majestically.

CHAPTER XV

"Penelope!" I exclaimed, holding out both hands as though her joy at the meeting must match mine and she would spring forward to seize them.

Then I checked my ardor, for it was the highest presumption for me to address so familiarly this woman grown, even though in years gone by she had raced with me over the fields and had ridden behind me on such a poor charger as Nathan, the white mule. "Miss Blight," I added, with a formal bow.

"I beg your pardon," she returned, implying that she had not the remotest idea who the man could be who had so boldly spoken, halted her, barred her pa.s.sage from the brougham to the modiste's door.

"Don't you remember David Malcolm?" I said.

The frown fled from her face. She regarded me a moment with wide eyes.

"Of course I remember David Malcolm," she cried, and, smiling, she held out a small gloved hand. "And I have seen you before at this very spot--I was sure it was you. But why didn't you speak to me then?"

"Because I was not sure," I returned, laughing aloud for the joy of this meeting. "You have changed since I saw you last, Penelope. It is hard even now to believe----"

Again I checked myself. I was looking past Penelope to the woman with the Pomeranian. Disapproval of me was so plainly evident in her eyes, she seemed in herself so far removed from mountain cabins, and if Penelope had grown worthy of such distinguished company, discretion bade me be silent.

Penelope divined my thoughts. "And it is equally hard for me to believe that this tall man is the boy I pulled out of the water." Half turning, she addressed her companion. "This is David Malcolm, Mrs.

Bannister--an old, old friend of mine."

Mrs. Bannister probably had her own ideas of Penelope's old, old friends, but she was fair enough to examine me from head to foot before she condemned me with the ma.s.s of them, and then finding that, to the eyes at least, I presented no glaring crudities, she accepted me on sufferance, inclining her head and parting her lips.

"But tell me, David," said Penelope eagerly, "where have you been all these years and how do you happen to be here?"

Had I told Penelope the truth I should have replied that I happened to be there because for four long months I had been looking for her, whenever I could, walking the streets with eyes alert, even on midsummer days when I had as well searched the Sahara as the deserted town. Perhaps in thus surrendering to the hope that, after all, I should find her, I had laid myself open to a self-accusation of disloyalty to Gladys Todd; but she was far away in those months, and the daily letter had become a weekly and then a semimonthly budget, and though their tone was none the less ardent I had begun to suspect that Europe was a more attractive abiding-place than the little flat with the easel by the window. In one letter she spoke of her longing to be home; she knew that there would be music in every beat of the ship's propeller which carried her nearer me. In her next she announced her parents' decision to prolong their stay abroad on Judge Bundy's account and her regret that she could not leave them. There was something contradictory in these statements, and yet I accepted them complacently. Then postcards supplanted the semimonthly budget, and only by them was I able to follow the movements of the travellers all that autumn. One letter did come in October. It covered many sheets, but said little more than that it had been simply impossible to write oftener, but she would soon be following her heart homeward. Enclosed was a photograph of the party posed on camels with the pyramids in the background, and I noticed with a twinge of jealousy that Judge Bundy's camel had posted himself beside the beast on which Gladys was enthroned, while Doctor and Mrs. Todd had less conspicuous positions to the left and rear. Studying the judge, I laughed at my twinge of jealousy, for knowing him I could not doubt that Doctor and Mrs. Todd kept always to the left and rear, which was but right considering the generosity with which he treated them; but he looked so little the dashing Bedouin in his great derby and his frock-coat, so hot and uncomfortable that even the burning sands, the pyramids, and the curious beast which he straddled could not make of him a romantic figure.

Young Tom Marshall, who honored Miss Minion's with his presence, studying the photograph on my bureau one evening, asked me who was "the beauty with the pugree." And when I replied with pride that she was my _fiancee_ he slapped my back in congratulation.

"And Julius Caesar," he went on--"Caesar visiting his African dominions is, I suppose, her father, and the little fellow in the top-hat his favorite American slave, and----"

With great dignity I explained to young Marshall the relations of the members of this Oriental group. At his suggestion that I had best take the first steamer for Egypt I laughed. The implication was so absurd that I even told Gladys Todd about it in my next letter to her, for I still sat down every Sat.u.r.day night and wrote to her voluminously of all that I had been doing. Yet I was growing conscious of a sense of her unreality. I seemed to be corresponding with the inhabitant of another planet, and when I looked at the girl on the camel, with the strange pugree flowing from her hat, and the pyramids in the background, it seemed that she could not be the same simple girl who had painted tulips on black plaques.

Penelope Blight was a much more concrete figure. At any moment as I walked the Avenue she might come around the corner, or step from a brougham, or be looking at me from the windows of a brown-stone mansion. Was it a wonder that my eyes were always alert? One morning three lines in a newspaper convinced me at last that the girl with the blue feathers was Penelope Blight. They announced that Rufus Blight, the Pittsburgh steel magnate, had bought a house on Fifth Avenue and would thereafter make New York his home. That night the city seemed more my own home than ever before and the future to hold for me more than the past had promised. The drawn curtains of this house might be hiding Penelope from me; she might be in the dark corner of that smart carriage flying northward; even the slender figure coming toward me through the yellow gloom, with her m.u.f.f pressed against her face to guard it from the November wind, might be she. And when on the next afternoon--by chance, it seemed, as by chance it seems all our lives are ordered--when at last by the same modiste's shop the same smart brougham drew up at the curb, the same haughty footman opened the door, and I saw the very same blue wings, I knew that I had found Penelope at last and I spoke without fear.