Vistas of New York Part 8

"He sent me flowers this morning--a big bunch of violets--and of course he will come in this afternoon to get thanked. If I am engaged before dinner I'll put in a postscript to tell you--so that you can get your wedding-present ready!"

As she wrote this last sentence she gave a hard little laugh.

Then she heard a brisk rattle from the telephone-box near the door.

She dropped her pen and went across the room and put the receiver to her ear.

"Yes--I'm Mrs. Randolph," she said. "Yes--I'm at home. Yes. Have Mr.

Stone shown up to my parlor."

Then she replaced the receiver and stood for a moment in thought. She went back to the desk and closed her portfolio, with the unfinished letter inside. She changed the position of the bowl of violets and brought it into the full light. She glanced about the room to see if it was in order; and she crossed to the fireplace and looked at herself in the mirror above.

"I do wish I had slept better last night," she said to herself. "I always show it so round the eyes."

She crossed swiftly to the door which opened into the next room.

"Jemima!" she called.

"Yes, Miss Evelyn," responded a voice from within.

"Mr. Stone is coming up--and my hair is all wrong. I simply must do it over. You tell him I'll be here in a minute."

"Yes, Miss Evelyn," was the answer.

"And after Mr. Stone comes you get the water ready for the tea," said Mrs. Randolph, as she went into the bedroom. "Be sure that you have a fresh lemon. The last time Mr. Stone was here his slice was all dried up--and men don't like that sort of thing."

A minute or two after she had disappeared there was a rap at the door, and Jemima came from the bedroom and admitted Mr. Stone. She told him that Mrs. Randolph would see him at once, and then she went back to her mistress, after giving him a curiously inquisitive look.

Mr. Stone had the walk of a sailor, but he carried himself like a soldier. His eyes were blue and penetrating; his ashen mustache curled over a firm mouth; his clean-shaven chin was square and resolute.

He stood near the door for a moment, and then he went toward the window.

The rain had dwindled, and as he looked out he thought he saw a break in the clouds.

It was full five minutes before Mrs. Randolph returned.

"Oh, Mr. Stone," she began, in voluble apology, "it's a shame to keep you waiting so, but honestly I couldn't help it. You took me by surprise so, I really wasn't fit to be seen!"

Mr. Stone gallantly expressed a doubt as to this last statement of hers.

"It's very good of you to think that," she responded, "but I hardly hoped to see any one this afternoon, in this awful weather. How did you ever have the courage to venture out? It's so kind of you to come and visit a lonely woman, for it has been such a long day!"

Mr. Stone informed her that it looked as though it was about to clear up.

"Of course you sailors have to know all about the weather, don't you?"

she replied. "That's the advantage of being a man--you can do things.

Now a woman can't do anything--she can't even go out in the rain for fear of getting her skirts wet!"

In her own ears her voice did not ring quite true. She knew that her liveliness was a little fact.i.tious. She wondered whether he had detected it. She looked up at him, and found that he was gazing full at her. She had never before recognized how clear his eyes were and how piercing.

"I haven't thanked you yet for those lovely violets," she began again, hastily. "They are exquisite! But then you have always such good taste in flowers. They have made the day less dreary for me--really they have.

They were company in my loneliness."

He looked at her in surprise. "You lonely?" he asked. "How can that be?"

"Why not?" she returned.

"You have made yourself a home here," he answered, looking about the room. "You have hosts of friends in New York. Whenever I see you in society you are surrounded by admirers. How can you be lonely?"

She was about to make an impetuous reply, but she checked herself.

"I am not really a New-Yorker, you know," she said at last. "I am a stranger in a strange city. You don't know what that means."

"I think I do," he responded. "The city is even stranger to me than it can be to you."

"I doubt it," she responded.

"I was once at sea alone in an open boat for three days," he went on, "and--it must seem absurd to you, very absurd, I suppose--but I was not as lonely as I am, now and then, in the midst of the millions of people here in New York."

"So you have felt that way too, have you?" she asked. "You have been overwhelmed by the immensity of the metropolis? You have known what it is to sink into the mult.i.tude, knowing that n.o.body cares who you are, or where you are going, or what you are doing, or what hopes and desires and dreams fill your head? You have found out that it is only in a great city that one can be really isolated--for in a village n.o.body is ever allowed to be alone. But in a human whirlpool like this you can be sucked down to death and n.o.body will answer your outcry."

He gave her another of his penetrating glances. "It surprises me that you can have such feelings--or even that you can know what such feelings are," he said, "you who lead so brilliant a life, with dinners every day, and parties, and--"

"Yes," she interrupted, with a hard little laugh, "but I have been lonely even at a dinner of twenty-four. I go to all these things, as you say--I've had my share of gaiety this winter, I'll admit--and then I come back here to this hideous hotel, where I don't know a single soul.

Why, I haven't a real friend--not what I call a _friend_--in all New York."

She saw that he had listened to her as though somewhat surprised, not only by what she was saying, but also by the tone in which she said it.

She observed that her last remark struck him as offering an opening for the proposal which she felt certain he had come to make that afternoon.

"You must not say that, Mrs. Randolph," he began. "Surely you know that I--"

Then he broke off suddenly as the door of the next room opened and Jemima entered with a tray in her hands.

"You will let me give you a cup of tea, won't you?" the widow asked, as Jemima poured out the steaming water.

"Thank you," the sailor answered. "Your tea is always delicious."

Jemima lighted the lamp under the silver kettle. Then she left the room, silently, and Stone was about to take up the conversation where she had interrupted it, when she came back with a plate of thin bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and a little gla.s.s dish with slices of lemon.

He checked himself again, not wanting to talk before the servant. Jemima stole a curious glance at him, as though wondering what manner of man he was. Then she turned down the flame of the little lamp and left the room.

Mrs. Randolph was glad that the conversation had been interrupted at that point. She had made up her mind to accept Stone's offer when he should ask her to marry him, but her immediate impulse was to procrastinate. She did not doubt that he would propose before he left her that afternoon, and yet she wanted to keep him at arm's-length as long as she could. There were imperative reasons, she thought, why she should marry him; but she knew she would bitterly regret having to give up her liberty--having to surrender the control of herself.

"You don't take sugar, I remember," she said, as she poured out his cup of tea. "And only one slice of lemon, isn't it?"

"Only one," he answered, as he took the cup. "Thank you."

There was a change of tone in his voice, and she knew that it was hopeless for her to try to postpone what he had to say. But she could not help making the effort.

"I'm so glad you like this tea," she said, hastily. "It is part of a chest Miss Marlenspuyk had sent to her from j.a.pan, and she let me have two or three pounds. Wasn't it nice of her?"