The Nine-Tenths Part 51

Then they went up the elevator to the clash and thunder on the eighth floor. And they felt more and more strange, double, as it were--the old Myra and the old Joe walking with the new Myra and the new Joe. Myra felt a queerness about her heart, a subtle sense of impending events; of great dramatic issues. Something that made her want to cry.

Then they stood a moment before the dirty door, and Joe said:

"Shall I? Shall I rouse 'em with the bell? Shall I break in on their peaceful lives?"

"Rouse away!" cried Myra. "Your hour has struck!"

He pulled the door, the bell rang sharply, and they stepped in. As of old, the tremble, the clatter, the flash of machines, the damp smell of printed sheets, swallowed them up--made them a quivering part of the place. And how little it had changed! They stood, almost choking with the unchanging change of things. As if the fire had never been! As if Tenth Street had never been!

Then at once the spell was broken. A pressman spied Joe and loosed a yell:

"_It's the old man_!"

His press stopped; his neighbors' presses stopped; as the yell went down the room, "Joe! Joe! The old man!" press after press paused until only the clatter and swing of the overhead belting was heard. And the men came running up.

"Mr. Joe! Mr. Joe! Shake! For G.o.d's sake, give me a grip! This is great for sore eyes! Where you been keeping yourself? Ain't he the limit? He's the same old penny! Look at him--even his hat's the same!"

Joe shook hand after hand, until his own was numb. They crowded about him, they flung their fondness at him, and he stood, his eyes blinded with tears, his heart rent in his breast, and a new color climbing to his cheeks.

Then suddenly a loud voice cried:

"What's the matter? What does this mean?"

And Marty Briggs emerged from the office.

"h.e.l.lo, Marty!" cried Joe.

Marty stood dumfounded; then he came with a rush.

"Joe! You son-of-a-gun! Beg pardon, Miss! I ain't seen him for a lifetime!"

"And how goes it, Marty? How goes it, Marty?"

"Tip-top; busy as beavers. But, say," he leaned over and whispered, "I've found a secret."

"What is it, Marty?"

"You can't run a business with your hands or lungs or your manners--you need gray stuff up here."

The reception was a great success, full of cross-questions, of bartered news--as the arrival of new babies christened Joe or Josephine, the pa.s.sing of old babies in the last birth of all, the absence of old faces, the presence of new ones. Glad talk and rapid, and only cut short by the urgency of business.

They sang him out with a "He's a jolly good fellow," and he emerged on the street with Myra, his eyes dripping.

Myra spoke softly.

"Joe."

"Yes, Myra."

"There's one more thing I want you to do for me."

"Name it."

"I want to walk with you in the Park."

He looked at her strangely, breathlessly.

"_In the Ramble, Myra_?"

She met his gaze.

"_In the Ramble, Joe_."

Silently, with strange, beating hearts and fore-glimmer of beauty and wonder and loveliness, they walked west to the Park, and entered that Crystal Palace. For every branch, every twig, every stone and rail had its pendent ice and icicle, and the strong sun smote the world with flakes of flame. The trees were showers of rainbow-flas.h.i.+ng glory; now and then an icicle dropped like a dart of fire, and the broad lawns were sheets of dazzle. Earth was glittering, fresh, new, decked out in unimaginable jewels under the vast and melting blue skies. The day was tender and clear and vigorous, tingling with life.

They followed the curve of the walk, they crossed the roadway, they climbed the hill, they walked the winding path of the Ramble.

"You remember that morning?" murmured Joe, a music waking in his heart, his pulses thronged with a new beauty.

"Remember it?" Myra whispered. "Yes, Joe, I remember it."

"That is the very bench we sat on."

"That is the bench."

"And that is the little pond."

"That is the little pond."

"And this is the spot."

"This is the spot."

They sat down on that bench in the crystal wilderness, a man and woman alone in the blue-skied s.p.a.ces, among the tree-trunks, and the circle of earth. And then to Myra came an inexpressible moment of agony and longing and love. She had struggled months; she had stayed away; and then she had come back, and merged her life in the life of this man. And she could bear this no longer! Oh, Joe, will you never speak? Will you never come to your senses?

More and more color was rising to his face, and his hands in his lap were trembling. He tried to speak naturally--but his voice was odd and unreal.

"Myra."

"Yes," tremulously.

"You must have thought me a brute."

"I thought--you were busy, overworked."

"So I was. I was swallowed up--swallowed up."

There was a silence, in which they heard little gray sparrows twittering in the sunlight.