The Nine-Tenths Part 52

"Myra."

He hardly heard her "yes."

"There's been a miracle in my life this year."

"Yes?"

"The way you came down and took hold and made good."

"Thank you," very faintly.

"It was the biggest thing that came my way."

Silence.

"I was noticing it, Myra, out of the tail of my eye."

Myra tried to laugh. It sounded more like a dull sob.

"I haven't time to be polite."

"Don't want you to," Myra blurted.

"Strange," said Joe, "how things come about. h.e.l.lo, Mr. Squirrel! Want a peanut? None on the premises. Sorry. Good-day!"

He leaned over, picked a bit of ice, and flung it in the air.

"Myra," he muttered. "I need a rest."

"You do," almost inaudible.

"I need--Didn't I say, no peanuts? No means no! Good-day!"

He turned about laughing.

"What do you think of that for a pesky little animal?"

"Joe!" she cried in her agony.

Joe said nothing, but stared, and a great sob shook him and escaped his lips.

"Myra!!"

He had her in his arms; he kissed her on the lips--that new kiss, sealing those others. And the wonderful moment came and went; the moment when two flames leap into one fire; when two lives das.h.i.+ng upon each other blend into one wonderful torrent. They did not mind the publicity of the place that afternoon; they were quite oblivious of the world.

They were in another realm, breathing another air, treading a different earth. It was too sacred for words, too miraculous for aught but the beating of their living hearts, the pulse of singing blood, the secret in their brains. Their years fell away. They were youth itself, dabbling with the miracles of the world; they were boy and girl, new-created man and woman. The world was a garden, and they were alone in that garden, and nothing but beauty was in that place. They had each other to behold and hear and touch and commune with. That was enough....

"Joe," said Myra, when the first glory had faded and they were conversing sweetly, "I made up my mind to save you, and I did!"

"Wonderful woman! And you're sure now you don't mind me--the way I'm constructed in the cranium and all that?"

"I love you, Joe!" She was as happy as a woman could be.

"I'm a powerful idiot, Myra."

"So am I."

"Well," he mused, "you're taking your chances. Suppose I go off into another strike or something?"

"I'll go with you."

"Myra," he said, "then let's go home and tell mother."

They were as happy as children. They were well satisfied with the world.

In fact, they found it an amazingly good place. Every face that pa.s.sed seemed touched with beauty and high moral purpose, and the slate of wrong and injustice and bitterness had been sponged clean.

"Oh, Myra," cried Joe, "isn't it great to know that we have it in us to go plumb loony once in a while? Isn't it great?"

And so they made their way home, and walked tiptoe to the kitchen, and stood hand in hand before Joe's mother. She wheeled.

"Joe! Myra!"

Joe gulped heavily.

"I've brought you a daughter, mother, the loveliest one I could find!"

Myra sobbed, and started forward--Joe's mother grasped her in a tight hug, tears running fast.

"It's about time, Joe," she cried, "it's just about time."

XIII

THE CITY

Over the city the Spring cast its subtle spell. The skies had a more fleeting blue and softer clouds and more golden sun. Here and there on a window-sill a new red geranium plant was set out to touch the stone walls with the green earth's glory. The salt breath of the sea, wandering up the dusty avenues, called the children of men to new adventures--hinted of far countries across the world, of men going down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, of traffic and merchandise in fairer climes, of dripping forest gloom and glittering peaks, of liquid-lisping brooks and the green scenery of the open earth.

Restlessness seized the hearts of men and the works of men. From the almshouses and the jails emerged the vagrants, stopped overnight to meet their cronies in dives and saloons, and next day took the freight to the blooming West, or tramped by foot the dust of the roads that leave the city and go ribboning over the shoulder and horizon of the world.

Windows were flung open, and the fresh sweet air came in to make the babies laugh and the women wistful and the men lazy. Factories droned with machines that seemed to grate against their iron fate. And of a night, now, the parks, the byways, and the waterside were the haunts of young lovers--stealing out together, arms round each other's waists--the future of the world in their trembling hands.

The air was full of the rumor of great things. Now, perchance, human nature at last was going to reveal itself, the love and hope and comradeliness and joy tucked away so deep in its interlinings. Now, possibly, the streets were going to be full of singing, and the housetops were going to rejoice with the mellower stars. Anything was possible. Did not earth set an example, showing how out of a hard dead crust and a forlorn and dry breast she could pour her new oceans of million-glorious life? If the dead tree could blossom and put forth green leaves, what dead soul need despair?

Swinging and swaying and gliding, the great white Sound liner came up on the morning and swept her flag-flapped way down the s.h.i.+ning river. Her glad whistle released her buoyant joy to the city, and the little tugs and the ferries answered with their barks and their toots. Up she came, triple-decked, her screw swirling in the green salt water, her smoke curling l.u.s.trous in the low-hung sun. She pa.s.sed Blackwells Island, she swung easily beneath the great span of the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, and gave "good-morning" to the lower city.

On a side-deck, leaning over the rail, stood a man and a woman. The man was strong, tan-faced, his eyes bright with fresh power. The woman was rosy-cheeked and exquisite in her new beauty. For the miracle of Spring which changed the earth had changed Myra and Joe. They too had put forth power and life, blossom and new green leaves. They had gone to the earth to be remade; they had given themselves over to the great physician, Nature; they had surrendered to the soil and the sun and the air. Earth had absorbed them, infolded them, and breathed anew in their spirits her warmth, her joy, her powerful peace. They had run bare-headed in the sun; they had climbed, panting, the jutting mountainside; they had taken the winds of the world on the topmost peak; they had romped in the woods and played in the meadow. And then, too, they had fed well, and rested much, and been content with the generous world.