“Yes, I’d like to. I’ll get my hat.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting downstairs.”
He went down the stairs, suddenly feeling rather frightened. The whole thing had gone wrong, appallingly wrong. What was going to happen now? Anything might happen. He walked nervously to and fro in the hallway, put on his hat and took it off again, stared at the Landseer stag over the hatrack, looked with unseeing eyes at the pile of dusty letters on the table. He could hear her moving quickly in her room—gayly, joyfully. Somehow, she had been too much for him. Was it that she had outwitted him—or was it simply that life itself was outwitting him, for once proving too subtly incalculable? Was she aware of what she was doing? No, he didn’t think so. It was simply that all of a sudden this business had fallen upon him with a stupendous force which he had not in the least foreseen. Good God—the thing might really be dangerous. It would have to be controlled at once. They would have to get back to the casual note and immediately: there wasn’t a minute to lose. But could it be done? And here was this walk, a thing he had never done before! How could he possibly counteract the effect, the obvious implications, of that? The step was already taken: there was no undoing it. And it was utterly impossible, now, to be rude about it, to treat her coldly—wasn’t it? The break in the logic would be too extreme. And impossible, also, to be explicit about it—to say, abruptly, “Look here—I don’t want you to misunderstand my motives in this … I’m not falling in love with you. Not in the least. And you had better not think so.…” No, this couldn’t be done. It was out of the question. And the more hurriedly he thought, or tried to think, of expedients, the more genuinely terrified and confused he became.…
V.
He noticed that she was flushed, when she came down the stairs toward him; and this did nothing to mitigate his uneasiness. She was excited, tremulous, and her excitement at once transmitted itself to him. He opened the screen door for her with an unexpectedly awkward gesture, a little strained—a confession of embarrassment which was very unusual with him, and which it gave him no pleasure to recognize.
“I thought—” he said, in a tone which he endeavored to make as light as possible, and at the same time somewhat cool—“we might go to the old bridge. I haven’t seen it for a whole month!”
“Five weeks, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes—I believe it is.”
For a few minutes they walked in silence. He stole a glance at her as they passed under a street-light, and saw that she was frowning.
“I suppose,” he said, “it’s been pretty quiet here. Did you get away at all?”
“Quiet!” She lifted her face and gave a charming little laugh, quite without bitterness. “It’s been like a tomb. Literally like a tomb. Or a mausoleum—which sounds even deader. No, I didn’t get away. My people are all abroad.… And, really, there were times—”
She broke off and made a shy, quick gesture with one hand, as if the thing transcended speech.
He saw what answer was expected of him; but also saw that there was no way of avoiding it.
“Times when what—” he said somewhat brusquely.
She paused, as if getting her breath, and then said:
“When I really thought I’d go melancholy mad. Have you ever been lonely?”
“Lonely! I should say so. But to tell the truth I rather like it.”
“Then I don’t believe you know what it is.”
“Don’t I! As a matter of fact, I’ve practiced loneliness all my life. I believe in it.”
“Oh!”
An uneasiness had come between them—as if, psychologically speaking, they had fallen out of step. He had deliberately failed to follow her lead, or to allow her to follow it; and they were both aware of this. Babcock felt a kind of momentary relief. Perhaps, after all, it wasn’t going to be so bad—he was keeping her at a distance. At the same time, he felt horribly conscience-stricken. He stole another glance at her—it was just as they turned the corner of the road into Langham Street, which led to the bridge—and saw that she was definitely unhappy. She had again lowered her chin into the orange scarf at her throat, and with her left hand was lifting a part of the scarf against her cheek. There was something extraordinarily pathetic about the gesture.
“Yes, you may not believe it, but I like it.”
“I don’t,” she said; and then on a lower tone, as if half to herself, she added: “Perhaps I’ve had too much of it.… Here, for example, in this funny little town—!… I don’t know what I would have done, without you.”
“Me!” Babcock’s laugh was somewhat hollow.
“Yes. Those dreadful people at the boarding-house! They’d have driven me mad.”
They had come to the bridge: at the middle of it they stopped, by tacit agreement, and rested their elbows on the hand-rail looking down at the black water. Everything was extraordinarily still. The water itself made scarcely a chuckle, the willow leaves which trailed in it were stirless, a faraway train whistle, with its mournful cry, only deepened the nocturnal peace. And suddenly it seemed to Babcock that all these things—the bridge, the river, the night, the willow trees, the profound silence—were in a subtle and terrifying way driving himself and this girl together. With a start he realized that his elbow was touching hers: and instantly he moved his arm.
“But those dreadful people—” he said deliberately and coolly—“as a matter of fact have been my chief source of entertainment. I have a passion for studying the human being at close range—it’s a habit worth cultivating. If you can do it without allowing them to infringe on you—”
She turned her head and looked at him rather intently.
“You mean to say—!”
“What?”
She averted her face from him quickly, almost angrily.
“Are you as heartless as all that? Heaven knows I don’t like them! But I don’t think I could do that.… Just what do you mean?”
“Just exactly that.… I like to surround them, so to speak, with my awareness. I like to know just what they’re doing and thinking, every minute of the day. And usually, after they’ve been there for a month or two, I flatter myself that I do …”
“I see.”
“Will you smoke?”
“No, thank you.”
Babcock struck a match. The bright flame danced before his face, and he was aware that the girl took the opportunity to look at him rather sharply.
“Well, then,” she said, “I suppose you’ve made no exception of me.”
“No.”
“How funny! How very funny! And I suppose you know all about me?”
“Well—I dare say I know a good deal.… I’ve enjoyed thinking about you—”
“Thank you—!”
“Wondering what you were up to—what you thought when you woke in the morning and looked up at the Botticelli ‘Venus,’ for example—or your blue chest of drawers—oh, all those little odds and ends that make up our lives—so many of them too complex for explicit expression. A kind of divination.”
“And all, I suppose, without the slightest feeling for me.”
“Well—why should I have?”
“And I, meanwhile, have been—in love with you! Isn’t it absurd?”
She turned and gave him a queer smile.
“I knew you were,” he said quietly. “That was one of the things that most interested me.… To tell the truth, I was deliberately experimenting with you. Why shouldn’t I be frank with you?”
“Why, indeed, since I’ve been so frank with you!”