• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 14876 0

was crowded, and I walked beside her. She looked at me once, and she knew that I was following her, but I felt sure she was the kind of woman who would not readily call for help. She waited at the corner for the light to change. I waited beside her. It was all I could do to keep from saying to her, very, very softly, "Madame, will you please let me put my hand around your ankle? That's all I want to do, madame. It will save my life." She didn't look around again, but I could see that she was frightened. She crossed the street and I stayed at her side, and all the time a voice inside my head was pleading, "Please let me put my hand around your ankle. It will save my life. I just want to put my hand around your ankle. I'll be very happy to pay you." I took out my wallet and pulled out some bills. Then I heard someone behind me calling my name. I recognized the hearty voice of an advertising salesman who is in and out of our office. I put the wallet back in my pocket, crossed the street, and tried to lose myself in the crowd.

I walked over to Park Avenue, and then to Lexington, and went into a movie theatre. A stale, cold wind blew down on me from the ventilating machine, like the air in those Pullmans I had listened to coming down the river in the morning from Chicago and the Far West. The lobby was empty, and I felt as if I had stepped into a palace or a basilica. I took a narrow staircase that went up and then turned abruptly, separating itself from the splendor. The landings were dirty and the walls were bare. This stairway brought me into the balcony, and I sat there in the dark, thinking that nothing now was going to save me, that no pretty girl with new shoes was going to cross my path in time.

I took a train home, but I was too tired to go to Orpheo's and then sit through a movie. I drove from the station to the house and put the car in the garage. From there I heard the telephone ringing, and I waited in the garden until the ringing had stopped. As soon as I stepped into the living room, I noticed on the wall some dirty handprints that had been made by the children before they went away. They were near the baseboard and I had to get down on my knees to kiss them.

Then I sat in the living room for a long time. I fell asleep, and when I woke it was late; all the other houses were dark. I turned on a light. Peeping Tom would be putting on his slippers and his bathrobe, I thought, to begin his prowl through the back yards and gardens. Mrs. Marston would be on her knees, praying. I got down the Lin Yutang and began to read. I heard the Barstows' dog barking. The telephone began to ring.

"Oh, my darling!" I shouted when I heard Rachel's voice. "Oh, my darling! Oh, my darling!" She was crying. She was at Seal Harbor, It had rained for a week, and Tobey had a temperature of a hundred and four. "I'll leave now," I said. "I'll drive all night. I'll be there tomorrow. I'll get there in the morning. Oh, my darling!"

That was all. It was all over. I packed a bag and turned off the icebox and drove all night. We've been happy ever since. So far as I know, Mr. Marston has never stood outside our house in the dark, although I've seen him often enough on the station platform and at the country club. His daughter Lydia is going to be married next month, and his sallow wife was recently cited by one of the national charities for her good works. Everyone here is well.

THE SUPERINTENDENT

The alarm began ringing at six in the morning. It sounded faintly in the first-floor apartment that Chester Coolidge was given as part wages of an apartment-house superintendent, but it woke him at once, for he slept with the percussive noises of the building machinery on his consciousness, as if they were linked to his own well-being. In the dark, he dressed quickly and ran through the lobby to the back stairs, where his path was obstructed by a peach basket full of dead roses and carnations. He kicked this aside and ran lightly down the iron stairs to the basement and along a hall whose brick walls, encrusted with paint, looked like a passage