The Messengers | Page 6

out where, after
thirteen hours of moving at the rate of twenty-two knots an hour, she
should be at that moment. Having determined that fact to his own
satisfaction, he sent a wireless after the ship. It read: "It is now
midnight and you are in latitude 40 degrees north, longitude 68 degrees
west, and I have grown old and gray waiting for the sign."
The next morning, and for many days after, he was surprised to find
that the city went on as though she still were in it. With unfeeling
regularity the sun rose out of the East River. On Broadway
electric-light signs flashed, street-cars pursued each other, taxicabs

bumped and skidded, women, and even men, dared to look happy, and
had apparently taken some thought to their attire. They did not respect
even his widowerhood. They smiled upon him, and asked him jocularly
about the farm and his "crops," and what he was doing in New York.
He pitied them, for obviously they were ignorant of the fact that in New
York there were art galleries, shops, restaurants of great interest, owing
to the fact that Polly Kirkland had visited them. They did not know that
on upper Fifth Avenue were houses of which she had deigned to
approve, or which she had destroyed with ridicule, and that to walk that
avenue and halt before each of these houses was an inestimable
privilege.
Each day, with pathetic vigilance, Ainsley examined his heart for the
promised sign. But so far from telling him that the change he longed for
had taken place, his heart grew heavier, and as weeks went by and no
sign appeared, what little confidence he had once enjoyed passed with
them.
But before hope entirely died, several false alarms had thrilled him with
happiness. One was a cablegram from Gibraltar in which the only
words that were intelligible were "congratulate" and "engagement."
This lifted him into an ecstasy of joy and excitement, until, on having
the cable company repeat the message, he learned it was a request from
Miss Kirkland to congratulate two mutual friends who had just
announced their engagement, and of whose address she was uncertain.
He had hardly recovered from this disappointment than he was again
thrown into a tumult by the receipt of a mysterious package from the
custom-house containing an intaglio ring. The ring came from Italy,
and her ship had touched at Genoa. The fact that it was addressed in an
unknown handwriting did not disconcert him, for he argued that to
make the test more difficult she might disguise the handwriting. He at
once carried the intaglio to an expert at the Metropolitan Museum, and
when he was told that it represented Cupid feeding a fire upon an altar,
he reserved a stateroom on the first steamer bound for the
Mediterranean. But before his ship sailed, a letter, also from Italy, from
his aunt Maria, who was spending the winter in Rome, informed him
that the ring was a Christmas gift from her. In his rage he unjustly
condemned Aunt Maria as a meddling old busybody, and gave her ring
to the cook.

After two months of pilgrimages to places sacred to the memory of
Polly Kirkland, Ainsley found that feeding his love on post-mortems
was poor fare, and, in surrender, determined to evacuate New York.
Since her departure he had received from Miss Kirkland several letters,
but they contained no hint of a change in her affections, and search
them as he might, he could find no cipher or hidden message. They
were merely frank, friendly notes of travel; at first filled with gossip of
the steamer, and later telling of excursions around Cairo. If they held
any touch of feeling they seemed to show that she was sorry for him,
and as she could not regard him in any way more calculated to increase
his discouragement, he, in utter hopelessness, retreated to the solitude
of the farm. In New York he left behind him two trunks filled with such
garments as a man would need on board a steamer and in the early
spring in Egypt. They had been packed and in readiness since the day
she sailed away, when she had told him of the possible sign. But there
had been no sign. Nor did he longer believe in one. So in the
baggage-room of an hotel the trunks were abandoned, accumulating
layers of dust and charges for storage.
At the farm the snow still lay in the crevices of the rocks and beneath
the branches of the evergreens, but under the wet, dead leaves little
flowers had begun to show their faces. The "backbone of the winter
was broken" and spring was in the air. But as Ainsley was certain that
his heart also was