Young Peoples Pride | Page 9

see would be a wraith of Nancy, wooden as a formal photograph, with none of her silences or mockeries about her till he felt like a painter who has somehow let the devil into his paintbox so that each stroke he makes goes a little fatally out of true from the vision in his mind till the canvas is only a crazy-quilt of reds and yellows. Now, perhaps, though, she might come, even though he was tired. He pressed the back of a hand against his eyes. She was coming to him now. He remembered one of their walks together--a walk they had taken some eight months ago, when they had been only three days engaged. Up Fifth Avenue; Forty-second Street, Forty-third, Forty-fourth, the crosstown glitter of lights, the reflected glow of Broadway, spraying the sky with dim gold-dust, begins to die a little behind them. Past pompous expensive windows full of the things that Oliver and Nancy will buy when Oliver's novel has gone into its first fifty thousand, content with the mere touch of each other's hands, they are so sure of each other now. Past people, dozens of people, getting fewer and fewer as Forty-sixth Street comes, Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, always a little arrogantly because none of the automatic figures they pass have ever eaten friendly bread together or had fire that can burn over them like clear salt water or the knowledge that the only thing worth having in life is the hurt and gladness of that fire. Buses pass like big squares of honeycomb on wheels, crowded with pale, tired bees--the stars march slowly from the western slope to their light viewless pinnacle in the center of the heavens, walking brightly like strong men in silvered armor--the stars and the buses, the buses and the stars, either and both of as little and much account--it would not really surprise either Oliver or Nancy if the next green bus that passes should start climbing into the sky like a clumsy bird.
The first intoxication is still upon them--they have told nobody except anyone who ever sees them together--they walk tactfully and never too close, both having a horror of publicly amatory couples, but like the king's daughter--or was it Solomon's Temple?--they are all glorious within. Fifty-fifth, Fifty-sixth, Fifty-seventh--the square in front of the Plaza--that tall chopped bulky tower lit from within like a model in a toyshop window--motors purring up to its door like thin dark cats, motors purring away. The fountain with the little statue--the pool a cool dark stone cracked with the gold of the lights upon it, and near the trees of the Park, half-hidden, gold Sherman, riding, riding, Victory striding ahead of him with a golden palm.
Ahead of them too goes Victory, over fear, over doubt, over littleness, her gold shoes ring like the noise of a sparkling sword, her steps are swift. They stand for an instant, hands locked, looking back at the long roller-coaster swoop of the Avenue, listening to the roll of tired wheels, the faint horns, the loud horns. They know each other now--their hands grip tighter--in the wandering instant the whole background of streets and tall buildings passes like breath from a mirror--for the instant without breath or clamor, they exist together, one being, and the being has neither flesh to use the senses too clumsily, nor human thoughts to rust at the will, but lives with the strength of a thunder and the heedlessness of a wave in a wide and bright eternity of the unspoken.
"All the same," says Nancy, when the moment passes, lifting a shoe with the concern of a kitten that has just discovered a thorn in its paw, "New York pavements are certainly hard on loving feet."

VII
So the picture came. And other pictures like it. And since the living that had made them was past for a little they were both fainter and in a measure brighter with more elfin colors than even that living had been which had made them glow at first. White memory had taken them into her long house of silence where everything is cool with the silver of Spring rain on leaves, she had washed from them the human pettiness, the human separateness, the human insufficiency to express the best that must come in any mortal relationship that lasts longer than the hour. They were not better in memory than they had been when lived, for the best remembrance makes only brilliant ghosts, but they were in their dim measure nearer the soul's perfection, for the tricks of the sounding board of the mind and the feckless instrument of the body had been put away. "We've had infinites already--infinites," thought Oliver, and didn't care about the ludicrous ineptness of the words. He smiled, turning back to the unwritten letter.