Part 11 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: An Idyl of Central Park]
It was nearly five o'clock on an afternoon early in May when Dr. Richard Demarest bicycled up Fifth Avenue and into Central Park. He looked at his watch to make sure of the hour, and then he dismounted on the western side of the broad drive, whence he could see everybody who might seek to enter the Park long before they were likely to discover him. He had reason to believe that Miss Minnie Contoit, who had refused to marry him only a fortnight before, and whom he had not seen since, was going to take a little turn on her wheel in the Park that afternoon.
As it had happened, he had gone into the club to lunch that morning, and he had met her only brother, with whom he had always carefully maintained the most pleasant relations. By ingeniously pumping Ralph Contoit he had ascertained that the girl he loved was going out at five with her father and her grandfather. The brother had been even franker than brothers usually are.
”I say,” he had declared, ”I don't know what has come over Minnie this last ten days; she's been as cross as two sticks, and generally she's pretty even-tempered for a girl, you know. But she's been so touchy lately; she nearly took my head off this morning! I guess you had better have Dr. Cheever come around and prescribe for her. Cocaine for a bad temper is what she needs now, I can tell you!”
Although he was a rejected lover, he was not melancholy. In the springtime youth feels the joy of living, and Richard Demarest took delight in the beauty of the day. The foliage was everywhere fresh and vigorous after the persistent rains of April, and a scent of young blossoms came to him from a clump of bushes behind the path. A group of half a dozen girls flashed past him on their wheels, laughing lightly as they sped along home, each of them with a bunch of fragrant lilacs lashed to her handle-bar.
He followed them with his eye till they turned out of the Park; and then at the entrance he saw the girl he was waiting for riding her bicycle carefully across the car-tracks in Fifty-ninth Street. Her father and grandfather were with her, one on each side.
Dr. Demarest sprang on his wheel and sped on ahead. When he came to the foot of the Mall he swerved to the westward. Then he turned and retraced his path, reaching the branching of the ways just as General Contoit with his son and granddaughter arrived there.
The General was nearly seventy, but he sat his wheel with a military stiffness, holding himself far more carefully than his son, the Professor. Between them came Miss Minnie Contoit, a slim slip of a girl, in a light-brown cloth suit, with her pale, blond hair coiled tightly under a brown alpine hat. They had just come up a hill, and the General's face was ruddy, but the girl's was as colorless as ever.
Demarest had often wondered why it was that no exercise ever brought a flush to her ivory cheeks.
He watched her now as her grandfather caught sight of him, and cried out: ”h.e.l.lo, Doctor! Out for a spin?”
He saw her look up, and then she glanced away swiftly, as though to choose her course of conduct before she acknowledged his greeting.
”Good afternoon, General; how well you are looking this spring!” said Demarest. ”Good afternoon, Professor. And you, too, Miss Contoit. Going round the Park, are you? May I join you?” He looked at her as he asked the question.
It was her grandfather who answered: ”Come along, come along! We shall be delighted to have you!”
She said nothing. They were all four going up on the east side of the Mall, and they had already left behind them the bronze ma.s.s-meeting of misshapen celebrities which disfigures that broad plateau. A Park omnibus was loitering in front of them, and they could not pa.s.s it four abreast.
”Come on, papa,” cried the girl; ”let's leave grandpa and Dr. Demarest to take care of each other! We had better go ahead and show them the way!”
It struck Dr. Demarest that she was glad to get away from him, as though her sudden flight was an instinctive shrinking from his wooing. He smiled and held this for a good sign. He was in no hurry to have his talk out with her, and he did not mean to begin it until a proper opportunity presented itself. He was glad to have her in front of him, where he could follow her movements and get delight out of the play of the suns.h.i.+ne through the branches as it fell molten on her fine, light hair. It pleased him to watch her firm strokes as they came to a hill and to see that she rode with no waste of energy.
The General had done his duty in the long years of the war, and he liked to talk about what he had seen. Dr. Demarest was a good listener, and perhaps this was one reason why the old soldier was always glad of his company. The young doctor was considerate, also, and he never increased his pace beyond the gait most comfortable for his elder companion; and as they drew near to the Metropolitan Museum he guided the General away to the Fifth Avenue entrance and thence back to the main road, by which excursion they avoided the long and steep hill at the top of which stands Cleopatra's Needle. And as they had ridden on the level rather rapidly they almost caught up with the General's son and granddaughter.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I'M SURE HE'D RATHER TALK TO YOU, MY DEAR, SO YOU CAN RUN ALONG TOGETHER”]
The two couples were close to each other as they went around the reservoir, along the shaded road on the edge of the Park, with the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue down below. Everywhere the gra.s.s was fresh and fragrant; and everywhere the squirrels were frequent and impertinent, cutting across the road almost under the wheels, or sitting up on the narrow sward in impudent expectation of the nuts gently thrown to them from the carriages.
When they came to McGowan's Pa.s.s he saw the Professor suddenly dismount, and he thought that Minnie was going on alone and that her father had to call her back.
”Shall we rest here for a while, father?” asked the Professor, as the General and the Doctor dismounted.
”Just as you say,” the old soldier answered; ”just as you say. I'm not at all fatigued, not at all. But don't let us old fogies keep you young folks from your exercise. Minnie, you and the Doctor can ride on--”
”But, grandpa--” she began, in protest.
”I'll stay here a minute or two with your father,” the General continued. ”The Doctor is very kind to let me talk to him, but I'm sure he'd rather talk to you, my dear; so you two can run along together.”
”I shall be delighted to accompany Miss Contoit if she cares to have a little spin,” said Dr. Demarest, turning to her.
”Oh, well,” she answered, a little ungraciously; then she smiled swiftly, and added: ”I always do what grandpa wants. Don't you think I'm a very good little girl?” And with that she started forward, springing lightly to her seat after her bicycle was in motion.