Authors -- Fiction; Ghosts -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
Susannah floated with the strong main current of the crowd up Broadway
and then, with a side current, a little down Broadway. Eddies took her
into Forty-second Street, and whirled her back. And all the time she was
in the crowd, but not of it--she was above it. She was looking down on
people--she could see the tops of their heads. Susannah kept chuckling
over an extraordinary truth she discovered.
"I must remember to tell Glorious Lutie," she said to herself, "how few
people ever brush their hats."
While one self was noting this amusing fact, however, the other was
listening to conversations; the snatches of talk that drifted up to her.
"Let's go to a midnight show somewhere," a peevish wife-voice suggested.
"No, _sir_!" a gruff husband-voice answered. "Li'l' ole beddo looks
pretty good to muh. I can't hit the hay too soon."
"What's Broadway got on Market Street?" a blithe boy's voice demanded.
"Take the view from Twin Peaks at night. Why, it has Broadway beat forty
ways from the jack."
"I'll say so!" a girl's voice agreed.
Theaters were empty now, but restaurants were filling. In an incredibly
short time, this phantasmagoria of movement, this kaleidoscope of color,
this hurly-burly of sound had shattered, melted, fallen to silence.
People disappeared as though by magic from the street; now there were
great gaps of sidewalk where nobody appeared. Susannah--both of her,
because now she seemed to have become two people permanently--felt
lonely. She quickened her pace, her floating rather, to catch up with a
figure ahead. It was a girl, just an everyday girl, in a white linen
suit and a white sailor hat topping a mass of black hair. She carried a
handbag. Susannah found herself following, step by step, behind this
girl whose face she had as yet not seen. She was floating; yet every
time she tried to see the top of that sailor hat her vision became
blurred. It was annoying; but this stealthy pursuit was pleasant,
somehow--satisfying.
"They've been shadowing me," said Susannah to herself. "Now I'm
shadowing. I've helped the Carbonado Company to rob orphans. I'm going
to break my promise to go to Jamaica tomorrow. Isn't it glorious to
float and be a criminal!"
So she followed westward on Forty-second Street and reached the Public
Library corner of Fifth Avenue, which stretched now deserted except
where knots of people awaited the omnibusses. Such a knot had gathered
on that corner. Suddenly the girl in white raised her hand, waved; a
woman in a light-blue summer evening gown answered her signal from the
crowd; they ran toward each other. They were going to have a talk.
Susannah floated toward them. The air-currents made her a little
wabbly--but wasn't it fun, eavesdropping and caring not the least bit
about manners!
"My train doesn't start until one," said the white linen suit. "It's no
use going back to my room--the night is so hot. I've been to the Summer
Garden, and I'm killing time."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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