The Long Run

At the moment when our glances joined, his had paused on a lady seated at some distance from our corner. Immersed, at first, in the satisfaction of finding myself again with Merrick, I had been only half aware of this lady, as of one of the few persons present whom I did not know, or had failed to remember. There was nothing in her appearance to challenge my attention or to excite my curiosity, and I don’t suppose I should have looked at her again if I had not noticed that my friend was doing so.

She was a woman of about forty-seven, with fair faded hair and a young figure. Her gray dress was handsome but ineffective, and her pale and rather serious face wore a small unvarying smile which might have been pinned on with her ornaments. She was one of the women in whom increasing years show rather what they have taken than what they have bestowed, and only on looking closely did one see that what they had taken must have been good of its kind.

Phil Cumnor and another man were talking to her, and the very intensity of the attention she bestowed on them betrayed the straining of rebellious thoughts. She never let her eyes stray or her smile drop; and at the proper moment I saw she was ready with the proper sentiment.

The party, like most of those that Mrs. Cumnor gathered about her, was not composed of exceptional beings. The people of the old vanished New York set were not exceptional: they were mostly cut on the same convenient and unobtrusive pattern; but they were often exceedingly “nice.” And this obsolete quality marked every look and gesture of the lady I was scrutinizing.

While these reflections were passing through my mind I was aware that Merrick’s eyes rested still on her. I took a cross-section of his look and found in it neither surprise nor absorption, but only a certain sober pleasure just about at the emotional level of the rest of the room.

If he continued to look at her, his expression seemed to say, it was only because, all things considered, there were fewer reasons for looking at anybody else.

This made me wonder what were the reasons for looking at her; and as a first step toward enlightenment I said:—“I’m sure I’ve seen the lady over there in gray—”

Merrick detached his eyes and turned them on me with a wondering look.

“Seen her? You know her.” He waited. ”Don’t you know her? It’s Mrs. Reardon.”

I wondered that he should wonder, for I could not remember, in the Cumnor group or elsewhere, having known any one of the name he mentioned.

“But perhaps,” he continued, “you hadn’t heard of her marriage? You knew her as Mrs. Trant.”

I gave him back his stare. “Not Mrs. Philip Trant?”

“Yes; Mrs. Philip Trant.”

“Not Paulina?”

“Yes—Paulina,” he said, with a just perceptible delay before the name.

In my surprise I continued to stare at him. He averted his eyes from mine after a moment, and I saw that they had strayed back to her. “You find her so changed?” he asked.

Something in his voice acted as a warning signal, and I tried to reduce my astonishment to less unbecoming proportions. “I don’t find that she looks much older.”

“No. Only different?” he suggested, as if there were nothing new to him in my perplexity.

“Yes—awfully different.”

“I suppose we’re all awfully different. To you, I mean—coming from so far?”

“I recognized all the rest of you,” I said, hesitating. “And she used to be the one who stood out most.”

There was a flash, a wave, a stir of something deep down in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. ”That’s the difference.”

“I see it is. She—she looks worn down. Soft but blurred, like the figures in that tapestry behind her.”

He glanced at her again, as if to test the exactness of my analogy.

“Life wears everybody down,” he said.

“Yes—except those it makes more distinct. They’re the rare ones, of course; but she was rare.”

He stood up suddenly, looking old and tired. “I believe I’ll be off. I wish you’d come down to my place for Sunday…. No, don’t shake hands—I want to slide away unawares.”

He had backed away to the threshold and was turning the noiseless doorknob. Even Mrs. Cumnor’s doorknobs had tact and didn’t tell.

“Of course I’ll come,” I promised warmly. In the last ten minutes he had begun to interest me again.

“All right Good-bye.” Half through the door he paused to add:—”She remembers you. You ought to speak to her.”

“I’m going to. But tell me a little more.” I thought I saw a shade of constraint on his face, and did not add, as I had meant to: “Tell me—because she interests me—what wore her down?” Instead, I asked: “How soon after Trant’s death did she remarry?”

He seemed to make an effort of memory. “It was seven years ago, I think.”

“And is Reardon here to-night?”

“Yes; over there, talking to Mrs. Cumnor.”

I looked across the broken groupings and saw a large glossy man with straw-coloured hair and a red face, whose shirt and shoes and complexion seemed all to have received a coat of the same expensive varnish.