Miss Wynn placed her hand lightly on Bles’s
arm, and for a moment he paused. A thrill ran
through him as he felt again the weight of a little
hand and saw beside him the dark beautiful eyes of
a girl. He felt again the warm quiver of her
body. Then he awoke to the lighted church and
the moving, well-dressed throng. The hand on
his arm was not so small; but it was well-gloved,
and somehow the fancy struck him that it was a cold
hand and not always sympathetic in its touch.
Twenty-three
“I did not know the world was so large,”
remarked Zora as she and Mrs. Vanderpool flew east
and northward on the New York-New Orleans limited.
For a long time the girl had given herself up to the
sheer delight of motion. Gazing from the window,
she compared the lands she passed with the lands she
knew: noting the formation of the cotton; the
kind and growth of the trees; the state of the roads.
Then the comparisons became infinite, endless; the
world stretched on and on until it seemed mere distance,
and she suddenly realized how vast a thing it was and
spoke.
Mrs. Vanderpool was amused. “It’s
much smaller than one would think,” she responded.
When they came to Atlanta Zora stared and wrinkled
her brows. It was her first large city.
The other towns were replicas of Toomsville; strange
in number, not in kind; but this was different, and
she could not understand it. It seemed senseless
and unreasonable, and yet so strangely so that she
was at a loss to ask questions. She was very
solemn as they rode on and night came down with dreams.
She awoke in Washington to new fairylands and wonders;
the endless going and coming of men; great piles that
challenged heaven, and homes crowded on homes till
one could not believe that they were full of living
things. They rolled by Baltimore and Philadelphia,
and she talked of every-day matters: of the sky
which alone stood steadfast amid whirling change;
of bits of empty earth that shook themselves here and
there loose from their burden of men, and lay naked
in the cold shining sunlight.
All the while the greater questions were beating and
curling and building themselves back in her brain,
and above all she was wondering why no one had told
her before of all this mighty world. Mrs. Vanderpool,
to whom it seemed too familiar for comment, had said
no word; or, if she had spoken, Zora’s ears
had not been tuned to understand; and as they flew
toward the towering ramparts of New York, she sat
up big with the terror of a new thought: suppose
this world were full yet of things she did not know
nor dream of? How could she find out? She
must know.
When finally they were settled in New York and sat
high up on the Fifth Avenue front of the hotel, gradually
the inarticulate questioning found words, albeit strange
ones.
“It reminds me of the swamp,” she said.
