Free A Young Man's Heart by Cornell Woolrich Page B

fixed each in its proper place as the darkening sky set them off. Unbelievable that a day or two ago at about this time each evening the thought of leaving here had chilled him with fright, that these same dissolving beams of light had been a rosary of procrastination for him, told off one by one with the prayer, “Another night gained, another night gained.” All at once he turned his head to the two people at the table with him and heard himself say, “We’ll miss the train.”
    Giraldy, without troubling to look at him, remarked, “Well, go out and get a carriage.”
    Blair stood up from the table and walked out of the room, leaving the two of them there together, with their mockery of love and their reading of one another’s eyes, feigning youth and loyalty and candor. He crossed the patio, and it was quite dark now, and looked up and could see stars in the square black opening above him. They disappeared for a moment while he passed through the street-doorway, and then he was out of the house and the whole heavens seemed full of them. At the very bottom of the sky, in the west, a stripe of green, lengthwise like a snake, still marked where the light had last been.
    He walked as far as the corner and whistled and motioned with his arm, summoning the solitary hack that was standing as usual outside the entrance to the Legation grounds. The driver slowly guided it around in a half-circle, it had been facing the other way, and made for him, and Blair, without waiting for it to stop, jumped on the step and accompanied it back to the house, one arm and leg swinging free. Just as they drew up, Mariquita came out of the doorway. Or rather she stepped forward as though she had been standing there waiting.
    “You’re going now?” she said anxiously.
    “As soon as he comes out.”
    They withdrew to the opposite side of the street, while the coachman alighted and went in to announce himself.
    They crouched against the plaster wall, ghostly white now in the darkness, a mantilla of blue tracery thrown over it and them by the shadow of the bougainvillea sprays above, shoulder to shoulder, their arms about one another, looking toward the house and the empty carriage standing before the door. And there, all at once, their childhood came to an end. They were silent, and they were no longer as young as they had been yesterday.
    Flowers perhaps had been thrown over this wall, flowers snatched at by a devout hand and never allowed to touch the ground. More than once it must have heard light whispers and the throaty trill of a guitar. And long ago, when love was still abroad in the land, perhaps someone clutching a small black lace fan had one night dropped lightly down from it into a pair of waiting arms. And Estelle, too, staring at it from her window across the street, had seen outlined upon it the portent of a better course of action. So now these two, children until a moment ago, who had played at its foot and whose hands had carelessly touched it a hundred times, found that it had bequeathed them their first sorrow.
    “Here, we will stand here, where no one is looking.”
    “You will remember Mariquita?”
    “And will you remember Blair?”
    “And you will come back like you said?”
    They clasped each other’s hands and kissed the knotted fingers, their heads bent close together. It seemed not to occur to them to kiss upon the lips, they were so intent upon holding one another’s hands.
    “When you grow up maybe you’ll be the most beautiful girl in the city. But pretend to all of them. Don’t really love anybody.”
    “But come back Blerr I like you so.”
    Giraldy came out of the house. They dropped their hands to their sides. The coachman appeared, carrying Blair’s bag. Blair started over toward them.
    “Adios.” She remained standing there.
    Blair got into the carriage from one side as Giraldy stepped in at the other. “San Lázaro,” he directed indolently. Blair looked back. She was still there, but gave