her own room was locked and the key was missing. To leave the apartment
she must pass through the room where Miss Manuel lay asleep. She held
her breath, but crossed in safety, though Miss Manuel stirred and
murmured something, as if subconsciously warned of danger. Miss
Stansbury closed the door noiselessly behind her and stood silent for a
moment in the hall, glancing about her and planning the wisest method
of getting away. She knew better than to enter any of the hotel
elevators. While there was no certainty that she would be detained if
she did, there had been a great deal of interest in her when she
arrived at the hotel, and there was every chance that some employe
might think it a wise precaution to ask her nurse a question or two
after she departed. Then Miss Manuel would be hot upon her trail, and
her day would be spoiled. She crept cautiously along the rear halls,
keeping out of sight on each floor when the elevators were passing, and
meeting only strangers and one preoccupied porter. Her rooms were on
the fifth floor, but she descended the four flights of stairs in
safety, and, going triumphantly out of the rear entrance of the hotel,
found herself in the quiet street on which it opened. The great
building was on a corner, and as she crossed its threshold she saw a
trolley-car passing along the avenue at her right. On a quick impulse
she signalled. When it stopped she entered and seated herself in a
corner, surveying her fellow-passengers with seeming unconcern, though
her breath came fast. She was safe; she was off! She decided to ride on
until she made her plans and knew in more detail what should be done
with this gift of the gods, a day that was all her own.
It had been a long time since she had been alone, she suddenly
remembered. There had been outings, of course, and shopping expeditions
and the like, but always Miss Manuel or one of her kind had been at her
elbow--sometimes professionally cheerful, sometimes professionally
grave, but at all times professionally watchful. The woman exulted
fiercely in her new-found liberty. She had hours before her--free,
glorious hours. She would use them, fill them, squander them in a
prodigal spending, following every impulse, indulging every desire, for
they were hers and they were her last. In the depths of her brain lay a
resolution as silent, as deadly, as a coiled serpent waiting to strike.
She would enter no asylums, she would endure no more "absences," she
would have no more supervision, no more consultations, no more
half-concealed fear of friends, no more pity from strangers. There was
a way of escaping all this forever, and she knew it and would take it,
though it led across the dim threshold over which she could never
return.
The car hummed as it sped along. At a distance she saw an entrance to
Central Park, and from the inside the branches of trees seemed to wave
a salute to her in honor of her freedom. She signalled to the conductor
and left the car, retracing her steps until she entered the Park. She
was far up-town, near the northern end of it, and the paths, warm in
the spring sunshine, were almost deserted. For a while she strolled
idly about, her senses revelling in the freshness and beauty around
her, in the green vistas that opened to right and left, and the soft
breeze that fanned her face. Children, riding tricycles or rolling
hoops, raced past her; and once, after she had walked almost an hour, a
small boy of four slipped his hand into her gloved one and trotted
beside her for a moment, to the open scandal of his nurse. She smiled
down at him, pleased by the touch of his little fingers. When he left,
as abruptly as he had joined her, and in response to a stentorian Irish
summons from the rear, she felt a rather surprising degree of regret.
The momentary contact had given her a pleasant sense of companionship;
for the first time it came to her that it would be better to have a
sharer of this day of days--no hireling, no scientific-eyed caretaker,
but a little child or a friend, some one, any one, whom she liked and
who liked her, and who, like the little boy, did not know the truth
about her.
Her spirits dropped as suddenly as they had risen, and she felt tired
and disappointed. Almost unconsciously she dropped on a bench to rest,
her eyes still following the figure of the child, now almost out of
sight around a distant bend. The bench was off the path, and she had
been too preoccupied when she sat down to notice that it had another
occupant; but as the figure of her little friend vanished and she
turned her eyes away with a sigh, she found herself looking into those
of a man. He was very young, hardly more than a boy, and he occupied
the far end of the seat, one arm thrown across the back of it, his
knees crossed, and his body so turned that he faced her. The thing she
saw in his eyes held her own fastened to them, at first in surprise,
then in sudden comprehension. It was hunger. With a long look she took
him in--the pinched pallor of his smooth, handsome young face, the
feverish brightness of his gray eyes, the shabbiness of his well-made,
well-fitting clothes, even the rent in the side of one of his
patent-leather shoes. His linen was clean, and his cuffs were fastened
with cheap black links; she reflected instinctively that he had pawned
those whose place they obviously filled, and then her mind returned at
once to her first discovery, that he was hungry. There was no mistaking
it. She had never seen hunger in a face before, but she recognized it
now. He had taken off his hat and dropped it on the bench beside him.
His brown hair was short and wavy, and one lock on his left temple was
white. He had been writing a note, or possibly an advertisement for
work, with a stub of lead-pencil on a scrap of paper resting on his
knee, and now he suddenly raised his eyes--either in an abstracted
search for the right word or because her appearance had startled him.
Without hesitation she spoke to him.
"Pardon me," she said, impersonally. "May I ask you some questions?"
He looked at her, and the understanding of his situation revealed in
her glance brought the blood to his face. He straightened himself, his
lips parting for a reply, but she gave him no time to speak.
"I am a stranger here," she continued, "and New York is not always kind
to strangers. You seem to be unhappy, too. I wonder if we cannot help
each other."
He smiled with an unyouthful bitterness.
"I'm afraid I'm not much use--to myself or any one else," he answered,
with hard deliberation. Then his face underwent a change as he looked
at hers and read in it, inexperienced as he was, some of the tragic
writing of Fate's inexorable hand. His voice showed his altered mood.
"Of course," he added, quickly, "if there's really anything I can do. I
know the town well enough. Perhaps I can help you if you want to get
anywhere. What is it you would like?"
Her face, under the sudden idea which came to her, could hardly be said
to brighten, but it changed, becoming less of a mask, more human. She
felt a thrill of unaccustomed interest, less in him than in the plan
which he unconsciously suggested. Here at last was something to do.
Here was a companion who did not know her. He was watching her closely
now, and it came to him for the first time, with a sense of surprise,
that this strange woman who had spoken to him was not old, and was even
attractive.
"I think you can help me, if you will," she went on, quietly. "As I
have said, I am a stranger in New York. I have never seen anything of
it except the streets I passed through this morning between the Park
and my hotel. But I've always wanted to see it, and to-day is my first
and only opportunity, for I am going away to-night."
He surveyed her thoughtfully. The shadow had returned to his face, and
it was plain that under his air of courteous interest stirred the
self-despair she had surprised in her first look at him.
"Of course I can make out a sight-seer's list for you," he said, when
she stopped, "and I will, with pleasure. I think you'd better drop into
the Metropolitan Art Galleries while you're in the Park. I'll write the
other places in their street order going down-town, so you won't waste
time doubling on your tracks. Have you a bit of paper?"
He began to fumble in his own pockets as he spoke, but vaguely, as one
who knows the search is vain. She shook her head.
"No," she told him, "and I don't want one. That isn't my idea at all--a
list of places to look up all alone and a dismal round of dreary
sight-seeing. What I would like"--she smiled almost demurely--"is a
'personally conducted' tour. Are you very busy?"
He flushed again and looked at her, this time with a veiled suspicion
in his glance. She met it with such calm appreciation that it changed
to one of surprised doubt. She knew perfectly what was passing in his
mind, and it caused her no more concern than the puzzled silence of a
child who has heard a new word. She went on as complacently as if he
were the little boy who had walked beside her a few moments before.
"In Paris and London," she remarked, "one can engage a guide, a
gentleman, for a day at a fixed price. Probably there are such guides
here in New York, if I knew where they were to be found and had the
time to look for them. You are much younger than I am. You might almost
be my son! Moreover, you will not mind my saying that I fancied you
were unemployed and possibly were looking for employment. You can
hardly help seeing the definite connection in all this."
His eyes met hers for a moment and then dropped. He blushed boyishly.
"I see you're trying to help me," he murmured, apologetically.
She went on as if she had not heard him.
"Let me employ you for the day. I need amusement, interest,
occupation--more than you can imagine. I am in the same mood, as far as
desolation and discouragement go, that you are in. I must be about,
seeing people and diverting my mind. We can each supply the other with
one thing that we need. I have money. To earn a little of that
professionally, by a humane service, should really appeal to you."
Something in her voice as she uttered the last words made him turn
toward her again. As he looked, his young face softened. She waited in
silence for what he would say.
He sat up and straightened his shoulders with a quick gesture.
"You are right," he said, "but I'm awfully afraid you'll get the worst
of it. I'm not an ornamental escort for a lady, as you see." He looked
at his broken shoe, and then at her. Her expression showed entire
indifference to the point he had raised.
"We will consider it settled," she said. "You will take my purse and
pay our joint expenses. I think," she went on, as she handed it to him,
"we'll omit the Metropolitan. After miles of the Louvre and the
Luxembourg and the Vatican, I don't seem to crave miles of that.
Suppose we take a cab and drive round. I want to see the streets, and
the crowds, and the different types of men and women, and the slums. I
used to be interested in Settlement work, long ago."
"Pardon me," he said. "You have won your case. I will serve you to the
best of my ability. But as a preliminary I insist on counting the money
in this purse, and on your seeing that my accounts are all right."
"Do as you like about that," she replied, indifferently, but her glance
rested on him with a glint of approval.
He deliberately counted the bills. "There are three hundred and forty
dollars," he said, replacing them.
She nodded absently. She had sunk into a momentary reverie, from which
he did not arouse her until she suddenly looked at her watch. "Why,
it's after twelve!" she exclaimed, with more animation than she had yet
shown. "We'll go to Delmonico's or Sherry's for luncheon, and make our
programme while we're there."
He started, and leaned forward, fixing his eyes on her, but she did not
meet them. She replaced her watch in her belt with a successful
assumption of abstraction, but she was full of doubt as to how he would
take this first proposition. The next instant the bench trembled under
the force with which he had dropped back on it.
"God!" he cried, hoarsely, "it's all a put-up job to feed me because
you suspect I'm hungry! No, you don't even suspect--you _know_ I'm
hungry!"
She put her hand on his arm, and the gesture silenced him.
"Be quiet," she said. "Suppose you are hungry? What of it? Is it a
disgrace to be hungry? Men and women deliberately cultivate the
condition! Come," she ended, as she rose abruptly, "keep to your
bargain. We both need our luncheon."
He replaced the purse in the inside-pocket of his coat, and rose. They
walked a few moments without a word. She noticed how well he carried
himself and how muscular and athletic his figure appeared even in its
shabby clothes. As they strolled toward the nearest exit she talked of
the Park, and asked him a few matter-of-fact questions, to which he
replied with growing animation. "I can't give you figures and
statistics, I'm afraid," he added, smiling.
She shook her head. "It would be sad if you could," she said. "Give me
anything but information. As for statistics, I've a constitutional
distaste for them. Where can we find a cab?"
"We won't find a cab," he explained, with an authoritative independence
which somehow appealed to her. "We'll take this trolley-car and ride to
within a short walk of Delmonico's. After luncheon we'll find cabs at
every turn."
He helped her into a car as he spoke, and paid their fare from her
purse, flushing as he had to change a five-dollar note to do so. The
simple act emphasized for him, as no words could have done, his
peculiar relation to this strange woman, whom he had never seen until
half an hour ago. Balancing the purse in his hand, he glanced at her,
taking in almost unconsciously the tragic droop of her lips, the
prematurely gray locks in her dark hair, and the unchanging gloom of
her brown eyes.
"How do you know I won't drop off the car at some corner and abscond
with this?" he asked, in a low voice.
She looked at him calmly.
"I think I know you will not. But if you did it would hurt me."
"Would it spoil your day?"
"Yes," she conceded, "it would spoil my day."
"Well," he announced, judiciously, "you shall not have to reproach me
with anything of that kind. Your day shall be a success if I can make
it so."
His manner was more than gentle. His mood was one of gratitude and
pleasant expectation. He was getting to know her and was sorry for
her--possibly because she trusted him and was sorry for him. She was
not the companion he would have chosen for a day's outing, and it was
doubtful if she would be any too cheerful; but he would serve her
loyally, wherever this queer adventure led, and he was young enough to
appreciate its possibilities. Inwardly she was amused by his little
affectation of experience, of ripe age addressing youth, but it was so
unconsciously done, so unconquerably youthful, that it added to the
interest he had aroused in her. She liked, too, his freshness and
boyish beauty, and his habit of asserting his sense of honor above
everything. Above all things, she liked his ignorance of her. To him,
she was merely a woman like other women; there was a satisfaction to
her in that thought as deep as it was indescribable. The only other
occupants of the car were a messenger-boy, lost to his surroundings in
a paper-covered novel, and a commercial traveller whose brow was
corrugated by mental strain over a notebook.
"There are some things I would like to do in New York," she confided.
"We will do them now--lunch at Delmonico's, go sight-seeing all the
afternoon, dine at Sherry's, and go to the theatre this evening. Which
is the best play in town?"
"Well--er--that, you know, depends on what you like," hazarded the boy,
sagely. "Do you prefer comedy, tragedy, or melodrama?"
She reflected.
"Something light," she decided; "something airy and effervescent--with
no problems or even thoughts in it."
His eyes twinkled as he smiled at her. If these were her tastes, she
was getting on, he reflected, and the vista of the long day before him
offered attractions.
"'Peter Pan'!" he exclaimed. "That's all those things. I've not seen
it, but I've read the criticisms, and I know a fellow who has gone five
times."
"Testimony enough," agreed his companion. "We'll go to 'Peter Pan.' Now
tell me something about yourself."
"Is that in the bond?"
"No. That would be a gift."
"I'd--I'd rather not, if you don't mind."
He indulged in his inevitable painful blush as he spoke, but she stared
at him without pity and with a sudden hauteur which gave him a glimpse
of another side of her complex nature. This woman who picked up strange
youths in the street and spent the day with them was obviously
accustomed to unquestioning deference from others. He edged away from
her, firm but unhappy.
"You're right," she said, at last. "We'll add a clause to our compact
and play we're disembodied spirits. Neither of us will ask the other a
personal question."
"Agreed, and thank you. It's not that I wouldn't be flattered, you
know, by your interest, and all that," he went on, awkwardly. "It's
only because it's such a beastly harrowing recital and shows me up in
such--such an inefficient light. It would depress you, and it couldn't
do me any good. The things about myself are what I want to get away
from--for a while."
They were soon at Delmonico's, and she followed him into the main
dining-room, where she selected a table at a window looking out on the
Avenue. The head waiter glanced at him, hesitated, surveyed her, and
showed that he was indeed a good servant who knew his own. He hovered
over them with deepening interest as they scanned the menu.
The boy smiled at his companion, trying not to notice the smell of the
food around them, nor the horrible sinking sensation which overwhelmed
him at intervals. A sickening fear swept over him that he would faint
before luncheon came--faint on a lady's hands, and from starvation at
that! He plunged into conversation with reckless vivacity.
When the waiter came with the oysters she set the example of eating
them at once. Her companion followed it in leisurely fashion. She told
herself that he was a thoroughbred, and that she had not been mistaken
in him, but she would almost have preferred to see him eat wolfishly.
His restraint got on her nerves. She could not eat, though she made a
pretence of it. When he had eaten his soup with the same careful
deliberation, a little color came into his face. She observed this, and
her tension relaxed.
"The last time I was here," he said, absently, "was two years ago. One
of the fellows at New Haven had a birthday, and we celebrated it in the
corner room just above this. It was a pretty lively dinner. We kept it
up from seven o'clock until two in the morning, and then we all went
out on the Avenue and sat down in the middle of the street, where it
was cool, to smoke and talk it over. That was Davidson's idea. It
annoyed the cabmen and policemen horribly. They have such ready tempers
and such torpid minds."
The recital and the picture it called up amused her.
"What else did you do?" she asked, with interest.
"I'm afraid I don't remember much of it," he confessed. "I know we were
pretty silly; but I do remember how foolish the head waiter looked when
Davidson insisted on kissing him good-bye in the hall out there, and
cried because he didn't know when he'd see him again. Of course you
can't see how funny that was, because you don't know Davidson. He was
the most dignified chap at college, and hated gush more than any one I
ever knew."
He drank the last of his black coffee with a sigh of content, and blew
a last ring from the cigar she had insisted that he should smoke.
"Don't you think," he hazarded, "that it would be jolly to drive up and
down Broadway and Fifth Avenue for an hour or two? If you want crowds,
they're there; and if you see anything worth closer inspection, we can
get out and look at it."
She agreed, and he paid the bill, tipping the waiter discriminatingly.
As their hansom threaded its way through the crowded street she rarely
smiled, but her sombre eyes took in everything, and she "said things,"
as the boy put it, which he recalled and quoted years afterward.
Incidentally she talked of herself, though always without giving him a
clew as to who she was and where she came from. Several times, as a
face in the passing throng caught her interest, she outlined for him in
a few terse words the character of its possessor. He was interested,
but he must have unconsciously suggested a certain unbelief in her
intuition, for once she stopped speaking and looked at him sharply.
"You think I don't know," she said, "but I do. We always know, until we
kill the gift with conventionalities. We're born with an intuitive
knowledge of character. Savages have it, and animals, and babies. We
lose it as we advance in civilization, for then we distrust our
impressions and force our likes and dislikes to follow the dictates of
policy. I've worked hard to keep and develop my insight, and behold my
reward! I recognized you at the first glance as the perfect companion
of a day."
The boy's face flamed with pleasure.
"Then it is a success?"
"It is a success. But it's also five o'clock. What next?"
"Then it's been a success?" he repeated, dreamily--"so far, I mean.
We've done so little in one way, but I'm awfully glad you've liked it.
We'll drop into Sherry's now for a cup of tea and a buttered English
muffin and the beautiful ladies and the Hungarian Band. Then, instead
of dining there, suppose we go to some gayer, more typical New York
place--one of the big Broadway restaurants? That will show you another
'phase,' as you say; and the cooking is almost as good."
She agreed at once. "I think I'd like that," she said. "I want as much
variety as I can get."
He leaned toward her impressively over the little table in the
tea-room, recalling her unexpected tribute to the "perfect companion,"
and feeling all at once surprisingly well acquainted with her.
"What a pity you've got to go away tonight!" he murmured, ingenuously.
"There's so much left to do."
For an instant, as memory rolled over her, her heart stopped beating.
He observed her change of expression and looked at her with a
sympathetic question in his gray eyes.
"Can't you change your plans?" he suggested, hopefully. "Must you go?"
"No, they're not that kind of plans. I must go."
As she spoke her face had the colorlessness and the immobility he had
seen in it during the first moments it was turned toward him in the
morning, and her features suddenly looked old and drawn. Under the
revelation of a trouble greater than he could understand, the boy
dropped his eyes.
"By Jove!" he thought, suddenly, "she's got something the matter with
her." He wondered what it was, and the idea flashed over him that it
might be an incurable disease. Only the year before he had heard a
friend receive his death-warrant in a specialist's office, and the
memory of the experience remained with him. He was so deep in these
reflections that for a moment he forgot to speak, and she in her turn
sat silent.
"I'm sorry," he then said, awkwardly. Then, rightly divining the
quickest way to divert her thoughts, he suggested that they should
drive again before dinner, for an hour or two, to get the effect of the
twilight and the early lights on Broadway.
She agreed at once, as she had agreed to most of his suggestions, and
her face when she looked at him was serene again, but he was not wholly
reassured. In silence he followed her to the cab.
Over their dinner that night in the glittering Broadway restaurant,
with the swinging music of French and German waltzes in their ears, she
relaxed again from the impersonal attitude she had observed during the
greater part of the day. She looked at him more as if she saw him, he
told himself, but he could not flatter himself that the change was due
to any deepening of her interest in him. It was merely that she knew
him better, and that their long hours of sight-seeing had verified her
judgment of him.
Their talk swept over the world. He realized that she had lived much
abroad and had known many interesting men and women. From casual
remarks she dropped he learned that she was an orphan, unmarried, with
no close ties, and that her home was not near New York. This, when the
next day, after a dazed reading of the morning newspapers, he summed up
his knowledge of her, was all he could recall--the garnered drift-wood
of a talk that had extended over twelve hours.
"You look," he said once, glancing critically at her, "as if you had
lived for centuries and had learned all the lessons life could teach."
She shook her head. "I have lived for centuries, so far as that goes,"
she said, "but of all the lessons I've really learned only one."
"And that is?"
"How little it all amounts to."