I think I'll go up tonight, stay at Pittsfield, and either drive across
the mountain in the morning of take an early train through the tunnel
for North Adams. Either way ought to land me at Runner's Rest station
about eight in the morning.
I can't tell you what your kindness has done for me. I think it was
about all I really wanted in the world--your friendship. It seems to
clean off my slate, square me with life.
I shall start in a few minutes. Until we meet, then, your friend,
OSWALD GRISMER.
He directed the envelope to Cleland's studio in town.
The other letter he directed to Stephanie at Runner's Rest and stamped
it.
He wrote to her:
I'm happier than I have been in years because I can do this thing for
you.
And now I'm going to admit something which will ease your mind
immensely: the situation was so impossible that I also began to weary of
it a little. You are entitled to the truth.
And now life looks very inviting to me. Liberty is the most wonderful
thing in the world. And I am restless for it, restless to begin again.
So if I come to you as a comrade, don't think for a moment that any
sympathy is due me. Alas, man belongs to a restless sex, Stephanie, and
the four winds are less irresponsible and inconstant!
As a comrade, I should delight in you. You are a very wonderful
girl--but you belong to Cleland and not to me. Don't worry. I'm
absolutely satisfied. Until we meet, then,
Your grateful friend,
OSWALD.
"I'll get a special for this letter on our way uptown," he said, voicing
his thoughts aloud to the girl who was scrubbing her painted lips and
cheeks behind the screen.
When she emerged, pinning on her hat, he had packed a suitcase and was
ready.
They found a taxi in Washington Square.
On the way uptown he mailed his letter to Stephanie; sent a district
messenger with his letter to Cleland's studio; sent a night letter to
Runner's Rest saying that he would take accommodations on a train which
would be due at Runner's Rest station at eight next morning; stopped at
the darkened and barred house of Square Jack Hennesey, and was admitted
after being scrutinized through a sliding grill.
When he came out half an hour later he told the driver to go to the
Grand Central Station, and got into the cab...
"Anne," he said gaily, "here's the two thousand. Count it."
The sheafs of new bills pinned to their paper bands lay in her lap for a
long time before she touched them. Even then she merely lifted one
packet and let it drop without even looking at it. So Grismer folded
the bills and put them into her reticule. Then he took her slim left
hand in both of his and held it while they rode on in silence through
the electric glare of the metropolis.
At the station he dismissed the taxicab, bought a ticket and
sleeping-car accommodations to Hudson--managed to get a state-room for
her all to herself.
"You won't sleep much," he remarked, smiling, "so we'll have to provide
you with amusement, Anne."
Carrying his suitcase, the girl walking beside him, he walked across the
great rotunda to the newsstand. There, and at the confectionery counter
opposite, he purchased food for mind and body--light food suitable for a
young and badly bruised mind, and for a soul in embryo, still in the
making.
Then he went over to another window and bought a ticket for himself to
Pittsfield, and sleeping accommodations.
"We travel by different lines, Anne," he said, opening his portfolio and
placing his own tickets in it, where several letters lay addressed to
him at his basement studio. Then he replaced the portfolio in his
breast pocket.
"I'll go with you to your train," he said, declining with a shake of his
head the offices of a red-capped porter. "Your train leaves at 12.10
and we have only a few minutes."
They walked together through the gates, the officials permitting him to
accompany her.
The train stood on the right--a very long train, and they had a long
distance to walk along the concrete platform before they found her car.
A porter showed them to her stateroom. Grismer tipped him generously:
"Be very attentive to this young lady," he said, "and see that she has
every service required, and that she is notified in plenty of time to
get off at Hudson. Now you may leave us until we ring."
He turned from the corridor and entered the stateroom, closing the door
behind him. The girl sat on the sofa, very pale, with a dazed
expression in her eyes.
He seated himself beside her and drew her hands into his own.
"Let me tell you something," he said cheerfully. "Everybody makes
mistakes. You've made some; so have I; so has everybody I ever heard
of.
"Everybody gets in wrong at one time or another. The idea is to get out
again and make a fresh start.... Will you try?"
She nodded, so close to tears that she could not speak.
"Promise me you'll make a hard fight to travel straight?"
"Y-yes."
"It won't be easy. But try to win out, Anne. Back there--in those
streets and alleys--there's nothing to hope for except death. You'll
find it if you ever go back--in some hospital, in some saloon-brawl, in
some rooming-house--it will surely, surely find you by bullet, by knife,
by disease--sooner or later it will find you unless you start to search
for it yourself."
He patted her hand, patted her pale cheek:
"It's a losing game, Anne. There's nothing in it. I guess you know that
already. So go back to your people and tell them the last lies you ever
tell. And stick. Stay put, little girl. You really _are_ all right,
you know, but you got in wrong. Now, you're out!"
He laughed and stood up. She lifted her head. All her colour had fled.
"Don't forget me," she whispered.
"Not as long as I live, Anne."
"May I--I write to you?"
He thought a minute, then with a smile:
"Why not?" He found a card and pencil, wrote his name and address, and
laid it on the sofa. "If it would do any good to think of me when
you're likely to get in wrong," he said, "then try to remember that I
was square with you. And be so to me. Will you?"
"I--will."
That was all. She was crying and her eyes were too blind with tears to
see the expression of his face as he kissed her.
He went away lightly, swinging his suitcase, and stood on the very end
of the cement platform looking out across a wilderness of tracks
branching out into darkness, set with red, green, and blue lamps.
He waited, lighting a cigarette. On his left a heavy electric engine
rolled into the station, drawing a Western express train. The lighted
windows of the cars threw a running yellow illumination over his
motionless figure for a few moments, then the train passed into the
depths of the station.
And now her train began to move very slowly out through the wilderness
of yard tracks. Car after car passed him, gaining momentum all the
while.
When the last car sped by and the tail-lights dwindled into perspective,
Grismer had finished his cigarette.
Behind him lay the dusky, lamp-lit tunnel of the station. Before him,
through ruddy darkness, countless jewelled lamps twinkled, countless
receding rails glimmered, leading away into the night.
It was in him to travel that way--the way of the glimmering, jewelled
lamps, the road of the shining rails.
But first he shoved his suitcase, with his foot, over the platform's
edge, as though it had fallen there by accident.... And, as though he
had followed to recover it, he climbed down among the tracks.
There was a third rail running parallel to the twin rails. It was
roofed with wood. Lying flat, there in the shimmering dusk, he could
look up under the wooden guard rail and see it.
Then, resting both legs across the steel car-tracks, he reached out and
took the guarded third rail in both hands.
*CHAPTER XXXV*
The train that Cleland took, after calling Runner's Rest on the
telephone, landed him at the home station at an impossible hour. Stars
filled the heavens with a magnificent lustre; the July darkness was
superb and still untouched by the coming dawn.
As he stepped from the car the tumbling roar of the river filled his
ears--that and the high pines' sighing under the stars, and the
sweet-scented night wind in his face greeted and met him as he set foot
on the platform at Runner's Rest station and looked around for the
conveyance that he had asked Stephanie to send.
There was nobody in sight except the baggage agent. He walked toward the
rear of the station, turned the corner, and saw Stephanie standing there
bareheaded in the starlight, wrapped in a red cloak, her hair in two
heavy braids.
"Steve!" he exclaimed. "Why on earth did you come--you darling!"
"Did you imagine I wouldn't?" she asked unsteadily.
"I told you over the wire to send Williams with a buckboard."
"Everybody was in bed when the telephone rang. So I concluded to sit up
for you, and when the time came I went out to the stable, harnessed up,
and drove over here."
Her hand was trembling in his while she spoke, but her voice was under
control.
They turned together and went over to the buckboard. She stepped in; he
strapped his suitcase on behind, then followed her and took the reins
from her gloved hands.
They were very quiet, but he could feel her tremble a little at times,
when their shoulders were in contact. The tension betrayed itself in his
voice at moments, too.
"I have a night letter from Oswald," she said. "They telephoned it up
from the station. He is coming to-morrow morning."
"That's fine. He's a splendid fellow, Steve."
"I have always known it."
"I know you have. I'm terribly sorry that I did not know him better."
The buckboard turned from the station road into a fragrant wood-road.
In the scented dusk little night-moths with glistening wings drifted
through the rays of the wagon-lamp like snowflakes. A bird, aroused
from slumber in the thicket, sang a few sweet, sleepy notes.
"Tell me," said Stephanie, in a low, tremulous voice.
He understood:
"It was entirely Oswald's doing. I never dreamed of mentioning it to
him. I was absolutely square to him and to you, Steve. I went there
with no idea that he knew I was in love with you--or that you cared for
me.... He met me with simple cordiality. We looked at his beautiful
model for the fountain. I don't think I betrayed in voice or look or
manner that anything was wrong with me.... Then, with a very winning
simplicity, he spoke of you, of himself.... There seemed to be nothing
for me to say; he knew that I was in love with you, and that you had
come to care for me.... And I heard a man speak to another man as only
a gentleman could speak--a real man, rare and thoroughbred.... It cost
him something to say to me what he said. His nerve was heart-breaking
to me when he found the courage to tell me what his father had done.
"He told me with a smile that his pride was dead--that he had cut its
throat. But it was still alive, Steve--a living, quivering thing. And
I saw him slay it before my eyes--kill it there between his, with his
steady, pleasant smile.... Well, he meant me to understand him and what
he had done.... And I understand.... And I understand your loyalty,
now. And the dreadful fear which kept you silent.... But there is no
need to be afraid any more."
"Did he say so?"
"Yes. He told me to tell you. He said you'd believe him because he had
never lied to you."
"I do believe him," she said. "I have never known him to lie to
anybody."
The light over the porch at Runner's Rest glimmered through the trees.
In a few moments they were at the door.
"I'll stable the horse," he said briefly.
She was in the library when he returned from the barn.
"The dawn is just breaking," she said. "It is wonderful out of doors.
Do you hear the birds?"
"Do you want to go to bed, Steve?"
"No. Do you?"
"Wait for me, then."
She waited while he went to his room. The windows were open and the
fresh, clean air of dawn carried the perfume of wet roses into the
house.
The wooded eastern hills were very dark against the dawn; silvery mist
marked the river's rushing course; thickets rang with bird songs.
She walked to the porch. Under its silver-sheeted dew the lawn looked
like a lake.
Very far away across the valley a train was rushing northward. She
could hear the faint vibration, the distant whistle. Then, from close
by, the clear, sweet call of a meadow-lark mocked the unseen
locomotive's warning in exquisite parody.
Cleland came down presently, freshened, dressed in flannels.
"Steve," he said, "you've only a nightgown on under that cloak!"
"It's all right. I'm going to get soaked anyway, if we walk on the
lawn."
She laughed, drew off her slippers, flung them into the room behind her,
then, with her lovely little naked feet she stepped ankle deep into the
drenched grass, turned, tossed one corner of her red cloak over her
shoulder, and looked back at him.
Over the soaking lawn they wandered, his arm encircling her slender
body, her hand covering his, holding it closer at her waist.
The sky over the eastern hills was tinted with palest saffron now; birds
sang everywhere. Down by the river cat-birds alternately mewed like
sick kittens or warbled like thrushes; rose grosbeaks filled the dawn
with heavenly arias, golden orioles fluted from every elm, song-sparrows
twittered and piped their cheery amateur efforts, and there came the
creak and chirr of purple grackles from the balsams and an incessant,
never-ending rush of jolly melody from the robins.
Over the tumbling river, through the hanging curtains of mist, a great
blue heron, looming enormously in the vague light, flapped by in stately
flight and alighted upon a bar of golden sand.
More swiftly now came the transfiguration of the world, shell-pink and
gold stained the sky; then a blaze of dazzling light cut the wooded
crests opposite as the thin knife-rim of the sun glittered above the
trees.
All the world rang out with song now; the river mists lifted and curled
and floated upward in silvery shreds disclosing golden shoals and
pebbled rapids all criss-crossed with the rosy lattice of the sun.
The girl at his side leaned her cheek against his shoulder.
"What would all this have meant without you?" she sighed. "The world
turned very dark for me yesterday. And it was the blackest night I ever
knew."
"And for me," he said; "--I had no further interest in living."
"Nor I.... I wanted to die last night.... I prayed I might.... I
nearly did die--with happiness--when I heard your voice over the wire.
That was all that mattered in the world--your voice calling me--out of
the depths--dearest--dearest----"
With her waist closely enlaced, he turned and looked deep into her grey
eyes--clear, sweet eyes tinged with the lilac-grey of iris bloom.
"The world is just beginning for us," he said. "This is the dawn of our
first morning on earth."
The slender girl in his arms lifted her face toward his. Both her hands
crept up around his neck. The air around them rang with the storm of
bird music bursting from every thicket, confusing, almost stunning their
ears with its heavenly tumult.
But within the house there was another clamour which they did not
hear--the reiterated ringing of the telephone. They did not hear it,
standing there in the golden glory of the sunrise, with the young world
awaking all around them and the birds' ecstacy overwhelming every sound
save the reckless laughter of the river.
But, in the dim house, Helen awoke in her bed, listening. And after she
had listened a while she sprang up, slipped out into the dark hall, and
unhooked the receiver from the hinge.
And after she had heard what the distant voice had to say she wrote it
down on the pad of paper hanging by the receiver--wrote it, shivering
there in the darkened hall:
Oswald Grismer, on his way last night to visit you at Runner's Rest, was
killed by the third rail in the Grand Central Station. He was
identified by letters. Harry Belter was notified, and has taken charge
of the body. There is no doubt that it was entirely accidental. Mr.
Grismer's suit-case evidently fell to the track, and, attempting to
recover it, he came into contact with the charged rail and was killed
instantly.