Chapter XXXIV
With the clang of the closing gate, Grismer’s handsome face altered terribly, and he turned deathly white for a moment. Two policemen lounged by in the glare of the arc-light; one of them glanced down into the areaway and saw a pallid face behind the iron bars—turned sharply to look again.
“Gee,” he said to his mate, “d’yeh get that guy’s map?”
“Coke,” said the other carelessly. “Looks like a feller I seen in Sing Sing waitin’ for the priest—what’s his name, now——” The voices receded. But Grismer had heard.
Perhaps his brain registered the scene sketched by the policeman—a bloodless face behind the death-cell grating—the distant steps of the procession already sounding in the corridor.
He opened the gate and went out to the sidewalk where a young girl, unskillfully painted, stood looking about her preliminary to opening the night’s campaign.
“Hello,” she said tentatively.
“Ah,” he said pleasantly, “a goddess of the stars!”
“Got anything on?” she asked, approaching with her mirthless smile.
“Yes, a few casual garments.”
She looked him over with the uncanny wisdom of her caste, and, young as she was, she divined in this man only the opportunity to waste her time.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, glancing at his shabby dressing gown. “Up against it?”
“What I’m up against,” he said, absently, “will look good to you, too, some day.”
“What’s that?”
“Death, my dear.”
“Quit kiddin’!” she retorted, with an uneasy laugh. “You got your looks yet.” She stepped nearer, looking at him curiously. “Nothing like that,” she said. “You’re a looker. Buck up, old scout!”
She was leaning against the railing where he stood resting his back. Presently he turned, leisurely, and surveyed her.
“You are young,” he said. “You’ll be a tired girl before you’re up against what I am.”
“What have you done?” she enquired curiously.
“Nothing.”
“Sure. That’s why we all go up the river.”
“I’m going across the river,” he remarked, smiling.
“Which?”
“The Styx. You never heard of it, I suppose.”
“One of them dirty rivers in Jersey?”
He nodded gravely.
“What’s out there?” she enquired.
“I don’t know, my dear.”
“Then what’s the idea?”
She waited for an answer, but his golden eyes were dreamily remote.
The girl lingered. Once or twice professional sense suggested departure, but when her tired eyes of a child rested on him something held her inert.
When she again interrupted his revery he looked around at her as though he had never before seen her, and she repeated what she had said.
“What?” he asked sharply.
“I got a fiver that ain’t workin’,” she said again. “You can use it in your business if it’s any good.”
“My dear child,” he said pleasantly, “you’re very kind, but that’s not what the matter is.” He turned, dropped his arm on the railing, facing her: “What’s your name?”
“Gloria Cameron.”
“Come on,” he said, good-humouredly, “what’s your other name?”
“Anne.”
“Anne, what?”
“O’Hara.”
“Will you wait a minute?”
She nodded uncertainly.
He went back through the area, entered his studio and dressed in his shabby street clothes.
The cheque was still lying on a small table where Cleland had placed it at his request. And now he picked it up, dipped a rusty pen into an ink-bottle, and indorsed the cheque, making it payable to Anne O’Hara. Then he took his straw hat and went out.
The girl was waiting.
“Anne,” he said, “I want you to read what’s written on this pretty perforated piece of paper.” He held it so that the electric light fell on it.
“Is it good?” she asked in an awed voice.
“Perfectly.” He turned the cheque over and showed her the indorsement.
She found her voice presently:
“What are you putting over on me?”
He said:
“I’d give this cheque to you now, but it wouldn’t be any good when the banks open to-morrow.”
She stared her question, and he laughed:
“It’s a law concerning cheques. Never mind. But there’s a way to beat it. I had a lot of money once. They’ll take my paper at Square Jack Hennesey’s. Shall we stroll up that way?”
She did not understand. It was quite evident that she had no faith in the scrap of paper either. But it was still more evident that she was willing to remain with him, even at the loss of professional opportunities—even though she was facing the obloquy of being “kidded.”
“Come into my studio first,” he said.
She went without protest. In the brightly lighted basement he turned and scrutinized her coolly from head to foot.
“How old?” he asked bluntly.
“Seventeen.”
“How long are you on the job?”
“Two years.”
“Whose are you?”
“I’m for myself——”
“Come on! Don’t lie!”
She straightened her thin finger in defiance:
“What are you? A bull?”
“You know I’m not. Who are you working for? Wait! Never mind! You’re working for somebody, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes.”
“Do your folks know it?”
“No.”
“What was it—cloaks, feathers, department store?”
She nodded.
“You can go back?”
She remained silent, and he repeated the question. Then the girl turned white under her paint.
“Damn you!” she said, “what are you trying to do to me?”
“Send you home, Anne, with a couple of thousand real money. Will you go?”
“Show it to me!” she said, but her voice had become childish and tremulous and her painted mouth was quivering.
“I’m going to show it to you,” he said pleasantly. “I’ll get it at Square Jack’s for you. If I do will you fly the coop? I mean now, to-night! Will you?”
“W-with you?”
“Dear child, I’ve got to cross that dirty Jersey river. I told you. You live up state, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Hudson.”
“All right. Will you go now, just as you are? You’d stand a fat chance if you went back and tried to pack up. That thing would batter you to a pulp, wouldn’t he?”
She nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Take off your hat and wash your face, Anne. They’d be on to you at home. I’ve got to pack a few things for my journey and write a couple of letters. Get all the paint off while I’m busy. There’s soap, towels, and a basin behind that screen.”
She came slowly to him and stood looking at him out of her disenchanted young eyes.
“Is this on the square?” she asked.
“Won’t you take a chance that it is?” he asked, taking her slim hands and looking her in the eyes.
“Yes.... I’ll take a chance with you—if you ask me to.”
“I do.” He patted her hands and smiled, then released them. “Hustle!” he said. “I’ll be ready very soon.”
He wrote first to Cleland:
DEAR CLELAND:
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.