The Restless Sex

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."