Nobody

CHAPTER XVIII

BREAKING JAIL

Within five minutes Sally was back behind the locked door of her bedchamber, alone with the glowing exaltation of complete exoneration and triumph over the machinations of her ill-wishers, alone with what should naturally have been tingling satisfaction in consciousness of having administered yet another and (it was to be hoped) a final stinging snub to that animal of a Trego.

Yet her gratification in the memory of the latter event was singularly vapid, flat, and savourless.

They had been the last to leave the boudoir where, with the help of her maid, Mrs. Gosnold was preoccupied with effort to restore her kinswoman-that hapless victim of her own malevolence.

The others had been only too glad to disperse, following that diversion which freed them from the open contempt of their hostess, Sally and Trego. Lyttleton, indeed, had not hesitated to show his spirit by taking to his heels down the corridor to his quarters when Trego betrayed an inclination to follow him. And it was this circumstance which had led to the discomfiture of Trego.

"A fine young specimen!" Trego commented with some disappointment, louring after the rapidly retreating figure. "But wait," he suggested ominously, "just wait till I catch him outside the house. I knew I did wrong to let him off so easy last night. But I'll make up for it, all right. Leave him to me!"

"I am not interested in your personal quarrels with Mr. Lyttleton," Sally told him frigidly. "Mine, if you please, I will settle for myself in my own way. When I desire your interference, I shall notify you. Till then-whatever the circumstances-I hope you will be good enough not to speak to me under any circumstances whatever."

With this she had left him dashed and staring.

Now, in retrospection, she was alternately sorry that she had said as much and that she had not said more. He had deserved either the cut direct and absolute, or he had deserved a thoroughgoing, whole-hearted exposition of his own despicable perfidy.

She could never forgive him-and, what was worse, she could never forgive herself for the smart of her wounded pride, when she recalled that shameful scene in the garden. She could not forgive herself for caring one way or the other. She could not forgive herself for admitting that she cared.

It was just this which rendered her position in Gosnold House positively untenable, however firmly it might seem to have been re-established by the events of the last half-hour.

It was just this which kept the girl from her pillow, buoyed by a feverish excitement.

She could never stay at Gosnold House and continue on terms of any sort with Trego and suffer the airs with which Mrs. Artemas would treat her vanquished rival in the man's affections, even though Sally had never been conscious of the rivalry nor in any way encouraged the putative prize.

It might seem ungrateful to Mrs. Gosnold; Sally couldn't help that, though she was sincerely sorry; the association simply must be discontinued.

And that, she declared in her solitude, was all there was about it..

By the time she had succeeded in composing a note which seemed sufficiently grateful in tone to excuse the pitiful inadequacy of her excuse for absconding-that she was "out of her element" on the Island, an outsider, a Nobody, and didn't "belong" and never could-the chill light of early dawn had rendered the electrics garish.

She read the note over with hypercritical sensitiveness to its defects, but decided that it must do. Besides, she had used the last sheet of note-paper in the rack on her desk; more was not obtainable without a trip to the living-room. Then in desperation she appended, under the sign of the venerable P. S., a prayer that this might prove acceptable in lieu of more gracious leave-taking, addressed the envelope to Mrs. Gosnold, and left it sticking conspicuously in the frame of her dressing-mirror.

Studiously she reduced her travelling gear to the simplest requisites; the hand-bag she took because she had a use for it, nothing less than to serve as a cover for the return of everything she wore.

She was determined to go out of this Island world, whose ether was too rare for her vulgar lungs, with no more than she had brought into it.

At length the laggard hands of the clock were close together on the figure 6.

She rose, let herself out of the room, and by way of that memorable side door issued forth into a morning as rarely beautiful as ever that blessed Island knew. It made renunciation doubly difficult. Yet Sally did not falter or once look back.

Her way to the village wharf was shortest by the beach. None saw her steal through the formal garden (with eyes averted from that one marble seat which was forever distinguished from all others in the world) and vanish over the lip of the cliff by way of its long, zigzag stairway. Few noticed her as she debouched from the beach into the village streets; her dress was inconspicuous, her demeanour even more than retiring.

Her hope was favoured in that on this earlier trip of the boat there were few passengers other than natives of the Island.

On the mainland she caught an accommodation train which wound a halting way through the morning and set her down in Providence late in the forenoon. Then ignorance of railroad travel made her choose another accommodation instead of an express which would have cost no more and landed her in New York an hour earlier.

Her flight was financed by a few dollars left over from her bridge winnings of the first day at Gosnold House after subsequent losses had been paid. Their sum no more than sufficed; when she had purchased a meagre lunch at the station counter in New Haven she was penniless again; but for the clothes she wore she landed in New York even as she had left it.

The city received her with a deafening roar that seemed of exultation that its prey had been delivered unto it again.

The heat was even more oppressive than that of the day on which she had left-or perhaps seemed so by contrast with the radiant coolness of the Island air.

Avoiding Park Avenue, she sought the place that she called home by way of Lexington.

She went slowly, wearily, lugging her half-empty hand-hag as if it were a heavy burden.

At length, leaving the avenue, she paused a few doors west of the corner, climbed the weather-bitten steps to the brownstone entrance, and addressed herself to those three long flights of naked stairs.

The studio door at the top was closed and locked. The card had been torn from the tacks that held it to the panel.

Puzzled and anxious, she stopped and turned up a corner of the worn fibre mat-and sighed with relief to find the key in its traditional hiding-place.

But when she let herself in, it was to a room tenanted solely by seven howling devils of desolation.

Only the decrepit furniture remained; it had not been worth cartage or storage; every personal belonging of the other two girls had disappeared; Mary Warden had not left so much as a sheet of music, Lucy Spade had overlooked not so much as a hopeless sketch.

Yet Sally had no cause for complaint; they had forsaken her less indifferently than she had them; one or the other had left a newspaper, now three days old, propped up where she could not fail to see it on the antiquated marble mantel-shelf. In separate columns on the page folded outermost two items were encircled with rings of crimson water-colour.

One, under the caption "News of Plays and Players," noted the departure for an opening in Atlantic City of the musical comedy company of whose chorus Mary Warden was a member.

The other, in the column headed "Marriages," announced tersely the nuptials of Lucy Spode and Samuel W. Meyerick. No details were given.

Forlornly Sally wandered to the windows and opened them to exchange the hot air of the studio for the hotter air of the back yards.

Then slowly she set about picking up the threads of her life.

Such clothing as she owned offered little variety for choice. She selected the least disreputable of two heavy, black winter skirts, a shirt-waist badly torn at the collar-band, her severely plain under-clothing, coarse black stockings, and shoes that had been discarded as not worth another visit to the cobbler's.

When these had been exchanged for the gifts of Mrs. Standish, Sally grimly packed the latter into the hand-bag and shut the latch upon them with a snap of despair.

Come evening, when it was dark enough, she would leave them at the door of the residence up the street, ring the bell, and run.

She sat out a long hour, hands listless in her lap, staring vacantly out at that well-hated vista of grimy back yards, drearily reviewing the history of the last five days. She felt as one who had dreamed a dream and was not yet sure that she had waked.

Later she roused to the call of hunger, and foraged in the larder, or what served the studio as such, turning up a broken carton of Uneeda Biscuit and half a packet of black tea. There was an egg, but she prudently refrained from testing it..

It never entered her weary head to imagine that the feet that pounded heavily on the stairs were those of anybody but the janitor; she was wondering idly whether there were rent due, and if she would be turned out into the street that very night; and was thinking it did not much matter, when the footfalls stopped on the threshold of the studio and she looked up into the face of Mr. Trego.

Surprise and indignation smote her with speechlessness, but her eyes were eloquent enough as she started up-and almost overturned the rickety table at which she had been dining.

But he was crassly oblivious of her emotion. Removing his hat, he mopped his brow, sighed, and smiled winningly.

"Hello!" he said. "You certainly did give me a deuce of a hunt. I wormed it out of Mrs. Gosnold that you inhabited a studio somewhere on this block, and I suppose I must have climbed thirty times three flights of stairs in the last hour."

She demanded in a low, tense voice: "Why have you followed me here?"

"Well," he protested, "Mrs. Gosnold sent me-and if she hadn't, I would have come anyway. I told you last night that I loved you. I haven't changed since then. And now that you're in a fix, whether or not of your own contriving-well, it isn't my notion of love to let you pull out for yourself if you'll let me help. And that goes, even if you stick to it that you won't marry me."

"And Mrs. Artemas?" she inquired icily. "What does she think about your coming after me?"

He stared and laughed. "Oh, did you know about that? I hoped you didn't."

"I saw you with her in your arms."

"Yes," he agreed patiently. "She'd been laying for me for several weeks. I told you she was-don't you remember? Only, of course, I didn't name her. And last night, when I went back there looking for you, she cornered me; and while I was trying to be nice and explain I could never be anything more than a brother to her she began to blubber and threw herself into my arms and.. What could a fellow do? I tried to make her behave, but before she would listen to reason those confounded people had to pop up. And, of course, she took advantage of that opening instanter. But-great Scott! – you didn't suppose I was going to be that sort of a gentleman and let her get away with it, did you? when I am so much in love with you I can hardly keep from grabbing you now! Not likely!"

She tried to answer him, but her traitorous voice broke, and before she could master it he had resumed.

"Mrs. Gosnold wants you back-sent me to say so-says she'll come after you if I fail to bring you."

"Oh, no!" she protested, trembling uncontrollably.

"You won't meet any of those folks. They're all going to-day. It's a new deal from a fresh deck, so to speak."

"No," she averred more steadily. "You told me I was foolish; you were right. I'm through with all that."

He came closer to her. "You needn't be," he said. "Don't damn Society just because you got in wrong at the first attempt. Try again. Let me try with you. I've got all the money there is, more or less. If you want a villa at Newport-"

"Oh, please, no! I tell you, I'm finished with all that forever."

"Well," he grinned fatuously, "what about a flat in Harlem?"

A little smile broke through her tears.

"Why must you go to such extremes?" she laughed brokenly. "Aren't there any more apartments to be had on Riverside Drive?"