Seven Miles to Arden. Ruth Sawyer
raced down two blocks and found one. “Grand Central—and drive—like the devil!”
As the door clicked behind her her eye caught the jumping indicator, and she smiled a grim smile. “Faith, in two-shilling jumps like that I’ll be bankrupt afore I’ve my hand on the tails of that coat.” And with a tired little sigh she leaned back in the corner, closed her eyes, and relaxed her grip on mind and will and body.
A series of jerks and a final stop shook her into a thinking, acting consciousness again; she was out of the taxi in a twinkling—with the man paid and her eyes on the back of a Balmacaan coat and plush hat disappearing through a doorway. She could not follow it as fast as she had reckoned. She balanced corners with a stout, indeterminate old gentleman who blocked her way and insisted on wavering in her direction each time she tried to dodge him. In her haste to make up for those precious lost seconds she upset a pair of twins belonging to an already overburdened mother. These she righted and went dashing on her way. Groups waylaid her; people with time to kill sauntered in front of her; wandering, indecisive people tried to stop her for information; and she reached the gate just as it was closing. Through it she could see—down a discouraging length of platform—a Balmacaaned figure disappearing into a car.
“Too late, lady; train’s leaving.”
It was well for Patsy that she was ignorant of the law governing closing gates and departing trains, for the foolish and the ignorant can sometimes achieve the impossible. She confronted the guard with a look of unconquerable determination. “No, ’tisn’t; the train guard is still on the platform. You’ve got to let me through.”
She emphasized the importance of it with two tight fists placed not overgently in the center of the guard’s rotundity, and accompanied by a shove. In some miraculous fashion this accomplished it. The gate clanged at Patsy’s back instead of in her face, as she had expected. A bell rang, a whistle tooted, and Patsy’s feet clattered like mad down the platform.
A good-natured brakeman picked her up and lifted her to the rear platform of the last car as it drew out. That saved the day for Patsy, for her strength and breath had gone past summoning.
“Thank you,” she said, feebly, with a vagabond glove held out in proffered fellowship. “That’s the kindest thing any one has done for me since I came over.”
“Are ye—”
“Irish—same as yourself.”
“How did ye know?”
“Sure, who but an Irishman would have had his wits and his heart working at the same time?” And with a laugh Patsy left him and went inside.
Her eye ran systematically down the rows of seats. Billy Burgeman was not there. She passed through to the next car, and a second, and a third. Still there was no back she could identify as belonging to the man she was pursuing.
She was crossing a fourth platform when she ran into the conductor, who barred her way. “Smoking-car ahead, lady; this is the last of the passenger-coaches.”
Patsy had it on the end of her tongue to say she preferred smoking-cars, intending to duck simultaneously under the conductor’s arm and enter, willy-nilly. But the words rolled no farther than the tongue’s edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was responsible. It had spun the day’s events before her like a roulette wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler’s concerning William Burgeman: “He’s the most conventional young gentleman I ever saw in my life. Why, you would shock—”
A strange young woman doling out consolation to him in a smoking-car would be anything but a dramatic success; Patsy felt this all too keenly. He was decidedly not of her world or the men and women she knew, who gave help when the need came regardless of time, place, acquaintanceship, or sex.
“Faith, he’s the kind that will expect an introduction first, and a month or two of tangoing, tea-drinking, and tennis-playing; after which, if I ask his permission, he might consider it proper—” Patsy groaned. “Oh, I hate the man already!”
“Ticket!”
“Ticket? What for?”
“What for? Do you think this is a joy ride?” The conductor radiated sarcasm.
Patsy crimsoned. “I haven’t mine. I—I was to—meet my—aunt—who had the ticket—and—she must have missed the train.”
“Where are you going?”
“I—I—Why, I was telling—My aunt had the tickets. How would I know where I was going without the tickets?”
The conductor snorted.
Patsy looked hard at him and knew the time had come for wits—good, sharp O’Connell wits. She smiled coaxingly. “It sounds so stupid, but, you see, I haven’t an idea where I am going. I was to meet my aunt and go down with her to her summer place. I—I can’t remember the name.” Her mouth drooped for the fraction of a second, then she brightened all over. “I know what I can do—very probably she missed the train because she expects to be at the station to meet me—I can look out each time the train stops, and when I see her I can get off. That makes it all right, doesn’t it?” And she smiled in open confidence as a sacrificial maiden might have propitiated the dragon.
But it was not reciprocated. He eyed her scornfully. “And who pays for the ticket?”
“Oh!” Patsy caught her breath; then she sent it bubbling forth in a contagious laugh. “I do—of course. I’ll take a ticket to—just name over the stations, please?”
The conductor growled them forth: “Hampden, Forestview, Hainsville, Dartmouth, Hudson, Arden, Brambleside, Mayberry, Greyfriars—”
“What’s that last—Greyfriars? I’ll take a ticket to Greyfriars.” She said it after the same fashion she might have used in ordering a mutton chop at a restaurant, and handed the conductor a bill.
When he had given her the change and passed on, still disgruntled, Patsy allowed herself what she called a “temporary attack of private prostration.”
“Idiot!” she groaned in self-address. “Ye are the biggest fool in two continents; and the Lord knows what Dan would be thinking of ye if he were topside o’ green earth to hear.” Whereupon she gripped one vagabond glove with the other—in fellow misery; and for the second time that afternoon her eyes closed with sheer exhaustion.
The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete oblivion.
She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for spice—and artistic finish—“After that—the devil take him!” when the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim outlines only. But those outlines were unmistakable, unforgetable.
“A million curses on the house of Burgeman!” quoth Patsy. “Well, there’s naught for it but to get off at the next station and go back.”
The conductor watched her get off with a distinct feeling of relief. He had very much feared she was not a responsible person and in no mental position to be traveling alone. Her departure cleared him of all uneasiness and obligation and he settled down to his business with an unburdened mind. Not so Patsy. She blinked at the vanishing train and then