By the Light of the Soul Part 26

"I don't care. I'm going down there."

"What be you goin' to do when you git there?"

"I am going to sit there, and wait till morning."

"My!" said Gladys.

However, she went on up the Elevated stairs with Maria and Wollaston.

Wollaston threw down the fares and got the tickets, and strode on ahead. His mouth was set. He was very pale. He probably realized to a greater extent than any of them what had taken place. It was inconceivable to him that it had taken place, that he himself had been such a fool. He felt like one who has met with some utterly unexplainable and unaccountable accident. He felt as he had done once when, younger, he had stuck his own knife, with which he was whittling, into his eye, to the possible loss of it. It seemed to him as if something had taken place without his volition. He was like a puppet in a show. He looked at Maria, and realized that he hated her.

He wondered how he could ever have thought her pretty. He looked at Gladys Mann, and felt murderous. He had a high temper. As the train approached, he whispered in her ear,

"d.a.m.n you, Gladys Mann, it's a pretty pickle you have got us into."

Gladys was used to being sworn at. She was not in the least intimidated.

"Do you s'pose I was goin' to have M'ria talked about?" she said.

"You can cuss all you want to."

They got into the train. Wollaston sat by himself, Gladys and Maria together. Maria was no longer weeping, but she looked terrified beyond measure, and desperate. A horrible imagination of evil was over her. She never glanced at Wollaston. She thought that she wished there would be an accident on the train and he might be killed. She hated him more than he hated her.

They were just in time for a boat at Cortlandt Street. When they reached the Jersey City side Wollaston went straight to the information bureau, and then returned to Gladys and Maria, seated on a bench in the waiting-room.

"Well, there _is_ a train," he said, curtly.

"'Ain't it been took off?" asked Gladys.

"No, but we've got to wait an hour and a half." Then he bent down and whispered in Gladys's ear, "I wish to G.o.d you'd been dead before you got us into this, Gladys Mann!"

"My father said it had been took off," said Gladys. "You sure there is one?"

"Of course I'm sure!"

"My!" said Gladys.

Wollaston went to a distant seat and sat by himself. The two girls waited miserably. Gladys had suffered a relapse. Her degeneracy of wit had again overwhelmed her. She looked at Maria from time to time, then she glanced around at Wollaston, and her expression was almost idiotic. The people who were on the seat with them moved away. Maria turned suddenly to Gladys.

"Gladys Mann," said she, "if you ever tell of this--"

"Then you ain't goin' to--" said Gladys.

"Going to what?"

"Live with him?"

"Live with him! I hate him enough to wish he was dead. I'll never live with him; and if you tell, Gladys Mann, I'll tell you what I'll do."

"What?" asked Gladys, in a horrified whisper.

"I'll go and drown myself in Fisher's Pond, that's what I'll do."

"I never will tell, honest, M'ria," said Gladys.

"You'd better not."

"Hope to die, if I do."

"You _will_ die if you do," said Maria, "for I'll leave a note saying you pushed me into the pond, and it will be true, too. Oh, Gladys Mann! it's awful what you've done!"

"I didn't mean no harm," said Gladys.

"And there's a train, too."

"Father said there wasn't."

"Your father!"

"I know it. There ain't never tellin' when father lies," said Gladys.

"I guess father don't know what lies is, most of the time. I s'pose he's always had a little, if he 'ain't had a good deal. But I'll never tell, Maria, not as long as I live."

"If you do, I'll drown myself," said Maria.

Then the two sat quietly until the train was called out, when they went through the gate, Maria showing her tickets for herself and Gladys. Wollaston had purchased his own and returned Maria's. He kept behind the two girls as if he did not belong to their party at all.

On the train he rode in the smoking-car.

The car was quite full at first, but the pa.s.sengers got off at the way-stations. When they drew near Edgham there were only a few left.

Wollaston had not paid the slightest attention to the pa.s.sengers. He could not have told what sort of a man occupied the seat with him, nor even when he got off. He was vaguely conscious of the reeking smoke of the car, but that was all. When the conductor came through he handed out his ticket mechanically, without looking at him. He stared out of the window at the swift-pa.s.sing, shadowy trees, at the green-and-red signal-lights, and the bright glare from the lights of the stations through which they pa.s.sed. Once they pa.s.sed by a large factory on fire, surrounded by a shouting mob of men, and engines.

Even that did not arrest his attention, although it caused quite a commotion in the car. He sat huddled up in a heap, staring out with blank eyes, all his consciousness fixed upon his own affairs. He felt as if he had made an awful leap from boyhood to manhood in a minute.

He was full of indignation, of horror, of shame. He was conscious of wis.h.i.+ng that there were no girls in the world. After they had pa.s.sed the last station before reaching Edgham he looked wearily away from the window, and recognized, stupidly, Maria's father in a seat in the forward part of the car. Harry was sitting as dejectedly hunched upon himself as was the boy. Wollaston recognized the fact that he could not have found little Evelyn, and realized wickedly and furiously that he did not care, that a much more dreadful complication had come into his own life. He turned again to the window.

Maria, in the car behind the smoker, sat beside Gladys, and looked out of the window very much as Wollaston was doing. She also was conscious of an exceeding horror and terror, and a vague shame. It was, to Maria, as if she had fallen through the fairy cobweb of romance and struck upon the hard ground of reality with such force that her very soul was bleeding. Wollaston, in the smoker, wished no more devoutly that there were no girls in the world, than Maria wished there were no boys. Her emotions had been, as it were, thrust back down her own throat, and she was choked and sickened with them.

She would not look at nor speak to Gladys. Once, when Gladys addressed a remark to her, Maria thrust out an indignant shoulder towards her.

"You needn't act so awful mad," whispered Gladys. "I ain't goin' to tell, and I was doin' it on your account. My mother will give it to me when I git home."

"What are you going to tell her?" asked Maria, with sudden interest.

"I'm goin' to tell her I've been out walkin' with Ben Jadkins. She's told me not to, and she'll lick me for all she's wuth," said Gladys, angrily. "But I don't care. It's lucky father 'ain't been through this train. It's real lucky to have your father git drunk sometimes.

I'll git licked, but I don't care."

Maria, sitting there, paid no more attention. The shock of her own plight had almost driven from her mind the thought of Evelyn, but when a woman got on the train leading a child about her age, the old pain concerning her came back. She began to weep again quietly.

"I don't see what you are cryin' for," said Gladys, in an accusing voice. "You might have been an old maid."

"I don't believe she is found," Maria moaned, in a low voice.

"Oh, the kid! You bet your life she'll turn up. Your pa 'll find her all right. I didn't know as you were cryin' about that."

When they reached Edgham, Maria and Gladys got off the train, Wollaston Lee also got off, and Harry Edgham, and from a rear car a stout woman, yanking, rather than leading, by the hand, a little girl with a fluff of yellow hair. The child was staggering with sleep. The stout woman carried on her other arm a large wax-doll whose face smiled inanely over her shoulder.