The Beautiful and Damned Part 44

"Gloria!"

Like a startled child she scurried along the plank, hopping, skipping, jumping, with an ecstatic sense of her own physical lightness. Let him come now--she no longer feared that, only she must first reach the station, because that was part of the game. She was happy. Her hat, s.n.a.t.c.hed off, was clutched tightly in her hand, and her short curled hair bobbed up and down about her ears. She had thought she would never feel so young again, but this was her night, her world. Triumphantly she laughed as she left the plank, and reaching the wooden platform flung herself down happily beside an iron roof-post.

"Here I am!" she called, gay as the dawn in her elation. "Here I am, Anthony, dear--old, worried Anthony."

"Gloria!" He reached the platform, ran toward her. "Are you all right?"

Coming up he knelt and took her in his arms.

"Yes."

"What was the matter? Why did you leave?" he queried anxiously.

"I had to--there was something"--she paused and a flicker of uneasiness lashed at her mind--"there was something sitting on me--here." She put her hand on her breast. "I had to go out and get away from it."

"What do you mean by 'something'?"

"I don't know--that man Hull--"

"Did he bother you?"

"He came to my door, drunk. I think I'd gotten sort of crazy by that time."

"Gloria, dearest--"

Wearily she laid her head upon his shoulder.

"Let's go back," he suggested.

She s.h.i.+vered.

"Uh! No, I couldn't. It'd come and sit on me again." Her voice rose to a cry that hung plaintive on the darkness. "That thing--"

"There--there," he soothed her, pulling her close to him. "We won't do anything you don't want to do. What do you want to do? Just sit here?"

"I want--I want to go away."

"Where?"

"Oh--anywhere."

"By golly, Gloria," he cried, "you're still tight!"

"No, I'm not. I haven't been, all evening. I went up-stairs about, oh, I don't know, about half an hour after dinner ...Ouch!"

He had inadvertently touched her right shoulder.

"It hurts me. I hurt it some way. I don't know--somebody picked me up and dropped me."

"Gloria, come home. It's late and damp."

"I can't," she wailed. "Oh, Anthony, don't ask me to! I will to-morrow.

You go home and I'll wait here for a train. I'll go to a hotel--"

"I'll go with you."

"No, I don't want you with me. I want to be alone. I want to sleep--oh, I want to sleep. And then to-morrow, when you've got all the smell of whiskey and cigarettes out of the house, and everything straight, and Hull is gone, then I'll come home. If I went now, that thing--oh--!" She covered her eyes with her hand; Anthony saw the futility of trying to persuade her.

"I was all sober when you left," he said. "d.i.c.k was asleep on the lounge and Maury and I were having a discussion. That fellow Hull had wandered off somewhere. Then I began to realize I hadn't seen you for several hours, so I went up-stairs--"

He broke off as a salutatory "h.e.l.lo, there!" boomed suddenly out of the darkness. Gloria sprang to her feet and he did likewise.

"It's Maury's voice," she cried excitedly. "If it's Hull with him, keep them away, keep them away!"

"Who's there?" Anthony called.

"Just d.i.c.k and Maury," returned two voices rea.s.suringly.

"Where's Hull?"

"He's in bed. Pa.s.sed out."

Their figures appeared dimly on the platform.

"What the devil are you and Gloria doing here?" inquired Richard Caramel with sleepy bewilderment.

"What are _you_ two doing here?"

Maury laughed.

"d.a.m.ned if I know. We followed you, and had the deuce of a time doing it. I heard you out on the porch yelling for Gloria, so I woke up the Caramel here and got it through his head, with some difficulty, that if there was a search-party we'd better be on it. He slowed me up by sitting down in the road at intervals and asking me what it was all about. We tracked you by the pleasant scent of Canadian Club."

There was a rattle of nervous laughter under the low train-shed.

"How did you track us, really?"

"Well, we followed along down the road and then we suddenly lost you.

Seems you turned off at a wagontrail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little s.h.i.+vering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was waving around--"

"Oh, the poor old man!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Gloria, moved.

"I threw him another and we went on, though he asked us to stay and tell him what it was all about."

"Poor old man," repeated Gloria dismally.

d.i.c.k sat down sleepily on a box.

"And now what?" he inquired in the tone of stoic resignation.