Chapter X: Maisie’s Flight From Home

“All the world before me where to choose,” murmured Maisie, drawing down her veil and closing her eyes, oblivious to all but her own thoughts, wondering vaguely how she was going to earn her own living in the great city. She would have to find employment directly, for she had but ten dollars in her purse. But there were her jewels and her watch. She could sell them if driven to bay by poverty.

At dusk the train reached Washington, and large numbers of the passengers got out there, but the half-distracted girl did not notice either those who went out or came in--the latter only three, a bride and groom beginning their wedding-tour, and wholly absorbed in each other, and a slender young woman in shabby black, who sat down opposite to Maisie, and regarded the apparently sleeping girl with some curiosity.

She could see that she was young, well-gowned, and lovely, despite the thick black veil, against which her crinkly yellow hair shone like gold.

“Looks like a runaway schoolgirl?” she muttered, and presently she leaned across the aisle and touched her arm.

“Can you give me the time, please, miss?” she murmured.

Maisie, startled from her reverie, thrust her veil back and touched the spring of the small chatelaine watch at her waist. The stranger caught the gleam of diamonds on the back as she shut it and answered:

“It is half-past eight.”

“Thank you, very much. Going far?” continued her interlocutor.

“To New York,” Maisie answered carelessly, turning her heavy eyes on the speaker, and discovering a young woman with a bold, handsome blonde face and thick masses of rich golden hair.

The stranger exclaimed flippantly:

“Ah, then I shall have some one to talk to all the way; so glad, don’t you know? Desperately lonesome for pretty young girls like us to be traveling alone at night, isn’t it? I never did it before but once. That was when I ran away from boarding-school. Strikes me you look like a runaway schoolgirl yourself, eh?” with an ingratiating laugh.

“You are mistaken,” Maisie answered coldly, though the color flew to her face as she reflected that, after all, she was a runaway, though a bride, not a schoolgirl.

She did not like the young woman’s bold, pretty face and flippant way, so she pulled down her veil and turned her head again, as a sign that she did not care for conversation.

“Humph! unsociable!” commented her neighbor quite audibly, but Maisie took no notice. She was, indeed, beginning to get dull and drowsy, the natural effect of last night’s vigil, when she had lain awake through sheer happiness, thinking of her handsome lover, who was to be her husband on the morrow.

She was his wife now, and she was flying from that lately coveted happiness as fast as steam could carry her, eager to escape her fate.

Despite her troubles, she presently found blessed oblivion of them all in healing sleep.

The new conductor, who had taken the train at Washington, came through and collected the fares of the new passengers, then retired, and everything was very still, except the tender murmurs of the young bridegroom in the ear of the pretty bride, whose brown head rested on his shoulder. They did not seem to be aware that there was any one in the coach but themselves.

The young woman that Maisie had snubbed fidgeted a great deal in her own seat, and at length moved over in front of the girl.

But if she wished to resume the conversation, she was not gratified. She found that her neighbor was sleeping heavily--so heavily that when she reached over and touched her hand she did not move from her trancelike sleep. A curious smile curled the stranger’s lips, and she glanced up covetously at the small leather satchel that Maisie had placed in the rack overhead.

On and on ran the train through the balmy April night, but Maisie slept on through all the jar and rumble, and stoppages at stations, and getting on and off of passengers, and still her sinister neighbor in front watched her with grim satisfaction, until the lights of a great city came into view, and the guard coming through mumbled indistinctly:

“Philadelphia! Philadelphia!”

Poor Maisie, with her golden head pillowed uncomfortably in the hollow of her small gloved hand, dreamed on without stirring, but the woman in front buttoned up her jacket, pulled down her veil, and made ready to leave.

Several other passengers were going out, too, and in the bustle and confusion the woman reached up and possessed herself of the satchel in the rack, without in the least disturbing the owner. She had already filched Maisie’s watch from her belt and her little purse from her jacket pocket, and now, with a little mocking, triumphant laugh, she hastened to leave the train, and it went flying on in the darkness of the night, bearing penniless Maisie on to her destination.

“Cab, lady?” cried a dozen men, crowding around to carry her satchel, but she clung to it, saying coolly:

“It isn’t heavy. I’ll keep it myself, but one of you fellows can take me to a cheap lodging-house.”

After a wrangle among the cab-drivers, she found herself pushed into a cab, and leaning back against the cushions, the wheels rattling over the stony streets, while she chuckled:

“What a rare haul, this watch! The three diamonds on the lid are not worth less than a cool thousand, I know. Mighty little in the purse, though--only a tenner and some change! But there must be more in the bag; and probably jewelry. A girl like that, such a high-stepper, wouldn’t be traveling on a little sum like ten dollars, to be sure!”

The cab stopped before a high brick building in a side street, and the driver got down and opened the door, saying:

“Here you are, now, ma’am, the William Penn lodging-house--cheap, but genteel. Shall I carry in your bag for you?”

“No; here’s your fare.” She paid him from the loose change in Maisie’s purse, and, clutching the bag, entered the office, where she asked for a room, and registered as M. V. Allen.

She had seen the initial M. V. A. on the bag, and muttered grimly:

“Adams or Allen, what? I’ll chance the last. It will do as well for an alias as another! And I’ll get away from here before daylight, before the girl can put any one on my track!”

She asked for a light supper and bottle of wine to be sent to her room, and retired quickly, eager to be alone, that she might go through the satchel’s contents, saying again to herself:

“What a haul! even if I hadn’t got anything but the watch! But here’s this money, and”--wrenching open the satchel, whose key she had found in the purse, “here’s underwear, a new black gown, and jewels! Dear me, what a necklace! Three rows of pearls clasped by a diamond. Three bracelets! Two pearl ones and a turquoise! A diamond ring! How they all shine! I wish I dared wear them! But it’s too risky! I’ll have to sacrifice them to the second-hand dealers. As for the underwear, I need that badly enough! I’ll have a bath and get into the dainty rig before I sleep. Whew, a photograph! What a handsome fellow, upon my word! Like to know him, really! That girl’s sweetheart, of course!” and she thrust back a very fine picture of Byrd Barrington, that, strangely enough, had accompanied Maisie in her flight.

She discussed the supper and the wine with gusto, then regaled herself with a cigarette or two; so that it was quite midnight before she was ready to retire.

Casting off with some contempt her own soiled and shabby clothing, the woman rolled them into a tight bundle and threw them down to the bottom of an air-shaft, after which she donned with satisfaction the dainty lace-trimmed lingerie she had purloined, and surveyed herself with pleasure in the narrow mirror over the dressing-table between the flaring gaslights.

“How pretty I look! Fine feathers make fine birds!” she laughed gaily. “What a chance for a woman flying in terror, without a rag to her back, from a poky husband, and who threatened her with death! Well, he ought never to have married me! I was too pretty! So here’s the end of it! I’ve fled from him at last, and to-morrow I’ll enter on the life I prefer. It’s true I was making for New York, but that girl tempted me--so here I am--a runaway wife and a thief, besides. Ha, ha! But nothing matters so that I don’t get caught! Ah, fire, fire, fire!” she ended, with a shriek, as she clapped her small white hands to her head.

All at once a most terrible tragedy had happened.

While leaning forward to the mirror, gaily apostrophizing herself, the heat of the gaslights had been concentrated on a small white carved celluloid comb that held in place the rich coils of her rippling golden hair. The highly inflammable character of the celluloid caused it to ignite from the heat with an explosive noise, bursting into a clear flame above her head, and involving in its destruction the mass of hair.

With an awful frenzied shriek of despair, the woman clutched at the burning comb, tearing down the heavy coils of long hair till they wrapped her form like living serpents of flame.

Then the blaze caught the light laces of her snowy night-robe, licking it up with tongues of fire, as she rushed to the door and tore it open, shrieking for assistance, a ghastly monument of flame.