VIII
VIII
Susannah let herself lightly down on the tin roof; it was scarcely a step from her window. With deliberate caution, she turned and drew the shade. Then she tiptoed toward the skylight. The workmen were still soldering; the older man, with the air of one performing a delicate operation, lay stretched out flat, holding some kind of receptacle; the younger was pouring molten lead from a ladle. Try as she might, she could not prevent her feet from making a slight tapping on the tin. The older man glanced sharply up. “Look out!” called the younger, and he bent again to his work. Almost running now, she stepped into the gaping hole of the skylight. The stairs were very steep—practically a ladder. As she disappeared from view, she heard a quick “What the hell!” from the roof above her.
Susannah hurried forward along a dark passage, looking for stairs. The passage jutted, became lighter, went forward again. This mustbe the point where the shed-addition joined the main building. She was in the hallway of a dingy, conventional flat-house, with doors to right and left. One of these doors opened; a woman in a faded calico dress looked her over, the glance including the traveling-bag; then picked up a letter from the hall-floor, and closed it again. Susannah found herself controlling an impulse to run. But no steps sounded behind her—she was not as yet pursued. And there was the stairway—at the very front of the house! She descended the two flights to the entrance. There, for a moment, she paused. As soon as Warner discovered her flight, they would be after her. The workmen would point the way. The street—and quick—was the only chance. Noiselessly she opened the door. At the head of the steps leading to the street, she stopped long enough for a look to right and left. Only a scattered afternoon crowd—no Warner, no Byan. An Eighth Avenue tram-car was ringing its gong violently. On a sudden impulse of safety, she shot down the steps, ran past her own door to the corner. An open southbound car had drawn up, was taking onpassengers. She reached it just as the conductor was about to give the forward signal, and was almost jerked off her feet as she stepped onto the platform. Steadying herself, she looked, in the brief moment afforded by the bumpy crossing of the car, down the side street.
The entrances of her own house at the corner, the entrances to the house she had just left, were blank and undisturbed; no one was following her. She paid her fare, and settled down on the end of a cross-seat.
And now she was aware not of relief or reaction or fear, but solely of her headache. It had changed in character. It had become a furious internal bombardment of her brows. If she turned her eyes to right or left, she seemed to be dragging weights across the front of her brain. Yet this headache did not seem quite a part of herself. It was as though she knew, by a supernormal sensitiveness, the symptoms of someone else. It was as though suddenly she had become two people. Anyway, it had ceased to be personal. And somewhere else within her head was growing a delicious feeling of freedom, oflightness, of escape from a wheel. Her evasion of the Carbonado Mining Company did not account for all that; she felt free from everything. “I’m not going to take any more rooms,” she said to herself. “I’m going to sleep out of doors now, like the birds. People find you when you take rooms. Where shall I begin?” She considered; and then one of those little hammers of intuition seemed to tap on her brain. Again, she did not resist. “Why, Washington Square of course!” she said to herself.
The car was threading now the narrow ways of Greenwich Village. It stopped; Susannah stepped off. The rest seemed for a long time to be just wandering. But that curious sense of duality had vanished. She was one person again. She did not find Washington Square easily; but then, it made no difference whether she ever found it. For New York and the world were so amusing when once you were free! You could laugh at everything—the passing crowds, surging as though business really mattered; the Carbonado Mining Company; the grisly old fool in their toils, and Susannah Ayer. You could laugh evenat the climate—for sometimes it seemed very hot, which was right in summer, and sometimes cold, which wasn’t right at all. You could laugh at the headache, when it tied ridiculous knots in your forehead. There was the Arch—Washington Square at last.
But it wasn’t time to sleep in Washington Square yet. The birds hadn’t gone to bed. Sparrows were still pecking and squabbling along the borders of the flower-beds. Besides, New York was still flowing, on its homeward surge from office and workshop, down the paths. Susannah sat down on a bench and considered. She had a disposition to stay there—why was she so weak? Oh, of course she hadn’t eaten. People always had dinner before going to bed. She must eat—and she had money. She shook out her pocketbook into her lap. A ten-dollar bill, a one-dollar bill, and some small change. She must dine gloriously—free creatures always did that when they had money. Besides, she was never going to pay any more room rent. Susannah rose, strolled up Fifth Avenue. The crowd was thinning out. That was pleasant, too. She disliked to get outof the way of people. She was crossing Twenty-third Street now; and now she was before the correct, white façade of the Hague House. A proper and expensive place for dinner.
Susannah found it very hard to speak to the waiter. It was like talking to someone through a partition. It seemed difficult even to move her lips; they felt wooden.
“A petite marmite, please; then I’ll see what more I want,” she heard herself saying at last.
But when the petite marmite came, steaming in its big, red casserole, she found herself quite disinclined to eat—almost unable to eat. She managed only two or three mouthfuls of the broth; then dallied with the beef. Perhaps it was because instantly—and for no reason whatever—she had become two people again. Perhaps it was because she had been drinking so much ice-water. It couldn’t be because H. Withington Warner was sitting at the next table to the right. It couldn’t be that—because she had told him, when first she saw him sitting there, that she was no longer afraid of the Carbonado Company. And indeed, when she turned to the left and sawhim sitting there also—when by degrees she discovered that there was one of him at every table in the room, she thought of Alice in the Trial Scene in Wonderland, and became as contemptuous as Alice. “After all,” she said, “you’re only a pack of cards.”
With a flourish, the waiter set the dinner-card before her, asking: “What will you have next, Madame?” Oh yes, she was dining!
“I think I can’t eat any more—the bill, please,” she heard one of her selves saying. That self, she discovered, took calm cognizance of everything about her; listened to conversation. As the waiter turned his back, that half of her saw that Mr. Warner wasn’t there any more; neither at the table on her right, nor anywhere. But when she had paid the bill, tipped, and risen to go, the other self discovered that he was back again at every table; and that with every Warner was a Byan and an O’Hearn. “I am snapping my fingers at them, though nobody sees it,” she said to both her selves. “I can’t imagine how they ever troubled me so much. They don’t know what I’m doing! I’m sleeping out of doors; theycan find me only in rooms!” As though staggered by her complete composure, not one of this triplicate multitude of enemies followed her outside.
“Now I’ll go to Washington Square,” she said, realizing that her personalities had merged again. “The birds must be in bed.” She took a bus; and sank into languor and that curious, impersonal headache until the conductor, calling “All out,” at the south terminus, recalled to her that she was going somewhere. “I must have been asleep,” she thought. “Isn’t this a wonderful world?”
The long, early summer twilight was just beginning to draw about the world. The day lingered though—in an exquisite luminousness. All around her the city was grappling tentatively with oncoming dusk. On a few of the passing limousines, the front lamps struck a garish note. Near, the Fifth Avenue lights were like slowly burning bonfires in the trees; in the distance, seemingly suspended by chains so delicate that they were invisible, they diminished to pots of gold. The six-o’clock rush had long ago ceased. Now everyonesauntered; for everyone was freshly caparisoned for the wonderful night glories of midsummer Manhattan.
Susannah sat down on a bench in Washington Square and surveyed this free world. Though her eyes burned, they saw crystal-clear. All about her Italian-town mixed democratically with Greenwich Village; made contrasting color and noise. Fat Italian mothers, snatching the post-sunset breezes, chattered from bench to bench while they nursed babies. On other benches, lovers clasped hands. Children played over the grass. The birds twittered and the trees murmured. Every color darted pricklingly distinct to Susannah’s avid eyes, burning and heavy though it was. Every sound came distinct to her avid ears, though it sounded through a ringing.
The Fifth Avenue busses were clumping and lumbering in swift succession to their stopping-places. How much, Susannah thought, they looked like prehistoric beetles; colossally big; armored to an incredible hardness and polish. And, already, roped-off crowds of people were patiently waiting upstairs seats. As each busstopped, there came momentary scramble and confusion until inside and out they filled up. She watched this process for a long, long time.
“I can’t go to sleep yet,” she said to herself finally, “the people won’t let me. One can’t sleep in this wonderful world. Where does one go after dinner? Oh, to the theater, of course! On Broadway!” She found herself drifting, happily though languorously, through the arch and northward.
Twilight had settled down; had become dusk; had become night. New York was so brilliant that it almost hurt. It was deep dusk and yet the atmosphere was like a purple river flowing between stiff cañon-like buildings. Everywhere in that purple river glittered golden lights. And, floating through it, were mermaids and mermen of an extreme beauty. Susannah passed from Fifth Avenue to Broadway. She stopped under one of the most brilliant palace-fronts of light, and bought a ticket in the front row. The curtain was just rising on the second act of a musical comedy. Susannah would have been hazy about the plot anyway, for the simple reason that therewas no plot. But tonight she was peculiarly hazy, because she enjoyed the dancing so much that she became oblivious to everything else. Indeed, at times she seemed to be dancing with the dancers. The illusion was so complete that she grew dizzy; and clung to the arm of her seat. She did not want to divide into two people again.
After a while, though, this sensation disappeared in a more intriguing one. For suddenly she discovered that the audience consisted entirely of her and the Carbonado Mining Company. H. Withington Warners, by the hundred, filled the orchestra seats. Byans, by the score, filled the balcony. O’Hearns, by the dozen, filled the gallery. But this did not perturb her. “You’re only a pack of cards,” she accused them mentally. And she stayed to the very end.
“I thought so,” she remarked contemptuously as she turned to go out. For the Carbonado Mining Company had vanished into thin air. She was the only real person who left the theater.
When she came out on the street again, her headache had stopped and the languor was over. There was a beautiful lightness to her wholebody. That lightness impelled her to walk with the crowd. But—she suddenly discovered—she was not walking. She wasfloating. She even flew—only she did not rise very high. She kept an even level, about a foot above the pavement; but at that height she was like a feather. And in a wink—how this extraordinary division happened, she could not guess—she was two people once more.
New York was again blooming; but this time with its transient, vivacious after-the-theater vividness. Crowds were pouring up; pouring down, deflecting into side streets; emerging from side streets. Everywhere was light. Taxicabs and motors raced and spun and backed and turned; they churned, sizzled, spluttered, and foamed—scattering light. Tram-cars, the low-set, armored cruisers of Broadway, flashed smoothly past, overbrimming with light. The tops of the buildings held great congregations of dancing stars. Light poured down their sides.
Susannah floated with the strong main current of the crowd up Broadway and then, with a side current, a little down Broadway. Eddies tookher into Forty-second Street, and whirled her back. And all the time she was in the crowd, but not of it—she was above it. She was looking down on people—she could see the tops of their heads. Susannah kept chuckling over an extraordinary truth she discovered.
“I must remember to tell Glorious Lutie,” she said to herself, “how few people ever brush their hats.”
While one self was noting this amusing fact, however, the other was listening to conversations; the snatches of talk that drifted up to her.
“Let’s go to a midnight show somewhere,” a peevish wife-voice suggested.
“No,sir!” a gruff husband-voice answered. “Li’l’ ole beddo looks pretty good to muh. I can’t hit the hay too soon.”
“What’s Broadway got on Market Street?” a blithe boy’s voice demanded. “Take the view from Twin Peaks at night. Why, it has Broadway beat forty ways from the jack.”
“I’ll say so!” a girl’s voice agreed.
Theaters were empty now, but restaurants were filling. In an incredibly short time, thisphantasmagoria of movement, this kaleidoscope of color, this hurly-burly of sound had shattered, melted, fallen to silence. People disappeared as though by magic from the street; now there were great gaps of sidewalk where nobody appeared. Susannah—both of her, because now she seemed to have become two people permanently—felt lonely. She quickened her pace, her floating rather, to catch up with a figure ahead. It was a girl, just an everyday girl, in a white linen suit and a white sailor hat topping a mass of black hair. She carried a handbag. Susannah found herself following, step by step, behind this girl whose face she had as yet not seen. She was floating; yet every time she tried to see the top of that sailor hat her vision became blurred. It was annoying; but this stealthy pursuit was pleasant, somehow—satisfying.
“They’ve been shadowing me,” said Susannah to herself. “Now I’m shadowing. I’ve helped the Carbonado Company to rob orphans. I’m going to break my promise to go to Jamaica tomorrow. Isn’t it glorious to float and be a criminal!”
So she followed westward on Forty-second Street and reached the Public Library corner of Fifth Avenue, which stretched now deserted except where knots of people awaited the omnibusses. Such a knot had gathered on that corner. Suddenly the girl in white raised her hand, waved; a woman in a light-blue summer evening gown answered her signal from the crowd; they ran toward each other. They were going to have a talk. Susannah floated toward them. The air-currents made her a little wabbly—but wasn’t it fun, eavesdropping and caring not the least bit about manners!
“My train doesn’t start until one,” said the white linen suit. “It’s no use going back to my room—the night is so hot. I’ve been to the Summer Garden, and I’m killing time.”
“Oh,” asked blue dress, “did you sublet your room?”
“No,” said the white linen suit, “I’ll be gone for only a month, and I decided it wasn’t worth while. I’ll have it all ready when I get back. I’ve even left the key under the rug in the hall.”
“I wouldn’t ever do that!” came the voice of the blue dress.
“Well,” said the linen suit, “you knowme! I always lose keys. I’m convinced that when I get to Boston, I shan’t have my trunk key! And there isn’t much to steal.”
“Still, I’d feel nervous if I were you.”
“I don’t see why. Nobody stays up on the top floor, where I am—that is, in the summer. All the other rooms are in one apartment, and the young man who lives there has been away for ages. The people on the ground floor own the house. I get the room for almost nothing by taking care of it and the hall. I haven’t seen anyone else on the floor since the man in the apartment went away. That’s why I love the place—you feel so independent!”
“I think I know the house,” said blue dress. “The old house with the fanlight entrance, isn’t it? Mary Merle used to have a ducky little flat on the second floor, didn’t she?”
“Yes—Number Fifty-seven and a Half—”
Susannah was floating down the Avenue now. But floating with more difficulty. Why was thereeffort about floating? And why did she keep repeating, “Number Fifty-seven and a Half, Washington Square, top floor, key under the rug?”
She met few people. A policeman stared at her for a moment, then turned indifferently away. How surprising that her floating made no impression upon him! But then, there was no law against floating! Once she drifted past H. Withington Warner, who was staring into a shop window. He did not see her. Susannah had to inhibit her chuckles when, floating a foot above his head, she realized for the first time that he dyed his hair. Why could she see that? He should have his hat on—or was she seeing through his hat?
She was passing under the arch into Washington Square. But she wasn’t floating any longer. She was dragging weights; she was wading through something like tar, which clung to her feet. She was coughing violently. She had been coughing for a long time. Night in New York was no longer beautiful; glorious. Tragic horrors were rasping in her head. There was Warner. And there was Byan. She could notsnap her fingers at them now.... But she knew how to get away from them ... she must rest....
She cut off a segment of Washington Square, looking for a number. There was a fanlight; and, plain in the street lamps, seeming for a moment the only object in the world, the number “Fifty-seven and a Half.” The outer door gave to her touch. A dim point of gaslight burned in the hall. She floated again for a minute as she mounted the stairs.... She was before a door.... She was on her hands and knees fumbling under the rug.... She was dragging herself up by the door-knob....
The key opened the door.
Light, streaming from somewhere in the backyard areas, illuminated a wide white bed.
“I am sick, Glorious Lutie—I think I am very sick,” said Susannah. “Watch me, won’t you? Keep Warner out!” Fumbling in the bag, she drew out the miniature, set it up against the mirror on the bureau beside the bed—just where she could see it plainly in the shaft of light.
She locked the door. She lay down.