"And so she decided to get it over while he was in the hospital. She thought the dye would have to wear off gradually, but there's a place on West Twenty-eighth Street--near Sixth Avenue, I think--where a French woman guarantees to remove any dye, perfectly harmlessly, in two hours. So she had it done, and he was delighted. My dear, she was fifty, and the grey hair really was more becoming to her. Everybody thinks so. But n.o.body knew her--I never saw such a change, at first.

If you know anybody who wants it done, just send them there. Some French name."

And just as Miss Mary was drifting off to that dull world of grievances in which she dwelt habitually, a new idea, as strong and definite as that which took her through the gate caught and held her, and she wrote in a little leather book in her bag, "28th St. west, near Sixth." Some primitive instinct of caution directed her to a street car in preference to a hansom or taxi-cab, and she found the French woman's small, musty establishment with an ease that surprised her. Her coat, obviously "imported," the elegance of her bag and umbrella, the air of custom with which she submitted to others' ministrations, brought her quick service, and in less than the guaranteed two hours she left Madame, whose very considerable fee she paid with gloved hands, thus, through sheer inadvertence, concealing the one trace of her ident.i.ty--her ma.s.sive and beautiful rings. For no one of Dr. Jarvyse's detectives could be expected to look at an iron-grey woman in black, when searching for a black-haired woman in blue plaid. And none of them, not the great Jarvyse, nor her maid even, knew that Miss Mary had dyed her hair for ten years!

As she stood by a little optician's, on one of the great avenues, later, gazing fascinated at her strange reflection in a large gla.s.s there, terrified at her daring, doubtful if her freedom could endure, two errand-girls, peering in with her in the imitative New York fashion, held her with an idle sentence.

"Did you know Miss Mahoney with those gla.s.ses? I nearly fell over when I seen her, honest! She was awful cross--the boss himself cut her dead!"

"Say, what do you think of that now?"

"An' they're only window-gla.s.s, too! She told one o' the fitters. She can stare at the ladies better she says, when they try to beat her down."

They moved on, but Miss Mary entered the shop.

"Can I get a pair of eye-gla.s.ses made of window-gla.s.s?" she asked him simply.

"Certainly, madam," and one would have supposed that leaders of fashion generally were wearing these articles, so swiftly and unsmilingly did he produce them and adjust them to her strong, dark eyes.

"Wonderful how they change a person, though," he admitted. "You wouldn't believe it."

The price seemed very small to Miss Mary, whose last purchase in that line had been a tortoise-sh.e.l.l lorgnette for her sister-in-law.

She had eaten very lightly at luncheon, for food was tasteless to her, of late, and she had been so followed, tended and directed in all the operations of life that she actually failed to recognise her sensations as those of hunger. But her unwonted exertions, the strain on her flagging brain, the stimulus of this unprecedented day, all combined to flush her cheek feverishly and she felt strangely weak. For the first time it flashed over her cleared faculties that she must go somewhere and at once. New York was too dangerous for her; she must leave it.

A very panic of terror seized her and she half expected to hear Dr.

Jarvyse's soft voice at her shoulder. She started from the shop like one pursued, and hurried foolishly on and on in an ecstasy of flight.

The streets were now dark, and Miss Mary, who had begun life in New York with her own private hansom, felt singularly out of place in the jostling crowd.

She stopped at the foot of an elevated railway station, and more because she was pushed up the steps by the hurrying ma.s.s of humanity that scurried like ants up and down, than for any other reason, climbed wearily up. As she sat pressed against a dirty man with a bundle, a sudden inconsequent thought struck her, and she removed her gloves in a leisurely way, took off her rings, dropped them into a roll of chamois-skin in the large bag, added to them a diamond cross and pendant from the lace at her neck and put on her gloves again. The dirty man stared at her.

Then she lifted her eyes to a large sign above the car-windows and the sign read:

_Avoid the biting March winds. You will find quiet, an even temperature and perfect seclusion among the pines at restful Lakewood.

Take the ferry at 23d St._

So that when the guard announced Twenty-third Street, Miss Mary got up, went down the stairs, tumbled with surprising facility upon a cross-town car and made for the ferry. And the dirty man went down the stairs with her.

Fate put Miss Mary on just the right boat for a Lakewood Special, and hunger cleared her mind to the extent of throwing her card-case over the rail on the way across. Her umbrella and ulster she had left behind on the elevated train, not being accustomed to carry such things, and they were found by a thrifty old lady in the second-hand-clothing line, who annexed them silently and forever. So that when she arrived at the Lakewood Station and fell among the cabbies and hotel touts she was the perfect type of the no-longer-young spinster, unaccompanied, awkward and light of luggage, presumably light of purse. The cabbies left her therefore, unchallenged, to a lad as shy and awkward as herself, who mumbled something about quiet, reasonable rooms, and received her yielded bag with a surprise as great as her own.

Miss Mary was by now almost light-headed from hunger and excitement.

At the slightest pressure she would have told her story to the first interested stranger, and thus ended her adventure, most surely. But Fate led her to the door of one too full of trouble to heed Miss Mary's. To Mrs. Meeker she was a lodger certainly, a boarder possibly--in any event, a source of income. So long had she been waiting for Miss Mary that she fairly s.n.a.t.c.hed her bag from her and pushed her up the faded, decent stairs into the faded, decent bedroom with the cracked china toilet-set. Any one, _any one_ would have been welcome to Mrs. Meeker, and Miss Mary's quiet elegance and handsome travelling-bag were far beyond her hopes.

"A real lady," she whispered to her nephew. "Ask if she'd like a little something on a tray, Georgie. I could poach that egg, and there's tea. I won't say anything about a week in advance. She looks tired to death."

Miss Mary's famishing senses cried out loudly at sight of the meagre tray, and as the egg and tea pa.s.sed her lips a strange, eager sensation was hers, a delicious, gratified climax of emotion: Miss Mary was glad she was alive! She savoured each morsel of the pitiful meal; she could have wished it doubled; the cheap tea filled her nostrils with a balmy odour; she was hungry.

And hardly had the food satisfied her when her eyelids fell, her head dropped forward. Approaching oblivion drugged her ere it reached her and she dozed in her chair. But some instinct forced her to her feet as the landlady appeared, and fumbling in her bag for her card-case and pocketbook, she held herself awake.

"I'd like to pay," she murmured, "and then I'll--I'll go to bed. Will you send some one, please?"

She meant some one to undress her, but Mrs. Meeker did not know this.

"It's--it's twelve a week, with board," she said, her eyes lighting at the yellow bills in her lodger's hand, "and--oh, dear, yes, two weeks is ample, Miss--Miss----"

"My cards are lost," said Miss Mary fretfully. "I can't think where I left them. The man or somebody will know. Ask----"

She started to say, "Ask the doctor," for her memory was swallowed, nearly, by sleepiness, and a curious woman would have had her secret in a twinkle. But Mrs. Meeker was too thankful to be curious.

"Certainly, Miss--Miss----"

"Miss Mary," said the other, yawning, and the landlady repeated, "Yes, Miss Merry. Can't I help you, you being so tired and all?"

"And she stuck out her feet for her shoes, just like a baby," she confided to Georgie, later. "She went off before I got her undressed, really; her folks ought to 've sent some one with her, worn out as she was! You go 'round the first thing in the morning and tell the agent I've got a fine boarder, and more expected. I feel real encouraged."

And all that night and all the next day Miss Mary slept dreamlessly, for the first time in years without a drug to help her.

It did not seem unusual that Mrs. Meeker should have unpacked her few things and laid them in the drawer of the battered bureau: some one always unpacked her things. And when, strangely weak and relaxed, she lay for three days more and ate dutifully from the tray, dozing between whiles, n.o.body questioned her.

On the fourth day she woke into a grey, despondent world again. The old angry, purposeless tears beset her and she felt that terrible dumbness settling over her. She had long ceased to fight it, now; she only wondered what Mrs. Meeker would do with her. But she never knew what Mrs. Meeker would have done, for when the tired, drudging little woman brought her breakfast tray she held it in dingily gloved hands; she was dressed for a journey.

"My brother's down with a stroke," she said abruptly, "Georgie's father, and wants to see me. I'll have to nurse him, prob'ly, and I s'pose his sending means he's friendly again. It may just be I won't need to come back, and I'm glad, of course, for I'm worth my keep to him any day, and he'd ought to have took Georgie long ago. I'll soon know, and I'll write you, and what I wanted to ask was, would you be willin' to wait till I find out? It might be only temp'ry, and then I'd be sorry to lose a boarder. Will you stay till you hear, anyway?"

Miss Mary nodded dumbly. She could not speak and she was ashamed that she could not; _she had never been ashamed before_.

"That's good," said Mrs. Meeker quickly, "and the lady next door'll give you meals. I'll settle with her--Mrs. Palmer. Her board's good, and I'll only charge you five for the room. That makes a month you've paid for. D'you see?"

Again, Miss Mary nodded.

"Then I'll get right off. It's Philadelphia I'm going to, and I'll write you as soon's I know. But I count on you to stay."

"Yes, I'll stay."

Miss Mary forced the words harshly and it seemed that they would tear her lips, so hard they came. But they came, and they sufficed for Mrs.

Meeker, who went out of her solitary lodger's life as quickly as she had come into it, for Miss Mary never saw her again.

On that day she dressed herself slowly, and with a certain clumsiness, took her little shopping bag and bought, with economy and taste, a very fair outfit of simple clothing for the seventy dollars she had gained on the strength of the peddler of embroideries; she pa.s.sed the peddler's very shop on her way. Underwear, a black dress, rubber overshoes and a plain umbrella--nothing was forgotten.

"When my money is all gone, I will begin to sell the jewelry," she thought, for she knew that she could live comfortably for the rest of her life on less than the value of the emeralds and diamonds. She did her shopping in a public victoria and brought the parcels home in it: it was her only extravagance that day.

As she got out at the door of the little faded house and paid the driver, it occurred to her that she had left it unlocked during her absence, and in her remorse over this and the bustle of going to the strange dining-room for luncheon, whither she was summoned by a slatternly waitress, she forgot completely that on this day she had sworn to stay alone in her room, to conceal from strangers her malady of melancholy dumbness.

"But I'm _not_ that way--I'm _not_!" she whispered to herself in amazement, "why, I talked to the clerks all the morning!" And so she had, and none of the dozen at Mrs. Palmer's table that noon remarked anything further than that Miss Merry seemed a quiet, shy sort of person with a tendency to vagueness and little idea of pa.s.sing the b.u.t.ter dish.

She sorted and arranged her purchases all the afternoon; the little roll of chamois-skin she kept carefully in the wrist-bag which never left her arm.

At dinner Mrs. Palmer took her aside and with the touch on her arm Miss Mary's blood turned to water. "She knows about me!" she thought and nearly fell to the ground from weakness.

"I'm sorry I startled you," said Mrs. Palmer, "Mrs. Meeker said you weren't any too strong, I remember. I only wanted to say that I've sent three more roomers over to your house--she'll be only too glad, I know. You don't mind, Miss Merry?"