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Page 19
"Well, no; I don't mean that, of course, but, Lloyd, do let us have
three dollars, and I can send word to the old chap this very afternoon.
It will make him happy for the rest of his life."
"No--no--no, not three dollars, nor three cents."
Miss Douglass made a gesture of despair. She might have expected that
she could not move Lloyd. Once her mind was made up, one might argue
with her till one's breath failed. She shook her head at Lloyd and
exclaimed, but not ill-naturedly:
"Obstinate! Obstinate! Obstinate!"
Lloyd put away the hypodermic syringe and the minim-glass in their
places in the bag, added a little ice-pick to its contents, and shut the
bag with a snap.
"Now," she announced, "I'm ready."
When Miss Douglass had taken herself away Lloyd settled herself in the
place she had vacated, and, stripping the wrappings from the books and
magazines she had bought, began to turn the pages, looking at the
pictures. But her interest flagged. She tried to read, but soon cast the
book from her and leaned back upon the great couch, her hands clasped
behind the great bronze-red coils at the back of her head, her dull-blue
eyes fixed and vacant.
For hours the preceding night she had lain broad awake in her bed,
staring at the shifting shadow pictures that the electric lights,
shining through the trees down in the square, threw upon the walls and
ceiling of her room. She had eaten but little since morning; a growing
spirit of unrest had possessed her for the last two days. Now it had
reached a head. She could no longer put her thoughts from her.
It had all come back again for the fiftieth time, for the hundredth
time, the old, intolerable burden of anxiety growing heavier month by
month, year by year. It seemed to her that a shape of terror, formless,
intangible, and invisible, was always by her, now withdrawing, now
advancing, but always there; there close at hand in some dark corner
where she could not see, ready at every instant to assume a terrible and
all too well-known form, and to jump at her from behind, from out the
dark, and to clutch her throat with cold fingers. The thing played with
her, tormented her; at times it all but disappeared; at times she
believed she had fought it from her for good, and then she would wake of
a night, in the stillness and in the dark, and know it to be there once
more--at her bedside--at her back--at her throat--till her heart went
wild with fear, and the suspense of waiting for an Enemy that would not
strike, but that lurked and leered in dark corners, wrung from her a
suppressed cry of anguish and exasperation, and drove her from her sleep
with streaming eyes and tight-shut hands and wordless prayers.
For a few moments Lloyd lay back upon the couch, then regained her feet
with a brusque, harassed movement of head and shoulders.
"Ah, no," she exclaimed under her breath, "it is too dreadful."
She tried to find diversion in her room, rearranging the few ornaments,
winding the clock that struck ships' bells instead of hours, and turning
the wicks of the old empire lamps that hung in brass brackets on either
side the fireplace. Lloyd, after building the agency, had felt no
scruple in choosing the best room in the house and furnishing it
according to her taste. Her room was beautiful, but very simple in its
appointments. There were great flat wall-space unspoiled by bric-�-brac,
the floor marquetry, with but few rugs. The fireplace and its
appurtenances were of brass. Her writing-desk, a huge affair, of ancient
and almost black San Domingo mahogany.
But soon she wearied of the small business of pottering about her clock
and lamps, and, turning to the window, opened it, and, leaning upon her
elbows, looked down into the square.
By now the thunderstorm was gone, like the withdrawal of a dark curtain;
the sun was out again over the City. The square, deserted but half an
hour ago, was reinvaded with its little people of nurse-maids,
gray-coated policemen, and loungers reading their papers on the benches
near the fountain. The elms still dripped, their wet leaves glistening
again to the sun. There was a delicious smell in the air--a smell of
warm, wet grass, of leaves and drenched bark from the trees. On the far
side of the square, seen at intervals in the spaces between the foliage,
a passing truck painted vermilion set a brisk note of colour in the
scene. A newsboy appeared chanting the evening editions. On a sudden and
from somewhere close at hand an unseen hand-piano broke out into a gay,
jangling quickstep, marking the time with delightful precision.
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