We Can't Have Everything Part 9

Adna refused the offices of the pages who clutched at the baggage. He went to the cashier and paid the blood-money with a grin of hate. Then he gathered up his women and his other baggage and set out for the station. He would leave all the baggage there while he hunted a place to stop.

They could not find the tunnelway, but debouched on the street. Crossing Vanderbilt Avenue was a problem for village folk heavy laden. The taxicabs were hooting and scurrying.

Adna found himself in the middle of the street, entirely surrounded by demoniac motors. His wife wanted to lie down there and die. Adna dared neither to go nor to stay. Suddenly a chauffeur of an empty limousine, fearing to lose a chance to swear at a taxi-driver, kept his head turned to the left and steered straight for the spot where the Thropps awaited their doom.

Adna had his wife pendent from one arm and a valise or two from the other. Kedzie carried a third valise. Her better than normal shoulders were sagged out of line by its weight.

When Adna saw the motor coming he had to choose between dropping his valise or his wife. Characteristically, he saved his valise.

In spite of his wife's squawking and tugging on his left arm, he achieved safety under the portico of the Grand Central Terminal. He looked about for Kedzie. She was not to be seen. Adna saw the taxicab pa.s.s over the valise she had carried. It left no trace of Kedzie. Her annihilation was uncanny. He gaped.

"Where's Kedzie?" Mrs. Thropp screamed.

A policeman checked the traffic with uplifted hand. Adna ran to him.

Mrs. Thropp told him what had happened.

"I saw the goil drop the bag and beat it for the walk," said the officer.

"Which way'd she go?"

"She lost herself in the crowd," said the officer.

"She was scared out of her wits," Mrs. Thropp sobbed.

The officer shook his head. "She was smilin' when I yelled at her. It looks to me like a get-away."

"A runaway?" Mrs. Thropp gasped.

"Yes,'m. I'd have went after her, but I was cut off by a taxi."

The two old Thropps stood staring at each other and the unfathomable New York, while the impatient chauffeurs squawked their horns in angry protest, and train-missers with important errands thrust their heads out of cab windows.

The officer led his bewildered charges to the sidewalk, motioned the traffic to proceed, and beckoned to a patrolman. "Tell your troubles to him," he said, and went back into his private maelstrom.

The patrolman heard the Thropp story and tried to keep the crowd away.

He patted Mrs. Thropp's back and said they'd find the kid easy, not to dis...o...b..herself. He told the father which station-house to go to and advised him to have the "skipper" send out a "general."

Thropp wondered what language he spoke, but he went; and a soft-hearted walrus in uniform sprawling across a lofty desk took down names and notes and minute descriptions of Kedzie and her costume. He told the two babes in the wood that such t'ings happened constant, and the goil would toin up in no time. He sent out a general alarm.

Mrs. Thropp told him the whole story, putting all the blame on her husband with such enthusiasm that the sympathy of everybody went out to him. Everybody included a number of reporters who asked Mrs. Thropp questions and particularly desired a photograph of Kedzie.

Mrs. Thropp confessed that she had not brought any along. She had never dreamed that the girl would run away. If she had have, she wouldn't have brought the girl along, to say nothing of her photograph.

The amiable walrus in the cap and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons recommended the Thropps to a boarding-house whose prices were commensurate with Adna's ideas and means, and he and his wife went thither, where they told a shabby and sentimental landlady all their troubles. She rea.s.sured them as best she could, and made a cup of tea for Mrs. Thropp and told Mr. Thropp there was a young fellow lived in the house who was working for a private detective bureau. He'd find the kid sure, for it was a small woild, after all.

There was a lull in the European-war news the next day--only a few hundreds killed in an interchange of trenches. There was a dearth of big local news also. So the morning papers all gave Kedzie Thropp the hospitality of their head-lines. The ill.u.s.trated journals published what they said was her photograph. No two of the photographs were alike, but they were all pretty.

The copy-writers loved the details of the event. They gave the dialogue of the Thropps in many versions, all emphasizing what is known as "the human note."

Every one of them gave due emphasis to the historic fact that Kedzie Thropp had been spanked.

The boarding-house was shaken from attic to bas.e.m.e.nt by the news. The Thropps read the papers. They were astounded and enraged at gaining publicity for such a deed. They visited the walrus in his den. But there was no word of Kedzie Thropp. The sea of people had opened and swallowed the little girl. Her mother wondered where she had slept and if she were hungry and into whose hands she had fallen. But there was no answer from anywhere.

CHAPTER IX

People who call a child in from All Outdoors and make it their infant owe it to their victim to be rich, brilliant, and generous. Kedzie Thropp's parents were poor, stupid, and stingy.

They were respectable enough, but not respectful at all. Children have more dignity than anybody else, because they have not lived long enough to have their natal dignity knocked out of them.

Kedzie's parents ought to have respected hers, but they subjected her to odious humiliation. When her father threatened to spank her--and did--and when her mother aided and abetted him, they forfeited all claim to her tolerance. The inspiration to run away was forced on Kedzie, though she would have said that her parents ran away from her first.

Kedzie had preferred her own life to the security of her valise. She dropped the bag without hesitation. When the taxicab parted her family in the middle, Kedzie ran to the opposite sidewalk. She saw a policeman dashing into the thick of the motors. Her eye caught his. He beckoned to her that he would ferry her across the torrent. He was a nice-looking man, but she shook her head at him. She smiled, however, and hastened away.

Freedom had been forced on her. Why should she relinquish the boon?

She lost herself in the crowd. She had no purpose or destination, for the whole city was a mystery to her. Soon she noted that part of the human stream flowed down into the yawning maw of a Subway kiosk as the water ran out of the bath-tub in the hotel. She floated down the steps and found herself in a big subterrene room with walls tiled like those of the hotel bathroom. Everybody was buying tickets from a man in a funny little cage.

Kedzie had a hand-bag slung at her wrist. In it was some small money.

She fished out a nickel and slid it across the gla.s.s sill as the others did.

Beneath her eyes she saw a card that asked, "How many?" She said, "One."

The doleful ticket-seller was annoyed at the tautology of pa.s.sing him a nickel and saying, "One!" He shot out an angry glance with the ticket, but he melted at sight of Kedzie's lush beauty, recognized her unquestionable plebeiance, and hailed her with a "Here you are, Cutie."

Kedzie was not at all insulted. She gave him smile for smile, took up her pasteboard and followed the crowd through the gate.

The ticket-chopper yelled at the back of her head, "Here, where you goin'?"

She turned to him, and his scowl relaxed. He pointed to the box and pleaded:

"Put her there, miss, if you please."

She smiled at the ticket-chopper and dropped the flake into the box. She moved down the stairway as an express rolled in. People ran. Kedzie ran.

They squeezed in at the side door, and so did Kedzie. The wicker seats were full, and so Kedzie stood. She could not reach the handles that looked like cruppers. Men and women saw how pretty she was. She was so pretty that one or two men nearly rose and offered her their seats. When the train whooped round the curve beneath Times Square Kedzie was spun into the lap of a man reading a prematurely born "Night Edition."

She came through the paper like a circus-lady, and the man was indignant till he saw what he held. Then he laughed foolishly, helped the giggling Kedzie to her feet and rose to his own, gave her his place, and went blushing into the next car. For an hour after his arms felt as if they had clasped a fugitive nymph for a moment before she escaped.

This train chanced to be an express to 180th Street in the Bronx Borough. If any one had asked Kedzie if she knew the Bronx she would probably have answered that she did not know them. She did not even know what a borough was.

It was fascinating how much Kedzie did not know. She had an infinite fund of things to find out.

She was thrilled thoroughly by the glorious velocity through the tunnel.

The train stopped at Seventy-second Street and at Ninety-sixth Street and at many other stations. People got on or off. But Kedzie was too well entertained to care to leave.

She did not know that the train ran under a corner of Central Park and beneath the Harlem River. She would have liked to know. To run under a river would tell well at home.