Sundry Accounts Part 10

"Please don't move," said Miss Smith. "Your young lady is thirsty and I'm going to bring her a drink of water--that's all."

"It's very good of you, miss," said the elder woman. She reached for her hand bag. "I think I've got a penny here for the cup."

"I've plenty of pennies," said Miss Smith.

At the cooler behind the forward door she filled a paper cup and brought it back to where the two were. To her surprise the elder woman reached for the cup and took it from her and held it to the girl's lips while she drank. With a profound shock of sympathy the realization went through Miss Smith that the girl had not the use of her hands.

Having drunk, the girl settled back in her former posture, her face half turned toward the window and her head drooping as if from weariness. The woman laid the emptied cup aside and at once was dozing off again. The third member of the group sat in pitying wonder. She wondered what affliction had made a cripple of this wholesome-looking bonny creature.

She thought of ghastly things she had read concerning the dreadful after effects of infantile paralysis, but rejected the suggestion, because no matter what else of dread and woe the girl's eyes had betrayed the face was too plump and the body, which she could feel touching hers, too firm and well nourished to betoken a present and wasting infirmity. So then it must have been some accident--some maiming mishap which probably had not been of recent occurrence, since nothing else about the girl suggested physical impairment. If this deduction were correct, the wearing of the shrouding blue cape in an atmosphere almost stiflingly close stood explained. It was so worn to hide the injured limbs from view. That, of course, would be the plausible explanation. Yet at the same time an inner consciousness gave Miss Smith a certain and absolute conviction that the specter of tearfulness lurking at the back of those big brown eyes meant more than the ever-present realization of some bodily disfigurement.

Fascinated, she found her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there was no morbid desire to spy upon another's hidden miseries--our Miss Smith was too well-bred for that--only was there a sudden quickened pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any small comfort of act or word which might fitly come her way. As her glance--behind the cover of her reopened book--traveled over the cloaked shape searching for a clew to the secret she saw how that chance promised to serve her ends. The girl was half turned from her, a shoulder pressing against the window ledge; the twist of her body had drawn one front breadth of the cape awry so that no longer did it completely overlap its fellow. In the slight opening thus unwittingly contrived Miss Smith could make out at the wearer's belt line a partly obscured inch or two of what seemed to be a heavy leathern gear, or truss, which so far as the small limits of the exposed area gave hint as to its purpose appeared to engage the forearms like a surgical device, supporting their weight below the bend of the elbows. With quickening and enhanced sympathy the little woman winced.

Then she started, her gaze lifting quickly. Of a sudden she became aware that the girl was regarding her straightforwardly with those haggard eyes.

"Can you tell what the--the trouble is with me?" she asked.

She spoke under her breath, the wraith of a weary little smile about her mouth.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," answered Miss Smith contritely. "But please believe me--it was not mere cheap inquisitiveness that made me look."

"I think I know," said the girl softly. "You were sorry. And it doesn't matter much--your seeing. Somehow I don't mind your seeing."

"But I haven't really seen--I only caught a glimpse. And I'm afraid now that I've been pressing too closely against your side; perhaps giving you pain by touching your arms."

"My arms are not hurting me," said the girl, still with that queer ghost of a smile at her lips. "I've not been hurt or injured in any way."

"Not hurt? Then why--"

She choked the involuntary question even as she was framing it.

"This--this has been done, I suppose, to keep me from hurting anyone else."

"But--but I don't understand."

"Don't you--yet? Then lift a fold of my wrap--carefully, so no one else can see while you are looking. I'd rather you did," she continued, seeing how Miss Smith hesitated.

"But I am a stranger to you. I don't wish to pry. I----"

"Please do! Then perhaps you won't be worrying later on about--about me if you know the truth now."

With one hand Miss Smith turned back the edge of the cape, enlarging slightly the opening, and what she saw shocked her more deeply than though she had beheld some hideous mutilation. She saw that about both of the girl's wrists were snugly strapped broad leather bands, designed something after the fas.h.i.+on of the armlets sometimes worn by athletes and artisans, excepting that here the buckle fastenings were set upon the tops of the wrists instead of upon the inner sides; saw, too, that these cuffs were made fast to a wide leather belt, which in an unbroken band encircled the girl's trunk, so that her prisoned forearms were pressed in and confined closely against her body at the line of her waist. Her elbows she might move slightly and her fingers freely; but the hands were held well apart and the fingers in play might touch only the face of the broad girthing, which presumably was made fast by buckles or lacings at her back. As if the better to indicate how firmly she was secured, the wearer of these strange bonds flexed her arm muscles slightly; the result was a little creaking sound as the harness answered the strain. Then the girl relaxed and the sound ended.

"Oh, you poor child!" The gasped exclamation came involuntarily, carrying all the deeper burden of compa.s.sion because it was uttered in a half whisper. Quickly she snugged the cloak in to cover the ugly thing she had looked upon. "What have you done that you should be treated so?"

Indignation was in the asking--that and an incredulous disbelief that here had been any wrongdoing.

"It isn't what I've done--exactly. I imagine it is their fear of what they think I might do if my hands were free."

"But where are you going? Where are these people taking you? You're no criminal. I know you're not. You couldn't be!"

"I am being taken to a place up the road to be confined as a dangerous lunatic."

In the accenting of the words was no trace of rebellion or even of self-pity, but merely there was the dead weight and numbness of a hopeless resignation to make the words sound flat and listless.

"I don't believe one word of it!" exclaimed Miss Smith, then broke off short, realizing that the shock of the girl's piteous admission had sent her own voice lifting and that now she had a second listener. The woman diagonally across from her was sitting bolt upright and a pair of small eyes were narrowing upon her in a squint of watchful and hostile suspicion. Instantly she stood up--a small, competent, determined body.

"I'll be back," she stated, disregarding the elder woman and speaking to the younger. "And I'm going to find out more about you, too, before I'm done."

Her step, departing, was brisk and resolute.

In the aisle near the forward door she encountered the flagman.

"There is a man in the smoker I must see at once," she said. "Will you please go in there and find him and tell him I wish--no, never mind. I see him coming now."

She went a step or two on to meet the person she sought, halting him in the untenanted s.p.a.ce at the end of the coach.

"I want to speak with you, please," she began.

"Well, you'll have to hurry," he told her, "because I'm getting off with my party in less'n five minutes from now. What was it you wanted to say to me?"

"That young girl yonder--I became interested in her. I thought perhaps she had been injured. Then more or less by chance I found out the true facts. I spoke to her; she told me a little about her plight."

"Well, if you've been talking to her what's the big idea in talking to me?"

His tone was churlish.

"This isn't mere vulgar curiosity on my part. I have a perfectly proper motive, I think, in inquiring into her case. What is her name."

"Margaret Vinsolving."

"Spell it for me, please--the last name?"

He spelled it out, and she after him to fix it in her mind.

"Where does she live--I mean where is her home?"

"Village of Pleasantdale, this state," shortly.

"Who are her people?"

"She's got a mother and that's all, far as I know."

"What asylum are you taking her to?"

"No asylum. We're taking her to Doctor Shorter's Sanitarium back of Peekskill two miles--Dr. Clement Shorter, specialist in nervous disorders--he's the head."

"It is a private place then and not a state asylum?"

"You said it."