She sat down at a writing-desk, in the waiting-room, and wrote: "I am
safe, and I thank you." Then she paused an instant, and with nervous haste
wrote "Mary" underneath. She opened the suit-case and pinned the paper to
the lapel of the evening coat. Just three dollars and sixty-seven cents
she had left in her pocket-book after paying the expressage on the
suit-case.
She felt doubtful whether she might not have done wrong about thus sending
her dress back, but what else could she have done? If she had bought a box
in which to put it, she would have had to carry it with her, and perhaps
the dress might have been found during her absence from her room, and she
suspected because of it. At any rate, it was too late now, and she felt
sure the young man would understand. She hoped it would not inconvenience
him especially to get rid of it. Surely he could give it to some
charitable organization without much trouble.
At her first waking, in the early gray hours of the morning, she had
looked her predicament calmly in the face. It was entirely likely that it
would continue indefinitely; it might be, throughout her whole life. She
could now see no way of help for herself. Time might, perhaps, give her a
friend who would assist her, or a way might open back into her old life in
some unthought-of manner, but for a time there must be hiding and a way
found to earn her living.
She had gone carefully over her own accomplishments. Her musical
attainments, which would naturally have been the first thought, were out
of the question. Her skill as a musician was so great, and so well known
by her enemy, that she would probably be traced by it at once. As she
looked back at the hour spent at Mrs. Bowman's piano, she shuddered at the
realization that it might have been her undoing, had it chanced that her
enemy passed the house, with a suspicion that she was inside. She would
never dare to seek a position as accompanist, and she knew how futile it
would be for her to attempt to teach music in an unknown city, among
strangers. She might starve to death before a single pupil appeared.
Besides, that too would put her in a position where she would be more
easily found. The same arguments were true if she were to attempt to take
a position as teacher or governess, although she was thoroughly competent
to do so. Rapidly rejecting all the natural resources which under ordinary
circumstances she would have used to maintain herself, she determined to
change her station entirely, at least for the present. She would have
chosen to do something in a little, quiet hired room somewhere, sewing or
decorating or something of the sort, but that too would be hopelessly out
of her reach, without friends to aid her. A servant's place in some one's
home was the only thing possible that presented itself to her mind. She
could not cook, nor do general housework, but she thought she could fill
the place of waitress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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