The Four Stragglers

by Frank L. Packard

THE MESSAGE

Polly Wickes, from her pillow, stared into the darkness. There had been no thought of sleep; it did not seem as though there ever could be again. She had undressed and gone to bed—but she had done this mechanically, because at night one went to bed, because she had always gone to bed.

Not to sleep!

The tears blinding her eyes, she had groped her way up the stairs from the living room where she had left Howard Locke, and somehow she had reached her room. That was hours and hours ago. Surely the daylight would come soon now; surely it would soon be morning. She wanted the daylight, she wanted the morning, because the darkness and the stillness seemed to accentuate a terrible and merciless sense of isolation that had come so swiftly, so suddenly into her life—to overturn, to dominate, to stupefy, to cast contemptuously aside the dreams and thoughts and hopes of happiness and contentment. And yet, though she yearned for the morning, she even dreaded it more. How could she meet Howard Locke—at breakfast? She couldn't. She wouldn't go down to breakfast.

The small hands came from under the coverings, and clasped themselves tightly about the aching head—and she turned and buried her face in the pillow. She might easily, very easily evade breakfast—and postpone the inevitable for a few minutes, even a few hours. Why did she grasp at pitiful subterfuges such as that?

She was nameless.

That phrase had come hours ago. It had scorched itself upon her brain—as a branding iron at white heat sears its imprint upon quivering flesh, never to be effaced, always to endure. She was nameless. It wasn't that she had not always known it—she always had. But it meant now what it had never meant before. Until now it had been as something that, since it must be borne, she had striven to bear with what courage was hers, and, denying its right to embitter life, had sought to imprison it in the dim recesses of her mind—but now in an instant it had broken its bonds to stand forth exposed in all its ugliness; no longer captive, but a vengeful captor, claiming its miserable right from now on to control and dominate her life.

She had thought of love—it would have been unnatural if she had not. But she had never loved, and therefore she had thought of it only in an abstract way. Dream love—fancies. But she loved now—she loved this man who had so suddenly come into her life—she loved Howard Locke. And happinesss, greater than she had realised happiness could ever be, had unfolded itself to her gaze, and, love had become a vibrant, personal thing, so wonderful, so tender and so glad a thing, that beside it all the world was little and insignificant and empty; but even as the glory of it, and the joy of it had burst upon her, she had been obliged to turn away from it—not very bravely, for the tears had scalded her as she had run from the living room—because there was no other thing to do, because it was something that was not hers to have.

She could never be the wife of any man.

She was nameless.