Part 58 (1/2)

She let the subject pa.s.s and they conversed on other things.

She felt strange loneliness. ”Am I, in truth, fantastical?” she sighed, ”or, if Heaven is witness to the sober truth of that which I conceive, am I so weak as to need other sympathy?” This was the tenor, not the words, of her thought. Yet all the way home, as they talked and walked through the glowing autumn land, her heart was aching.

CHAPTER XIX.

The day came on which Bates was to go home. He had had a week's petulant struggle with his malady since he last pa.s.sed through the door of Trenholme's house, but now he had conquered it for the hour, and even his host perceived that it was necessary for him to make his journey before the weather grew colder.

His small belongings packed, his morose good-byes said, Alec Trenholme drove him to the railway station.

Both the brothers knew why it was that, in taking leave of them, Bates hardly seemed to notice that he did so; they knew that, in leaving the place, he was all-engrossed in the thought that he was leaving the girl, Eliza Cameron, for ever; but he seemed to have no thought of saying to her a second farewell.

The stern reserve which Bates had maintained on this subject had so wrought on Alec's sympathy that he had consulted his brother as to the advisability of himself making some personal appeal to Eliza, and the day before Bates started he had actually gone on this mission. If it was not successful, hardly deserved that it should be; for when he stood in front of the girl, he could not conceal the great dislike he felt for her, nor could he bring himself to plead on behalf of a man who he felt was worth a thousand such as she. He said briefly that Bates was to start for home the next day, and by such a train, and that he had thought it might concern her to know it.

”Did he tell you to tell me?” asked Eliza, without expression.

”No, he didn't; and what's more, he never told me how you came here. You think he's been telling tales about you! You can know now that he never did; he's not that sort. I saw you at Turrifs, and when I saw you again here I knew you. All I've got to say about _that_ is, that I, for one, don't like that kind of conduct. You've half killed Bates, and this winter will finish him off.”

”That's not my fault,” said Eliza.

”Oh? Well, that's for you to settle with yourself. I thought I'd come and tell you what I thought about it, and that he was going. That's all I've got to say.”

”But I've something more to say, and you'll stay and hear it.” She folded her arms upon her breast, and looked at him, a contemptuous, indignant Amazon. ”You think Mr. Bates would thank you if you got me to go away with him because I was afraid he'd die. You think”--growing sarcastic--”that Mr. Bates wants me to go with him because _I'm sorry for him_. I tell you, if I did what you're asking, Mr. Bates would be the first to tell you to mind your own business and to send me about mine.”

She relapsed into cold silence for a minute, and then added, ”If you think Mr. Bates can't do his own love-making, you're vastly mistaken.”

It did not help to soothe Alec that, when he went home, his brother laughed at his recital.

”She is a coa.r.s.e-minded person,” he said. ”I shall never speak to her again.”

This had happened the day before he drove Bates to the station.

It was a midday train. The railway platform was comparatively empty, for the season of summer visitors was past. The sun glared with unsoftened light on the painted station building, on the bare boards of the platform, upon the varnished exterior of the pa.s.senger cars, and in, through their windows, upon the long rows of red velvet seats. Alec disposed Bates and his bundles on a seat near the stove at the end of one of the almost empty cars. Then he stood, without much idea what to say in the few minutes before the train started.

”Well,” said he, ”you'll be at Quebec before dark.”

As they both knew this, Bates did not consider it worth an answer. His only desire was that the train should be gone, so that he might be left alone. He was a good deal oppressed by the idea of his indebtedness to Alec, but he had already said all on that head that was in him to say; it had not been much.

An urchin came by, bawling oranges. They looked small and sour, but, for sheer lack of anything better to do, Alec went out of the car to buy a couple. He was just stepping in again to present them when, to his surprise, he became aware that one of the various people on the platform was Eliza Cameron. When he caught sight of her she was coming running from the other end of the train, her face red with exertion and her dress disordered. She looked in at the windows, saw Bates, and entered where Alec had intended to enter, he drawing aside, and she not even seeing him.

The impetus of his intention carried Alec on to the outer porch of the car, but his consideration for Bates caused him then to turn his back to the door, and gaze down the long level track, waiting until Eliza should come out again.

The prospect that met his gaze was one in which two parallel straight lines met visibly in the region of somewhere. He remembered learning that such two lines do, in truth, always meet in infinity. He wondered drearily if this were a parable. As he saw his life, all that he desired and all that was right seemed to lie in two tracks, side by side, but for ever apart.

The advent of Eliza had sunk into less significance in his mind by the time he heard the engine's warning bell. He turned and looked into the car. There sat the man whom he had left, but not the same man; a new existence seemed to have started into life in his thin sinewy frame, and to be looking out through the weather-beaten visage. This man, fond and happy, was actually addressing a glance of arch amus.e.m.e.nt at the girl who, flushed and disconcerted, sought to busy herself by rearranging his possessions. So quickly did it seem that Bates had travelled from one extreme of life to another that Alec felt no doubt as to the kindly triumph in the eye. Explanation he had none. He stepped off the jolting car.

”Is she coming out?” he asked the conductor.

”No, she ain't,” said a Ch.e.l.laston man who stood near at hand. ”She's got her trunk in the baggage car, and she's got her ticket for Quebec, she has. She's left the hotel, and left old Hutchins in the lurch--that's what she's done.”