Two young men in officers’ uniforms entered the smoker of a suburban train, and after the usual formalities of matches and cigarettes settled back to enjoy their ride out to Bryne Haven.
“What d’ye think of that girl I introduced you to the other night, Harry? Isn’t she a pippin?” asked the second lieutenant taking a luxurious puff at his cigarette.
“I should say, Bobbie, she’s some girl! Where d’ye pick her up? I certainly owe you one for a good time.”
“Don’t speak of it, Harry. Come on with me and try it again. I’m going to see her friend to-night and can get her over the ’phone any time. She’s just nuts about you. What do you say? Shall I call her up?”
“Well, hardly to-night, Bob,” said the first lieutenant thoughtfully, “she’s a ripping fine girl and all that, of course, but the fact is, Bob, I’ve decided to marry Ruth Macdonald and I haven’t much time left before I go over. I think I’ll have to get things fixed up between us to-night, you see. Perhaps—later——. But no. I guess that wouldn’t do. Ruth’s folks are rather fussy about such things. It might get out. No, Bob, I’ll have to forego the pleasures you offer me this time.”
The second lieutenant sat up and whistled:
“You’ve decided to marry Ruth Macdonald!” he ejaculated, staring. “But has Ruth Macdonald decided to marry you?”
“I hardly think there’ll be any trouble on that score when I get ready to propose,” smiled the first lieutenant complacently, as he lolled back in his seat. “You seem surprised,” he added.
“Well, rather!” said the other officer dryly, still staring.
“What’s there so surprising about that?” The first lieutenant was enjoying the sensation he was creating. He knew that the second lieutenant had always been “sweet” on Ruth Macdonald.
“Well, you know, Harry, you’re pretty rotten!” said the second lieutenant uneasily, a flush beginning to rise in his face. “I didn’t think you’d have the nerve. She’s a mighty fine girl, you know. She’s—unusual!”
“Exactly. Didn’t you suppose I would want a fine girl when I marry?”
“I don’t believe you’re really going to do it!” burst forth the second lieutenant. “In fact, I don’t believe I’ll let you do it if you try!”
“You couldn’t stop me, Bob!” with an amiable sneer. “One word from you, young man, and I’d put your captain wise about where you were the last time you overstayed your leave and got away with it. You know I’ve got a pull with your captain. It never pays for the pot to call the kettle black.”
The second lieutenant sat back sullenly with a deep red streaking his cheeks.
“You’re no angel yourself, Bob, see?” went on the first lieutenant lying back in his seat in satisfied triumph, “and I’m going to marry Ruth Macdonald next week and get a ten days’ leave! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
There ensued a long and pregnant silence. One glance at the second lieutenant showed that he was most effectually silenced.
The front door of the car slammed open and shut, and a tall slim officer with touches of silver about the edges of his dark hair, and a look of command in his keen eyes came crisply down the aisle. The two young lieutenants sat up with a jerk, and an undertone of oaths, and prepared to salute as he passed them. The captain gave them a quick searching glance as he saluted and went on to the next car.
The two jerked out salutes and settled back uneasily.
“That man gives me a pain!” said Harry Wainwright preparing to soothe his ruffled spirits by a fresh cigarette.
“He thinks he’s so doggone good himself that he has to pry into other people’s business and get them in wrong. It beats me how he ever got to be a captain—a prim old fossil like him!”
“It might puzzle some people to know how you got your commission, Harry. You’re no fossil, of course, but you’re no angel, either, and there are some things in your career that aren’t exactly laid down in military manuals.”
“Oh, my uncle Henry looked after my commission. It was a cinch! He thinks the sun rises and sets in me, and he had no idea how he perjured himself when he put me through. Why, I’ve got some of the biggest men in the country for my backers, and wouldn’t they lie awake at night if they knew! Oh Boy! I thought I’d croak when I read some of those recommendations, they fairly gushed with praise. You’d have died laughing, Bob, if you had read them. They had such adjectives as ‘estimable, moral, active, efficient,’ and one went so far as to say that I was equally distinguished in college in scholarship and athletics! Some stretch of imagination, eh, what?”
The two laughed loudly over this.
“And the best of it is,” continued the first lieutenant, “the poor boob believed it was all true!”
“But your college records, Harry, how could they get around those? Or didn’t they look you up?”
“Oh, mother fixed that all up. She sent the college a good fat check to establish a new scholarship or something.”
“Lucky dog!” sighed his friend. “Now I’m just the other way. I never try to put anything over but I get caught, and nobody ever tried to cover up my tracks for me when I got gay!”
“You worry too much, Bobby, and you never take a chance. Now I——”
The front door of the car opened and shut with a slam, and a tall young fellow with a finely cut face and wearing workman’s clothes entered. He gave one quick glance down the car as though he was searching for someone, and came on down the aisle. The sight of him stopped the boast on young Wainwright’s tongue, and an angry flush grew, and rolled up from the top of his immaculate olive-drab collar to his close, military hair-cut.
Slowly, deliberately, John Cameron walked down the aisle of the car looking keenly from side to side, scanning each face alertly, until his eyes lighted on the two young officers. At Bob Wetherill he merely glanced knowingly, but he fixed his eyes on young Wainwright with a steady, amused, contemptuous gaze as he came toward him; a gaze so noticeable that it could not fail to arrest the attention of any who were looking; and he finished the affront with a lingering turn of his head as he passed by, and a slight accentuation of the amusement as he finally lifted his gaze and passed on out of the rear door of the car. Those who were sitting in the seats near the door might have heard the words: “And they killed such men as Lincoln!” muttered laughingly as the door slammed shut behind him.
Lieutenant Wainwright uttered a low oath of imprecation and flung his half spent cigarette on the floor angrily:
“Did you see that, Bob?” he complained furiously, “If I don’t get that fellow!”
“I certainly did! Are you going to stand for that? What’s eating him, anyway? Has he got it in for you again? But he isn’t a very easy fellow to get, you know. He has the reputation——”
“Oh, I know! Yes, I guess anyhow I know!”
“Oh, I see! Licked you, too, once, did he?” laughed Wetherill, “what had you been up to?”
“Oh, having some fun with his girl! At least I suppose she must have been his girl the way he carried on about it. He said he didn’t know her, but of course that was all bluff. Then, too, I called his father a name he didn’t like and he lit into me again. Good night! I thought that was the end of little Harry! I was sick for a week after he got through with me. He certainly is some brute. Of course, I didn’t realize what I was up against at first or I’d have got the upper hand right away. I could have, you know! I’ve been trained! But I didn’t want to hurt the fellow and get into the papers. You see, the circumstances were peculiar just then——”
“I see! You’d just applied for Officer’s Training Camp?”
“Exactly, and you know you never can tell what rumor a person like that can start. He’s keen enough to see the advantage, of course, and follow it up. Oh, he’s got one coming to him all right!”
“Yes, he’s keen all right. That’s the trouble. It’s hard to get him.”
“Well, just wait. I’ve got him now. If I don’t make him bite the dust! Ye gods! When I think of the way he looks at me every time he sees me I could skin him alive!”
“I fancy he’d be rather slippery to skin. I wouldn’t like to try it, Harry!”
“Well, but wait till you see where I’ve got him! He’s in the draft. He goes next week. And they’re sending all those men to our camp! He’ll be a private, of course, and he’ll have to salute me! Won’t that gall him?”
“He won’t do it! I know him, and he won’t do it!”
“I’ll take care that he does it all right! I’ll put myself in his way and make him do it. And if he refuses I’ll report him and get him in the guard house. See? I can, you know. Then I guess he’ll smile out of the other side of his mouth!”
“He won’t likely be in your company.”
“That doesn’t make any difference. I can get him into trouble if he isn’t, but I’ll try to work it that he is if I can. I’ve got ‘pull,’ you know, and I know how to ‘work’ my superiors!” he swaggered.
“That isn’t very good policy,” advised the other, “I’ve heard of men picking off officers they didn’t like when it came to battle.”
“I’ll take good care that he’s in front of me on all such occasions!”
A sudden nudge from his companion made him look up, and there looking sharply down at him, was the returning captain, and behind him walked John Cameron still with that amused smile on his face. It was plain that they had both heard his boast. His face crimsoned and he jerked out a tardy salute, as the two passed on leaving him muttering imprecations under his breath.
When the front door slammed behind the two Wainwright spoke in a low shaken growl:
“Now what in thunder is that Captain La Rue going on to Bryne Haven for? I thought, of course, he got off at Spring Heights. That’s where his mother lives. I’ll bet he is going up to see Ruth Macdonald! You know they’re related. If he is, that knocks my plans all into a cocked hat. I’d have to sit at attention all the evening, and I couldn’t propose with that cad around!”
“Better put it off then and come with me,” soothed his friend. “Athalie Britt will help you forget your troubles all right, and there’s plenty of time. You’ll get another leave soon.”
“How the dickens did John Cameron come to be on speaking terms with Captain La Rue, I’d like to know?” mused Wainwright, paying no heed to his friend.
“H’m! That does complicate matters for you some, doesn’t it? Captain La Rue is down at your camp, isn’t he? Why, I suppose Cameron knew him up at college, perhaps. Cap used to come up from the university every week last winter to lecture at college.”
Wainwright muttered a chain of choice expletives known only to men of his kind.
“Forget it!” encouraged his friend slapping him vigorously on the shoulder as the train drew into Bryne Haven. “Come off that grouch and get busy! You’re on leave, man! If you can’t visit one woman there’s plenty more, and time enough to get married, too, before you go to France. Marriage is only an incident, anyway. Why make such a fuss about it?”
By the fitful glare of the station lights they could see that Cameron was walking with the captain just ahead of them in the attitude of familiar converse. The sight did not put Wainwright into a better humor.
At the great gate of the Macdonald estate Cameron and La Rue parted. They could hear the last words of their conversation as La Rue swung into the wide driveway and Cameron started on up the street:
“I’ll attend to it the first thing in the morning, Cameron, and I’m glad you spoke to me about it! I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t go through! I shall be personally gratified if we can make the arrangement. Good-night and good luck to you!”
The two young officers halted at a discreet distance until John Cameron had turned off to the right and walked away into the darkness. The captain’s quick step could be heard crunching along the gravel drive to the Macdonald house.
“Well, I guess that about settles me for the night, Bobbie!” sighed Wainwright. “Come on, let’s pass the time away somehow. I’ll stop at the drug store to ’phone and make a date with Ruth for to-morrow morning. Wonder where I can get a car to take her out? No, I don’t want to go in her car because she always wants to run it herself. When you’re proposing to a woman you don’t want her to be absorbed in running a car. See?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t so much experience in that line as you have, Harry, but I should think it might be inconvenient,” laughed the other.
They went back to the station. A few minutes later Wainwright emerged from the telephone booth in the drug store with a lugubrious expression.
“Doggone my luck! She’s promised to go to church with that smug cousin of hers, and she’s busy all the rest of the day. But she’s promised to give me next Saturday if I can get off!” His face brightened with the thought.
“I guess I can make it. If I can’t do anything else I’ll tell ’em I’m going to be married, and then I can make her rush things through, perhaps. Girls are game for that sort of thing just now; it’s in the air, these war marriages. By George, I’m not sure but that’s the best way to work it after all. She’s the kind of a girl that would do almost anything to help you out of a fix that way, and I’ll just tell her I had to say that to get off and that I’ll be court-martialed if they find out it wasn’t so. How about it?”
“I don’t know, Harry. It’s all right, of course, if you can get away with it, but Ruth’s a pretty bright girl and has a will of her own, you know. But now, come on. It’s getting late. What do you say if we get up a party and run down to Atlantic City over Sunday, now that you’re free? I know those two girls would be tickled to death to go, especially Athalie. She’s a Westerner, you know, and has never seen the ocean.”
“All right, come on, only you must promise there won’t be any scrapes that will get me into the papers and blow back to Bryne Haven. You know there’s a lot of Bryne Haven people go to Atlantic City this time of year and I’m not going to have any stories started. I’m going to marry Ruth Macdonald!”
“All right. Come on.”
Ruth Macdonald drew up her little electric runabout sharply at the crossing, as the station gates suddenly clanged down in her way, and sat back with a look of annoyance on her face.
Michael of the crossing was so overcareful sometimes that it became trying. She was sure there was plenty of time to cross before the down train. She glanced at her tiny wrist watch and frowned. Why, it was fully five minutes before the train was due! What could Michael mean, standing there with his flag so importantly and that determined look upon his face?
She glanced down the platform and was surprised to find a crowd. There must be a special expected. What was it? A convention of some sort? Or a picnic? It was late in the season for picnics, and not quite soon enough for a college football game. Who were they, anyway? She looked them over and was astonished to find people of every class, the workers, the wealthy, the plain every-day men, women and children, all with a waiting attitude and a strange seriousness upon them. As she looked closer she saw tears on some faces and handkerchiefs everywhere in evidence. Had some one died? Was this a funeral train they were awaiting? Strange she had not heard!
Then the band suddenly burst out upon her with the familiar wail:
|
There’s a long, long trail awinding, Into the land of our dreams,— |
and behind came the muffled tramping of feet not accustomed to marching together.
Ruth suddenly sat up very straight and began to watch, an unfamiliar awe upon her. This must be the first draft men just going away! Of course! Why had she not thought of it at once. She had read about their going and heard people mention it the last week, but it had not entered much into her thoughts. She had not realized that it would be a ceremony of public interest like this. She had no friends whom it would touch. The young men of her circle had all taken warning in plenty of time and found themselves a commission somewhere, two of them having settled up matters but a few days before. She had thought of these draft men, when she had thought of them at all, only when she saw mention of them in the newspapers, and then as a lot of workingmen or farmers’ boys who were reluctant to leave their homes and had to be forced into patriotism in this way. It had not occurred to her that there were many honorable young men who would take this way of putting themselves at the disposal of their country in her time of need, without attempting to feather a nice little nest for themselves. Now she watched them seriously and found to her astonishment that she knew many of them. There were three college fellows in the front ranks whom she had met. She had danced with them and been taken out to supper by them, and had a calling acquaintance with their sisters. The sister of one stood on the sidewalk now in the common crowd, quite near to the runabout, and seemed to have forgotten that anybody was by. Her face was drenched with tears and her lips were quivering. Behind her was a gray-haired woman with a skewey blouse and a faded dark blue serge skirt too long for the prevailing fashion. The tears were trickling down her cheeks also; and an old man with a crutch, and a little round-eyed girl, seemed to belong to the party. The old man’s lips were set and he was looking at the boys with his heart in his eyes.
Ruth shrank back not to intrude upon such open sorrow, and glanced at the line again as they straggled down the road to the platform; fifty serious, grave-eyed young men with determined mien and sorrow in the very droop of their shoulders. One could see how they hated all this publicity and display, this tense moment of farewell in the eyes of the town; and yet how tender they felt toward those dear ones who had gathered thus to do them honor as they went away to do their part in the great world-struggle for liberty.
As she looked closer the girl saw they were not mature men as at first glance they had seemed, but most of them mere boys. There was the boy that mowed the Macdonald lawn, and the yellow-haired grocery boy. There was the gas man and the nice young plumber who fixed the leak in the water pipes the other day, and the clerk from the post office, and the cashier from the bank! What made them look so old at first sight? Why, it was as if sorrow and responsibility had suddenly been put upon them like a garment that morning for a uniform, and they walked in the shadow of the great sadness that had come upon the world. She understood that perhaps even up to the very day before, they had most of them been merry, careless boys; but now they were men, made so in a night by the horrible sin that had brought about this thing called War.
For the first time since the war began Ruth Macdonald had a vision of what the war meant. She had been knitting, of course, with all the rest; she had spent long mornings at the Red Cross rooms—she was on her way there this very minute when Michael and the procession had interrupted her course—she had made miles of surgical dressings and picked tons of oakum. She had bade her men friends cheery good-byes when they went to Officers’ Training Camps, and with the other girls welcomed and admired their uniforms when they came home on short furloughs, one by one winning his stripes and commission. They were all men whom she had known in society. They had wealth and position and found it easy to get into the kind of thing that pleased them in the army or navy. The danger they were facing seemed hardly a negligible quantity. It was the fashion to look on it that way. Ruth had never thought about it before. She had even been severe in her judgment of a few mothers who worried about their sons and wanted to get them exempt in some way. But these stern loyal mothers who stood in close ranks with heavy lines of sacrifice upon their faces, tears on their cheeks, love and self-abnegation in their eyes, gave her a new view of the world. These were the ones who would be in actual poverty, some of them, without their boys, and whose lives would be empty indeed when they went forth. Ruth Macdonald had never before realized the suffering this war was causing individuals until she saw the faces of those women with their sons and brothers and lovers; until she saw the faces of the brave boys, for the moment all the rollicking lightness gone, and only the pain of parting and the mists of the unknown future in their eyes.
It came to the girl with a sudden pang that she was left out of all this. That really it made little difference to her whether America was in the war or not. Her life would go on just the same—a pleasant monotony of bustle and amusement. There would be the same round of social affairs and regular engagements, spiced with the excitement of war work and occasional visiting uniforms. There was no one going forth from their home to fight whose going would put the light of life out for her and cause her to feel sad, beyond the ordinary superficial sadness for the absence of one’s playmates.
She liked them all, her friends, and shrank from having them in danger; although it was splendid to have them doing something real at last. In truth until this moment the danger had seemed so remote; the casualty list of which people spoke with bated breath so much a thing of vast unknown numbers, that it had scarcely come within her realization as yet. But now she suddenly read the truth in the suffering eyes of these people who were met to say good-bye, perhaps a last good-bye, to those who were dearer than life to them. How would she, Ruth Macdonald, feel, if one of those boys were her brother or lover? It was inconceivably dreadful.
The band blared on, and the familiar words insisted themselves upon her unwilling mind:
|
There’s a long, long night of waiting! |
A sob at her right made her start and then turn away quickly from the sight of a mother’s grief as she clung to a frail daughter for support, sobbing with utter abandon, while the daughter kept begging her to “be calm for Tom’s sake.”
It was all horrible! Why had she gotten into this situation? Aunt Rhoda would blame her for it. Aunt Rhoda would say it was too conspicuous, right there in the front ranks! She put her hand on the starter and glanced out, hoping to be able to back out and get away, but the road behind was blocked several deep with cars, and the crowd had closed in upon her and about her on every side. Retreat was impossible. However, she noticed with relief that the matter of being conspicuous need not trouble her. Nobody was looking her way. All eyes were turned in one direction, toward that straggling, determined line that wound up from the Borough Hall, past the Post Office and Bank to the station where the Home Guards stood uniformed, in open silent ranks doing honor to the boys who were going to fight for them.
Ruth’s eyes went reluctantly back to the marching line again. Somehow it struck her that they would not have seemed so forlorn if they had worn new trig uniforms, instead of rusty varied civilian clothes. They seemed like an ill-prepared sacrifice passing in review. Then suddenly her gaze was riveted upon a single figure, the last man in the procession, marching alone, with uplifted head and a look of self-abnegation on his strong young face. All at once something sharp seemed to slash through her soul and hold her with a long quiver of pain and she sat looking straight ahead staring with a kind of wild frenzy at John Cameron walking alone at the end of the line.
She remembered him in her youngest school days, the imp of the grammar school, with a twinkle in his eye and an irrepressible grin on his handsome face. Nothing had ever daunted him and no punishment had ever stopped his mischief. He never studied his lessons, yet he always seemed to know enough to carry him through, and would sometimes burst out with astonishing knowledge where others failed. But there was always that joke on his lips and that wide delightful grin that made him the worshipped-afar of all the little girls. He had dropped a rose on her desk once as he lounged late and laughing to his seat after recess, apparently unaware that his teacher was calling him to order. She could feel the thrill of her little childish heart now as she realized that he had given the rose to her. The next term she was sent to a private school and saw no more of him save an occasional glimpse in passing him on the street, but she never had forgotten him; and now and then she had heard little scraps of news about him. He was working his way through college. He was on the football team and the baseball team. She knew vaguely that his father had died and their money was gone, but beyond that she had no knowledge of him. They had drifted apart. He was not of her world, and gossip about him seldom came her way. He had long ago ceased to look at her when they happened to pass on the street. He doubtless had forgotten her, or thought she had forgotten him. Or, it might even be that he did not wish to presume upon an acquaintance begun when she was too young to have a choice of whom should be her friends. But the memory of that rose had never quite faded from her heart even though she had been but seven, and always she had looked after him when she chanced to see him on the street with a kind of admiration and wonder. Now suddenly she saw him in another light. The laugh was gone from his lips and the twinkle from his eyes. He looked as he had looked the day he fought Chuck Woodcock for tying a string across the sidewalk and tripping up the little girls on the way to school. It came to her like a revelation that he was going forth now in just such a way to fight the world-foe. In a way he was going to fight for her. To make the world a safe place for girls such as she! All the terrible stories of Belgium flashed across her mind, and she was lifted on a great wave of gratitude to this boy friend of her babyhood for going out to defend her!
All the rest of the straggling line of draft men were going out for the same purpose perhaps, but it did not occur to her that they were anything to her until she saw John Cameron. All those friends of her own world who were training for officers, they, too, were going to fight in the same way to defend the world, but she had not thought of it in that way before. It took a sight of John Cameron’s high bearing and serious face to bring the knowledge to her mind.
She thought no longer of trying to get away. She seemed held to the spot by a new insight into life. She could not take her eyes from the face of the young man. She forgot that she was staying, forgot that she was staring. She could no more control the swelling thoughts of horror that surged over her and took possession of her than she could have controlled a mob if it had suddenly swept down upon her.
The gates presently lifted silently to let the little procession pass over to her side of the tracks, and within a few short minutes the special train that was to bear the men away to camp came rattling up, laden with other victims of the chance that sent some men on ahead to be pioneers in the camps.
These were a noisy jolly bunch. Perhaps, having had their own sad partings they were only trying to brace themselves against the scenes of other partings through which they must pass all the way along the line. They must be reminded of their own mothers and sisters and sweethearts. Something of this Ruth Macdonald seemed to define to herself as, startled and annoyed by the clamor of the strangers in the midst of the sacredness of the moment, she turned to look at the crowding heads in the car windows and caught the eye of an irrepressible youth:
“Think of me over there!” he shouted, waving a flippant hand and twinkling his eyes at the beautiful girl in her car.
Another time Ruth would have resented such familiarity, but now something touched her spirit with an inexpressible pity, and she let a tiny ripple of a smile pass over her lovely face as her eyes traveled on down the platform in search of the tall form of John Cameron. In the moment of the oncoming train she had somehow lost sight of him. Ah! There he was stooping over a little white haired woman, taking her tenderly in his arms to kiss her. The girl’s eyes lingered on him. His whole attitude was such a revelation of the man the rollicking boy had become. It seemed to pleasantly round out her thought of him.
The whistle sounded, the drafted men gave one last wringing hand-clasp, one last look, and sprang on board.
John Cameron was the last to board the train. He stood on the lower step of the last car as it began to move slowly. His hat was lifted, and he stood with slightly lifted chin and eyes that looked as if they had sounded the depths of all sadness and surrendered himself to whatever had been decreed. There was settled sorrow in all the lines of his fine face. Ruth was startled by the change in it; by the look of the boy in the man. Had the war done that for him just in one short summer? Had it done that for the thousands who were going to fight for her? And she was sitting in her luxurious car with a bundle of wool at her feet, and presuming to bear her part by mere knitting! Poor little useless woman that she was! A thing to send a man forth from everything he counted dear or wanted to do, into suffering and hardship—and death—perhaps! She shuddered as she watched his face with its strong uplifted look, and its unutterable sorrow. She had not thought he could look like that! Oh, he would be gay to-morrow, like the rest, of course, with his merry jest and his contagious grin, and making light of the serious business of war! He would not be the boy he used to be without the ability to do that. But she would never forget how he had looked in this farewell minute while he was gazing his last on the life of his boyhood and being borne away into a dubious future. She felt a hopelessly yearning, as if, had there been time, she would have liked to have told him how much she appreciated his doing this great deed for her and for all her sisters!
Has it ever been fully explained why the eyes of one person looking hard across a crowd will draw the eyes of another?
The train had slipped along ten feet or more and was gaining speed when John Cameron’s eyes met those of Ruth Macdonald, and her vivid speaking face flashed its message to his soul. A pleased wonder sprang into his eyes, a question as his glance lingered, held by the tumult in her face, and the unmistakable personality of her glance. Then his face lit up with its old smile, graver, oh, much! and more deferential than it used to be, with a certain courtliness in it that spoke of maturity of spirit. He lifted his hat a little higher and waved it just a trifle in recognition of her greeting, wondering in sudden confusion if he were really not mistaken after all and had perhaps been appropriating a farewell that belonged to someone else; then amazed and pleased at the flutter of her handkerchief in reply.
The train was moving rapidly now in the midst of a deep throaty cheer that sounded more like a sob, and still he stood on that bottom step with his hat lifted and let his eyes linger on the slender girlish figure in the car, with the morning sun glinting across her red-gold hair, and the beautiful soft rose color in her cheeks.
As the train swept past the little shelter shed he bethought himself and turned a farewell tender smile on the white-haired woman who stood watching him through a mist of tears. Then his eyes went back for one last glimpse of the girl; and so he flashed out of sight around the curve.
It had taken only a short time after all. The crowd drowned its cheer in one deep gasp of silence and broke up tearfully into little groups beginning to melt away at the sound of Michael ringing up the gates, and telling the cars and wagons to hurry that it was almost time for the up-train.
Ruth Macdonald started her car and tried to bring her senses back to their normal calm wondering what had happened to her and why there was such an inexpressible mingling of loss and pleasure in her heart.
The way at first was intricate with congestion of traffic and Ruth was obliged to go slowly. As the road cleared before her she was about to glide forward and make up for lost time. Suddenly a bewildered little woman with white hair darted in front of the car, hesitated, drew back, came on again. Ruth stopped the car shortly, much shaken with the swift vision of catastrophe, and the sudden recognition of the woman. It was the same one who had been with John Cameron.
“Oh, I’m so sorry I startled you!” she called pleasantly, leaning out of the car. “Won’t you get in, please, and let me take you home?”
The woman looked up and there were great tears in her eyes. It was plain why she had not seen where she was going.
“Thank you, no, I couldn’t!” she said with a choke in her voice and another blur of tears, “I—you see—I want to get away—I’ve been seeing off my boy!”