Anne Part 48

"Mademoiselle," she said, her burning haste contrasting with her clear calm utterance of the moment before, "I beg you to leave this train with me without one instant's delay. The peace of my whole life depends upon it."

"What _can_ you mean?" said the bewildered teacher.

"I can not explain now; I will, later. But if you have any regard for me, any compa.s.sion, come at once."

"But our bags, our--"

"I will take them all."

"And our trunks--they are checked through to Valley City. Will there be time to take them off?" said Jeanne-Armande, confusedly. Then, with more clearness, "But why should we go at all? I have no money to spend on freaks."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT IS, OR SHOULD BE, OVER THERE."]

"This is Stringhampton Junction; we can cross here to the northern road, as you originally intended," explained Anne, rapidly. "All the additional expense I will pay. Dear mademoiselle, have pity on me, and come. Else I shall go alone."

The voice was eloquent; Jeanne-Armande rose. Anne hurried her through the almost empty car toward the rear door.

"But where _are_ we going?"

"Out of the light," answered Anne.

They climbed down in the darkness on the other side of the train, and Anne led the way across the tracks at random, until they reached a safe country road-side beyond, and felt the soft gra.s.s under their feet.

"Where _are_ we going?" said the Frenchwoman again, almost in tears.

"Monsieur Heathcote--what will he think of us?"

"It is from him I am fleeing," replied Anne. "And now we must find the cross-road train. Do you know where it is?"

"It is, or should be, over there," said Jeanne-Armande, waving her umbrella tragically.

But she followed: the young girl had turned leader now.

They found the cross-road train, entered, and took their seats. And then Anne feverishly counted the seconds, expecting with each one to see Heathcote's face at the door. But the little branch train did not wait for supper; the few pa.s.sengers were already in their places, and at last the bell rang, and the engine started northward, but so slowly that Anne found herself leaning forward, as though to hasten its speed. Then the wheels began to turn more rapidly--clank, clank, past the switches; rumble, rumble, over the bridge; by the dark line of the wood-pile; and then onward into the dark defiles of the mountains. They were away.

CHAPTER XXI.

"How heavy do I journey on the way When what I seek, my weary travel's end, Doth teach that ease and that repose to say, 'Thus far the miles are measured from my friend.'"

--_Shakspeare's Sonnets._

In the mean time Ward Heathcote was in the supper-room. After selecting the best that the little country station afforded, and feeing a servant to take it across to the train, he sat down to eat a nondescript meal with some hunger.

The intelligent mulatto boy who carried the waiter consumed as many minutes as possible in his search for "the two ladies in that car, on the right-hand side opposite the fourth window," who, plainly, were not there. He had the fee in his pocket, there would not be another, and the two "suppers" were paid for. It was decidedly a case for delay. He waited, therefore, until the warning bell rang, and he was then encountered in hot haste hurrying to meet his patron, the waiter still balanced on his shoulder.

"No ladies there, sah. Looked everywhere fur 'em, sah."

There was no time for further parley. Heathcote hurried forward, and the train started. They must be there, of course; probably the cars had been changed or moved forward while the train was waiting. But although he went from end to end of the long file of carriages, he found no one.

They were under full headway now; the great engine did not need gradual beginnings. He could not bring himself to ask questions of the pa.s.sengers whose faces he remembered in the same car; they would open upon him a battery of curiosity in return. He went to the rear door, opened it, and looked out; the two grime-encircled eyes of a brakeman met his gravely. He stepped outside, closed the door, and entered into conversation with the eyes.

Yes, he seed two ladies get off; they come out this here end door, and climbed down on the wrong side. Seemed to be in a hurry. Didn't know where they went. Called after 'em that that warn't the way to the dining-room, and the young one said, "Thanks," but didn't say no more.

Was they left behind? No, train didn't stop this side of Valley City; but the gentleman could telegraph back, and they could come on safe and sound in the morning express. 'Twarn't likely they'd gone north by the little branch road, was it? Branch connects at Stringhampton for the Northern Line.

But this suggestion made no impression upon Heathcote. Mademoiselle lived in Valley City; he had seen her tickets for Valley City. No, it was some unlooked-for mistake or accident. He gave the brakeman a dollar, and went back into the car. But everything was gone--bags, shawls, basket, cloak, bundle, and umbrella, all the miscellaneous possessions with which mademoiselle was accustomed to travel; there had been, then, deliberation enough to collect them all. He sat down perplexed, and gradually the certainty stole coldly over him that Anne had fled. It must be this.

For it was no freak of the Frenchwoman's; she had been too much pleased with his escort to forego it willingly. He was deeply hurt. And deeply surprised. Had he not followed her to ask her to be his wife? (This was not true, but for the moment he thought it was.) Was this a proper response?

Never before had he received such a rebuff, and after brooding over it an hour in the dismal car, it grew into an insult. His deeper feelings were aroused. Under his indolence he had a dominant pride, even arrogance of nature, which would have astonished many who thought they knew him. Whether his words had or had not been the result of impulse, now that they were spoken, they were worthy of at least respect. He grew more angry as the minutes pa.s.sed, for he was so deeply hurt that he took refuge in anger. To be so thwarted and played upon--he, a man of the world--by a young girl; a young girl regarding whom, too, there had sprung up in his heart almost the only real faith of his life! He had believed in that face, had trusted those violet eyes, he did not know how unquestioningly until now. And then, feeling something very like moisture coming into his own eyes, he rose, angry over his weakness, went forward to the smoking car, lit a cigar, and savagely tried to think of other things. A pretty fool he was to be on a night train in the heart of Pennsylvania, going no one knew whither.

But, in spite of himself, his mind stole back to Anne. She was so different from the society women with whom he had always a.s.sociated; she had so plainly loved him. Poor, remorseful, conscientious, struggling, faithful heart! Why had she fled from him? It did not occur to him that she was fleeing from herself.

He arrived at Valley City at eleven o'clock, and had the very room with gaudy carpet he had pictured to himself. The next morning, disgusted with everything and out of temper as he was, he yet so far postponed his return journey as to make inquiries concerning schools for girls--one in particular, in which a certain Mademoiselle Pitre had been teaching French and music for several years. The clerk thought it must be the "Young Ladies' Seminary." Heathcote took down the address of this establishment, ordered a carriage, and drove thither, inquiring at the door if Mademoiselle Pitre had arrived.

There was no such person there, the maid answered. No; he knew that she had not yet arrived. But when was she expected?

The maid (who admired the stranger) did not take it upon herself to deny his statement, but went away, and returned with the princ.i.p.al, Professor Adolphus Bittinger. Professor Bittinger was not acquainted with Mademoiselle Pitre. Their instructress in the French language was named Blanchard, and was already there. Heathcote then asked if there were any other young ladies' seminaries in Valley City, and was told (loftily) that there were not. No schools where French was taught? There might be, the professor thought, one or two small establishments for day scholars. The visitor wrote down the new addresses, and drove away to visit four day schools in succession, sending a ripple of curiosity down the benches, and exciting a flutter in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of four French teachers, who came in person to answer the inquiries of monsieur. One of them, a veteran in the profession, who had spent her life in asking about the loaf made by the distant one-eyed relative of the baker, answered decidedly that there was no such person in Valley City.

"Monsieur" was beginning to think so himself; but having now the fancy to exhaust all the possibilities, he visited the infant schools, and a private cla.s.s, and at two o'clock returned to the hotel, having seen altogether about five hundred young Americans in frocks, from five years old to seventeen.

According to the statement of the little shop-keeper at Lancaster, mademoiselle had been teaching in Valley City for a number of years: there remained, then, the chance that she was in a private family as governess. Heathcote lingered in Valley City three days longer on this governess chance. He ate three more dinners in the comfortless dining-room, slept three more nights in the gaudy bedroom, and was at the railway station five times each day, to wit, at the hours when the trains arrived from the east. If they had waited at Stringhampton until he had had time to return to New York, they would be coming on now. But no one came. The fourth day opened with dull gray rain; the smoke of the manufactories hung over the valley like a pall. In the dining-room there was a sour odor of fresh paint, and from the window he could see only a line of hacks, the horses standing in the rain with drooping heads, while the drivers, in a row against an opposite wall, looked, in their long oil-skin coats, as though they were drawn up there in their black shrouds to be shot. In a fit of utter disgust he rang for his bill, ordered a carriage, and drove to the station: he would take the morning train for New York.

Yet when the carriage was dismissed, he let the express roll away without him, while he walked to and fro, waiting for an incoming train.

The train was behind time; when it did come, there was no one among its pa.s.sengers whom he had ever seen before. With an anathema upon his own folly, he took the day accommodation eastward. He would return to New York without any more senseless delays. And then at Stringhampton Junction he was the only person who alighted. His idea was to make inquiries there. He spent two hours of that afternoon in the rain, under a borrowed umbrella, and three alone in the waiting-room. No such persons as he described had been seen at Stringhampton, and as the settlement was small, and possessed of active curiosity, there remained no room for doubt. There was the chance that they had followed him to Valley City an hour later on a freight train with car attached, in which case he had missed them. And there was the other chance that they had gone northward by the branch road. But why should they go northward?

They lived in Valley City, or near there; their tickets were marked "Valley City." The branch led to the Northern Line, by which one could reach Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, the wilderness, but not Valley City.

The gentleman might go up as far as the Northern Line, and inquire of the station agent there, suggested the Stringhampton ticket-seller, who balanced a wooden tooth-pick in his mouth lightly, like a cigarette. But the gentleman, who had already been looking up the narrow line of wet rails under his umbrella for an hour, regarded the speaker menacingly, and turned away with the ironical comment in his own mind that the Northern Line and its station agent might be--what amounted to Calvinized--before _he_ sought them.

The night express came thundering along at midnight. It bore away the visitor. Stringhampton saw him no more.

In the mean time Anne and her companion had ridden on during the night, and the younger woman had explained to the elder as well as she could the cause of her sudden action. "It was not right that I should hear or that he should speak such words."

"He had but little time in which to speak them," said Jeanne-Armande, stiffly. "He spent most of the day with me. But, in any case, why run away? Why could you not have repelled him quietly, and with the proper dignity of a lady, and yet remained where you were, comfortably, and allowed me to remain as well?"

"I _could_ not," said Anne. Then, after a moment, "Dear mademoiselle,"

she added, "do not ask me any more questions. I have done wrong, and I have been very, very unhappy. It is over now, and with your help I hope to have a long winter of quiet and patient labor. I am grateful to you; you do not know how grateful. Save those far away on the island, you seem to me now the only friend I have on earth." Her voice broke.

Jeanne-Armande's better feelings were touched. "My poor child!" she said, pityingly.

And then Anne laid her head down upon the Frenchwoman's shoulder, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

They reached Weston the next day. The journey was ended.

Mademoiselle selected new lodgings, in a quarter which overlooked the lake. She never occupied the same rooms two seasons in succession, lest she should be regarded as "an old friend," and expected to make concessions accordingly. On the second day she called ceremoniously upon the princ.i.p.al of the school, sending in her old-fashioned glazed card, with her name engraved upon it, together with a minute "Paris" in one corner. To this important personage she formally presented her candidate, endowing her with so large a variety of brilliant qualities and accomplishments that the candidate was filled with astonishment, and came near denying them, had she not been prevented by the silent meaning pressure of a gaiter that divined her intention, and forbade the revelation. Fortunately an under-teacher was needed, and half an hour later Anne went away, definitely, although at a very small salary, engaged.

She went directly home, locked her door, took paper and pen, and began to write. "Dear Rast," she wrote. Then, with a flood of remorseful affection, "Dear, dear Rast." Her letter was a long one, without break or hesitation. She told him all save names, and asked him to forgive her. If he still loved her and wished her to be his wife, she was ready; in truth, she seemed almost to urge the marriage, that is, if he still loved her. When the letter was completed she went out and placed it in a letter-box with her own hands, coming home with a conscience more free.

She had done what she could. The letter was sent to the island, where Rast still was when she had heard from him the last time before leaving Caryl's; for only seven days had pa.s.sed since then. They seemed seven years.

A day later she wrote to Miss Lois, telling of Miss Vanhorn's action, her new home and change of position. She said nothing of her letter to Rast or the story it told; she left that to him to relate or not as he pleased. In all things he should be now her master.