The Best Man (15 page)

The morning sun poured down upon the thick-set man on his pilgrimage, and waxed hotter until noon. Trains whizzed mercilessly by and gave him no succor. Weary, faint, and fiercely thirsty he came at last to the spot where he was satisfied his quarry had escaped. He could see the marks of their rough descent in the steep cinder bank, and assaying the same himself came upon a shred of purple silk caught on a bramble at the foot.

Puffing and panting, bruised and foot-sore, he sat down at the very place where Celia had stopped to have her shoes fastened, and mopped his purple brow, but there was triumph in his ugly eye, and after a few moment’s rest he trudged onward. That town over there ought to yield both conveyance and food as well as information concerning those he sought. He would catch them. They could never get away from him. He was on their track again, though hours behind. He would get them yet and no man should take his reward from him.

Almost spent he came at last to the village, and ate a surprisingly large dish of beef and vegetable stew at the quaint little house where Celia and Gordon had breakfasted, but the old lady who served it to them was shy about talking, and though admitting that a couple of people had been there that morning she was noncommittal about their appearance. They might have been young and good-looking and worn feathers in their hats, and they might not. She wasn’t one for noticing people’s appearance if they treated her civilly and paid their bills. Would he have another cup of coffee? He would, and also two more pieces of pie, but he got very little further information.

It was over at the corner store where he finally went in search of something stronger than coffee that he further pursued his investigations.

The loungers were still there. It was their only business in life and they were most diligent in it. They eyed the newcomer with relish and settled back on their various barrels and boxes to enjoy whatever entertainment the gods were about to provide to relieve their monotonous existence.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. This man’s elegant garments assumed for the nonce did not fit the rest of his general appearance which had been accentuated by his long, hot, dusty tramp. The high evening hat was jammed on the back of his head and bore a decided dent where it had rolled down the cinder embankment, his collar was wilted and lifeless, his white laundered tie at half mast, his coat awry, and his fine patent leather shoes which pinched were covered with dust and had caused a limp like the hardest tramp upon the road. Moreover, again the speech of the man betrayed him, and the keen-minded old gossips who were watching him suspiciously sized him up at once the minute he opened his mouth.

“Saw anything of a couple of young folks walking down this way?” he enquired casually, pausing to light a cigar with which he was reinforcing himself for further travel.

One man allowed that there might have passed such people that day. He hardly seemed willing to commit himself, but another vouchsafed the information that “Joe here driv two parties of thet description to Milton this mornin’ – jes got back. Mebbe he could answer fer ’em.”

Joe frowned. He did not like the looks of the thick-set man. He still remembered the forget-me-not eyes.

But the stranger made instant request to be driven to Milton, offering ten dollars for the same when he found that his driver was reluctant, and that Milton was a railroad centre. A few keen questions had made him sure that his man had gone to Milton.

Joe haggled, allowed his horse was tired, and he didn’t care about the trip twice in one day, but finally agreed to take the man for fifteen dollars, and sauntered off to get a fresh horse. He had no mind to be in a hurry. He had his own opinion about letting those two “parties” get out of the way before the third put in an appearance, but he had no mind to lose fifteen dollars. It would help to buy the ring he coveted for his girl.

In due time Joe rode leisurely up and the impatient traveller climbed into the high spring wagon and was driven away from the apathetic gaze of the country loungers who unblinkingly took in the fact that Joe was headed toward Ashville, and evidently intended taking his fare to Milton by way of that village, a thirty-mile drive at least. The man would get the worth of his money in ride. A grim twinkle sat in their several eyes as the spring wagon turned the curve in the road and was lost to sight, and after due silence an old stager spoke:

“Do you reckon that there was their sho-fur?” he requested languidly.

“Naw!” replied a farmer’s son vigorously. “He wouldn’t try to showf all dolled up like that. He’s the rich dad comin’ after the runaways. Joe didn’t intend he shell get ’em yet awhile. I reckon the ceremony’ll be over ’fore he steps in to interfere.” This lad went twice a month to Milton to the “movies” and was regarded as an authority on matters of romance. A pause showed that his theory had taken root in the minds of his auditors.

“Wal, I reckon Joe thinks the longest way round is the shortest way home,” declared the old stager. “Joe never did like them cod-fish swells – but how do you ’count fer the style ’o that gal? She wasn’t like her dad one little bit.”

“Oh, she’s ben to collidge I ’spose,” declared the youth. “They get all that off ’n collidge.”

“serves the old man right fer sendin’ his gal to a fool colidge when she ought to ben home learnin’ to house-keep. I hope she gits off with her young man all right,” said a grim old lounger, and a cackle of laughter went round the group, which presently broke up, for this had been a strenuous day and all  felt their need of rest; besides they wanted to get home and tell the news before some neighbor got ahead of them.

All this time Celia and Gordon were touring Milton, serenely unconscious of danger near, or guardian angel of the name of Joe.

Investigation disclosed the fact that there was a train for Pittsburgh about three in the afternoon. Gordon sent a code telegram to his chief, assuring him of the safety of the message, and of his own intention to proceed to Washington as fast as steam could carry him. Then he took the girl to a restaurant, where they mounted two high stools, and partook with an unusually ravenous appetite of nearly everything on the menu – corn soup, roast beef, baked trout, stewed tomatoes, cole slaw, custard, apple, and mince pies, with a cup of good country coffee and real cream – all for twenty-five cents apiece.

It was a very merry meal. Celia felt somehow as if for the time all memory of the past had been taken from her, and she were free to think and act happily in the present, without any great problems to solve or decisions to make. Just two young people off having a good time, they were, at least until that afternoon train came.

After their diner, they took a short walk to a tiny park where two white ducks disported themselves on a seven-by-nine pond, spanned by a rustic bridge where lovers had cut their initials. Gordon took out his knife and idly cut C.H. in the rough bark of the upper rail, while his companion sat on the little board seat and watched him. She was pondering over the fact that he had cut her initials, and not his own. It would have been like the George of old to cut his own and never once think of hers. And he had put but one H. Probably he thought of her now as Celia Hayne, without the Hathaway, or else he was so used to writing her name Celia Hathaway, that he was not thinking at all.

Those letters! How they haunted her and clouded every bright experience that she fain would have grasped and held for a little hour.

They were silent now, while he worked and she thought. He had finished C. H., and was cutting another C, but instead of making another H, he carefully carved out the letter G. What was that for? C.G.? Who was C.G.? Oh, how stupid! George, of course. He had started a C by mistake. But he did not add the expected H. Instead he snapped his knife shut, laid his hand over the carving, and leaned over the rail.

“Some time, perhaps, we’ll come here again, and remember,” he said, and then bethought him that he had no right to hope for any such anniversary.

“Oh!” She looked up into his eyes, startled, troubled, the haunting of her fears in the shadows of the blue.

He looked down into them and read her trouble, read and understood, and looked back his great desire to comfort her.

His look carried further than he meant it should. For the third time that day a thrill of wonder and delight passed over her and left her fearful with a strange joy that she felt she should put from her.

It was only an instant, that look, but it brought the bright color to both faces, and made Gordon feel the immediate necessity of changing the subject.

“See those little fishes down there,” he said pointing to the tiny lake below them.

Through a blur of tears, the girl looked down and saw the tiny, sharp-finned creatures darting here and there in a beam of sun like a small search-light set to show them off.

She moved her hand on the rail to lean further over, and her soft fingers touched his hand for a moment. She would not know, but she could not – would not – hurt him. Not now! The two hands lay side by side for a full minute, and the touch to Gordon was as if a roseleaf had kissed his soul. He had never felt anything sweeter. He longed to gather the little hand into his clasp and feel its pulses trembling there as he had felt it in the church the night before, but she was not his. He might not touch her till she had her choice of what to do, and she would never choose him, never, when she knew how he had deceived her.

That one supreme moment they had of perfect consciousness, consciousness of the drawing of the soul to soul, of the sweetness of that hovering touch of hands, of the longing to know and understand each other.

Then a sharp whistle sounded, and a farmer’s boy with a new rake and a sack of corn on his shoulder came sauntering briskly down the road to the bridge. Instantly they drew apart, Celia felt that she had been on the verge of disloyalty to her true self.

They walked silently back to the station, each busy with his own thoughts, each conscious of that one moment when the other had come so near.

There were a lot of people at the station. They had been to a family gathering of some sort from their remarks, and they talked loudly and much, so that the two stood apart – for the seats were all occupied – and had no opportunity for conversation, save a quiet smiling comment now and then upon the chatter about them, or the odd remarks they heard.

There had come a constraint upon them, a withdrawing of each into his shell, each conscious of something that separated. Gordon struggled to prevent it, but he seemed helpless. Celia would smile in answer to his quiet remarks, but it was a smile of distance, such as she had worn early in the morning. She had quite found her former standing ground, with its fence of prejudice, and she was repairing the breaks through which she had gone over to the enemy during the snatches from those terrible letters which were written in characters of fire in her heart. Never, never, could she care for a man who had done what this man had done. She had forgotten for a little while those terrible things he had said of her dear dead father. How could she have forgotten for an instant! How could she have let her hand lie close to the hand that had defiled itself by writing such things!

By the time they were seated in the train, she was freezing in her attitude, and poor Gordon sat miserably beside her and tried to thin what had he done to offend her. It was not his fault that her hand had lain near his on the rail. She had put it there herself. Perhaps she expected him to put his over it, to show her that he cared as a bridegroom should care – as he did care, in reality, if he only had the right. And perhaps she was hurt that he had stood coolly and said or done nothing. But he could not help it.

Much to Gordon’s relief, the train carried a parlor car, and it happened on this particular day to be almost deserted save for a deaf old man with a florid complexion and a gold-knobbed cane who slumbered audibly at the further end from the two chairs Gordon selected. He established his companion comfortably, disposed of the baggage, and sat down, but the girl paid no heed to him. With a sad, set face, she stared out of the window, her eyes seeming to see nothing. For two hours she sat so, he making remarks occasionally, to which she made little or no reply, until he lapsed into silence, looking at her with troubled eyes. Finally, just as they neared the outskirts of Pittsburgh, he leaned softly forward and touched her coat-sleeve, to attract her attention.

“Have I offended – hurt – you in any way?” he asked gently. She turned toward him, and her eyes were brimming full of tears.

“No,” she said, and her lips were trembling. “No, you have been – most – kind – but – but I cannot forget those letters!” She ended with a sob and put up her handkerchief quickly to stifle it.

“Letters?” he asked helplessly. “What letters?”

“The letters you wrote me. All the letters of the last five months. I cannot forget them. I can never forget them! How could you think I could?”

He looked at her anxiously, not knowing what to say, and yet he must say something. The time had come when some kind of an understanding, some clearing up of facts, must take place. He must go cautiously, but he must find out what was the matter. He could not see her suffer so. There must be some way to let her know that so far as he was concerned she need suffer nothing further and that he would do all in his power to set her right with her world.

But letters! He had written no letters. His face lighted up with the swift certainty of one thing about which he had not dared to be sure. She still thought him the man she had intended to marry. She was not therefore troubled about that phase of the question. It was strange, almost unbelievable, but it was true that he personally was not responsible for the trouble in her eyes. What trouble she might feel when she knew all, he had yet to find out, but it was a great relief to be sure of so much. Still, something must be said.

“Letter!” he repeated again stupidly, and then added with perplexed tone: “Would you mind telling me just what it was in the letters that hurt you?”