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."

The train was moving quicker. The conductor had jumped aboard. Alec was just aware that all who were left on the platform were gossiping about Eliza's departure when he was suddenly spurred into violent movement by the recollection that he had absently retained in his possession Bates's ticket and the change of the note given him to buy it with. To run and swing himself on to the last car was a piece of vigorous action, but once again upon the small rear porch and bound perforce for the next station, he gave only one uncomfortable glance through the gla.s.s door and turned once more to the prospect of the long level track. Who could mention a railway ticket and small change to a man so recently beatified?

The awkwardness of his position, a shyness that came over him at the thought that they must soon see him and wonder why he was there, suggested the wonder why he had desired that Bates should be happy; now that he saw him opulent in happiness, as it appeared, above all other men, he felt only irritation--first, at the sort of happiness that could be derived from such a woman, and secondly, at the contrast between this man's fulness and his own lack. What had Bates done that he was to have all that he wanted?

It is an easier and less angelic thing to feel sympathy with sorrow than with joy.

In a minute or two it was evident they had seen him, for he heard the door slide and Bates came out on the little platform. He had gone into the car feebly; he came out with so easy a step and holding himself so erect, with even a consequential pose, that a gleam of derision shot through the younger man's mind, even though he knew with the quick knowledge of envy that it was for the sake of the woman behind the door that the other was now making the most of himself.

Alec gave what he had to give; it was not his place to make comment.

Bates counted the change with a care that perhaps was feigned. If he stood very straight, his hard hand trembled.

"I'm sorry ye were forced to come on with the cars; it's another added to all the good deeds you've done by me." He had found a tongue now in which he could be gracious.

"Oh, I shall soon get back," said Alec.

"I suppose ye've seen"--with attempted coolness--"that my young friend here, Eliza Cameron, is going back with me."

"So I see." If his life had depended upon it, Alec could not have refrained from a smile which he felt might be offensive, but it pa.s.sed unseen.

"When she saw ye out here, she asked me just to step out, for perhaps ye'd be so kind as to take a message to a young lady she has a great caring for--a Miss Rexford, as I understand."

"All right." Alec looked at the rails flying behind them, and stroked his yellow moustache, and sighed in spite of himself.

"I'd like ye to tell Miss Rexford from me that we intend to be married to-morrow--in the city of Quebec; but Sissy, she would like ye to say that she'd have gone to say good-bye if she'd known her own mind sooner, and that she prefairred to come" (he rolled the r in this "preferred"

with emphasis not too obvious) "--ye understand?"--this last a little sharply, as if afraid that the word might be challenged.

Still looking upon the flying track, Alec nodded to show that he challenged nothing.

"And she wishes it to be said," continued the stiff, formal Scot (there was a consequential air about him now that was almost insufferable), "that for all I've the intention in my mind to spend my life in the old place, she thinks she'll very likely break me of it, and bring me to live in more frequented parts in a year or two, when she'll hope to come and see her friends again. 'Tis what she says, Mr. Trenholme" (and Alec knew, from his tone, that Bates, even in speaking to him, had smiled again that gloriously happy smile), "and of course I humour her by giving her words. As to how that will be, I can't say, but"--with condescension--"ye'd be surprised, Mr. Trenholme, at the hold a woman can get on a man."

"Really--yes, I suppose so," Alec muttered inanely; but within he laid control on himself, lest he should kick this man. Surely it would only make the scales of fortune balance if Bates should have a few of his limbs broken to pay for his luxury!

Alec turned, throwing a trifle of patronage into his farewell. Nature had turned him out such a good-looking fellow that he might have spared the other, but he was not conscious of his good looks just then.

"Well, Bates, upon my word I wish you joy. It's certainly a relief to _me_ to think you will have someone to look after that cough of yours, and see after you a bit when you have the asthma. I didn't think you'd get through this winter alone, 'pon my word, I didn't; but I hope that--Mrs. Bates will take good care of you."

It was only less brutal to hurl the man's weakness at him than it would have been to hurl him off the train. Yet Alec did it, then jumped from the car when the speed lessened.

He found himself left at a junction which had no interest for him, and as there was a goods train going further on to that village where he had stopped with Bates on their first arrival in these parts, he followed a whim and went thither, in order to walk home by the road on which he had first heard Sophia's voice in the darkness.

Ah, that voice--how clear and sweet and ringing it was! It was not words, but tones, of which he was now cherishing remembrance. And he thought of the face he now knew so well, hugged the thought of her to his heart, and knew that he ought not to think of her.

Everywhere the trees hung out red and yellow, as flags upon a gala day.

He saw the maples on the mountain rise tier above tier, in feathery scarlet and gold. About his feet the flowering weeds were blowing in one last desperate effort of riotous bloom. The indigo birds, like flakes from the sky above, were flitting, calling, everywhere, as they tarried on their southward journey. Alec walked by the rushing river, almost dazzled by its glitter, and felt himself to be, not only an unhappy, but an ill-disposed man.