On Saturday night Miss Selby did not appear at the little table.
“Gone out to dinner,” he thought.
Why shouldn’t she go out to dinner? He simply hoped that she was
enjoying herself. And, as he ate his solitary dinner, he thought about
this; he imagined Miss Selby enjoying herself somewhere, sitting at some
other table, and probably with some other young man sitting opposite
her.
He knew how she would look if she were enjoying herself, with that
lovely color in her cheeks, and that wonderful smile of hers. Well, it
was none of his business--absolutely none of his business.
And yet, after dinner, he found occasion to stop the landlady in the
hall, and to say, with an air of courteous indifference:
“That young lady who sits at my table--didn’t see her to-night. Has she
gone away?”
“No, Mr. Anderson!” answered Mrs. Brown, with stern solemnity. “She has
not. She’s lying upstairs, sick, at this very moment that I’m speaking
to you. And _I_ think it’s pneumonia, that’s what _I_ think.”
“Pneumonia!” he cried. “But only last night--”
“It takes you sudden,” Mrs. Brown asserted. “And Miss Selby--well,
people have often said to me how blooming she looked, but well I knew it
was nerve, and nerve alone, that kept her going. Nerve strength!” she
sighed. “It’s a treacherous thing, Mr. Anderson. You live on your
nerves, and then, all of a sudden, they snap--like that!”
And her bony fingers snapped loudly, a startling sound in the dimly lit
hall. The young man was in no condition to judge of the value of Mrs.
Brown’s medical opinion; he was simply panic-stricken.
He went out of the house in a sort of blind haste, and began to walk
along roads strange to him, under a cloudy and somber sky. He heard the
voice of the wind in the trees, and to his unaccustomed ears it held no
solace, but was a voice infinitely mournful.
Pneumonia! That little, little pretty thing--so far from home--ill and
alone in a boarding house. Such a young, little thing.
He remembered that morning in the woods--her face when she had looked up
at him from the violets she was picking--that radiant face, clear-eyed
as a child’s.
“It’s my fault!” he cried aloud. “I ought to have known she couldn’t
take care of herself properly. It’s my fault! The poor little thing!
She’s done some fool trick--got her feet wet--probably makes her lunch
of an ice cream soda--perhaps she can’t afford any lunch. And
now--pneumonia! She had no _right_ to get pneumonia! It’s--”
He stopped short, in a still, dark little lane, clenched his hands,
stood there shaken by pain, by anger, by all the unreason of grief and
anxiety.
“She ought to have known better!” he shouted.