XI.

There was trouble with the telegraph and telephone connections between

Hatboro' and Ponkwasset, and Adeline had to go to the funeral without an

answer to Elbridge's message. Below her surface interest in the ceremony

and the behavior of the mourners and the friends, which nothing could

have alienated but the actual presence of calamity, she had a nether

misery of alternating hope and fear, of anxieties continually reasoned

down, and of security lost the instant it was found. The double strain

told so upon her nerves, that when the rites at the grave were ended,

she sent word to the clergyman and piteously begged him to drive home

with her.

"Why, aren't you well, Miss Northwick?" he asked, with a glance at her

troubled face, as he got into the covered sleigh with her.

"Oh, yes," she said, and she flung herself back against the cushioning

and began to cry.

"Poor Mrs. Newton's grief has been very trying," he said, gently, and

with a certain serenity of smile he had, and he added, as if he thought

it well to lure Miss Northwick from the minor affliction that we feel

for others' sorrows to the sorrow itself, "It has been a terrible blow

to her--so sudden, and her only child."

"Oh, it isn't that," said Adeline, frankly. "Have--have you seen

the--paper this morning?"

"It came," said the clergyman. "But in view of the duty before me, I

thought I wouldn't read it. Is there anything particular in it?"

"No, nothing. Only--only--" Adeline had not been able to separate

herself from the dreadful thing, and she took it out of the carriage

pocket. "There has been an accident on the railroad," she began firmly,

but she broke down in the effort to go on. "And I wanted to have you

see--see--" She stopped, and handed him the paper.

He took it and ran over the account of the accident, and came at her

trouble with an instant intelligence that was in itself a sort of

reassurance. "But had you any reason to suppose your father was on the

train?"

"No," she said from the strength he gave her. "That is the strange part

about it. He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, and he couldn't

have been on the train at all. Only the name--"

"It isn't quite the name," said Wade, with a gentle moderation, as if he

would not willingly make too much of the difference, and felt truth to

be too sacred to be tampered with even while it had merely the form of

possibility.

"No," said Adeline, eager to be comforted, "and I'm sure he's at the

Mills. Elbridge has sent a dispatch to find out if he's there, but there

must be something the matter with the telegraph. We hadn't heard before

the funeral; or, at least, he didn't bring the word; and I hated to keep

round after him when--"

"He probably hadn't heard," said the clergyman, soothingly, "and no news

is good news, you know. But hadn't we better drive round by the station,

and find out whether any answer has been--"

"O, no! I couldn't do that!" said Adeline, nervously. "They will

telephone the answer up to Elbridge. But come home with me, if you

haven't something to do, and stay with us till we--"

"Oh, very willingly." On the way the young clergyman talked of the

accident, guessing that her hysterical conjectures had heightened the

horror, and that he should make it less dreadful by exploring its facts

with her. He did not declare it impossible her father should have been

on the train, but he urged the extreme improbability.

Elbridge and his wife passed them, driving rapidly in Simpson's booby,

which Adeline had ordered for their use at the funeral; and when she got

into the house Elbridge was waiting there for her. He began at once;

"Miss Northwick, I don't believe but what your father's staid over at

Springfield for something. He was talkin' to me last week about some

hosses there--"

"Isn't he at the Mills?" she demanded sharply.

Elbridge gave his hat a turn on his hand, before he looked up. "Well,

no, he hain't been, yet--"

Adeline made no sound, but she sank down as a column of water sinks.

At the confusion of movements and voices that followed, Suzette came to

the door of the library, and looked wonderingly into the hall, where

this had happened, with a book clasped over her finger. "What in the

world is the matter?" she asked with a sort of sarcastic amaze, at sight

of Elbridge lifting something from the floor.

"Don't be alarmed, Miss Suzette," said Mr. Wade, "Your sister seems a

little faint, and--"

"It's this sickening heat!" cried the girl, running to the door, and

setting it wide. "It suffocates me when I come in from the outside. I'll

get some water." She vanished and was back again instantly, stooping

over Adeline to wet her forehead and temples. The rush of the cold air

began to revive her. She opened her eyes, and Suzette said, severely,

"What has come over you, Adeline? Aren't you well?" and as Adeline

answered nothing, she went on: "I don't believe she knows where she is.

Let us get her into the library on the lounge."

She put her strength with that of the young clergyman, and they carried

Adeline to the lounge; Suzette dispatched Elbridge, hanging helplessly

about, for some of the women. He sent the parlor-maid, and did not come

back.

Adeline kept looking at her sister as if she were afraid of her. When

she was recovered sufficiently to speak, she turned her eyes on the

clergyman, and said huskily, "Tell her."

"Your sister has had a little fright," he began; and with his gentle

eyes on the girl's he went on to deal the pain that priests and

physicians must give. "There's the report of a railroad accident in the

morning paper, and among the passengers--the missing--was one of the

name of Northwick--"

"But father is at the Mills!"

"Your sister had telegraphed before the funeral, to make sure--and word

has come that he--isn't there."

"Where is the paper?" demanded Suzette, with a kind of haughty

incredulity.

Wade found it in his pocket, where he must have put it instead of giving

it back to Adeline in the sleigh. Suzette took it and went with it to

one of the windows. She stood reading the account of the accident, while

her sister watched her with tremulous eagerness for the help that came

from her contemptuous rejection of the calamity.

"How absurd! It isn't father's name, and he couldn't have been on the

train. What in the world would he have been going to Montreal for, at

this time of year? It's ridiculous!" Suzette flung the paper down, and

came back to the other two.

"I felt," said Wade, "that it was extremely improbable--"

"But where," Adeline put in faintly, "could he have been if he wasn't at

the Mills?"

"Anywhere in the world except Wellwater Junction," returned Suzette,

scornfully. "He may have stopped over at Springfield, or--"

"Yes," Adeline admitted, "that's what Elbridge thought."

"Or he may have gone on to Willoughby Junction. He often goes there."

"That is true," said the other, suffering herself to take heart a

little. "And he's been talking of selling his interest in the quarries

there; and--"

"He's there, of course," said Suzette with finality. "If he'd been going

farther, he'd have telegraphed us. He's always very careful. I'm not in

the least alarmed, and I advise you not to be, Adeline. When did you see

the paper first?"

"When I came down to breakfast," said Adeline, quietly.

"And I suppose you didn't eat any breakfast?"

Adeline's silence made confession.

"What I think is, we'd better all have _lunch_," said Suzette, and she

went and touched the bell at the chimney. "You'll stay with us, won't

you, Mr. Wade? We want lunch at once, James," she said to the man who

answered her ring. "Of course, you must stay, Mr. Wade, and help see

Adeline back to her right mind." She touched the bell again, and when

the man appeared, "My sleigh at once, James," she commanded. "I will

drive you home, Mr. Wade, on my way to the station. Of course I shall

not leave anything in doubt about this silly scare. I fancy it will be

no great difficulty to find out where father is. Where is that railroad

guide? Probably my father took it up to his room." She ran upstairs and

came down with the book in her hand. "Now we will see. I don't believe

he could get any train at Springfield, where he would have to change for

the Mills, that would take him beyond the Junction at that hour last

night. The express has to come up from Boston--" She stopped and ran

over the time-table of the route. "Well, he _could_ get a connecting

train at the Junction; but that doesn't prove at all that he did."

She talked on, mocking the mere suggestion of such a notion, and then

suddenly rang the bell once more, to ask sharply, "Isn't lunch ready

yet? Then bring us tea, here. I shall telegraph to the Mills again, and

I shall telegraph to Mr. Hilary in Boston; he will know whether father

was going anywhere else. They had a meeting of the Board day before

yesterday, and father went to the Mills unexpectedly. I shall telegraph

to Ponkwasset Junction, too; and you may be sure I shall not come home,

Adeline, till I know something definite."

The tea came, and Suzette served the cups herself, with nerves that

betrayed no tremor in the clash of silver or china. But she made haste,

and at the sound of sleigh-bells without, she put down her own cup,

untasted.

"Oh, must you take Mr. Wade away?" Adeline feebly pleaded. "Stay till

she comes back!" she entreated.

Suzette faltered a moment, and then with a look at Mr. Wade, she gave a

harsh laugh. "Very well!" she said.

She ran into the hall and up the stairs, and in another moment they

heard her coming down again; the outer door shut after her, and then

came the flutter of the sleigh-bells as she drove away.

Over the lunch the elder sister recovered herself a little, and ate as

one can in the suspense of a strong emotion.

"Your sister is a person of great courage," said the clergyman, as if he

were a little abashed by it.

"She would never show that she's troubled. But I know well enough that

she's troubled, by the way she kept talking and doing something every

minute; and now, if she hadn't gone to telegraph, she'd--I mustn't keep

you here, any longer, Mr. Wade," she broke off in the sense of physical

strength the food had given her. "Indeed, I mustn't. You needn't be

anxious. I shall do very well, now. Yes! I shall!"

She begged him to leave her, but he perceived that she did not really

wish him to go, and it was nearly an hour after Suzette drove away,

before he got out of the house. He would not let her send him home; and

he walked toward the village in the still, sunny cold of the early

winter afternoon, thinking of the sort of contempt with which that girl

had spurned the notion of calamity, as if it were something to be

resented, and even snubbed, in its approach to her. It was as if she had

now gone to trace it to its source, and defy it there; to stamp upon the

presumptuous rumor and destroy it.

Just before he reached the crest of the upland that shut out the village

from him, he heard the clash of sleigh-bells; a pair of horses leaped

into sight, and came bearing down upon him with that fine throw of their

feet, which you get only in such a direct encounter. He stepped into the

side track, and then he heard Miss Sue Northwick call to her horses and

saw her pulling them up. She had her father's fondness for horses, and

the pair of little grays were a gift from him with the picturesque

sledge they drew. The dasher swelled forward like a swan's breast, and

then curved deeply backward; from either corner of the band of iron

filagree at the top, dangled a red horsetail. The man who had driven her

to the station sat in a rumble behind; on the seat with Suzette was

another young lady, who put out her hand to Wade with a look of uncommon

liking, across the shining bearskin robe, and laughed at his

astonishment in seeing her. While they talked, the clipped grays

nervously lifted and set down their forefeet in the snow, as if

fingering it; they inhaled the cold air with squared nostrils, and blew

it out in blasts of white steam. Suzette said, in, explanation of her

friend's presence: "Louise had seen the account, and she made her

brother bring her up. They think just as I do, that there's nothing of

it; one of the papers had the name Nordeck; but we've left Mr. Hilary at

the station, fighting the telegraph and telephone in all directions, and

he isn't to stop till he gets something positive. He's trying Wellwater

now." She said all this very haughtily, but she added, "The only thing

is, I can't understand why my father hasn't been heard of at the Mills.

Some one was asking for him there yesterday."

"Probably he went on to Willoughby Junction, as you suggested."

"Of course he did," said Louise. "We haven't heard from there yet."

"Oh, I'm not in the least troubled," said Sue, "but it's certainly very

provoking." She lifted her reins. "I'm hurrying home to let Adeline

know."

"She'll be very glad," Wade returned, as if it were the certainty of

good news she was carrying. "I think I'll join Matt at the station," he

suggested to Louise.

"Do!" she answered. "You can certainly manage something between you.

Matt will be almost as glad of your coming as my going. I thought we

were coming up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely superfluous."

"You can reassure Adeline," said Sue. She added to Wade, "I keep

thinking what an annoyance it will be to my father, to have all this

fuss made over him. I sometimes feel vexed with Adeline. Good-bye!" she

called back to him as she drove away, and she stopped again to add,

"Won't you come up with Mr. Hilary when you've heard something

definite?"

Wade promised, and they repeated their good-byes all round with a

resolute cheerfulness.