ANTHONY sat late into the night composing an explanatory and farewell
letter to Eliza:
“Your family would laugh at me,” he wrote; “I couldn't show them a
dollar. And although my father has done a great deal for me he wouldn't
do this. I couldn't expect him to. Mother might help, she is like you,
but I could not very well live between two women, could I? The only hope
is California for a couple of years. You know how much I want to stay
with you, how hard this is to write, when our engagement, everything, is
so new and wonderful. But it would only be harder later. If I had seen
you this afternoon I would never have left you. I am going to-morrow
night. This will come to you in the morning, and I will be home if you
send me a message. I would like to see you again before I go away in
order to come back to you forever. I would like to hear you say again
that you love me. Sometimes I think it never really happened. If I don't
see you again before I leave, remember I shall never change, I shall
love you always and not forget the least thing you said. I wish now I
had studied so that I could write better. Remember that I belong to you,
when you want me I will come to you if it's around the world, I would
come to you if I were dead I think. Good-bye, dear, dear Eliza, until
tomorrow anyhow, and that's a long while to be without seeing you or
hearing your voice.”
At the announcement of his agreement to go West, the attitude of his
father had changed greatly; his hand continually sought Anthony's
shoulder; he consulted gravely, as it were with an equal, with regard
to trains, precautions, new climates. His mother busied herself over
his clothes, her rare speech brusque and hurried. To Anthony she seemed
suddenly old, _grey_; her hands trembled, and necessary stitches were
uneven.
He was aware that the mail for Hydrangea House was collected before
noon, and he sat expectantly in the room overlooking the street. It was
dark and cool, there were creamy tea roses in the Canton jar now,
while in the street it was hot and bright. A sere engraving of Joseph
Bonaparte in regal robes gazed serenely from the wall. The hour for
lunch arrived without any message from Eliza. Throughout the afternoon
he dropped his pressing affairs find descended to the street... nothing.
His heart grew heavy with doubts, with fears--his letter had been
intercepted; or, if Eliza had received it, her answer had been diverted.
Perhaps she had at last realized that he was unfit for her love. The
impulse almost mastered him to go once more to Hydrangea House, but
pride prevented; his unhappiness hardened, grew bitter, suspicious. Then
he again read her letter, and its patent sincerity swept away all doubt;
Eliza was unwavering; if not now he would find her at the end of two
years, unchanged, warm, beautiful.
He was summoned to dinner, where he found the delicacies he especially
liked. The plates were liberally filled, all made a pretence at
eating, but, at the end, the food remained hardly touched. The forced
conversation fell into sudden, disturbing silences. His father sharpened
the carving knife twice, which, for shad roe, was scarcely necessary;
his mother scolded the servant without cause; even Ellie was affected,
and smiled at him with a bright tenderness.
He was to leave Ellerton at midnight, when he would be enabled to
connect with a western express, and it was arranged for him to spend a
last hour at the Club with his father. Ellie and the servant stood upon
the pavement, his mother was upstairs in the sewing room... where he
entered softly.
At the Club the billiard room was dark, the tables shrouded, but from
a room at the end of the hall came the murmur of the nightly coon-can
players. They seated themselves at a table, and his father ordered beer
and cigars. It was the first time that he had acknowledged Anthony to
possess the discretion of maturity, and he raised the stein to his lips
with the feeling that it was a sacrament of his manhood, an earnest and
pledge of his success.
The midnight train emerged from the gloom of the station, passed through
the outskirts of Ellerton, detached rows of dark dwellings, by the
grounds of the Baseball Association, its fence still plastered with the
gaudy circus posters, into the dim fields and shining streams. Anthony
stood on the last, swinging platform, gazing back at the gloom that
enveloped Ellerton, at the place where Hydrangea House was hid by
the hills. An acute misery possessed him--the unsettled maimer of his
departure from Eliza, her silence, struggled in his thoughts with the
attempt to realize the necessity of the course he had adopted to bring
about a final and lasting joy. He wondered if Eliza would understand the
need for his going; but, assured of her wise sympathy, he felt that she
would; and a measure of content settled upon him. The engine swung about
a curve, disappearing into the obscurity of a wood. “Eliza,” he cried
aloud, “Eliza, be here when I come back to you!”
He sat for the greater part of an hour on the deserted platform of the
junction, where signal lamps glistened on the steel rails that vanished
into the night, into the west, the inscrutable future. The headlight
of the massive locomotive flared unexpectedly, whitely upon him; the
engine, with a brief glimpse of a sanguinary heart of fire illuminating
a sooty human countenance, gleaming, liquid eyeballs, passed and
stopped; and Anthony hastily mounted the train. He made his way through
the narrow passage of buttoned, red curtains, and found his berth, when
he sank into a weary, dreamless sleep.