IT was one of those little ironies of fate that are spoken about so
much, that when Warren Reyburn alighted from the train in Tinsdale
Abijah Gage should be supporting one corner of the station, and
contributing a quid now and then to the accumulations of the week
scattered all about his feet.
He spotted the stranger at once and turned his cunning little eyes upon
him, making it obvious that he was bulging with information. It was,
therefore, quite natural, when Reyburn paused to take his bearings, that
Bi should speak up and inquire if he was looking for some one. Reyburn
shook his head and passed on, but Bi was not to be headed off so easily
as that. He shuffled after him:
"Say!" he said, pointing to a shackley horse and buckboard that stood
near, belonging to a pal over at the freight house. "Ef you want a lift
I'll take you along."
"Thank you, no," said Reyburn, smiling; "I'm not going far."
"Say!" said Bi again as he saw his quarry about to disappear. "You name
ain't Bains, is it?"
"No!" said Reyburn, quite annoyed by the persistent old fellow.
"From New York?" he hazarded cheerfully.
"No," answered Reyburn, turning to go. "You must excuse me. I'm in a
hurry."
"That's all right," said Bi contentedly. "I'll walk a piece with you. I
was lookin' fer a doctor to take down to see a sick child. A doctor from
New York. You ain't by any chance a doctor, are you?" Bi eyed the big
leather bag inquiringly.
"No," said Reyburn, laughing in spite of his annoyance. "I'm only a
lawyer." And with a bound he cleared the curb and hurried off down the
street, having now recognized the direction described in Jane's diagram
of Tinsdale.
Abijah Gage looked after him with twinkling eyes of dry mirth, and
slowly sauntered after him, watching him until he entered the little
unpainted gate of the Carson house and tapped at the old gray door. Then
Bi lunged across the street and entered a path that ran along the
railroad track for a few rods, curving suddenly into a stretch of vacant
lots. On a convenient fence rail with a good outlook toward the west end
of the village he ensconced himself and set about whittling a whistle
from some willow stalks. He waited until he saw Bobbie Carson hurry off
toward Hathaway's house and return with Lizzie Hope; waited hopefully
until the stranger finally came out of the house again, touching his hat
gracefully to the girl as she stood at the open door. Then he hurried
back to the station again, and was comfortably settled on a tub of
butter just arrived by freight, when Reyburn reached there. He was much
occupied with his whistle, and never seemed to notice, but not a
movement of the stranger escaped him, and when the Philadelphia express
came by, and the stranger got aboard the parlor car, old Bi Gage swung
his lumbering length up on the back platform of the last car. The hounds
were hot on the trail now.
It was several years since Bi Gage had been on so long a journey, but he
managed to enjoy the trip, and kept in pretty good touch with the parlor
car, although he was never in evidence. If anybody had told Warren
Reyburn as he let himself into his apartment late that night that he was
being followed, he would have laughed and told them it was an
impossibility. When he came out to the street the next morning and swung
himself into a car that would land him at his office, he did not see the
lank flabby figure of the toothless Bi standing just across the block,
and keeping tab on him from the back platform, nor notice that he slid
into the office building behind him and took the same elevator up,
crowding in behind two fat men and effacing himself against the wall of
the cage. Reyburn was reading his paper, and did not look up. The figure
slid out of the elevator after him and slithered into a shadow, watching
him, slipping softly after, until sure which door he took, then waited
silently until sure that the door was shut. No one heard the slouching
footsteps come down the marble hall. Bi Gage always wore rubbers when he
went anywhere in particular. He had them on that morning. He took
careful note of the name on the door: "_Warren Reyburn_,
Attorney-at-Law," and the number. Then he slid down the stairs as
unobserved as he had come, and made his way to a name and number on a
bit of paper from his pocket which he consulted in the shelter of a
doorway.
When Warren Reyburn started on his first trip to Tinsdale his mind was
filled with varying emotions. He had never been able to quite get away
from the impression made upon him by that little white bride lying so
still amid her bridal finery, and the glowering bridegroom above her. It
epitomized for him all the unhappy marriages of the world, and he felt
like starting out somehow in hot pursuit of that bridegroom and making
him answer for the sadness of his bride. Whenever the matter had been
brought to his memory he had always been conscious of the first gladness
he had felt when he knew she had escaped. It could not seem to him
anything but a happy escape, little as he knew about any of the people
who played the principal parts in the little tragedy he had witnessed.
Hour after hour as he sat in the train and tried to sleep or tried to
think he kept wondering at himself that he was going on this "wild goose
chase," as he called it in his innermost thoughts. Yet he knew he had to
go. In fact, he had known it from the moment James Ryan had shown him
the advertisement. Not that he had ever had any idea of trying for that
horrible reward. Simply that his soul had been stirred to its most
knightly depths to try somehow to protect her in her hiding. Of course,
it had been a mere crazy thought then, with no way of fulfilment, but
when the chance had offered of really finding her and asking if there
was anything she would like done, he knew from the instant it was
suggested that he was going to do it, even if he lost every other
business chance he ever had or expected to have, even if it took all his
time and every cent he could borrow. He knew he had to try to find that
girl! The thought that the only shelter between her and the great awful
world lay in the word of an untaught girl like Jane Carson filled him
with terror for her. If that was true, the sooner some one of
responsibility and sense got to her the better. The questions he had
asked of various people that afternoon had revealed more than he had
already guessed of the character of the bridegroom to whom he had taken
such a strong dislike on first sight.
Thus he argued the long night through between the fitful naps he caught
when he was not wondering if he should find her, and whether he would
know her from that one brief sight of her in church. How did he know but
this was some game put up on him to get him into a mix-up? He must go
cautiously, and on no account do anything rash or make any promises
until he had first found out all about her.
When morning dawned he was in a state of perturbation quite unusual for
the son and grandson of renowned lawyers noted for their calmness and
poise under all circumstances. This perhaps was why the little incident
with Abijah Gage at the station annoyed him so extremely. He felt he was
doing a questionable thing in taking this journey at all. He certainly
did not intend to reveal his identity or business to this curious old
man.
The little gray house looked exactly as Jane had described it, and as he
opened the gate and heard the rusty chain that held it clank he had a
sense of having been there before.
He was pleasantly surprised, however, when the door was opened by Emily,
who smiled at him out of shy blue eyes, and stood waiting to see what he
wanted. It was like expecting a viper and finding a flower. Somehow he
had not anticipated anything flower-like in Jane's family. The mother,
too, was a surprise when she came from her ironing, and, pushing her
wavy gray hair back from a furrowed brow lifted intelligent eyes that
reminded him of Jane, to search his face. Ma did not appear flustered.
She seemed to be taking account of him and deciding whether or not she
would be cordial to him.
"Yes, I had a telegram from Jane this morning," she was scanning his
eyes once more to see whether there was a shadow of what she called
"shiftiness" in them. "Come in," she added grudgingly.
He was not led into the dining-room, but seated on one of the best
varnished chairs in the "parlor," as they called the little unused front
room. He felt strangely ill at ease and began to be convinced that he
was on the very wildest of wild goose chases. To think of expecting to
find Elizabeth Stanhope in a place like this! If she ever had been here
she certainly must have flown faster than she had from the church on her
wedding night.
So, instead of beginning as he had planned, to put a list of logically
prepared keen questions to a floundering and suspecting victim, he found
the clear eyes of Ma looking into his unwaveringly and the wise tongue
of Ma putting him through a regular orgy of catechism before she would
so much as admit that she had ever heard of a girl named Lizzie Hope.
Then he bethought him of her daughter's letter and handed it over for
her to read.
"Well," she admitted at last, half satisfied, "she isn't here at
present. I sent her away when I found you was comin'. I wasn't sure I'd
let you see her at all if I didn't like your looks."
"That's right, Mrs. Carson," he said heartily, with real admiration in
his voice. "I'm glad she has some one so careful to look out for her.
Your daughter said she was in a good safe place, and I begin to see she
knew what she was talking about."
Then the strong look around Ma's lips settled into the sweeter one, and
she sent Bob after the girl.
"Are you a friend of hers?" she asked, watching him keenly.
"No," said Reyburn. "I've never seen her but once. She doesn't know me
at all."
"Are you a friend of her--family?"
"Oh, no!"
"Or any of her friends or relations?" Ma meant to be comprehensive.
"No. I'm sorry I am not. I am a rather recent comer to the city where
she made her home, I understand."
Ma looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. It wouldn't have been called
a stare, it was too kindly for that, but Reyburn thought to himself that
he would not have liked to have borne her scrutiny if he had anything to
conceal, for he felt as if she might read the truth in his eyes.
"Are you--please excuse me for askin'--but are you a member of any
church?"
Reyburn flushed, and wanted to laugh, but was embarrassed in spite of
himself:
"Why, yes--I'm a member," he said slowly, then with a frank lifting of
his eyes to her troubled gaze, "I united with the church when I was a
mere kid, but I'm afraid I'm not much of a member. I really am not what
you'd call 'working' at it much nowadays. I go to morning service
sometimes, but that's about all. I don't want to be a hypocrite."
He wondered as he spoke why he took the trouble to answer the woman so
fully. Her question was in a way impertinent, much like the way her
daughter talked. Yet she seemed wholly unconscious of it.
"I know," she assented sorrowfully. "There's lots of them in the church.
We have 'em, too, even in our little village. But still, after all, you
can't help havin' confidence more in them that has 'named the name' than
in them that has not."
Reyburn looked at her curiously and felt a sudden infusion of respect
for her. She was putting the test of her faith to him, and he knew by
the little stifled sigh that he had been found wanting.
"I s'pose lawyers don't have much time to think about being Christians,"
she apologized for him.
He felt impelled to be frank with her:
"I'm afraid I can't urge that excuse. Unfortunately I have a good deal
of time on my hands now. I've just opened my office and I'm waiting for
clients."
"Where were you before that? You did not just get through studying?"
He saw she was wondering whether he was wise enough to help her protege.
"No, I spent the last three years in France."
"Up at the front?" The pupils of her eyes dilated eagerly.
"Yes, in every drive," he answered, wondering that a woman of this sort
should be so interested now that the war was over.
"And you came back safe!" she said slowly, looking at him with a kind of
wistful sorrow in her eyes. "My boy was shot the first day he went over
the top."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Reyburn gently, a sudden tightness in his throat.
"But it was all right." She flashed a dazzling smile at him through the
tears that came into her eyes. "It wasn't as if he wasn't ready. Johnny
was always a good boy, an' he joined church when he was fourteen, an'
always kep' his promises. He used to pray every night just as faithful,
an' read his Bible. I've got the little Testament he carried all
through. His chaplain sent it to me. It's got a bullet hole through it,
and blood-marks, but it's good to me to look at, 'cause I know Johnny's
with his Saviour. He wasn't afraid to die. He said to me before he left,
he says: 'Ma, if anythin' happens to me it's all right. You know, Ma, I
ain't forgettin' what you taught me, an' I ain't forgettin' Christ is
with me.'"
Mrs. Carson wiped her eyes furtively, and tried to look cheerful.
Reyburn wished he knew how to comfort her.
"It makes a man feel mean," he said at last, trying to fit his toe into
the pattern of the ingrain carpet, "to come home alive and whole when so
many poor fellows had to give their lives. I've often wondered how I
happened to get through."
She looked at him tenderly:
"Perhaps your Heavenly Father brought you back to give you more chance
to do things for Him, an' get ready to die when your time comes."
There was something startling to this self-composed city chap in hearing
a thing like this from the lips of the mother whose beloved son was gone
forever beyond her teaching but had "been ready." Reyburn looked at her
steadily, soberly, and then with a queer constriction in his throat he
looked down at the floor thoughtfully and said:
"Perhaps He did."
"Well, I can't help bein' glad you're a church member, anyhow," said
Mrs. Carson, rising to look out of the window. "She needs a Christian to
help her, an' I'd sooner trust a Christian. If you really meant it when
you joined church you've got somethin' to fall back on anyhow. Here she
comes. I'll just go an' tell her you're in here."