  The gas lamps had been early lit and threw flaring streaks of white across the dingy platform as Margaret reached the station. She had stood on the top of the little slope, looking back across the fields, grown dim and mysterious in the purpling dusk, with a tightening of the throat. However unhappy she had been here, yet she had seen Daunt. He had stood with her by those dwarfed hedges, he had pleaded with her under the flaming boughs of those woods. She could still feel the strong pressure of his lips upon her hand as he besought her for what she could have given him so eagerly, so gladly, so joyously if she had dared. She was leaving him there, and the parting now seemed so much more than that other seaside flight, when she had been stung to She sank into her Pullman seat wearily. Several windows were open and inquiring heads were thrust forth. She was conscious of a subdued excitement in the air. A conductor passed hurriedly through the coach and swung himself deftly off the end. People about her asked each other impatiently why the train did not start, and a sallow-faced woman with a false front hoped nervously and audibly that nothing was the matter. A sudden whisper spread itself from chair to chair, and a man came back from the smoking “An accident. A man hurt.” Margaret heard it with a tremor. She tried to raise her window, but the latch caught, and she placed her face close to the pane to peer out. Up the platform tramped four trainmen, bloused and grimy with coal-dust, carrying between them a board, covered with tarpaulin, under which showed clearly the outlines of a human figure. Margaret caught her breath and drew back with a sudden feeling of faintness. There were a few tense moments of waiting. Then a quiver ran through the heavy trucks, there was a sharp whistle, a snort of escaping steam, and past her window moved slowly back the station lamps. A porter went toward the baggage-car, his arms piled high with white towels, which threw his ebony face into sharp contrast. The forward conductor leaned over the occupant of the chair He was probably at that moment lying on the floor of the baggage-car, amid a litter of trunks and bags. Men were bending over him to see if he lived or died. Five minutes ago he had been as full of life and strength and breath as she. Now he lay stricken and maimed and ghastly, a huddle of bleeding flesh and torn sinew, perhaps never again to see the smile of the sunlight, or, perhaps, to live mutilated and broken and disfigured, his every breath a pain, his every pulse a pang. Perhaps he had loved ones—a one loved one, who had hung about his neck and kissed him when he went away. What of that love when they should bring this object back to her? A hideous question of the lastingness of human love flung itself from the darkness without in upon her brain. One could love when the face was fair, when the form was supple and straight, when the eyes were clear and the blood was young But let that straight form be struck down in its prime: a misstep, a slip in the crowded street, a broken rail, an explosion in a chemist’s shop, and in an instant the beauty is scarred, the symmetrical limb is twisted, the tender face is seamed and gnarled. The loved form has gone, and in its place is left a shape of pain, of repulsion, of undelight. Ah! what of that love then? Margaret shivered as if with cold. How could she answer that? There was a love that did not live and die in the beating of the heart, which did not fade into darkness when its outer shell perished. That was the spirit love. That was the love of the mother for the child, of the soul for the kindred soul. That was the love that endured. It was the only love which justified itself. It was this that God intended when He put man Woman’s heart is the Great Questioner. When Doubt waves it from natural interrogation of the world about it, it turns with fearful and inevitable questionings upon itself, until the sky which had been thronged with quiring seraphim flocks thick with sneering devils. “Do you think,” insinuates the Tempter mockingly, “that this beautiful dove-eyed love of yours can stand the ultimate test? Have you tried it? You have seen loves just as beautiful, just as young, go down into the pit. Do you dream that yours can endure? Strip from your love the subtle magnetism of the body, take from it the hand-touch, the lip-caress, the pride of the eye, and what have you left? The hand grows palsied, the lips shrivel, the eye leadens, The darkness had fallen more thickly without, and Margaret saw her face reflected from the window-pane, as in a tarnished and trembling mirror. Her own eyes gazed back at her. She put up her hands and rubbed them against the glass, as though to erase the image she saw. “Don’t look so,” she said, half aloud. “What right have you to look so good? Don’t you know that if you had staid, if you had seen him again, you would have thought as he did? You couldn’t have helped it! You couldn’t! You had to run away! You didn’t want to come! You wish you were back again now! You—you do! You want him. You want him just as you did—then! That’s the worst of it.” The face in the glass made her no answer. It angered her that those eyes would offer no glance of self-defence, and, with a quick impulse, she reached up and drew down the shade. She hardly noted the various stations as the train stopped and breathed a moment, and then dashed on. Try as she would, her thoughts recurred to the baggage-car and the burden it carried. She wondered whether they would put it off quickly at the terminal, and what it would look like. It was for such things that hospitals were built, and to a hospital with all that it implied, she was bound. New and torturing doubts of her An engulfing rumbling told her that they were entering the city tunnel, and near-by passengers began a deliberate assortment of wraps and parcels. The porter passed through the train, loudly announcing the last stop. There was almost a relief to Margaret’s overwrought sensibilities in his sophisticated utterance. It was a part of the great cube-jumbled, fish-ribbed metropolis, with its clanging noises and its swirl of caÑoned living for which during the past weeks she had thirsted feverishly. She felt, without putting it into actual mental expression, that surcharged thought might find relief in simple things. Lois would be waiting there to meet her. She would be glad to see her. It was pleasant to be loved and looked for. A moment or two more and the white, smoky haze that blotted the car Margaret alighted on the platform with limbs numb and tired. The strain of the day had given her a yearning for quiet, for the abandon of a deep chair with soft cushions, and a cup of tea. She met Lois with outstretched arms and a wan and uncertain smile against which her lips feebly protested. “Why, Margaret, dear, how tired you look!” said Lois, kissing her. “Come, and we’ll get a cab just outside. Your train was very late. I thought you never would get here at all!” Margaret clung to Lois’s hands. “O—h,” she said, falteringly, “do we have to go up the whole length of the train?” “Why, yes; are you so very tired?” “No—but——” she stopped, ashamed of her weakness. She was coming to be a nurse—to “Oh,” said Lois, cheerfully, “we’ll leave your checks here; it won’t be necessary to wait for the trunks. Come, dear!” She led the way up the thronged platform. “Hurry!” she said suddenly, “there is a case in the baggage-car. I wonder where it’s going! Oh, you poor darling!” Margaret had turned very pale and leaned against a waiting truck for support. “I forgot. That is a rather stiff beginning for you, isn’t it? I’m so sorry! I hope you didn’t see; it looks like a bad one. Don’t watch it, dear. That’s right! You won’t mind it a bit after a while. You’re quite worn out now. Come, we’ll go around this other way.” “It happened at Warne,” said Margaret, tremulously. “I saw them take him on.” “Poor dear! and you must have been worrying about it all the way in. Do you see the ambulance at the curb? That’s ours. You see, they |
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