by Zane Grey
Next day the donor of the kindly gift might as well not have been on the ship, for all Forrest saw of her. On the ensuing morning he thought he caught a glimpse of wavy chestnut hair disappearing behind a corner of deck, but it did not reappear. And gradually the persuasive force of the incident faded; the fleeting interest that had kept him from morbid retrospection lost its healthy tone, and he drifted back. The little affair, perhaps only a kind thought for her, yet of such incalculable good for him, had been ended. Chestnut-haired girls were not for him.
When in the early rose and gold of sunrise the ship steamed up the Narrows and on past the Statue of Liberty, the hour was one of tremendous moment to Clifton Forrest. His own, his native land! One of his prayers at least had been answered. There was only one left, and he renewed that with a faith incurred by this beautiful answer.
At the docking his ordeal of transfer began. But he kept out of the press of the crowd, and watched the gay fluttering of handkerchiefs, the upturned faces, eager and intent, the hurry of passengers down the gangplank. And looking among them, suddenly he espied her. Had he forgotten? She was clad in white and those around her dimmed in his sight. Yet he saw her welcomed by young men and women, who whisked her away, leaving a blankness over the noisy crowd, the incessant movement and changing color.
After complying with the wearying customs regulations, Forrest sat resting upon his luggage until he could engage a steward who would take him to a taxi. Soon, then, he was dodging the traffic of the streets of New York, the peril of which he thought equal to tank warfare in France.
Uptown, the great canyon streets, with their endless stream of humanity, and in the center the four rows of continuous motors, brought stunningly to him the bewildering fact that he was in New York City. To be sure, a thousand leagues still separated him from his destination, yet this was home. It roused him to a high pitch of gratitude, and of an inexplicable emotion that had long been dormant in his breast.
The stimulus of this grew as he turned into Fifth Avenue, where the wild taxi-driver had to join the right-hand procession and slow up at frequent intervals. Thus Forrest had opportunity to revel in the sidewalks packed with his countrymen. The bitterness of neglect had no place in his full heart then, and the hour was too big for the tragedy of his life to prevail. He had not dreamed it would be like this. Perhaps there was something his misery had blunted or which his intelligence had never divined. Among the thousands of pedestrians he saw women of all degrees, from the elegant lithe-stepping patrician to the overdressed little shopgirl. And it was these his hungry heart seemed to seize. Had he not seen enough men to last ten lifetimes?
At the Grand Central Station he expended about the last of his strength reaching a bench in the waiting-room. The huge domed vault, which he could see through the doorway, seemed dim, and the hurrying people vague in his sight. He leaned back with his coat under his head, and slowly watched the arch clear of dim gloom, of spectral cubistic shapes, like the things of a nightmare; and rays of colored sunlight shine upon the splendor of sculptured walls and the painted dome.
Oddly it struck him then that the clearing of the vast space above might be a symbol of his homecoming. Out of chaos, out of turgid gloom, the beautiful lights on the storied painted windows! But if it were true it must mean out of travail into ease, out of insupportable life to dreamless death.
It took hours sometimes for Forrest to recover from undue exertion. This appeared to be a time when he would just about be rested and free from torture, then be compelled to rouse the fiends of flesh and bone again. It was well that he had to wait for one of the slow trains, upon which no extra fare was charged.
Eventually he once more got pleasure and excitement from the hurrying throngs. Wherever did so many people come from? Whither were they going? Indeed, their paths seemed the pleasanter lanes of life, for few indeed belonged to the lower classes. All well dressed, intent on thought or merry with companions, bright-faced and eager for whatever lay ahead, they impressed Forrest with the singular and monstrous fact of their immeasurable distance from him, from the past that had ruined him, from the bleak ash-strewn shore of the future.
He had given his all for them and they passed him by, blind to his extremity. But for the moment he soared above bitterness and he had clearness of vision. Surely one or more of these handsome girls had a brother under the poppies in the fields of France. Perhaps some of these business-like young men had shared with him the battlefield, but had escaped his misfortunes.
So the hours passed, not tediously for the latter half, until the porter who had carried his bags and purchased his ticket arrived to put him on his train.
“Come, buddy,” said the porter, with a grin; “hang on to me and we’ll go over the top.”
Anyone who ran could read, thought Forrest with resignation. Still his pride would never succumb. Without a falter he followed his guide to Pullman, and once sunk in his seat he sighed and wiped the cold dew from his brow. Only one more like ordeal—the bus ride in Chicago from station to station—and then the Santa Fé Limited! How often from the hills outside Las Vegas had he reined his horse to watch the famous Western train wind like a snake across the desert!
The Palisades above the Hudson, with the sinking sun behind them, appeared to have a faint bursting tinge of spring. At home the cottonwoods would be in leaf, full-foliaged, and green as emerald. He watched the reflection of cliff and hill in the broad river until dusk. Then he ventured boldly for the dining-car. It brought poignant memories. How different his first experience in a diner six years before on his way to college at Lawrence, Kansas!
That night he did not sleep very well, though he rested comfortably. The rushing of the train through the darkness, fearful as it was, seemed welcome because of the miles so swiftly annihilated.
Morning came, and finally Chicago, dark under its cloud of smoke. Forrest naturally was slow in disembarking from the train. All was bustle and confusion. Porters were scarce. And as the connection for the Santa Fé was close he could not risk missing the bus. So he carried his luggage. As a result he had to be helped into the bus, and at Dearborn Street put in a wheel chair and taken out to his Pullman. He was staggering and groping like one in the dark, while the porter led him to his berth and deposited his luggage. When Forrest sagged into the seat he felt that it was not any too soon. He was glad indeed to lay his head on a pillow the porter brought. Outside, the conductor called all aboard. The train gave a slight jar and started to glide. Forrest heard a passenger exclaim that the Twentieth Century Limited had just made the connection and that was all. Then the train emerged from the shaded station out into the sunlight.
Forrest knew that he had overshot his strength, but if it did not kill him outright, he did not care. He was on the last lap home. And the ecstasy of it counterbalanced the riotous protest of his broken body. Had he not endured as much without any help at all save the brute instinct to survive? He opened his heavy eyelids, and the first person he saw was the chestnut-haired girl he had met on the ship.
Chapter Two
RECKON he’s fainted, Miss.” The voice probably came from the porter.
“He is very white.” This was evidently from a girl. “Are you sure it’s the same fellow, Ginia?”
“I know it is.” That voice had a rich note that Forrest recognized. It had power to raise him from his lethargy, but he decided he would like staying unconscious a little while longer.
“Miss, he was fetched in a wheel chair,” said the porter. “Sho I had all I could do with his luggage, an’ I reckoned whoever fetched him would help him aboard. But he got on alone, an’ I seen him saggin’ here too late.”
“Mother,” interposed the first girl, “Ginia declares she saw this young man on the Berengaria.”
“Indeed! Who is he?” queried the mother.
“I don’t know,” answered the girl Forrest knew. “But I do know he’s a wounded soldier.”
“Who told you that, my dear?”
“
Anyone could have seen. Besides, he told me so. . . . He was alone on the ship. . . . Porter, is there anyone with him now?”
“No, Miss, I’s sho there ain’t. It was a red-cap who fetched him in.”
“Bring me a towel wet with cold water,” returned the girl called Ginia. “Ethel, get your mother’s smelling-salts, in case I need something stronger.”
Forrest felt some one brush his knees and evidently sit down opposite him. Then a soft warm hand touched his cheek, and that gentle contact shot all through him.
“Like ice,” she whispered.
“Poor fellow! Wouldn’t it be awful if he were dead?” exclaimed the girl who was probably Ethel.
“Hush! Suppose he heard you! . . . Ethel, don’t stand there like a ninny. Go back to your mother. . . . Thanks, porter. You might get another pillow.”
Then Forrest felt the gentle pressure of a cold wet cloth upon his brow and temples, and the touch of light fingers smoothing back his hair. A most unaccountable sensation assailed him. This was the girl who had given him the tiny bouquet of violets, which he had still in his possession. What chance had brought them together again and now on a train going west?
“He doesn’t come to,” whispered the girl to some one near. “I wonder if there’s a doctor aboard.”
Forrest thought it was quite time he was recovering consciousness. Therefore to the best of his ability he imitated a motion-picture actress coming out of a trance, and then opened his eyes. Some one gasped, but it was not the girl bending toward him. She drew back, a little startled. Then the gravity of her face relaxed.
“There! You’ve come to. We—I had begun to fear you never would. . . . You fainted, you know.”
“Very good of you to trouble—about me,” he replied, and his unsteadiness was not feigned.
“You must have hurried too fast.”
“Yes. You see, I didn’t want to miss this train. . . . Another whole day.”
A blond head popped up from behind the seat, where manifestly it had been very close indeed. And a pretty girl asked, solicitously:
“Ginia, is he all right?”
“He has recovered, at any rate.”
“Thank you. I think the fact that I’m on this train will make me all right—presently,” replied Forrest.
“I am very glad,” said the girl, soberly, and sat down opposite him.
The porter brought another pillow and slipped it under Forrest’s shoulders.
“Anythin’ mo’ I can get you, boss?”
Forrest shook his head. The girl handed the towel to the porter, and moved as if to rise. But she did not carry out her impulse. Forrest was gazing into her eyes, which evidently confused her, yet held her there for the moment. Her eyes were deep dark violet, wide apart, and somehow they struck a memory chord in Forrest’s uncertain mind. Just now they were troubled.
“Was it on the ship—I saw you?” he asked, uncertainly.
“Yes.”
“Anywhere else?”
“Not that I know of.”
Slipping his hand inside his breast pocket, he drew forth the faded violets and exposed them in his palm.
“I found these pinned to my steamer rug. Did you put them there?”
She blushed rosy red. “I! . . . Why do you imagine I did it?”
“There was only one other person who could have been kind enough. He was an old man and never would have thought of it. . . . Did you?”
“But why do you want to know?”
“I’d like to know truly that you did it, instead of some stranger.”
“I am a stranger, too.”
“You are, yes. But then you are not. I can’t explain. I believe, though, I’ve seen you somewhere. . . . I’d been nine months in a hospital. Missing months before that. God only knows where. . . . The first time my frozen heart seemed to soften was when I saw those violets. . . . I laid them on my pillow—and cried myself to sleep on them. . . . Absurd for a soldier! But the iron in me is gone. . . . Now will you tell me?”
“Something prompted me,” she answered, swiftly. “I don’t know what. I resisted the impulse. . . . But then I did it. And now I’m very, very glad.”
She arose, somewhat confusedly, and backed into the aisle. Forrest felt the intensity of his gaze and that it fascinated her. There seemed nothing more to be said in words.
“I hope you rest and soon feel stronger,” she said, and left him.
Forrest thought it would be well to do just that thing, if he were ever to reach Las Vegas. Yet an inner conviction, more stable and determined today, assured him that such hope was no longer vain. He relaxed the tension which had upheld him, and closing his eyes, went back to the old ghastly strife with his pangs. Always he paid for exertion, and that meant of emotion as well as of muscle.
But outworn nature took a hand, and his surrender to reality was only a preamble to sleep. When he awoke the sun was on the other side of the car. Aware at once of relief, Forrest sat up. The flat green country and the wide farms, with their straight fences, told him Illinois was fast passing by.
The blond girl came down the aisle with an elderly woman, presumably her mother, and she smiled at Forrest.
“You had a long nap. I hope you feel better.”
“I do, thank you.”
“The porter was going to wake you—for lunch, he said—but we drove him off.”
“Thank you. I don’t need much to eat and it’s easy to get. But sleep is difficult. I guess I was just about all in.”
“You don’t look so—so bad now,” she concluded, with naïve encouragement.
The other girl was not in evidence. Forrest leaned on the window-sill and watched the flying landscape, scarcely believing that at last he was on the way home. There had come a break in his bitterness. The broad brown and green acres thrilled him. He had never appreciated his country. If he only could have had everything to do over again! There were horses in the meadows, flocks of blackbirds flying in clouds over the wooded creek bottoms. The lanes, recently muddy, stretched for leagues across the land, empty of vehicles clear to the horizon. How different in France! But America was endless and boundless. Wait till he crossed the Mississippi—then France could have been set down anywhere and lost!
Some one addressed him. Turning, he looked up into the bright face of the girl who had been so kind to him.
“You are better?” she asked, gladly.
“Yes, indeed,” he replied, and thanked her for her solicitude.
“Oh, but you had me scared!” she exclaimed. “Are you really as—as ill as you made me believe?”
“How ill was that?” asked Forrest, smiling up at her. The wholesomeness and artlessness of her drew him out of himself.
“When I first asked if you were a wounded soldier you said—‘all that’s left of me.’”
“Well, isn’t it true?”
“I—I can’t tell,” she returned, the glad light fading. “You don’t look ill or weak now—only pale.” Here she sat down opposite him and clasped her hands over her knees. She had changed her dark traveling dress to one of lighter hue, and the effect was magical. “Truly, I hoped you were just spoofing—that day on the ship. This morning, indeed, I noticed you were a very sick boy. . . . Still, when I saw you sitting up just now, I hoped again——”
“Boy!—I am twenty-eight,” he interrupted, in pain that her kindness made acute. He faced again to the window, biting his lip. “And my doctors give me perhaps a month—to live.”
There ensued what Forrest felt to be a very long silence. He could not control remorse. But her youth, her abounding health, stung him into a revolt at he knew not what.
“How dreadful!” she answered, in a hushed voice.
“Only for the thoughtless—and selfish,” he returned. “Death is nothing. I have seen a hundred thousand young men like me meet death in every conceivable manner.”
“Yes, we are thoughtless—selfish, and worse. But how little we know! It takes actual contact.”
&
nbsp; “Did you have a brother, a friend, or anyone dear—over there?”
“No. Only acquaintances, and I thought that hard to bear. . . . Mr. Soldier, it is courteous of you to confide in me. I can imagine how you hate it. . . . But one question more. You are going home to your mother?”
“Home to mother, thank God!” he whispered, dropping his head. “And dad!—I disgraced them. But this, I feel, has made it up. All I ask is to see them again, to learn all is well with them—and then it can’t come too soon for me.”
“I say, thank God, too,” she murmured. “Quien sabe? Home might make you well.”
When Forrest recovered from this lapse into agitation, a most irritating and increasing habit that had grown upon him, the girl had gone back to her berth, which was across the aisle and the second down. She faced him, however, and thereafter, whether reading, or talking to the several members of her party, her glance came back frequently to his, as if unaccountably drawn.
The sight of her somehow gladdened him, in a way long foreign to him. Curiosity became added to the attraction he did not try to resist. Who was she? Where was she going? She certainly did not appear related to the pretty blond girl and her mother, nor to several young men who appeared very attentive. One of these, presently, noted her interest in Forrest, and did not take kindly to it. This byplay assured Forrest that he was not quite yet a disembodied spirit. He was still a flesh-and-blood individual over whom another could show jealousy.
He got out his magazines and a book and pretended to read, when in truth he merely wanted to watch the girl unobtrusively. She was quick to grasp his subterfuge, and adopted it herself, giving him a look and a smile that made his heart beat faster.
Gradually the exchange assumed the proportions of a flirtation, but not the frivolity of one. Her look answered to his, until a consciousness of it perhaps, made her shy. Not for a good while then did she reciprocate, but eventually he won her glance again. This time she laid the magazine in her lap and stared at him with wonderful eyes of sadness, of understanding, and more which Forrest could not define. But it seemed as if she were sending him a message—one which Forrest did not in the least know how to interpret. But as it seemed incumbent upon him to answer her challenge, he turned in his book to a favorite poem, which had in it the elements of his tragedy, and rising he walked down the aisle and handed it to her.
