XXIII
That night he turned in, greatly depressed. Bad dreams assailed his slumbers—menacing ones like the visions that annoyed Eugene Aram.
And every time he awoke and sat up in his bunk, shaken by the swaying car, he realised that Romance had also its tragic phases—a sample of which he was now enduring. And yet, miserable as he was, a horrid sort of joy neutralised the misery when he recollected that it was Romance, after all, and that he, George Z. Green, was in it up to his neck.
A grey morning—a wet and pallid sky lowering over the brown North Carolina fields—this was his waking view from his tumbled bunk.[221]
Neither his toilet nor his breakfast dispelled the gloom; certainly the speeding landscape did not.
He sat grimly in the observation car, reviewing a dispiriting landscape set with swamps, razorbacks, buzzards, and niggers.
Luncheon aided him very little. She had not appeared at all. Either her own misery and fright were starving her to death or she preferred to take her meals in her stateroom. He hoped fervently the latter might be the case; that murder might not be added to whatever else he evidently was suspected of committing.
Like the ticket he had seen her purchase, his own ticket took him as far as Ormond. Of course he could go on if she did. She could go to the West Indies and ultimately to Brazil. So could he. They were on the main travelled road to almost anywhere.
Nevertheless, he was on the watch at St. Augustine; and when he saw her come forth hastily and get into a bus emblazoned with the name and escutcheon of the Hotel Royal Orchid, he got in also.
The bus was full. Glancing at the other occupants of the bus, she included him in her brief review, and to his great relief he saw her incurious[222] blue eyes pass calmly to the next countenance.
A dreadful, almost hysterical impulse assailed him to suddenly rise and say: "I am George Z. Green!"—merely to observe the cataclysmic effect on her.
But it did not seem so funny to him on after thoughts, for the chances appeared to be that she could not survive the shock. Which scared him; and he looked about nervously for fear somebody who knew him might be among the passengers, and might address him by name.
In due time the contents of the bus trooped into the vast corridors of the Hotel Royal Orchid. One by one they registered; and on the ledger Green read her name with palpitating heart—Miss Marie Wiltz and Maid. And heard her say to the clerk that her maid had been delayed and would arrive on the next train.
It never occurred to this unimaginative man to sign any name but his own to the register that was shoved toward him. Which perfectly proves his guilelessness and goodness.
He went to his room, cleansed from his person the stains of travel, and, having no outer clothes to change to, smoked a cigarette and gazed moodily from the window.[223]
Now, his window gave on the drive-encircled fountain before the front entrance to the hotel; and, as he was standing there immersed in tobacco smoke and gloom, he was astonished to see the girl herself come out hastily, travelling satchel in hand, and spring lightly into a cab. It was one of those victorias which are stationed for hire in front of such southern hotels; he could see her perfectly plainly; saw the darkey coachman flourish his whip; saw the vehicle roll away.
The next instant he seized his new satchel, swept his brand new toilet articles into it, snapped it, picked up hat and cane, and dashed down stairs to the desk.
Here he paid his bill, ran out, and leaped into a waiting victoria.
"Where did that other cab drive?" he demanded breathlessly to his negro coachman. "Didn't you hear what the young lady said to her driver?"
"Yaas, suh. De young lady done say she's in a pow'ful hurry, suh. She 'low she gotta git to Ormond."
"Ormond! There's no train!"
"Milk-train, suh."
"What! Is she going to Ormond on a milk-train?"[224]
"Yaas, suh."
"All right, then. Drive me to the station."
It was not very far. She was standing alone on the deserted platform, her bag at her feet, his overcoat lying across it. Her head was bent, and she did not notice him at first. Never had he seen a youthful figure so exquisitely eloquent of despair.
The milk-train was about an hour overdue, which would make it about due in the South. Green seated himself on a wooden bench and folded his hands over the silver crook of his walking-stick. The situation was now perfectly clear to him. She had come down from her room, and had seen his name on the register, had been seized by a terrible panic, and had fled.
Had he been alone and unobserved, he might have attempted to knock his brains out with his walking-stick. He desired to, earnestly, when he realised what an ass he had been to sign the register.
She had begun to pace the platform, nervously, halting and leaning forward from time to time to scan impatiently the long, glittering perspective of the metals.
It had begun to grow dusk. Lanterns on switches and semaphores flashed out red, green,[225] blue, white, stringing their jewelled sparks far away into the distance.
To and fro she paced the empty platform, passing and repassing him. And he began to notice presently that she looked at him rather intently each time.
He wondered whether she suspected his identity. Guiltless of anything that he could remember having done, nevertheless he shivered guiltily every time she glanced at him.
Then the unexpected happened; and he fairly shook in his shoes as she marched deliberately up to him.
"I beg your pardon," she said in a very sweet and anxious voice, "but might I ask if you happen to be going to Ormond?"
He was on his feet, hat in hand, by this time; his heart and pulses badly stampeded; but he managed to answer calmly that he was going to Ormond.
"There is only a milk-train, I understand," she said.
"So I understand."
"Do you think there will be any difficulty in my obtaining permission to travel on it? The station-master says that permission is not given to ladies unaccompanied."[226]
She looked at him almost imploringly.
"I really must go on that train," she said in a low voice. "It is desperately necessary. Could you—could you manage to arrange it for me? I would be so grateful!—so deeply grateful!"
"I'll do what I can," said that unimaginative man. "Probably bribery can fix it——"
"There might be—if—if—you would be willing—if you didn't object—I know it sounds very strange—but my case is so desperate——" She checked herself, flushing a delicate pink. And he waited.
Then, very resolutely she looked up at him:
"Would you—could you p-pretend that I am—am—your sister?"
"Certainly," he said. An immense happiness seized him. He was not only up to his neck in Romance. It was already over his head, and he was out of his depth, and swimming.
"Certainly," he repeated quietly, controlling his joy by a supreme effort. "That would be the simplest way out of it, after all."
She said earnestly, almost solemnly: "If you will do this generous thing for—for a stranger—in very deep perplexity and trouble—that stranger will remain in your debt while life lasts!"
She had not intended to be dramatic; she may[227] not have thought she was; but the tears again glimmered in her lovely eyes, and the situation seemed tense enough to George Z. Green.
Moreover, he felt that complications already were arising—complications which he had often read of and sometimes dreamed of. Because, as he stood there in the southern dusk, looking at this slim, young girl, he began to realise that never before in all his life had he gazed upon anything half as beautiful.
Very far away a locomotive whistled: they both turned, and saw the distant headlight glittering on the horizon like a tiny star.
"W-would it be best for us to t-take your name or mine—in case they ask us?" she stammered, flushing deeply.
"Perhaps," he said pleasantly, "you might be more likely to remember yours in an emergency."
"I think so," she said naïvely; "it is rather difficult for me to deceive anybody. My name is Marie Wiltz."
"Then I am Mr. Wiltz, your brother, for an hour or two."
"If you please," she murmured.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to add, "Mr. George Z. Wiltz," but he managed to check himself.[228]
The great, lumbering train came rolling in; the station agent looked very sharply through his spectacles at Miss Wiltz when he saw her with Green, but being a Southerner, he gallantly assumed that it was all right.
One of the train crew placed two wooden chairs for them in the partly empty baggage car; and there they sat, side by side, while the big, heavy milk cans were loaded aboard, and a few parcels shoved into their car. Then the locomotive tooted leisurely; there came a jolt, a resonant clash; and the train was under way.[229]
