CHAPTER VII
RATHER A BIG THING
BLACK was standing in the vestibule of a train which was bringing him back, at a late hour, from the city where he had spent the day at a conference of clergymen. He was somewhat weary, for the day had been filled with long debate over a certain question which had seemed to him vital indeed but not debatable. He had not hesitated to say so, and had been delayed after the evening session was over by men who still wanted to talk it out interminably with him. He had missed his trolley and had therefore taken the train.
As the train drew in Black found himself crowded next to a young man who seemed to be suffering from an excessive nervousness. He was tall and thin, rather handsome of face, but with eyes so deeply shadowed that they suggested extreme and recent illness. His manner was so shaky, as he went down the steps ahead of Black, and he set down his bag upon the platform with such a gesture of supreme fatigue, that Black stopped to find out if he were indeed ill, and if he needed help. At the same moment the stranger looked round at him, and put a question in a quick, breathless voice which indicated both anxiety and difficulty at self-control.
“Can you tell me,” he jerked out, “where Miss Ray’s shop is—antique shop—Jane Ray? I ought to know—forgotten the street.”
Black hesitated. Send this unknown and unnatural young man to Jane at this late hour? He looked both dissipated and irresponsible, and Black thought he caught the odour of alcohol upon his breath.
“It’s late. The shop will be closed,” Black suggested. “Hadn’t you better go to a hotel to-night, and look it up in the morning?”
The stranger frowned, and answered irritably—almost angrily:
“I should say not. Miss Ray’s my sister. Will you tell me where the shop is, or have I got to find somebody who will?”
Black made a quick decision. “I’ll show you the way. It’s not far out of my course.”
His eyes searched the stranger’s face, to find there confirmation of the statement which otherwise he would not have been inclined to believe. The resemblance, taking into account the difference between Jane’s look of vitality and radiant energy, and this young man’s whole aspect of broken health and overwrought nerves, was very apparent. And as the stranger looked down the platform, and his profile was presented to Black’s scrutiny, he saw that the same definite outlines of beauty and distinction were there, not to be mistaken. On this basis he could have no hesitation in guiding the markedly feeble footsteps to her door, though he was wondering, rather anxiously, just what his arrival, evidently unexpected by her, would mean to her. Black had never heard anybody mention her having a brother—he had understood she was quite alone in the world.