V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

To herself she seemed to lie endlessly between sleeping and waking: and the rhythmic noises of the train sounded a continual cadence, Dalhousie's unquiet requiem. But she must have fallen sound asleep without knowing it; for her eyes opened suddenly with a start, and she was aware of the clanging of bells, the waxing and waning of men's voices, the hiss of steam and the flaring of yellow lights. Looking out under the blind, she saw that they had come to a city, which must be Philadelphia. Two hours nearer home....

Now her wakefulness had a sharper quality; Cally lay wide-eyed, in a dazed chill wonder. Once in the night she pushed up the curtain, raised herself on an elbow in the stateroom berth; and her splendid gay hair, loosened with much tossing, streamed downward over her shoulders. Outside was a world of moonlit peace. The flying trees had tops of silver; meadows danced by in splotches of light and shade; once they sped over a lovely river. Strange to think, that if she had but said on that far-away day, "He frightened me so, I didn't want to call him hack,"--just those words, how few and simple,--she would not be hurrying home now, with everything ahead so dark, so terrifying. And, though she seemed to try a long time, she could not think now why she had not said these words, could not weigh those slight fanciful tremors against this vast icy void....

She fell asleep; woke again to more clanging and hissing; slept and dreamed badly; and suddenly sat up in the berth, confusedly, to find it broad day, and the sun streaming through the little crevice beneath the curtain. Her mother was standing braced in the aisle of the little room, dressing systematically.

"We've passed Penton. You'd better get up," said the brisk familiar tones.

And she eyed her daughter narrowly as she asked if she had slept.

Home again. This time yesterday, who would have dreamed this possible?...

And then, after just enough time to dress, they began to pass landmarks, and presently to slacken speed; and then they were stepping down from the train, out into the hotch-potch gathering on the sunny station platform.

Both women were heavily veiled. Mrs. Heth's furtive glances discovered no one who was likely to hail them, demanding what in the world these things meant. A ramshackle hack invited and received them. And, jogging over streets crowded with a life-time's associations, the Heths presently came to their own house, whose face they had not thought to see again these four months....

Mr. Heth was away, fishing, in a spot dear to his heart, but remote from railroad or telegraph. The House of Heth looked like a deserted house; its blinds were drawn from fourth story to basement. However, there was old Moses, bowing and running down the steps to open the carriage door and assist with the hand-luggage. He greeted the ladies with courtliness, and inquired mout anybody be sick. Answered vaguely on this point, he announced that he had breakfast ready-waiting on the table; this, though Mr. Canning's telegraph never retched him till nea'bout eight o'clock. His tone indicated a pride of accomplishment not, he hoped, unjustified.

Having removed the more superficial stains of travel, the two women sat at table in the half-dismantled dining-room. It was a meal not easily to be forgotten, made the more fantastic by Mrs. Heth's determined attempts to act as if nothing in particular had happened. From her remarks to the ancient family retainer it appeared that she and Miss Carlisle had returned home to attend to a business matter of no great consequence, overlooked in the rush of departure. And she demanded, quite as if that were the very business referred to, whether the plumber had come to stop the drip in the white-room bathroom.