“I’m going to spend Christmas with the Setons,” he said. “Probably you know them. They’ve always lived in the Town.”
The woman frowned slightly. “Seton?” she repeated, “Seton?” Then it appeared that the light dawned upon her. “To be sure.... I know.... They own a corset factory.... But they’re new people. Yes, I know who they are although I don’t know them.”
She made the statement simply and without a trace of condescension. She made it as a simple observation. If she had said, “I know who the King of England is ... but I don’t know him,” the intonation, the inflection would have been identical. She had answered his question, but she had answered it more profoundly than she knew, more profoundly, more tragically than even Clarence knew until years afterward. “I know who they are although I don’t know them.”
Before the eyes of Clarence there rose suddenly the image of May Seton, good-natured, trivial, blonde, commonplace. It was almost as if she had entered the train by some obscure miracle and stood there beside the mysterious stranger, awkward, silly, ungainly.
The woman was rising now. “I must go back to my seat,” she said. “It isn’t fair to keep the others waiting.” She pulled the stole of black fox about her handsome shoulders and lowered the veil. “Thank you,” she said, “for saving a poor helpless traveler from boredom.”
And with that she closed the adventure.
When he returned to his seat, he found her sitting absorbed in her yellow-backed novel. Greeting him with a faint smile, she returned to her reading. After an hour she rested her head against the back of the chair and appeared to fall asleep. It was not until the train roared into the Town that she again addressed him.
Snow filled the air as they got down from the train at midnight. The big flakes, tormented by a rising wind, fell heavily, obscuring the yellow lights of the dirty brick station. They were the only passengers to descend and Clarence offered to take charge of her luggage. There were two large trunks and another handbag. The trunks she left at the station. She would send for them. The two handbags she would take with her.
The great train, spouting steam, got under way with a vast uproar. The brightly lighted cars moved away into the snowstorm and the pair of them were left alone beneath the yellow glare of the station lamps. A little way off two horse drawn cabs stood by the curb, the heads of the beasts hanging, their backs bent against the storm. From the warm station emerged a pair of drivers, muffled to the ears. To one of them, the lady called out.
“Oh, Jerry,” she said, “I’m glad you’re here.... There’s no one to meet me.... I didn’t send word ahead.”