“Why, how you talk!” the old lady replied. “I s’posed of course he was your beau. He acted like it. Well, it’s just as well, maybe. He looked to me as if he was dissipated, and you’d better die than marry a drunkard. My oldest girl, ’Mandy, did that, and leads a terrible life. He’s had the tremens two or three times. It’s awful!”
Elithe thought of Stokes’s cabin and the night she spent in it, while Mrs. Baker rambled on, giving a full history of ’Mandy and ’Mandy’s children, together with her son and his family.
“Will she never stop?” Elithe thought, “and let me see what is in the box.”
It was still held tightly in her hand where Mr. Pennington had put it, and she longed to know what it contained. After a while Mrs. Baker declared herself hungry, and, telling her husband to bring the big lunch basket, she invited Elithe to share with her. But Elithe could not eat. A terrible homesickness had come over her, and she declined the food, saying she had plenty of her own and her head was aching.
“Poor little girl!” Mrs. Baker said. “You are tired; that’s what’s the matter. Lucky we hain’t many passengers, so’s you can have two whole seats to-night. I’ll turn one back and fix you nice.”
She was as good as her word, and Elithe found herself in possession of two seats, with a very comfortable-looking bed improvised on one of them from her own wraps and those of Mrs. Baker, who said she did not need them. Her seat was behind Elithe, who, the moment she was alone, untied the box and by the dim light of the lamp overhead read the note which lay upon the top.
It was as follows: “Elithe.—There is so much I want to say to you, but dare not. You are too pure and good for a man like me to do more than think of you. If I had known you years ago I should not have been what I am,—a man broken in his prime from excesses of all kinds. Don’t forget me, and every time you look at the ring, have a kind thought of me. I shall never forget you,—never.—J.P.”
“The ring! What ring?” Elithe said to herself, and, lifting up the bit of jeweler’s cotton, she gave an exclamation of surprise as her eyes fell upon the costly diamond.
She had some idea of its value, as she had heard Stokes tell how much it cost, and she had a still more definite idea that it should never have been given to her, and that she ought not to keep it. There was no way of returning it now. She must wait until she reached Oak City, when she would write her father and ask him what to do. Thus deciding, she put the box in the under pocket of her skirt, where no one could get it without her knowledge. Then she began to think of the contents of the note and what Mrs. Baker had said to her. Did Mr. Pennington care for her in the way the woman had insinuated? It would seem so, and for one moment something like gratification stirred her pulse, but passed quickly. There was nothing in her nature which could ever respond to love from him. She liked him,—that was all. If he cared very much for her she was sorry, and sorry, too, that he had given her the ring.
By this time she had settled herself for the night, and her thoughts were growing confused. The whir and pounding of the wheels made her think of a tornado which had once swept the plain near Samona. Artie was waving his long stick from the platform, her mother was kissing her and leaving tears on her cheeks, and Mrs. Baker was holding up ’Mandy as a warning against girls marrying men who drank. All these thoughts and more mingled in her dreams, as the train sped on its way, and the air in the car grew closer and the lamps burned low, with a smell of bad oil, and the conductor came through now and then with his lantern and looked at the sleeping crowd. Once, as he stopped near Elithe, whose face was plainly visible, he pulled over her the shawl which had partially slipped from her shoulders, and wondered who she was and why she was alone.