* * * * *
There was a movement. The service was ended. The burial was the only thing that remained to be done. Sommers went to the cemetery with the minister and Dr. Leonard. He did not wish to be with Alves until they could be alone. The grave was in the half-finished cemetery beside the Cottage Grove cable line, among the newest lots. It was a fit place for Preston, this bit of sandy prairie in the incomplete city. The man who came and went from town to town, knowing chiefly the hotel and the railroad station, might well rest here, within call of the hoarse locomotives gliding restlessly to and fro.
As the little company retraced their steps from the grave, Alves spoke to
Sommers for the first time.
"You will come back with me?" she asked.
"Not now," he answered hastily, instinctively. "I must go back to town. The others will be there. Not to-day."
CHAPTER XXIV
At the gate of the cemetery he fled from the little company. Dr. Leonard wanted to return to the city with him, but he shook off the talkative dentist. He must escape all sense of participation in the affair. So he made the long journey in the cable train, thinking disconnectedly in unison with the banging, jolting, grinding of the car. The panorama of his one short year in Chicago rose bit by bit into his mind: the hospital, the rich, bizarre town, the society of thirsty, struggling souls, always rushing madly hither and thither, his love for the woman he had just left, and this final distracting event.
What if she had doubled the dose of the anodyne? Probably the fellow was abusive. It might have been some shameful extremity that had forced upon her this act in self-defence. But such a situation would have called for violence, some swift blow. The man had died in insidious calm. He had counselled it, believed in it. But not that she—the woman he loved—should be brave with that desperate courage. Yet it was over now, beyond sight and thought, and he loved her—yes, loved her more than if it had not been so.
Once in town, he felt intolerably lonely, as a busy man who has had his round of little duties in a busy world soon comes to feel when any jar has put him out of his usual course. As he sauntered among the strange faces of the city streets, looking out for a familiar being, he began to realize how completely he had cut himself off from the ordinary routine of life. He was as much a stranger as if he had been dropped into the bustling crowd for the first time. He had sat in judgment, and the world would give a fig for his judgments. A week ago he might have taken refuge in a dozen houses. To-night he stood upon street corners and wistfully eyed the passing stream.
He walked to the river aimlessly, and then walked back, examining the blank faces of the people. He spied through the lowered window of a carriage Brome Porter and Carson, going in the direction of the Northwestern station. The carriage skirted the curb near him, but the occupants were looking the other way. He recalled that Carson had been induced to leave the famous portrait on exhibition at the Art Institute. Whenever in the future he might care to refresh his mind with the vision of this epitome of success, he had but to drop into the dusky building on the lake front and have it all—with the comment of the great artist.