The Millionth Chance/Chapter 3
III
I WAITED until, from the washroom window, I saw the girl and her elderly companion pass along the station platform and through the station door. If I were silly enough to hold some desire to meet again the girl whose beauty attracted me, despite my unwilling conviction that she had searched my effects last night, that desire was of the future, not the present.
Accompanied by the porter, who carried my bags, I finally left the train and entered the station. I sighed with a relief that, against my common sense and will, was tinctured with regret, when I found that the waiting-room did not hold either of them. I tipped my ebon attendant, grinned involuntarily at his display of teeth, left my bags upon a bench, and strolled over to the ticket window. I had no time-table beyond Portland.
“When’s the next train for Folly Cove?” I inquired.
“Two o’clock,” was the answer. “The one due to leave at nine-thirty waited a couple of hours for the New York train. You came on her?”
I nodded. “Too bad,” he said. “Still, you’ll get there for supper. Two o’clock,” he repeated.
I thanked him. It was only a little after twelve and, hungry as I was, I was glad that the easy-going Folly Cove schedule had not been too elastic, and that the morning train had gone. I should not have relished continuing my journey without food. I took my bags to the check-room. Leaving there, and starting for the restaurant, water dripped from the visor of my cap. Though it had ceased snowing, a tiny drift piled upon the station roof had broken off as I followed the porter from the train and some of it had impinged upon my cap. The heat of the station had melted it.
I took off the cap and brushed it with my sleeve. Because some of the moisture had somehow got on my forehead I drew a handkerchief from my left-hand pocket. Having dried my forehead, and having discovered that the left-hand pocket was rather crowded, containing keys, matches and pencil, I replaced the handkerchief in my right-hand pocket. I mention these trivial details because of what immediately followed. For, as I resumed my way toward the restaurant, a man blocked my path. He seemed to have done so deliberately, for when I looked up at him he was grinning. Swiftly, before I had time to grasp his rudeness, he drew a handkerchief from his left-hand pocket, wiped his forehead, and replaced it in his right-hand pocket.
“Not that it’s really necessary,” he said, “but a guy can’t be too careful, can he? You’re twenty-seven, aincha?”
Later, of course, I learned that he had given me some sort of signal; was, indeed, returning what he thought to be a signal of mine. But at the moment, embittered at having to leave New York, disgusted with my mental condition, worked up by my ef forts to decide whether or not I had dreamed the visitation of last night or really remembered it, angered that I, so long immune to feminine attraction, could not refrain from dwelling on the girl’s beauty, hungry and irascible. I thought that he was merely an ignorant boor, possibly slightly intoxicated, mocking my action.
I tried to move around him, but he sidestepped with me and still blocked the way.
“Say, you’re twenty-seven O. K., aincha?” he demanded again.
“I’m thirty-two,” I answered angrily. “Also, I weigh one hundred and sixty-eight pounds and pack a punch in both hands. Do you care to sample one?”
“Aw, say, don’t get hot,” he cried. “’Sall right. I’m eight, from Portland, and”
“And why the devil do you think that I’m concerned in what you are or where you come from?” I raged. “If you don’t let me by you I’ll walk over you! Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
He drew aside.
“Oh, shush,” he said angrily. “If that ain’t just like you swell-headed New Yorkers! Think you can”
But the rest of his words died away in an indistinguishable grumble, for I had passed by him on my way to the restaurant. And as I gave my order to the waitress, I enjoyed the pleasantest moment of several weeks. For the man who had accosted me was at least my height and so much broader and stockier that he must have outweighed me by at least twenty pounds. Nor was he fat; husky was the word that fitted him. Yet I had meant my threat to him, and had even thrilled at the prospect of carrying it out. It gave zest to my breakfast-luncheon to know that my fears did not include dread of combat with a man bigger than myself. This was some salve to soothe my self-respect.
I had finished my steak and fried potatoes and was draining my second cup of coffee when the stranger accosted me again. He came to my table.
“Look here,” he began, “what’s the use of trying to go it alone? You’ll likely need some one and it might as well be me as any one else from the office here. Maybe I done wrong in butting in outside there; maybe you wanted to be alone, but how could I know it after you tipped me who you was?”
“Would you mind very much,” I inquired politely, “going away from here? You annoy me, and I don’t propose to be annoyed by any one this January morning. Now, then, if you want me to take hold of your pink ear and throw you in a snow-drift, I’ll do it. But if you don’t, please disappear.”
“Oh, shush,” he said. But he turned on his heel and left me.
He had shown no signs of intoxication, nor of insanity either. Nor did his manner bear out my first impression: that he was some sort of practical joker. Evidently he mistook me for some one else.
He lumbered across the room and sat down at a table. While I read the Portland paper the waitress had brought me, he ordered something to eat. And every now and then, as I looked up over the sheets, I would notice that he was looking curiously at me, as if awaiting some belated sign of recognition, of invitation. Not receiving it, he would shrug his shoulders, shake his head and resume his attack upon his food. And finally, having finished his meal, and cast a glance that was almost imploring at me, to which I returned a stony glare, he left the restaurant.
“And a stubborn gentleman he is, too,” I smiled to myself.
I wondered what he meant by asking me if I were “Twenty-seven” and by his statement that he was “Eight” from the Portland office. But it was none of my business that he had taken me for some one else. In truth, he did not interest me. My thoughts, when I had finally put aside the newspaper, insisted on being concerned only with the brown-eyed damsel. I wondered how she’d look when she smiled; how she’d look if—when, I changed it—she smiled at me. And now, fortified by food, I went over again my discoveries of the morning and tried again to decide whether I remembered awaking in the night and seeing her, or whether I had dreamed the scene, or whether I had imagined it on finding the bone hairpin. And I couldn’t decide.
Restless, annoyed with myself for letting my mind dwell on what was, after all, a matter of unimportance—I’d missed nothing from my effects; and I was thirty-two years of age, slightly beyond the love-at-first-sight period—I left the restaurant. It still lacked somewhat over half an hour to train-time. My mood would not permit me to remain idle. So I went for a walk.
The snow was deeper, I imagined, here in Portland than in New York, but it had been cleaned from the sidewalks and the footing was not bad. It had been a long time since I had seen sleighs, and the sight of the laughing people scudding along, and the feel of the cold upon my face did me good.
I turned back to the station with the belief that Billy Odlin had prescribed wisely. Surely fantom fears could not exist where the winds of Maine blew. Surely the peace of the country in Wintertime, the cold quiet, would heal the fever that had begun to burn my brain. I felt no apprehension at all about taking the train again. Now that I remembered, in the hours of the forenoon when we stumbled toward Portland I had felt no nervousness. Could it be that the mere fact of leaving the hurly-burly of New York had begun to cure me already? I prayed so as I walked briskly back to the station.
I had not been gone long. The Folly Cove train would not leave for ten minutes yet, the station clock assured me. I thought I’d let Billy Odlin know that I’d arrived safely in Portland. A rather unnecessary assurance, but I suppose I had a touch of that peculiarly American mania for sending messages, usually picture post-cards, home. Only mine was a telegram.
I got a blank at the operator’s window and hastily scrawled a few words. I shoved it through the window. The operator looked at the address. He shook his head.
“Can’t guarantee delivery today,” he said.
“No? Why not?”
“Wires down between here and Boston. Between here and Worcester, too. Message came through from Philadelphia, via Chicago, Montreal and Quebec a while ago, saying that all wires near New York were down. I could send it around that way, to Philly, and it would be mailed to New York. That do?”
I laughed.
“Oh, it’s not as important as all that. Never mind it.”
I crumpled the message up. Not an especially tidy man, I yet have an aversion for throwing waste-paper carelessly about. I saw no waste-paper-basket around, so I put the unsent message in my coat pocket. Then I got my bags and, finding a porter, started on the last leg of my journey to Folly Cove.
The porter conveyed me to a most dingy-looking train. It consisted of an engine of ancient vintage, a mail and baggage coach, a smoking-car, and one ordinary day coach, between the other two. To this car the porter took me. He took my bags to the middle of the car, threw over the back of one seat to give me more room, placed the bags on one of the seats, accepted my tip and withdrew.
I took off my coat, hung it on a hook, opened one of the bags, drew forth a magazine and settled back in my chair to try and kill time. A noise across the aisle drew my attention. It sounded like a snort of indignation.
I had noticed, as I entered the car, that two people occupied the seats across the aisle from where the porter had deposited me, but in the most casual fashion. I had given them not the slightest attention, and could not have told of what sex, even, they were. But now I looked at them.
It was a snort of indignation, and it emanated from the nostrils of the elderly gentleman with the white hair. Beside him sat the brown-eyed girl whose relationship to him had so pleasantly intrigued my interest, and about whom were woven incidents and suspicions that were not so pleasant.
I felt myself flush beneath the glare of the old man. He stared at me as if I were some criminal, not a mere maniac, as I had felt, heretofore, that he considered me. He snorted again, and my flush deepened. If he did have any suspicion that I was an offender against the laws, as his glare indicated, surely that guilty flush, which I could not restrain, must have seemed to him added evidence of my criminality.
He started to rise from his seat. I saw the girl’s hand snatch at his sleeve, and saw him detach her fingers. He was shaking with what could only be anger, yet, I noticed, his unfastening of her fingers, while firm, was gentle. Indubitably a gentleman, as I had mentally commented once before. Then he spoke.
“My dear, I must speak to this person!”
She sank back helplessly as he stepped into the aisle and towered above me.
“Sir,” he said, “may I ask what you mean by following us?”