The smoking car was almost empty. Across the aisle a warm man, who had the air of having run for the train, was fanning himself with a newspaper. In the seat behind him two men had begun an earnest and wordy discussion of automobiles. An official in uniform stood beside a seatful of papers and packages. Soon, perhaps because he was an unquenchable optimist but more probably because it was his job, he would patrol the train offering for sale the peanut brittle and the road maps of Long Island which nobody ever bought. In the far corner there was something shapeless which closer inspection would have revealed as a sleeping Irishman.
The conductor was asking for tickets. Bill showed his mechanically, and the conductor passed on. Then he settled down once more to his thoughts. He could not think coherently yet. His walk to the station had been like a walk in a dream. He was conscious of a great dull pain that weighed on his mind, smothering it. The trees and houses still moved past him in the same indistinguishable blur.
He became aware that the conductor was standing beside him, saying something about a ticket. He produced his once more, but this did not seem to satisfy the conductor. To get rid of the man, who was becoming a nuisance, he gave him his whole attention, as far as that smothering weight would allow him to give his whole attention to anything, and found that the man was saying strange things. He thought that he could not have heard him correctly.
“What?” he said.
“Lady back there told me to collect her fare from you,” repeated the conductor. “Said you would pay.”
Bill blinked. Either there was some mistake or trouble had turned his brain.
“It’s to New York—one seventy-nine.”
Bill pushed himself together with a supreme effort.
“A lady said I would pay her fare?”
“Yup.”
“But—but why?” demanded Bill feebly.
The conductor seemed unwilling to go into first causes.
“Search me,” he replied. “It’s what she said.”
“Pay her fare!”
“Told me to collect it off the gentleman in the gray suit in the smoking car. You’re the only one that’s got a gray suit.”
“There’s some mistake.”
“Not mine.”
“What does she look like?”
The conductor delved in his mind for adjectives.
“Small,” he said, collecting them slowly. “Fair hair. Brown eyes—”
He desisted from his cataloguing at this point, for with a loud exclamation that woke the slumbering Irishman and caused the two automobile experts to lose temporarily the thread of their remarks, Bill had dashed from the car. The man with the newspaper sought information.
“What’s the trouble?”
“Search me,” said the conductor, a man of a slim vocabulary.
A solution occurred to him. He offered it.
“Dippy,” he suggested, and went to talk about peanut brittle and road maps to the official in uniform.
Two cars farther back Bill had dropped into the seat by Elizabeth, and was gurgling wordlessly. A massive lady, who had entered the train at East Moriches in company with three children and a cat in a basket, eyed him with a curiosity that she made no attempt to conceal. Two girls in a neighboring seat leaned forward eagerly to hear all. This was because one of them had told the other that Elizabeth was Mary Pickford. Her companion was skeptical, but nevertheless obviously impressed.
“My God!” said Bill.
The massive lady told the three children sharply to look at their picture book.
“Well, I’m damned!”
The mother of three said that if her offspring did not go right along to the end of the car and look at the pretty trees trouble must infallibly ensue.
“Elizabeth!”
At the sound of the name the two girls leaned back, taking no further interest in the proceedings.
“What are you doing here?”
Elizabeth smiled, a shaky but encouraging smile.
“I came after you, Bill.”
“You’ve got no hat!”
“I was in too much of a hurry to get one, and I gave all my money to the man who drove the car. That’s why I had to ask you to pay my fare. You see, I’m not too proud to use your money after all.”
“Then—”
“Tickets, please. One seventy-nine.”
It was the indefatigable conductor, sensible of his duty to the company and resolved that nothing should stand in the way of its performance. Bill gave him five dollars and told him to keep the change. The conductor saw eye to eye with him in this.
“Bill! You gave him—” She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “Well, it’s lucky you’re going to marry a rich girl.”
A look of the utmost determination overspread Bill’s face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m going to marry you. Now that I’ve got you again I’m not going to let you go. You can use all the arguments you like, but it won’t matter. I was a fool ever to listen. If you try the same sort of thing again I’m just going to pick you up and carry you off. I’ve been thinking it over since I left you. My mind has been working absolutely clearly. I’ve gone into the whole thing. It’s perfect rot to take the attitude you did. We know we love each other, and I’m not going to listen to any talk about time making us doubt it. Time will only make us love each other all the more.”
“Why, Bill, this is eloquence!”
“I feel eloquent.”
The stout lady ceased to listen. They had lowered their voices and she was hard of hearing. She consoled herself by taking up her copy of Gingery Stories and burying herself in the hectic adventures of a young millionaire and an artist’s model. Elizabeth caught a fleeting glimpse of the cover.
“I bet there’s a story in there of a man named Harold who was too proud to marry a girl, though he loved her, because she was rich and he wasn’t. You wouldn’t be so silly as that, Bill, would you?”
“It’s the other way about with me.”
“No, it’s not. Bill, do you know a
