“It seems that your freight was switched by mistake over to Monterey. If you leave it to us”—his stern eye loosed a twinkle—“you’ll probably get it sometime in the next six months. But if you’ll take these passes for the evening train and hunt it up yourself you can have it tagged onto the train that leaves tomorrow night.”
Though the vicissitudes of thirty years’ railroading had almost petrified his heart, the organ stirred faintly as Seyd returned hearty thanks. Watching him go out, he even muttered: “It’s a damned shame! But I’ll take care that he’s bothered no more.”
More grateful on his part than he had any legal right to be, Seyd would have been better pleased had the passes read to Vera Cruz. Knowing that Francesca must pass through Mexico City on her way home, he would have preferred even to stay where he was. But the thought of Billy fretting himself thin at the mine reinforced his naturally strong sense of duty, and he took the train out that night. And his steadfastness made for his good. During his three days’ absence the flame of feeling which was consuming his resolution and blinding his thought burned itself out. The morning after he had seen his car billed through to his own station he rose with his mind clear and a renewed purpose to do the right thing.
“At the first favorable opportunity I shall tell her,” he told himself, in the coach going down to the station. With the thought strong in his mind he stepped on the train and—came face to face with Francesca herself.
“Oh! it is you!”
“I—I—thought you were already gone!”
While he blushed and stammered confusedly his senses, nevertheless, took cognizance of the fluttering rush of her hands, the happy eyes in the midst of her flushes, other things that answered, without words, several questions which had greatly perplexed him. Whatever the cause behind her long silence, it was neither the resurrection of her racial pride nor, as he had sometimes suspected, her discovery of his marriage. Indeed, her very next words gave him an inkling.
“You must have wondered why I did not write? But I—could not help it.” She glanced at her mother, who, with eloquent hands, was telegraphing him welcome from the other end of the car. “I will tell you later—all.”
In his surprise and gladness his mind still clung to his resolve, and, nearly as possible, he kept his pact with himself. “I also have something to tell.”
She looked up quickly. But his eyes indicated no diminution of the old feeling. Satisfied, she asked, with a little sigh: “The mine? Something gone wrong? You will tell us—now.”
The señora, who had caught the last sentence, added her word. “Sí, for we, you know, are your friends.” Making room for him by her side, she punctuated his tale of the summer’s mishaps with pitiful exclamations, and comforted him at the end with maternal solicitude. “Sí, at the first glance I saw it, that you had suffered. But, courage, amigo, it will make for your greater enjoyment in the end.”
Francesca had taken the seat opposite, and, catching her eye just then, Seyd saw, along with the sympathy and understanding, a gleam of exultation. “You suffered, sí, but I’m glad for—’twas for me.” Her glance said it plainly as words, and he ached to answer it; but, in accordance with the honest course he had laid out for himself, he refrained, and went on talking to her mother.
“Don Luis,” she answered his question, “is in the front car with Sebastien—in attendance on our dear friend, his mother.”
He knew that he had no part in their grief, and, tentatively, he began, “If I can be of any help—”
Divining his feeling from the pause, she answered at once: “You are very kind. Francesca, poor niña, has been under a great strain. ’Twill be a mercy if you will stay here and talk.”
Now that her first blushes had died, he could see it for himself. Her smile added the soft confession, “You did not suffer alone.”
Under her look Seyd felt his resolution weaken; to save it he looked out of the window, whereupon it gained strength from the thought of his impending confession. But it relaxed again the next time their glances met; and, as love is an anarchist who scoffs alike at law and death, their communications proceeded with alternate thawings and freezings, while, in reverse order, the black lava fields and gloomy piñon gave place to the painted hamlets, pink churches, and villages of huts in green seas of corn. Yet, if a little worse for wear, his resolution held. Indeed, it found definite expression when the train stopped at last at their station.
“I must see you soon!” he said, as they went out. “I have something very serious to say.”
Once more she looked up quickly. “We shall be at El Quiss, Sebastien’s place, for three days. After that you will find me at home. But do not come alone!” The hasty addition threw more light on the causes behind her sudden departure. “As you value your life—nay, you were always careless of that—promise, for my sake, that you will not come alone? When you go out anywhere take with you at least one man.”
“Is it so serious as that?” But he stopped laughing when he saw she was hurt. “There! I promise!”
She paid him, alighting, with a clasp of her hand that left its soft clinging pressure tingling after she disappeared in the crowd of rancheros and hacendados, Sebastien’s retainers and friends, who filled the station. His sharp gray eye had already singled out his car on a side track, and while
