Chapter XXIII: An Introduction

Forbes waited for the door to be opened with sensations approximating those of a naughty boy, caught in mischief. Man of the world as he was, he recoiled from the prospect before him. He had never been of the temperament to ignore precedent and defy regulations, and the necessary explanations to outraged authority were no more attractive because they were something new in his experience. Hardly more agreeable than his anticipations of an interview with the conductor was the realization of the probable comments of his fellow passengers, the smiles that would be exchanged, the curious conjectures passed from one to another, as to the occasion for his act.

As Forbes reflected ruefully on the coming ordeal, his hat was lifted lightly from his head and sent whirling on an independent journey. His impulse to snatch after it was checked by the discovery that he needed both hands for another purpose, needed them imperatively, for the lurch of the train had nearly thrown him off his balance. He tightened his grip and gave himself up to irritated reflection. Like most men, Forbes was pathetically dependent on his hat. He never so much as crossed the street without it. Now it would be necessary to make the rest of his journey hatless and leave the train in some unfamiliar city, stared at by the crowd who would mistake him for a faddist, demonstrating a protest against conventional garb. Forbes' annoyance gave vent in a profane ejaculation.

The next to go were his eye-glasses. Again Forbes' inclination to clutch for his vanishing possessions was conquered just in time to save him from following in their wake. The narrow margin by which he had missed death did not prevent him from grieving over his glasses. He had no others with him. He would not be able to read till he reached home, and the strain on his eyes would probably bring on a severe headache. His hat could be replaced at the first shop, but not his glasses. He found it hard to be reconciled to such ill luck.

It was several minutes before the realization was brought home to Forbes that the loss of these belongings was a very trifling matter. By that time his feeling of reluctance to have the door opened had entirely vanished. In his boyhood he had frequently played "crack the whip." His sensations when the line of runners suddenly halted, and he, a little fellow bringing up the rear, was sent sprawling over the grass, were being duplicated in this memorable ride. The express was playing "crack the whip" with himself as snapper. Once as the train rounded a curve, both feet flew from under him, and the unexpected jerk upon his arms almost broke his hold. He could hardly believe in his good fortune when he found himself still standing on the step, holding on literally for dear life. For now he knew that in his desperate determination to see Agatha again, he had taken his life in his hands.

Oddly enough it was not the likelihood of a sudden and violent death which presented itself most forcibly to his imagination. The opportunities he had missed with Agatha were infinitely more disturbing. If only he had spoken in her defense the day Julia had exhausted her ingenuity in wounding and insulting the rival she instinctively feared. But he had stood silent while Julia's malice spent itself. And later when time had revealed the affair in a truer perspective, if he had but gone to her and said to her all that was in his heart, she might have been his wife by now. One inevitably gets down to realities when life flickers like a candle in the wind, and Forbes no longer debated the question of Agatha's love for him. In addition to Warren's testimony, he had the memory of a kiss, a dream kiss, pressed on his cheeks as he struggled back to consciousness after the stormy interview with Hephzibah, a kiss salt with tears and sweet with ineffable promise. Forbes heard his bitter laughter above the roar of the train. "God!" his voice said, "what a mess I've made of things."

Forbes had never had a high opinion of the intelligence of that portion of the traveling public which puts its head out of the window of a moving train. Indeed he had always classified it with the people who maim or kill their best friends by playful maneuvers with guns that are not loaded. From this time on, his ideas on the subject were to be revolutionized. He was destined to think of the above-named individuals as philanthropists of a high order.

A man in the smoking-car, thrusting his head out of the window at a time when the curving of the track brought the rear coach into full view, made a discovery which he promptly imparted to the conductor. That official, properly incredulous, extended his own head from the window and verified the passenger's astonishing statement. And at the moment when Forbes' imagination was busy with the gruesome details relating to the discovery of his lifeless body lying beside the tracks, the vestibule door suddenly opened and the face of indignant authority looked down at him.

They dragged Forbes inside after unclenching his hands for him, his stiffened muscles refusing that simple service. The conductor failing to recognize in this disheveled individual with the unsteady knees, the respectable passenger whose ticket he had punched earlier in the trip, not unnaturally assumed that Forbes was drunk and acting on that supposition, proceeded to make himself very disagreeable. As Forbes regained his shaken dignity, and paid his fare, the man in uniform became less truculent and in the end, positively congratulatory.

Forbes' grips were in the possession of an unknown porter at a station some thirty miles back, and he made as satisfactory a toilet as was possible without the aid of their contents, before returning to the coach where lately he had devoted himself to entertaining Charlie Briggs, unaware that the door of Paradise stood ajar just across the aisle. Here disappointment awaited him. Agatha, having learned from bitter experience that activity is the best of balms for a sore heart, had resolved on washing the hands and faces of her charges and giving their hair proper attention. To make the toilet of four children in the limited accommodations of a Pullman, with the certainty that at any moment the lurch of the train may precipitate you into the wash basin, or through the hanging curtains out into the aisle, is a process requiring time and patience. Forbes sat in his former place, biting his lips for three-quarters of an hour before he saw the little procession slowly making its way down the aisle.

Forbes' uncomfortable uncertainty as to whether he had made a fool of himself or not, vanished at the sight of Agatha. Worn and weary as she looked, her eyes still reddened from weeping, she had never seemed to him so infinitely dear and desirable. Such trivial things as corrugated palms and lost eye-glasses and a narrow escape from death, no longer mattered.

Charlie Briggs was the first to discover him. "My man's come back," he shouted jubilantly and ran into Forbes' arms. Agatha's eyes followed him, and she stopped short, her flushed cheeks paling. For a moment Forbes thought her about to faint and started to his feet to assist her, but immediately she had regained her self-control and walked steadily to her seat, though as a matter of fact she did not feel the floor beneath her feet and was scarcely conscious of the child in her arms. He had come back and intuition told her why.

Forbes rose and crossed the aisle. "Charlie," he said in a voice of authority, "take your little sisters to my seat and play with them for a while."

Charlie Briggs demurred.

"Run along," Forbes insisted. "And when I get a chance to buy you some candy you shall have enough to make you sick for a month."

"Us too?" asked the curly-haired girl, ready to oppose any unfair sex-discrimination.

"Yes, you, too," Forbes promised recklessly. "Enough so all three of you will need a doctor."

It was not in human nature to resist such a bribe. The three crossed immediately to the opposite section. Forbes took the seat at Agatha's side.

A silence at once inevitable and ridiculous fell between them. There was so much to be said that there seemed no rational starting point. He wanted to ask what she was doing with all those children, but the query seemed to put her on the defensive. She was longing to know how after leaving the train, he could possibly be aboard again, but she left the first move to him. Presently a mutual attraction drew their eyes together and Forbes lost no more time.

"Have you had long enough," he said a trifle unsteadily, "to decide on that proposition I made you nine months ago to a day?"

"I--I--What proposition do you mean?"

"That we should set up housekeeping together?"

Agatha seemed trying to remember. "Wasn't that for last winter only?"

"No. It's for this summer and next winter and for all the summers and winters that ever will be."

She regarded him amazedly. "You're not--you can't be--"

"But I am, exactly that. Will you marry me, Agatha?"

"Listen!" A little flutter of laughter escaped her and he loved the sound of it. "Do you realize those are the first words you've ever spoken to me--the real _me_, that we've just been introduced? Of course we had any number of good talks when I was Great-aunt Agatha Kent."

"Bless her dear heart!" Forbes interjected gratefully.

"And we had one rather exciting interview when I was Hephzibah."

"Yes, I have reason to remember that interview." He looked at her meaningly and gloated over her blush.

"And now I'm just Agatha," she went on bravely, ignoring her scarlet cheeks. "And the very first words you say to me are to ask me to marry you."

"And they're the words I shall keep saying till you promise."

She shot him a side-long glance. "But what--what about Julia?"

"She was married early in January. They have been spending the winter in Palm Beach, I understand."

"Oh!" There was such compassion in her voice, such pitying tenderness in her eyes that she had a narrow escape from being kissed on the spot.

He compromised by taking her hand. "Listen, dear girl. Let's clear this thing up once for all. I've had a narrow escape. The Julia I loved was no more real than your Hephzibah. I knew my mistake that day when she attacked you at Oak Knoll. The cruelty of it was a revelation. I can't understand now why I listened without protest, but you must remember that I had received a staggering surprise."

"Staggering and cruel!" Her fingers tightened about his. "I tried so hard to tell you everything that day in the woods and I was such a coward that the words wouldn't come. How can you ever forgive me?"

"Hush, dear love! I shall shock this train-load of people if you are not careful. I was too dazed and bewildered that first day to be quite responsible for what I did or left undone. But within twenty-four hours I spoke my mind so plainly as to terminate the friendship between Miss Studley and myself. I have never seen nor heard from her since."

The look she turned on him made him hang his head. The certainty that elates most men, humbles those of finer mold.

"Agatha, my dearest, you talk of my forgiving you. Can you ever forgive me?"

The train was slowing for a stop before they had settled that delicate question. Agatha argued that it was preposterous to talk of forgiving one who in every relation of life was absolute perfection. Forbes insisted that her attitude proved her an angel. The baby, with a discretion beyond its years, refrained from offering any interruption to this absorbing conversation, though occasionally its toothless gums were revealed in what might have impressed the unprejudiced on-looker as a derisive smile.

After the brief stop, a train boy appeared shouting Forbes' name. He proved to be the bearer of a telegram from Warren. Forbes and Agatha read it together:

"If enough is left of you to make the marriage ceremony valid advise clenching matter at the first stop run no risk of letting her get away from us again."

"Warren seems to be laboring under the impression," frowned Forbes, "that he comes in on this. Except for that slight error--"

Agatha interpolated irrelevantly that Warren was a dear.

"He's not half bad," Forbes admitted generously. "And apart from his erroneous impression that this is a partnership affair, the message impresses me favorably. What do you think?"

"How do you know," questioned Agatha interestedly, "that I'm not already married to a widower with four small children?"

"I'll own the thought crossed my mind. But I wouldn't consider it. You looked too sad for a bride."

Agatha put her hand into his quite shamelessly. "Of course I would look sad if I had been so silly as to marry somebody else."

"Who are these children anyway?" Forbes asked, as if he had just thought of it.

"Orphans. Orphans who are going to be adopted. The homes have been investigated and they're all right. Now I'm going to leave the children for a six months' trial, and if at the end of that time everybody is satisfied, they will be legally adopted." Agatha added casually that they would reach the baby's future home at five o'clock and that she would be rather glad to get him off her hands before nightfall. Forbes recalled a statement of Charlie Briggs much to the same effect, and was man enough to apologize mentally to the youngster.

Agatha's next remark had to Forbes a delicious suggestion of wifely authority. "Why aren't you wearing your glasses?"

He explained the fate of those cherished belongings and did his best to make light of the whole affair. But Agatha was not to be deceived. Her eyes widened to surprising proportions. Her face grew white.

"You might have been killed. It's a miracle you weren't killed."

His distress over the discovery that she was crying was spiced with ecstasy. She interrupted his clumsy efforts at comfort with self-accusation. "And if you had been killed, I would have been to blame."

"Why, in heaven's name, dearest? My own folly would have been solely responsible. But when I realized that I had actually spoken face to face with you, and that you were escaping me again, I lost my head completely."

"If I'd told you who I was, you wouldn't have had any reason to risk your life. And so if anything had happened it would have been all my fault."

He took a rather base advantage of her self-reproach. "I'll forgive you on one condition. As I understand it, after you have made arrangements about the baby you will spend the night at a hotel and take the train to-morrow."

"Yes, that's my plan."

"And my plan is that you marry me to-morrow morning."

"I had intended," Agatha answered reflectively, "to take an eight o'clock train."

"I suppose a later one will do."

"Very likely. But a wedding without a trousseau! I am equal to a trousseau now, you know. I have--or did have a little while ago--a fortune of twelve thousand dollars."

"I can't think," Forbes murmured, "of anything I should enjoy better than helping to select a trousseau--a little later."

"You know I'm responsible for Miss Finch," Agatha said breathlessly. "She's not going to be married after all."

"Miss Finch is a member of my family from now on."

"And Howard! It was all make-believe that he was a young friend of mine. He's really my darling brother."

"And mine as soon as you say the word. Dear little Miss Proteus," cried Forbes with a laugh that did not disguise the tenderness of his voice, "I'm afraid to let you out of my sight for fear you'll change into something else, a mermaid or a fairy, and be lost to me forever."

"I'm sure it will disappoint Mrs. Van Horne if I come back with a husband," mused Agatha. "It will seem such a childish performance. And yet--when you've made up your mind that all that's left in life for you is to go on doing your duty and trying to be kind to everybody, and then happiness comes back and knocks at your door, you--you--oh, Burton--it's not in human nature to keep her waiting."

After a party, consisting of a smiling gentleman, a radiant girl and four tired children, had left the train, one of the people who always know the details of everybody's business, sketched their history for the benefit of the owner of the poodle.

"They had a dreadful quarrel, you know, the way young people will, and she was going home to her father's. Somehow or other he learned what train she was to take and got aboard just at the last minute."

The listener knitted blonde brows. "I didn't really feel sure the woman was in her right mind. She made some absurd statement about those two little girls. Said there was six months' difference in their ages."

"She was so excited she didn't know what she was saying," explained the omniscient traveler. "He sent her messages by the little boy and when she wouldn't pay any attention, he brought her to time by standing on the steps of the rear coach for more than an hour. It was a wonder he wasn't killed."

The stout blonde expressed the opinion that it was woman's place to forgive.

"Well, that melted her, and you can't wonder. The porter in the rear coach told our porter that when they dragged him aboard he hardly had strength to stand on his feet. It didn't take them long to get things fixed up after that. I went for a drink of water after they'd been talking for half an hour or so, and he'd picked up the baby, and I'm pretty sure from the way he held that child, he was using it just as a screen and kissing the mother behind it."

"Awful fretful baby," commented the stout blonde. "I'm glad it won't be on the train to-night."

"Looks as if they'd started out to have a real old-fashioned family," said the omniscient narrator. "None of the children looks like her but the curly-haired girl and the boy are the image of their papa."