"I'll be back in a minute. It's only half a block to Henry's. All I
have to do is to leave the car in front of his place. His men will look
after it. It's all understood, dearest; don't worry. I'll be here
before the train, never fear. Stand here in the shadow, dear." He gave
her what might have been a passionate kiss had it not been for the
intervention of veil and goggles. Then he was off to the motor, his
heart thumping frantically. Standing as stiff and motionless as a
statue against the damp brick wall, she heard the automobile leap away
and go pounding down the street. Apparently she was alone on the
platform; the ticking of telegraph instruments came to her anxious
ears, however, and she knew there were living people inside the long,
low building. The experience certainly was new to this tall, carefully
nurtured girl. Never before had she been left alone at such an hour and
place; it goes without saying that the circumstances were unique. Here
she was, standing alone in the most wretched of nights, her heart
throbbing with a dozen emotions, her eyes and ears labouring in a new
and thrilling enterprise, her whole life poised on the social dividing
line. She was running away to marry the man she had loved for years;
slipping away from the knot that ambition was trying to throw over her
rebellious head. If she had any thought of the past or the future,
however, it was lost among the fears and anxieties of the present. Her
soul was crying out for the approach of two objects--Joe Dauntless and
the north-bound flyer.
Her sharp ears caught the sound which told her that the motor had
stopped down the street; it was a welcome sound, for it meant that he
was racing back to the station--and just in time, too; the flyer was
pounding the rails less than half a mile away.
Fenlock was a division point in the railroad. The company's yards and
the train despatcher's office were located there. A huge round-house
stood off to the right; half a dozen big headlights glared out at the
shivering Eleanor like so many spying, accusing eyes. She knew that all
trains stopped in Fenlock. Joe had told her that the flyer's pause was
the briefest of any during the day or night; still she wondered if it
would go thundering through and spoil everything.
Miss Thursdale, watching the approaching headlight, her ears filled
with the din of the wheels, did not see or hear a second motor car rush
up to the extreme south end of the platform. She was not thinking of
Windomshire or his machine. That is why she failed to witness an
extraordinary incident.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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