The Manager of the B. & A.: A NovelKester, Vaughan
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The Manager of the B. & A.: A Novel
Kester, Vaughan
American fiction; Railroad stories
“You will find your happiness some day, Mr. Oakley. You will find
some one more worthy than I.” She knew he would be insensible to the
triteness of her remark.
“No,” generously, “that couldn't be. I'll not find any one. I'll not
look.”
“Oh, but you will.”
Already, with the selfishness of her sex, and a selfishness which was
greater than that of her sex, she was regretting that she had allowed
him to step so easily into the position of a rejected lover.
“I don't want you to think it is going to ruin my life,” he said,
quietly, “or anything of that sort.”
An appeal to her pity seemed weak and contemptible.
“I have striven to win what I can't have, what is not for me, and I am
satisfied to have made the effort.”
Miss Emory bit her lip. He was going to put her out of his life
entirely. It was ended, and he would do his best to forget her with what
speed he might, for he loved her, and was too generous to wish her
to suffer. This generosity, needless to say, was too altruistic for
Constance to fully appreciate its beauties. Indeed, she did not regard
it as generosity at all. She resented it. She realized that probably she
would not see him again; at least the meeting would not be of his making
or choosing. There was to be no sentimental aftermath. He was preparing
to go, like the sensible fellow he was, for good and all, and she
rebelled against the decree. It seemed brutal and harsh. She was angry,
hurt, and offended. Perhaps her conscience was troubling her, too. She
knew she was mean and petty.
“I don't think it could have been very serious to you, Mr. Oakley,” she
murmured, gazing abstractedly from the window.
“I don't know why you think that. I can't say any more than I have said.
It includes all.” She wanted to tell him he gave up too easily.
“At any rate, we are friends,” he added.
“Are you going?” she cried, with a ring of real longing and regret in
her voice, lifted out of herself for the moment at the thought of losing
him.
Dan nodded, and a look of pain came into his face.
“Yes, I am going.”
“But you are not going to leave Antioch?”
“Oh, no!”
And Miss Emory felt a sense of relief. She rose from her chair. “Then I
shall see you again?”
“Probably,” smiling. “We couldn't well avoid seeing each other in a
place the size of this.”
He held out his hand frankly.
“And I sha'n't see you here any more?” she asked, softly.
“I guess not,” a little roughly. The bitterness of his loss stung him.
He felt something was wrong somewhere. He wondered, too, if she had
been quite fair to him, if her ability to guard herself was entirely
commendable, after all. He knew, in the end, his only memory of her
would be that she was beautiful. He would carry this memory and a
haunting sense of incompleteness with him wherever he went.
She placed her hand in his and looked up into his face with troubled,
serious eyes.
“Good-bye.” It was almost a whisper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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