The Blind Man's Eyes by William MacHarg and Edwin Balmer
CHAPTER III
MISS DORNE MEETS EATON
Dorne motioned Avery to the aisle, where already some of thepassengers, having settled their belongings in their sections, werebeginning to wander through the cars seeking acquaintances or playersto make up a card game. Eaton, however, was not among these. On thecontrary, when these approached him in his section, he frankly avoidedchance of their speaking to him, by an appearance of complete immersionin his own concerns. The Englishman directly across the aisle fromEaton clearly was not likely to speak to him, or to anybody else,without an introduction; the red-haired man, "D. S.," however, seemed amore expansive personality. Eaton, seeing "D. S." look several timesin his direction, pulled a newspaper from the pocket of his overcoatand engrossed himself in it; the newspaper finished, he opened histraveling bag and produced a magazine.
But as the train settled into the steady running which reminded of thedays of travel ahead during which the half-dozen cars of the train mustcreate a world in which it would be absolutely impossible to avoidcontact with other people, Eaton put the magazine into his travelingbag, took from the bag a handful of cigars with which he filled aplain, uninitialed cigar-case, and went toward the club and observationcar in the rear. As he passed through the sleeper next to him,--thelast one,--Harriet Dorne glanced up at him and spoke to her father;Dorne nodded but did not look up. Eaton went on into the wide-windowedobservation-room beyond, which opened onto the rear platform protectedon three sides.
The observation-room was nearly empty. The sleet which had beenfalling when they left Seattle had changed to huge, heavy flakes offast-falling snow, which blurred the windows, obscured the landscapeand left visible only the two thin black lines of track that, streamingout behind them, vanished fifty feet away in the white smother. Theonly occupants of the room were a young woman who was reading amagazine, and an elderly man. Eaton chose a seat as far from these twoas possible.
He had been there only a few minutes, however, when, looking up, he sawHarriet Dorne and Avery enter the room. They passed him, engaged inconversation, and stood by the rear door looking out into the storm.It was evident to Eaton, although he did not watch them, that they werearguing something; the girl seemed insistent, Avery irritated andunwilling. Her manner showed that she won her point finally. Sheseated herself in one of the chairs, and Avery left her. He wandered,as if aimlessly, to the reading table, turning over the magazinesthere; abandoning them, he gazed about as if bored; then, with a whollycasual manner, he came toward Eaton and took the seat beside him.
"Rotten weather, isn't it?" Avery observed somewhat ungraciously.
Eaton could not well avoid reply. "It's been getting worse," hecommented, "ever since we left Seattle."
"We're running into it, apparently." Again Avery looked toward Eatonand waited.
"It'll be bad in the mountains, I suspect," Eaton said.
"Yes--lucky if we get through."
The conversation on Avery's part was patently forced; and it wasequally forced on Eaton's; nevertheless it continued. Avery introducedthe war and other subjects upon which men, thrown together for a time,are accustomed to exchange opinions. But Avery did not do it easily ornaturally; he plainly was of the caste whose pose it is to repel, notseek, overtures toward a chance acquaintance. His lack of practice wasperfectly obvious when at last he asked directly: "Beg pardon, but Idon't think I know your name."
Eaton was obliged to give it.
"Mine's Avery," the other offered; "perhaps you heard it when we weregetting our berths assigned."
And again the conversation, enjoyed by neither of them, went on.Finally the girl at the end of the car rose and passed them, as thoughleaving the car. Avery looked up.
"Where are you going, Harry?"
"I think some one ought to be with Father."
"I'll go in just a minute."
She had halted almost in front of them. Avery, hesitating as though hedid not know what he ought to do, finally arose; and as Eaton observedthat Avery, having introduced himself, appeared now to consider it hisduty to present Eaton to Harriet Dorne, Eaton also arose. Averymurmured the names. Harriet Dorne, resting her hand on the back ofAvery's chair, joined in the conversation. As she replied easily andinterestedly to a comment of Eaton's, Avery suddenly reminded her ofher father. After a minute, when Avery--still ungracious and stillirritated over something which Eaton could not guess--rather abruptlyleft them, she took Avery's seat; and Eaton dropped into his chairbeside her.
Now, this whole proceeding--though within the convention which,forbidding a girl to make a man's acquaintance directly, says nothingagainst her making it through the medium of another man--had been sounnaturally done that Eaton understood that Harriet Dorne deliberatelyhad arranged to make his acquaintance, and that Avery, angry andobjecting, had been overruled.
She seemed to Eaton less alertly boyish now than she had looked an hourbefore when they had boarded the train. Her cheeks were smoothlyrounded, her lips rather full, her lashes very long. He could not lookup without looking directly at her, for her chair, which had not beenmoved since Avery left it, was at an angle with his own. A faint,sweet fragrance from her hair and clothing came to him and made himrecollect how long it was--five years--since he had talked with, oreven been near, such a girl as this; and the sudden tumult of hispulses which her nearness caused warned him to keep watch of what hesaid until he had learned why she had sought him out.
To avoid the appearance of studying her too openly, he turned slightly,so that his gaze went past her to the white turmoil outside the windows.
"It's wonderful," she said, "isn't it?"
"You mean the storm?" A twinkle of amusement came to Eaton's eyes."It would be more interesting if it allowed a little more to be seen.At present there is nothing visible but snow."
"Is that the only way it affects you?" She turned to him, apparently atrifle disappointed.
"I don't exactly understand."
"Why, it must affect every man most as it touches his own interests.An artist would think of it as a background for contrasts--a thing tosketch or paint; a writer as something to be written down in words."
Eaton understood. She could not more plainly have asked him what hewas.
"And an engineer, I suppose," he said, easily, "would think of it onlyas an element to be included in his formulas--an _x_, or an _a_, or a_b_, to be put in somewhere and square-rooted or squared so that theroof-truss he was figuring should not buckle under its weight."
"Oh--so that is the way you were thinking of it?"
"You mean," Eaton challenged her directly, "am I an engineer?"
"Are you?"
"Oh, no; I was only talking in pure generalities, just as you were."
"Let us go on, then," she said gayly. "I see I can't conceal from youthat I am doing you the honor to wonder what you are. A lawyer wouldthink of it in the light of damage it might create and the subsequentpossibilities of litigation." She made a little pause. "A businessman would take it into account, as he has to take into account allthings in nature or human; it would delay transportation, or harm oraid the winter wheat."
"Or stop competition somewhere," he observed, more interested.
The flash of satisfaction which came to her face and as quickly waschecked and faded showed him she thought she was on the right track.
"Business," she said, still lightly, "will--how is it the newspapersput it?--will marshal its cohorts; it will send out its generals incommand of brigades of snowplows, its colonels in command of regimentsof snow-shovelers and its spies to discover and to bring back word ofthe effect upon the crops."
"You talk," he said, "as if business were a war."
"Isn't it?--like war, but war in higher terms."
"In higher terms?" he questioned, attempting to make his tone likehers, but a sudden bitterness now was betrayed by it. "Or in lower?"
"Why, in higher," she declared, "demanding greater courage, greaterdevotion, greater dete
"What makes you say that?"
"Soldiers themselves say it, Mr. Eaton, and all the observers in thishorrible war say it when they say that they find almost no cowards andvery few weaklings among all the millions of every sort of men at thefront. They could not say the same of those identical millions underthe normal conditions of everyday business life."
He remained silent, though she waited for him to reply.
"You know that is so, Mr. Eaton," she said. "One has only to look onthe streets of any great city to find thousands of men who have not hadthe courage and determination to carry on their share of the ordinaryduties of life. Recruiting officers can pick any man off the streetsand make a good soldier of him, but no one could be so sure of findinga satisfactory employee in that way. Doesn't that show that dailylife, the everyday business of earning a living and bearing one's sharein the workaday world, demands greater qualities than war?"
Her face had flushed eagerly as she spoke; a darker, livid flushanswered her words on his.
"But the opportunities for evil are greater, too," he asserted almostfiercely.
"What do you mean?"
"For deceit, for lies, for treachery, Miss Dorne! Violence is the evilof war, and violence is the evil most easily punished, even if it doesnot bring its own punishment upon itself. But how many of those menyou speak of on the streets have been deliberately, mercilessly, evensavagely sacrificed to some business expediency, their futuredestroyed, their hope killed!" Some storm of passion, whose meaningshe could not divine, was sweeping him.
"You mean," she asked after an instant's silence, "that you, Mr. Eaton,have been sacrificed in such a way?"
"I am still talking in generalities," he denied ineffectively.
He saw that she sensed the untruthfulness of these last words. Hersmooth young forehead and her eyes were shadowy with thought. Eatonwas uneasily silent. The train roared across some trestle, giving asharp glimpse of gray, snow-swept water far below. Finally HarrietDorne seemed to have made her decision.
"I think you should meet my father, Mr. Eaton," she said. "Would youlike to?"
He did not reply at once. He knew that his delay was causing her tostudy him now with greater surprise.
"I would like to meet him, yes," he said, "but,"--he hesitated, triedto avoid answer without offending her, but already he had affrontedher,--"but not now, Miss Dorne."
She stared at him, rebuffed and chilled.
"You mean--" The sentence, obviously, was one she felt it better notto finish. As though he recognized that now she must wish theconversation to end, he got up. She rose stiffly.
"I'll see you into your car, if you're returning there," he offered.
Neither spoke, as he went with her into the next car; and at thesection where her father sat, Eaton bowed silently, nodded to Avery,who coldly returned his nod, and left her. Eaton went on into his owncar and sat down, his thoughts in mad confusion.
How near he had come to talking to this girl about himself, eventhough, he had felt from the first that that was what she was trying tomake him do! Was he losing his common sense? Was the self-command onwhich he had so counted that he had dared to take this train desertinghim? He felt that he must not see Harriet Dorne again alone. At firstthis was all he felt; but as he sat, pale and quiet, staring vacantlyat the snow-flakes which struck and melted on the window beside him,his thoughts grew more clear. In Avery he had recognized, by thatinstinct which so strangely divines the personalities one meets, anenemy from the start; Dorne's attitude toward him, of course, was notyet defined; as for Harriet Dorne--he could not tell whether she wasprepared to be his enemy or friend.