Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/46

24 his mother’s face in the down-train halted at the Junction where he himself was changing.

She did not see him till he came striding along the aisle of her coach, his arms full of his things, face flushed, eyes brimming with the surprise and pleasure of seeing her; lips trembling questions.

“Why, Mother, what on earth? Where are you going? I’m to have a week at least, Mother; and here you’re going away, and you didn’t tell me, and what is it, and everything?”

His eager voice trailed off. The colour drained out of his face and there was a shadow in his eyes. He drew back from her the least way.

“What is it, Mother? Mother!”

Somewhere on the platform outside the conductor’s droning “—board” ran along the coaches. Agnes Kain opened her white lips.

“Get off before it’s too late, Christopher. I haven’t time to explain now. Go home, and Mary will see you have everything. Ill be back in a day or so. Kiss me, and go quickly. Quickly!”

He did not kiss her. He would not have kissed her for worlds. He was too bewildered, dazed, lost, too inexpressibly hurt. On the platform outside, had she turned ever so little to look, she might have seen his face again for an instant as the wheels ground on the rails. Colour was coming back to it again, a murky colour like the shadow of a red cloud.

They must have wondered, in the coach with her, at the change in the calm, unobtrusive, well-gowned gentlewoman, their fellow-passenger. Those that were left after another two hours saw her get down at a barren station where an old man waited in a carriage. The halt was brief, and none of them caught sight of the boyish figure that slipped down from the rearmost coach to take shelter for himself and his dark, tempest-ridden face behind the shed at the end of the platform—

Christopher walked out across a broad, high, cloudy plain, following a red road, led by the dust-feather hanging over the distant carriage.

He walked for miles, creeping ant-like between the