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Was it that, feeling her chances in Tawnleytown so few, counting the soil there so barren, driven by an ambition beyond the imagination of staid, stodgy, normal Tawnleytown girls, she felt she must create opportunities where none were? She was very lovely, Harber tells me, in a fiery rose-red of the fairy-tale way; though even without beauty it needn't have been hard for her.
A streak of thunderous light swam into view and passed them, plunging into a gap in the west. The fire-box in the locomotive opened and flung a flood of light upon a swirling cloud of smoke. A sharp turn in the track, a weak blast of the whistle at the bridge-head, and the "Limited," disdaining contemptible Tawnleytown, had swept out of sight into the world at a mile to the minute.
He didn't want to see Janet or Tawnleytown, again. He did have, he told me, a fleeting desire to know just how many other ships Janet might have launched, but it wasn't strong enough to take him to see her. He sent her the papers and letters by registered mail under an assumed name. And then he went to Claridon, Michigan, to learn of her people when Vanessa might be expected home.
He had only to destroy the letter that lay there before him, to wait on until the next sailing, to make continued love to Vanessa, and never to go to Tawnleytown again. There was little probability that Janet would come here for him. Ten years and ten thousand miles ... despite all that he had vowed on Bald Knob that Sunday so long ago, wouldn't you have said that was barrier enough?
And, by heaven, it was splendid shooting ... even if none of the other arrows scored! Harber tells me he was ripe for the thing without any encouragement to speak of. Tawnleytown was dull plodding for hot youth. Half hidden in the green of fir and oak and maple, slumberous with midsummer heat, it lay when he left it.
Picture that scene, if you will. What would you have said? Harber saw leaping up before him, with terrible clarity, as if it were etched upon his mind, that night in Tawnleytown ten years before. It was as if Barton, in his semidelirium, were reading the words from his past! "I won't let you fail! ... half a loaf ... the bravest adventures ... the yellowest gold." Incredible thing!
And, discounting their adventurous talk, he had tacitly supposed that his course the last few weeks spelled the confinement of the four walls of a Tawnleytown cottage, the fetters of an early marriage. He had been fighting his mounting fever for the great world, and thinking, as the train sped by, that after all "home was best." It would be. It must be.
Harber and Janet sat in the long grass, their hearts stirring with the same urgent, inarticulate thoughts, their hands clasped together. "Let's wait for Eighty-seven," she said. Harber pressed her hand for reply. In the mind of each of them Eighty-seven was the symbol of release from Tawnleytown, of freedom, of romance.
Harber might be rated at, perhaps, some forty thousand pounds, not counting his interest in the schooner. One of Janet Spencer's argosies, then, its cargo laden, is ready to set sail for the hills of home. In short, Harber is now in one of the island ports of call, waiting for the steamer from Fiji. In six weeks he will be in Tawnleytown if all goes well. It isn't, and yet it is, the same Harber.
He went off to his so-called hotel. In his room, by the light of the kerosene-lamp, he took out the envelope and reed what she had written. It was: Vanessa Simola, Claridon, Michigan. He turned over the envelope and looked at the address on the other side, in his own handwriting: Miss Janet Spencer, Tawnleytown.... And the envelope dropped from his nerveless fingers to the table.
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