A.V. Laider | Page 9

born a year later--how old would the

mother be? Forty-three, yes. Not less than that, poor woman!"
Laider looked at me.
"Why 'poor woman!' you wonder? Well, in that first glance I had seen
other things than her marriage-line. I had seen a very complete break in
the lines of life and of fate. I had seen violent death there. At what age?
Not later, not possibly LATER, than forty-three. While I talked to her
about the things that had happened in her girlhood, the back of my
brain was hard at work on those marks of catastrophe. I was horribly
wondering that she was still alive. It was impossible that between her
and that catastrophe there could be more than a few short months. And
all the time I was talking; and I suppose I acquitted myself well, for I
remember that when I ceased I had a sort of ovation from the Elbourns.
"It was a relief to turn to another pair of hands. Mrs. Brett was an
amusing young creature, and her hands were very characteristic, and
prettily odd in form. I allowed myself to be rather whimsical about her
nature, and having begun in that vein, I went on in it, somehow, even
after she had turned her palms. In those palms were reduplicated the
signs I had seen in Mrs. Elbourn's. It was as though they had been
copied neatly out. The only difference was in the placing of them; and
it was this difference that was the most horrible point. The fatal age in
Mrs. Brett's hands was--not past, no, for here SHE was. But she might
have died when she was twenty-one. Twenty-three seemed to be the
utmost span. She was twenty-four, you know.
"I have said that I am a weak man. And you will have good proof of
that directly. Yet I showed a certain amount of strength that day--yes,
even on that day which has humiliated and saddened the rest of my life.
Neither my face nor my voice betrayed me when in the palms of
Dorothy Elbourn I was again confronted with those same signs. She
was all for knowing the future, poor child! I believe I told her all
manner of things that were to be. And she had no future--none, none in
THIS world--except--
"And then, while I talked, there came to me suddenly a suspicion. I
wondered it hadn't come before. You guess what it was? It made me

feel very cold and strange. I went on talking. But, also, I went on--quite
separately--thinking. The suspicion wasn't a certainty. This mother and
daughter were always together. What was to befall the one might
anywhere--anywhere--befall the other. But a like fate, in an equally
near future, was in store for that other lady. The coincidence was
curious, very. Here we all were together--here, they and I--I who was
narrowly to escape, so soon now, what they, so soon now, were to
suffer. Oh, there was an inference to be drawn. Not a sure inference, I
told myself. And always I was talking, talking, and the train was
swinging and swaying noisily along--to what? It was a fast train. Our
carriage was near the engine. I was talking loudly. Full well I had
known what I should see in the colonel's hands. I told myself I had not
known. I told myself that even now the thing I dreaded was not sure to
be. Don't think I was dreading it for myself. I wasn't so 'lamentable' as
all that--now. It was only of them that I thought--only for them. I
hurried over the colonel's character and career; I was perfunctory. It
was Brett's hands that I wanted. THEY were the hands that mattered. If
THEY had the marks-- Remember, Brett was to start for India in the
coming week, his wife was to remain in England. They would be apart.
Therefore--
"And the marks were there. And I did nothing--nothing but hold forth
on the subtleties of Brett's character. There was a thing for me to do. I
wanted to do it. I wanted to spring to the window and pull the
communication-cord. Quite a simple thing to do. Nothing easier than to
stop a train. You just give a sharp pull, and the train slows down,
comes to a standstill. And the guard appears at your window. You
explain to the guard.
"Nothing easier than to tell him there is going to be a collision. Nothing
easier than to insist that you and your friends and every other passenger
in the train must get out at once. There ARE easier things than this?
Things that need less courage than this? Some of THEM I could have
done, I dare say. This thing I was going to do. Oh, I