Eaton

“ AS he entered his own car, Eaton halted; that part of the train had taken on its usual look and manner, or as near so, it seemed, as the stoppage in the snow left possible. Knowing what he did, Eaton stared at first with astonishment; and the irrational thought came to him that the people before him were acting. Then he realized that they were almost as usual because they did not know what had happened; the fact that Basil Santoine had been attacked—or that he was on the train—still had been carefully kept secret by the spreading of some other explanation of the trouble in the car behind. ”

“ Eaton had seen no one but the newsboy when he looked out the window, but he felt sure that, if he had been left alone in the car, he was being watched so that he could not escape.
His hand moved toward the bell, then checked itself. By calling any one, he now must change his situation only for the worse; as long as they were letting him stay there, so much the better. He realized that it was long past the time when the porter usually came to make up his berth and they brought him breakfast ”

“ In another, however, you have been very careful, Eaton. You have been careful to act as though the attempt to run you down could not have been a deliberate attack; you were careful to call it an accident; you were careful not to recognize any of the three men in the motor."
"I had no chance to recognize any of them, Mr. Santoine," Eaton replied easily. "I did not see the car coming; I was thrown from my feet; when I got up, it was too far away for me to recognize any one."
"Perhaps so; but were you surprised when my daughter recognized one of them as having been on the train with us?" ”

“ What’s Eaton got to do with it?”
She explained that Eaton was substituting for the president of the Settlement House Association, who had been called from town, and that he had asked her to recite something.
“Well, ‘The Ole Swimmin’ Hole’ will come in handy. I always like the way you do that. Run along now!”
She darted into her room and found the letter just as she had left it on the mantel. She tore it into strips and threw them into her beribboned waste-paper basket. Her revulsion of feeling was complete. It was like waking from a nightmare to find herself secure amid familiar surroundings. ”

“ Another motor sped near, halted and then speeded on again; Eaton, looking up, saw it was a runabout with Avery alone in it; evidently, seeing them in the road, Avery had halted to protest, then thought better of it and gone on. But other motors passed now with people who spoke to Harriet and who stopped to inquire for her father and wish him well.
"Your father does not seem to be one of the great men without honor in his own neighborhood," Eaton said to her after one of these had halted and gone on.
"Every one who knows Father likes and admires him!" ”

“ Now, too, no more stains appeared on the brown leaves where they had passed; their burden no longer bled. Eaton, realizing what this meant, felt neither exultation nor surprise. He had known that the man they carried, though evidently alive when taken from the car, was dying. But now he watched the tracks more closely even than before, looking for them to show him where the men had got rid of their burden. ”

“ Gabrielle Eaton, walking across the great meadow, lifted her face to the sky. She had come out from faculty meeting tired and depressed and longing for a breath of air. The meeting had droned through its three interminable hours of detail and bickering. Little dried-up morsels of men had argued and plotted and counterplotted over the mental and spiritual food that should be served out to vigorous, growing girls. ”

“ She sang very badly, indeed, and he had been depressed by the knowledge that she was spending for music lessons wages earned as a clerk at the soap and perfumery counter in a department store. Eaton’s occasional monologues on what, for a better name, he called his friend’s religion, struck him as fantastic; he was never sure that Eaton wasn’t kidding him; and the suspicion that you are being kidded by a man at whose feet you sit in adoration is not agreeable. ”

“ Eaton remarked. “Mr. Farley and I have had a splendid talk; I never found him more amusing. One of the most interesting men I ever knew! What have you been talking about? The silence down here has been ominously painful!”
“Mr. Amidon has been telling me of the egg-throwing habits of the waitresses in my native town. Life here in the city is nothing to what it is down on the river. He’s almost made me homesick!”
“My dear Amidon,” said Eaton severely, “have you been telling that story—in a private house? I thought when I brought you here you’d be on [112] your good behavior. I’m sorry, Nan ”

“ He could hear men all about him, out of sight but calling to one another in the woods. All at once he recoiled, throwing himself down again upon the ground. The clump of bushes hiding him ended abruptly only a few yards away; through their bare twigs, but far below him, the sunlight twinkled, mockingly, at him from the surface of water. It was the lake!
Eaton crept forward to the edge of the steep bluff, following the tracks. He peered over the edge. The tracks did not stop at the edge of the bluff; they went on down it. ”

“ Conductor Connery came for the last time to Eaton's door.
"Miss Santoine says you're to go with the man she's left here for you. Here's the things I took from you. The money's all there. Mr. Santoine says you've been his guest on this car."
Eaton received back his purse and bill-fold. He put them in his pocket without examining their contents. The porter appeared with his overcoat and hat. Eaton put them on and stepped out of the car. The conductor escorted him to a limousine car. ”

“ Eaton, I tried to burn the store the night before the Western notes came due—and I’d have done it—I’d have done it if Jerry hadn’t stopped me!—God!” he groaned. His frame shook with repulsion and abhorrence and he turned his head to avoid Eaton’s eyes.
“It’s a good thing, Copeland,” said the lawyer quietly, “that we’re not allowed to be as bad as we want to be in this world. No man is ever that! That, for a lack of a better word, is my religion. Let’s go back to the notes. You say you prefer to pay them ”

“ Her Eaton was a sedate gentleman who made cryptic remarks to her at parties and was known to be exceedingly conservative in social matters. Amidon, she surmised, was far too keen to subject himself unwillingly to Eaton’s caustic humor, nor was Eaton a man to [18] trouble himself with any one unless he received an adequate return. ”

“ The man at the bridge—Dibley—had told enough to let Eaton know that those whom Eaton pursued were no longer in the machine he had followed with Harriet. As Eaton had rushed out of Santoine's study after the two that he had fought there, he had seen that one of these men was supporting and helping the other; he had gained on them because of that. Then other men had appeared suddenly, to give their help, and he had no longer been able to gain; but he had been close enough to see that the one they dragged along and helped into the car was that enemy whose presence in the study had so amazed him. ”

“ Eaton immediately resigned his situation as navy agent, and returned to the United States, where he was universally received with interest and attention; but never recovered his equanimity; he had been as he conceived, disappointed in the opportunity of distinguishing himself, and moreover unjustly robbed of his share in the credit of reducing the Pasha to terms. His natural irritability was increased, and he was on many occasions tempted to assert his claims, in a manner which savored of boastfulness. His own peaceful [p. 332] country offered no field for the display of his peculiar talents ”

“ Eaton had not only seen him and heard his voice, but he had felt his grasp; that sudden, instinctive crouch before a charge, and the savage lunge and tackle were the instant, natural acts of an old linesman on a championship team in the game of football as it was played twenty years before. That lift of the opponent off his feet and the heavy lunge hurling him back to fall on his head was what one man—in the rougher, more cruel days of the college game—had been famous for. On the football field that throw sufficed to knock a helmeted opponent unconscious ”

“ Eaton, who predicted that 'if his scholar lived to be a man, and if opportunity enabled him to exert his talents, few names would be greater than his.' At the age of eleven he was removed to a school at Market Drayton, thence in 1737 to Merchant Taylors' School, and finally to a private school at Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, where he remained until he was appointed in 1743, at the age of eighteen, a writer in the service of the East India Company at Madras. ”

“ Basil Santoine, as Eaton knew, slept above; a nurse must be waiting on duty somewhere near. Eaton had seen the row of buttons which the blind man had within arm's-length with which he must be able to summon every servant in the house. ”

“ He was a member of this society for thirty-three years. He died in Worcester, May 4th, 1859, at the age of ninety-three. His daughter now owns and occupies the estate on the west side of Main street, where Mr. Eaton resided most of his lifetime.
Very few men have lived in Worcester who understood the workings of the human mind among the masses better than William Eaton. Hence he never was at loss to know how to approach a man and control him under any circumstances. His gentle and kind manner enabled him to exert a powerful influence over his fellow citizens. ”

“ Eaton, as he saw Connery make the signal for the train to go ahead, sank back suddenly, conscious of the suspense he had been under.
He got out the railroad folder and looked ahead to the next town where he might be given up to the authorities; but when they rolled into this in the late afternoon the proceedings were no different. Eaton could not understand. He saw by studying the time-table that some time in the night they would pass the Montana state line into North Dakota. ”

“ If one was so made one had certainly no business, on any terms, at Matcham; whereas if one wasn’t one had no business there on the particular terms—terms of conformity with the principles of Eaton Square—under which one had been so absurdly dedicated. Deep at the heart of that resurgent unrest in our young man which we have had to content ourselves with calling his irritation—deep in the bosom of this falsity of position glowed the red spark of his inextinguishable sense of a higher and braver propriety. ”

“ From time to time people had passed through the car, but no one had stopped at the washroom door or looked in; the voices in the washroom had not been raised, and even if what was going on there could have attracted momentary attention, the instructions to pass quickly through the car would have prevented any one from stopping to gratify his curiosity. Eaton's heart-beat quickened as, listening, he heard the car door open and close again and footsteps, coming to them along the aisle, which he recognized as those of Conductor Connery and some one else with him. ”

“ Haven’t they been telegraphin’ me from all over the country for months askin’ about this house?”
“And, of course,” said Eaton softly, “you did all you could to protect your competitor—neighborly feeling, and that sort of thing. ”

“ Eaton drew further back into the alcove as some one passed through the hall above. The girl turned swiftly to the tall pier mirror near to which she stood; she faced it, slowly drawing off her gloves, trembling and not looking toward him. The foot-steps ceased overhead; Eaton, assured no one was coming down the stairs, spoke swiftly to tell her as much as he might in their moment. "He—Santoine—wasn't taken ill on the train, Edith; he was attacked."
"Attacked!" Her lips barely moved. ”

“ Now this morning you claim a telegram meant for another man—a man named Hillward, on this train, who seems to be all right—that is, by his answers and his account of himself he seems to be exactly what he claims to be."
"Did he read the telegram to you?" Eaton asked. "It was in code. If it was meant for him, he ought to be able to read it."
"No, he didn't. Will you?"
Eaton halted while he recalled the exact wording of the message. "No."
Connery also paused.
"Is this all you have against me?" Eaton asked.
"No; it's not. Mr. Avery's already told you the next thing, and you've admitted it. ”

“ In spite of his absurdities, she was conscious of definite manly qualities in him. Several times she caught him scrutinizing her sharply, as though something about her puzzled him and gave him concern. His manners were very good—thanks, perhaps, to his adored Eaton; and she liked his clean, fresh look and good humor. After her talk with Eaton on the golf links, she had wondered whether the lawyer wasn’t making a butt of him; but she dismissed this now as unjust to Eaton, and as appraising Amidon’s intelligence at too low a figure. ”

“ Eaton got up slowly and mechanically and followed the conductor. At the door he halted and looked back; Harriet Santoine was not looking; her face was covered with her hands; Eaton hesitated; then he went on. Connery threw open the door of the compartment next to the washroom and corresponding to the drawing-room at the other end of the car, but smaller.
"You'll do well enough in here." He looked over Eaton deliberately. "Judging from your manner, I suppose there's not much use expecting you to answer anything more about yourself—either in relation to the Warden murder or this?" ”

“ There was no one in sight in the hall or on the stairs or within the other rooms which opened into the hall. The door Eaton had just come from stayed shut. He held his breath while he listened; but there was no sound anywhere in the house which told him they were likely to be seen; so he came back to the spot where he had been standing.
"Stay where you are, Edith," he whispered. "If we hear any one coming, we are just passing each other in the hall."
"I understand; of course, Hugh! But you—you're here! In his house!"
"Even lower, Edith; remember I'm Eaton—Philip Eaton." ”