It was not so much a
parting, one might have thought, as a funeral. Little was said, but eyes
were eloquent, either with tears, or with long strong glances that meant
undying faithfulness all round; and Mike knew that Henry's eyes were
quoting "_Allons_! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!"
Henry's will to achieve was too strong for him to think of this as a
parting; he could only think of it as a glorious beginning. There is
something impersonal in ambition, and in the absorption of the work to
be done the ambitious man forgets his merely individual sensibilities.
To achieve, though the heavens fall,--that was Henry's ambition for Mike
and for himself.
No one really believed that the train would have the hard-heartedness to
start; but at last, with deliberate intention, evidently not to be
swayed by human pity, the guard set the estranging whistle to his lips,
cold and inexorable as Nero turning down the thumb of death, and surely
Mike's sad little face began to move away from them. Hands reached out
to him, eyes streamed, handkerchiefs fluttered,--but nothing could hold
him back; and when at last a curve in the line had swallowed the white
speck of his face, they turned away from the dark gulf where the train
had been as though it were a newly opened grave.
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