Part 2

It was one of the worst wrecks the road had known. No one placed the blame. Those on the ground were too busy to have theories; and those at a distance had to change their theories a dozen times during the day. At noon word came that the president of the road was on his way to the scene of the accident. The news reached John as he was getting into the wrecking-car to return to the office. He paused for a flying minute, one foot on the step of the car. Then he swung off, and the car moved on without him. He spent the next half hour going over the ground. He made careful notes of every detail, recalling points from memory, taking measurements, jotting down facts and figures with his swift, short fingers. When he had finished he took the next wrecking-car back, making up for lost time by lunching at his desk while he worked.

All the afternoon he had been doing the work of three men.... Six o’clock. He got down from the high stool, stretching himself and rubbing his arms. In ten minutes the special would pass. He glanced out through the office window at the back of the building. High at the top of the sandy bank a bunch of clover bloomed against the sky, huge heads, with pink-and-white hearts--a kind of alfalfa--perhaps a seed from some passing freight. He had seen them, flaunting there, between hurried snatches of work, all the afternoon. He would pick them and carry them to her. But not now.... He looked again at his watch. He wanted to see the special when it passed. It would not stop, probably, but he might catch a glimpse of Simeon Tetlow. He had often wished he might see him, and he had often thought of his face the morning he said good-by. Beneath the anger in it had been something the boy could not fathom--a kind of entreaty.... He must find some way to give him the notes he had made of the wreck. He stepped out on the platform, looking up and down the shine on the tracks. The sun, coming low across the meadow beyond the tracks, made everything beautiful. A whistle sounded. The special--at the upper bridge. In five minutes it would pass. A smile curved his lips. The sound of quick bells and puffs and wheels came pleasantly to him from the engines at work in the yard down beyond the freight-house. A long train at the left was backing in slowly. John watched it and jingled some pennies in his pockets. He was thinking of Simeon Tetlow, the smile still on his lips.... Suddenly the smile stopped. The fingers gripped the pennies and held them fast.. .. His eye flashed along the top of the slow-moving train.--No one in sight--level tracks--the special two minutes off--the freight taking her track.... The switch, if he could make it--It was not a thought, but a swift turn of the short legs. Never had they seemed to him so fat and heavy beneath him. Yet they were flying over the ties as the wind sweeps a field. The short, strong body dropped itself upon the switch and hung there, gripping--a whirl of cinders and blast and roar. ... Had he come fast enough?... Ages passed. He lifted his head and looked back up the long tracks. The freight was still backing in slowly. The special--like an old lady who has taken the wrong crossing--was emitting a sound of dismay, a quick, high note. The wheels reversed and she came back, puffing and complaining, in little jerks.

When the train halted Simeon Tetlow stepped down from the platform. His hand, as it left the iron rail, trembled a little. He thrust it into the pocket of his light coat, looking up and down the tracks with stern glance. The glance fell upon John mopping his brow.

The president of the road moved toward him slowly. “What ’s up?” It was short and sharp.

John waited a minute while he mopped his brow again and replaced the handkerchief. He was thinking fast--for two. “I--I wanted to see you, sir.” One glance at the man had told him everything--the shaking hand clinched in the pocket, the quivering nerves, the dusty journey, the anxiety and fierce need of help. One more shock and the tension would give way. “I wanted to see you, sir,” he repeated quietly.

Simeon was looking at him keenly, up and down. “So you stopped my special?”

John nodded. “Yes, I stopped it--I guess I stopped it.” His voice almost laughed at the words. He was tugging at something in his pocket. “I wanted to give you these, sir.” He had fished out the handful of papers--old envelopes, scraps, bits of newspaper margins--covered with writing and figures. “I was down there this morning--to the wreck,” he said quickly. “Things were pretty well mixed up--I thought you might like to see how they lay. I made some notes.”

“Ah-h!” It was a long-drawn breath-something between a snarl and a laugh. “Come inside.”

They went into the special, with her hideous decorations of plush and imitation leather. The president nodded to the seat beside a table covered with telegrams and newspapers and memoranda: “Sit down.”

He seated himself opposite the boy, his elbow on the table and his head resting on the hand. Beneath its shelter his swift eyes looked out, scanning the boy’s face. “Well!” It was sharp and quick.

The boy smiled at the familiar note. He ran over the papers in his fingers, selecting one near the bottom. “This is the way things lay when we got there. We were first on the ground. I had a good chance to see,” he said simply.

“I ’ll warrant.” Simeon growled a little, leaning toward it.

The boy moved nearer to him. “These are the sleepers--the freight lay this way, over to the left. They must have struck just as the last car left the bridge.”

“I see.” Simeon reached out a hand for the paper. It trembled mistily as he bent above it. “I see.” The tone held a note of satisfaction. “What else?” He looked up quickly.

John was sorting the papers, a half-smile on his slow lips. A sense of happiness held his stubby fingers.

The president’s eyes rested on the dull face for a long minute. His hand, holding the paper, had ceased to tremble. He was resting in the strength of this body, short and sturdy and full of willing life. No one knew what that stubby-fingered boy had meant to him--what plans for the future had been cut off. The boy was to have been closer than a partner for him, closer than his own body, through the years. He was to have lived with him--shared his fortune, good and bad.... No one had guessed. He himself had not quite known--until, one day, the door closed behind the boy and he found himself sitting before a desk, trying with trembling fingers to make an entry in the ledger.... He had worried along since then as best he could.... And now he was sitting in the quiet car with the boy opposite him. The freight outside was pulling away with slow, disturbed puffs. The low sun shone through the car, and a glow of red plush lifted itself about them and filled the car with clear, rosy light.

The boy looked up. His eyes met the watching ones, and a quick light flashed into them, touching the lamps of service to flame. “This is the next one, sir.” He looked down again at the papers and held one out.

The president pushed it aside with a touch. His eyes searched the boy’s face. “Tell me what happened--just now!”

“Just now--!” The boy looked up, waiting, his lips half apart.

The president nodded. “You know--When we stopped--What was wrong!”

The boy waited a minute. “No. 39 had your track,” he said at last, quietly. “She’s gone now. That’s her whistle--up the yard.” He turned his head a little.

The president’s eyes still scanned the dull face. “And you changed the switch!”

“Yes, sir.”

The president pushed the papers farther from him, making a place for both arms on the table. He leaned forward a little. “So that’s what you left me for?”

The boy looked up, startled. “What, sir!”

The president nodded slowly. “To turn a switch, I suppose--” The thin hand lifted to his lips was trembling now as a leaf quivers at a sudden wind.

“Some one else would have seen,” said the boy quickly.

“Nobody sees--but you.” He crunched out the words. “When are you coming back?”

“Back!”

“To the office--I need you.” He gulped a little over the words. He had never said as much to any one.

The lamps, with their still glow, were turned toward him. “I want to come, sir.”

“Well?”

“We talked it over last night--She wants me to do it--She will come with me--But--”

The president of the road was looking down now--waiting.

The boy’s eyes studied the worn face with its wrinkles, the thin, hard lips and stern lines. Something in it made his heart suddenly go from him. “I think I’m coming, sir,” he said simply.

The face did not look up. It worked strangely for a moment.

Then it dropped in the folded arms on the table and rested there.

The boy fell to sorting the telegrams.

When the man looked up the face was quiet. But something had gone from it--a kind of hard selfishness. The gentleness that touched the lines had left them free. He smiled a little wistfully as he held out his hand for the papers. “I’m ready now. Go ahead.”

In ten minutes the papers were all in his hands, and the special was on her way to the wreck. The boy watched it out of sight. Then he turned away and crossed the tracks to the sandy bank, whistling softly--little breaths of sound that broke into lightest bubbles of joy as he climbed the bank. He was going to gather the clover blossoms, with the pink-and-white hearts, to carry home to her.

V

The man at work in the garden looked up with sudden interest. A light whistle had caught his ear--“That you, Johnny?” He looked out through the vista of currant-bushes and peas to the path that skirted the house. “You there?” he called.

The youth, who had come around the corner, nodded casually. “How is mother?”

The old man got slowly to his feet, rubbing his knees a little. “All right, I guess. She was out here with me a while ago, but I took her in.--You got some flowers for her?” He glanced at the pink-and-white blossoms in the boy’s hand.

“I got them on the bank by the track--Has she had a good day?”

“Putty good, I reckon. Putty good.” He was coming down between the peas, limping a little. “They found out who’s to blame--?”

The boy was moving toward the house, but he turned back with a little gesture of silence. “She does n’t know?”

The older man looked a little guilty. “Well--yes--fact is--I told her. She kind o’ got it out o’ me,” he added in defence.

The boy smiled. “She always gets it out of you.--Never mind if it has n’t hurt her.” He turned again toward the house.

She was very quiet as he entered the room. The blinds were closed and the little light that came through the shutters made a kind of cool dusk. He crossed to the lounge and laid the flowers by her hand. The delicate fingers reached out and closed over them. “Clover blossoms,” she said softly. “I was wishing today--We used to have them in the yard-before the lawn-mower--” The fingers strayed here and there, touching them gently. “Are they crimson?”

“Guess again.” His voice was full of gentle love.

“Not crimson, no.... But they ’re not white, either--”

“But you ’re warm,” he said.

The eyes flashed open and looked at him. “What happened today?”

“Father told you--about the accident?”

“The accident--Yes. But there was something else--”

He laughed quietly. “You always know, don’t you! Was it good or bad!”

She hesitated a second. “Good--for you.”

“And for all of us, mother.” He bent toward her. “We were talking about it last night--about my going back--if he wanted me.”

“Yes--Have you heard from him!”

“I ’ve seen him.”

“Today!”

He nodded. “He came down to look after the accident, and his train stopped a minute at the office. He wants me--I think he needs me--But it ’s for you to say, mother--you and father.”

The breath of a sigh came to her lips and changed to a smile. “Ah, if you can get your father to go--”

He smiled back, his eyes searching her face for the slightest shadow that should cross it. “He ’ll go,” he said decisively. “And he ’ll like it--after we get there. But will _you_ like it, mother! That ’s what I ’m afraid of--You ’ll miss your friends--and little things--”

“I shall have you,” she returned quickly, “and your father--and President Tetlow.”

He smiled a little at the picture. But his face had suddenly cleared. “I believe you _would_ like him,” he said. “I never thought before how much alike you are--you two--in some ways!”

She laughed out. “He’s a terrible hard man to get on with!”

He bent and kissed her cheek lightly. “For other people, perhaps--not for you--or me.” She had lifted the clovers and was looking at them. “How beautiful they are!” she said softly. They dropped again to her side. “I want to go.” She was looking at him with clear eyes. “And I want _you_ to go--I didn’t see how it was when we talked it over last winter--how much it would mean to you. I dreaded the change and your father is so hard to move--and I thought, too, that it would be too much for you--having me to look after and all the responsibility besides. I did n’t see then--but I’ve been thinking about it months now, lying here. You really liked the work there and that made it easy--” She was looking at him inquiringly.

He nodded slowly. “I liked it--I don’t think I ever did any work I liked so well. It was almost as if I thought things out myself. I can’t explain how it felt--but somehow I used to forget, almost, that I was n’t planning things--It seemed so natural to do them--the things he wanted done.”

“I know.” She sighed softly. “How he must miss you!”

He seemed not to have heard her. He was following his thought, clearing it to his slow mind. “You ’re right in the midst of things down there. It’s like being fireman on one of these big engines, I guess--every shovelful you put in, you can see her fly just as if you were doing it yourself. Here it ’s different, somehow. I do first one thing and then another, but nothing seems to count much.”

“It ’s like being a brakeman,” she suggested.

“That’s it! I never thought of that! But I’ve always said I’d rather be fireman on any old engine than a high-class brakeman--Pullman or anything.”

Again the little breath of a sigh that changed quickly to a smile. “We won’t be brakemen any more,” she said. “We ’ll go live on the engine--right by the throttle--that’s what you call it, is n’t it?” A little laugh covered the words.

He bent and kissed her again. “Dear mother! You shall never go if you do not want it.”

“Ah, but I want it--more than anything in the world. But there is your father--?”

“There is father,” he said decisively. “But first we ’ll have supper.”

He went out into the kitchen and she lay in the half-dusk with the flowers clasped in her fingers. Presently she lifted them and drew them across her cheek. “It was good in You to make flowers,” she said softly, “thank You for them. ... Thank You....” The words trailed away to a breath as she held the flowers to the light, turning them a little and shaking them softly apart to look into their cool fragrance.

Then she touched them again to her cheek and lay with closed eyes.

When the boy came in a few minutes later, he stood for a moment watching her before he set the slender glass of water on the table and turned to the window, opening the blinds and letting in the late light. Her eyelids lifted and she looked out at him dreamily. “I must have been asleep,” she said. “I was picking flowers in the meadow at home and the wind blew in my face. I ran a little way--” She held out the flowers to him. “Put them in water for me, John.”

He took them and shook them apart, dropping them lightly into the glass of water on the table.

“They are drooping,” she said regretfully.

“Yes, but they will come up.--Supper is ready.” He had placed an arm under her shoulders and lifted her from her place as easily as if she were a child. They waited a moment while she slipped to her feet, steadying herself a little. Then they moved slowly toward the door, her weight half resting on the arm that guided her. Any one watching them would have seen where the boy had gained his gentle bearing. He leaned a little as they went, his soul absorbed in serving her; and something of the dignity and courage of the slender shoulders seemed to have passed into the heavier ones, as if they, too, bore the burden and the pain with heroic spirit.

To the old man, waiting by the stove, tea-pot in hand, there was nothing heroic in the sight of the two in the doorway. They were simply John and Marcia and they had always walked together like that, almost from the time John could toddle across the floor. Then her hand had rested on the boy’s shoulder and he had looked up, now and then, under the weight, saying, “Does it hurt this way, mother?” Now he did not need to ask. He guided the slight figure, half carrying it, lightly, as if it had been a part of himself.

The old man set the tea-pot on the table and drew out her chair clumsily. “We’ve got lettuce for supper,” he said proudly, “and redishes, and tomorrow night they ’ll be a mess of peas, if nothin’ happens.”

She sank into the chair with a little sigh and a smile of pleasure at the dainty table. The lettuce lifted itself crisply and the radishes glowed pink and white in their dish. A silence fell for a moment on the little group. They had never formed the habit of saying grace; but when the mother was well enough to be in her place, there was a quiet moment before they broke bread.

John looked at her now, a little shade of anxiety in his face. Then he began to talk of the day’s happenings, the old man chiming in with the odd effect of a heavy freight, shacking back and forth through the whirl of traffic. To the boy and his mother talking was a kind of thinking aloud--elliptical flashes, sentences half-finished, nods intercepted and smiles running to quick laughs. To the old man it was a slower process, broken by spaces of silence, chewing and meditating. Now and then he caught at some flying fragment of talk, holding it close--as to near-sighted eyes.

“You wa’n’t thinkin’ of moving to Bay-port?” He asked the question humbly, but with a kind of mild obstinacy that checked the flow of talk.

“That’s what we wanted to ask you, father.”

The boy had raised his voice a little, as if speaking to a person who was a little deaf.

The old man sat down his tea-cup and rubbed his finger thoughtfully along his chin. “I don’t b’lieve I ’d better go,” he said slowly. He shook his head. “I don’t see how I can go nohow.”

The boy glanced swiftly at his mother. A little line had fallen between her eyes. The slower processes of the man’s mind were a nervous horror to her quick-moving one.

She leaned forward a little. “We want to go, Caleb, because it will be better for John,” she said slowly.

He nodded imperturbably. “Yes, it ’ll be better for the boy.” He glanced at him kindly. “I know all about it’s being better for the boy. We talked about it last winter, and if you ’d made up your minds to go then, I would n’t ’a’ said a word--not a word.”

“But it will be better now--easier to go. There is n’t any other difference from what there was last winter.”

“Yes, they’s a difference,” said the old man slowly. “I did n’t hev my squashes then.”

“But you have n’t got them now,” said John. “They won’t be ripe for months--”

“Six weeks,” interrupted the old man solemnly. “They are just a-settin ’.”

“But we can buy squashes in Bayport, Caleb.”

He looked at her mildly. “Yes, we can buy ’em, but will they be them squashes!--You know they won’t be, and Johnny knows they won’t.” His look changed a little to severity. “When a man’s done what I have for them squashes--Why, I dug that ground and I fertilized it, and I’ve weeded and watered and fussed and tended them all spring, and when a man ’s done that much, a man wants to _eat ’em!_” It was a long speech for the old man, and he chewed in gloomy silence.

The man looked up again and saw them shining at him. “I want to go, Johnny,” he said, and his thick lips trembled a little, “I want to do what’s best for you. You know it and your mother knows it.” He was looking at her humbly.

“Yes, Caleb, I know.” The line had vanished from her eyes. Dear old Caleb!--How slow he was and how right, always, in the end!

“How would it do, father, if we had the things sent down to us?” said the boy.

The man’s mouth was open, regarding him mildly. “If we had, what sent, Johnny?”

“The garden stuff--peas and beets and squashes and so on?”

The dull look lightened. “Maybe we could--and it would seem good to eat the same ones we raised, would n’t it?” He looked at him appealingly.

“We’d all like it, and it would be good for mother--to have the things fresh from home.”

“So ’t would, Johnny. So ’t would. Who’ll we get to tend ’em?” The thought puckered his forehead in anxious lines.

“There ’s Stillwell,” said John absently. He was not looking at the old man, but at his mother’s face.

It was turned to him with a little smile. “I am glad,” she said, as if he had spoken.

“You are tired?”

“Yes--it has been a long day--so much has happened.”

“I will help you to bed,” he said, thoughtfully, “and then I must go back to the office for a little while.”

She looked at him inquiringly. “Tonight?”

“Only for a little while. The special goes back at eight--I want to tell him.”

She made a swift gesture. “Don’t wait. Your father will help me.”

“I ’ll help her, Sonny. You run right along,” said the old man kindly.

“I am a little late,” said the hoy, looking at his watch. “I ’ll have to hurry. But I ’ll be back before you ’re asleep.” With a little nod he was gone.

They looked at each other across the vacant place. “I do know how you ’re goin’ to stand it,” said the old man slowly.

“I shall not mind.” She spoke with quick decision, “but it will be hard for you--leaving the garden and the place.”

“We ’ve lived here thirty year,” he said thoughtfully.

“Thirty-one,” she responded.

“So ’t was--thirty-one last May.”

He came around and laid a clumsy hand on her shoulder. “You want I should help you, Marcia?”

“No, Caleb, I ’ll sit here a little--perhaps till the boy comes back. I like to look at the garden from here.”

The old man’s glance followed hers. “It is putty,” he said. “You see how them squashes hev come on since morning?”

“Yes.” She smiled at him in the dim light. “Seems’s if you could most see ’em grow,” said the old man with a little sigh. He took up his battered hat. “Well, I ’ll go see Stillwell. Like enough he ’ll be glad to do it.”

But when he was outside of the door, he did not turn toward Stillwell’s. He went down the garden path instead, stooping now and then to a plant or vine, patting the mold with slow fingers. At the end of the garden he dropped to his knees, feeling cautiously along the bed that skirted the high board fence.... “Coming on fine,” he said, “and hollyhocks is what she wanted most of all.” His fingers strayed among them, picking off dead leaves, straightening stems and propping them with bits of stick. While he worked he talked to himself, a kind of mumbling chant, and sometimes he lifted himself a little and looked about the garden, much as a muskrat sits upon its haunches and watches the outer world for a moment before it dives again to its home. Once he looked up to the sky and his fingers ceased their work, his face wore a passive look. Kneeling there in the half-light, his big face lifted and the fragrance of the garden rising about him, he seemed to wait for something. Then his face dropped and his fingers groped again among the plants. By-and-by he got to his feet, stamping a little to shake out the stiffness. “It ’s better for the boy,” he said humbly. “I ’ll go see Stillwell right off.”

VI

The special was halting, with little puffs, and the president swung down from the steps. He looked about him with a nervous, running glance up and down the platform. If the boy were not here, he could not wait....