XIX.
Three days passed at the mills with no special incident. To Salome they seemed the dullest she had ever known. For the first time, she discovered that the Shawsheen Mills and the condition of its operatives was not enough to satisfy the inmost longings of her heart, or to still its disquietude. Without the presence of John Villard, and the constant inspiration of his presence, life lost its zest and sparkle.
When the three days were over, Salome went to her pillow at night with a sense of relief. Until now, she had not realized what her position at the head of the mills might mean without Villard. She saw that without him she could have done little, and would have made many mistakes—a fact which it was good for her to realize. And then she remembered, with sudden terror, that he might leave her at any moment, as Burnham had done.
“He will be home in the morning,” she said to her disquieted heart, “and I will offer him a share in the business. I will make him a partner, and then I shall never lose him.” And even in the darkness of night and the privacy of her own room, she resolutely put away from herself any other contingency.
The morning dawned beautiful, fresh and balmy, as only a spring morning late in May can dawn in New England. Salome dressed herself with unusual care. A strange, happy feeling under-ran all her thoughts. She would not think of him; she would not look forward to his coming; but, for her, all the gladness of the May morning, all the blossoming of spring flowers, all the caroling of joyous birds, meant only that Villard had arrived in Shepardtown on the night express, and that she would see him in an hour or two. She did not hurry her preparations for breakfast,—this was such a strange, delightful mood. She looked at her own reflection in the mirror, thinking unconsciously of making herself fair for him. She sang snatches of merry song from the last comic opera, laughing to herself as she recalled how her nurse used to forbid her singing beforethe morning meal, and how she used to repeat, in a lugubrious tone, the old sign:
“If you sing before breakfast,You’ll cry before night.”
“If you sing before breakfast,You’ll cry before night.”
“If you sing before breakfast,You’ll cry before night.”
“If you sing before breakfast,
You’ll cry before night.”
And, still singing, she stopped at her aunt’s room, only to find that everybody had gone downstairs before her.
Mrs. Soule and Marion were chatting pleasantly over their hot-house grapes when she entered the breakfast-room. The morning papers lay untouched beside Salome’s plate. She took her place and leisurely pared an orange. Afterwards she remembered the time she wasted in cutting the peel into fantastic shapes.
“Has nobody looked at the papers?” she asked, after a while. “I declare, how self-absorbed we are growing. Who knows but the world has, half of it, come to an end, over night?”
She picked up one of the papers—the one which contained the most startling head-lines, the most sickening sensations. Opening it, her eyes became riveted to the front page. Her face paled. She grew whiter, but no onenoticed. When Marion looked up, the paper was falling from Salome’s hand, and she had fallen back in her chair—faint, speechless with terror.
With a cry, Marion sprang to her side; but Salome, by a tremendous effort, recovered herself.
“Read it,” she gasped, “and tell me what to do.”
Marion picked up the paper, and read:
HORRIBLE ACCIDENT ON THE ALBANY ROAD.Thirteen Killed and Twenty Wounded.Terrible Slaughter due to Carelessness.Prominent Business Men of Boston and Shepardtown among the Injured.
HORRIBLE ACCIDENT ON THE ALBANY ROAD.Thirteen Killed and Twenty Wounded.Terrible Slaughter due to Carelessness.Prominent Business Men of Boston and Shepardtown among the Injured.
HORRIBLE ACCIDENT ON THE ALBANY ROAD.
Thirteen Killed and Twenty Wounded.
Terrible Slaughter due to Carelessness.
Prominent Business Men of Boston and Shepardtown among the Injured.
Running her eye hastily down the column, Marion gathered that the night express had been crashed into by a heavy freight; that both trains had been thrown off the track; that many passengers had been killed, scalded, mangled or bruised.
She looked quickly over the list of killed. There were no familiar names; but at the head of the wounded was:
“John Villard of Shepardtown. Fatally injured. Impossible to recover.”
She turned to Salome, who was already leaving the table.
“Help me to get ready,” she said. “I must go to him immediately.” Marion marveled to see her so calm; but she knew only too well the anguish concealed in the woman’s heart below.
“What is it? What are you going to do? Why does not some one tell me?” asked Mrs. Soule.
“Dear auntie,” and Salome bent and kissed the fair, soft cheek, “there has been a terrible accident to the train that Mr. Villard was coming home on. I am going to him. He is dying.” Then she left the room.
In less than an hour she was at the railway station, waiting for the train to Boston. At the last moment, Mrs. Soule, having recovered from the shock which the news had given her, had tried to dissuade her niece from going.
It seemed to her that this was the strangest thing her unaccountable niece had ever done. She really must remonstrate with her on the impropriety of her conduct. And seeing that Salome would not be restrained from makingthis erratic trip, she proposed to go, too, as chaperon. Only Salome must wait for the noon train, as she could not possibly get ready for an earlier one.
“The noon train!” exclaimed Salome, buttoning her gloves. “No, auntie, Mr. Villard may not live until then. I shall go to him at once. You forget that I am no longer a young girl. I am a business woman, and my chief assistant lies dying.” She bent over and kissed her aunt, who was still remonstrating, and ran down the steps to the waiting carriage, where Marion had already taken her seat.
Marion, too, had offered to go with her; but Salome had only replied:
“No, dear. If you will take my place here, that is all I ask.”
And when the train finally drew out of Shepardtown, and she had left her friend standing on the platform, she gave an involuntary sigh. Only the strong heart, which can best bear its grief alone, will understand her feeling.
The train had never seemed so slow to her. Strained and anxious with that nervous intensity which makes a woman waste her strength in a half-conscious physical effort to propel, byher own will-power, the great, unsympathetic, methodical engine, she sat straight up in her seat with heart and soul benumbed. Constantly before her, was the picture of John Villard—mangled, bleeding, dying—perhaps dead. Her brain reeled as she thought of him lying pale and cold in death.
She remembered how, only three days ago, he had clasped her hand and looked into her eyes; how he had called her “Salome,” his voice deep and tender with emotion. Dead? No, it could not be. And still the long, unfeeling train stopped to take on its horde of passengers, or to let off a working-man or a school-girl.
The hour’s ride to Boston seemed to her an eternity; and when, at last, they rolled into the long, covered shed, Salome was first to reach the steps, and first to touch the platform.
Ordering a carriage, she was soon on her way across the city. But here again the slowness of her progress drove her nearly frantic. She called to the driver and told him she would double his fee if he caught the next train for the scene of the accident. He did not know what time that would be, but he accepted theoffer and drove at such a rate of speed that an agent of the Humane Society ran after him to catch his number,—and did not succeed.
When they reached the Albany station, Salome threw him the smallest bill she had, a two-dollar one,—and without waiting for the change, hastened to the ticket-office. It was beset with more than the usual crowd of curious questioners and eager passengers, whose plans the accident had thrown into confusion. It was some minutes before Salome could reach the window. She was about to turn away in despair when the agent recognized her.
“Let that lady pass, there,” he said, authoritatively; and then Salome learned that a relief train had been sent early in the morning, that another would be starting in ten minutes, and that regular trains would be run in the course of an hour or two, “carrying by,” at Jones’s Crossing, where the accident had occurred.
“And the injured ones, are they still——” her voice failed her.
“They are still living,” answered the agent. “But some of them are so badly hurt they must die. Stand back there, one minute,” hesaid to the crowd. “Well, I don’t know, miss, whether you could go on the relief train. You might go out and ask, though they’ve shut down on the crowd.”
Salome turned away. For the first time since breakfast a clear thought came into her brain. She went out to the train-gate.
No, they could not take any one. There were so many wanting to go, and they only took one car. Oh, a friend of the injured? Well, she must go to the division superintendent, or the general passenger agent. There was the “G. P. A.” over there.
Salome walked over to the official designated,—a pleasant gentleman with kind eyes.
“I am Miss Shepard of Shepardtown,” she said; “my chief superintendent is among the injured, and is probably dying. He has no friends, and I must get to him. Can you help me?”
The official took out a little book, wrote her name on a blank pass, and handed it to her.
“Anything we can do for him or for you, Miss Shepard, we shall be glad to do. You needn’t hesitate to ask. Your grandfather was once kind to me, when I was a poor boy.”
The passenger agent hurried away to theengine, giving some last orders, and Salome did not have a chance to thank him.
“You’ll have to hurry, miss,” a brakeman said who was standing near. “The train is going.”
A moment later she was on the way for Jones’s Crossing.
This train had the right of way and a clear track for some distance. They seemed to fly, as they sped out through the suburbs into the country beyond.
The bloom of the May morning was still on the tender, up-springing grass and the fresh foliage of the trees. Birds sang cheerfully on, in spite of the thundering engine on its way to the scene of woe. But there was no more beauty in the world for Salome.
Three or four physicians sat in the corner of the one baggage-car which they all occupied together, and, used as they were to scenes of death and suffering, talked indifferently of politics and the misdoings of Congress. The brakeman laughed as the conductor passed him with some trivial remark. To Salome it seemed that she alone, of all the world, cared because thirteen persons lay dead and twenty more were fatally injured, a few miles away.
Afterwards, when she saw the tenderness and courageous sympathy of these people among the suffering, she reversed her judgment.
A small woman in black sat at the opposite end of the car, and was the only other passenger.
“Who is that?” She stopped the conductor to ask the question, at last drawn out of her own sorrow by the pathetic attitude of the woman’s figure.
“That’s the engineer’s mother. He is fatally hurt. He’s the last of her five boys, and her sole dependence. It’s pretty rough on her; but the boys won’t let her suffer.”
His words came like a reproach to her. What right had she, with all her wealth and friends and pleasures, to think of herself as the only suffering one? What was her sorrow, compared to that of this bereaved mother?
She felt an impulse to go over to the motionless figure and speak a word of comfort. And then she felt the train slacking up.
“We’re almost there,” the conductor said, as he passed her again.
When the train stopped, two of the physicians, having heard who she was, came forward withoffers of assistance. The others were kindly aiding the pathetic old lady in black.
And then Salome found herself face to face with such a scene as she had never even dreamed of.
The public is, through the “enterprising” journalistic system of the present day, already too familiar with such scenes of sickening horror. To Salome, this one came as the vivid realization of things she had hitherto carefully avoided in the newspapers.
At first, she turned faint and sick at the prospect. Several dead bodies lay plainly in sight, partially covered with a blanket. The living must first be cared for; and groans on every side, from those who, even yet, had not been extricated from the debris, told how much still remained to be done.
“Tell me,” she said, catching at the arm of a doctor who had been on the ground since daybreak, “where is Mr. Villard?”
“Villard? Let’s see—tall man? Dark hair and full beard? Yes. He was removed to the tavern over there an hour ago.” And he passed on to another sufferer.
Salome looked across the railroad track, inthe direction the physician had pointed. There was a country store, a “tavern,” and three or four less pretentious buildings.
Hastily she clambered over the torn-up track, down the embankment and across the narrow, open field. There were no signs of life around the group of houses. Everybody was at the scene of the accident.
She walked into the tavern. It seemed to be deserted. Through the narrow hall she could see, at the end of the building, a dining-room; at one side was the office, where no one was in view. The clerk heard her step, however, and came hastily from the dining-room.
“Is there a Mr. Villard here?” she began—“a patient, from the accident?”
“There are three men upstairs who were hurt,” the clerk answered. “There’s no one here to tend office, or I’d show you up.”
“I must find him. Is there no one to show me the way?” she asked, impatient at this last trivial delay.
“They’re each in different rooms up there,” was the reply. “Walk right up the stairs. There’s nurses up there. They’ll tell you.”
Salome turned up the narrow, dingy staircase.At the top there was no one in sight. Groans came from behind a closed door. Inside, she could hear voices, subdued to an undertone. In the absolute silence, she heard the word “amputation.” Could this be Villard’s room?
She leaned against the wall, unable to try that latch. While she stood there, helpless and dazed, she lifted her eyes to the opposite doorway. It was open.
Inside, there seemed to be no one. Certainly there was no attendant. She stepped forward and looked in. There, on the white, clean bed, lay the form of John Villard, his face whiter than the pillow it rested against, his dark hair contrasting strangely with his paleness.
With the sight, all the repressed love of the last two years swept over Salome like a resistless impulse. A hand seemed clutching at her heart. Her limbs seemed paralyzed; but in an instant she was beside the bed, looking down at the closed eyes. A terrible fear that he was dead swept over her. With an inarticulate groan, she knelt beside him and laid her hand against his face.
He opened his eyes and smiled faintly. He thought he had died and reached Heaven.