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 willyoulike 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 youwouldlike 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 wantyouto 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 toeat ’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 boy, 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.”
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....
“Hello!” He laid his hands on a pair of broad shoulders that pushed toward him out of the dusk. “I want you—right off!”
“All right, sir, I’m coming.” There was a note of joy in the voice that warmed the older man’s heart.
“You ’re ready, are you?” He had turned toward the steps, with quick motion.
The boy laughed a little, hurrying beside him. “Not tonight. I must wait. There are things—”
The president paused, one foot on the step, glaring at him. “What things—Telegraph—” He waved a hand toward the office.
“It is n’t that.” The boy spoke quickly, the puffs from the engine driving his words aside. Nothing could seem important except that great engine, panting to be off, and the nervous man gripping the rail at his side. “It is n’t that, sir. It is my mother and the moving. I must see to that first.”
“Oh, they ’re coming, are they?” The hand on the rail relaxed.
“Yes, sir.”
The president stepped back to the platform. He made an impatient gesture to the engineer and turned to the boy. “How long do you want?” It was the old, sharp tone.
But the boy smiled, looking at him with shining eyes. “We might walk up and down,” he suggested.
“Oh, walk—if you want to!” growled Simeon. He fell into a quick trot, matching the boy’s stride.
“Things are bad down there!” He jerked out the words. “Damn fool work!”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the fault’s here.” He nodded toward the maze of tracks that stretched away in the dark.
“Tomlinson is an old man,” said the boy.
“Old fool!” retorted the other. “Must have been asleep—drunk!”
“I don’t think he drinks,” said the boy quietly. “The hours are long—he ’s old—he may have dropped off.”
“He ’ll drop off now,” said the other grimly, “—way off—How long will it take—this moving business?”
The boy waited a minute. “I want to come now, sir, right off—tomorrow. But my mother is not well—You see we must wait for the right day, and there is the house to look out for and my father—”
“Don’t you know I need you?” said Simeon gruffly.
The boy looked at him again. It was plain, even in the obscure light, that the man was driven.... He had never seen him like this; and he thought rapidly. The engine had ceased its puffs, but he felt the great throbbing power waiting there behind it. His blood thrilled to it, drifting in his veins. To be off with this man—shaping the course of a world! They had come to the end of the platform and he stopped, wiping away the great drops that had gathered on his forehead.
“It ’s a hot night,” said Simeon testily. “Come into the car—get something cool.” The tone was almost crafty and the boy smiled, shaking his head. “Not tonight!”
Already the slow, patient underhold had regained its power. He spoke in his old, slow fashion, choosing his words with care. “I can’t go tonight, sir. But I ’ll come the first thing in the morning, if that will do. A few days won’t matter. The moving can wait till this thing is straightened out.” He motioned toward the east, where the wreck lay.
They had turned and were pacing back toward the engine. Insensibly Simeon’s gait had slowed to the boy’s even tread and his breathing had slackened its quick beat. He looked at the great eye blazing toward them through the dusk. “You won’t come,” he said, “not till you ’re good and ready. But I tell you—I shall dock your pay!”
The boy laughed out. “I will come tomorrow, sir, if she keeps well.”
“Oh, tomorrow!” said Simeon. It might have been years from the tone.
He stepped on to the platform of the car. “I can get along without you,” he said. The train had started and the words rumbled back, out of the roar of smoke. But to the boy, standing with his hat in his hand, they were an appeal for help, a call from the whirl and rush of the world for something that he had to give.
He turned away and went down the street, wondering a little at the strangeness of the day.
It was a radiant night.
He looked up to the sky—the same sky that the man in the garden had lifted his face to, a little while ago, kneeling among the plants. But the stars were out now, lighting its gloom. The boy thought suddenly of his mother’s eyes and quickened his pace. She would be waiting for him, looking into the dark. He felt a little thrill of pride in her courage. ... She would make the sacrifice for him without a murmur. Yet it was not for him—nor for the man who needed him. But behind him—behind them all—a great hand seemed reaching out to the boy, beckoning him, drawing him to his place in the world.
SPEEDING that night toward Bayport, through the dark and the stars, Simeon Tetlow’s thoughts were often on the hoy. He was haunted by the wreck. It was shattered glass, and charred wood, and blood everywhere, and trampled grass and leaves.... But across the face of the wreck moved the hoy’s eyes as they had turned to him, following his train into the night.
With the boy again, he could do all that he had ever planned—and more. In spite of his harsh words, flung back as the train started, his heart was aglow. John was coming back to him and together they could work out the plan that held him.... He could not have told the plan to any one; it was hardly articulate, even to himself. He paced up and down the tawdry car, his hands, tense at his sides, opening and closing with the swift thought that crowded upon him. It had been coming to him through the months, while he had groped and wrestled alone. Slowly it had been forming deep below—shaping itself out of life—a vision of service. And today he had seen it stretching before him, unrolling its web of thought as the train tracked the fertile country. All day he had looked out upon wide fields, scarred and broken by late frosts, on orchards and meadows and stretches of plain, half-tilled; and always, in the distance, the mountains, filled to the brim with ore. It was a rich country, but starved, straitened—and no one knew better than the President of the “R. and Q.” road the cause of its poverty. Across its length and breadth stretched the road—like a great monster that sprawled, sucking its lifeblood. He had known it, always,—and he had not cared. Let the country take care of itself. There was always enough for the road—and for dividends. He had put them off, when they had come to him begging better rates—leniency in bad seasons. There was not a farmer, up and down the region, that did not know Simeon Tetlow. He had a name among them. “The road was not there for its health.” They knew his face as he said it, and they hated it. As he sped through the night, he seemed to feel it closing in upon him—a cloud of malevolence settling upon him from the hills, rising from the valleys, shutting in on every side—and he, alone in its midst, tracking the great country—his hand reaching out to grasp its wealth.... But not now. He had seen it in the slow days that lay behind—a new vision. Sitting alone in his high office, he had watched the great system stretching out—not to drain the wealth of the country, not the huge monster that battened on its strength, but a vital necessity—a thing of veins and arteries, the highway of its life current—without which life itself must cease altogether or run feeble and clogged. The great imagination that could think a railroad into existence had brooded on the picture, sitting alone in its high office, watching the system stretching away, branching in every direction, lighting up the surrounding hills. And today, when the Boy had said he would come back, the man had known that the picture would come true.
The porter had brought in his supper, placing it noiselessly before him on the table, but the president of the road had pushed it from him, leaning a little forward, gazing at the picture that glowed and filled the horizon. He drew his hand hastily across his eyes and the porter moved forward.
“Supper, sah.”
“Yes—yes.” But he did not stir. His eyes were fixed on the dark window, staring into the night.
The porter reached out a hand to draw down the blind, but the president stayed him with a smile.
“Let it he, Sam. I am ready now.”
He ate with quick, nervous motion, his eyes still on the window. Glimmers of light from the hills struck across it—towns glinted and sparkled and slipped into the night. The eyes followed them eagerly—each gleam of light, each flash of power. It was a new country—hiscountry. It should Be what he chose to make it—a fertile land.
The supper had been removed and the porter had set down the box of cigars on the table and withdrawn to his own place. The train rumbled through the night with swift shrieks and long, sliding rushes of sound. The president of the road reached out for a cigar. But the hand that held the lighted match trembled and whirred. He threw it aside, with an impatient sound, and struck another, taking the light with quick, tense puffs. It caught the spark and glowed. He dropped the match upon its tray. There was a look in his eyes that was half fear. He had been a man of iron—but the iron was shaken, shattered.... They threw the worn-out engine on the scrap-heap.... But not yet—Give him a year, two years, to make the dream come true. He saw the country bud and blossom and fling its promise on the air. In the ground he heard the grass grow, creeping. The grain beneath the mold could not move its silken filaments so lightly that his ear did not catch the sound; and from the mountains the ore called, loud and free, knocking against its walls. The mountains opened their great sides, and it poured down into the valleys—wealth for all the world—It should come true.... Time and strength—and John!
The cigar had gone out and he tossed it aside, throwing himself on the red cushions and staring at the ceiling that swayed to the swift run of the engine. Then he closed his eyes and the boy’s face was before him, smiling. He slept fitfully. The train rumbled and jarred through his sleep, but always with its song of iron courage.
THERE were no dreams in the eyes of the President of the “R. and Q.” road the next morning. The office was a chaos of papers; they lay on the desk and on chairs, and covered the floor. “When John opened the door and stepped in, the president was running distracted fingers through his hair and diving into the chaos. He came up with a grunt.
“I wish you’d find that statement the C. B. and L. sent last month—and be quick about it!”
With a smile the boy hung up his hat and went down on his knees into the chaos, filing, selecting, discarding, with the old care.
Simeon returned to his desk, growling. He took up the telephone receiver and put it to his ear, his scowl alert for blunders.... “What?—No!—You ’ve copied that wrong—Thelastone—yes.... Tomlinson, I said—not Thompson—Oh, Lord!Tomlin—L-i-n...”
John slipped quietly from the room. At the door marked with the bronze token, “President’s Office,” he paused. The typewriters clattered merrily within and through the ground glass he caught a haze of pompadours rising against the light. He opened the door and looked in. The young women at the typewriters did not look up—except with their shoulders. The one by the large window scowled fixedly at her machine, her fingers fidgeting and thumping the keys. Her mouth wore a look of fine scorn and her blue eyes glinted.
John returned to the outer office. The head bookkeeper looked up with a nod. “Morning, John. Moving along up above!”
The boy nodded a slow reply. “Where is Edith?” he said.
“Oh—Edith?” The man thought a moment with pen suspended. The light from the hanging bulb fell on his lined face. “Edith? Oh, yes. Congdon took her. Billing-room, I guess. Back to stay?”
“Not for long.” The boy had disappeared through the swinging door at the end of the room.
The young man seated at another desk in the room followed him with curious glance. “Who is that?” he asked, turning a little on his stool and staring at his companion.
The head bookkeeper nodded absently. “That is John Bennett.” His finger was on the column, tracing a blunder to its source.
“And who in hell is John Bennett?” demanded the other slowly.
“You ’ll find out—if you stay long enough,” replied the head bookkeeper pleasantly. He placed his finger on the column and jotted figures on the little pad at his side. He laid aside the pad. “He ’s Simeon Tetlow’s shadow,” he said. “The two Bridgewater boys over there by the window.” He nodded his head. “They call him ’Sissie Johnny.’”
“Looks like a fool and acts like Lord of Creation,” muttered the other.
“That ’s what he is,” said the head bookkeeper. He had no time for conversation just then. He was close on the track of his mistake. Moreover, the assistant bookkeeper was a thorn in his side. The appointment had been none of his—one of old man Tetlow’s blunders, he called it savagely when he had time to talk.
The assistant bookkeeper took up his pen, looking at it musingly. He knew, perhaps better than the head bookkeeper, to what he owed his appointment. Six months ago he had been in the employ of the rival road. Just why he had left them was his own affair, as were also the wires that had been pulled in his behalf along the “R. and Q.” Well, he was here. He had gathered much interesting information in his six months—information that might be valuable—very valuable—some day. He dipped his pen in the ink.... As for this John Bennett.... The pens were both at work now, flying fast.
“You want Edith?” Congdon, the head billing-clerk, looked up from his file of bills with a little scowl; it changed slowly to pleasure. “Why, how are you, John? Did n’t know you were back... Edith—Well, yes, I took her—wanted another hand here. Marshall said they could spare one from the office. So I took the littlest.” He smiled genially.
“Littlest and best,” said John.
The other laughed out. “I began to suspect it—The old man wants her back?”
“Right off.”
Congdon turned a little in his place. “Oh, Edith!” He raised his voice and the girl across the room looked up.
He beckoned to her and she came slowly, leaving her machine with a little touch that was almost a pat, as if it said, “Coming back very soon.”
“Yes, sir.” She stood before them waiting, a slight, dark girl, with clear glance.
“Ah,” the man’s eyes dwelt on her kindly. “They want you back in the office, Edith. You need n’t stop to finish.—I ’ll put some one else on those.”
She turned away with a look that was almost a smile of pleasure. Half way to her table she paused and came back. “I can take my machine, can’t I?”
He laughed tolerantly. “Oh, take it along, if you want to—Nobody else wants it.”
John followed her to the table. “I ’ll carry it for you, Edith.”
She slipped out the paper she had been at work on and began gathering up the trifles from her table.
When he set down the machine in the president’s office, a ripple of eyebrows passed it by—glances too busy for comment. The clatter of the typewriters rose and hummed. The hive could not pause for a worker more or less. She slipped into her place with a little smile and nod, waiting while John shifted the telephone connection and swung a bulb, with its green shade, conveniently in place.
The little bell rang sharply and she leaned to the receiver. “Hello!”
John crossed to the young woman by the window. She had finished a sheet and was drawing it out with a quick swirl.
“All done?” he asked pleasantly.
She ignored him, rubbing out an offending word and blowing away the black fuzz before she looked up. “What is it?” she said sharply. Her hair, which was red and crisp, glinted as she turned her head.
John’s eyes followed it with a little look of pleasure. There was something about that color that always made him happy. He did not know this and it had never occurred to him to be diplomatic. But a hint of a smile crossed the girl’s mouth.
“Well?” She was looking at him tolerantly.
He drew a sheaf of papers from his pocket. “These are to be copied—leaving blanks here, and here—Send a boy when they are done. He wants two carbons—very clear.”
“All right.” She took them from him with a look of relief. It might be an honor to take down ’the old man’s dictation, but it was an honor she could dispense with. She fluffed her fingers toward the glinting hair and descended on the keys.
John stood for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the crisping hair in the wide window-light. The girl had turned her head a little and it twinkled, but did not look up.
As he crossed the room, he glanced casually at the new occupant. Her head was bent to the receiver and a little smile played about her lips. “Yes—yes—yes?—yes.” Her fingers moved quickly and she nodded once or twice as if listening to something pleasant. “Shelikesto work for him,” thought John, “same as I do.”
With a look of satisfaction on his round face he closed the office door behind him. He had accomplished, without a jar, what perhaps no other man in the service could have done. But he was not thinking of this—he hardly knew it. He was planning what Simeon should have for luncheon—something hot and staying....
He reached out a hand to a boy who was hurrying toward the elevator. “Hold up, Sandy. What’s that?”
“A note for the president.” It was the tone of pride.
John smiled a little as he held out his hand. “I ’ll take it to him—and here—” The hoy’s face had fallen, “Take this—” He wrote hastily on a pad—“Carry that, one o’clock sharp, to the Holman House. They ’ll give you a luncheon for the president. Sprint, won’t you?”
“You bet.” The smile was stealing back to the boyish face.
John nodded. “Bring it up yourself—set it on the box by the door—not later than one, mind.”
The boy nodded and was gone, tucking the note in his pocket. It did not occur to him to question the authority of this slow-moving young man—hardly more than a boy himself.
It did not occur to any one to question it, as he made his way in a sort of slow-looking, fast fashion about the building, doing the things, little and big, that came to his hand. One did not think of the boy apart from his eyes. It was as if a spirit dwelt there, guiding the slowness and sureness, and men yielded to it, as they yield to the light when it shines on them.
If the boy had known his power or guessed it, it would have vanished, slipped from him, even while he put out his hand to it. But he had always been slow and stupid—not clever like other boys—and needing time and patience for his work. He knew that it rested his mother to have him do things for her, and that Simeon Tetlow needed him. Beyond that his mind did not travel. He could not have told how he knew men’s thoughts—read their minds, almost, when their eyes looked into his—any more than he could have told why certain colors made him happy, or why he had chosen Edith Burton out of the office force for Simeon’s private work. Things came to him slowly. He stood motionless, sometimes, waiting—almost stupidly, it seemed—before a piece of work, a decision to be made—but when he put out his hand to it, he held it with firm grasp.
Simeon did not look up when he came back. He was speaking into the telephone, a look of comparative peace on his face.
John swept aside the heap of bills and memoranda that covered the desk across the room. Then he looked about for the dust-cloth. He found it in the pocket of one of Simeon’s old coats on the wall. A piece of cheese fell to the floor as he shook it out. And Simeon, looking around as he hung up the receiver, smiled for the first time in weeks.
“So that ’s where I put that cheese, is it? I got it one day for luncheon—forgot where I put it—did n’t have any luncheon that day at all.” He was looking at it regretfully.
John tossed it into the waste basket, a look of disapproval in his face. He wiped the dust from his desk, arranging the files of papers he had collected from the floor and placing them in pigeon-holes.
Simeon watched, a look of something like contentment creeping to his face. “You found that statement yet?” The question was almost mild.
“Yes, sir.” John picked up the paper and handed it to him. “They ’ve made double charge on those forty boilers, have n’t they?” Simeon took it and glared at it. “That ’s what I can’t find out,” he said. “I can’t find out.” He sighed impatiently and laid it on the desk while he reached for another set of papers.
John, watching the face, was struck anew by the weariness in it. It was the face of an old man.
He held out his hand. “Suppose I take it, sir. I ’ll be down in the yard this afternoon and I ’ll look it up.”
There was a sound of jingling glass outside the partition.
John stepped quickly to the door.
“Here, Sandy. Take this to McElwain in the yard. Tell him I ’ll be down in half an hour.—Here ’s your luncheon, sir.” He brought in the tray and placed it on the table, setting a chair before it and drawing the cork from the bottle. He removed the napkin that covered the tray. “Your luncheon ’s ready, sir.”
With a sigh of satisfaction, the President of the “R. and Q.” Road rose from his desk.
“There’s a fresh towel, sir, and I brought up some soap.”
With another sigh, the president of the road obeyed.