The Woman With a Past/Right of Way
XVII.—RIGHT OF WAY.
Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world. ... Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something to look on!—Pippa Passes.
PIPPA CARPENTER was once more headed for the Western coast. There is that about the Pacific; if you have once looked upon its unspeakable blue and heard its wonderful, deep pur—like that of a great, drowsy, dangerous tiger—you carry the memory within your head and heart henceforward. And the spell and the call are likely to grip you at all sorts of inopportune times and places, pulling—pulling—pulling you back to the sunset country and the long trail that leads to the elder worlds.
Yet Philippa, although she was obeying this impulse, and should have felt her accustomed thrill of adventure on starting for new scenes, was not happy; in fact, she was almost bored. As she sat curled up in the corner of her green plush section, with her red hair rumpled, and her mouth drooping wistfully at the corners, she seemed to more than one male fellow traveler rather like a weary little girl, and aroused an inconsequent desire to comfort her. She was wearing a gown that exactly matched her dark, purple-blue eyes, and was looking her best, in spite of her discontented mood.
Most of us have experienced moments in which the salt and savor of life seem chiefly conspicuous by their absence, in which we exist rather than live, and in which we can find no conceivable incentive toward hope, optimism, courage, or even interest. That, after all, is the whole of this human game of ours—interest. While we are interested, we can get along famously. We may suffer, rejoice, frivol, starve, feast, fail, or make money, but so long as we are not bored, it does not matter very much which. When we lose that reaching, soaring eagerness of spirit, and cease to be, like Teufelsdröckh, “wonder loving and wonder seeking,” then indeed we lose our birth-right. We dry up, and grow old, and generally become encumbrances upon the face of the earth, and nuisances to ourselves.
More than once Mrs. Carpenter had met and walked with this phantom, but it seemed to her that never had she felt on such intimate terms with him as to-day. Was there really anything in the world worth looking for, or looking at, once you had found it? She was inclined to think not, even though her plastic memory carried the imprint of a thousand vivid experiences, emotions, and enthusiasms. As restless as a storm-tossed boat, she was again wandering forth upon the high seas. And for what port was she headed? For what end was her cruise?
With a shiver, in spite of the soft air that blew against her face, she got up and went to the back platform of the train. They were slowing up at a way station, and experience had proved to her that in the Western States a stop at a station was a stop; not a mere formal call, but a comfortable, lengthy visit. So she descended, and began to walk up and down, the while she looked disgustedly at the town, most of which was visible from the station.
“Twenty-two saloons,” she counted aloud. “And a Sunday school! What a comment on the civilization of the West!”
And at that moment she heard a very faint giggle close at hand. She jumped with surprise, and stared around her; but there was no one to be seen. It seemed like witchcraft, but witches do not, as a rule, frequent railways, and Philippa stood still and searched the immediate horizon thoroughly.
The little chuckle came again, even more faintly this time, and with a minor note in it, as if some one were not feeling a bit like laughing, but had been surprised into it.
The next moment, Pippa had bent her head swiftly, and was staring into a small face that glimmered whitely in the grimy dimness under the car.
Mrs. Carpenter had heard that tramps did sometimes “steal rides” perched in this perilous and uncomfortable fashion above the wheels of trains, but the fact somehow had seemed to belong to fabulous and fictionary realms,and she certainly would never have dreamed of happening upon the thing herself. Yet here was a real, living human creature making a long and weary journey in such picturesque and dangerous style!
A trackman approached, tramping heavily, and a voice issued in hurried accents from the small, white face:
“Don't give me away, will you?”
Pippa straightened up, and turned her eyes once more upon the twenty-two saloons, ranged formidably in a row parallel with the track.
“And a Sunday school!” she repeated softly.
The trackman passed on. She heard a low sigh, as if of relief, and leaned down to see more of the tramp.
It was a slim, small, shabby boy, with great dark eyes staring out of a chalk-white face, and thin, dirty hands that clung convulsively to his precarious support. He seemed about fifteen or sixteen, though some haunted, hunted look about his tense mouth suggested that he might be older, in experience, if not in years.
“Why,” gasped Pippa, “you're hardly more than a child, are you?”
“Eighteen,” said the tramp, in a rather tired voice.
“Do—do you have to do this?” asked Mrs. Carpenter, genuinely aghast.
“Ride the rods? You bet I do! Do you think I'd be doing it for fun?”
The boy did not seem to mean to be impertinent; he was simply quite candid, and very weary.
“When did you get on?” asked Philippa, amazement giving full place to pity.
The boy's white face seemed to grow a little more pinched and haggard.
“This morning,” he replied. “I had to wait for this train, and I lost a whole night! They pinched me on the other, and chucked me off.”
A phrase in this caught Mrs. Carpenter's attention.
“Was it so important,” she queried gently, “losing the whole night?”
“My mother's sick,” explained the boy, without expression. “I guess she's dying, or they wouldn't have sent for me. Dad swore he never would, after I—left home.”
“Why should a boy as young as you are want to leave home?” asked Pippa, genuinely interested. “Were you running away to sea, or what was it?”
“I'm not a boy,” said the tramp laconically. “I'm a girl.”
Before Pippa could more than just grasp this astonishing fact, a hissing and grinding and ringing announced the approaching departure of the train, and she hurriedly climbed on board. As she sank into her green plush corner once more, she felt a bit breathless and dizzy. Was it only a few minutes ago that she had sat there sulking over the uninterestingness of life? And all the time a runaway girl tramp had been—what was the weird phrase?—“riding the rods,” almost underneath her!
“I might have known,” said Philippa to herself, “that something exciting was happening close by! There always is, if you look for it!”
This particular train stopped at a varied assortment of ash heaps, wood piles, and water tanks—for the stopping places could certainly not be dignified by terms more pretentious—and Philippa soon had another opportunity to slip from the back platform. While ostensibly viewing a sleepy and unattractive little way station, occupied, seemingly, only by a blind negro and a mangy cat, she addressed the girl tramp once more:
“Why did you leave home?”
The tramp laughed huskily. “Why do girls leave home? Question or quotation, just as you like! I left because I was just the usual sort of female idiot, and—got into trouble. Mother would have stood by me, but dad thought a perfectly good sister just beginning to go about, and a perfectly good brother finishing high school, were more worth while than I was, so he said so, and I cleared out. The—the man—he was one of those gilt-edged ones that don't have to tell the truth—said he'd look out for me if I went to Chicago. Well, I went. And that's the end of that!”
“Are you hungry?” asked Pippa, in a sudden and irrelevant burst.
“Oh, gee!” said the tramp very softly.
The train grunted again, and Mrs. Carpenter barely got on to it in time. In her seat she was soon busily thinking. And incidentally she had forgotten that she had ever been bored!
It was late afternoon, and the child had had nothing to eat since morning. Why, she must be famished! Mrs. Carpenter began to turn over in her mind varied plans for feeding her. And then, all at once, the whole idea came to her, full-fledged and inspirational: why not smuggle her on board the train? Why not
Pippa sat up suddenly, and hailed a passing porter.
“I am going out to sit on the back platform for a while,” she said. “Can you get me a chair or a camp stool? And please carry this for me.”
She handed him a light dust coat, such as eight women out of ten carry when traveling through a warm climate. And when she was settled on the platform, she said, fingering the catch of her gold purse:
“Do you know if there is a stateroom vacant on the train?”
He reflected.
“Reckon so, ma'am. Ah don' rightly know, but Ah'll ask de po'ter on de nex' car.”
There was a vacant stateroom, they found, and Pippa promptly engaged it.
“I've a friend who is to join me at the next station,” she explained carelessly. “I forget the name” She hesitated, seeming to be trying to remember.
“You mean Blackstone,” said the negro. “Yas'm! Dat's de nex' stop—jus' de oder side ob de tunnel.”
“What tunnel?” demanded Pippa hastily. She did not like tunnels.
“De long, big tunnel, ma'am. We strike it in 'bout twenty minutes, an' takes her mos' half an hour to go through! Yas'm!”
Pippa shuddered. If she did not like tunnels herself, how about the girl lying cramped and choked between the wheels, with steam and coal gas and cinders blowing against her face and filling her aching lungs? The shudder was galvanized into a sort of electric tremor. Something must be done, and immediately.
“Don't we stop at all before we reach the tunnel?” she asked, almost sharply.
“Well, yas'm. We gen'ally stops 'long 'bout jus' inside de tunnel fo' a minute or two. Den Ah goes 'bout shuttin' winders an' vent'lators, an' tuhnin' on de 'lectric lights, an'”
She opened the gold purse, and held out. a crisp green bill.
“How far can you be trusted?” she demanded succinctly. “Five dollars' worth?”
The man—Joe, his name was—gazed raptly at the bill, and grasped it reverently. His eyes bulged in his black face. Pippa felt fairly sure of him, and she unfolded her plan in a rapid undertone.
Twenty minutes later her things were in the newly engaged stateroom, and she was standing on the platform nearest it, with a dust coat over her arm, peering anxiously into the growing dimness and murkiness of the tunnel. The mouth of it was becoming a smaller and smaller round of light; the air was increasingly heavier and more difficult to breathe. Would the train never slow down? Would the girl down there in the darkness faint before they could get to her?
There was a creak and a jar, and the car swayed beneath her. God was good; it was moving more and more slowly! Yes—it was really stopping! There was a sort of sick jerk, and the train was still.
In the sudden silence, she heard the porter inside the car explaining in apologetic tones: “Ah suttenly am sorry, suh! De 'lectric lights won' light fo' me to-day! Ah'll go an' repo't 'em right away; suh!”
The next moment he was beside her on the platform.
“Quick!” murmured Pippa breathlessly.
He nodded, and slipped down into the choking darkness. She held the coat open in her arms, trembling from head to foot with excitement. In less than a minute a little white, blurred face told her that the tramp girl was being helped up the car steps.
“Ketch hold, ma'am!” muttered the negro. “She cain't walk much yet!”
In a second's space the girl was in the coat, and also in Mrs. Carpenter's close clasp. Joe had the door open, and Pippa and her tramp passed swiftly through the darkness to the stateroom.
The train started, and the porter suddenly found himself mysteriously able to switch on the refractory electric lights. He had also contrived to make up the stateroom berth in miraculously quick time, and the girl fell in a limp little heap upon it. For the first time Philippa was able to see what she really looked like. The slender, boyish body, the roughly cropped dark hair, the firm little jaw, and the tightly set young mouth all lent themselves to the masquerade she was playing. She truly did look like a boy—a tired, sick, worn-out, miserable little boy.
A light tap heralded Joe with a tray of sandwiches and coffee.
“Couldn' get nuffin' mo', ma'am,”' he explained. “De dinin' car don' open fo' half an hour.”
As he turned to leave the compartment, he paused, and looked down at the girl on the berth. His black face was wrinkled with compassion.
“De poor—li'l'—pusson!” said he gently, and tiptoed out.
The girl tramp opened her great eyes, and gazed up wonderingly into Mrs. Carpenter's.
“I didn't know there were any women as good as you,” she said slowly.
Pippa winced. “I'm not good,” she said simply.
But the tramp was persistent.
“You bet you are!” she declared. “Most women would have just said, 'It isn't my business,' and let it go at that. You didn't!”
“Maybe,” said Philippa, in a low voice, “it's because I'm not—good—that I—didn't.”
They looked at each other for a few moments, in that strange, deep understanding that comes from a common knowledge of the dark places of life, a common remembrance of stormy waters and of devastating winds.
Then the girl told her story, filling in the gaps of her first brief little narrative with detail and explanation. While she talked, Pippa fed her with morsels of meat and bread and sips of coffee.
“What was the name of—the man?” she asked her finally.
And the girl told her; adding, “He's 'way up in G, and owns mines, and railroads, and yachts, and little things like that. I guess a girl more or less doesn't matter a whole heap to him!”
Pippa sat still, wondering at the wild improbabilities that color this our human life. “When we read about these things in novels and magazines,” she said to herself, “and when we see them on the stage, we say they're impossible. Yet they go on happening right along!”
For Pippa knew the man.
A hundred years before, more or less, he had been a friend and admirer of hers. She knew that in the last decade he had climbed up to a position such as few little tin gods may hold. She did not see much of him, for she had never liked or trusted him, but he had reminded her constantly of his existence, and she had reason to believe that there were few things this side of murder or gratuitous philanthropy that he would not be willing to do for her.
The girl, who had not even noticed her start of surprise, was going on with her tale. “And if there's any God,” she finished up, “He'll let me get to Los Angeles in time to let me see mother—once. If I don't, I'll never even try to believe in Him again!”
In the odd way in which Fate, the incomparable dramatist, permits things to happen on appropriate cues, the black face of Joe appeared once more in the doorway.
“Ah done knocked,” he apologized, “but Ah reckon you-all didn' hear me. Anythin' Ah can get? De diner am open.”
Pippa gave an order, and he was departing when the girl sat up in the berth.
“Wait!” she cried. “I guess I'm nutty all right! I was forgetting. This is the Frisco train; I have to change at Ogden. When do we get there?”
The negro shook his head.
“Don' know, miss,” he said. “We're two hours late already. What train was you aimin' fo' to take?”
“The Los Angeles Express,” she said, her eyes widening with apprehension.
“Cain't make it, miss,” said Joe, with that lugubrious joy in breaking bad news that seems to be characteristic of his race and kind.
The girl tramp fell back upon the pillow with a cry like that of a hurt animal.
“I'll be too late!' she moaned. “I'll be too late!”
“Isn't there a chance,” demanded Philippa, “of their holding the express?”
“No, ma'am! Dat am de gilt-edged limited, ma'am, an' it don' wait fo' nuffin'!”
Pippa began to think; to think harder and faster than she had ever thought in her life. She saw almost instantly that there was only one thing to be done. She had never been willing to accept a favor for herself from that Chicago man; but here was some one with a right to his favors. She turned swiftly to the porter.
“Please get me a telegraph blank,” she said.
The girl soon slept the deep sleep of weakness and fatigue, and Mrs. Carpenter ate a solitary dinner, and watched the hands of her little traveling clock.
At ten o'clock, Joe handed in a yellow envelope. Pippa tore it open. The message was characteristically brief and to the point:
- Telegram received. Thanks for the privilege. Instructions for train conductor and engine driver follow: “Los Angeles Express being held for you. Get a move on. The bearer has the track.”
And it was signed with the name of a man so high up that he could be both slangy and brusque without impairing his augustness.
Pippa laid a light hand upon the girl tramp's shoulder.
“Wake up!” she said softly. “It's all right; you'll catch your train. This telegram is for you. It gives you right of way.”
In the small hours before morning Pippa Carpenter lay in her berth, staring into the night. The girl tramp, with a little extra money in the pocket of Philippa's dust coat, was safe on board the limited bound for Los Angeles, and had promised to write the day after she got there. Now that it was all over, Pippa felt profoundly tired, but the boredom of the afternoon had quite evaporated. She was a-thrill with adventure and interest. Life once more showed possibilities for exploration.
And suddenly, in the darkness, above the roar and rattle of the train, she seemed to hear a voice; a voice that she had heard actually but once, yet would recognize at any time, in any place, under any conditions; a voice that, while promising nothing, yet seemed to vibrate with promises. He—this man whom she had spoken with for a few brief moments—seemed, in her dreamy mood, a part of this new faring forth of hers.
Once more she was “yearning beyond the sky line,” once more she was shaken by that ancient unrest which seemed an intrinsic part of her very spirit's core. Sometimes it seemed to her that she must have flitted through other worlds and outer space in just such unquiet fashion. Surely her soul had never been at peace since the beginning of things. And now a new restlessness, a new fever, quickened her pulse and tingled through her nerves. What was waiting for her, there in the West—and, beyond that, in the East?
The night air poured in through the open window. The car was quiet, save for the roar of the train. The moon was going down, and a faintly silvered world flashed past. Pippa sat in the rhythmic darkness and leaned her head against the window frame. Her eyes sought the setting moon, and, gazing dreamily at it, drooped at last.
With her face turned toward the Pacific, she slept.