Through the Gap

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

Through the Gap.

The train wreck had taken fire. The first little leaping tongues, licking their way through shattered windows and chimney-like transoms, had given way to solid sheets of flame, dazzlingly white against the night, with sickening red edges which dissolved into a dull, overhanging pall of smoke. On the bank beside the track, full in the glare, a man was sitting, his night clothing torn and dirty, with little scorched places here and there which told of the struggle he had made with death. Now and then he ran his hand nervously over his hair, which had been singed into queer, irregular tufts of yellowish brown. His eyebrows, too, were gone, adding to the strangeness of the desperate eyes which were fixed upon the track.

A trainman ran past, holding a battered red lantern. He was hatless and coatless, and one arm hung limp beside him. As he came abreast of the man on the bank he stopped suddenly, looking at the lantern with fear-haunted eyes. Then he gave it a fling toward the flames.

“What's the use of a lantern in hell?” he muttered, catching at his broken arm with a gasp of pain. Then he became conscious of the man beside him. “They'll blame it on me,” he babbled. “You see if they don't. I went clear back over the trestle, but that cursed fool on forty-five wouldn't stop!”

The man on the bank did not notice. He sat quite still, his unwavering eyes fixed on the spot down the track where a gap had been left by a car which, had gone down the embankment. Shadowy figures were running through, now and then,sometimes with a burden, sometimes tottering alone. It was there, too, that the doctors from the relief train were working, their coats off, in the blistering heat. Just below, peaceful in the midst of the inferno, were the sheeted dead.

“I was clear back over the trestle,” reiterated the trainman, as if his statement had been questioned. “If you don't believe it, look at this arm. I fell through, I tell you, fell through!” His voice trailed weakly into a sob. “God, I wish it had killed me!”

But the man on the bank never moved, never heard. The trainman went on, lurching like a drunken man, down the track. A volunteer fire company was throwing a feeble, hissing stream into the midst of the fire, without effect.

A man, partly dressed, was coming alone up the track. He passed the trainman with a glance and kept on, but abreast of the man on the bank he stopped suddenly and looked at him. It required a second glance to recognize the altered face; but, apparently satisfied, he touched him on the shoulder. The man on the bank shifted his position uneasily, but without taking his eyes from, the gap in the flames.

“Hurt any?” asked the newcomer. He was a big man, in trousers and undershirt, one bare foot thrust into a low shoe, the other unprotected from the cinders. He sat down beside the other and looked at him closely. “Hurt any?” he repeated.

The man on the bank shook his head without speaking.

“Any one with you?” asked the other.

This time the nod was affirmative. The big man got up again heavily.

“Who was it?” he asked. “I'll go and look.”

But the other drew him down again with a convulsive gesture.

“Don't go,” he said hoarsely. “I—I don't want to know.”

For a minute there was silence. Then the big man raised his voice again, above the crackling of the flames.

“Who was it?”

“Wife and baby.”

The voice was calm with the quiet of absolute hopelessness. But the big man tried to reassure him.

“There's a crowd of people on the other side,” he said. “She may—they may—be there.”

“That's it.” The man on the bank put up his hand to shield his face from the glare. “I'm afraid to find that they're not. Who's that?” he asked suddenly, as a woman emerged slowly into view, a man supporting her with his arm around her.

“It's an old lady, I think,” said the big man.

The other sank back again.

“I was knocked senseless,” he said with difficulty. “When I came around, it was too late to—to do anything.”

Two more figures came through the gap, and a woman, rushing forward, wildly embraced the small, white-clad figure of a boy, who held out his arms. The man on the bank groaned.

“I haven't the faintest hope,” he said drearily, covering his eyes. “I wish you would watch that gap for a while. I've looked for so long that I can't see anything now but dancing specks of fire.”

The big man affected cheerfulness.

“They'll come, sure,” he said, his eyes on the gap between the cars. “There's another old lady now, and a man. There must be doctors working on that side, too; the woman has a bandage on her head.”

The other looked up, then covered his eyes again. Beside them, on the track, a Pullman blanket lay smoking. The big man brought it over, and threw it, toga-fashion, around his distraught companion. He looked up then, only to cover his eyes again.

“You'll know them,” he said, “if they come. Margaret was—is—tall and straight, with great coils of brown hair, and the baby has yellow curls. My God,” he repeated, “those little yellow curls!”

The big man stirred uneasily.

“I have two children at home myself,” he said a bit thickly.

“Why have I been saved?” went on the hopeless voice. “I've been a fool, and worse. Why, this very trip was flight, that's all. Flight!” He sat up and stared at a young woman who had come across the track and was sobbing hysterically that she had lost her jewels. “I forged a man's name. We needed money, and I hoped to pay it back, of course. But it was flight or arrest.” He paid no attention to the other man, who was leaning on his elbow, his eyes still fixed on the momentous gap. “I should have left them and gone alone,” went on the dreary voice, “but Margaret wouldn't allow it. I'd have gone to jail, for I deserved it; but there was the baby. How was Margaret to bring her up alone, and what would it be to have her grow up to think of her father as a felon?”

Down where the missing car had left a space a woman stepped suddenly into view. She had a man's raincoat thrown over her night-clothes, and in her arms she carried a golden-haired child. The man on the bank rose, first to his knees, then to his feet.

“Margaret!” he cried, and his voice carried over the crackling and roaring of the fire.

The woman turned toward him, and her face was radiant with joy.

Left alone, the big man watched the trio for a moment. Then he took from his pocket a folded paper and glanced over it. It was an officer's warrant of arrest. He looked from it to the face of the woman down the track—to the baby's yellow curls; then he slowly tore it into bits and flung it into the flames.

Mary Roberts Rinehart.