THE TRAIN COMES IN
There is in Orham a self-appointed committee whose duty it is to see the
train come in. The committeemen receive no salary for their services;
the sole compensation is the pleasure derived from the sense of duty
done. Rain, snow, or shine, the committee is on hand at the station--the
natives, of course, call it the “deepo”--to consume borrowed tobacco
and to favor Providence with its advice concerning the running of the
universe. Also it discusses local affairs with fluency and more or less
point.
Mr. “Squealer” Wixon, a lifelong member of this committee, was the first
to sight Captain Eri as the latter strolled across the tracks into the
circle of light from the station lamps. The Captain had moored Daniel to
a picket in the fence over by the freight-house. He had heard the clock
in the belfry of the Methodist church strike eight as he drove by that
edifice, but he heard no whistle from the direction of the West Orham
woods, so he knew that the down train would arrive at its usual time,
that is, from fifteen to twenty minutes behind the schedule.
“Hey!” shouted Mr. Wixon with enthusiasm. “Here's Cap'n Eri! Well, Cap,
how's she headin'?”
“'Bout no'theast by no'th,” was the calm reply. “Runnin' fair, but with
lookout for wind ahead.”
“Hain't got a spare chaw nowheres about you, have you, Cap'n?” anxiously
inquired “Bluey” Batcheldor. Mr. Batcheldor is called “Bluey” for the
same reason that Mr. Wixon is called “Squealer,” and that reason has
been forgotten for years.
Captain Eri obligingly produced a black plug of smoking tobacco, and Mr.
Batcheldor bit off two-thirds and returned the balance. After adjusting
the morsel so that it might interfere in the least degree with his vocal
machinery, he drawled:
“I cal'late you ain't heard the news, Eri. Web Saunders has got his
original-package license. It come on the noon mail.”
The Captain turned sharply toward the speaker. “Is that a fact?” he
asked. “Who told you?”
“See it myself. So did Squealer and a whole lot more. Web was showin' it
round.”
“We was wonderin',” said Jabez Smalley, a member of the committee whose
standing was somewhat impaired, inasmuch as he went fishing occasionally
and was, therefore, obliged to miss some of the meetings, “what kind of
a fit John Baxter would have now. He's been pretty nigh distracted ever
sence Web started his billiard room, callin' it a 'ha'nt of sin' and a
whole lot more names. There ain't been a 'Come-Outers' meetin' 'sence
I don't know when that he ain't pitched into that saloon. Now, when he
hears that Web's goin' to sell rum, he'll bust a biler sure.”
The committee received this prophecy with an hilarious shout of approval
and each member began to talk. Captain Eri took advantage of this
simultaneous expression of opinion to walk away. He looked in at the
window of the ticket-office, exchanged greetings with Sam Hardy, the
stationmaster, and then leaned against the corner of the building
furthest removed from Mr. Wixon and his friends, lit his pipe and puffed
thoughtfully with a troubled expression on his face.
From the clump of blackness that indicated the beginning of the West
Orham woods came a long-drawn dismal “toot”; then two shorter ones. The
committee sprang to its feet and looked interested. Sam Hardy came out
of the ticket office. The stage-driver, a sharp-looking boy of about
fourteen, with a disagreeable air of cheap smartness sticking out all
over him, left his seat in the shadow of Mr. Batcheldor's manly form,
tossed a cigarette stump away and loafed over to the vicinity of the
“depot wagon,” which was backed up against the platform. Captain Eri
knocked the ashes from his pipe and put that service-stained veteran in
his pocket. The train was really “coming in” at last.
If this had been an August evening instead of a September one, both
train and platform would have been crowded. But the butterfly summer
maiden had flitted and, as is his wont, the summer man had flitted after
her, so the passengers who alighted from the two coaches that, with
the freight car, made up the Orham Branch train, were few in number and
homely in flavor. There was a very stout lady with a canvas extension
case and an umbrella in one hand and a bulging shawl-strap and a
pasteboard box in the other, who panted and wheezed like the locomotive
itself and who asked the brakeman, “What on airth DO they have such high
steps for?” There was a slim, not to say gawky, individual with a chin
beard and rubber boots, whom the committee hailed as “Andy” and welcomed
to its bosom. There were two young men, drummers, evidently, who nodded
to Hardy, and seemed very much at home. Also, there was another young
man, smooth-shaven and square-shouldered, who deposited a suit-case on
the platform and looked about him with the air of being very far from
home, indeed.
The drummers and the stout lady got into the stage. The young man with
the suit-case picked up the latter and walked toward the same vehicle.
He accosted the sharp boy, who had lighted another cigarette.
“Can you direct me to the cable station?” he asked.
“Sure thing!” said the youth, and there was no Cape Cod twist to his
accent. “Git aboard.”
“I didn't intend to ride,” said the stranger.
“What was you goin' to do? Walk?”
“Yes, if it's not far.”
The boy grinned, and the members of the committee, who had been staring
with all their might, grinned also. The young man's mention of the cable
station seemed to have caused considerable excitement.
“Oh, it ain't too FAR!” said the stage-driver. Then he added: “Say,
you're the new electrician, ain't you?”
The young man hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “Yes,” and
suggested, “I asked the way.”
“Two blocks to the right; that's the main road, keep on that for four
blocks, then turn to the left, and if you keep on straight ahead you'll
get to the station.”
“Blocks?” The stranger smiled. “I think you must be from New York.”
“Do you?” inquired the youthful prodigy, climbing to the wagon seat.
“Don't forget to keep straight ahead after you turn off the main road.
Git dap! So long, fellers!” He leaned over the wheel, as the stage
turned, and bestowed a wink upon the delighted “Squealer,” who was
holding one freckled paw over his mouth; then the “depot wagon” creaked
away.
The square-shouldered young man looked after the equipage with an odd
expression of countenance. Then he shrugged his shoulders, picked up the
suitcase, and walked off the platform into the darkness.
Mr. Wixon removed the hand from his mouth and displayed a mammoth
grin, that grew into a shriek of laughter in which every member of the
committee joined.
“Haw! haw!” bellowed “Bluey,” “so that's the feller that done Parker out
of his job! Well, he may be mighty smart, but if that Joe Bartlett ain't
smarter then I'm a skate, that's all! Smartest boy ever I see! 'If you
keep on straight ahead you'll git to the station!' Gosh! he'll have to
wear rubbers!”
“Maybe he's web-footed,” suggested Smalley, and they laughed again.
A little later Captain Eri, with a dozen new, clean-smelling cranberry
barrels in the wagon behind him, drove slowly down the “depot road.” It
was a clear night, but there was no moon, and Orham was almost at its
darkest, which is very dark, indeed. The “depot road”--please bear in
mind that there are no streets in Orham--was full of ruts, and although
Daniel knew his way and did his best to follow it, the cranberry barrels
rattled and shook in lively fashion. There are few homes near the
station, and the dwellers in them conscientiously refrain from showing
lights except in the ends of the buildings furthest from the front.
Strangers are inclined to wonder at this, but when they become better
acquainted with the town and its people, they come to know that front
gates and parlors are, by the majority of the inhabitants, restricted in
their use to occasions such as a funeral, or, possibly, a wedding. For
the average Orham family to sit in the parlor on a week evening would be
an act bordering pretty closely on sacrilege.
It is from the hill by the Methodist church that the visitor to Orham
gets his best view of the village. It is all about him, and for the most
part below him. At night the lights in the houses show only here and
there through the trees, but those on the beaches and at sea shine
out plainly. The brilliant yellow gleam a mile away is from the Orham
lighthouse on the bluff. The smaller white dot marks the light on
Baker's Beach. The tiny red speck in the distance, that goes and comes
again, is the flash-light at Setuckit Point, and the twinkle on the
horizon to the south is the beacon of the lightship on Sand Hill Shoal.
It is on his arrival at this point, too, that the stranger first notices
the sound of the surf. Being a newcomer, he notices this at once; after
he has been in the village a few weeks, he ceases to notice it at all.
It is like the ticking of a clock, so incessant and regular, that one
has to listen intently for a moment or two before his accustomed ear
will single it out and make it definite. One low, steady, continuous
roar, a little deeper in tone when the wind is easterly, the voice of
the old dog Ocean gnawing with foaming mouth at the bone of the Cape and
growling as he gnaws.
It may be that the young man with the square shoulders and the suit-case
had paused at the turn of the road by the church to listen to this
song of the sea; at any rate he was there, and when Captain Eri steered
Daniel and the cranberry barrels around the corner and into the “main
road,” he stepped out and hailed.
“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I'm afraid I'm mixed in my directions.
The stage-driver told me the way to the cable station, but I've
forgotten whether he said to turn to the right when I reached here, or
to the left.”
Captain Eri took his lantern from the floor of the wagon and held it up.
He had seen the stranger when the latter left the train, but he had not
heard the dialogue with Josiah Bartlett.
“How was you cal'latin' to go to the station?” he asked.
“Why, I intended to walk.”
“Did you tell them fellers at the depot that you wanted to walk?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, I swan! And they give you the direction?”
“Yes,” a little impatiently; “why shouldn't they? So many blocks till I
got to the main street, or road, and so many more, till I got somewhere
else, and then straight on.”
“Blocks, hey? That's Joe Bartlett. That boy ought to be mastheaded, and
I've told Perez so more'n once. Well, Mister, I guess maybe you'd better
not try to walk to the cable station to-night. You see, there's one
thing they forgot to tell you. The station's on the outer beach, and
there's a ha'f mile of pretty wet water between here and there.”
The young man whistled. “You don't mean it!” he exclaimed.
“I sartin do, unless there's been an almighty drought since I left the
house. I tell you what! If you'll jump in here with me, and don't mind
waitin' till I leave these barrels at the house of the man that owns
'em, I'll drive you down to the shore and maybe find somebody to row you
over. That is,” with a chuckle, “if you ain't dead set on walkin'.”
The stranger laughed heartily. “I'm not so stubborn as all that,” he
said. “It's mighty good of you, all the same.”
“Don't say a word,” said the Captain. “Give us your satchel. Now your
flipper! There you are! Git dap, Dan'l!”
Daniel accepted the Captain's command in a tolerant spirit. He paddled
along at a jog-trot for perhaps a hundred yards, and then, evidently
feeling that he had done all that could be expected, settled back into a
walk. The Captain turned towards his companion on the seat:
“I don't know as I mentioned it,” he observed, “but my name is Hedge.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Hedge,” said the stranger. “My name is
Hazeltine.”
“I kind of jedged it might be when you said you wanted to git to the
cable station. We heard you was expected.”
“Did you? From Mr. Langley, I presume.”
“No-o, not d'rectly. Of course, we knew Parker had been let go, and that
somebody would have to take his place. I guess likely it was one of the
operators that told it fust that you was the man, but anyhow it got as
fur as M'lissy Busteed, and after that 'twas plain sailin'. You come
from New York, don't you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you know how 'tis when a thing gits into the papers. Orham ain't
big enough to have a paper of its own, so the Almighty give us M'lissy,
I jedge, as a sort of substitute. She can spread a little news over more
country than anybody I know. If she spreads butter the same way, she
could make money keepin' boarders. Is this your fust visit to the Cape?”
“Yes. I hardly know why I'm here now. I have been with the Cable Company
at their New York experimental station for some years, and the other day
the General Manager called me into his office and told me I was expected
to take the position of electrician here. I thought it might add to my
experience, so I accepted.”
“Humph! Did he say anything about the general liveliness of things
around the station?”
Mr. Hazeltine laughed. “Why,” he answered, “now that you speak of it,
I remember that he began by asking me if I had any marked objection to
premature burial.”
The Captain chuckled. “The outer beach in winter ain't exactly a
camp-meeting for sociableness,” he said. “And the idea of that Bartlett
boy tellin' you how to walk there!”
“Is he a specimen of your Cape Cod youngsters?”
“Not exactly. He's a new shipment from New York. Grand-nephew of a
messmate of mine, Cap'n Perez Ryder. Perez, he's a bachelor, but his
sister's daughter married a feller named Bartlett. Maybe you knew him;
he used to run a tugboat in the Sound.”
Mr. Hazeltine, much amused, denied the acquaintance.
“Well, I s'pose you wouldn't, nat'rally,” continued the Captain.
“Anyhow, Perez's niece's husband died, and the boy sort of run loose,
as yer might say. Went to school when he had to, and raised Ned when
he didn't, near's I can find out. 'Lizabeth, that's his ma, died last
spring, and she made Perez promise--he being the only relation the
youngster had--to fetch the boy down here and sort of bring him up.
Perez knows as much about bringing up a boy as a hen does about the Ten
Commandments, and 'Lizabeth made him promise not to lick the youngster
and a whole lot more foolishness. School don't commence here till
October, so we got him a job with Lem Mullett at the liv'ry stable. He's
boardin' with Lem till school opens. He ain't a reel bad boy, but he
knows too much 'bout some things and not ha'f enough 'bout others.
You've seen fellers like that, maybe?”
Hazeltine nodded. “There are a good many of that kind in New York, I'm
afraid,” he said.
Captain Eri smiled. “I shouldn't wonder,” he observed. “The boys down
here think Josiah's the whole crew, and the girls ain't fur behind.
There's been more deviltry in this village sence he landed than there
ever was afore. He needs somethin', and needs it bad, but I ain't
decided jest what it is yit. Are you a married man?”
“No.”
“Same here. Never had the disease. Perez, he's had symptoms every once
in a while, but nothin' lastin'. Jerry's the only one of us three that's
been through the mill. His wife died twenty year ago. I don't know as
I told you, but Jerry and Perez and me are keepin' house down by the
shore. That is, we call it keepin' house, but--”
Here the Captain broke off and seemed to meditate.
Ralph Hazeltine forbore to interrupt, and occupied himself by
scrutinizing the buildings that they were passing. They were nearing the
center of the town now, and the houses were closer together than they
had been on the “depot road,” but never so close as to be in the least
crowded. Each house had its ample front yard, and the new arrival
could smell the box hedges and see, now and then, the whiteness of the
kalsomined stones that bordered a driveway. It was too dark for the big
seashells at the front steps to be visible, but they were there, all the
same; every third house of respectability in Orham has them. There was
an occasional shop, too, with signs like “Cape Cod Variety Store,” or
“The Boston Dry Goods Emporium,” over their doors. On the platform of
one a small crowd was gathered, and from the interior came shouts of
laughter and the sound of a tin-panny piano.
“That's the billiard saloon,” volunteered Captain Eri, suddenly waking
from his trance. “Play pool, Mr. Hazeltine?”
“Sometimes.”
“What d'ye play it with?”
“Why, with a cue, generally speaking.”
“That so! Most of the fellers in there play it with their mouths. Miss a
shot and then spend the rest of the evenin' tellin' how it happened.”
“I don't think I should care to play it that way,” said Ralph, laughing.
“Well, it has its good p'ints. Kind of all-round exercise; develops the
lungs and strengthens the muscles, as the patent-medicine almanac says.
Parker played it considerable.”
“I judge that your opinion of my predecessor isn't a high one.”
“Who? Oh, Parker! He was all right in his way. Good many folks in this
town swore by him. I understand the fellers over at the station thought
he was about the ticket.”
“Mr. Langley included?”
“Oh, Mr. Langley, bein' manager, had his own ideas, I s'pose! Langley
don't play pool much; not at Web Saunders' place, anyhow. We turn in
here.”
They rolled up a long driveway, very dark and overgrown with trees, and
drew up at the back door of a good-sized two-story house. There was a
light in the kitchen window.
“Whoa, Dan'l!” commanded the Captain. Then he began to shout, “Ship
ahoy!” at the top of his lungs.
The kitchen door opened and a man came out, carrying a lamp, its light
shining full upon his face. It was an old face, a stern face, with white
eyebrows and a thin-lipped mouth. Just such a face as looked on with
approval when the executioner held up the head of Charles I., at
Whitehall. There was, however, a tremble about the chin that told of
infirm health.
“Hello, John!” said Captain Eri heartily. “John, let me make you
acquainted with Mr. Hazeltine, the new man at the cable station. Mr.
Hazeltine, this is my friend, Cap'n John Baxter.”
The two shook hands, and then Captain Eri said:
“John, I brought down them barrels for you. Hawkins got 'em here, same
as he always does, by the skin of his teeth. Stand by now, 'cause I've
got to deliver Mr. Hazeltine at the station, and it's gittin' late.”
John Baxter said nothing, beyond thanking his friend for the good turn,
but he “stood by,” as directed, and the barrels were quickly unloaded.
As they were about to drive out of the yard, Captain Eri turned in his
seat and said:
“John, guess I'll be up some time to-morrow. I want to talk with you
about that billiard-room business.”
The lamp in Baxter's hand shook.
“God A'mighty's got his eye on that place, Eri Hedge,” he shouted, “and
on them that's runnin' it!”
“That's all right,” said the Captain. “Then the job's in good hands, and
we ain't got to worry. Good-night.”
But, in spite of this assurance, Hazeltine noticed that his driver was
silent and preoccupied until they reached the end of the road by the
shore, when he brought the willing Daniel to a stand still and announced
that it was time to “change cars.”
It is a fifteen-minute row from the mainland to the outer beach, and
Captain Eri made it on schedule time. Hazeltine protested that he was
used to a boat, and could go alone and return the dory in the morning,
but the Captain wouldn't hear of it. The dory slid up on the sand and
the passenger climbed out. The sound of the surf on the ocean side of
the beach was no longer a steady roar, it was broken into splashing
plunges and hisses with, running through it, a series of blows like
those of a muffled hammer. The wind was wet and smelt salty.
“There's the station,” said the Captain, pointing to a row of lighted
windows a quarter of a mile away. “It IS straight ahead this time, and
the walkin's better'n it has been for the last few minutes. Good-night!”
The electrician put his hand in his pocket, hesitated, and then withdrew
it, empty.
“I'm very much obliged to you for all this,” he said. “I'm glad to have
made your acquaintance, and I hope we shall see each other often.”
“Same here!” said the Captain heartily. “We're likely to git together
once in a while, seein' as we're next-door neighbors, right across the
road, as you might say. That's my berth over yonder, where you see them
lights. It's jest 'round the corner from the road we drove down last.
Good-night! Good luck to you!”
And he settled himself for the row home.