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 making this 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, by her 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 the offer 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,” he said 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 the engine, 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 with offers 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, in the 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.