In the necessity, which we all feel, of making practical excuses to
ourselves for a foolish action, he pretended that he had been at
Craybrooks long enough, and that now, since he had derived all the
benefit to be got from the west-side air, it was best to begin his
homestretch on the other slope of the hills. His real reason was that he
wished to stop at Lower Merritt and experience whatever fortuities might
happen to him from doing so. He wished, in other words, to see Phyllis
Desmond, or, failing this, to find out whether her piano had reached
her.
It had now a pathos for him which had been wanting earlier in his
romance. It was no longer a gay surprise for a young girl's birthday; it
was the sober means of living to a woman who must work for her living.
But he found it not the less charming for that; he had even a more
romantic interest in it, mingled with the sense of patronage, of
protection, which is so agreeable to a successful man.
He began to long for some new occasion of promoting the arrival of the
piano in Lower Merritt, and he was so far from regretting his former
interventions that at the first junction where his train stopped he
employed the time in exploring the freight-house in the vain hope of
finding it there, and urging the road to greater speed in its delivery
to Miss Desmond. He was now not at all ashamed of the stand he had taken
in the matter at former opportunities, and he was not abashed when a man
in a silk cap demanded, across the twilight of the freight-house, in
accents of the semi-sarcasm appropriate in addressing a person
apparently not minding his own business, "Lost something?"
"Yes, I have," answered Gaites with just effrontery. "I've lost an
upright piano. I started with it from Boston ten days or a fortnight
ago, and I've found it everywhere I've stopped, and sometimes where I
didn't stop. How long, in the course of nature, ought an upright piano
to take in getting to this point from Boston, anyway?"
The man obviously tasted the sarcasm in Gaites's tone, and dropped it
from his own, but he was sulkier if more respectful than before in
answering: "'D ought a come right through in a couple of days. 'D ought
a been here a week ago."
"Why isn't it here now, then?"
"Might 'a' got off on some branch road, by mistake, and waited there
till it was looked up. You see," the man continued, resting an elbow on
the tall casing of a chest of drawers, and dropping to a more
confidential level in his manner, "an upright piano ain't like a
passenger. It don't kick if it's shunted off on the wrong line. As a
gene'l rule, freight don't complain of the route it travels by, and it
ain't in a hurry to arrive."
"Oh!" said Gaites, with a sympathetic sneer.
"But it ain't likely," said the man, who now pushed his hat far back on
his head, in the interest of self-possession, "that it's gone wrong.
With all these wash-outs and devilments, the last fo't-night, it might
a' been travellin' straight and not got the'a, yet. What d'you say was
the address?"
"Lower Merritt," said Gaites, beginning to feel a little uncomfortable.
"Name?" persisted the man.
"Miss Phyllis Desmond," Gaites answered, now feeling really silly, but
unable to get away without answering.
"That ain't your name?" the man suggested, with reviving sarcasm.
"No, it isn't!" Gaites retorted, angrily, aware that he was giving
himself away in fine shape.
"Oh, I see," the man mocked. "Friend o' the family. Well, I guess you'll
find your piano at Lower Merritt, all right, in two-three weeks." He was
now openly offensive, as with a sense of having Gaites in his power.
A locomotive-bell rang, and Gaites started toward the doorway. "Is that
my train?"
The man openly laughed. "Guess it is, if you're goin' to Lower Merritt."
As Gaites shot through the doorway toward his train, he added, in an
insolent drawl, "Miss--Des--mond!"
Gaites was so furious when he got back to the smoking-room of the
parlor-car that he was sorry for several miles that he had not turned
back and kicked the man, even if it lost him his train. But this was
only while he was under the impression that he was furious with the man.
When he discovered that he was furious with himself, for having been all
imaginable kinds of an ass, he perceived that he had done the wisest
thing he could in leaving the man to himself, and taking up the line of
his journey again. What remained mortifying was that he had bought his
ticket and checked his bag to Lower Merritt, which he wished never to
hear of again, much less see.
He rang for the porter and consulted him as to what could be done toward
changing the check on his bag from Lower Merritt to Middlemount
Junction; and as it appeared that this was quite feasible, since his
ticket would have carried him two stations beyond the Junction, he had
done it. He knew the hotel at Middlemount, and he decided to pass the
night there, and the next day to go back to Kent Harbor and June Alber,
and let Lower Merritt and Phyllis Desmond take care of themselves from
that time forward.
While the driver of the Middlemount House barge was helping the
station-master-and-baggage-man (they were one) put the arriving
passengers' trunks into the wagon for the Middlemount House, Gaites
paced up and down the long platform in the remnant of his excitement,
and vowed himself to have nothing more to do with Miss Desmond's piano,
even if it should turn up then and there and personally appeal to him
for help. In this humor he was not prepared to have anything of the kind
happen, and he stood aghast, in looking absently into a freight-car
standing on the track, to read, "Miss Phyllis Desmond, Lower Merritt, N.
H.," on the slope of the now familiar case just within the open doorway.
It was as if the poor girl were personally there pleading for his help
with the eyes whose tenderness he remembered.
The united station-master-and-baggage-man, who appeared also to be the
freight agent, came lounging down the platform toward him. He was so
exactly of the rustic railroad type that he confused Gaites with a doubt
as to which functionary, of the many he now knew, this was.
"Go'n' to walk over to the hotel?" he asked.
"Yes," Gaites faltered, and the man abruptly turned, and made the
gesture for starting a locomotive to the driver of the Middlemount
stage.
"All right, Jim!" he shouted, and the stage drove off.
"What time can I get a train for Lower Merritt this afternoon?" asked
Gaites.
"Four o'clock," said the man. "This freight goes out first;" and now
Gaites noticed that up on a siding beyond the station an engine with a
train of freight-cars was fretfully fizzing. The engineer put a
silk-capped head out of the cab window and looked back at the
station-master, who began to work his arms like a semaphore telegraph.
Then the locomotive tooted, the bell rang, and the freight-train ran
forward on the switch to the main track, and commenced backing down to
where they stood. Evidently it was going to pick up the car with Phyllis
Desmond's piano in it.
"When does this freight go out?" Gaites palpitated.
"'Bout ten minutes," said the station-master.
"Does it stop at Lower Merritt?"
"Leaves this cah the'a," said the man, as if surprised into the
admission.
"Can I go on her?" Gaites pursued, breathlessly.
"Well, I guess you'll have to talk to this man about that," and the
station-master indicated, with a nod of his head, the freight conductor,
who was swinging himself down from the caboose, now come abreast of them
on the track. A brakeman had also jumped down, and the train fastened on
to the waiting car, under his manipulation, with a final cluck and jolt.
The conductor and station-master exchanged large oblong Manila-paper
envelopes, and the station-master said, casually, "Here's a man wants to
go to Lower Merritt with you, Bill."