TENDING TO SHOW THAT MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY
To natives of Los Angeles, or to those who have spent some years in that
beautiful city—so beautiful that one could easily vision Adam and Eve
as its occupants before the Fall—an earthquake tremor is just something
more than of passing interest. They remain “unusual calm” when the house
shakes, the pictures flap upon the wall, and the crockery rattles in
noisy unrest. They regard their earthquakes as tamed creatures—not more
formidable, practically speaking, than “a thing of noise and fury,
signifying nothing.” When visitors show agitation at the coming of an
earth tremor, these old inhabitants—and five years’ residence in Los
Angeles makes one something little short of a patriarch—are almost
scandalized. Should these strangers go the way that leads to hysteria,
the old inhabitants grow properly indignant, and point out that all the
tremors in the history of Los Angeles County are as nothing, in point of
damage, as compared to one solitary cyclone of the Middle West. No doubt
they are right.
However, to a stranger these pranks of mother earth are fraught with
terror. Many men and women are not only frightened, but actually become
sick. Dizziness and nausea are not uncommon, although the cause be only
a slight tremor of but three or four seconds’ duration.
Among those affected on this day, so momentous in her life and that of
her only child, was Mrs. Barbara Vernon. When the shock came she was
resting on the sands under the shade of one of those gigantic umbrellas
rented out at the beaches as a protection from the ardent rays of the
sun. Beside her sat Mrs. Sansone, Peggy’s mother.
“Oh, my God!” cried Mrs. Vernon, jumping to her feet and clasping her
hands. She would have run straight into the ocean had not Mrs. Sansone
laid upon her a restraining hand.
“My dear,” said the old inhabitant, “don’t be frightened. It’s really
nothing at all. We who live here don’t mind it in the least.” She patted
Mrs. Vernon’s beautiful cheek as she continued: “Why, my little Peggy
sees nothing in them. The last time we had an earthquake shock Peggy
said that the earth was trying to do the shimmy.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Vernon, “I’m feeling so ill! Let me lean on you, dear. I
feel as though I should faint.”
The sympathetic right arm of Mrs. Sansone wound itself about the other’s
waist.
“Many strangers are so affected,” she said. “But really there’s nothing
to fear. God is here with us right now.”
Mrs. Barbara Vernon unobtrusively made the sign of the cross.
“Thank you,” she said. “My fear is gone; but I feel sick, sick.”
“Lean on my arm, Mrs. Vernon. I will bring you to our Pullman, where you
can lie down and rest quietly.”
“But the children!” objected Barbara.
“Leave that to me. At the worst, Peggy knows the way, and she is really
a very punctual little girl.”
They had walked but a few paces, when an automobile, moving along the
sands, came abreast of them and stopped. The driver, its sole occupant,
leaned out.
“Beg pardon,” he said removing his hat, “but I fear one of you ladies is
rather indisposed. Anything I can do for you?”
“Indeed you can,” replied Mrs. Sansone very promptly. “This lady is
suffering from nausea. The earthquake is something new to her. You would
do us a great favor by bringing us to the railroad station.”
“Favor! It will be an immense pleasure to me.” As he spoke the young man
jumped out, threw open the door of the tonneau, and, hat in hand, helped
the two women in. He was rather a striking personality, thin almost to
emaciation, and despite the smile now upon his features, with a face
melancholy to the point of pathos.
“Los Angeles,” he remarked as he seated himself at the wheel, “would be
the most perfect place in the world if the earth hereabouts would only
keep sober. If I had my way,” he continued, in a voice only less
pathetic than his countenance, “I’d give the earth the pledge for life.
It’s a perfect country when it’s sober.”
Mrs. Sansone laughed.
“Even at that,” continued the melancholy man, allowing himself the
indulgence of a slight smile, “what does it amount to, a little bit of
an earthquake like that? It is merely a fly in the amber.”
“I agree with you absolutely,” said Mrs. Sansone.
“Which means you’re a native. That other lady—”
“Mrs. Barbara Vernon,” interpolated Mrs. Sansone.
“Thank you, glad to meet you, ma’am,” said the stranger, turning his
head and smiling ungrudgingly. “You, I take it, don’t see it as we do.
Instead of a fly in the amber, you regard it rather as a shark in a
swimming pool.”
“It is very kind of you,” said Barbara, “to go out of your way for me. I
can’t tell you how I appreciate your goodness. I shall pray for you.”
The driver’s face changed from melancholy to reverence.
“Please remember that,” he said. As he spoke he thought of the great
Thackeray’s great words on the preciousness of living on in the heart of
one good woman.
Had Barbara been his own mother he could not have been more attentive.
He helped her from the car, placed her in her section, and furtively
slipping a dollar into the porter’s responsive fist, got that
functionary into a state of useful and eager activity which would have
filled, had he seen it, the Pullman superintendent’s heart with wild
delight.
“Can’t I get you a physician, Mrs. Vernon?” pleaded the stranger.
“I need none, thank you. You have done infinitely more than I had any
right to expect.”
“Well, then, I am going to leave you in the hands of this lady—”
“Mrs. Estelle Sansone,” supplied the owner of that name.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sansone. I am glad to know your name. And,” he
continued, turning upon Barbara the most melancholy eyes she had ever
seen, while taking reverently her proffered hand, “I beg you, Mrs.
Vernon, to remember me in—in—to remember me as you said.”
“Indeed and indeed I will. God bless you!”
“Amen,” answered the young man thickly. His face twitched, he paused as
though about to speak, and then suddenly turned and left the car.
“Isn’t he strange!” ejaculated Barbara. “I never saw a more melancholy
face.”
“He is very strange,” assented Mrs. Sansone.
There was a depth of meaning in her words, unsuspected by Barbara, for
the kind Italian woman had recognized the good Samaritan. This
melancholy man was, in her estimation, the greatest screen comedian in
the world.
“And,” continued Barbara, when the porter had placed a second pillow
under her head, “with all his melancholy, he is so kind and so good!”
“I don’t understand,” commented the Italian. Again the depth of this
remark was lost upon Barbara. For Mrs. Sansone knew much of the gossip
concerning the great comedian. She knew that he had figured in many
episodes which, to say the least, were anything but savory. And now she
had met the man in a few intimate moments and seen him kind, gentle,
gracious, and with a reverence for a good woman and a good woman’s
prayers that had filled her with a feeling akin to awe. As she
ministered lovingly to Barbara she meditated upon these opposing truths,
and so meditating took a new lesson in the school of experience, a
lesson the fruits of which are wisdom.
“I am anxious about my boy,” said Barbara opening her eyes and
endeavoring vainly to sit up.
Mrs. Sansone threw a quick glance about the car. Her gaze rested
presently upon an elderly woman whose face was eminently kindly. She was
every inch a matron. Mrs. Estelle Sansone stepped over to her.
“Pardon me,” she said, “but the lady over there is quite ill, and she is
worrying about her little boy, who should have been back by this time. I
don’t like to leave her alone while I go in search—”
“And,” broke in the other, “you want some one to take your place? I
thank you for asking me. I’ve been a widow for nearly fourteen years,
and since my husband’s death I have worked as nurse in the Northwestern
Railroad’s emergency ward in Chicago.”
“Why, I couldn’t have made a better choice,” cried Mrs. Sansone.
“It’s my first real pleasure trip—mine and my daughter’s—since my
widowhood,” continued the woman, “but the pleasures of travel are as
nothing compared with waiting on any good woman in distress.”
The introductions were quickly made, and Mrs. Sansone left the car,
feeling that Barbara was in hands better far than her own.
She looked about the station. The clock indicated that in about five
minutes the train would start. Mrs. Sansone grew anxious. She hurried
along the platform, looking eagerly on every side for some sign of the
children. A glance towards the beach rewarded her searching. Peggy, her
hair streaming in the wind, was running towards her. Mrs. Sansone’s
heart sank. Where was the boy? A sense of calamity seized her. She too
ran to meet the child.
“Oh, mother, mother!” cried Peggy, throwing her arms about Mrs. Sansone
and bursting into a new agony of grief.
“Dearest,” crooned Mrs. Sansone, raising the child to her bosom, “tell
me! What has become of Bobby?”
“Oh, mother! I am afraid!”
“Tell the truth, darling. No matter what—it is your mother who listens.
She will understand; she will not scold.”
“Bobby is drowned!”
“Oh, blessed Mary!” cried Mrs. Sansone, restoring Peggy to the sands and
clasping her hands in dismay. “I can’t believe it! Tell me, dear, how it
happened.”
“Bobby was wading, and he was trying to be obedient. He got out too far,
and I reminded him of his promise to his mother. And he said he was
going to keep his promise. And just while he was talking to me a big
roller came on him—you see, his back was turned—and that roller
knocked him down and pulled him out, and when I looked—”
Here Peggy fell to weeping again.
“What, dear? Tell me quick.”
“He was gone.”
“And were there none around to go to his help?”
“We were alone.”
“And did you call for help?”
“No, mother. I just ran away.”
“And you said nothing, dearest?”
“No. I was afraid they would think I was a murderer.”
Mrs. Sansone had long walked the paths of wisdom. She knew how common it
was for little children, witnesses to a drowning or a like calamity, to
fly from the scene and in fear keep silent. She understood.
“You were frightened, dearest. If you were older, you would have called
for help. But you are not to blame. God help us! Now, Peggy, come with
me. Or stay—I must break the news to his poor mother.”
“And tell her,” said Peggy sobbingly, “that his last words were how he
must always keep his promises, especially those he made to his mother.”
Then Mrs. Sansone wept. It was a bitter moment.
“All aboard!” cried one of the trainmen.
Peggy and her mother were just in time to mount the platform when the
train started.
Then, with love and pity and all manner of gentleness, Mrs. Sansone told
the pitiful story. When the full horror of it was grasped by Barbara,
she asked for her crucifix, gazed upon it fixedly for several seconds,
kissed it, and fell into a faint.
Then it was that all that was matronly shone forth in Mrs. Feehan. Then
it was that she and Mrs. Sansone, never for a moment neglecting the sick
woman, mingled their tears and their grief. The porter, the gayest,
chattiest porter in that section of the Pullman service, was their
willing slave. He too became a partner in their sorrow. In fact, every
passenger on the car and every employee of the road on duty duly caught
the spirit of sympathy, and before Barbara came to, dry-eyed and almost
despairing, lines and telephones were busy in a vain endeavor to get any
possible light on the drowning.
“But,” cried Barbara when she became fully conscious of the dark
tragedy, “I must go back! I cannot go on without my boy!”
The conductor was summoned.
“I can let you off, lady,” he explained. “But I doubt whether you can
get any means of returning at this point. Besides, when we arrive at the
next station, we may expect an answer concerning the child. In that way
you will get word quicker than if you were to return at once.”
“Mrs. Vernon,” urged the nurse, “it would be the worst thing you could
do to return. You are physically unfit just now to walk or make any kind
of exertion. You need several hours of complete rest. If you take my
advice, you will go on and not attempt to leave the car until the shock
has passed and your strength returns.”
“But I must go back—I must!” cried Barbara hysterically. As she spoke
she suddenly rose and took a few quick steps. But the effort was too
much. She staggered, and despite her efforts fell back into the arms of
the kind matron.