THE MANAGER OF THE B. & A.
A Novel
By Vaughan Kester
Grosset & Dunlap, New York
Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
1901
[Illustration: 0008]
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY UNCLE
HARRY WATKINS
THE MANAGER OF THE B. & A.
CHAPTER I
OAKLEY was alone in the bare general offices of the Huckleberry line-as
the Buckhom and Antioch Railroad was commonly called by the public,
which it betrayed in the matter of meals and connections. He was lolling
lazily over his desk with a copy of the local paper before him, and the
stem of a disreputable cob pipe between his teeth.
The business of the day was done, and the noise and hurry attending its
doing had given way to a sudden hush. Other sounds than those that had
filled the ear since morning grew out of the stillness. Big drops of
rain driven by the wind splashed softly against the unpainted pine door
which led into the yards, or fell with a gay patter on the corrugated
tin roof overhead. No. 7, due at 5.40, had just pulled out with twenty
minutes to make up between Antioch and Harrison, the western terminus
of the line. The six-o'clock whistle had blown, and the men from the car
shops, a dingy, one-story building that joined the general offices on
the east, were straggling off home. Across the tracks at the ugly little
depot the ticket-agent and telegraph-operator had locked up and hurried
away under one umbrella the moment No. 7 was clear of the platform. From
the yards every one was gone but Milton McClintock, the master mechanic,
and Dutch Pete, the yard buss. Protected by dripping yellow oil-skins,
they were busy repairing a wheezy switch engine that had been
incontinently backed into a siding and the caboose of a freight.
Oakley was waiting the return of Clarence, the office-boy, whom he had
sent up-town to the post-office. Having read the two columns of local
and personal gossip arranged under the heading “People You Know,” he
swept his newspaper into the wastebasket and pushed back his chair. The
window nearest his desk overlooked the yards and a long line of shabby
day coaches and battered freight cars on one of the sidings. They were
there to be rebuilt or repaired. This meant a new lease of life to the
shops, which had never proved profitable.
Oakley had been with the Huckleberry two months. The first intimation
the office force received that the new man whom they had been expecting
for over a week had arrived in Antioch, and was prepared to take hold,
was when he walked into the office and quietly introduced himself to
Kerr and Holt. Former general managers had arrived by special after much
preliminary wiring. The manner of their going had been less spectacular.
They one and all failed, and General Cornish cut short the days of their
pride and display.
Naturally the office had been the least bit skeptical concerning Oakley
and his capabilities, but within a week a change was patent to every one
connected with the road: the trains began to regard their schedules,
and the slackness and unthrift in the yards gave place to an ordered
prosperity. Without any apparent effort he found work for the shops,
a few extra men even were taken on, and there was no hint as yet of
half-time for the summer months.
He was a broad-shouldered, long-limbed, energetic young fellow, with
frank blue eyes that looked one squarely in the face. Men liked him
because he was straightforward, alert, and able, with an indefinite
personal charm that lifted him out of the ordinary. These were the
qualities Cornish had recognized when he put him in control of his
interests at Antioch, and Oakley, who enjoyed hard work, had earned his
salary several times over and was really doing wonders.
He put down his pipe, which was smoked out, and glanced at the clock.
“What's the matter with that boy?” he muttered.
The matter was that Clarence had concluded to take a brief vacation.
After leaving the post-office he skirted a vacant lot and retired
behind his father's red barn, where he applied himself diligently to the
fragment of a cigarette that earlier in the day McClintock, to his great
scandal, had discovered him smoking in the solitude of an empty box-car
in the yards. The master mechanic, who had boys of his own, had called
him a runty little cuss, and had sent him flying up the tracks with a
volley of bad words ringing in his ears.
When the cigarette was finished, the urchin bethought him of the purpose
of his errand. This so worked upon his fears that he bolted for the
office with all the speed of his short legs. As he ran he promised
himself, emotionally, that “the boss” was likely to “skin” him. But
whatever his fears, he dashed into Oakley's presence, panting and in hot
haste. “Just two letters for you, Mr. Oakley!” he gasped. “That was all
there was!”
He went over to the superintendent and handed him the letters. Oakley
observed him critically and with a dry smile. For an instant the boy
hung his head sheepishly, then his face brightened.
“It's an awfully wet day; it's just sopping!”
Oakley waived this bit of gratuitous information.
“Did you run all the way?”
“Yep, every step,” with the impudent mendacity that comes of long
practice.
“It's rather curious you didn't get back sooner.”
Clarence looked at the clock.
“Was I gone long? It didn't seem long to me,” he added, with a candor he
intended should disarm criticism.
“Only a little over half an hour, Clarence.”
The superintendent sniffed suspiciously.
“McClintock says he caught you smoking a cigarette to-day--how about
it?”
“Cubebs,” in a faint voice.
The superintendent sniffed again and scrutinized the boy's hands, which
rested on the corner of his desk.
“What's that on your fingers?”
Clarence considered.
“That? Why, that must be walnut-stains from last year. Didn't you ever
get walnut-stains on your hands when you was a boy, Mr. Oakley?”
“I suppose so, but I don't remember that they lasted all winter.”
Clarence was discreetly silent. He felt that the chief executive of the
Huckleberry took too great an interest in his personal habits. Besides,
it was positively painful to have to tell lies that went so wide of the
mark as his had gone.
“I guess you may as well go home now. But I wouldn't smoke any more
cigarettes, if I were you,” gathering up his letters.
“Good-night, Mr. Oakley,” with happy alacrity.
“Good-night, Clarence.”
The door into the yards closed with a bang, and Clarence, gleefully
skipping the mud-puddles which lay in his path, hurried his small person
off through the rain and mist.
Oakley glanced at his letters. One he saw was from General Cornish. It
proved to be a brief note, scribbled in pencil on the back of a telegram
blank. The general would arrive in Antioch that night on the late train.
He wished Oakley to meet him.
The other letter was in an unfamiliar hand. Oakley opened it. Like the
first, it was brief and to the point, but he did not at once grasp its
meaning. This is what he read:
_“DEAR Sir,--I enclose two newspaper clippings which fully explain
themselves. Your father is much interested in knowing your whereabouts.
I have not furnished him with any definite information on this point, as
I have not felt at liberty to do so. However, I was able to tell him
I believed you were doing well. Should you desire to write him, I will
gladly undertake to see that any communication you may send care of this
office will reach him._
“_Very sincerely yours,_
_“Ezra Hart.”_
It was like a bolt from a clear sky. He drew a deep, quick breath. Then
he took up the newspaper clippings. One was a florid column-and-a-half
account of a fire in the hospital ward of the Massachusetts State
prison, and dealt particularly with the heroism of Roger Oakley, a life
prisoner, in leading a rescue. The other clipping, merely a paragraph,
was of more recent date. It announced that Roger Oakley had been
pardoned.
Oakley had scarcely thought of his father in years. The man and his
concerns--his crime and his tragic atonement--had passed completely out
of his life, but now he was free, if he chose, to enter it again. There
was such suddenness in the thought that he turned sick on the moment; a
great wave of self-pity enveloped him, the recollection of his struggles
and his shame--the bitter, helpless shame of a child--returned. He felt
only resentment towards this man whose crime had blasted his youth,
robbing him of every ordinary advantage, and clearly the end was not
yet.
True, by degrees, he had grown away from the memory of it all. He
had long since freed himself of the fear that his secret might be
discovered. With success, he had even acquired a certain complacency.
Without knowing his history, the good or the bad of it, his world had
accepted him for what he was really worth. He was neither cowardly
nor selfish. It was not alone the memory of his own hardships that
embittered him and turned his heart against his father. His mother's
face, with its hunted, fugitive look, rose up before him in protest. He
recalled their wanderings in search of some place where their story was
not known and where they could begin life anew, their return to Burton,
and then her death.
For years it had been like a dream, and now he saw only the slouching
figure of the old convict, which seemed to menace him, and remembered
only the evil consequent upon his crime.
Next he fell to wondering what sort of a man this Roger Oakley was who
had seemed so curiously remote, who had been as a shadow in his way
preceding the presence, and suddenly he found his heart softening
towards him. It was infinitely pathetic to the young man, with his
abundant strength and splendid energy; this imprisonment that had
endured for almost a quarter of a century. He fancied his father as
broken and friendless, as dazed and confused by his unexpected freedom,
with his place in the world forever lost. After all, he could not sit in
judgment, or avenge.
So far as he knew he had never seen his father but once. First there had
been a hot, dusty journey by stage, then he had gone through a massive
iron gate and down a narrow passage, where he had trotted by his
mother's side, holding fast to her hand.
All this came back in a jerky, disconnected fashion, with wide gaps and
lapses he could not fill, but the impression made upon his mind by his
father had been lasting and vivid. He still saw him as he was then, with
the chalky prison pallor on his haggard face. A clumsily made man of
tremendous bone and muscle, who had spoken with them through the bars of
his cell-door, while his mother cried softly behind her shawl. The boy
had thought of him as a man in a cage.
He wondered who Ezra Hart was, for the name seemed familiar. At length
he placed him. He was the lawyer who had defended his father. He was
puzzled that Hart knew where he was; he had hoped the little New England
village had lost all track of him, but the fact that Hart did know
convinced him it would be quite useless to try to keep his whereabouts
a secret from his father, even if he wished to. Since Hart knew, there
must be others, also, who knew.
He took up the newspaper clippings again. By an odd coincidence they had
reached him on the very day the Governor of Massachusetts had set apart
for his father's release.
Outside, in the yards, on the drenched town, and in the sweating fields
beyond, the warm spring rain fell and splashed.
It was a fit time for Roger Oakley to leave the gray walls, and the gray
garb he had worn so long, and to re-enter the world of living things and
the life of the one person in all that world who had reason to remember
him.