Sweetheart herself remained quite silent and pensive for a moment after
her little song, as if it had touched some chord of sadness in her
heart. Then she nestled her curly head softly against Norman de Vere’s
broad breast.
“Sweet’art tired, Sweet’art s’eepy,” she lisped in a plaintive tone,
and shut her eyes.
He held her closely in a tender clasp, looking down admiringly at
the lovely baby face, fair as carven pearl, and tinted warmly yet
delicately as a Mme. de Watteville rose. How richly fringed with thick
gold were the full white lids; how lovely the curve of the scarlet
lips; how deep the dimple--a perfect Cupid’s nest--in the exquisite
chin! His eyes dwelt long and lingeringly on every perfect outline, and
he said to himself, with a half smile:
“If she grows up like this, she will give many a man the heartache.”
A sigh chased away the smile, and a cold, cynical look came into the
dark eyes, as if some unpleasant memory stirred within him.
The train rushed on through the rainy afternoon, past the swamps and
forests, past the unfrequent little towns where they seemed to make
the most unconscionably long stops, considering the small additions
received to the stock of passengers, and presently it seemed to Norman
de Vere that every one was asleep but himself.
The drummers had each taken a double seat to himself, and with silk
handkerchiefs over their faces, snored sedately. Even the “little
widow,” as Norman called her in his thoughts, had let her arm and head
slip down to the back of her seat, and seemed to be quietly sleeping.
Sweetheart still lay close in the fold of his strong arm, and though
presently the plump little thing began to feel warm and heavy, he would
not rouse her, lest he should call her back from her wandering in the
beautiful Land of Nod.
“But what a careless little mother!” he thought. “She takes small
concern over her baby, leaving her to be nursed and cuddled by utter
strangers. Still,” with an excusing thought, “she must be fond of the
little one, she has trained her to sing with such wondrous sweetness
and accuracy. It is only that she is tired or ill--broken down with
grief most likely--and she knows that even rough men are only too proud
to play the nurse to her little pet.”
He wondered vaguely if the face hidden under the little poke bonnet and
veil were one half as lovely as the one slumbering so peacefully on his
breast, and gazing down at little Sweetheart, tried to fancy the cherub
face grown older, and the innocent soul grown wise with woman’s lore;
but again a heavy sigh heaved his breast and a frown of deep cynicism
drew ungracious lines on his high, white brow.
“Heaven forbid! Heaven forbid!” he muttered, with something like
impatient wrath. “It seems a pity for this dear little one to grow up
so. Yet,” bitterly, “how else could it be, and a woman?”
The early autumn twilight, hastened by the steady rain, began to darken
in the car, and the brakeman came in and lighted the lamps.
“A bad spell o’ weather, sir,” he said, loquaciously, to the occupant
of the car who had his eyes open. “Uncommon rainy for Florida; been
fallin’ stiddy for two days and nights. ’Counts for the few passengers,
I ’spose. Well, ’tis er ill wind blows nobody good. Better sleepin’
’commodations for the passengers,” glancing around humorously; for this
was twenty years ago, reader, and before the luxurious era of Pullman
sleepers and parlor cars and fast-flying vestibule trains.
Norman de Vere was about to make some brief, courteous answer to the
man’s remarks, but he was prevented by a sudden terrible rumble and
rocking of the car--the swift precursor of one of those dreadful
railway accidents due to heavy rains and weakened bridge foundations
that desolate so many hearts and homes. With a swift instinct he
clasped his sleeping burden tightly to his breast just as the doomed
car reared upward a moment, like a maddened, living creature, only
to collapse the next instant with its freight of human souls and go
crashing down through a broken bridge into a mad hell of seething,
foaming water.
* * * * *
A little river ordinarily insignificant enough, but swollen now to a
torrent by incessant rains for several days, had washed all the mortar
from the stone foundations of the railroad bridge and weakened it so
that the weight of the locomotive had carried it down crashing to the
bed of the river and telescoped the train.
* * * * *
When Norman de Vere realized that, but for a sharp blow on the head
from a heavy timber, he was unhurt, and that he held the struggling
child safe in his arms, it seemed to him that he must have been saved
by a miracle, nothing less.
The whole train was a wreck, and but for the fact that the ladies’ car
was on top of the _débris_, he could never have escaped alive. He was
wedged between two seats of the car, which lay on its side, the windows
uppermost, and over and around surged the raging water, churned into
foam by the rapid descent of the train, and by the explosion of the
locomotive’s boiler as soon as it touched the river. To add to the
horror of the position, the lamps just lighted by the brakeman had
exploded and caught fire, affording a lurid light within the interior
of the wrecked car.
The child in his arms waked and screamed with sudden terror. He hushed
her with a tender word, and listened appalled for another human sound
in that terrible tumult of crashing timbers and raging waters.
But no sound came.
He saw the brakeman’s legs sticking out from under a pile of timbers
that had instantaneously crushed the life from his body. Turning about
in his cramped position, he looked for Sweetheart’s mother and the
drummers.
There was no sign of the slender little black-draped figure, but a
pair of masculine arms protruded from under an overturned seat. He put
Sweetheart down and went to work manfully to extricate the owner.
To his joy, he dragged the man out, stunned, but alive--one of the
jolly drummers. Rapidly as he could, he resuscitated him and made him
understand their position.
“We will either be burned or drowned if we do not speedily escape,” he
said. “But before we think of ourselves we must see if there are any
more alive in the car.”
“I’m with you to the death!” the other cried, heartily; then he
shuddered. “But this is horrible! How the water seethes over the
settling wreck! And it will be on fire inside presently.”
“Be good, little darling!” Norman cried to the whimpering, frightened
baby, who sat very still where he had placed her, with a dazed look in
her big blue eyes.
Obeying a pitying impulse, he kissed her lightly, then turned to his
grewsome task.
The two other drummers were soon discovered, both stone dead, and one
horribly mutilated.
“God rest their souls!” cried the drummer, who was a devout Catholic.
He crossed himself, his face pale with grief and horror, then went on
with his task. The mysterious woman had not been found yet.
A few steps further on and they began to pull away great fragments
of the roof where it had crashed in over the seat where she had been
reclining. They were obliged to work very carefully lest she should be
pinioned under them yet alive, and they must not crush out the faintest
spark of life.
And above them and around them the fierce and swollen river roared like
a tiger eager for its prey, while within the narrow compass of the
wrecked car the air began to grow hot and dense with smoke from the
burning lamp that had sent its blazing oil running about like tongues
of flame, devouring all it touched.
A minute more and they found her, dead. Norman de Vere was never to
know whether the face over which he had wondered was beautiful or
homely. The heavy timbers had mutilated it beyond all semblance of
humanity, and he reeled and sickened at sight of the bloody corpse.
“Oh, my God, how terrible!” he cried, and the Catholic crossed himself
again. “God rest her soul!” he muttered, then eagerly: “We can do
no more. They are all dead. Let us try to save ourselves. We shall
suffocate if we remain in here five minutes longer. See the child!”
Little Sweetheart had suddenly succumbed to the heat and smoke, and
fallen senseless.
Norman de Vere caught her up in his arms with a cry very like despair.
“Now don’t give way!” cried George Hinton, the drummer, eagerly. “What
do you propose to do?”
“Can you swim?”
“Like a fish.”
“So can I. We must knock out that window there. The water will pour
into the car, but we must climb through the opening and commit
ourselves to the mercy of the river.”
* * * * *
The hour of deadly peril under the gloomy night sky on the wild,
swirling river, battling fiercely with the elements in the effort
to reach the lights that glimmered on shore, would the two nearly
exhausted men ever forget it?
Norman de Vere’s efforts were greatly hampered by the little
unconscious burden in his arms, but he would not listen to the shouts
of the other.
“She is dead, poor little one! She was suffocated in the burning car.
Better let her go and save yourself.”
“Never! We sink together rather than so cowardly a deed!” Norman de
Vere replied above the roar of the water; and by the most heroic
struggles he neared the land, where a rope was thrown by friendly hands
of excited watchers along the shore. A moment more and safety was
assured to them, and a loud, solemn shout of thanksgiving went up from
fifty throats for the three solitary survivors of the wrecked train.