A RIFT IN THE CLOUD.
“And then that hope, that fairy hope,
Oh! she awaked such happy dreams,
And gave my soul such tempting scope,
For all its dearest, fondest schemes!”--MOORE.
For more than a month Floy tarried at Clearfield, diligently pursuing
her investigations, yet without gaining the faintest clue to the fate
of her whom she so ardently desired to find.
The proprietors of the shanty inn had removed farther west years ago,
but to what particular point none could tell; the two switchmen had
gone into the army early in the civil war and were probably among the
slain, and the telegraph operator, it was conjectured, had met the same
fate.
Floy of course knew nothing of the Heywoods; but they too had left
the vicinity so long ago that no one who heard of her through the
advertisements or otherwise thought of connecting them with the object
of her search.
At length she was forced to give it up in despair. She had spent a good
deal in advertising, and her means were nearly exhausted. The heirs, as
Mr. Crosby had duly informed her, had refused to allow her any share in
Mr. Kemper’s estate, and five hundred dollars which he had deposited in
a bank in her name was all her inheritance.
She must now do something for her own support. Her education qualified
her for teaching, but finding no opening for that, while one presented
itself for the learning of dress-making, for which she possessed both
taste and talent, she decided to avail herself of it.
Her plan was to go to Chicago and apprentice herself to one of the most
fashionable mantua-makers there.
Miss Wells would have been rejoiced to take Floy under her wing, but
the girl felt an unconquerable repugnance to beginning her new career
in Cranley, the scene of her former prosperity, and where she could not
hope to avoid occasionally meeting with the Aldens.
In fact, her sensitive dread of such encounters led to the resolve not
to return thither at all, but to go directly to the city and begin
the new life at once, such a place as she desired having been already
secured for her through some of her Clearfield friends.
She had formed a strong attachment for Mrs. Bond, which was fully
reciprocated. They could not part without pain, yet cheered each other
with the hope of meeting again at no very distant day, as Floy thought
of returning to Clearfield to set up business on her own account when
once she should be prepared for that.
“Don’t despair, dear child; brighter days will come; something tells
me you will find your mother yet,” the old lady said in bidding her
good-by.
As the train sped on its way through the busy streets of the town,
over the prairies dotted here and there with neat farm-houses, and
anon plunged into forests gay with the rich coloring of the Frost
King’s pencil, Floy set herself resolutely to put aside thoughts of her
losses, disappointments, anxieties, and perplexities, and to fix them
upon the blessings that were still left her.
Gay and light-hearted she could not be, but hope kindled anew within
her as she thought on Mrs. Bond’s last words. Ah, she would not
despair! her long-lost mother, and Espy too, would yet be restored.
His words had deeply wounded her, but surely the love which had been
given her from their very infancy could not be so suddenly withdrawn.
“We are moving very slowly; something must be wrong. Don’t you think
so, miss?” queried a woman in the next seat, turning suddenly around
upon Floy.
The words startled our heroine from her reverie, sending a sharp pang
of grief and terror through her heart as they vividly recalled the
horrors of the accident which had wrought her such woe. She had been
hardly conscious of the fact, but certainly the train had gradually
slackened speed for the last ten minutes or more; and now it stood
still.
“What is wrong? why do we stop here where there is no station?” she
asked of the conductor, who was passing the car window.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said; “the boiler has sprung a leak, and we’ll
have to stand here a while till they can get another engine sent down
from Clearfield.”
“Dear, dear!” fretted a thoughtless girl, “we shall be behind time all
along the route now, miss our connections, and have no end of trouble.”
But Floy’s heart swelled with gratitude that things were no worse.
They had two long hours of waiting ere the train was again in motion,
for the spot where it had halted was several miles from the nearest
town, to which a messenger must be sent on foot to telegraph back to
Clearfield for another engine; and when at last that arrived it had to
propel the cars from behind, and the progress made was much slower than
by the ordinary mode.
Many of the passengers ventured to relieve the tedium of the detention
by strolling about the prairie in the near vicinity of their train, and
for the greater part of the time the car in which Floy sat was nearly
deserted.
Her attention was presently attracted by the fretting of a little child.
“Mother, I’m hungry; gi’ me a cake.”
“Now do be quiet, Sammy; you know I hain’t none for you,” returned the
parent, “so what’s the use o’ teasin’? I’d give it to you in a minute
if I had it.”
By Mrs. Bond’s thoughtful kindness Floy had been supplied with a
bountiful lunch. She was very glad of that now, and opening her basket,
she invited mother and child to partake with her.
“Thank you, miss,” said the former, a decent-looking countrywoman.
“Sammy’ll be very glad of a bit of bread if you’ve got it to spare. I’d
have brought a lunch along, but expected to be at my sister’s afore
this, and it didn’t seem worth while.”
“I have abundance for all three of us,” returned Floy, with a winning
smile, displaying her stores; “so do let me have the pleasure of
sharing with you.”
“Yes, come, mother,” said Sammy, tugging at her skirts.
Thus urged, the woman accepted the invitation.
“Are you from Clearfield, miss?” she asked.
“I have been there for the past month or more. Is it there you live?”
“A little ways out o’ the town, on t’other side. I’ve been in that
neighborhood nigh on to fifteen year now. Clearfield wasn’t much of a
town when father moved out there, but it’s growed powerful fast these
few years back.”
Floy’s heart gave a sudden bound, and she turned an eager, questioning
glance upon the speaker. “I suppose you knew--everybody knew--every one
else in the place when it was so small?”
“Why yes, of course we did, an’ mother she kep’ a boardin’-house an’
boarded the railroad hands. She was always for helping father along,
and that’s the way I do by my Sammy. He’s named for his pap, you know,”
nodding toward her boy and smiling proudly on him.
“Yes, sirree! and I’m a-goin’ to be as big a man as him some day!”
cried the young hopeful, swallowing down one mouthful with great gusto
and hastily cramming in another.
Floy pressed her hand to her side in the vain effort to still the loud
beating of her heart.
“Did--did you ever hear any of those men--speak of a sort of shanty inn
that stood not very far from the old depot?”
“Oh my, yes! and I’ve see it many a time; ’twas there better’n a year,
I should say, after we come to the place. And I’ve heard Jack Strong
(he was one o’ the switchmen on the road, and boarded with us a long
spell after those folks pulled down their shanty and moved off)--I’ve
heard him tell a pitiful kind of a story about a poor woman that come
there one night clear beat out travellin’ through the storm (for ’twas
an awful wild night, Jack said, so he did, a-rainin’ and hailin’, and
the wind blowin’ so it blowed down lots o’ big trees in the woods).
Well, as I was a-sayin’, the woman she’d been footing it all day, and
with a child in her arms too; and Jack he told how some other folks
that were there, a man and his wife, coaxed her to give the little
girl to them, tellin’ her she’d got to die directly, and she’d better
provide for it while she could; and how she give it to ’em and then ran
screamin’ after the cars, ‘My child, my child! give me back my child!’
till she dropped down like dead, and would have fell flat in the mud
and water in the middle of the road if Jack hadn’t a-caught her in his
arms.”
Floy’s hands were clasped in her lap, cold beads of perspiration stood
on her brow, her breath came pantingly, and her dilated eyes were
fixed on the face of the narrator, who, however, was too busy brushing
the crumbs off Sammy’s Sunday jacket to observe the look, but went on
garrulously:
“Jack he carried her into the depot and laid her down on the settee;
and while they were tryin’ to bring her to, an old gentleman (I
disremember his name now) come in his covered wagon fur to git his son
as was expected home from ’way off somewheres, but wasn’t there (he
didn’t come till next day, Jack said), and the old gentleman he took
the poor thing home with him.
“There, now, Sammy, hold still till I tie this hankercher round your
neck. Them clo’es won’t be fit to be seen if you keep on droppin’
greasy crumbs over ’em.”
Floy was making a desperate effort to be calm.
“Where did he take her?” she asked, half concealing her agitated face
behind the folds of her veil.
“Out to the old gentleman’s place; a splendid place they said it was. I
can’t say just how fur off in the woods, where he’d cleared acres and
acres of land. Jack never see her after she was took out there, but he
said she didn’t die after all, but got married to the young feller that
I told you was comin’ home on a visit to the old folks (I think they’d
know’d each other afore she was married the first time, and kind a got
separated somehow), and when she got about again he took her back with
him, and I guess the old folks follered ’em after a bit.”
“Where, oh! where?” asked Floy imploringly.
The woman started and turned an earnest, inquiring gaze upon her.
“I beg pardon, but was they anything to you, miss?”
“I was the baby! and I’m looking for my mother. Oh, can you tell me
where to find her?”
“That must a been a long while ago; you’re a heap bigger’n me, and I
ain’t no baby,” remarked Sammy, disposing of the last mouthful of his
lunch and wiping his hands on his mother’s handkerchief.
“Well, I never!” ejaculated the latter in wide-eyed astonishment. “And
you was the baby! well now! Oh, do tell me! was those folks good to
you?”
“As kind, as tender and loving as my own mother could possibly have
been,” answered Floy, with emotion. “But oh, tell me where I shall find
her!”
“Indeed, I wish I knowed! but I never did know whether ’twas to
Californy or Oregon or some other o’ them fur-off places that they
went.”
“And the man who told you the story?”
“Jack Strong? he went off years and years ago. They say he went to the
war and got killed, and I guess it’s true.”