THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
A short, thick old man, grey-bearded and puff-eyed and loaded with
enormous jewels, met Gail, Lucile and Arly, Ted Teasdale and the
Reverend Smith Boyd, at the foot of the subway stairs, and introduced
himself with smiling ease as Tim Corman, beaming with much pride in his
wide-spread fame.
“Mr. Allison sent me to meet you,” he stated, with a bow on which he
justly prided himself. “Allison played a low trick on me, ladies,” and
he gazed on them in turns with a jovial familiarity, which, in another,
they might have resented. “From the description he gave me, I was
looking for the most beautiful young lady in the world, and here there’s
three of you.” His eyes swelled completely shut when he laughed. “So
you’ll have to help me out. Which one of you is Miss Sargent?”
“The young lady who answers the description,” smiled Arly, delighted
with Tim Corman, and she indicated Gail.
“Mr. Allison couldn’t be here,” explained Tim, leading the way to the
brightly lighted private car. “We’re to pick him up at Hoadley Park.
Miss Sargent, as hostess of the party, is to have charge of everything.”
The side doors slid open as they approached, and they entered the
carpeted and draped car, furnished with wicker chairs and a well-stocked
buffet. In the forward compartment were three responsible looking men
and a motorman, and one of the responsibles, a fat gentleman who did not
seem to care how his clothes looked, leaned into the parlour.
“All ready?” he inquired, with an air of concealing a secret impression
that women had no business here.
Tim Corman, who had carefully seen to it that he had a seat between Gail
and Arly, touched Gail on the glove.
“Ready, thank you,” she replied, glancing brightly at the loosely
arrayed fat man, and she could see that immediately a portion of that
secret impression was removed.
With an easy glide, which increased with surprising rapidity into
express speed, the car slid into the long, glistening tunnel, still
moist with the odours of building.
“This is the most stunningly exclusive thing in the world!” exclaimed
Lucile Teasdale. “A private subway!”
The Reverend Smith Boyd bent forward. All the way down to the subway
entrance he had enjoyed the reversal to that golden age where no one
says anything and everybody laughs at it.
“To my mind that is not the greatest novelty,” he observed. “The most
enjoyable part of the journey so far has been getting into the subway
without paying a nickel.” He glanced over at Gail as he spoke, but only
Arly, Lucile and Ted laughed. Tim Corman had adroitly blocked Gail into
a corner, and was holding her attention.
“Ed Allison’s one of the smartest boys in New York,” he enthusiastically
declared. “Did you ever see anybody as busy as he is?”
“He seems to be a very energetic man,” Gail assented, with a sudden
remembrance of how busy Allison had always been.
“Gets anything he goes after,” Tim informed her, and screwed one of his
many-puffed eyes into a wink; at which significant action Gail looked
out at the motorman. “Never tells his plans to anybody, nor what he
wants. Just goes and gets it.”
“That’s a successful way, I should judge,” she responded, now able to
see the humour of Tim Corman’s volunteer mission, but a red spot
beginning to dawn, nevertheless, in either cheek.
“Well, he’s square,” asserted Tim judicially. “Understand, he don’t care
how he gets a thing just so he gets it, but if he makes you a promise
he’ll keep it. That’s what I call square.”
Gail nodded. She had discerned that quality in Allison.
“What I like about him is that he always wins,” went on Tim. “Nobody in
this town has ever passed him the prunes. Do you know what he did? He
started with two miles of rust and four horse cars, and now he owns the
whole works.”
Gail knitted her brows. She had heard something of this marvellous tale
before, and it had interested her. She had been groping for an
explanation of Allison’s tremendous force.
“That was a wonderful achievement. How did he accomplish it?”
“Made ’em get off and walk!” boasted Tim, with vast pride in the fact.
“Any time Eddie run across a man that had a street car line, he choked
it out of him. He’s a wizard.”
Tim’s statement seemed to be somewhat clouded in metaphor, but Gail
managed to gather that Allison had possibly used first-principle methods
on his royal pathway to success.
“You mean that he drove them out of business.”
“Pushed ’em off!” and Tim’s voice was exultant.
“I don’t think I understand business,” worried Gail. “It seems so
cruel.”
“So is baseball, if you want to figure that it’s a shame the losers have
to take a licking,” chuckled Tim. “Anybody Allison likes is lucky,” and
with the friendly familiarity of an old man, Tim Corman patted Gail on
the glove.
“It occurs to me that I’m neglecting my opportunities,” observed Gail,
rising. “I’m supposed to be running this car,” and going to the glass
door she looked into the motorman’s compartment, which was large, and
had seats in it, and all sorts of mysterious tools and appliances in the
middle of the floor.
Tim Corman, as Allison’s personal representative, was right on the spot.
“Come on out,” he invited, and opened the door, whereupon the three
responsible looking men immediately arose.
Gail hesitated, then smiled. She turned to look at the others, half
wondering if she should invite them to come, and whether a crowd would
be welcomed, but the quartette were gathered on the observation
platform, watching the tunnel swallowing itself in a faraway point.
“Mr. Greggory, general manager of the Municipal Transportation Company,
Miss Sargent,” introduced Tim, and the fat man bowed, with still another
portion of that secret opinion removed. “Mr. Lincoln, general engineer
of the Transportation Company, Miss Sargent,” and the thin-faced man
with the high forehead and the little French moustache, bowed, smiling
his decided approval. “Mr. McCarthy, general construction manager of the
Transportation Company, Miss Sargent,” and the red-faced man with the
big red moustache, bowed, grinning. Tim Corman led Gail forward to the
motorman, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Show her how it works, Tom,”
he directed.
So it was that Edward E. Allison, standing quite alone on the platform
of the Hoadley Park station, saw the approaching trial trip car stop,
and run slowly, and run backwards, and dart forwards, and perform all
sorts of experimental movements, before it rushed down to his platform,
with a rosy-cheeked girl standing at the wheel, her brown eyes
sparkling, her red lips parted in a smile of ecstatic happiness, her hat
off and her waving brown hair flowing behind her in the sweep of the
wind. To one side stood a highly pleased motorman, while a short, thick
old man, and a careless fat man, and a man with a high forehead and one
with a red moustache, all smiling indulgently, clogged the space in the
rear.
Allison boarded the car, and greeted his guests, and came straight
through to the motorman’s cage, as Gail, in response to the clang of the
bell, pulled the lever. She was just getting that easy starting glide,
and she was filled with pride in the fact.
“You should not stand bare-headed in front of that window,” greeted
Allison, almost roughly; and he closed it.
Gail turned very sweetly to the motorman.
“Thank you,” she said, and gave him the lever, then she walked back into
the car. It had required some repression to avoid recognising that
dictatorial attitude, and Allison felt that she was rather distant, and
wondered what was the matter; but he was a practical minded person, and
he felt that it would soon blow over.
“This is the deepest line in the city,” he informed her, as she led the
way back to the group in the parlour division. “Every subway we build
presents more difficult problems of construction because of the
crossings.”
“I should think it would be most difficult,” she indifferently
responded, and hurried back to the girls.
“I feel horribly selfish,” she confessed, slipping her arm around Lucile
on one side and Arly on the other; and the Reverend Smith Boyd,
strangely inclined to poetry these days, compared them to the Three
Graces, with Hope in the centre. They were an attractive picture for the
looking of any man; the blonde Lucile, the brown Gail, and the
black-haired Arly, all fresh-cheeked, slender, and sparkling of eye.
“I’m glad your conscience smites you,” smiled Arly. “Wasn’t it fun?”
“The most glorious in the world!” and Gail glanced doubtfully at Tim
Corman, who was right on the spot.
“Come on, girls,” heartily invited Tim, who could catch a hint as fast
as any man. “I’ll introduce you to Tom,” and, profoundly happy in his
gallantry, he returned to the front of the car with a laughing blonde on
one arm and a laughing brunette on the other.
Allison turned confidently to chat with Gail, but that young lady,
smiling on the Reverend Smith Boyd, moved back to the observation
platform, and the Reverend Smith Boyd followed the smile with alacrity.
“I’ve been neglecting this view,” she observed, gazing out into the
rapidly diminishing perspective, then she glanced up sidewise at the
tall young rector, whose eyes were perfectly blue.
He answered something or other, and the conversation was so obviously a
tête-à-tête that Allison remained behind. Ted Teasdale had long since
found, in the engineer, a man who knew motor boating in every phase of
its failures; so that Allison and Tim Corman were in sole possession of
the parlour compartment, and Tim looked up at Allison with a complacent
grin, as the latter sat beside him.
“Well, Eddie, I put in a plug for you,” stated Tim, with the air of one
looking for approval.
“How’s that?” inquired Allison, abstractedly.
“Boosted you to the girl. Say, she’s a peach!”
Allison looked quickly back at the platform, and then frowned down on
his zealous friend Tim.
“What did you tell Miss Sargent about me?”
“Don’t you worry, Eddie; it’s all right,” laughed Tim. “I hinted to her,
so that she had to get it, that you’re about the most eligible party in
New York. I let her know that no man in this village had ever skinned
you. She wanted to know how you made this big combination, and I told
her you made ’em all get off; pushed ’em off the map. Take it from me,
Eddie, after I got through, she knew where to find a happy home.”
Allison’s brows knitted in quick anger, and then suddenly he startled
the subway with its first loud laugh. He understood now, or thought he
did, Gail’s distant attitude; but, knowing what was the matter, he could
easily straighten it out.
“Thanks, Tim,” he chuckled. “Let’s talk business a minute. I had you
hold up the Vedder Court condemnation because I got a new idea last
night. Those buildings are unsafe.”
“Well, the building commissioners have to make a living,” considered
Tim.
“That’s what I think,” agreed Allison.
Tim Corman looked up at him shrewdly out of his puffy slits of eyes, for
a moment, and considered.
“I get you,” he said, and the business talk being concluded, Allison
went forward.
“McCarthy,” he snapped, in a voice which grated; “what are all those
boxes back in the beginning of the ‘Y’ of the West Docks branch?”
“Blasting material,” and McCarthy looked uncomfortable.
“Get it out,” ordered Allison, and returned to Tim.
The girls and Ted came back presently, and, with their arrival, Gail
brought the Reverend Smith Boyd into the crowd, thereupon they resolved
themselves into some appearance of sociability, and Allison, for the
amusement of the company, slyly started old Tim Corman into a line of
personal reminiscences, so replete in unconscious humour and so frank in
unconscious disclosure of callous knavery, that the company needed no
other entertainment.
Out into the open, where the sun paled the electric lights of the car
into a sickly yellow, up into the air, peering into third story
tenements and down narrow alleys, aflutter with countless flapping
pieces of laundry work, then suddenly into the darkness of the tunnel
again, then out, on the surface of country fields, and dreary winter
landscape, to the terminal. It was more cosy in the tunnel, and they
returned there for lunch, while the general manager and the general
engineer and the general construction manager of the Municipal
Transportation Company, with occasional crisp visits from President
Allison, soberly discussed the condition of the line. The Reverend Smith
Boyd displayed an unexpected technical interest in that subject. He had
taken an engineering course in college, and, in fact, he had once
wavered seriously between that occupation and the Church, and he put two
or three questions so pertinent that he awakened a new respect in
Allison. Allison took the rector to the observation platform to explain
something in the construction of the receding tunnel, and as they stood
there earnestly talking, with concentrated brows and eyes searching into
each other for quick understanding, Gail Sargent was suddenly struck by
a wonder as to what makes the differences in men. Allison, slightly
stocky, standing with his feet spread sturdily apart and his hands in
his coat pockets, and his clean-cut profile slightly upturned to the
young rector, was the very epitome of force, of decisive action, of
unconquerable will. He seemed to fairly radiate resistless energy, and
as she looked, Gail was filled with the admiration she had often felt
for this exponent of the distinctively American spirit of achievement.
She had never seen the type in so perfect an example, and again there
seemed to wave toward her that indefinable thrill with which he had so
often impressed her. Was the thrill altogether pleasurable? She could
not tell, but she did know that with it there was mixed a something
which she could not quite fathom in herself. Was it dislike? No, not
that. Was it resentment? Was it fear? She asked herself that last
question again.
The young rector was vastly different; taller and broader-shouldered,
and more erect of carriage, and fully as firm of profile, he did not
somehow seem to impress her with the strength of Allison. He was more
temperamental, and, consequently, more susceptible to change; therefore
weaker. Was that deduction correct? She wondered, for it troubled her.
She was not quite satisfied.
Suddenly there came a dull, muffled report, like the distant firing of a
cannon; then an interval of silence, an infinitesimal one, in which the
car ran smoothly on, and, half rising, they looked at each other in
startled questioning. Then, all at once, came a stupendous roar, as if
the world had split asunder, a jolting and jerking, a headlong stoppage,
a clattering, and slapping and crashing and grinding, deafening in its
volume, and with it all, darkness; blackness so intense that it seemed
almost palpable to the touch!
There was a single shriek, and a nervous laugh verging on hysteria. The
shriek was from Arly, and the laugh from Lucile. There was a cry from
the forward end of the car, as if some one in pain. A man’s yell of
fright; Greggory the general manager. A strong hand clutched Gail’s in
the darkness, firm, reassuring. The rector.
“Don’t move!” it was the voice of Allison, crisp, harsh, commanding.
“Anybody hurt?” Tim Corman, the voice of age, but otherwise steady. One
could sense, somehow, that he sat rigid in his chair, with both hands on
his cane.
“It’s me,” called Tom, the motorman. “Head cut a little, arm bruised.
Nothing bad.”
“Gail?” Allison again.
“Yes.” Clear voiced, with the courage which has no sex.
“Mrs. Teasdale? Mrs. Fosland?”
Both all right, one a trifle sharp of voice, the other nervous.
“Ted? Doctor Boyd?” and so through the list. Everybody safe.
“It is an accidental blast,” said the voice of Allison. He had figured
that a concise statement of just what had happened might expedite
organisation. “We are below the Farmount Ridge, over a hundred feet
deep, and the tube has caved in on us. There must be no waste of
exertion. Don’t move until I find what electrical dangers there are.”
They obeyed his admonition not to move, even to the extent of silence;
for there was an instinct that Allison might need to hear minutely. He
made his way into the front compartment, he called the chief engineer.
There was a clanking of the strange looking implements on the floor of
the car. A match flared up, and showed the pale face of the engineer
bending over.
“No matches,” ordered Allison. “We may need the oxygen.”
He and the engineer made their way back into the parlour compartment.
They took up the door of the motor well in the floor, and in a few
minutes they replaced it. From the sounds they seemed remarkably clumsy.
“That much is lucky,” commented Allison. “The next thing is to dig.”
They were quiet a moment.
“In front or behind?” wondered the engineer.
Again a pause.
“In front,” decided Allison. “The explosion came from that direction,
and has probably shaken down more of the soil there than behind, but
it’s solid clay in the rear, and further out.”
Gail felt the rector’s hand suddenly leave her own. It had been
wonderfully comforting there in the dark; so firm and warm and steady.
He had not talked much to her, just a few reassuring words, in that low,
melodious voice, which thrilled her as did occasionally the touch of
Allison’s hand, as did the eyes of Dick Rodley. But she had received
more strength from the voice of Allison. He was big, Allison, a power, a
force, a spirit of command. She began, for the first time, to comprehend
his magnitude.
“What have we to dig with?” The voice of the Reverend Smith Boyd, and
there was a note of eagerness in it.
“The benches up in front here,” yelled McCarthy, and there was a ripping
sound as he tore the seat from one of them.
“Pardon me.” It was the voice of the rector, up in front.
“The balance of you sit down, and keep rested,” ordered Allison, now
also up in front. “McCarthy, Boyd and I go first.”
The long struggle began. The girls grouped together in the back of the
car, moving but very little, for there was much broken glass about. Up
in front the three men could be heard making an opening into the débris
through the forward windows. They talked a great deal, at first, strong,
capable voices. They were interfering with each other, then helping,
combining their strength to move heavy stones and the like, then they
were silent, working independently, or in effective unison.
Tim Corman was the possessor of a phosphorescent-faced watch, with
twenty-two jewels on the inside and a ruby on the winding stem, and he
constituted himself timekeeper.
“Thirty minutes,” he called out. “It’s our shift.”
“You’d better save yourself, Tim,” suggested Greggory, in a kindly tone.
“I’ll do as much as any of you!” growled old Tim, with the will, if not
the quality, of youth in his voice. “Will one of you girls take care of
my rings?” and stripping them from his fingers, he laid them carefully
in the outstretched hands of Arly. There was a good handful of them.
The men crawled in from outside, but they stayed in the front
compartment. The air was growing a trifle close, and they breathed
heavily.
“Good-bye Girl,” called the gaily funereal voice of Ted Teasdale.
“Husband is going to work.”
“Put on your gloves,” Lucile reminded him.
“Greggory,” called Allison.
“Here,” responded the careless fat man. “How did you find it?”
“Loose,” reported Allison, and there was a sound suspiciously like
grunting, as Greggory crawled through the narrow opening.
Another interminable wait, while the air grew more stifling. There was
no further levity after Lincoln and the motorman and McCarthy had come
back; for the condition was becoming serious. Some air must undoubtedly
be finding its way to the car through the loose débris, but the carbonic
acid gas exhaled from a dozen pairs of lungs was beginning to pocket,
and the opening ahead, though steadily pushing forward, displayed no
signs of lessening solidity.
They established shorter shifts now; a quarter of an hour. The men came
silently in and out, and as silently worked, and as silently rested,
while the girls carried that heavy burden of women’s hardest labour;
waiting!
Greggory was the first to give out, then the injured motorman. When
their turns came, they had not the strength nor the air in their lungs.
Strong McCarthy was the next to join them.
The shifts had reduced to two, of two men each by now; Ted and old Tim,
and Allison and the rector; and these latter two worked double time.
Their lips and their tongues were parched and cracking, and in their
periods of rest they sat motionlessly facing each other, with a wheeze
in the drawing of their breath. Their stentorian breathing could be
heard from the forward end of their little tunnel clear back into the
car, where the three girls were battling to preserve their senses
against the poisonous gases which were now all that they had to breathe.
Acting on the rector’s advice, they had stood up in the car to escape
the gradually rising level of the carbonic gas, stood, as the time
progressed, with their mouths agape and their breasts heaving and sharp
pains in their lungs at every breath. Arly dropped, silently crumpling
to the floor; then, a few minutes later, Lucile, and, panic-stricken by
the thought that they had gone under, Gail felt her own senses reeling,
when suddenly, looking ahead through eyes which were staring, she saw a
crack of blessed light!
There was a hoarse cry from ahead! The crack of light widened. Another
one appeared, some four feet to the right of it, and Gail already
fancied that she could feel a freshening of the air she breathed with
such tearing pain. Against the light of the openings, two figures, the
only two which were left to work, strove, at first with the slow, limp
motions of exhaustion, and then with the renewed vigour of approaching
triumph. She could distinguish them clearly now, by the light which
streamed in, the stocky, strong figure of Allison and the tall, sinewy
figure of the rector. They were working frantically, Allison with his
coat off, and the rector with his coat and vest both removed, and one
sleeve torn almost entirely from his shirt, revealing his swelling
biceps, and a long, red scratch. Gail’s senses were numbed, so that they
were reduced to almost merely optical consciousness, so that she saw
things photographically; but, even in her numbness, she realised that
what she had thought a trace of weakness in the rector, was only the
grace which had rounded his strength.
The two figures bent inward toward each other. There was a moment of
mighty straining, and then the whole centre between the two cracks
rolled away. A huge boulder had barred the path, and its removal let
down a rush of pure, fresh air from the ground above, let down, too, a
flood of dazzling light; and in the curving, under-rim of the opening,
stood the two stalwart men who were the survival of the fittest! The
mere instinct of self-preservation drove Gail forward, with a cry,
toward the source of that life-giving air, and she scrambled through the
window and ran toward the two men. They came hurriedly down to meet her,
and each gave her a hand.