THE SECOND SECTION
Have you ever been picked up out of your three-meals-a-day life,
whirled around in a tornado of events, and landed in a situation so
grotesque and yet so horrible that you laugh even while you are
groaning, and straining at its hopelessness? McKnight says that is
hysteria, and that no man worthy of the name ever admits to it.
Also, as McKnight says, it sounds like a tank drama. Just as the
revolving saw is about to cut the hero into stove lengths, the second
villain blows up the sawmill. The hero goes up through the roof and
alights on the bank of a stream at the feet of his lady love, who is
making daisy chains.
Nevertheless, when I was safely home again, with Mrs. Klopton brewing
strange drinks that came in paper packets from the pharmacy, and that
smelled to heaven, I remember staggering to the door and closing it,
and then going back to bed and howling out the absurdity and the
madness of the whole thing. And while I laughed my very soul was sick,
for the girl was gone by that time, and I knew by all the loyalty that
answers between men for honor that I would have to put her out of my
mind.
And yet, all the night that followed, filled as it was with the
shrieking demons of pain, I saw her as I had seen her last, in the
queer hat with green ribbons. I told the doctor this, guardedly, the
next morning, and he said it was the morphia, and that I was lucky not
to have seen a row of devils with green tails.
I don’t know anything about the wreck of September ninth last. You who
swallowed the details with your coffee and digested the horrors with
your chop, probably know a great deal more than I do. I remember very
distinctly that the jumping and throbbing in my arm brought me back to
a world that at first was nothing but sky, a heap of clouds that I
thought hazily were the meringue on a blue charlotte russe. As the
sense of hearing was slowly added to vision, I heard a woman near me
sobbing that she had lost her hat pin, and she couldn’t keep her hat
on.
I think I dropped back into unconsciousness again, for the next thing I
remember was of my blue patch of sky clouded with smoke, of a strange
roaring and crackling, of a rain of fiery sparks on my face and of
somebody beating at me with feeble hands. I opened my eyes and closed
them again: the girl in blue was bending over me. With that
imperviousness to big things and keenness to small that is the first
effect of shock, I tried to be facetious, when a spark stung my cheek.
“You will have to rouse yourself!” the girl was repeating desperately.
“You’ve been on fire twice already.” A piece of striped ticking floated
slowly over my head. As the wind caught it its charring edges leaped
into flame.
“Looks like a kite, doesn’t it?” I remarked cheerfully. And then, as my
arm gave an excruciating throb—“Jove, how my arm hurts!”
The girl bent over and spoke slowly, distinctly, as one might speak to
a deaf person or a child.
“Listen, Mr. Blakeley,” she said earnestly. “You _must_ rouse yourself.
There has been a terrible accident. The second section ran into us. The
wreck is burning now, and if we don’t move, we will catch fire. Do you
hear?”
Her voice and my arm were bringing me to my senses. “I hear,” I said.
“I—I’ll sit up in a second. Are you hurt?”
“No, only bruised. Do you think you can walk?”
I drew up one foot after another, gingerly.
“They seem to move all right,” I remarked dubiously. “Would you mind
telling me where the back of my head has gone? I can’t help thinking it
isn’t there.”
She made a quick examination. “It’s pretty badly bumped,” she said.
“You must have fallen on it.”
I had got up on my uninjured elbow by that time, but the pain threw me
back. “Don’t look at the wreck,” I entreated her. “It’s no sight for a
woman. If—if there is any way to tie up this arm, I might be able to do
something. There may be people under those cars!”
“Then it is too late to help,” she replied solemnly. A little shower of
feathers, each carrying its fiery lamp, blew over us from some burning
pillow. A part of the wreck collapsed with a crash. In a resolute
endeavor to play a man’s part in the tragedy going on around, I got to
my knees. Then I realized what I had not noticed before: the hand and
wrist of the broken left arm were jammed through the handle of the
sealskin grip. I gasped and sat down suddenly.
[Illustration]
“You must not do that,” the girl insisted. I noticed now that she kept
her back to the wreck, her eyes averted. “The weight of the
traveling-bag must be agony. Let me support the valise until we get
back a few yards. Then you must lie down until we can get it cut off.”
“Will it have to be cut off?” I asked as calmly as possible. There were
red-hot stabs of agony clear to my neck, but we were moving slowly away
from the track.
“Yes,” she replied, with dumfounding coolness. “If I had a knife I
could do it myself. You might sit here and lean against this fence.”
By that time my returning faculties had realized that she was going to
cut off the satchel, not the arm. The dizziness was leaving and I was
gradually becoming myself.
“If you pull, it might come,” I suggested. “And with that weight gone,
I think I will cease to be five feet eleven inches of baby.”
She tried gently to loosen the handle, but it would not move, and at
last, with great drops of cold perspiration over me, I had to give up.
“I’m afraid I can’t stand it,” I said. “But there’s a knife somewhere
around these clothes, and if I can find it, perhaps you can cut the
leather.”
As I gave her the knife she turned it over, examining it with a
peculiar expression, bewilderment rather than surprise. But she said
nothing. She set to work deftly, and in a few minutes the bag dropped
free.
“That’s better,” I declared, sitting up. “Now, if you can pin my sleeve
to my coat, it will support the arm so we can get away from here.”
“The pin might give,” she objected, “and the jerk would be terrible.”
She looked around, puzzled; then she got up, coming back in a minute
with a draggled, partly scorched sheet. This she tore into a large
square, and after she had folded it, she slipped it under the broken
arm and tied it securely at the back of my neck.
The relief was immediate, and, picking up the sealskin bag, I walked
slowly beside her, away from the track.
The first act was over: the curtain fallen. The scene was “struck.”