The group before the fire at the Engineers' Club were listening, every
one--though nothing was being said; nor was it the crackle of apple logs
or fluttering sails and drowning cries of the northeaster in the chimney
that preoccupied them. Rather some still, distant undertone in their own
breasts, arresting their conversation, gestures, thoughts--they glanced
at one another surreptitiously, uneasily.
"But listen--I am telling you," said old Con O'Connel, the railroad
builder, his voice rolling and sweet as the bells of Shandon: "To-night
I hear a footfall in the rain--that of Tim Cannon, the messenger."
So that was the undertone which had arrested their thoughts; the rush of
footfalls symbolizing to the group, every one, the pursuit of himself by
a belated messenger. They settled themselves, relieved and smiling;
after all the thing had been naturally suggested to them by the echo of
rain on the broad plate windows. And they nodded their heads to Con,
still listening.
The footfall of Tim Cannon, a name of ancient days on the P. D.
Railroad; but as the story does not concern him except as Molly Regan's
messenger I will leave him come into it in his own time and take up with
the Regans themselves.
Two of them there were to begin with--young Michael, swinging a lusty
pick in a construction gang of the Great Southwest Railway; and Molly, a
pretty bride with solemn wondering gaze and air of listening to things
which no one else could hear.
Often Mike would smile at her queer fancies that there are things to
learn and do beyond the day's work, and after the Great Southwest has
been builded and he has laid aside pick and shovel to become track boss
at Turntable Station this queerness of Molly's leads her into playing a
great joke on her husband.
For she saves her odd pennies against his birthday and presents him with
a book. "A book of higher knowledge, it is," she says, while Mike
scratches his head in awe; and she must kiss him for the kind interest
he takes and that evening read to him a page in a voice like the song of
soldiers marching. Mike toils after in mind with his big fists gripping
and forehead glistening in the struggle to remember the journey, but at
the end a darkness comes down on him, and the two gaze at each other
uneasily and the page is read over again.
But devil a bit can Mike remember of it, so that he sits despairing with
his head between his hands. "Do not mind, Molly," he says then; "you
shall study on alone at the higher knowledge, having a joy of it which
is not for me." He says this, looking up to smile, and yet the big hands
hold on to hers as if fearing she was being stolen away.
But Molly answers him back so clear and strong that the song of soldiers
marching is nothing to it. "'T is only the joke I am playing. Am I the
wife to bother you with learning when you know already so much," she
says, "and have the care of the section on your mind, with ties to lay
straight and rails to spike fast so that the great railroad may run?"
And when he speaks once more of the study she should make of knowledge
Molly closes the big book and sets it on the mantel along with the
clock.
"'T is for ornament, and now you know why I bought it from the peddler,"
she explains; "for every household of pretension must have a book."
So they admire the shiny binding and gold letters, and after five years
when their new cottage is built it is given a shelf of its own.
Danny is born, the same who in Molly's lifetime shall be an official of
the great railroad; and when in the course of time he is turned a sturdy
boy of seven, with coal-black eyes and a round cropped head, she would
place the book in his hands for purposes of learning. But detecting the
fear of Michael as he smokes in the evening with eyes on the shelf, that
the mysterious volume may contain matter treasonable to their state and
condition, she ignores the higher knowledge completely and is content to
send Danny only to the Turntable school.
A cruel one he is to the old master there, inking the pages of his
reader and carving a locomotive on his desk; and when he is twelve he
has decided against all books and school and is interested only in
things of the Turntable yard.
So that one evening he comes home, and when Molly kisses him because he
brought all his books as if to study Danny explains, "Mother, I am now a
man and have a job calling crews, so study is of no more use."
He stacks his reader and arithmetic on the shelf by the old book, and
Michael hearing the news that evening laughs with pleasure that the boy
has completed his education so soon and promises to put half Danny's
salary in bank in his own name. Time passes and the books fade in their
bindings, and are forgotten even by Molly; but the eyes of her shine
more clearly than ever as if studying in pages which no one else could
see. When Danny is about eighteen years old, and already operator at
Turntable, she notices that a habit has come over him of pausing in the
doorway at dusk, and there he will stand gazing out into the yards with
folded arms till at last his mother asks the reason with timid
eagerness.
"'T is the lanterns," says Dan. "Beckon they do to things beyond
Turntable."
"To things beyond," repeats Molly with hand on her heart. "Turn to me,"
she says; and Dan does so, grinning at his fancy; but as she studies the
black-browed face a fierce frown like the fluff and smoke of powder
passes over it, with the white teeth gleaming out.
"Beckon they do, mother," he says steadily, "to the job of trainmaster
and superintendent, and even beyond to places high and powerful. And
there I must trample my way whoever has to be pulled down to make
room."
In that instant she sees him as he is, the Regan of them all; and after
a bit she smiles and nods, but never again does she ask about the
beckoning of the lanterns.
So time passes again, and Dan goes up to division headquarters at Barlow
to dispatch trains, and Michael gives a last order as assistant
roadmaster and comes home to his long sickness. And now Molly is alone
in the little house, settled down to keep blooming the memories of it
along with the hollyhocks of the garden beyond the lattice with the
morning-glory vines trailing over. Time fades her face, but 't is still
uplifted and lighted, and later she is seen among the flowers till they
die in the fall, and winter coming down she sits at her window knitting
a shawl as the snow is knitted without.
But deep is her grieving over Dan, who is by this time superintendent,
with his policy of pull-down and trample-under, dreaded by all round
him. Two or three times a year he will stop his special at Turntable,
and seated in the little parlor he seems a glowing metal mass of a man
to Molly, standing apart in awe of him. But the time is at hand when she
must appeal to him or never at all in this world, so the saints inspire
her to speak a message to the man of power and she smiles with shy pride
of their confidence in her.
"Faith, I will talk to him as a boy again," she plans; "'Danny,' I will
say, 'when the lanterns of the yard do beckon to your ambition is there
not one light above and beyond, brighter than all the others, which
beckons the spirit?' Then he will be guided by it," reasons old Molly
with her solemn gaze fixed on the future of Dan.
But it chances that Dan's visit is delayed and Molly feels that the
saints are impatient of her worldly lingering.
"I must put the message into writing lest it be lost entirely," she says
then. "Anyhow Danny will read it over and over in memory of me, having
that tender a heart toward his mother, for all his hardness to others."
So that the message of the farthest lantern is at last about to be
written, on an evening when the little cottage with crusted eaves and
hoary glimmering windows seems but the bivouac of winter elves in folk
story. And as old Molly by the cleared table, with pen in hand and
bottle of ink and the paper she bought when Michael died--to write his
second cousin in Kildare a letter of sympathy, y' understand--as old
Molly makes ready for the writing, after a stick laid on the fire and
hearth brushed, the snow drifts solidly to the window but is swept clean
of the doorstep, leaving a scratch of firelight under the door on the
path beyond.
"The Farthest Lantern," she writes, as a headline, for 't is certain
that Danny before reading will wish to know what it is about; and then
pleased with the successful beginning she holds it up to the shaded lamp
to read over, then because of the wrinkled hands shaking lays it down on
the table, surely as steady as rock.
Divil a thing can she make out except blots and scratches, so that the
headline is done over with more care. And only then it becomes plain
that what with the rheumatism and palsy Molly has written her last,
except scratches, which the most credulous could not accept at all as a
message of interest, y' understand.
Now well would it be for old Mistress Regan's memory if she had put
aside the message with resignation and thought no more about it. But
there is no doubt that the look of solemn wonder flitted suddenly from
her face, leaving it haggard and fierce, and that like a stab with a
dagger she drove the splintering pen into the desk as into the breast of
an enemy. So much is known, for there is little done that can be
screened from mortal ken.
As for her thoughts--here no man can tell, for she held her words behind
grim set lips. But the guess cannot be far amiss that when old Molly
discovered she was destined to die with never a word of warning or
counsel to Dan she broke into bitter revolt. Not a word of all the
wisdom she had stored with this one purpose could be written or spoken
to him--and it never was. Far be it from me to blackguard an old lady
fallen in with disappointment but it is a fact proved by witness that
her trembling hands upraised and her lips, always so faintly smiling,
curled as with a curse--and whether it was launched at the fiend or
heaven itself is not for me to say who have no proof that her voice was
heard above the howling of the blizzard.
But this I know, that on the instant she hears a summons that breaks
the spell of anger as no threat of purgatory would have done. A moment
she hesitates, the old hands sink unclenching, the fierceness fades from
her eyes, and once again with wondering uplifted look Molly Regan turns
to the things beyond, which no one else may see.
At the wide-open welcoming door she stands, peering amid the squall of
snow; and there in the center of the blur of light stands Tim the
messenger, in aftertime the ruin of Dan Regan's fortunes.
The boy's hands are clasped as those of a frozen corpse, the wind
whistles in his rags, but he glowers at her with narrowed brows and a
gleam of teeth. Here he is, come to demand retribution for her rebellion
against the will of God, and since Molly cannot live to pay it is
ordained that she shall give instead into Tim Cannon's hands the means
of trampling under Dan Regan and his fortune. 'T is little we know.
"Come," says Molly, "come in to the fire, and the hot coffee; you are
frozen with the wind and snow. Glory be, that I am still here to make
comfortable for the waif on my doorstep."
The wisp of old woman in mourning dress, with blown white hair and
out-stretched hand; the crackling hearth, and coziness of the room
beyond--these are hostess and haven enough to any waif of winter
tempest; and Molly knowing it to be so steps aside for him, laughing
with eagerness to see him at the fireside, dry and warm in Danny's old
clothes, sniffing the steam of his coffee cup.
But this is no ordinary outcast, y' understand, submissive to charity,
but an agent of retribution, who stands with frozen folded hands, and
wind whistling in his rags, looking on with a threatening manner. And
when the moment has come for him to enter, and not until then, he stalks
stiffly past the outheld hand to the center of the room and turns slowly
in his tracks to study the features of the place, as an agent of destiny
should always do. His pinched little face is dirty, his black hair
tousled by the storm, which has blown away his cap; and now the
lamp-light touching his temple reveals the deep scar there. A wild and
awesome waif is this, and Molly studying with startled interest his
behavior feels at last that she is entertaining some veteran campaigner
of regions beyond Turntable to whom the mischances of earthly wandering
in cold and snow are nothing.
Not a word does he say but spreads his stiffened fingers before the
blaze, and Molly with the strangest of hopes dawning so soon after her
rebellion bustles briskly about the coffee making. And presently it is
brewed and Tim Cannon stands by the table drinking and munching toast
and cold meat.
"Ye must be seated in the chair," urges Molly, "and be comfortable, and
it will seem like home to you."
At this Tim Cannon rubs his scar with remembrance of his drunken
grandfather and their home in the city slums. Then he eats the faster
till he is done, studying her with peculiar interest.
"You should have seen the money before I began the eats," he says by way
of advice on the entertainment of wayfarers.
"Do you mean you can't pay?" asks Molly after a moment's reflection.
"Now what am I to do?"
"Throw me out," instructs Tim, with contempt of her ignorance.
"Into the storm? Oh, no!"
"Why not?" he asks with suspicion.
"Faith, I wouldn't treat a dog so," replied Molly.
"Sure, not a dog," agrees Tim; and waiting to be driven out stands
arrow-straight in Danny's old clothes, which are too big for him,
wondering what the dog has to do with the matter.
"But you can pay," says Molly after a moment. Faintly and eagerly she
speaks, her hand pressing her heart to steady it in against the impulse
of hope. "You can pay for that and much more--food and drink and warmth
all the days of my life--and without money." Tim shrewdly glances his
question, but Molly shakes her head for answer.
"To-night I will keep secret and plan how to arrange it--and you may
sleep here on the sofa before the fire and dream of good things for
to-morrow; and only then"--she nods with mystery in her smile--"I will
say what ye are to do."
And Tim gives her a glance of his level eyes, reflecting in the wisdom
of experience that here is crooked business to be done for his keep.
"Sure," he answers in a way to inspire confidence, and the bargain being
struck Molly says good night, and the guest is soon stretched in sleep
on the couch.
After a time the shadows move up closer to him, the fire flickering on
the blackened log as the spirit clings to a body dying; the wind falls
till only the deep breathing of the sleeper is heard, and the loud
ticking of the clock--it strikes two with a crash, and Tim rouses.
As an old campaigner he rises from sleep without recoil or startled look
at the cloaked figure standing with ink and paper at the table in the
center of the room.
"Whist!" she says, and for a moment marvels at the nature of a boy who
rises to the alarm in the middle of the night, awake and ready; the
indifference with which he buttons his coat whilst hearing the snow he
has just escaped snarl threateningly against the window. "Whist!" says
Molly, hesitating to tell the reason for her coming at that hour, lest
it shock or frighten him. But the bearing of the meager boy and the
level glance of the untamable blue eyes once more assure her that he has
not been sent here from beyond Turntable to fail her at extremity.
"Y' understand, Timothy, that I am an old lady who may die any
time--perhaps to-night, having such warning in the unsteady beating of
my heart--and so I am come at once to explain matters and have you
settle my affairs for me on earth. Do not be afraid----"
"What of?" asks Tim.
"First," resumes Molly eagerly, "I have planned to explain to you a
moment--that 't is a duty I promised myself to do and have long
neglected."
"What is that?" asks Tim.
"A duty? Why, the same as made me take you in this night."
"How did it make you?" asks Tim, and listens with skepticism to her
explanation.
"'T will be the same with you, settling my affairs on earth," says Molly
in conclusion; "if you promise to do it 't is then a duty, and of course
you would not fail--through storm and hardship and fear, you would
go----"
"A duty," says Tim with reflection; "if you die you'll never know
whether I 'tend to it."
"Why, that would make no difference. You would 'tend to it because you
promised. You would follow the Farthest Lantern, as I will explain
presently."
Queerly he looks round, studying the flicker of fire, the cozy room,
even the clothes he is wearing; then the uplifted old face under the
white hair with its expression of listening to things he cannot hear.
"I promise," he says, and laughs in a fierce puzzled way--the only laugh
ever heard from him. And he has forgotten and Molly has forgotten to
name the price to be paid for his trouble.
"Here is a pen you may fit in the broken holder," she says; "write what
I cannot for the palsy in my hand. Now, as I tell you--'t is the letter
of the Farthest Lantern--the lantern which beckons to duty."
But Tim fumbles the pen. "I never learned how," he explains, "to write
the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble
and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her
cheeks--and curses with a mighty smother in the breast of him.
"You need not curse," says Molly faintly; "'t is the will of the saints
after all."
She nods, listening, and then the boy watches her glide from the room,
and for a long time sits on the hearth before the fire, his chin locked
in his hands.
So after all it has come about that the message of the Farthest Lantern
is never written at all. And neither is it spoken, for Tim scratching on
the door of Molly's room at daybreak receives no cheery word of
greeting; and after a moment's reflection entering with the lamp he
finds her silent forever.
Without reverence he stares at the face on the pillow, having no
knowledge of death's ghostly significance; and scowling he brushes away
the cold beads which gather on his forehead. 'T is certain that an
outcast in a strange house with a dead person will be marked for
suspicion by the neighbors; and Tim Cannon has had cause enough to avoid
the police. Yet queerly enough he sets the lamp, shining brightly, by
the bedside, and sometimes seated and sometimes moving about, but never
leaving the chill room for the warm fireplace next door, he keeps her
company.
One neighbor hears of Molly's death from a vagabond at her door in the
morning and runs to call to others "Come, Aunt Molly is dead." On their
way to the Regan cottage they agree that the vagabond is a suspicious
character and look about for him. But Tim has disappeared; nor do they
see him again until entering the room where Molly lies, with lamp
burning brightly and grim little sentry returned to await them.
Later when questioned he explains his presence in a few words. "I'll be
on the way," he says then.
No one offers him shelter or money or food, being a suspicious
character. Indeed all the company approve when a man stops him to
examine the package in his pocket. But as it is found to consist of only
an ink bottle and some paper with a broken pen he is permitted to go.
"It is suspicious," they agree. "What can the likes of him want with
letter writing?"
But they are broad-minded people of Turntable, and let him go on
condition that he stay away.
And 't is on this same day Dan Regan catches the stride that shall make
destiny for railroads, and lands his great job with the P. D. System.
All of two months after Molly's funeral--in fact the very morning of Dan
Regan's departure from Barlow and the Great Southwest Railroad to take
his position as general manager of the P. D.--a ragged gossoon with a
scar over his temple peeps from the box car of a through train halted
for a change of engines near the depot platform. It is Tim Cannon,
surprised every morning at waking to find himself out of the den of the
city slums, where morning, noon and night his grandfather--being in
liquor at the time--would drive him out to steal some trifle good for a
drink at the pawnbroker's saloon. And having no knowledge that a living
is to be gained by a more honorable profession than crime he peeps out
with suspicion on the open streets and yards, where it is impossible to
hide from a patrolman.
But hunger drives him out into the open, snarling under his breath; and
presently toward the depot lunch stand, groaning under the weight of
sinkers and pies, Timothy is making his way by fits and starts and
glancing suspicion in every direction. So that he is overcome with
chagrin when in spite of all his caution a young man steps from behind
the car unnoticed and taps him smartly on the shoulder.
Quite an elegant young gentleman, in pink shirt and gay suspenders, who
says: "See Dan Regan, yonder, up the platform, who is now off from his
old job as superintendent here to become general manager of the P. D.
All the luck he has, and myself with a headpiece of solid gold knocking
at Opportunity, who has on her door 'Nobody Home,'" says the young man
in gloom.
To the switch engine signaling down the yard he gives the high sign in
answer that he will be there in the course of time, and as Tim prowls
round the corner of the station he follows after to see what is meant by
it.
"What, are you not going out again in the box car, young hobo?" he asks.
"It is a fine home if you have but the bread," says Tim.
"A home?" repeats the other. "Mr. James Craney, I am," he informs with
dignity; "chief clerk to the general yardmaster, who has no other but
me. Is it reasonable, young hobo, as man to man, that you can jolly me
along?"
He peers round the corner, and for the first time Regan, a towering
figure of a man, turns so that Tim can see his face. The bell of the
special rings faintly as the sweep of his glance takes in Mr. Craney and
the vagabond boy; then he steps on board and in a moment the glittering
brass spark of the car amid the flying dust cloud flings Regan's last
signal to the G. S. Railroad.
But the towering black-browed man lingers in the mind's eyes of Timothy;
a giant who has stepped out of the unknown and swept him with slow
smoldering glance and then stepped back again.
Thus they meet and part, and the great man holds no more memory of the
vagabond than if he had never been; but in the bony little breast under
the rags the heart leaps high, and on the instant Tim takes up the trail
which Destiny, a far-sighted old creature, has long since blazed out for
him.
"He is the big boss," says the boy with awe, gazing after the spangle of
the flying train.
"I would not envy Regan if I were you," advises Craney. "See how he has
gone--with no friend to bid him godspeed because of the way he has kept
us all under."
But the boy still gazes after the spangle in the dust. "Divil a bit will
Regan care whether he be godspeeded or not," he says, so boldly that
Craney considers him with respect.
"I see that yourself has ambition along of the rags," he says with
meditation. "Then I know a job where you may use the ambition freely and
never a chance to part with the rags," he says. "A job which is the
equal of Regan's in every way, only on a smaller scale, you understand;
where you will be general manager of a railroad and all the other
officials to boot, including your own pay-master. Do I interest you?"
Tim nods in respect to the big words and Mr. Craney instructs him:
"Whist! Arrange your running time to meet me passing the yard-limit post
yonder at six one P.M."
And to make it official he scribbles a train order in his note-book for
Tim to sign with his mark, as his drunken grandfather has educated him
to do.
Then Mr. Craney strolls away to answer the signals of the engine that
there are cars to be weighed, and Tim prowling professionally past the
lunch counter in the waiting room, steals a banana and a sandwich, which
he has for breakfast in the shade of a pile of ties. There he watches
the making up of trains, the flying switches, the flatheads scuttling
along packing the journal boxes; and far beyond he can see the machine
shops with the forked tongues of blacksmiths' forges and the blink of
brasses in the roundhouse.
A great groan of iron and steam and toil swells in the smoky light, and
the bells call to him so that he begins prowling everywhere from end to
end of the yards. The noon comes with blowing of whistles; and hungry
again he goes back to the lunch counter while the waiter is busy and
sandwiches are easy prey. But instead of stealing them he comes out on
the platform with empty hands and stares back, not understanding why it
is so, till the groan of the work hour swelling again calls up the
memory of black-browed Regan who has been big boss of it all.
"'T is sure he would never run and hide from a policeman," says Tim, and
ponders how Regan would act in his place. "He would go hungry if he was
not strong enough to take what he wanted to their faces--that is what
Regan would do," he says; and despising sandwiches and sinkers which
have to be stolen in secret he struts proudly about with his rags and
hunger till the six o'clock whistle blows and Mr. Craney meets him at
the yard limit.
Now be it explained that just below this spot the Great Southwest had
built its first freight house, abandoned as the village of Barlow grew
away from it into a big town. Long ago the foundations have been wiped
out, but in Regan's time it still stands, a ramshackle ruin on the edge
of the right of way, which some official with economy has leased out
instead of tearing down.
"This is the Terminal Building," explains Mr. Craney as they come up,
"of the Barlow Suburban Railway." And he points out the sagging track of
rust-eaten rails which wanders away across the town's outskirts. "In
here," he explains, escorting Tim up the incline of the platform and
through the sliding door of the wareroom, "we have a stall for the
motive power, which is a horse, and in the corner a cot for the general
manager, who drives him. 'T is only three runs must be made daily across
pleasant hills and fields and then a hearty supper when you collect
fares enough to pay for it, and an infant's sleep here rocked by the
trains as they pass. Then up in the morning in jolly good time to get
the limekiln workers on the job by seven. Observe, young hobo," he says,
"that I keep nothing up my sleeve. The job is here for you to take or
leave, for better or worse; and I throw in this cap with the gold
braid," he says, unwrapping one of the bundles he carries.
"Gimme it," replies Tim with decision; and the suburban car arriving at
the moment, the driver turns in thirty-five cents as the day's revenue,
and Mr. Craney pays him seventy cents as wages and discharges him with
thanks.
"You are now installed, young manager, and so on," he tells Tim; and
after presenting the cap with gold braid, which comes down over his
manager's ears, he shows him how to reverse the horse and work the
combination of the harness, which is woven of wire and rope and old
trunk straps.
"All aboard, Barlow Suburban!" he calls then, so quickly that a young
lady passenger must run the last few steps and be assisted into the car
by himself.
"You will be most active as superintendent of motive power," he shouts
to Tim as he dusts the bony nag with the reins, and the battered little
car bumps along. "Old Charley is an heirloom who has come down to me
along of the cursed railway," he explains.
"Do not frighten away the gadfly which is his train dispatcher or he
will sit down in the track till the whistle blows."
Further instructions he gives also, and they have gone about a mile out
into the fields when the young lady passenger having dropped her fare
into the box rings the bell and is helped off at a wild-rose bush where
a path leads over a hill to a farmhouse.
"Sweet creature," says Mr. Craney with gloom. "Drive on!" And never a
word more does he speak till they reach the end of the line and the
house where he lives alone. "We are total strangers," he explains then,
"though she has boarded at the farmhouse half the summer and is named
Katy O'Hare and is telephone lady in town."
When Tim asks why Katy O'Hare and himself do not become acquainted: "'T
is the fatal circumstances of me," he answers; and invites his official
to dinner, unwrapping his other bundle.
The cheap old cottage is also fallen upon fatal circumstances, with
shutters and panes broken and seams of its walls opening to the weather;
the barns and sheds are but heaps of boards, and the crooked, rusty
switch seems but a fork of lightning which has so wrecked and blackened
the whole Craney homestead that Tim's rags are an ornament to it. And
yet Mr. Craney snaps his fingers and dances a jig. "Now ruin and
mortgage may swallow you as it has me," he says with ridicule, and
knocks some splinters from the house to build a fire in the yard between
four bricks which he knocks from the chimney.
He brings the coffeepot from the kitchen and then kicks it away that he
may boil the coffee in an old can as a courtesy to the young hobo; and
sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs he sets out from his bundle.
"Never can we become acquainted," resumes Mr. Craney; "because how could
I ask her to be mine and all the time about to be swallowed up," he
says, "by the Barlow Suburban, which has already swallowed my father who
built it, and his estate and my own earnings for five years?" And now he
makes plain that he is seizing the opportunity to travel away in search
of fortune, having found a manager in rags who can afford to live on the
dividends of the Suburban.
"We are not engaged; far from it," he says; "yet never would I desert
her to walk such ties as the Barlow Suburban, more cruel than the ties
which bind us together." So he makes out a time card. "In the morning
she goes to work, and back at evening; and some day she may be minded to
ride at noon for the sake of the exercise which is to be had on the B.
S. car." He gives Tim this time card and the key to the box which the
nickels are dropped in. "Good-by; I can trust you." He points up to the
sky. "Do not leave her walk; you solemnly promise! Good-by!"
And having turned his coat wrong side out he twists a red handkerchief
round his neck and is gone. And as he becomes smaller with distance
Timothy feels his own body swell larger with importance; having tried
the key in the fare box he leaves the nickel there as a come-on, and
kicks the horse to his feet as he has seen the truckmen do in the city
slums.
After a bit the lime burners arrive from the kiln half a mile away, and
Tim drives them to Barlow. All the way he thinks of the smoky yards with
the groan of toil rising from them, where all have dwelt so long, afraid
of Regan.
"Myself will rise up to be big boss," he says.
Well the gossoon understands, with the scar on his temple and body
still marked from the drunkard's blows that no one can rule except by
fear, so he speeds up Charley with slaps of the reins, and after
unhitching at the terminal chases him up the incline and into the stall
with a stick. "Never let me see you staggering or sitting down on the
job," he warns in kindly caution, so that Charley may save himself some
of the beatings.
With a smolder in his eyes and drumbeat in his bony little breast Tim
sits on his pallet below a lantern hung to a beam, listening whilst the
old building rolls and pitches to the passing trains and loose shingles
hoot in the blast above. And 't is worthy of note that spiders swing
down from cobwebbed rafters to glare at him with interest as a comrade
weaving a web of his own; and the mice do not come out at present, but
scurry all to set their nests in order and be ready for the part they
are to play in the history of Tim the messenger. 'T is little we know.
In a few days Tim has made a study of the Suburban's affairs; six or
seven of the lime burners ride with him on weekdays, and also Katy
O'Hare; but on Sunday he has no passengers, the kiln being closed down
so that the burners may convalesce from riding on the Suburban, and Katy
choosing to walk along the path by the rosebush with sidelong glance and
blush lest the elegant young gentleman with whom she is not acquainted
be on the car platform. In the evening Tim dines at the lunch wagon
across the track for a dime, and morning and noon munches a loaf with
indignation of Charley, who draws a hatful of oats three times a day.
But soon after he has cut the ration to two hatfuls Charley sits down on
the track, indifferent to the gadfly and all the beatings, till they
compromise on two and a half hatfuls, Tim rubbing his scar with
remembrance.
"Sure, the horse is like I used to be with my old man; when I was hungry
I was afraid of being starved and kicked; but after I had been starved
and kicked I was not afraid of going hungry or of the old man either."
'T is live and let live we must, so he feeds Charley just little enough
to keep him afraid of getting still less, which is the secret of all
contented relations between employer and employed, y' understand.
Only a short time afterward Tim raises the car fare to ten cents,
recking little of the lime burners' wrath and the high glances of Katy
O'Hare at the hard little face and hunched ragged body as he drives on,
clenching the reins in his fists. Divil a bit does he seek their
goodwill or anybody's, knowing that there is profit to be made only from
the fear that people have of him as they have of Regan.
At evening when he makes bold to stroll through the yards among the
roadmen some tale of Regan will send him scurrying back light-hearted to
the old terminal to count his money, hidden in a can behind some loose
bricks in the wall.
"Buy and sell and trample them all, I will, some day," he says, and
dances a banshee dance with shuffling feet and flinging arms. The
spiders--who are all misers--glare down on him with a poison joy, and
hasten to spin a web over the cranny where the can of treasure is
buried. "No thief will suspect what is hidden there now," says Tim; and
opens another deposit in another cranny, where a spider with golden
spots mounts guard. But the mice having set their nests in order only
look on at all this, so as not to take their part in his history before
it is time.
Drafty and echoing and chill the old terminal is that same night, and
for the first time the boy sitting cross-legged with his tattered toga
of old sacks wrapped round him is aware of the loneliness. In a sort of
vision a cozy room with sparkling hearth rises to mind, and the old
woman welcoming him on the snowy doorstep; the hard lines at the corners
of his mouth melt away, a dimple coming into the brown cheek, which had
never known dimple before, and he curses softly with a gleam of white
teeth.
"Sure, the old dame had a message to send, and I could have carried it,"
he muses; "because," he admits uneasily, "'t was a promise."
And hereupon by the arrangement of Destiny the mice having all in order
take their cue and come out boldly into his history. In the corner along
of Tim is a rubbish of old records upon which he has thrown the package
brought from Molly's cottage--thrown it the first evening of his
coming, with no thought of it since, being preoccupied with the business
of pull-down and trample-under. But now the mice gnawing at the string
open the package, and the little bottle of ink comes rolling across the
floor directly before his eyes. And this appearance of the ink bottle
being so timed to his mood the boy reaches for the rest of the package
and laying aside the pen unfolds the sheets of paper.
One of them he examines curiously, placing it between his elbows under
the lantern as he stretches flat on the floor. He knows very well 't is
Molly's beginning of the message of the Farthest Lantern, and though he
is not an educated person--often cursing the printing in books which
makes them so hard to understand--it is certain that Tim Cannon alone of
all the world can read what is written here. The eagerness of things
beyond, which had been Molly Regan's, the falter of disappointment when
discovering that she could not reveal them to Dan, the fierce bitterness
of her rebellion--all are written plainly in the cramped scribbling and
broad hideous scratches. The huge black blots were threats and
prophecies of death, struck from the pen in her hand by a Providence
impatient of her lingering.
The vagabond raises his eyes, his body flat and motionless. "All she
wanted," he says sullenly, "was to write a page 'cause it was duty." It
was another duty which had made her take him in that freezing night. He
is resentful toward some thing or power--he does not know what--that
Molly was prevented from writing this message.
"I might have stayed till I learned how to write it for her," he says;
and all at once is tremendously sorry that it is too late to do this;
too late to knock on the cottage door and be welcomed by the old dame to
the cheerful room; to show he would keep his promise; too late to leave
pull-down and trample-under behind him and begin all over again.
Just this far Tim Cannon lets his musings lead him; then fiercely, in a
scorn of his own musings and loneliness, rouses up to sit a while,
cross-legged, darting deliberately the untamable blue eye to the dark
corners, and listening, as if daring all these bright memories, which
would lure him from his purpose of being boss like Regan, to come out
in the open and halt him.
Presently in cold defiance of them he tears across the page of yellowed
writing; no doubt, remembering Dan, a spirit looks wistfully down upon
the vagabond with the scroll in his fist. Again and again he tears
deliberately. The very scratches of Molly's message are tatters. Tim
Cannon is himself again.
And the great door at the end of the building rolls back and a towering
figure stands whipping in the storm; slowly he comes up to the lantern;
the visitor is Regan.
"Where is Craney, who owns the car line?" he asks.
"He is gone; I am the manager," says Tim, rising. And after he has
explained, "No matter," nods Regan.
At the great man's feet lies his mother's message, and as he muses with
resentment and wonder that circumstances should drive him here to parley
with a ragged boy on the highway of his destiny the last tatters drift
away on the draft which has followed him in from the storm. 'T is a
ghostly way Fate has with things neglected.
"The car line could be made to pay," begins Regan craftily, "and I might
risk a few dollars to buy it in."
"Craney would sell if he was by," replies the boy.
"No matter; you can put through the deal as his manager, making all the
money for yourself. Perhaps fifty dollars," says Regan, careful not to
overbid and make Tim think the deal of too great importance.
There is a tone and movement to the air round Regan which electrifies
his companion, and at once they are conspiring together.
"You will abandon the run; suspend the service," says Regan,
deliberating; "and because your regular passengers might take hold and
operate it themselves you shall drive the horse away into the woods with
one trace broken and his side plastered over with clay as if he has been
in an accident--having first wrecked the car."
Tim nods, his own eyes glittering red, as Regan makes plain how it is to
be done. From the top of the high hill at the end of the line the car is
to be turned loose with brakes unset, so that it will leave the track
where it curves at the bottom.
"There it will take the plunge of thirty feet into the creek bed," he
says; "and when it lies in splinters at the bottom you will be handed
the money."
"And how will wrecking the car make the road belong to you?" asks Tim.
The man of power smiles at his shrewdness, and is frank with information
so that he will not be tempted to ask someone else. The Barlow Suburban
has an agreement with the state which is called a charter, he explains,
which will be forfeited if cars are not run for a certain number of
days. "So I can buy in the property from the state officials that I
know," he adds, "and operate it with new cars." He does not say with
steam cars, though by the foresight of old Craney the builder this is
permitted by the charter.
The conspiracy is now complete and as Regans puts on his raincoat Tim
makes bold to tell him: "Some day I will be boss like yourself, Mr.
Regan."
"So you may," nods the other with rare good humor, and departs for his
car.
And Dan can afford to be good-humored this night, having found a way of
escape from difficulties which have threatened to ruin his new career at
its very beginning. For a line of the P. D. building into this territory
has been held up by the Great Southwest, which warns openly that it will
bankrupt and destroy the town of Barlow if its competitor is granted
right of way or terminals. To avoid long delay in the courts Regan
himself, with the prestige of old command in this territory, has been
sent to open the way. But never a friend has he found in his old
headquarters town; the politicians whom he once ruled with a rod of iron
are in fact rejoiced to break one of their own across the head of him.
Not a loophole is left open to the P. D.
"'T is a wall of China," thinks Regan, "and what will my new directors
say of a manager who cannot persuade or bribe his old fellow citizens to
receive him with a new railroad in his hands?"
"Our new line will be the fortunes of Barlow," he has argued, but the
citizens in control laugh at him.
"The G. S. will do better by us, with new machine shops, and even build
a branch into your own territory," is the answer he has taken back to
his car from the final conference this very night.
As his first repulse the man of pull-down and trample-under has not
known how to take it, pacing his car like a madman who mistakes his own
fits for the destruction of the world. The lanterns which beckoned from
a boy at Turntable blinked now in mockery; suddenly across the yards his
eye, as dark as the stormy sky, steadied to a single spark--the beam of
Tim Cannon's lantern through the dingy window.
"'T is in the old freight house, leased to the Barlow Suburban!" he
thought aloud. "The Barlow Suburban!" And already he was into his
stormcoat and on his way to parley with the ragged boy posted like a
sentry on the highway of his destiny. So Regan discovered the only
unguarded gateway into Barlow.
Now the scheme is brewed and Tim settles down to count the gain in money
and in the interest he will make with Regan; the old building reels and
shingles whir away like bats in the gale, but he only laughs dourly, the
scrawny little breast hurting and straining with the ambition to be
mounting on bigger storms than this. By dawn he is as drunk with
scheming as ever his old grandfather with whisky, and yet his nerves do
not tremble as he goes about the business of the day, kicking Charley to
his feet and hitching with a scowl to the limekiln crew.
With deliberation he drives into the sheeted rain, and his look into the
gulch at the bottom of the last hill, where the wreck will presently
lie, is calculating and steady. In action Tim does honor to himself and
to the great men who are of his company this day; the horse is plastered
with clay and stoned far out into some woods, the brake thrown off for
the plunge from the crest of the hill--and then as the car starts
rolling and Tim grins boldly up into the black tumbling sky a dazzle of
light strikes through his plotting little brain.
And in this instant the little vagabond who has arrived at Barlow and
his tremendous partnership with Dan Regan by the route leading through
Molly's cottage on a stormy night--in this instant with the car rumbling
on its way to wreck itself and the Suburban, Tim Cannon understands
that the thing will not do at all. The tremendous partnership is not,
nor ever can be.
Such a revelation has come to many an ambitious man about to commit a
crime or betray a trust. Cowardice or conscience may unnerve him; or on
the other hand he may be fearless and willing, and yet not able to go
on, realizing suddenly the thing will not do at all. It is not destined.
And then remorse or dread seizes on the coward, and disappointment on
the bold who would have gone on if it had been so destined.
But divil a bit does remorse seize on Tim Cannon, being a person of no
moral convictions whatever; and as for dread and disappointment--one
moment he steadies his darkling blue eyes on the aspect of them, and the
next is racing after the car, swinging aboard, and setting the brakes,
though the wheels lock and coast on down the rails, slippery with rain.
For it is not the nature of him to falter or to parley with
fortune--when she declares against him he takes his loss though it be
that of life or limb, and quits the game.
Y'understand that perhaps his knees quake and buckle and a yelp of
terror is driven out of his bony breast--beating so high with ambition
but a moment before--but the spirit does not quail as he releases the
brake, sets it again slowly, carefully; the wheels revolve and begin to
feel the grip of the brake shoe. Still the car seems streaking to such a
wreck as will mangle him with broken rods and torn sheet steel at the
bottom of the gulch. Instead, by a miracle it takes the curve with only
a roar and crash of glass. Tim Cannon has held the car to the rails and
the Barlow Suburban to its charter.
The storm deepens and darkens round the lonely little car and its
driver, who stands erect and still with hands on the brake considering
his treason to Regan's ambitions and his own. The cause does not have to
be searched for.
"Sure, I had promised Craney to manage this railroad till he got back,"
says Tim Cannon as a matter of course.
He has it in mind to hasten and explain to Regan, but lingers a moment
in musing, unusual for him when business is to be done.
"'T was a wise old dame," he says; and recalls what Molly had stated as
a matter of fact. "If you promise--then 't is a duty." She had said
that; and: "Through storm and hardship and fear you would go--because
you promised."
"Sure!" agrees Tim, disgusted that he has not remembered this before
making the deal with Regan. "I will explain to him," says Tim, "that I
promised Craney."
All of a sudden a vast respect fills him--not reverence, for he has
none, but a respect for this wise woman who knew what was in a man so
much better than he knew himself.
Then stepping down he plunges into the depths of storm on his way back
to Barlow.
The great man laughs at his tale that the job is not done.
"You are a boy of brains, and I am not surprised at the news you bring,"
he says. "How much is the price risen, you little robber? A hundred?
Go," he says, "and finish quickly. I am not the man to haggle, be it
five hundred and a job on my railroad to boot."