Chapter Forty-one

The sleet came down and hopped off shoulders and blew and bounced along the streets and then finally formed a coating of ice that shellacked the windward side of buildings and trees and made walking a matter of balancing.

High Street wore its coating promptly away into a mucilaginous ooze of mud, but the tributary streets, except where housewives leaned from the top steps of their porches and threw out handfuls of ashes, or ice-cream salt, glittered in an armor of thin ice, and the naked branches of the double rows of maples along Sycamore Street shone like a regiment of fountains with their ornamental waters frozen in action. Shrubbery in front yards sagged under ice. Horses pedaled for footing and struck sparks. In front of the Five and Ten Cent Store, one was down, with a driver sitting on his head, while they shoveled ashes under his plunging hoofs. The pair of iron stags on the Court House lawn had ice beards.

In winter, Henry Schuyler persisted in wearing a veteran coon-skin cap with ear-flaps, probably the only one still extant in Centralia.

When he came down out of his office to emerge into the sleet, these flaps were tied down over his ears in a little bow of black tape under his chin. In his short reefer, coon-skin mittens, and goloshes that he lashed closer to his thin legs with a winding of hemp, there was a lanky Ichabod-look to him, as he strode surefootedly along the perilous streets.

David was leaving on the one-forty-nine. Henry had left Senator Jim Kearney, who wanted unprofessional advice on an extradition case he was handling in Cincinnati, waiting with his feet up against the base-runner, while he made the dash around to the station. As the Senator put it, he had just dropped in. As a matter of fact, Henry knew, and the Senator suspected that Henry knew, that he had made the trip to Centralia for the express purpose of the interview with Henry.

The one-forty-nine was due in ten minutes.

Henry hurried.

David, and his father, and Mathilda in an outlandish-looking dolman cape with ball fringe that gave her coachman’s shoulders, and Dora Tarkington in her white wool cap, were standing around a stove in the waiting-room, with their clothes steaming and smelling.

Tom Willets had raised the ticket-window grating and was leaning along the outer sill to talk with the Old Gentleman.

Katie, old Trina’s niece, who before her marriage had done day-work in the House on Sycamore Street, getting wind of Davey’s departure, had driven in on her husband’s dirt-cart from Ideola with her three-year-old twins, who kept up a constant trekking across the room to the water-cooler, Katie constantly after them for keeping the spigot open.

There were two other passengers for the one-forty-nine. A salesman with his sample-case and a shawled woman with a live chicken in a chip basket.

The sleet beat against the smoke-smeared windows in a monotonous tattoo.

“It’s a bad day for travel, son,” said Mathilda for the fourth time.

“Oh no, Mrs. Schuyler!” cried Dora. “I just love to travel on a rainy day. There’s something so cozy about being right out in the middle of the weather and not a bit of it able to get at you. Don’t you think so, Dave?”

David thought so.

“Of course, I know what you mean, Mrs. Schuyler. There’s something depressing about people going away in the rain. Sad-like.”

Dora’s voice was too high. It had a nervous pitch to it from talking to David’s mother. She was not quite herself. They were a little fierce together, these two, a rush of excitement out over them just from being in each other’s presence. Mathilda, without quite knowing it, full of unease, as if something were rubbing against the grain of her very being.

Pretty Dora. David’s shy eyes these last moments were furtively for her.

Mathilda knew it by the tight feeling behind her eyes.

Dora, by that same token, knew that Mathilda knew. With all of her astonishing capacity for rising to the demands of almost any sort of moment, Dora, even with her throat so hot and dry and nervous-feeling, knew that there must be just one right sort of kindness to make this moment more endurable to Mathilda.

In a way, she almost accomplished that miracle. Except for the overstrain in her manner, which David wanted passionately not to be there.

It kept her too eager. Too high-voiced. Too voluble. And not more than once did she let her glance be caught and pinioned by David, whose eyes ached to be caught and pinioned.

“Don’t you think it fun to travel in the rain, Dave?”

“Dora isn’t really this way, Mother,” he wanted to shout. “She’s sweet and neat and cozy. She isn’t really this way, Mother.”

“You do think it’s fun to travel in the rain, Dave?”

“You bet!”

He had a dry throat that kept breaking his sentences into gulps. There was even one between the “you” and the “bet.”

How beautiful she was in that woolly cap that shone against the dirty morning. And she had cut her hair. The curls that had romped through a thousand of his fancies of her, were gone now from their yellowish riot along her shoulders. And strangely, incredibly, the little bang of yellow that escaped her cap, and the short, straight line of yellow that lay along her cheeks, and the furry little peak where it petered out in the back of her head, like a boy’s, were just as goose-fleshingly lovely as the curls had been.

How beautiful she was. The secret thing between them that he had whispered to his mother a thousand times with the secret lips of his heart, was obscured for the moment by the enormous casualness of her manner. Too casual. Too obviously casual, he thought. Even strangers could be expected to meet eye-to-eye. The eyes that must serve him as lamps now. Two shining lamps down in his heart.

Yet there they stood, scraping their feet along the fender of the stove, dilly-dallying through the infinitesimally small talk of waiting for a train.

“When Father took me to Springfield when Aunt Genevieve died, we ate in a dining-car!”

Gabble. Gabble. Dora’s tongue was like the hum of his mother’s sewing-machine. Gabble. Gabble. Dear gabble, gabble.

“Of course, with local trains, it’s different....”

It made all the commotion of his emotions somehow subservient to just her nearness and dearness.

Once it seemed to him that something shining lay along her lashes as she half raised them to him. Only half, but it swept the plunging excitement higher and dryer into his throat.

“Only ten minutes, Dave,” said Mathilda, her words seeming to collapse against the rim of her lips.

“Yes, Mother.”

How beautiful she was. Dora.

“You’ll remember, Davey, to make a package of your dirty wash every-other-week and parcel-post it home.”

Dirty wash! At least she might have put it “soiled linen.” Mother!

“Rita’s got her hands full with her own family. Besides, son, it will be almost like having you back. The clothes—you’ve worn—close—to you. Don’t forget to change regular, son.”

“Mother.” What if he should cry. His throat ached so.

“I’ve put in two weights, Dave. The ones with the little red ’D’ embroidered on the drawers are the heavies, son.”

Drawers! How terrible. How Terrible. How TERRIBLE. In front of Dora. Dora, whose sweet eyes were almost looking into his now. Dora, whose sweet eyes were violets. Red “D” on the belt of his drawers. Ignominy drenched him. It made red signals of his ears. It made a throttle of his Adam’s-apple.

“Mother!”

“Dora knows, son,” said Mathilda, and fixed her ineffably tired eyes upon the two of them, standing flaming in the murk of the clogged air of that waiting-room which they enchanted for each other. “Dora knows such things have to be thought about. No right-thinking girl, Davey, is ever above thinking about those kind of things,” said Mathilda, and began to cry miserably and in sniffles that screwed her face cruelly because she tried to hold them back.

“Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother!” cried Davey to himself, as if his heart were turning to sand and running away from him.

And yet he only stood and gulped the Adam’s-apple that would not stay gulped.

“Dear Mrs. Schuyler,” cried Dora, and stepped over the impediment of Dave’s cheap, light-yellow suitcase and neatly-wrapped shoe-box of lunch, which he had consistently tried to keep kicked out of her sight, “look what I’ve brought him, if he thinks you’re kind of fussy about—about little things. I knitted it myself. All but the orange stripe. Mary Chipman was sleeping with me one Saturday night, and she knows the zigzag stitch—she did the stripe.”

“A muffler! For me—all but the stripe—gee, swell—fellow needs muffler—all but the stripe—gee——”

“He—wouldn’t let me put the one I knitted for him in,” sobbed Mathilda, the words tumbling off her lips like coals, and then making a forward jump as if she would scrape them all back again.

“Why, you darling, of course he wouldn’t. No son in the world ever would.”

“He—he—said—no——”

“Mother, I didn’t mean——”

“You did!” said Dora, who had an armful of Mathilda, and stamped her foot. “You did! You were horrid! You did!”

“He didn’t!” cried Mathilda. “You see, it was a gray one. Of a bit of wool left over from his father’s socks. He was always a child liked color. It’s the orange in this one. He didn’t!”

“That’s exactly what I meant, dear—he did—I mean he didn’t—I—mean—of course I mean he did.”

Oh, Dora—Dora—sweet, appeasing, ever-ready Dora——

Things began to happen then, starting with the faint shivering of the timbers under their feet and a blast of whistle. A door blew open on a gust of sleet.

Tom Willets slammed down the ticket grating and the straggle of travelers made stooping dives for their luggage. Katie hoisted her babies. Henry strode in, and as if shooed, the group began to move out to the ice-sheeted platform.

“Got your ticket, Dave?”

“Yep, Henry.”

“Remember us to the folks down Springfield, Dave.”

“Yep.”

“Don’t forget to give Rita that strip of red flannel, son. It’s packed under your shirts. Phil writes baby had quite another spell of croup.”

“No’m.”

“Write a body, son, and come home by the first holiday they give you. Don’t bang that shoe-box, Dave. There’s a jar of cole-slaw in it. Don’t throw the glass away. Take it to Rita for her jelly-time. There’s mustard in a separate paper for the sliced bologna, son. Plenty of it the way you like.”

How terrible. How Terrible. How TERRIBLE. Dora’s eyes laughing—at him!

“Mother!”

“I hope you put in a good dill-pickle, Mrs. Schuyler. He used to steal them for me out of your crocks and squirm through the hedge with large, green, luscious beauties for me.”

“Two of them are in there, Dave. And a bit of corned-beef to munch with the cole-slaw. He’s a great one for corned-beef and cole-slaw, Dora. Queer combination. Never saw the like.”[70]

“Corned-beef and cole-slaw,” in front of Dora, when his heart was bursting to tell her that her eyes were violets! Tears would come. Humiliated hot ones which he kept swallowing back. Corned beef——

“Goodby, Dave! I’ll be waiting.”

“Dora! Dora! goodby, Dora!”

“Goodby, son! God bless you!”

“Mother, goodby!”

“Boy! Boy! Boy!”

“Yes, Mother!”

“Goodby, son! God bless you!”

“Father—oh, Father!”

“Carry your own torch, son, for what you think is right, even if it’s a torch no bigger than a lightning-bug.”

“Yes—Father—goodby!”

“Goodby, Davey—Trina sends word, goodby, too.”

“Goodby, Katie——”

“Tell my twins goodby, Davey!”

“Goodby, youngsters!”

The train dove in then, parting the sleet like a curtain and Charlie Herkhimer sprang up out of nowhere, in furiously greasy overalls and a torch, and began poking in and out of the day-coach entrails.

“So long, Dave! Luck!”

“S’long, Charlie! Well, well! Guess I’m off Henry!”

“Yep!”

“All aboard!”

“Oh, Davey—there comes Bek!”

“Goodby, Dave! Catch! It’s a sack of chestnuts Roasted them for you this morning.”

“Thanks, Bek! Goodby, Bek!”

“Don’t eat them, son; they’re bad for your headaches Take them to Phil.”

“Mother—Father—all—Bek—Dora—Goodby!”

“Your shoe-box, son! Don’t crush! It’s lunch!”

“Wave goodby to my twins, Davey!”

“’By, twins!”

“Oh!”

Sleet bounced down against the shoulders of the little group on the platform, as the train that bore David Schuyler out of the years of his childhood, wound like snake around the end of the old South Meadow of the now historic House on Sycamore Street.

FINIS

FOOTNOTES:

This book is set in Caslon Old Style and Caslon Old Face types, following the lines of those originally designed by William Caslon in the early part of the eighteenth century. Working at a time when type designing had fallen into a state of uninspired mediocrity, Caslon, by the beauty of his new types, did much to revitalize the art of printing. After two centuries of constant use, they are still considered the finest faces for book composition, embodying, as they do, both pleasing grace of line and maximum readability. The text is printed on Lorette laid stock from Perkins & Squier Company, bound in glazed black Holliston vellum, stamped in art gold with linoleum-block printed sides designed by A.W. Rushmore. Set, printed, and bound by the Haddon Craftsmen in Camden, New Jersey, for the publishers, Harper & Brothers