The Whirligig of Time Part 56

James had smiled with the others, but his merriment was short-lived.

This indeed was the finishing stroke. That young fellow actually was more concerned about his dog....

The relief train was due to arrive at 1:30, and shortly before that hour there was a general adjournment to the concourse. A crowd had already gathered before the gate through which the survivors would presently file. James looked at the waiting people and shuddered slightly. He preferred not to wait there.

Pa.s.sing by a news stand he bought the latest extra. It was curious to see the contents of those press agent flimsies transcribed on the flaring columns as the livest news obtainable. Well, all that would be changed shortly.... His own name caught his eye; a paragraph was devoted to telling how he had waited in the station, and why. "Mr. Wimbourne was entirely calm and self-contained," the item ended. Calm and self-contained. And those people took it for a virtue!...

The gates were opened to allow the friends of pa.s.sengers on the ill-fated train to pa.s.s through to the platform. The reporters were unusually silent as James walked by. James knew what their silence meant, and writhed under it.

The platform was dark and chilly. Like a tomb, almost.... The idea was suggestive, but his heart was stone against it. The thought of seeing Beatrice walking up the platform in a moment was enough to check any possible indulgence of feeling. That was the way such things always had been rewarded, with him. He could not remember having entertained one such emotional impulse in the past that had not led him into fresh misery.

He had waited nearly two hours and there was absolutely no indication as to whether Beatrice had suffered or not. He had telephoned several times to his flat, to which the servants had lately returned, and to his office and had learned that no word had been received at either place.

That meant nothing. Five names of people killed had been received when he left the press office, and hers was not among them. But the number of dead was said to be larger than was at first expected; it would probably reach into the twenties. Part of one Pullman, it appeared, had been entirely destroyed by fire, and several people were believed to have perished in it. There was no telling, of course, till the train came in.

The chances were still overwhelmingly in favor of Beatrice's safety, of course....

One torment had been spared him: Tommy had not turned up. There would be no scene; he would not have to look on while his wife and her lover, maddened by the pangs of separation and suspense, rushed into each other's arms.... Ah, no; he would not deceive himself. His relief at Tommy's absence was really due to the fact that he had been spared the sight of some one genuinely and whole-heartedly anxious about Beatrice's fate.

The train crawled noiselessly into the station. James posted himself near the inner end of the platform, so as to be sure not to miss her.

Soon groups began to file by of people laughing and crying and embracing each other, as unconscious to appearances as children. How many happy reunions, how many quarrels and misunderstandings mended forever by an hour or two of intense suffering!... No, that was a foolish thought, of course.

Presently he saw her, or rather a hat which he recognized as hers, moving up the platform. He braced himself and walked forward with lowered eyes, trying to think of something felicitous to say. He dared not look up till she was quite near. At last he raised a hand toward her, opened his mouth to speak, and found himself staring into the face of a perfectly strange woman.

The mischance unnerved him. He lost control of himself and darted aimlessly to and fro through the crowd for a few moments, like a rabbit.

Then he rushed back to the gate and stood there watching till the last pa.s.senger had left the platform and white shrouded things on wheels began to appear.

He saw a uniformed official and addressed him, asking where he could find a complete list of the dead and injured. The man silently handed him a paper. James ran his eyes feverishly down the list of names. There it was--Wim--no, no, Wilson. Her name was not there. He raised his eyes questioningly to the official.

"No, that list is not complete," said the man.

He led James away to one or two other uniformed officials, and then to a man who was not in uniform. At length it was arranged; James was to take the first train for Stamford. Some one gave him a pa.s.s.

But before he went he telegraphed to Bar Harbor. It was necessary to have conclusive proof that Beatrice was on the train. As he recrossed the concourse, now converted into a happy hunting ground for the reporters, he caught sight of Mrs. Lindenbaum, the anxious mother. She was alone, but the expression on her face left no doubt as to how the day had turned out for her. He stopped and spoke to her:

"Your son is all right, is he?"

"Yes!" She turned toward him a face fairly transfigured with joy. "He wasn't hurt at all--just scratched a little by broken gla.s.s. He and my daughter have just gone to telephone to some people.... What do you think--he was the first one in his car to break open a window and let the smoke out! He reached up with his umbrella and smashed it open--that was how he got out. And he dragged out three people who were unconscious...." She stopped and laughed. "You must excuse me--I'm foolish!"

"Not at all," replied James. "I'm so glad--" He started to move on, but the woman stopped him, suddenly remembering.

"But what about--I do hope--" she began.

"No," said James quietly. "I'm sorry to say my news is bad." He had little doubt now as to the verdict, but bad--! Was it? Oh, was it?

It was early evening before he returned. His expedition had been painful in the extreme, but wholly without definite results. There had been one or two charred fragments of clothing that might or might not have been.... It was too horrible to think much about.

He knew for certain no more than when he started out, but conviction was only increased, for all that. What was there left to imagine but what that heap of cinders suggested? There was just one other chance, one bare possibility; Beatrice might not have left Bar Harbor, at any rate not on that train. The answer to his telegram would settle that.

He found the yellow envelope awaiting him on the hall table. He lifted it slowly and paused a moment before opening it, wondering if he could trust himself to hope or feel anything in this final instant of uncertainty. Anything! Any human feeling to break this sh.e.l.l of indifference....

No use. Something in his brain refused to work.

He tore open the envelope. "Beatrice left last night on the seven o'clock ferry; nothing more known. Please wire latest news," he read.

Well, that settled it, at any rate. He knew what the facts were; now he had only to bring himself face to face with them. Yet still he found himself dodging the issue, letting his thoughts wander into obscure by-paths. His brain was strangely lethargic, his heart more so, if possible, than in the station this morning. It was not that he felt bitter or cruel; he explained the situation to the maid, as she served him his dinner, with great tact and consideration, and afterward arranged certain matters of detail with all his usual care and foresight. It was only when he looked into himself that he met darkness.

Uncle James, who was in town on business, dropped in during the evening.

James told him the results of his labors and watched the first hopefulness of his uncle's face freeze gradually into conviction.

"I see, I see," said Uncle James at last. "There's nothing more to be done, then? Any use I can be, in any way--"

"Thank you," replied James gravely, "there's nothing more to be done."

Uncle James rose to go and then hesitated. "Well, there it is," he said; "it's just got to be faced, I suppose. A major sorrow--the great blow of a lifetime. Not many of us are called upon to bear such great things, James. I never have been, and never shall, now. We feel less sharply as we grow older.... It's a great sorrow, a great trial--but I can't help feeling, somehow, that it's also a great chance.... But I'm only harrowing you--I'm sorry." He turned and went out without another word.

Presently James wandered into the bedroom that had once been hers. He turned on all the lights as if in the hope that illuminating the places she had been familiar with would bring the memory of her more sharply to his mind. Yes, it all seemed very natural; he would not say but what it made death less terrible. The fact that her chair was in its accustomed place before her dressing table did somehow make it easier to remember the events of that afternoon. He sat down before the dressing table.

There was little on it to bring an intimate recollection of her to his mind; most of her small possessions she had naturally taken away with her to Bar Harbor. He opened a drawer and discovered nothing but a small box of hairpins.

He took them out and handled them gently for a moment. Hairpins! Even so, they brought her back more vividly than anything had yet done--the soft dark hair sweeping back from the forehead, the lovely arch of her nose, and all the rest of it.... He supposed she ought to seem aloof and unapproachable, now that she was dead, but it was not so at all. He remembered her only as feminine and appealing. She certainly had been very beautiful. And of all that beauty there remained only--hairpins.

The fact of human mortality pressed suddenly down on him. Some time, a few days or a few decades hence, he would cease to exist, even as Beatrice, and nothing would remain of him but--Not hairpins, indeed, but hardly anything more substantial. A society pin, a little gold football, a few papers bearing his signatures in McClellan's files....

Poor Beatrice!

A feeling touched his heart at last; one of pity. Poor Beatrice! Fate had treated her harshly, far beneath her deserts. She had sinned.... Had she? It was not for him to settle that; she had been human, even as he.

She had been frail; leave it at that. The strongest of us are weak at times. Only most of us are given a chance to regain our strength, pull ourselves together after a fall, make something out of ourselves at last. This opportunity had been denied Beatrice. Surely it was hard that she should be cut off thus in the depth of her frailty, at the lowest ebb of all that was good in her. The weakest deserved better than that.

So he sat meditating on the tragedy of her life as he might, in an idle mood, have brooded over the story of a lovely and unhappy queen of long ago, some appealing, wistful figure of the past with whom he had nothing in common but mortality. The sense of his own detachment from the story of his wife's life struck him at last and roused him to fresh pity. He went into his dressing room and fetched the photograph of her that he had thought it advisable to keep on his bureau. He stood it up on her dressing table and sat down again to study it. Poor Beatrice! It was pathetic that she, so young, so beautiful, so lonely, should be unmourned, since his feeling could not properly be described as mourning....

"Poor Beatrice," he murmured, "is pity all I can feel for you?"

A bell sounded somewhere, the front door bell. He scarcely noticed it.

No, there was one person to mourn her, of course--Tommy. The thought of him sent a sudden shudder through him. Tommy! He wondered if he could bring himself to be decent to Tommy in case he should turn up.... Just like him, the nauseous little brute!

No, that thought was unworthy of him. What particular grudge had he against Tommy? Hitherto he had not even taken the trouble to despise Tommy, and surely there was no point in beginning now. No, he must be decent to Tommy, if the occasion should arise.

But that Tommy should be chief mourner! Poor Beatrice!...

Presently he roused himself with a slight start. He did not wish to grudge his wife what slight homage he could pay her, but he felt that he had perhaps gone far enough. One felt what one could; harping over things was merely morbid. He rose and quietly left the room.

The lights in the hall seemed dim and low. A gentle glow shone through the living room door. That was odd; he thought he remembered turning out the light in the room before he left it. Then he became aware of a sentence or two being spoken in a low voice in that room, and the next moment one of the servants walked out of the door and into the hall.

He brushed past her, wondering who could have arrived at this time of night. At the door he stopped, strained his eyes to pierce the half-gloom and became aware of a figure standing before him, a silent, black-robed figure, full of a strange portent....

Aunt Selina.