AT BAY SOFTLY

Stafford had at frequent intervals during the day been in communication with the relief train and had received neither encouragement nor the opposite. There had been a sharp questioning of a new man in charge, a person who seemed to know his business thoroughly, but who was far from voluble in conversation. Evidently the emergency had been thought such as to require the presence of someone of greater versatility than was likely to be possessed by the train crew, but from this new overseer the questioner received but little satisfaction. In fact the boss had seemed not altogether open and candid in his statements and Stafford had become a trifle irritated. He put the case lightly, for the man to whom he was talking was evidently bright:

"I'm not altogether satisfied with your answers. We people imprisoned here have a right to know exactly what the outlook is. Why don't you come to me more like a child to its mother? We are cutting wood for fuel, and the food supply is getting low. What are you doing over there?"

"Are you a railroad man?"

"Well, I've seen a railroad."

"You ought to know what this job is then. It's a pretty tough one."

"I know it, but why don't you answer my questions more definitely? Have you anything up your sleeve?"

"Possibly; my sleeves are pretty big. This I'll tell you, though, that I think we're all right. I'd tell you more if I felt sure myself. We're going to try something. That's all."

Somehow, this elated Stafford. He felt that he had been talking to a man who knew what he was about and he became confident that release was close at hand. But was he elated, after all? Release would mean that there would remain but two more days of Her, for, in such event, within two days the train would be in Chicago. He was in a most uncertain mood.

He was restless and unreasonable. Why to him should come such perplexity in life, such trial to one who had banished himself to avoid temptation?

Yet, here it was, thrust in his way again, and he must be once more a Tantalus. He became mightily impatient as he brooded and wished that he had Fate where he could punish her. Just what he would do with that lady in such contingency he hardly knew. He got to speculating upon that and had all sorts of fancies. He conceived the grotesque idea that the ducking-stool would be about the thing. The a.s.sociation of Fate with the ducking-stool seemed somewhat incongruous, it is true, something in the way of an anachronism, it was such a far cry from Homer to New England, but that didn't matter. She certainly deserved the ducking-stool,--and then he could not but laugh at himself and his vexed fancies. It was a trait of Stafford that, whatever the situation, he was certain in turning it over in his mind, to give it some fantastic sidelight, which diverted his attention, and that generally relieved him. The idea of having Fate in the ducking-stool appealed to him just now and smoothed his mood. How would that arbitrary lady, she who had had her own way with the world so long, conduct herself under such trying circ.u.mstances, for trying he inferred they were, from old prints which he had studied with great interest in his childhood. He imagined the way in which her long hair would float out upon the water as the sh.o.r.e end of the board went up and she, in the chair at the other end, went down and under water, and, in imagination, he could hear her gasp a little, stubborn as she is reputed to be. How would she behave and comport herself after the third or fourth dip? Would she prove amenable and, when she had got her breath, pledge herself to be henceforth and for all time a little more considerate of the comfort of humanity? For lovers especially would she exhibit a more kindly and understanding regard? If not, why, then, under she must go again!

So he ambled on foolishly and to his own relief. An admirable thing for Stafford was it that these whimsies so often seized upon him, equally when he was enraged or distressed, it didn't matter which. They helped to tide him over the mental emergency. Happy the man who has such an odd streak in the composition of his under-nature.

"Still," Stafford laughed to himself, "I am an abused man. I am a victim of atrocious circ.u.mstances. I'm an injured being, and I'm at bay! I'm going to turn and make the best of it savagely. I'll have, at least, the comfort of looking into a pair of eyes and listening to a voice.

I'll go and talk to Her."

And he went into the next car and seated himself beside the Far Away Lady, who received him kindly. He resolved to indulge himself in her companionship for a time, though against his better judgment. He knew that he was but making his trial the harder to bear.

"Do you know," he said, after the first greeting, "that I wish I could sing?"

"And why do you wish that?" she queried.

"Because, if I could, I would get off the train and wade through the snow away out to that clump of evergreens you see there two-thirds of the way up the slope--which would be out of hearing from here--and I would get behind the evergreens, out of sight, and sing something dolorous."

"Why would you do that?"

"I hardly know myself. I suppose it would be something in the mood and the way of the old troubadours, who, when things went wrong, murmured 'Alack' and sought the silent places and engaged in dismal vocalism."

"But don't you think it was rather foolish of them?" ventured the Far Away Lady.

"I don't know about that. It must have been a sort of relief. Groaning is a great relief when you are hurt. I noticed that particularly among my workmen in Siberia, whenever one of them had been injured in an accident. Very fine groaners they were, too."

"But what nonsense you are talking"--there was a note of more than anxiety in her voice--"has something happened? Tell me, John. Has anything occurred to-day to disturb you?"

"Nothing, madam, nothing at all. Do you know what is meant by 'c.u.mulative repression?' Well I'm suffering from 'c.u.mulative repression.' That's all. There are different kinds of the disease and mine is of the sort for which there is nothing one can take."

"I don't understand you, John."

"No? Well, I don't seem to make myself very clear, it is true. I didn't explain 'c.u.mulative' as thoroughly as I might have done. It's this way: Suppose you were compelled to take some drug the effect of which is known as 'c.u.mulative.' The first dose would have little effect, and so on, up to a certain time. Then something would happen, and that something would be a result just the same as if you had taken all the doses at once--mighty serious, possibly. In my case I don't, as yet, know just how serious the effect is. I think--at least I hope--that I will recover. I seem to feel it wearing off a shade, but I'm not quite sure. The consequences of 'c.u.mulative repression' are sometimes most serious. Insanity has been known to come. But, as for me, 'I am not mad, I am not mad,' I'm only a little--I'm only wandering in my mind."

Then, all at once, his mood changed to something absolutely earnest and his look was pitifully appealing as he leaned toward her:

"Oh, Lady Leech, can you do nothing for me?"

She did not answer him. She understood. She knew, as well as if he had told her in simpler words, that he had almost failed in his high resolve and that he had come to her, feverish, in a half madness, to be upheld and strengthened, or otherwise to be dealt with, as she would. She realized it all, and thought silently, struggling with herself as he might never know. But the good, both for his sake and hers, was strong within her and finally came her soft reply:

"You know, John, that I would help you if I could, but you know that I cannot, that I must not, even a little."

Her's was a great sympathy, yet, in the midst of it all, there was something she could not understand. She had heard that of him, from China, which made this scene incomprehensible. She knew that there was not a trace of acting, that there was no craft nor design about him, and she was but lost in a maze of troubled doubt. There was her own heart.

An overwhelming pity overcame her, but she could not express it.

He sat looking at her, silent, sad, studying. Then, suddenly, he returned to earth again; his face lightened:

"What nonsense I've been talking to you! I will go into the other car and encourage the Colonel in the arena," and so he left her.

But there was a mist in her eyes as he went out. How he had reminded her of the Stafford of old, in the days when they were careless!

CHAPTER XX

LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY

The Colonel was royally in his element now. On no occasion before during all the time of detention had he played with so free a hand or felt himself so much an element of good among his fellow creatures. The psychological hour had come for him.

"We should congratulate ourselves," he resonantly declared. "Where else or under what other circ.u.mstances could have been accidentally a.s.sembled such a number of people so qualified to minister mentally to each other and make otherwise dead hours breathe as we who are here now looking into each other's eyes?" Then, very properly, feeling that he had expressed himself rather finely, he continued, "We will not waste the shining hour. We must have other stories. Mr. Showman, have you anything to say?"

Had the Colonel not known very well what he was about his last sentence would have been as tactless as it seemed to everybody cruel, and even his trusting and admiring wife looked upon him in a startled way as he thus addressed himself to an exceedingly florid man in somewhat florid garb, but with, nevertheless, an air of intelligence of the better sort and one of general understanding. He had been a not infrequent visitor and had listened quietly and with evident delight to what he had heard.

The Colonel had not offended him in the least by the blunt application of the word "showman." The two knew each other and, besides, the t.i.tle belonged to him properly and he was not at all ashamed of it. On the contrary, he was rather proud of it. He looked at the Colonel in a meditative way and took his time. He had faced audiences--though, perhaps, none quite so select, before--and finally remarked, very simply and to the admiration of everybody:

"You can't expect much of a plain, uneducated showman, but I know of one story, a sort of love story, too, which a friend of mine who owns a dime museum told me. I'm in the circus business myself, so do not know as much about what you might call family details as he would, but this is what he gave me. He was tickled and used some large words:

LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY

The Ossified Man was in love with the Fat Woman. Such things happen. Men are falling in love with women every day and apparent absurdities and incongruities do not count. Love asks no odds. The Ossified Man was in love with the Fat Lady. She weighed six hundred and eighty-three pounds; he weighed just eighty-three. It may have been that this singular coincidence, as shown on the billboards throughout the city, first drew the two together. Who can tell? They became acquainted and then began one of the love affairs of the thousand myriads, with which the world is at all times occupied.

The Fat Lady was fair to look upon. She had the tremendous advantage of being a landscape as well as a personality. She was, somehow, healthy, and her far-outstanding flesh was firm and white, despite her mountainous proportions. She rose and fell rythmatically as a ma.s.s with each inhalation of her fortunately great lungs and reminded one, in a way, of a volcano half quiescent. This, though, would be an utterly wrong simile. There was nothing fiery about her. Her round face showed but a somewhat intensified benevolence. Upon second thought--because she had what she deemed taste in dress and wore a variety of outside ribbon things upon her looming corsage and vast flowers upon her hat--she reminded one, billowy and heaving and with green and flowery things atop her, of the ever soft and rolling and lifting Sarga.s.so Sea. She was a good girl in her way and had come from Indiana.

The Ossified man was nearly six feet in height, was one of the best known specimens in the show world of what may be called an animated stalact.i.te and could scarcely be called ungraceful though a slightly too robust skeleton. His joints were singularly flexible yet and his digestion and his mind were active. "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Thus he explained the quality of the personality of the two.

The wooing of the Ossified Man was in the nature of an innovation. He recognized the att.i.tude in the community occupied by his inamorata and himself, not merely toward each other but with relation to all the outside world, and he conducted himself accordingly.

What the Ossified Man did--and it is greatly to his credit--was to do what any other man of his grade would do. Neither he nor the Fat Woman were highly educated but each had been through a school and each had read and could understand things and each had intelligence and no little sentiment. As remarked, the Ossified Man made his advances as would any other man of his degree. The two came to understand each other in a way and the Fat Woman began to feel somewhere, far away in her system, something she had never felt before. In truth she was beginning to fall in love with the Ossified Man. Not being a fool, the Ossified Man knew it. He realized the fact that he had found another being of the other s.e.x, of good sense, though out of the common in appearance, as sentimental as he, the great heart once fairly stirred. Affairs drifted.

He knew that he was going to propose to her and she knew that he was going to ask her to be his wife. That reflection, somehow, startled her throughout all her vast being, though a dim sub-consciousness told her that she liked him much. As for him, he resolved to stake the future upon a single poem he sent to her, confident that she would accept it gravely. And these are the few lines she received:

"All flesh is gra.s.s, and gra.s.s must turn to clay; All bones must turn to dust, and we are they!