Complete weird tales of.., p.591
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 591
The car was hot; he was hot. Burning thoughts concerning the insolence of railroads made him hotter; the knowledge that he had furnished amusement for the passengers of two trains did not cool him.
Meanwhile everybody in the car had become tired of staring at him; a little boy across the aisle giggled his last giggle; several men resumed their newspapers; a shopgirl remembered her gum and began chewing it again.
A large mottled man with a damp moustache, seated opposite him, said: “Vell, Mister, you runned pooty quvick alretty py dot Vestport train!”
“It seems to me,” observed Seabury, touching his heated face with his handkerchief, “that the public ought to do something.”
“Yaw; der bublic it runs,” said the large man, resuming his eyeglasses and holding his newspaper nearer to the window in the fading light.
Seabury smiled to himself and ventured to glance across the aisle in time to see the dawning smile in the blue eyes of his neighbor die out instantly as he turned. It was the second smile he had extinguished since his appearance aboard the train.
The conductor, a fat, unbuttoned, untidy official, wearing spectacles and a walrus moustache, came straddling down the aisle. He looked over the tops of his spectacles at Seabury doubtfully.
“I managed to jump aboard,” explained the young man, smiling.
“Tickuts!” returned the conductor without interest.
“I haven’t a ticket; I’ll pay — —”
“Sure,” said the conductor; “vere you ged owid?”
“What?”
“Vere do you ged owid?”
“Oh, where do I get out? I’m going to Beverly — —”
“Peverly? Sefenty-vive cends.”
“Not to Peverly, to Beverly — —”
“Yaw, Peverly — —”
“No, no; Beverly! not Peverly — —”
“Aind I said Peverly alretty? Sefenty-vive — —”
“Look here; there’s a Beverly and a Peverly on this line, and I don’t want to go to Peverly and I do want to go to Beverly — —”
“You go py Peverly und you don’d go py Beverly alretty! Sure! Sefenty-vive ce — —”
The young man cast an exasperated glance across the aisle in time to catch a glimpse of two deliciously blue eyes suffused with mirth. And instantly, as before, the mirth died out. As an extinguisher of smiles he was a success, anyway; and he turned again to the placid conductor who was in the act of punching a ticket.
“Wait! Hold on! Don’t do that until I get this matter straight! Now, do you understand where I wish to go?”
“You go py Peverly — —”
“No, Beverly! Beverly! Beverly,” he repeated in patiently studied accents.
The large mottled man with the damp moustache looked up gravely over his newspaper: “Yaw, der gonductor he also says Peverly.”
“But Peverly isn’t Beverly — —”
“Aind I said it blenty enough dimes?” demanded the conductor, becoming irritable.
“But you haven’t said it right yet!” insisted Seabury.
The conductor was growing madder and madder. “Peverly! Peverly!! Peverly!!! In Gottes Himmel, don’d you English yet alretty understandt? Sefenty-vive cends! Und” — here he jammed a seat check into the rattling windows-sill— “Und ven I sez Peverly it iss Peverly, und ven I sez Beverly it iss Beverly, und ven I sez sefenty-vive cends so iss it sefenty-vi — —”
Seabury thrust three silver quarters at him; it was impossible to pursue the subject; madness lay in that direction. And when the affronted conductor, mumbling muffled indignation, had straddled off down the aisle, the young man took a cautious glance at the check in the window-sill. But on it was printed only, “Please show this to the conductor,” so he got no satisfaction there. He had mislaid his time-table, too, and the large mottled man opposite had none, and began an endless and patient explanation which naturally resulted in nothing, as his labials were similar to the conductor’s; even more so.
* * *
CHAPTER IX
FATE
TURNING TO THE man behind him Seabury attempted to extract a little information, and the man was very affable and anxious to be of help, but all he could do was to nod and utter Teutonic gutturals through a bushy beard with a deep, buzzing sound, and Seabury sank back, beaten and dejected.
“Good Lord!” he muttered to himself, “is the entire Fatherland travelling on this accursed car! I — I’ve half a mind — —”
He stole a doubtful sidelong glance at his blue-eyed neighbor across the aisle, but she was looking out of her own window this time, her cheeks buried in the fur of her chinchilla muff.
“And after all,” he reflected, “if I ask her, she might turn out to be of the same nationality.” But it was not exactly that which prevented him.
The train was slowing down; sundry hoarse toots from the locomotive indicated a station somewhere in the vicinity.
“Plue Pirt Lake! Change heraus für Bleasant Falley!” shouted the conductor, opening the forward door. He lingered long enough to glare balefully at Seabury, then, as nobody apparently cared either to get out at Blue Bird Lake or change for Pleasant Valley, he slammed the door and jerked the signal rope; the locomotive emitted a scornful Teutonic grunt; the train moved forward into the deepening twilight of the December night.
The snow was now falling more heavily — it was light enough to see that — a fine gray powder sifting down out of obscurity, blowing past the windows in misty streamers.
The bulky man opposite breathed on the pane, rubbed it with a thumb like a pincushion, and peered out.
“Der next station iss Beverly,” he said.
“The next is Peverly?”
“No, der next iss Beverly; und der nextest iss Peverly.
“Then, if I am going to Beverly, I get out at the next station, don’t I?” stammered the perplexed young fellow, trying to be polite.
The man became peevish. “Nun, wass ist es?” he growled. “I dell you Peverly und you say Beverly. Don’d I know vat it iss I say alretty?”
“Yes — but I don’t — —”
“Also, you ged owid vere you tam blease!” retorted the incensed passenger, and resumed his newspaper, hunching himself around to present nothing to Seabury except a vast expanse of neck and shoulder.
Seabury, painfully embarrassed, let it go at that. Probably the poor man had managed to enunciate the name of the station properly; no doubt the next stop was Beverly, after all. He was due there at 6.17. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six already. The next stop must be Beverly — supposing the train to be on time.
And already the guttural warning of the locomotive sounded from the darkness ahead; already he sensed the gritting resistance of the brakes.
Permitting himself a farewell and perfectly inoffensive glance across the aisle, he perceived her of the blue eyes and chinchilla furs preparing for departure; and, what he had not before noticed, her maid in the seat behind her, gathering a dainty satchel, umbrella, and suit-case marked C. G.
So she was going to Beverly, too! He hoped she might be bound for the Christmas Eve frolic at the Austins’. It was perfectly possible — in fact, probable.
He was a young man whose optimism colored his personal wishes so vividly that sometimes what he desired became presently, in his imagination, a charming and delightful probability. And already his misgivings concerning the proper name of the next station had vanished. He wanted Beverly to be the next station, and already it was, for him. Also, he had quite made up his mind that she of the chinchillas was bound for the Austins’.
A cynical blast from the locomotive; a jerking pull of brakes, and, from the forward smoker, entered the fat conductor.
“Beverly! Beverly!” he shouted.
So he, too, had managed to master his P’s and B’s, concluded the young man, smiling to himself as he rose, invested himself with his heavy coat, and picked up his suit-case.
The young lady of the chinchillas had already left the car, followed by her maid, before he stepped into the aisle ready for departure.
A shadow of misgiving fell upon him when, glancing politely at his fellow-passenger, he encountered only a huge sneer, and concluded that the nod of courtesy was superfluous.
Also he hesitated as he passed the fat conductor, who was glaring at him, mouth agape — hesitated a moment only, then, realizing the dreadful possibilities of reopening the subject, swallowed his question in silence.
“It’s got to be Beverly, now,” he thought, making his way to the snowy platform and looking about him for some sign of a conveyance which might be destined for him. There were several sleighs and depot-wagons there — a number of footmen bustling about in furs.
“I’ll just glance at the name of the station to be sure,” he thought to himself, peering up through the thickly descending snow where the name of the station ought to be. And, as he stepped out to get a good view, he backed into a fur-robed footman, who touched his hat in hasty apology.
“Oh, Bailey! Is that you?” said Seabury, relieved to encounter one of Mrs. Austin’s men.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Seabury, sir! Were you expected —— ?”
“Certainly,” nodded the young man gayly, abandoning his suit-case to the footman and following him to a big depot-sleigh.
And there, sure enough, was his lady of the chinchillas, nestling under the robes to her pretty chin, and her maid on the box with the coachman — a strangely fat coachman — no doubt a new one to replace old Martin.
When Seabury came up the young lady turned and looked at him, and he took off his hat politely, and she acknowledged his presence very gravely and he seated himself decorously, and the footman swung to the rumble.
Then the chiming silver sleigh-bells rang out through the snow, the magnificent pair of plumed horses swung around the circle under the bleared lights of the station and away they speeded into snowy darkness.
A decent interval of silence elapsed before he considered himself at liberty to use a traveller’s privilege. Then he said something sufficiently commonplace to permit her the choice of conversing or remaining silent. She hesitated; she had never been particularly wedded to silence. Besides, she was scarcely twenty — much too young to be wedded to anything. So she said something, with perfect composure, which left the choice to him. And his choice was obvious.
“I have no idea how far it is; have you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said coolly.
“This is a jolly sleigh,” he continued with unimpaired cheerfulness.
She thought it comfortable. And for a while the conversation clung so closely around the sleigh that it might have been run over had not he dragged it into another path.
“Isn’t it amazing how indifferent railroads are to the convenience of their passengers?”
She turned her blue eyes on him; there was the faintest glimmer in their depths.
“I know you saw me running after that train,” he said, laughingly attempting to break the ice.
“I?”
“Certainly. And it amused you, I think.”
She raised her eyebrows a trifle. “What is there amusing about that?”
“But you did smile — at least I thought so.”
Evidently she had no comment to offer. She was hard to talk to. But he tried again.
“The fact is, I never expected to catch your — that train. It was only when I saw — saw” — he floundered on the verge of saying “you,” but veered off hastily— “when I saw that brakeman’s expression of tired contempt, I simply sailed through the air like a — a — like a — one of those — er you know — —”
“Do you mean kangaroos?” she ventured so listlessly that the quick flush of chagrin on his face died out again; because it was quite impossible that such infantine coldness and candour could be secretly trifling with his dignity.
“It was a long jump,” he concluded gayly, “but I did some jumping at Harvard and I made it and managed to hold on.”
“You were very fortunate,” she said, smiling for the first time.
And, looking at her, he thought he was; and he admitted it so blandly that he overdid the part. But he didn’t know that.
“I fancy,” he continued, “that everybody on that train except you and I were Germans. Such a type as sat opposite me — —”
“Which car were you in?” she asked simply.
“Why — in your car — —”
“In my car?”
“Why — er — yes,” he explained; “you were sitting across the aisle, you know.”
“Was I?” she asked with pleasant surprise; “across the aisle from you?”
He grew red; he had certainly supposed that she had noticed him enough to identify him again. Evidently she had not. Mistakes like that are annoying. Every man instinctively supposes himself enough of an entity to be noticed by a pretty woman.
“I had no end of trouble of finding out where Beverly was,” he said after a minute.
“Oh! And how did you find out?”
“I didn’t until I backed into Bailey, yonder.... Do you know that I had a curious sort of presentiment that I should find you in this sleigh?”
“That is strange,” she said. “When did you have it?”
“In the car — long before you got off.”
She thought it most remarkable — rather listlessly.
“Those things happen, you know,” he went on; “like thinking of a person you don’t expect to see, and looking up and suddenly seeing that very person walking along.”
“How does that resemble your case?” she asked.
It didn’t. He realised it even before he began to try to explain the similarity. It really didn’t matter one way or the other; it was nothing to turn red about, but he was turning. Somehow or other she managed to say things that never permitted that easy, graceful flow of language which characterised him in his normal state. Somehow or other, he felt that he was not doing himself justice. He could converse well enough with people as a rule. Something in that topsy-turvy and maddeningly foolish colloquy with those Germans must have twisted his tongue or unbalanced his logic.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “there’s no similarity between the two cases except the basic idea of premonition.”
She had been watching him disentangle himself with bright eyes in which something was sparkling — perhaps sympathy and perhaps not. It may have been the glimmer of malice. Perhaps she thought him just a trifle too ornamental — for he certainly was a very good-looking youth — perhaps something in the entire episode appealed to her sense of mischief. Probably even she herself could not explain just why she had thought it funny to see him running for his train, and later entangling himself in a futile word-fest with the conductor and the large mottled man.
“So,” she said thoughtfully, “you were obsessed by a premonition.”
“Not — er — exactly obsessed,” he said suspiciously. Then his face cleared. How could anybody be suspicious of such sweetly inquiring frankness? “You see,” he admitted, “that I — well, I rather hoped you would be going to the Austins’.”
“The Austins’!” she repeated.
“Yes. I — I couldn’t help speculating — —”
“About me?” she asked. “Why should you?”
“I — there was no reason, of course, only I k-kept seeing you without trying to — —”
“Me?”
“Certainly. I couldn’t help seeing you, could I?”
“Not if you were looking at me,” she murmured, pressing her muff to her face. Perhaps she was cold.
Again it occurred to him that there was something foolish in her reply. Certainly she was a little difficult to talk to. But then she was young — very young and — close enough to being a beauty to excuse herself from any overstrenuous claim to intellectuality.
“Yes,” he said kindly and patiently, “I did see you, and I did hope that you were going to the Austins’. And then I bumped into somebody and there you were. I don’t mean,” as she raised her pretty eyebrows— “mean that you were Bailey. Good Lord, what is the matter with my tongue!” he said, flushing with annoyance. “I don’t talk this way usually.”
“Don’t you?” she managed to whisper behind her muff.
“No, I don’t. That conductor’s jargon seems to have inoculated me. You will probably not believe it, but I can talk the English tongue sometimes — —”
She was laughing now — a clear, delicious, irrepressible little peal that rang sweetly in the frosty air, harmonising with the chiming sleigh-bells. And he laughed, too, still uncomfortably flushed.
“Do you think it would help if we began all over again?” she asked, looking wickedly at him over her muff. “Let me see — you had an obsession which turned into a premonition that bumped Bailey and you found it wasn’t Bailey at all, but a stranger in chinchillas who was going to — where did you say she was going? Oh, to the Austins’! That is clear, isn’t it?”
“About as clear as anything that’s happened to me to-night,” he said.
“A snowy night does make a difference,” she reflected.
“A — a difference?”
“Yes — doesn’t it?” she asked innocently.
“I — in what?”
“In clearness. Things are clearer by daylight?”
“I don’t see — I — exactly how — as a matter of fact I don’t follow you at all,” he said desperately. “You say things — and they sound all right — but somehow my answers seem queer. Do you suppose that German conversation has mentally twisted me?”
Her eyes above the fluffy fur of her muff were bright as stars, but she did not laugh.
“Suppose,” she said, demurely, “that you choose a subject of conversation and try to make sense of it. If you are mentally twisted it will be good practice.”
“And you will — you won’t say things — I mean things not germane to the subject?”
