CHAPTER IX

FRED and his jovial employer spent a ===day and night at New Orleans, and early the following morning took a fast train for New York. Ensconced in the luxurious Pullman, which contained few other passengers, Fred felt that by remaining close in the car as it passed through Georgia he would run little risk of being recognized by any acquaintance or friend of the past. Nevertheless, as the train was leaving Atlanta and speeding toward Stafford, he was literally besieged with gloomy memories. Every station or familiar landmark along the way brought back with crushing force occurrences he had completely forgotten. Once or twice he fancied that Whipple was watching him with an unusually sympathetic eye, but he put the thought from him. Never having been told of the fact, how could the old man even suspect that he was nearing the home of his childhood—the spot of his dreams? He had a yearning to confide more fully to his kindly companion, but the thought came to him that such a disclosure just now might throw a damper upon a journey which he had determined should contain nothing but joy to his benefactor.

It was six o’clock when Cherry Hill was reached. Only seven rapidly shortening miles lay between him and his old home. Fred sat at a window, pretending to read a newspaper. It struck him as highly incongruous that Whipple should think no more of that particular town than of any of the others through which they had passed when it means so much—so very much—to him. The time-table told him that the train stopped only a few minutes at Stafford, and he was both glad and disappointed—glad that the short stop would render his detection the more remote, and sad that he was not to see with his actual eyes the spot dearer to him than any other. There was a prolonged scream from the locomotive’s whistle at the extreme end of the train. Could it be that the station was reached? No, for through the gathering dusk Fred could see that the suburbs of the town, as indicated by the electric lights in the distance, were still half a mile away. Perhaps it was to take on water, he thought; but that couldn’t be the explanation, for the porter of the car had thrown up a window and was looking out inquiringly.

“What is it?” he inquired of the porter, who had drawn his head back into the car.

“I don’t know, sir,” the negro answered. “Something must be wrong ahead. We never slow up till we get to the crossing.” He hurriedly left the car, and Fred followed. Outside there was a rushing to and fro of trainmen with flags and lanterns, a jumble of calls in stentorian tones, the slow clanging of the locomotive’s bell, the exhausting of steam. The porter ran to the porter of the car ahead, and came back to where Walton stood waiting on the step.

“Freight-train knocked all to smash in the edge of town,” he explained. “Nobody hurt, but it is sure to hold us here awhile.”

“We’ll have to stop, then!” Fred exclaimed, fearing a vague something which seemed to hover, like a threat, in the air about him. At that moment he gave way to the superstitious feeling that it was the direct hand of Providence which had delayed him there, of all spots on the long journey.

“It looks like it now, sir,” the porter answered; and as he left, Walton turned and saw Whipple close beside him.

“Why, it won’t make any difference to us,” the old man said, in evident wonder over his protégé’s disappointment. “We’ll be sound asleep in our berths. I don’t know but what I’d kind o’ like one night’s rest without so much jostle and motion. We can get a good breakfast in the dining-car in the morning, and go on our way as smooth as goose-grease.”

“Yes, yes,” Fred said. But the thought had come to him that they might be delayed till the next morning, and the idea of passing through his old home in the broad light of day was far from pleasant. What if he should actually meet his father or some officer of the law whose duty it would be to arrest him, right when he had begun to hope that he might ultimately earn his freedom?

Fred went back into the car, followed by the drowsy Whipple, and took a seat by a window. It was open, and by leaning out he could see the lights of Stafford. Under the skies he had known as a child, on the same hillsides, they blazed and beckoned. Suppressing a groan, he told himself that he would go to bed and try to sleep; but he delayed, held in his place by some weird charm. At ten o’clock, when Whipple was stowed away, Fred went out of the car once more. On the sidetrack he met the conductor.

“How long shall we be here?” Walton inquired.

“Till three o’clock, sir,” the conductor said, as they walked along toward the locomotive.

“I wonder if I’d have time to walk to town and look around,” Fred said. “I don’t feel like turning in right now.”

“Plenty, plenty,” the conductor answered. “It is only a mile or so to the square.”

“Then I’ll go,” Walton said, and he walked away, thankful that the night was cloudy. On he went down the railway, in the streaming glare of the locomotive’s headlight, till he reached the first street leading into Stafford. Ahead, in the light of many lanterns, a throng of trackmen were at work on the wreck.

How changed was the landscape he had once known so well! Spots which had been old barren fields, dismantled brick-yards, and stretches of forest, were now, thanks to the enterprise of Kenneth Galt, filled with cottages, cotton factories, iron-foundries, and other industries. To the right, on a common, which used to be the ball-ground where the team, of which Fred had been the popular captain, had played in his schooldays, the round-house and machine-shops of the S. R. & M. had risen. New thoroughfares had been opened, natural elevations graded away, and uncouth gullies filled.

Taking the darker and quieter streets by choice, Walton strode onward, headed toward the old part of town, his heart wrung with a pain more poignant than any he had ever felt. Once, as he was passing through a cluster of small houses which seemed inhabited by negroes, he saw a few dusky faces he had known, and recognized some familiar voices coming from the unlighted porches and open windows. On trudged the wayfarer, his step slow, his feet heavy. Presently he came to a stone and iron bridge which spanned a small arm of the river, and, crossing to the other side, he ascended a slight elevation from which he had a view of the entire town. It was a lonely, unimproved spot, where a few scrubby pines grew and some gray primitive bowlders lay half embedded in the ground. Farther along the brow of the narrow hill stood the old brick school, which, as a boy, he had attended. A thousand memories flogged his quickened brain—memories of those lost days, when his gentle mother had dressed him and sent him off with a kiss and the admonition to be a good boy. She was dead, she was gone forever, and her prayers in his behalf had fallen on the deaf ear of Infinite Providence. He had not been a good boy, and she had prayed in vain. Her grave was there beyond the town’s lights on another hill, and he who had been the sole hope of her motherhood was an alien. He stifled a cry of sheer agony. In his active life in the West he had, in a measure, dulled his senses to much of the past, but here, in view of all he had lost, it was upon him like a monster as long and broad as the universe, with a million sinister claws sunken into his being. There below was the home which might have been his; there, veiled from his sight by the kindly pall of night, lived the men and women who might still have been his friends; there, too, lived the girl, the one girl in all the earth, who—He groaned, and, throwing himself on the ground, he folded his arms and sobbed. How long he remained there he hardly knew, but it was late, for the fights in the houses below were blinking and going out one by one. He was tempted to steal down the hillside, now that deeper darkness offered shelter, and wander through the streets he had loved so well—to wander on till he could see his father’s house. Perhaps he might even pass Margaret’s home without detection. It would be a risk, an awful risk, he told himself, for he might be recognized, pursued, and even arrested. His hungry heart told him to take the chance, his inbred caution warned him strongly to return to the car without delay, and yet he fingered. He fancied he could see, as his blurred eyes strove to probe the curtain of darkness, the very spot his old home stood upon. Yes, he would risk it. He had been away for years, and he might never return to the old town again. Providence itself had caused the accident to which he owed the opportunity.

Down the incline he went, into the quiet street below, and along it to another which led toward his father’s house. Once he saw a man and woman approaching, and he stepped behind a high fence in the grounds of an old mill. He crouched down, and heard their voices as they went by, but they sounded strange to him. He followed now in their wake, and saw them turn in another direction. Then he saw a man approaching, but he walked from side to side of the pavement, as if he were intoxicated, and Walton avoided him by crossing the street and pursuing his way on the other side.

At last he was at his old home. The grounds were the same in size, but the old house had been repainted, and trees which had been small and slender were now large and dense. There was a heartless alteration in the appearance of it all. The white paint on the house somehow made it seem a veritable ghost of its former self; its whole aspect was cold and forbidding. He opened the gate and entered. He was not afraid, for as a boy he had gone into the grounds at any hour he liked; he had even raised an unfastened window in the old dining-room, when he had mislaid his key, and climbed in long after midnight.

There was a light in his father’s room on the ground floor, but the blind was drawn down. Fred could not look in from where he stood, so he crept up close to the wall, and moved noiselessly along against it till he could peer through the crack between the window-sill and the blind. He started back, for in the light of the green-shaded lamp he saw his father seated at a table reading a paper. How strange it seemed to see him after all those years! And yet the banker had changed very little. It was the same harsh, imperturbable face. In it lay no sign of concern over the absence of the son who now loved him with a woman’s tenderness.

“Poor, poor father!” the young man said, in his heart. “I never understood you. I didn’t know what life meant then as I do now. You are living according to your lights. It was I who was wrong—wofully wrong. God help me!”

With a low groan he crept away. Out into the street he went. He must hurry now, for his time was limited. There must be no mistake about the train. He must not let his employer suspect this stolen excursion of his, for it would mar the pleasure of the old man’s journey.

Fred now met and had to avoid few passers-by, and he hurried on to Margaret’s home, thankful that it lay in the direction of the waiting train. The great structure was wholly dark, and there was no sign of life about it. That was her window; he could plainly see it as he stood at the fence. But what, after all, could it matter to him? Perhaps she had not occupied the room for years. His heart seemed turned to stone as the new fear sank into him that she might have married and moved away. She had loved him once; he was as sure of that as he was of her honesty. Yes, she had loved him! She had told him so with her arms tightly clasped about his neck. His shameful conduct had separated them—that and nothing else. With his head lowered he turned away, wholly indifferent now as to whether he was seen or not.

Almost before he realized it the wrecked freight-cars were before him; the track was being rapidly cleared; the headlight of the train that was to bear him away was streaming on him with insistent fierceness.

“How long will you keep us waiting?” he asked the foreman of the gang, who, in greased and blackened overalls, stood near an overturned truck.

“Only an hour or so longer. It is past one now,” was the reply.

The Pullman was dimly lighted from the overhead lamps which were turned low, but the outer door was open, and, passing the porter half asleep in the smoking-room, Fred went to his berth, drew the curtains aside, and began to undress.

“Is that you, Fred?” a low, anxious voice inquired, and Whipple thrust his shaggy head out from his berth.

“Yes, sir. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Whipple?”

“No; that is—” The curtains slowly parted, and the old man came out, completely dressed, save for the absence of his coat, collar, and cravat. He looked around cautiously, and seemed relieved to find that they were the only passengers awake. He sank into a seat opposite Fred’s berth and sighed. “I’ve been awfully worried,” he said. “You see, my boy, I missed you. I waited and waited and couldn’t sleep a wink, and the longer you stayed away the worse I got. You see, I have my clothes on. I got up, and went out to the wreck, and tried to find you. I don’t know what got into me. I was worried—worried like rips.”

“I felt restless and—went for a walk,” Walton explained, lamely. “I didn’t know it was so late; besides, I thought you’d be sound asleep and not miss me.”

“I reckon I’m old and childish,” Whipple said, with a forced laugh. “The fact is, Fred, if the truth must be told, I reckon I feel powerful close to you. I didn’t know the thing had taken such a deep hold on me. I reckon it is this trip with just you and me off together like two boys. I’ve got so I think I can detect when you are happy and when you ain’t over your old trouble, and ever since morning I sort o’ fancied you looked uneasy and downhearted. Then when you went off, leaving me away out here all by myself, why, somehow, I was afraid—actually afraid that—”

“You were afraid that in my despondency I might injure myself,” Fred broke in; “but you needn’t ever—”

“I wasn’t afraid of any such thing!” Whipple threw in, almost indignantly. “I knew there was no such danger when you had fought the fight you have for six years hand-running, and got as high up as you have; but I was a little afraid—well, to be honest—I was afraid you might have seen somebody on the train who you wanted to avoid on account of matters long past and buried, and that you thought it might be advisable to—to keep out of sight, that’s all.”

“It wasn’t that, Mr. Whipple, I assure you,” Walton answered, in a husky voice, and he sat down opposite his friend and laid his hands firmly on the old man’s knees. “The time has come, Mr. Whipple, when I must tell you more about my past life. After I have done so, you will fully understand how I—”

“No, no, I won’t listen!” Whipple raised his hands in protest. “I don’t want to hear a word. It wrings my silly old heart, anyway, to think of what may lie away back there before you come to me. You seem to be a son of my own, bom to me in your terrible trouble, and I want to think of you that way. I thought, at first, that it would be a pretty thing to let you pay back the debt hanging over you with just your own earnings; but I don’t think so now. That amount of money would be nothing to me, and you know it. You’ve seen me donate more than that to causes that didn’t interest me one-hundredth part as much as this does. My boy, when we get to New York I’ll draw the money, and you must take it and clear yourself. I’ll never rest till you do.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Whipple,” Walton said, in a grateful tone. “When I left home I told my father the money should be replaced by my own earnings, and it must be that way.”

“You can’t keep me from raising your salary if I see fit and proper,” Whipple argued. “You are the best man I ever employed from any standpoint, and you don’t draw pay enough—not half enough.”

“I can’t let you do it,” Walton said, with a grateful smile. “I am already paid more than any other man in my position. To give me more would be charity, and I don’t want that. I want to pay my way out, Mr. Whipple.”

“Well, you’ll do it,” the old man gave in, fervently.

“If you was to be hampered now, my brave boy, I’d actually lose faith in God and the hereafter. I honestly believe you’ll get your reward, and be reinstated in all you ever wanted. Now, good-night. Sleep sound, and let’s not allow this to spoil our good time. I reckon this trip has sort o’ turned your thoughts onto bygone days, but we’ll have other things to think of in New York. Good-night, my son, good-night.”

“Good-night, sir.”

The heavy curtains hid the portly old man, and Walton proceeded to undress and lie down. But he could not sleep. What human being with a normal heart could have done so under like circumstances? An hour later the dull, rumbling movement of the car told him that they were off. There was no stop at the station, but Walton propped himself upon his elbow and raised the little window-shade and peered out as they passed through the switch-yard of the town. On the platform a night-watchman stood swinging a lantern. In the rapidly shifting glare of light Fred recognized him. It was Dan Smith, a faithful negro who used to work about the bank and whom Fred had known from childhood up.

“Poor old Uncle Dan!” the outcast said, bitterly, as the kindly features were spirited away in the distance.’ “You know why ‘Marse Freddie’ had to leave, don’t you? It was because he was a thief, Uncle Dan. The little fellow you used to carry on your shoulders and be so proud of grew up to be a thief—a thief, and he is hiding now from you and all the rest!”