“All right,” he said shortly; then, nodding at Mar-ley in dismissal: “I hope you will remember what I’ve said. You may go.”
Marley hesitated as though about to speak and changed his mind, evidently, for he turned, walked straight to the door and out, then his boots creaked down the stairs.
“He’ll be away from the men there, all except a few,” said the master mechanic, as though picking up the thread of a discussion. “And as for them, I’ll see there’s no trouble. There’s Mrs. Coogan now that——”
“Yes, Tommy”—Carleton smiled a little—“I didn’t put your interest all down to love for Marley.”
“What gets me,” muttered Regan screwing up his eyes, as his teeth met in the plug he had dragged with some labor from his hip pocket, “what gets me is the way he went to crying afterward. Like a kid, he was. It was the blamedest thing I ever saw, what?”
“I don’t think he’s responsible for himself when he gets like that,” replied Carleton. “That’s exactly what I am afraid of. It comes over him in a flash, making a very demon of him, and then the relaxation the other way is just as uncontrollable. I don’t suppose he can help it, he’s made that way. It wouldn’t make so much difference in an ordinary man, but with strength like his”—Carleton blew a ring of smoke ceilingwards—“you saw what he did to Boileau.”
“I ain’t likely to forget it,” said Regan. “But if he’s left alone I guess he’ll be all right. Any man that’s fool enough to do anything else now will do it with his eyes open, and it’s his own funeral.”
Those of the night crew in the roundhouse were evidently of the same mind. They received him, it is true, with little evidence of cordiality, but their aloofness was decidedly pronounced, and they looked askance at the queer figure as it dodged in and out of the shadows cast by the big mountain racers, or, at times, stood silently by one of the engine doors under the dim light of an oil lamp staring out across the black of the turntable to the twinkling switch lights in the yard. They didn’t like him, but they had learned their lesson well; and, as the weeks slipped away, they practised it—he was to be left alone.
One thing they grudgingly admitted—Marley could work, and did. Clarihue, the night turner, was man enough to give another his due any time, no matter what his own personal feelings might be, and there was some talk, after a bit, between him and the master mechanic about Marley getting the next spare run firing.
Clarihue even went so far as to hint at it as a possibility to Marley, and for his pains got a surprise—he wasn’t used to seeing the chance of promotion turned down. Marley had shaken his head and would have none of it. He was satisfied where he was. That was all there was to that. Clarihue drew back into his shell after that. Marley could wipe till his hair was gray for all he cared.