“No, dear. If you will take my place here, that is all I ask.”
And when the train finally drew out of Shepardtown, and she had left her friend standing on the platform, she gave an involuntary sigh. Only the strong heart, which can best bear its grief alone, will understand her feeling.
The train had never seemed so slow to her. Strained and anxious with that nervous intensity which makes a woman waste her strength in a half-conscious physical effort to propel, by her own will-power, the great, unsympathetic, methodical engine, she sat straight up in her seat with heart and soul benumbed. Constantly before her, was the picture of John Villard—mangled, bleeding, dying—perhaps dead. Her brain reeled as she thought of him lying pale and cold in death.
She remembered how, only three days ago, he had clasped her hand and looked into her eyes; how he had called her “Salome,” his voice deep and tender with emotion. Dead? No, it could not be. And still the long, unfeeling train stopped to take on its horde of passengers, or to let off a working-man or a school-girl.
The hour’s ride to Boston seemed to her an eternity; and when, at last, they rolled into the long, covered shed, Salome was first to reach the steps, and first to touch the platform.
Ordering a carriage, she was soon on her way across the city. But here again the slowness of her progress drove her nearly frantic. She called to the driver and told him she would double his fee if he caught the next train for the scene of the accident. He did not know what time that would be, but he accepted the offer and drove at such a rate of speed that an agent of the Humane Society ran after him to catch his number,—and did not succeed.
When they reached the Albany station, Salome threw him the smallest bill she had, a two-dollar one,—and without waiting for the change, hastened to the ticket-office. It was beset with more than the usual crowd of curious questioners and eager passengers, whose plans the accident had thrown into confusion. It was some minutes before Salome could reach the window. She was about to turn away in despair when the agent recognized her.
“Let that lady pass, there,” he said, authoritatively; and then Salome learned that a relief train had been sent early in the morning, that another would be starting in ten minutes, and that regular trains would be run in the course of an hour or two, “carrying by,” at Jones’s Crossing, where the accident had occurred.
“And the injured ones, are they still——” her voice failed her.
“They are still living,” answered the agent. “But some of them are so badly hurt they must die. Stand back there, one minute,” he said to the crowd. “Well, I don’t know, miss, whether you could go on the relief train. You might go out and ask, though they’ve shut down on the crowd.”