Gathering herself up, her first thought was for the violin, and tying the smallest chips in her handkerchief she went to the inner room and began to pack a large portmanteau. Then she put on her hat, veil and cloak and, locking the apartment door and slipping the key in her grip, she left the house and hurried down town towards the railroad depot.
It was dark when she reached there, and she quickly boarded a local, to wait in the suburbs until the night sleeping car train for Derrstown made its stop there. All went well, and by midnight she was boarding the sleeper and was soon afterwards undressed and under the sooty-smelling blankets in a lower berth.
She did not know how long she had been sleeping when the train suddenly stopped with a jerk and she was awake. Looking around, she saw a face peering through the curtains. It was not the porter, but the leering, open mouth, old Jacob Mintges himself, tusks and all.
Twice now in twenty-four hours he had come to her, for the night previous she had waked just in the gray half light before dawn, and had seen him standing grinning by her bedside.
An inexperienced person might have screamed, but not so Eugenie Carlevan, the great-great-granddaughter of Jacob Marshall. When their eyes met, Mintges quickly withdrew, and the girl, wide awake, began thinking over the past years of her life, as the train again started to roll on into the night. She had always been fond of music and theatres. The violin given to her on her sixth birthday by her grandfather Marshall had become the evil genius of her destiny. Her father had died and her mother was too much of a drudge to control her. She had attended every circus, burlesque, minstrel show or dramatic performance that had come to the town where she had lived, since she was thirteen years old.
When the young Thespian who called himself Derment Catesby had come to Swinefordstown, where she was visiting an aunt, with the “Lights O’London” Company, she had fallen violently in love with him, had made his acquaintance, and he, struck by her imperious beauty and musical predilections, had asked her to go away with him.
She had joined him a few days later in Sunbury, bringing her precious violin, and traveled with him to the great city. There the actor soon signed up to play in repertoire at a stock company. She liked him well enough, despite his vanity and selfishness, for he was very handsome. It was before the days when actors were clean-shaven like every servant, and looked much like other people. However much she had loved him, Jacob Mintges’ ghost had revealed a more pressing duty twice, and she was on her way home.
Soon she fell asleep again, and did not wake until the porter’s face appeared to notify her that the train was leaving Sunbury. Her mother lived with her aged parents out near Hartley Hall, among the high mountains; it would be a relief to see those lofty peaks and wide expanse of vision once more, after the cramped outlook of the city. How peculiarly sweet the air seemed, with the sun coming up behind the fringe of old yellow pines and oaks along the river! What refreshing zephyrs were wafted from those newly-ploughed fields. The bluebirds and robins were singing in the maple trees about the station. On a side-track stood the little wood-burner engine, with its bulbous stack, puffing black smoke, ready to pull its train of tiny cars out to the wonderful, wild mountain country, the land of Lick Run Gap, the Lost Valley, the High Head, Big Buffalo, Winklebleck and Shreiner!
How well she remembered the first time she had seen that wood-burner, as a little tot, going on a visit with her father and mother. It was in the golden hour, and deep purple shadows fell from the station roof athwart the golden light on the platform!
All these thoughts were crowding through her head until the bell on the little engine reminded her that the L. & T. train was soon to depart.