He looked up to the sky—the same sky that the man in the garden had lifted his face to, a little while ago, kneeling among the plants. But the stars were out now, lighting its gloom. The boy thought suddenly of his mother’s eyes and quickened his pace. She would be waiting for him, looking into the dark. He felt a little thrill of pride in her courage. ... She would make the sacrifice for him without a murmur. Yet it was not for him—nor for the man who needed him. But behind him—behind them all—a great hand seemed reaching out to the boy, beckoning him, drawing him to his place in the world.
VII
SPEEDING that night toward Bayport, through the dark and the stars, Simeon Tetlow’s thoughts were often on the hoy. He was haunted by the wreck. It was shattered glass, and charred wood, and blood everywhere, and trampled grass and leaves.... But across the face of the wreck moved the hoy’s eyes as they had turned to him, following his train into the night.
With the boy again, he could do all that he had ever planned—and more. In spite of his harsh words, flung back as the train started, his heart was aglow. John was coming back to him and together they could work out the plan that held him.... He could not have told the plan to any one; it was hardly articulate, even to himself. He paced up and down the tawdry car, his hands, tense at his sides, opening and closing with the swift thought that crowded upon him. It had been coming to him through the months, while he had groped and wrestled alone. Slowly it had been forming deep below—shaping itself out of life—a vision of service. And today he had seen it stretching before him, unrolling its web of thought as the train tracked the fertile country. All day he had looked out upon wide fields, scarred and broken by late frosts, on orchards and meadows and stretches of plain, half-tilled; and always, in the distance, the mountains, filled to the brim with ore. It was a rich country, but starved, straitened—and no one knew better than the President of the “R. and Q.” road the cause of its poverty. Across its length and breadth stretched the road—like a great monster that sprawled, sucking its lifeblood. He had known it, always,—and he had not cared. Let the country take care of itself. There was always enough for the road—and for dividends. He had put them off, when they had come to him begging better rates—leniency in bad seasons. There was not a farmer, up and down the region, that did not know Simeon Tetlow. He had a name among them. “The road was not there for its health.” They knew his face as he said it, and they hated it. As he sped through the night, he seemed to feel it closing in upon him—a cloud of malevolence settling upon him from the hills, rising from the valleys, shutting in on every side—and he, alone in its midst, tracking the great country—his hand reaching out to grasp its wealth.... But not now. He had seen it in the slow days that lay behind—a new vision. Sitting alone in his high office, he had watched the great system stretching out—not to drain the wealth of the country, not the huge monster that battened on its strength, but a vital necessity—a thing of veins and arteries, the highway of its life current—without which life itself must cease altogether or run feeble and clogged. The great imagination that could think a railroad into existence had brooded on the picture, sitting alone in its high office, watching the system stretching away, branching in every direction, lighting up the surrounding hills. And today, when the Boy had said he would come back, the man had known that the picture would come true.
The porter had brought in his supper, placing it noiselessly before him on the table, but the president of the road had pushed it from him, leaning a little forward, gazing at the picture that glowed and filled the horizon. He drew his hand hastily across his eyes and the porter moved forward.
“Supper, sah.”
“Yes—yes.” But he did not stir. His eyes were fixed on the dark window, staring into the night.
The porter reached out a hand to draw down the blind, but the president stayed him with a smile.