The Open Window: Tales of the Months

by Mabel Osgood Wright

It was three years before I saw Miranda again; meanwhile, a far-away city had thrown a lariat of steel across country, and it had encircled Hattertown; a railway that ran down the valley needed a southern outlet. The survey ran by the ruined factory, and rounding Nob Hill, crossed the river below the Banks’ farm, and disappeared on trestles over “calf pastures,” a name given strangely enough to many a bit of waste river meadow, as if calves did not need the best of material to become successful cows.

At the sound of the first locomotive whistle, announcing that the branch road was a thing accomplished and neither a scare nor a phantom boom, the Rip Van Winkles awoke and rubbed their eyes. They had slept a half-famished sleep. Rather than push and plan a way to sell their produce, they had ceased producing.

The Sky Line Railroad had come. Cruft’s store was rented as a temporary station and the name Hattertown appeared in dazzling white letters on the black sign over the door. In one room were scales for weighing freight and a baggage truck, in the other, a ticket booth took the place of the old post-boxes, while on a shelf behind the little window, a telegraph instrument ticked and told the doings of the outer world to the only man in the neighbourhood that could interpret it. Time-tables were tacked above the two benches in a corner that made the waiting-room, but the greatest excitement of all was contained in a great poster that was not only stuck in conspicuous places in all the settlements along the line, but put in the mail-boxes as well, announcing that a milk train would be run nightly, Sundays included, and urging all farmers, if they had no milk to market, to make immediate arrangements for producing that commodity.

The Widow Banks had three cows. A dealer in Bridgeton had tried to buy them late in the autumn when fodder was at a premium, but she had withstood temptation and taken the risk of wintering them; if she had not, Miranda would never have met Jim Bradley during the negotiations for the transportation to the city of the polished tin can that cost the little teacher many days’ pay, and was regarded by her as a speculation as wild and daring as any gambler staking his all on a throw of dice, nor would this story have found its way into father’s note-book.

Jim Bradley came of good up-country stock, but the yeast of desire to see the world had led him upon the shining road, freight brakeman first and now conductor. Visiting New York every other day, he seemed a travelled man of the world to Miranda, whose outside life was bounded by two trips a year to Bridgeton and the paragraphs upon racial traits, habits and customs, exports and imports contained in the Geography which she had heard droned and mispronounced annually for the five seasons she had taught at the corners.

A year had passed, and now when Jim Bradley ran his train into the siding at Hattertown, he could not have told which light he saw first, the railway signal or the well-trimmed lamp in the Widow Banks’ kitchen; this light, being always kept bright and clear, was lit at sunset with the regularity of a lighthouse beacon, the reflector improvised from a tin plate being turned so that the welcoming rays met the milk train as it rounded the hills and left solid ground for the trestles between eight and half-past every evening.

As the whistle of the eight-fifteen morning train spelt school to Miranda, so the whistle of the milk freight, one long and two short, not only spelled but shouted Jim Bradley, and as a matter of course, she took her hand lantern if the night was dark, or else trusted to the moon and stars and following the now well-worn path through the corn patch to “calf pastures,” reached the low shed by the water-tank almost at the moment that the engine gave its final puff, and Jim Bradley swung himself from the caboose and seeing that his rear lights were properly set, promptly forgot his train for an interval ranging from twenty minutes to perhaps half an hour, when traffic on the through express was heavy.

Widow Banks had long since announced to inquiries both of the really interested and maliciously curious order, that Randy and Jim Bradley were keeping company, though, at the same time, regretting with a sigh that his business didn’t allow of evenings spent in the austere “fore room” where the one visible eye of the departed deacon’s portrait done in air brush crayon, might witness the courting. Neither was it possible for Randy to exhibit him to the neighbours in a bright and shining buggy with a blue bow tied to the whip, of a Sunday afternoon, nor had they the chance for the same reason to judge of his capacity at prayer-meeting.

If either Randy or Jim had been questioned as to their relations to each other, they would have been speechless upon the subject. Neither had given the matter a thought, and therefore neither was worried by the mazes of material analysis.

Miranda simply obeyed a call that made the spot where Jim Bradley was the only possible place for her to be between eight and half past; but when the train left the siding, crossed the bridge over the Moosatuck and disappeared, she returned to the house and gave her mind up to the correction of the smeared papers whereon the youth of Hattertown were struggling along the Arithmetic road, and in striving to prepare for the puzzling questions that the school’s bad boy might spring upon her on the morrow.