How stuffy these trains were when one first entered them—coal smoky!
And that operation! What a solemn thing it was, really, with only himself, the doctor and three nurses in the empty operating room that night. Dorsey was so tall, so solemn, but always so courageous. He had asked if he might not be present, although he did not know her, and because there were no relatives about to bar him from the room, no one to look after her or to tell who she was, the accident having occurred after midnight in the suburbs, he had been allowed by Dorsey to come in.
“Yes, put them down here!”
He had pulled on a white slip over his business suit, and clean white cotton gloves on his hands, and had then been allowed to come into the observation gallery while Dorsey, assisted by the hospital staff, had operated. He saw her cut open—the blood—heard her groan heavily under ether! And all the time wondering who she was. Her history. And pitying her, too! Fearing she might not come to! How the memory of her pretty shrewd face, hidden under bandages and a gas cone, had haunted him!
The train on this other track, its windows all polished, its dining-car tables set and its lamps already glowing!
That was another of those fool dreams of his—of love and happiness, that had tortured him so of late. From the first, almost without quite knowing it, he had been bewitched, stricken with this fever, and could not possibly think of her dying. And afterward, with her broken arm set and her torn diaphragm mended, he had followed her into the private room which he had ordered and had charged to himself (Dorsey must have thought it queer!) and then had waited so restlessly at his club until the next morning, when, standing beside her bed, he had said: “You don’t know me, but my name is Garrison—Upham Brainerd Garrison. Perhaps you know of our family here in G——, the Willard Garrisons. I saw you brought in last night. I want to be of service to you if I may, to notify your friends, and be of any other use that I can. May I?”
How well he remembered saying that, formulating it all beforehand, and then being so delighted when she accepted his services with a peculiar, quizzical smile—that odd, evasive glance of hers!
Men struck car wheels this way, no doubt, in order to see that they were not broken, liable to fly to pieces when the train was running fast and so destroy the lives of all!
And then she had given him her address—her mother’s, rather, to whom he went at once, bringing her back with him. And so glad he was to know that there was only her mother, no husband or— And the flowers he had sent. And the fruit. And the gifts generally, everything he thought she might like! And then that queer friendship with Idelle afterwards, his quickly realized dream of bliss when she had let him call on her daily, not telling him anything of herself, of course, evading him rather, and letting him think what he would, but tolerating him! Yes, she had played her game fair enough, no doubt, only he was so eager to believe that everything was going to be perfect with them—smooth, easy, lasting, bliss always. What a fool of love he really was!
What a disgusting fat woman coming in with all her bags! Would this train never start?