It was too bad that Beatrice had not arrived at anything like his own state of sanity and calmness. This business of eloping—oh, it was so ludicrous, so amateurish! That was not the way to live. He hoped he might be able to make her see this. It would be easier, of course, if Tommy were not at the station; one could not tell what arrangements a woman in her condition might make. But he did not fear Tommy; there would be no scene. A few firm words from him and they would see things in their proper light. He pictured himself and Beatrice repairing sanely and amicably to a lawyer's office together;—"Please tell us the quickest and easiest way to be divorced...."
As he approached Forty-second Street the traffic grew heavier and noisier. He could not think properly now; watching for a chance to traverse the frequent cross streets took most of his attention. And those newsboys—! Why on earth should those newspaper fellows send out papers marked "Late Afternoon Edition" at half-past eleven in the morning? Oh, it was an extra, was it? A fire on the East Side, no doubt, two people injured—he knew the sort of thing. If those newspaper fellows would have the sense only to get out an extra when something really important had happened somebody might occasionally buy them.
Seeing that he had plenty of time he walked slowly round to the Forty-second Street entrance instead of going in the side way. He observed the great piles of building and rebuilding that were going on in the neighborhood, and compared the reconstruction of the quarter to his own case. He wondered why they delayed in making the Park Avenue connecting bridge—such an integral part of the scheme. If he had shilly-shallied like that, a nice mess he would have made of his life! He gazed up at the great new front of the station and bumped into a stentorian newsboy. Everywhere those confounded newsboys—!
He was actually in the station before he had any suspicion. There was about the usual number of people in the great waiting-room, but there seemed to be more hurrying than usual. He saw one or two people dart across the space, and observed that they did not disappear into the train gates.... Had he or had he not caught the word "wreck" on one of those flaunting headlines in the street? He turned off suddenly to a news stand and bought a paper.
There it all was, in black and white—or rather red and white. Red letters, five inches high.
Train 64, the Maine Special, had run through an open switch and turned turtle somewhere near Stamford. Fifteen reported killed, others injured. No names given.
The Maine Special. Beatrice's train.
He knew that he must devote all his efforts at this juncture to keep himself from thinking. Until he knew, that was. He did not even allow himself to name the thoughts he was afraid of giving birth to. Anxiety, hope, fear, premonition, horror, satisfaction, pity—he must put them all away from him. There was no telling what future horrors he might be led into if he gave way ever so little to any one of them. The one thing to do now was to find out.
This was not so easy. He went first to the bulletin board where the arrivals of trains were announced, and found a small and anxious-eyed crowd gazing at the few uninforming statements marked in white chalk. There was nothing to be learned from them. He spoke to an official, who was equally reticent, and spoke vaguely of a relief train.
"Do you mean to say there's no way of finding out the names of those killed before the relief train comes in?" he asked.