The Cottage of Delight Part 31

"'s.h.!.+" John said, glancing furtively at the adjoining table and lowering his voice to a whisper. "Yes, I said so, but we have to be careful. That man would have wanted my name and address and I don't know what else.

You see, kid, you and I are trying to cover our tracks. If we got our names in a paper the people in Ridgeville would know as much about our business as we do ourselves. There are several reporters here jotting down names and telegraphing them. I made a point of not registering just now--paid in advance to get around it."

Young as she was, Dora understood what he meant. The supper came, was eaten, and they gave their places to other applicants for seats at the table. Dora looked tired and he sent her to her room. He had decided to sit up all night, but he did not tell her so. He saw a stream of sight-seers going toward the flaring gorge, and he joined them. More than a thousand persons were now ma.s.sed along the brink of the ravine, in the depths of which lay a vast heap of coals, red-hot iron, twisted steel rails, and the burly outlines of the unconsumed locomotive, over which the ashes and coals had settled like a pall of scarlet.

In the light of a lantern held by a trainman a reporter on the steps of the chair-car sat rapidly making notes on a pad with a pencil. Suddenly he saw a man pa.s.sing and called out to him:

"Hey, Timmons!" he cried. "Any more names?"

"Oh yes! I was looking for you," the man addressed answered, and he drew a slip of paper from his pocket. "Here you are. Take 'em down quick. I have to wire my own list in right away. T. B. Wrenshall, wife and child, St. Louis. Got that? Begins with a W, not an R. They say he was a traveling-man, but that doesn't matter. It is the list my people want.

Here is another: Mrs. Marie Dugan, Nashville, also Miss Satterlee, Atlanta--a school-teacher, they say, but I'm not sure, so leave that out."

"All right. Thank you, Timmons," and the two reporters parted.

John paused, leaned against the car near the man with the pad, and idly watched his rapidly moving pencil. Something, he knew not what, seemed to hold him there as for some occult purpose. A conductor of one of the sleeping-cars approached. "Press?" he asked, hurriedly.

"Yes, here I am," muttered the reporter.

"Here is a complete list of all my pa.s.sengers," the conductor said, "all alive and checked up."

"All right, but it is the dead ones I'm after," the reporter said, taking the paper and pinning it to his notes.

John moved a few feet away. Again he viewed the red ruins, peering over the brink as into the heart of an active volcano. A thought had come to him, but he was irresolute. He looked back at the reporter. The man was still on the steps at work.

"It would be easy," John mused. "The simplest thing in the world, and I ought to do it. That would settle it for good and all. It would free Tilly completely, and give Dora her chance, too. Yes, I ought to do it-- I really ought."

He walked about on the edge of the throng for several moments undecidedly. "What the h.e.l.l is the matter with me?" he muttered. "Why can't I decide on a thing as simple as that and be done with it? It is for Tilly's lasting good. It would wipe the whole rotten thing out at once, and stop the d.a.m.ned wagging tongues sooner than anything else. It would sting sharply, like a doctor's knife, but it would cure the trouble. If I don't do something it will hang over her as long as she lives. I spoiled her chances by dropping into her life--here is a chance to drop out of it. I'm leaving her for good and all, anyway, so why not make a clean job of it?"

He felt that he had decided at last, and he went back to the reporter.

"Are you taking names?" he asked, in a voice the matter-of-fact tone of which surprised himself.

"Yes. Got any?" The writer did not look up from his rapidly moving pencil.

"Two friends of mine."

"All right, wait a minute."

The pencil was now rapidly producing shorthand dots, curves, and dashes.

The red sky above the gorge held John's eyes. As in a picture of radiating flame he saw his little wife as he had seen her the morning he had unknowingly kissed her farewell forever on the door-step of the cottage as he stood, dinner-pail in hand, the sun just rising above the hills. In spite of his self-control and a belief in his stolidness, a lump swelled in his throat.

"She deserves a better deal out of the deck than to be tied to the memory of a man like me," he thought. "When she reads my name in the papers I'll be dead to her, dead and cremated. After all, it can't be worse than the other."

"Well, well," the reporter said, looking up, "you say you have lost some friends?"

"Yes, two--a man and a little girl, in the coach just ahead of this one."

"Their names and addresses, please. I'm in a devil of a rush--using railroad telegraph, and it is packed with official business. Got an opening now, but may lose it any moment. Mention ages and business, if you know them."

"John Trott, twenty years old, Ridgeville, Georgia, brick-mason."

"All right--two t's in Trott, eh? Well, and the other one?"

"Dora Boyles--B-o-y-l-e-s," slowly spelled John; "age about nine, orphan, same town--Ridgeville, Georgia."

"Thanks. Is that all?" asked the reporter.

"That is all," and, afraid of being further questioned, John turned and stalked away.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

He and Dora took a train for New York early the next morning. The air seemed to be growing more crisp. Dora's color was better, her skin clearer, her eyes brighter. She seemed more and more interested in the scenery along the way. They had to stop over in Was.h.i.+ngton for about three hours, and, leaving their valises in a check-room, they strolled about the city. John did not realize it, but the care and entertainment of the child had much to do with keeping his mind from dwelling on his troubles. Once he caught himself actually laughing over a droll mistake Dora made. She was so much interested in the sights that she walked nearly half a block at the side of a stranger, thinking that the man was John, who had paused to buy a cigar, and when she discovered her mistake she fairly screamed and hastened to John, whose hand she wanted to hold thereafter.

"He wouldn't bite you," John said. "In fact, he thought it was a good joke."

At four o'clock that afternoon they reached Jersey City, and at once took the ferry for New York, sitting on the upper deck and viewing the harbor and sky-line.

"It is a big town," John said, "a powerful big town. We'll be lost here like needles in a haystack. Well, that is what we are after, Sis," he added, a serious cast to his features.

They went ash.o.r.e at Twenty-third Street. They were so ignorant of the life they were entering that they were fairly dazed by the crush and din of human beings and traffic which met them at the long pier and in the congested thoroughfare upon which it fronted. They were all but as helpless as incoming foreigners who could not speak the language of the country. However, with a bag in each hand, and Dora closely following, John managed to reach a street that was less crowded, and they walked on now more calmly. He was looking for a boarding-house, John informed his companion. "I understand there are plenty of them all about," he added.

They had reached West Fourteenth Street, and there in the windows of many of the old-fas.h.i.+oned brownstone former residences of the well-to-do John saw cards advertising rooms and board.

"There are three in a row," he smiled at Dora. "Which one shall we pick?"

"The one this way," she decided. "It looks cleaner, and there are some flowers on the window-sills."

"Good! Let's try it--ask the rates, anyway."

They crossed the street and went to the house in question. Here, however, they were puzzled, for there were two entrances, one on the brownstone stoop and the other beneath it. They decided on the lower, it being more accessible. There was a bell-pull and John, who had once put one into a wall, understood what it was for and used it promptly.

A white woman, who looked like she was Irish, opened the door.

"I see you have rooms and board," John ventured. "We want to see about them."

The woman smiled agreeably. "The madam is up-stairs. You can go up the steps and I'll let you in at the upper door, or you can come through here."

"This way is all right," John said. And the woman led them into a little hallway adjoining a long dining-room, the white-clothed tables of which could be seen through the open door. On the same floor, just beyond, was the kitchen. They knew this, for they caught a glimpse of a big range above which hung a row of polished pots and pans.

The stairway to the upper floor was quite narrow, and John had some difficulty in ascending it with his valises and the mute Dora, who was nervously attempting to hold his arm. However, the ascent was made, and they were shown into a big parlor with windows looking out on the street. The floor was covered by a well-worn but clean carpet, the walls held pictures of various sorts--crayon portraits, steel engravings, machine-made oil landscapes and a few water-colors in every style of frame imaginable.

"Oh, Mrs. McGwire!" the servant called up the flight of stairs which reached the next floor above. "Are you there?"

"Yes, Mrs. Clark. What is it?"