CHAPTER II
THE CABLES
The General Manager of the Pacific, Lakes & Atlantic RailroadSystem had had a hard struggle of it. He who begins his career witha shovel in a locomotive cab usually has something of that sortto look back upon. There are no roses along the pathway he hastraversed. In the end, perhaps, he wonders if it has been worthwhile. David Cable was a General Manager; he had been a fireman.It had required twenty-five years of hard work on his part to breakthrough the chrysalis. Packed away in a chest upstairs in his housethere was a grimy, greasy, unwholesome suit of once-blue overalls.The garments were just as old as his railroad career, for he had wornthem on his first trip with the shovel. When his wife implored himto throw away the "detestable things," he said, with characteristichumour, that he thought he would keep them for a rainy day. It wasmuch simpler to go from General Manager to fireman than vice versa,and it might be that he would need the suit again. It pleased himto hear his wife sniff contemptuously.
David Cable had been a wayward, venturesome youth. His father andmother had built their hopes high with him as a foundation, and hehad proved a decidedly insecure basis; for one night, in the winterof 1863, he stole away from his home in New York; before springhe was fighting in the far Southland, a boy of sixteen carrying amusket in the service of his country.
At the close of the Civil War Private Cable, barely eighteen, returnedto his home only to find that death had destroyed its happiness:his father had died, leaving his widowed mother a dependant uponhim. It was then, philosophically, he realised that labour alonecould win for him; and he stuck to it with rigid integrity. Inturn, he became brakeman and fireman; finally his determinationand faithfulness won him a fireman's place on one of the fast NewYork Central "runs." If ever he was dissatisfied with the work, noone was the wiser.
Railroading in those days was not what it is in these advanced times.Then, it meant that one was possessed of all the evil habits thatfall to the lot of man. David Cable was more or less contaminatedby contact with his rough, ribald companions of the rail, andhe glided moderately into the bad habits of his kind. He drankand "gamboled" with the rest of the boys; but by nature not beingvicious and low, the influences were not hopelessly deadening tothe better qualities of his character. To his mother, he was alwaysthe strong, good-hearted, manly boy, better than all the othersons in the world. She believed in him; he worshipped her; and itwas not until he was well up in the twenties that he stopped tothink that she was not the only good woman in the world who deservedrespect.
Up in Albany lived the Widow Coleman and her two pretty daughters.Mrs. Coleman's husband died on the battlefield, and she, like manywomen in the North and the South, after years of moderate prosperity,was compelled to support herself and her family. She had beena pretty woman, and one readily could see where her daughters gottheir personal attractiveness. Not many doors from the boisterouslittle eating-house in which the railroad men snatched their mealsas they went through, the widow opened a book and newsstand. Herhome was on the floor above the stand, and it was there she broughther little girls to womanhood. Good-looking, harum-scarum DaveCable saw Frances Coleman one evening as he dropped in to purchasea newspaper. It was at the end of June, in 1876, and the countrywas in the throes of excitement over the first news of the Custermassacre on the Little Big Horn River.
Cable was deeply interested, for he had seen Custer fighting atthe front in the sixties. Frances Coleman, the prettiest girl hehad ever seen, sold him the newspaper. After that, he seldom wentthrough Albany without visiting the little book shop.
Tempestuous, even arrogant in love, Cable, once convinced that hecared for her, lost no time in claiming her, whether or no. In lessthan three months after the Custer massacre they were married.
Defeated rivals unanimously and enviously observed that thehandsomest fireman on the road had conquered the mo&t outrageouslittle coquette between New York and Buffalo. As a matter of fact,she had loved him from the start; the others served as thorns withwhich she delightedly pricked his heart into subjection.
The young husband settled down, renounced all of his undesirablehabits and became a new man with such surprising suddenness thathis friends marvelled and--derided. A year of happiness followed.He grew accustomed to her frivolous ways, overlooked her merrywhimsicalities and gave her the "full length of a free rope," as hecalled it. He was contented and consequently careless. She chafedunder the indifference, and in her resentment believed the worstof him. Turmoil succeeded peace and contentment, and in the end,David Cable, driven to distraction, weakly abandoned the domesticbattlefield and fled to the Far West, giving up home, good wages,and all for the sake of freedom, such as it was. He ignored herletters and entreaties, but in all those months that he was awayfrom her he never ceased to regret the impulse that had defeatedhim. Nevertheless, he could not make up his mind to go back andresume the life of torture her jealousy had begotten.
Then, the unexpected happened. A letter was received containingthe command to come home and care for his wife and baby. At once,David Cable called a halt in his demoralising career and saw thesituation plainly. He forgot that she had "nagged" him to the pointwhere endurance rebelled; he forgot everything but the fact thathe cared for her in spite of all. Sobered and conscience-stricken,he knew only that she was alone and toiling; that she had suffereduncomplainingly until the babe was some months old before appealingto him for help. In abject humiliation, he hastened back to NewYork, reproaching himself every mile of the way. Had he but knownthe true situation, he would have been spared the pangs of remorse,and this narrative never would have been written.
CHAPTER III
JAMES BANSEMER
Jane Cable Page 2