The Man in Lower Ten

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER IX. THE HALCYON BREAKFAST

  We were still dazed, I think, for we wandered like two troubledchildren, our one idea at first to get as far away as we could from thehorror behind us. We were both bareheaded, grimy, pallid through thegrit. Now and then we met little groups of country folk hurrying to thetrack: they stared at us curiously, and some wished to question us.But we hurried past them; we had put the wreck behind us. That way laymadness.

  Only once the girl turned and looked behind her. The wreck washidden, but the smoke cloud hung heavy and dense. For the first time Iremembered that my companion had not been alone on the train.

  "It is quiet here," I suggested. "If you will sit down on the bank Iwill go back and make some inquiries. I've been criminally thoughtless.Your traveling companion--"

  She interrupted me, and something of her splendid poise was gone."Please don't go back," she said. "I am afraid it would be of no use.And I don't want to be left alone."

  Heaven knows I did not want her to be alone. I was more than content towalk along beside her aimlessly, for any length of time. Gradually, asshe lost the exaltation of the moment, I was gaining my normal conditionof mind. I was beginning to realize that I had lacked the morning graceof a shave, that I looked like some lost hope of yesterday, and thatmy left shoe pinched outrageously. A man does not rise triumphant abovesuch handicaps. The girl, for all her disordered hair and the crumpledlinen of her waist, in spite of her missing hat and the small gold bagthat hung forlornly from a broken chain, looked exceedingly lovely.

  "Then I won't leave you alone," I said manfully, and we stumbled ontogether. Thus far we had seen nobody from the wreck, but well up thelane we came across the tall dark woman who had occupied lower eleven.She was half crouching beside the road, her black hair about hershoulders, and an ugly bruise over her eye. She did not seem to knowus, and refused to accompany us. We left her there at last, babblingincoherently and rolling in her hands a dozen pebbles she had gatheredin the road.

  The girl shuddered as we went on. Once she turned and glanced at mybandage. "Does it hurt very much?" she asked.

  "It's growing rather numb. But it might be worse," I answeredmendaciously. If anything in this world could be worse, I had neverexperienced it.

  And so we trudged on bareheaded under the summer sun, growing parchedand dusty and weary, doggedly leaving behind us the pillar of smoke.I thought I knew of a trolley line somewhere in the direction wewere going, or perhaps we could find a horse and trap to take us intoBaltimore. The girl smiled when I suggested it.

  "We will create a sensation, won't we?" she asked. "Isn't it queer--orperhaps it's my state of mind--but I keep wishing for a pair of gloves,when I haven't even a hat!"

  When we reached the main road we sat down for a moment, and her hair,which had been coming loose for some time, fell over her shoulders inlittle waves that were most alluring. It seemed a pity to twist itup again, but when I suggested this, cautiously, she said it wastroublesome and got in her eyes when it was loose. So she gathered itup, while I held a row of little shell combs and pins, and when it wasdone it was vastly becoming, too. Funny about hair: a man never knowshe has it until he begins to lose it, but it's different with a girl.Something of the unconventional situation began to dawn on her as sheput in the last hair-pin and patted some stray locks to place.

  "I have not told you my name," she said abruptly. "I forgot that becauseI know who you are, you know nothing about me. I am Alison West, and myhome is in Richmond."

  So that was it! This was the girl of the photograph on John Gilmore'sbedside table. The girl McKnight expected to see in Richmond the nextday, Sunday! She was on her way back to meet him! Well, what differencedid it make, anyhow? We had been thrown together by the merest chance.In an hour or two at the most we would be back in civilization and shewould recall me, if she remembered me at all, as an unshaven creature ina red cravat and tan shoes, with a soiled Pullman sheet tied around myneck. I drew a deep breath.

  "Just a twinge," I said, when she glanced up quickly. "It's very goodof you to let me know, Miss West. I have been hearing delightful thingsabout you for three months."

  "From Richey McKnight?" She was frankly curious.

  "Yes. From Richey McKnight," I assented. Was it any wonder McKnight wascrazy about her? I dug my heels into the dust.

  "I have been visiting near Cresson, in the mountains," Miss West wassaying. "The person you mentioned, Mrs. Curtis, was my hostess. We--wewere on our way to Washington together." She spoke slowly, as if shewished to give the minimum of explanation. Across her face had comeagain the baffling expression of perplexity and trouble I had seenbefore.

  "You were on your way home, I suppose? Richey spoke about seeing you," Ifloundered, finding it necessary to say something. She looked at me withlevel, direct eyes.

  "No," she returned quietly. "I did not intend to go home. I--well, itdoesn't matter; I am going home now."

  A woman in a calico dress, with two children, each an exact duplicate ofthe other, had come quickly down the road. She took in the situation ata glance, and was explosively hospitable.

  "You poor things," she said. "If you'll take the first road to the leftover there, and turn in at the second pigsty, you will find breakfast onthe table and a coffee-pot on the stove. And there's plenty of soap andwater, too. Don't say one word. There isn't a soul there to see you."

  We accepted the invitation and she hurried on toward the excitement andthe railroad. I got up carefully and helped Miss West to her feet.

  "At the second pigsty to the left," I repeated, "we will find thebreakfast I promised you seven eternities ago. Forward to the pigsty!"

  We said very little for the remainder of that walk. I had almost reachedthe limit of endurance: with every step the broken ends of the bonegrated together. We found the farm-house without difficulty, and Iremember wondering if I could hold out to the end of the old stone walkthat led between hedges to the door.

  "Allah be praised," I said with all the voice I could muster. "Beholdthe coffee-pot!" And then I put down the grip and folded up like ajack-knife on the porch floor.

  When I came around something hot was trickling down my neck, and adespairing voice was saying, "Oh, I don't seem to be able to pour itinto your mouth. Please open your eyes."

  "But I don't want it in my eyes," I replied dreamily. "I haven't anyidea what came over me. It was the shoes, I think: the left one is ared-hot torture." I was sitting by that time and looking across into herface.

  Never before or since have I fainted, but I would do it joyfully, adozen times a day, if I could waken again to the blissful touch of softfingers on my face, the hot ecstasy of coffee spilled by those fingersdown my neck. There was a thrill in every tone of her voice thatmorning. Before long my loyalty to McKnight would step between me andthe girl he loved: life would develop new complexities. In those earlyhours after the wreck, full of pain as they were, there was nothingof the suspicion and distrust that came later. Shorn of our gauds andbaubles, we were primitive man and woman, together: our world for thehour was the deserted farm-house, the slope of wheat-field that led tothe road, the woodland lot, the pasture.

  We breakfasted together across the homely table. Our cheerfulness, atfirst sheer reaction, became less forced as we ate great slices of breadfrom the granny oven back of the house, and drank hot fluid that smelledlike coffee and tasted like nothing that I have ever swallowed. We foundcream in stone jars, sunk deep in the chill water of the spring house.And there were eggs, great yellow-brown ones,--a basket of them.

  So, like two children awakened from a nightmare, we chattered overour food: we hunted mutual friends, we laughed together at my feeblewitticisms, but we put the horror behind us resolutely. After all, itwas the hat with the green ribbons that brought back the strangeness ofthe situation.

  All along I had had the impression that Alison West was deliberatelyputting out of her mind something that obtruded now and then. It broughtwith it a return of the puzzled expressio
n that I had surprised early inthe day, before the wreck. I caught it once, when, breakfast over, shewas tightening the sling that held the broken arm. I had prolonged themorning meal as much as I could, but when the wooden clock with the pinkroses on the dial pointed to half after ten, and the mother with theduplicate youngsters had not come back, Miss West made the move I haddreaded.

  "If we are to get into Baltimore at all we must start," she said,rising. "You ought to see a doctor as soon as possible."

  "Hush," I said warningly. "Don't mention the arm, please; it is asleepnow. You may rouse it."

  "If I only had a hat," she reflected. "It wouldn't need to be much ofone, but--" She gave a little cry and darted to the corner. "Look," shesaid triumphantly, "the very thing. With the green streamers tied up ina bow, like this--do you suppose the child would mind? I can put fivedollars or so here--that would buy a dozen of them."

  It was a queer affair of straw, that hat, with a round crown and a rimthat flopped dismally. With a single movement she had turned it up atone side and fitted it to her head. Grotesque by itself, when she woreit it was a thing of joy.

  Evidently the lack of head covering had troubled her, for she was elatedat her find. She left me, scrawling a note of thanks and pinning itwith a bill to the table-cloth, and ran up-stairs to the mirror and thepromised soap and water.

  I did not see her when she came down. I had discovered a bench witha tin basin outside the kitchen door, and was washing, in a helpless,one-sided way. I felt rather than saw that she was standing in thedoor-way, and I made a final plunge into the basin.

  "How is it possible for a man with only a right hand to wash his leftear?" I asked from the roller towel. I was distinctly uncomfortable: menare more rigidly creatures of convention than women, whether they admitit or not. "There is so much soap on me still that if I laugh I willblow bubbles. Washing with rain-water and home-made soap is likemotoring on a slippery road. I only struck the high places."

  Then, having achieved a brilliant polish with the towel, I looked at thegirl.

  She was leaning against the frame of the door, her face perfectlycolorless, her breath coming in slow, difficult respirations. Theerratic hat was pinned to place, but it had slid rakishly to one side.When I realized that she was staring, not at me, but past me to the roadalong which we had come, I turned and followed her gaze. There wasno one in sight: the lane stretched dust white in the sun,--no movingfigure on it, no sign of life.