“The pin might give,” she objected, “and the jerk would be terrible.” She looked around, puzzled; then she got up, coming back in a minute with a draggled, partly scorched sheet. This she tore into a large square, and after she had folded it, she slipped it under the broken arm and tied it securely at the back of my neck.
The relief was immediate, and, picking up the sealskin bag, I walked slowly beside her, away from the track.
The first act was over: the curtain fallen. The scene was “struck.”
IX
The Halcyon Breakfast
We were still dazed, I think, for we wandered like two troubled children, our one idea at first to get as far away as we could from the horror behind us. We were both bareheaded, grimy, pallid through the grit. Now and then we met little groups of country folk hurrying to the track: 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 lay madness.
Only once the girl turned and looked behind her. The wreck was hidden, but the smoke cloud hung heavy and dense. For the first time I remembered that my companion had not been alone on the train.
“It is quiet here,” I suggested. “If you will sit down on the bank I will 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 to walk along beside her aimlessly, for any length of time. Gradually, as she lost the exaltation of the moment, I was gaining my normal condition of mind. I was beginning to realize that I had lacked the morning grace of a shave, that I looked like some lost hope of yesterday, and that my left shoe pinched outrageously. A man does not rise triumphant above such handicaps. The girl, for all her disordered hair and the crumpled linen of her waist, in spite of her missing hat and the small gold bag that hung forlornly from a broken chain, looked exceedingly lovely.
“Then I won’t leave you alone,” I said manfully, and we stumbled on together. Thus far we had seen nobody from the wreck, but well up the lane we came across the tall dark woman who had occupied lower eleven. She was half crouching beside the road, her black hair about her shoulders, and an ugly bruise over her eye. She did not seem to know us, and refused to accompany us. We left her there at last, babbling incoherently and rolling in her hands a dozen pebbles she had gathered in the road.
The girl shuddered as we went on. Once she turned and glanced at my bandage. “Does it hurt very much?” she asked.
“It’s growing rather numb. But it might be worse,” I answered mendaciously. If anything in this world could be worse, I had never experienced it.
And so we trudged on bareheaded under the summer sun, growing parched and dusty and weary, doggedly leaving behind us the pillar of smoke. I thought I knew of a trolley line somewhere in the direction we were going, or perhaps we could find a horse and trap to take us into Baltimore. The girl smiled when I suggested it.
“We will create a sensation, won’t we?” she asked. “Isn’t it queer—or perhaps 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 in little waves that were most alluring. It seemed a pity to twist it up again, but when I suggested this, cautiously, she said it was troublesome and got in her eyes when it was loose. So she gathered it up, while I held a row of little shell combs and pins, and when it was done it was vastly becoming, too. Funny about hair: a man never knows he 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 she put in the last hairpin and patted some stray locks to place.
“I have not told you my name,” she said abruptly. “I forgot that because I know who you are, you know nothing about me. I am Alison West, and my home is in Richmond.”
So that was it! This was the girl of the photograph on John Gilmore’s bedside table. The girl McKnight expected to see in Richmond the next day, Sunday! She was on her way back to meet him! Well, what difference did 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 she would recall me, if she remembered me at all, as an unshaven creature in a red cravat and tan shoes, with a soiled Pullman sheet tied around my neck. I drew a deep breath.
“Just a twinge,” I said, when she glanced up quickly. “It’s very good of you to let me know, Miss West. I have been hearing delightful things about you for three months.”
“From Richey McKnight?” She was frankly curious.
“Yes. From Richey McKnight,” I assented. Was it any wonder McKnight was crazy about her? I dug my heels into the dust.
“I have been visiting near Cresson, in the mountains,” Miss West was saying. “The person you mentioned, Mrs. Curtis, was my hostess. We—we were on our way to Washington together.” She spoke slowly,
