Part 30 (1/2)

”Well, well, is that all?” Joel inquired, huskily.

”I left her seated at a window,” Martha Jane continued. ”I tried to get her to promise to be calm and hopeful, but all the old strength and energy seemed to have left her. I'm afraid, very much afraid, that she will never get over it. She has borne a lot already and this shock is the last straw.”

A strap which held the breeching around the b.u.t.tocks of the horse and fastened it to the shafts had broken, and Joel got down to fix it. The buckle-hole had torn out of the rotten leather, and he had to punch another with his pocket-knife.

”Poor Joel!” Martha Jane thought, as she sat and watched him. ”People needn't tell me that men can't be constant. He'd love Tilly if she were to wipe her feet on him. He'd love her if she refused him a dozen times for other men. He'd go any length right now to give her back her husband. I wonder what there is about her that men care so much for. I'm sure I don't know, unless it is because she is so patient and gentle and plucky.”

The harness was fixed. Joel got back into the buggy and drove on to the Square. ”I was going to stop and get some things,” Martha Jane said, ”but I won't. I'm coming in to see Tilly to-morrow. I'm about the only one that goes to see her now. You knew, didn't you, that some of these narrow-minded women and girls are pretending to believe simply awful things about her?”

”What sort of things?” Eperson asked, waxing indignant.

”Why, you know--they say that Mr. Trott took her to his mother's house and introduced her to the worst sort of folks. There isn't a word of truth in it. Tilly has not yet even met the woman. Tilly and he had a cottage all to themselves. She told me that herself.”

Joel groaned angrily. ”I'm not surprised at anything the people around here would say and believe,” he said, his lips drawn tight, his eyes holding fierce fires that were bursting into flames.

”Joel,” Martha Jane said, as they were nearing their home, ”you must take yourself in hand. This is showing on you. Tilly's marriage was bad enough, but this is hurting you even more.”

”Oh, don't bother about me!” he cried, testily. ”I'm a man and can stand anything. But you must look after her. Do you understand? You must come in to-morrow early and stay all day. She will need somebody besides that sour-faced, crabbed old pair that is with her. They will kill her or drive her insane.”

”I'll do it--you may depend on me, brother,” Martha Jane promised, as he helped her from the buggy at the gate.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

On the morning following their arrival at Bristol, John and Dora took the train for New York. ”We'll sit in the chair-car,” he proposed. ”It has revolving fans and is more roomy. They say this train is usually crowded.”

Dora smiled expectantly as she followed him into the luxurious coach.

She had slept well, had eaten a good breakfast, and seemed brighter than she had the day before. She was still a grotesque-looking creature in the dress which was too long for a child of her age, and the hat that was too large, being one Jane Holder, in one of her rare moments of mild self-reproach, had discarded and hastily retrimmed for her niece. But John Trott was not critical of outward appearances. There was something beneath the surface in Dora--an unspoken reliance on him, a gentle betrayal of pride and confidence in him, not to mention her abject helplessness, which atoned for all external shortcomings. The whole world looked dark to him, but he had determined that Dora should not dwell in the shadow, if he could prevent it.

They were soon well into the state of Virginia. The train was quite crowded and John congratulated himself on securing seats in the parlor-car. From the window Dora listlessly viewed the back-drifting fields and forests, the tobacco which she had never seen growing before, and the old-fas.h.i.+oned houses on the farms as well as in the towns and villages.

It was near night. Was.h.i.+ngton was only a few hours away.

”We are going to cross a high trestle over a ravine,” John explained to his charge. ”I heard a man talking about it. There! that is the whistle.

I guess they will slow down until we get over it.”

But the train was late and the locomotive's speed was not greatly diminished. From the window John saw the line of trees marking the ravine's sinuous course through the fields and told Dora that they would soon be on the trestle. A moment later there was a shriek from the locomotive, a violent jerking of the cars, a distant cras.h.i.+ng and grinding of timbers, and a thunderous sound of heavy bodies falling. The coupling was broken and the chair-car lurched forward, left the track, shot its front end against an embankment about twenty feet high and remained poised there. Dora was thrown against a window, the thick gla.s.s of which fortunately did not break, and John fell between the chairs to the floor. Everywhere in the car the pa.s.sengers lay over one another, squirming and screaming in pain and terror.

”Are you hurt?” John asked Dora, as he struggled to his feet and bent over her.

”No.” She shook her head, her face blanched, her whole frame quivering.

”Come, let's get out!” he said. He offered to lift her in his arms, for the floor of the car was sharply slanting to one side, but she refused to permit it.

”Oh no. I can get out better by myself,” she said, stepping from one seat to another to accelerate their egress.

Some of the pa.s.sengers around them were injured slightly, some had fainted, and lay p.r.o.ne in the aisle, and these people blocked their progress for a few moments. But when they had finally reached the open a frightful sight met their view. At the bottom of the ravine which the trestle had spanned lay an indiscriminate heap of splintered and telescoped coaches which quite hid from view the locomotive lying beneath. A violent hissing of steam came from the ma.s.s which all but drowned out the cries of pain and terror from the imprisoned victims.

Now and then men or boys could be seen breaking through the car windows and climbing down to the ground. But hundreds were out of sight. They were doubtless stunned or killed outright.

Fifty or sixty people from the chair-car and the two connected sleeping-coaches, which were the only parts of the train saved from the ruin, gathered on the brink of the ravine and stood spellbound by the sights they beheld in the smoking inferno beneath.