CHAPTER 14

Months rolled by. Mrs. Raleigh had found it expedient to leave town. Spring and summer came and passed into the years, and these months brought me sad news from home: Mrs. Walton had died, and Nell was engaged to be married. I had twice written to Aunt Libby. No answer. With the slow transition that marks the change of seasons we approach and enter into new epochs of our lives, and we become aware of this new order of things only by a forced and ever-present realization, a surrounding atmosphere that affects every fibre of our being. We are no longer what we were, something has left us that will never return; we are confronted by a stranger in the person of our new self whose acquaintance it takes time to make.

The old Walton homestead no longer appealed to me as a sure haven to which I might steer through the blackness of the storm; the kindly keeper in the person of “ Mother ” was not there, and the beacon light, Nell, must now not shine so sure with a man between her and me. I felt that my presence in the old home would not be so welcome with the other male on the place. I must look ahead, now, with a new and real earnestness, as one who knows there is no turning back; I must form plans for the future. Many a night I lay quietly awake, dreaming, planning, trying to solve a problem I didn’t even know how to begin on; many an evening I stole away from my companions, leaving them wondering, as I sought aloneness, even in the city crowds, to think, to find a way out. And from these wanderings I would return, feeling no better than when I strolled forth.

As thus I entered upon my changed life little did I dream that very soon a bright star in the form of a beautiful girl was to appear on my horizon, that my great adventure was near at hand, and that I was to be led irresistibly into a romance and carried away into a realm of glorious anticipation. Nor did I dream that another star, an opposing one, in the person of a woman whose acquaintance we have already made, was to flash across my heaven and come so dangerously near my bright one as to bring about a cataclysm in our little firmament.

A day came when Bunny lost his job, and he decided to try another city, the city where the convention of my people was soon held. There Bunny readily got another printer’s stick to fill, another press to feed, and when Bunny was thus established he was contented, as people must be in this world. Ere long Dick and I followed the little fellow, bidding adieu to the old club, and, we hoped, to the memory of Mrs. Raleigh.

And now I was to witness a convention of my tribe. From far and near the tribesmen came, some bringing their peace pipes, some leaving them behind. And many women and girls came, for it was to be a social gathering of old acquaintances as well as a matter of serious business, the business of looking out for the interests of our fellow deaf, of those deaf yet to come. Old college rivals turned up, old college scores were about to break out anew, now in the way of opposing plans, or in rivalry for offices, for leadership. The town filled with silent people, hotel lobbies were crowded with them, people on the street cars found amusement watching the strange conversation of the voiceless. Newspaper reporters were assigned to cover the convention, and incidentally to misrepresent about everything and feed the interested city on columns of humor very easily worked up out of the situation. There was to be a baseball game between teams composed of deaf girls, and the press announced a “ ballet of deaf ladies, ” whereupon we were besieged on all sides by every male in that city madly anxious for a ticket to the show! When we had elected our new president the morning editions sent forth the startling intelligence that so-and-so would lead the dead ! A cub reporter, or a wag of a compositor, had wantonly changed deaf to dead.

“ The devil! ” burst out Bunny, in a crowd that filled a hotel lobby, “ And still, the devil, or the printer, or the editor himself, whoever did this, I’d like to catch him and maul him. ” We three, Dick, Bunny and I, held our breath lest we find the “ She-mute ” in our midst; but she didn’t appear, lucky for us. Those boys back in the old club town must have bought her a ticket for a far country.

That convention struck me as a little Congress assembled. Just as I had seen our law makers back in the Capitol, years ago, lambasting one another, so did I see my fellow deaf here; yet out of it all something worthwhile came, ideas, plans, labors, that should put my tribe on a better and safer footing, set us forth in a clearer light before a very dim-eyed world. And when it was all over, when all the visitors had departed and the town no longer found so much amusement in the morning editions, Bunny came to me one morning and stated that a new opening for him loomed up in the Northwest, and he was off the very next day, bag and baggage. Boys don’t exactly cry, but Dick and I seemed to want to when we thought of losing the little fellow who had been such a real spirit, such a good sport and steadfast friend. That evening Dick and I sneaked up town and bought an Elgin. It was Saturday, and the stores were open. We bribed the engraver to work overtime and cut a picture of a rabbit on the back of the case, and Bunny’s initials on the inside of the back. We bought all kinds of kiddy things and some candy. When we got back to our rooms we found Bunny asleep, his suit case packed and ready for the journey. We opened it and pulled out a sock, and when Bunny awoke next morning he found a sort of a premature Christmas awaiting him, his well-filled sock hanging over his head from the top of the bedstead, and a cypress wreath at the foot of the bed, greeting him with a “ Merry Christmas ” in red glazed paper letters.

It was worth all the money it cost us to see that morning dawn on Bunny; it was worth more than that to see the little fellow fall right into the role of a child and dig into that sock, stuffing the candy into his mouth as a kid will do, and working feverishly to the bottom of the sock for the grand prize.

And how his eyes swelled with pride when he beheld that watch! “ Gee! boys, ” he cried, grinning like a darkey, “ this is going too far, it’s against scripture, Christmas falls in December, not September. If we ever meet again, I’ll warrant you we’ll have a good time-piece. ”

At nine o’clock we saw Bunny safely aboard a respectable train, in fact, he had a Pullman ticket this time, and when that train pulled out we two fairly felt the ground sink under us. And so passed out of my life little Bunny, whose place was now to be filled by a very different person, one whose coming put a new aspect on life and set my being a-thrill with a sensation never yet realized, even in the days of Florence Lillian.

Six months later Dick and I boarded a train, bound for salt water, and it was on that train the Great Adventure began.

It was afternoon of the second day that our porter approached us and sat down. We were in one of those things called a Tourist sleeper, the poor man’s rolling bunk. This darkey was an intelligent fellow, he had talked with us before, and had not once tried shouting into our ears, as many people would do, but instead, and correctly, took our pad and pencil and wrote. We were this time informed that a young deaf lady was in the last Pullman, and that this identical young lady was “ very pretty. ” Now, wouldn’t we two boys like to go back with Sam and meet her?

We needed no persuading. Sam’s face was all grins, his white teeth fairly radiating his pleasure and negro humor over the situation. “ You just come along with me, ” he wrote, “ and I’ll fix it—her name’s Marion Carrel. She’s bound for Frisco, same as you. ” He wrote a good, clear hand, and spelled correctly.

“ Where is she from? ” asked Dick.

“ York state. ”

“ Any one with her? ” I inquired.

“ No; she’s alone. Come on. ” We got up, when Sam again wrote. “ She can talk, but not very good—can’t hear at all, ” and he motioned us to follow.

We followed the porter and at the end of the fourth Pullman stopped before a girl reading a book. Sam tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked up, greeting the porter with a smile. From Sam her eyes turned and met ours. Sam wrote on my pad, giving our names, and explaining that we, too, were deaf, and on our way to San Francisco. It was a complete surprise to the girl, as she had not been told of our presence on the train. She greeted us pleasantly, laying aside her book as we talked, for she responded readily to our spelling.

“ It’s very interesting to meet you, ” she said, “ and it’s rather odd to find other deaf people on my train. Won’t you sit down? ” She started to remove a satchel from the opposite seat, but Sam interposed and moved it for her. I thrust my hand in my pocket and drew forth a quarter, giving it to the happy porter telling him how glad we were to find this girl aboard. Sam left, seemingly as pleased over the affair as we three were. Dick and I sat down.

And Marion was, indeed, to use the porter’s description, “ very pretty. ” Not since my puppy affair with Florence had I been so smitten on first sight of a girl, and for all I know, maybe Dick was equally impressed. Never had I seen a deaf girl so beautiful as Marion Carrel, who carried her olive beauty with such a delicious air of utter unaffectedness and fine culture that I marveled, conscious of the fact that here was a girl so far out of the ordinary she was in a class by herself.

“ I’m going home to my daddy, ” she explained. “ I’ve been studying back in New York under a tutor who had been keeping me all caged up. I got so restless and tired of it all I broke away, as a caged canary might do if the door to its cage were left open. ”

I looked at Marion with a face filled with amazement, and her own face that at first was half expressive of cunning and humor seemed gradually to assume a soft tinge as of a blush, giving me the impression that perhaps she had opened with too much frankness. But it was not this that had amazed me, it was the girl’s wonderful language, for a deaf girl, almost a mute. She had used a simile, and that is a rare thing with young deaf people. As Marion was an unusual girl, so, I thought, her tutor must be an unusual teacher.

“ If they kept you penned up, I don’t blame you for breaking away; and you certainly were brave to start across the continent alone—if you are alone. ”

“ This is a through Pullman, and I wasn’t afraid. The porter has been ever so good to me—and watchful. The people on the car are so nice, I just feel as safe as if I were at home with Daddy. Daddy’s old—I think he ought to be my granddaddy, he’s so white for just a daddy of a girl of my age. He just does everything in the world for me, and I am afraid my sudden arrival home will hurt him—he wants me to stay. ”

“ Then I think you should have stayed, ” joined Dick. “ If your father is so good to you as you say he is, you should try to please him. Then there’s your mother— ”

“ I haven’t a mother. It’s just Daddy and I in a great, big house set in a great, big yard that overlooks a great, big ocean. ” She turned to the car window and gazed over the swiftly passing scene. This gave me my first view of her profile. Her lines were so delicately cut and finely proportioned, her features so unmistakably classic that for an instant I seemed to behold a Greek marble; only the delicate, natural flush of healthy and happy maidenhood saved me from my dreamy fancy. I felt my heart pounding faster. Marion’s seventeen or eighteen years had now just brought about that full bloom of feminine beauty such as we dream of and artists are always searching for. As I looked, enraptured, Marion turned her head and spoke.

“ Daddy is such a glorious daddy and man—I just love him, and you mustn’t blame me for thus hurrying home to him. He’s all the man sort I ever get to know— ” she paused as a look from Dick and me caused her to see her mistake—“ because he and that old guard of a tutor just won’t let me go with other people like other girls do. I—I’m lonesome. ” She sighed, and dropped her head, displaying a wealth of dark, brown hair.

By this time some of the other passengers had become interested in us and our conversation. Marion looked up, and swiftly catching the situation, turned her gaze upon the nearest pair, who, seated a section ahead and across the aisle, were watching us and talking.

“ They’re talking about us, ” laughed Marion, “ I can read their lips—some. One of them just said, ‘ Isn’t it wonderful how they talk?’ ”

“ Then you read lips well, ” I half queried, my admiration growing with everything the girl said and did.

“ Pretty well—it has been a part of my training since I was a tot—I was born deaf. ”

Born deaf! And use language as Marion was using it, and read the lips so well! What an unusual deaf child! Here was beauty and intelligence, and judging by the furs and expensive, yet tastefully selected wraps the girl had, wealth and culture, too. Everything was to Marion’s advantage; but I found one little weakness—she was innocent and consequently trustful.

“ If you were born deaf, I don’t see how you learned to read the lips so well. ” I said, with a show of surprise and admiration.

“ I’m afraid I couldn’t help it—it was just hammered into me every day. I can’t always understand what people say to me, but I get a lot of help by it, anyway, and it’s fun to see what others may be saying. ”

“ It’s like pardonable eavesdropping, ” laughed Dick.

“ What is that—I never heard the word? ” Marion looked puzzled. We two laughed.

“ Listening, or peeping, when you shouldn’t, ” explained Dick. Marion’s fingers flew as she spelled the word several times, memorizing it.

“ Then, ” laughed Marion, “ I may have to do some eavesdropping on you two boys unless you tell me where you are going. ”

“ To San Francisco. That’s where our porter told us you are going; so Dick and I are assured of another day of your delightful company. ” I looked at my watch, it was nearly five o’clock. “ Miss Carrel, ” I said, replacing my timepiece, Dick and I would be delighted to have you dine with us in the diner at half past five. May we have that pleasure—will you honor us by accepting?”

“ It will be grand, Mr. Dunmore; yes, thank you. What time is it now—five? ” I had flashed the time to her as she spoke. “ Then will you two gentlemen please excuse me so I can tidy up and be ready for you two at five-thirty? ”

And so came to a close our first meeting with Marion Carrel. If Dick were as much in love with that rare bit of girlhood as I was, even so soon, it would be bad for our long friendship. But Dick was not one to fall before feminine charms quite so readily as I; and what business had I, even, to let myself feel as I did on so sudden and brief acquaintance, and with a wide chasm between us such as marked the social position this wonderful girl undoubtedly enjoyed? Though she were rich and I were poor, a boy’s a boy for all that, I sing-songed to myself as we, Dick and I, swayed along the car aisles on our way back to that rolling bunk. We looked up Sam and told him he was a real African prince to get us in such nice company, and we bade him bring us a menu from the diner, warning him to pass word to the cook that whatsoever we should order for our little banquet should be exceptionally well prepared, and ready at five-thirty, on the dot. Sam left and soon came back with the card, Dick and I did our best to select what we hoped a girl like Marion would enjoy, and giving a solemn warning once more about having that dinner ready on time, sent Sam along with our written order.

And it went beautifully. Marion was waiting for us in greater beauty, I fancied, than before. She had rearranged her hair, changed her dark blue blouse for a dress of pastel blue. The only piece of adornment the girl wore, besides a thin gold, unmounted ring, was her gold pencil secured by a thin, gold chain encircling her neck and dropping down over her waist. She carried a small silk bag in which was that ever-necessary writing pad such as all deaf people carry.

To our surprise and delight the waiter who was to serve us met us as we entered the diner, and escorted us to our table. I believed this to be a bit of Sam’s doing, also the decorated table at which we were seated.

It isn’t necessary to go into details here, nor to record the conversation that accompanied our delicious dinner. We were happy, very happy, and to Dick and myself it was a treat so rare and so fine after the commonplace, and too often, hard, rough life we had been going through we felt that we had no business indulging in it, no right to expect this beautiful girl to share it with us.

We had entered the Rockies that morning, and were now in the ore and mining district, where, we had been told, labor troubles were brewing. But labor troubles did not disturb us three, just then, because we were oblivious to everything but our own enjoyment.

Returning to Marion’s car after the dinner, we remained with her until nine, when Dick and I, roused to the fact that other passengers were retiring, left our wonderful little friend to return once more to our own car and there turn in for the night, a night that should turn into one of horrors!

At about two o’clock in the morning we approached a mining town where the situation had grown so serious as to require armed troops. A mining town in the Far West is not a very pleasant picture to contemplate. There isn’t anything conducive to comfort, order, or morality. In times of labor unrest, of strikes, and particularly when “ scabs, ” or strike breakers, are shipped in, a mining camp is dangerous.

To such a place we were now speeding, and a little past the hour of two there was a terrific crash, and swaying and grinding of our cars. Our train had been wrecked! There wasn’t a strike breaker aboard our train, but in anticipation of a trainload of them at about this hour there was carried out a conspiracy to wreck it. By a dreadful mistake our train instead left the track at a point a mile east of town where, in the dark of the early hour, two rails had been removed.

Coaches telescoped coaches. The great, steaming and smoking engine lay throbbing on its side. Fire broke out and the cries of the uninjured, but terrified, passengers mingled with the screams and groans of the horribly wounded. Up near the engine the day coaches were almost demolished, and it was there the most appalling scenes were revealed. There were the dead, and the mangled, and the dying. To the rear the sturdy, steel sleepers still held to the track, but what had the awful shock done? How was Marion?

Dick and I, picking ourselves up from the floor of the car where we had been violently thrown, grabbed our overcoats and shoes, and throwing on the coats and fairly leaping into the shoes, we rushed from the car and hurried down to the last sleeper.

By the far-reaching light of the now fearful conflagration we took in the situation. We were at the base of a precipitous mountain, around which we had been curving. A hundred feet beyond the tracks on the opposite side was a stream, and not a quarter mile ahead of the engine the land suddenly grew more even, dropping rapidly to the plain, or floor of the valley. This area of ancient moraine was now tree-covered, and offered, as I later saw, a short cut to the town.

Porters, trainmen, and uninjured passengers were now swarming about the wreck. The vestibules had been opened. Through these people were pouring, thinly clad, or heavily wrapped in all manner of covering, cloaks, blankets and shoes. The less seriously injured were assisted or carried out, mattresses were brought out or thrust through windows and laid upon the ground for the injured. Through this swarm of confused and terrified people, through this bedlam Dick and I plunged and managed to enter Marion’s sleeper, coming upon her struggling to get into her coat.

“ Marion! ” I sighed aloud, rushing up to her. She greeted us with a smile, yet she shook like an aspen, and I noticed one arm hung limp and inactive.

“ Are you hurt? ” I asked, anxiously, drawing her great cloak about her.

“ I can’t use my arm—I think it’s broken. I fell awfully hard—I thought I would be killed. You aren’t hurt—you and Dick? ” Even within the great car there was sufficient light from without to enable us to talk.

“ No. We are about all right. Come, get out of here. Dick, get her things. ” My hands shot the words forth so rapidly that spoken words themselves could not have done better. We gathered together Marion’s belongings, pulled her shoes over her feet and rushed her out of the smoke-filling car. We were almost the last to leave. Dick hurried back to our car and got our luggage.

We got out in the open and walked towards the stream. Dick hurried back and returned with a mattress, and when Marion was seated, we had a chance to examine her arm. It was broken. A pang shot through me. That Dick and I should come out of this crash whole and this frail girl receive a fractured arm was an unkind and unfair turn of fate. I ripped up a sheet we had unknowingly dragged along with us and made a sling to support the useless left arm, and despite my carefulness a cry of pain escaped our otherwise brave and uncomplaining little Marion.

Somewhat comfortably fixed on that mattress, Marion insisted that Dick and I go and help others; so off we started, to find scores of people in distress, or dead. We worked wherever we could be of service, now and then hurrying back to see if Marion were all right.

Soldiers were now arriving and taking positions about the train. A relief train had been brought up from the town, doctors and nurses and volunteer nurses took charge of the injured. This left little for us to do, and somehow Dick and I got separated. I returned to Marion, expecting to find Dick, but he was not there. Soldiers were stationed all along the tracks, and I could see by the glare of the burning coaches that they sent many a challenge as people tried to enter the woods to cross-cut to the town. Once I was sure I felt the vibrations of a shot. I spent a half hour hunting Dick, but in vain, and it was now absolutely necessary to get Marion under medical aid. She was able to carry her lighter bag with her good arm, and taking her suitcase in one hand and assisting her with the other, we started off in hopes of reaching the relief train, only to arrive after it had left with its freight of dead and injured. So we started off down the track, Marion, her arm paining, slightly limping, and I, struggling to ease her way, and carrying our two suitcases. Now and then she would stop as sharp pain shot through her arm.

But where was Dick? As we footed it along, like fugitives fleeing an invaded town, we again and again passed a guard, and sometimes saw his bayonet glitter as he thrust it forward. We now understood that we must keep along the track, or on the river side of the rails, the tree-studded base of the mountain was forbidden ground. Then an awful thought came to me and I dared not reveal it to Marion. I must have paled, for I felt the cold chill of fear sweep my face and forehead. Could Dick, unconscious of a guard’s challenge, have ignored it and been shot?

No, I refused to entertain the awful thought; yet I could not quite get rid of it. Truth will remain in the mind despite our hardest efforts to throw it off. A doubt may be dispelled; but a truth, although yet to be proved, holds and haunts us. Nor would I yet tell Marion what I feared. I might be wrong, and she had enough to suffer without my adding such fatality. On we went, stumbling, picking our uncertain and dimly lighted way, but always paralleling the tracks, which seemed to be a boundary line between life and death. At last we could see the town, or the jumble of shacks with here and there a more pretentious building, which in turn was dwarfed by the sombre mountains.

When we reached the station, Marion faint and pale, and entered it, we were confronted by rows of injured lying upon mattresses, with doctors and others attending. At every door was a guard; but nowhere did I see Dick. Anxiously I had hoped to see him turn up here, hunting for me as I was for him. I was trembling, now, fearful for Dick’s safety. Taking Marion at once to a doctor, I told him to examine her arm, whereupon she was immediately taken to a building that had been selected for an operating room for the women, where the fracture was set, the arm dressed, and Marion put to bed.

It was nearly six o’clock. Over the Western range of mountains the snow began to tinge with the first rays of the sun as they skimmed the clear-cut peaks. Assuring myself of Marion’s comfort, as comfort went in that awful place, I set about determined to find Dick.

Nobody could enlighten me. Half an hour of search about the place brought no relief to my fears, and I grew sick at heart. No one had seen a deaf youth, nor could anyone give any information. Then I mustered up courage to face the worst and approached an officer.

“ I am deaf, ” I began, with trembling voice. “ I was aboard that wrecked train and another deaf boy, and there was a deaf girl, too. ” The officer seemed amused on hearing of so many deaf people.

“ The girl’s in the improvised hospital with a broken arm, but I can’t find my chum. I want to know if the guards fired at anyone last night. ”

He took my pad and pencil and began writing when another officer, overhearing my excited conversation, came up. He looked at me with an anxious expression, and taking the pad and pencil, wrote: “ A deaf boy was terribly burned while rescuing a little boy from the first coach. He may not live. Go to the second house beyond the women’s emergency station, and you’ll find him. ”

I gasped. “ Thank you. It’s terrible. ” I took my pad and the pencil and started running. I didn’t stop until I reached the building, where I was halted by a soldier as I started to enter without even knocking. I explained the situation, and asked him to let me in. He went to the door, knocked. A nurse opened it. I entered. “ Is there a deaf boy here? ” I was trembling again. Getting no response from me when she replied, and so guessing that I, too, was deaf, she took my hand and led me to—Dick.

I sank to my knees beside his cot. He turned his head, and seeing who I was, smiled. The nurse gave me a look of caution. I rose and bent over. Evidently he was not now in great pain, the doctors having allayed it.

But he was all bandaged up, only his eyes were exposed. His eyebrows were burned off, yet the smile he gave me was evident in his eyes, the slight moving of the bandages. I put my hand on his forehead, and spelled: “ You must get well—have courage. I will wire your mother. ” His eyelids blinked. The nurse led me away. She took my pad and wrote: “ I’m afraid he won’t live. He is terribly burned. He saved a child’s life. ”

“ Nurse, ” I spoke softly, “ may I bring a girl to see him? It will cheer him, give him courage. ”

“ Yes, but come with her at once, and don’t excite him. ”

I went to the little house where the women who had been treated for their injuries were staying, and suppressing my emotion, found Marion sitting in a chair, reading.

“ Have you found Dick? ”

“ Yes, and he is pretty badly hurt. The nurse says you may see him. Come with me, and please be calm. ” She rose, a pallor mounting her face.

“ Mickey, tell me, is he badly hurt—will he live? ”

I took her arm, and without another word we reached the little house where Dick was lying, and entered. We paused. Marion swept her eyes over the scene of cots with their injured. She turned to me and her head sank on my shoulder. The nurse came up and put a finger to her lips. We followed her to Dick’s cot.

Marion gave a start as she beheld him, swathed in bandages, one arm exposed. Then we went up, the nurse at our side.

For a brief moment Marion gazed. Dick’s eyes brightened. He tried to smile, and moved his arm. Slowly her head sank, and with moistening eyes her lips touched his forehead.

She turned to me and caught my hand.

“ Mickey, I can’t stand it. Take me away. ”

Dick didn’t see what she said. I put a hand on his forehead and told him that the nurse would not let us stay. “ You must be absolutely quiet—you will get well. We’ll be with you. ” Dick gave me the last smile that ever brightened his face.

At two that afternoon he passed away.

I didn’t let Marion know how seriously Dick was burned; but when he died, and I had to tell her, she burst into uncontrollable tears.