Janet: Her Winter in Quebec/Chapter 18

VER the wide-spanned arch of the Springfield station, the snow was sifting softly down. The flakes were small and icy cold; and they came swiftly, steadily, directly down through the windless air. All day long and all the day before, the spirit of the New England winter had been threatening storm, frowning, gray and cold. By six o'clock that night, the first snowflakes had fallen. By eight o'clock, the roadways outside the station were covered with a thick, soft blanket, and the blanket was growing thicker with every passing minute.

Inside the station, there was warmth and light and bustle. The waiting-rooms were filled with people who came hurrying in, stamping the snow from their feet, shaking it from their shoulders and from their luggage, exchanging the greetings that are wont to fly about among commuters while the local trains are being made up in the yard above.

Outside, above the tracks between the stations, the snow-filled air was heavy with steam, and the snow beneath the feet was soft and slippery with the dampness of the air above. Over on the northern track, the engine of a long express train lay puffing lazily to itself; and, far down the train, a tall, broad-shouldered figure was standing at attention beside the steps of one of the sleepers.

"Awful night!" he said to his attendant porter, as he pulled up his velvet collar and shrugged his shoulders together. "I fancy we'll have the car to ourselves. No, by Jove!" And he dashed forward and caught Rob Argyle by the nearer elbow. "Steady!" he cautioned him. "This snow is like pitch. Give me your luggage. And so you're going down again?"

And before Rob, tired, dazed and heartsick, could quite realize what had befallen him, he was being helped into the car and packed snugly into a section directly beneath the central light.

"Here you are, Number Eight." Then, as the lamps, shining down upon them, showed that Rob's face was gray to ghastliness, the young conductor lost his jollity. "What is it?" he asked swiftly. "Are you ill? Did you hurt yourself, when you slipped?"

Rob shook his head.

"It's my sister," he said dully.

"You mean the pretty one who came to see you off?"

"Yes. She's the only one I have."

And the answering words came with hearty, kindly sympathy,—

"I'm sorry. I hope it isn't bad." And then, for the hour drew near for starting, he yielded to discipline and went back to his post outside the car.

His shoulders were thickly covered with white, when he came back again. While the train drew slowly out of the long, bright station, out through the snow-veiled lights of the city streets, he moved briskly to and fro, removing his overcoat and assuring himself that all was right with his car. Then he returned to Rob and, all unbidden, dropped into the vacant seat at his side.

"I'm learning to count on you as my own property, Mr. Argyle," he said cheerily then. "It's an odd chance that always brings you, when I'm on the run. By the way. my name is Blanchard, Jack Blanchard. You've taken a bad night for the trip."

"I couldn't wait," Rob said briefly.

"I know. I wish it hadn't been the reason. And you? You're better?"

Rob straightened out his leg across the opposite seat.

"I was better, almost well. I twisted myself a little, getting out of the other car," he explained listlessly.

From under the shadow of his visored cap, Blanchard eyed him keenly for a moment. This was not the Rob Argyle he had seen before. Plainly his trouble was deep and lay upon him heavily. The level eyes swept Rob from head to heel, lingered a little longer on the feet which were moving with a restlessness which was not entirely due to pain. Then suddenly Jack Blanchard turned and threw one sturdy arm along the back of the seat.

"Tell me about it," he said quietly. "It won't be so hard for you, you know, after we've talked it out."

And Rob, turning to look into the clean, kind brown eyes that faced him, was dimly conscious of a returning wave of the courage which had started up within him at Sidney's farewell words.

Together, they sat there talking until the porter came to make up the berth. Together, they moved across the aisle and went on with their talk. Now and then, as the train slackened its speed at a station, Blanchard rose and went outside. He came in again, his shoulders white, shook himself and once more dropped down at Rob's side. On such a night as that, there were no other passengers; and, as the hours and the miles rolled by, Rob had an odd sensation of being in an own private car accompanied by an own old friend. At least, none of his own old friends could have been kindlier to him, more heedful for his comfort.

And Rob felt better for the talk. It began with Day and, even with the putting his alarm into words, it seemed to him that his alarm grew less, from the very fact of his sharing it with another. Viewed in the reflected light of the keen brown eyes before him, the message seemed of less tragic omen, Day's girlish strength seemed fitter to bear the sudden strain. At first, Rob spoke reservedly and as to a stranger; but, as the evening grew old and night came on, the sense of strangeness vanished and he talked more freely and with brightening mood.

"I beg your pardon," he said bluntly at last. "It's not my business, I know; but how does a fellow like you happen to be—" The words stuck in his throat.

The other helped him out.

"To be running a Pullman car?" he supplemented quietly. "Why not?"

"Because—" Rob faced him directly; "because you don't seem the sort."

Blanchard laughed. Then he straightened his shoulders.

"The question is, what is the sort," he said briefly. "As for me, I was just starting in at Queen's, when the war came. Fighting is in my race. I went out with one of the contingents. When I came back, a year ago, the. father was dead, and there's the mother to be looked out for. I took the first thing that came."

"Oh." Rob pondered swiftly. "Then you're another."

"Beg pardon?"

Rob glanced up to meet the inquiring eyes.

"We're every one of us bound to get pinched, sooner or later. It all depends on whether we take it without squealing," he answered. "I was thinking of a fellow I know in Quebec. Being ill isn't the only worry."

The other man shook his head.

"Not when one comes out of it as well as you are going to do."

But Rob made dreary answer,—

"It wasn't about myself I was thinking; it was Day."

Blanchard glanced out of the window at a lighted station. Then he looked at his watch. Then he rose. "Argyle," he said kindly; "it's very late. If I were you, I'd go to bed. You're tired; perhaps you'll get some sleep. Don't take this thing harder than you can help; pneumonia isn't always deadly." He started down the car. Then, turning, he came back. "Put on your coat and come out on the platform for a mile or two. The air will make you sleepy," he advised. "Then, if you don't sleep and get lonesome, ring me up. I'm not allowed to go to bed till three, and there's nobody to be disturbed, in case you feel like talking. Sure your coat is buttoned? Come." And he led the way to a sheltered corner of the vestibule.

But Rob, as he had risen to his feet, had faced him with somewhat of his old cheery smile.

"Thank you—Jack," he had answered. "You're very good to me, you know."

Nevertheless, in spite of their quarter-hour in the snowy outer air, drowsiness was not for Rob, that night. Hour after hour, he lay awake, his head resting on his heaped-up pillows and his eyes fixed on the blinding grayish mist which seemed to be enveloping the train. Most of the time, his thoughts were fixed upon Day. Now and then, however, as the night wore on, they went trailing off to other things: to the occasional dry little cough which marked the conductor's whereabouts in the car, to the long delay at a wayside station and to the fantastic shapes of the station lights behind the shifting veil of snow, to the rising wind which moaned about the car and sought to force its way through the cracks of the double windows, to the steady, sturdy determination in Jack Blanchard's eyes when he had spoken of his mother and of taking the first thing that came. And the fellow spoke well, too, like a man of education. And he had been so kind. Rob punched his pillows into a higher mound, while he rebuked himself for the hours he had sat, pouring his own personal woes into a stranger's ears. Still, a fellow like that was never quite a stranger, any more than Sidney Stayre had been. Being a stranger was more a matter of sympathy than of introductions. But how long the night was! He had supposed it nearly over, when he had gone to bed, and still they were stopping and starting and running and stopping, as if the time would never end. He fell to counting the rails as he passed over them. It was too dark to see his watch to mark the twenty seconds; nevertheless, he knew, from old familiarity with the trick, that the train was running slowly, far more slowly than the time card allowed. And the car was very cold. Wriggling to the outer edge of the berth, he straightened up and sought for Sidney's rug which the porter had stowed away in the upper berth.

Wrapped in the rug, Rob fell asleep at last; but it was a troubled, restless sleep, haunted by dreams of Day who, lost in the storm outside, eluded all the efforts of Sidney Stayre and Jack Blanchard to find her. Nevertheless, one and then the other of them came to him and begged him not to worry. She would be found at last, if only it would leave off snowing. A sudden jar of the train wakened him to the vague consciousness that they were stopping at a wayside station, and he opened his eyes to stare out into a mist of snowflakes falling so fast as to hide the landscape utterly. He stirred a little, yawning and rubbing the window pane in order to assure himself that the mistiness came from outside the car. Then, as he lay back again, his eye met a pair of friendly brown eyes peering in at him through the crack of the parted curtains.

"I heard you stirring," the owner of the eyes said. "If you take my advice, you will lie still and keep your appetite in check. We're four hours late, and there is no chance for breakfast till we get to Newport."

"Four hours!"

"Yes. It is the worst storm of the year."

Rob's thoughts flew north to Day.

"What time shall we get in?"

"There's no telling. I am sorry, sorry for you as a man can be. Keep up your pluck, though, and we'll pull through in time. Let's hope we'll find her better. I would telegraph down for you for news; but they say the wires are down, up on the heights at Harlaka."

The words were direct and few; the voice was wholly kind. Then the eyes vanished, the curtains fell together, and Rob lay back and pulled the rug over his face, that not even the pitiless gray sky should look in upon his fight with himself for steadiness and courage.

The fight lasted long; but Rob won out. When at last he appeared from between his curtains, his face was pale, his eyes ringed with heavy shadows; but his lips were steady, his voice had its old ring. No matter if Day were ill, even to the point of death, he had no right to allow his own anxiety and sorrow to blacken for others a day which was bidding fair to be one of hardship. Day herself would have been the first one to have urged him to face the future stoutly and with a laugh on his lips. He greeted the porter cheerily; but his eyes were a little wishful, as he looked about for Blanchard.

Quebec was still far distant when the wintry twilight closed in upon a day of storm. For Rob Argyle, it had been a day when time had ceased to be. Breakfast had merged itself in dinner; dinner, eaten hastily at the place appointed for breakfast time, had occurred somewhere between noon and the fall of twilight. For the exact hour Rob had stopped caring. It seemed to him that time would only begin again when his journey's end should bring him news of Day. When that end would come, what that news would be, he refused to allow himself to think. In the intervals of his long talks with Blanchard, he forced his attention to cling to the half-veiled scenes outside his window, to the snow screen which shut out all view of the distant mountain sides, to the snow-heaped villages grouped about their gray stone churches, to the trams and smelters and waste heaps of a mining town in the southern edge of the Townships, to all things outside, save a moving human figure. For hours on end, it was as if there were no human life outside their car. The village streets were clear of people, the platforms of the stations deserted. Not even at his meals did Rob catch sight of a human face, for Blanchard's quick eye had seen that his sole passenger was in no trim to battle with the storm, and he himself had come wading back to the car, laden with spoils from the steaming kitchen somewhere in the rear of the station.

"I'm an old hand at the foraging," he had explained. "Besides, there's no sense in your getting wet for nothing. You're better off inside the car."

And, as the darkness fell and Blanchard went to order the porter to turn on the lights, Rob gave over thinking of Day long enough to assure himself that, without Jack Blanchard's jovial care, his journey would have been a different thing. The day had been one of discomfort. The train had crawled forward and come to halt by turns. The car was cold, food scarce, the outlook dreary. The train conductor lapsed into voluble French at all questions in regard to the hour of their arrival. There was nothing to do but wait—and worry. And Blanchard had so far helped the one thing as wellnigh to prevent the other. Bundled in blankets to the chin, the two young fellows had nestled side by side, with Sidney's rug across their knees, while Blanchard had spun interminable yarns of life on veldt and kopje, had made merry over the strange people who had slept the night in that selfsame car. And, all the time, even while his mirth infected Rob and chased the shadow from his eyes, Blanchard's own keen brown eyes, meeting Rob's blue ones, told their wordless story of sympathy and of friendly liking. And so the day and the miles dragged on.

Under conditions such as this, social rank counts for nothing. Long before nightfall, they were Rob and Jack to each other; long before nightfall, Rob had forgotten that he was a rich man's son, fallen by chance into the care of an efficient Pullman conductor. Instead, he merely had a vague consciousness that Blanchard was an all-round good fellow and of a speech and manner equal to his own; that never once, in all those tedious hours, had he neglected, nor yet obtruded, a little watchful care for his weaker comrade. Still more vaguely was he conscious that a comradeship such as theirs had been, that day, was bound to bear its fruit at some time in the future. Under some conditions, Rob could have enjoyed the day, enjoyed even its sheer discomforts. To a hearty boy with a mind at rest, they would have held their own charming spice of danger. But now, however far diverted, his mind kept swinging back to the one fixed point. That point, of course, was Day.

It was a certain relief when the porter turned on the lights. The drawn curtains of the car shut out all measure of the slowness of their progress. The wind had fallen with the falling dark; the drifts were fewer now, their passage steadier. And so they plodded on and on, while twilight grew to evening, and evening turned into night. And at last, just as the clocks in the distant city were chiming the hour of twelve, the train rumbled through the last of the Harlaka snowsheds and went sliding away down the long grade that leads to Levis.

Cramped and stiff with the cold and the long sitting still, Rob was glad to rest his hand on Blanchard's shoulder, as he stepped down from the car. His eyes, meanwhile sought through and through the little crowd upon the platform. Then he pulled his hat over his eyes, while his other hand shut on Blanchard's arm. In all that little waiting crowd, there was no familiar face.

"Steady, Rob!" Blanchard's voice was quiet. "Likely there's been no ferry across, to-night. Take my arm. It's slippery as death. The porter will see to your traps. Come along." And he led the way to the ferry-house, and came on board the little boat, already steaming and straining at her moorings in the wash of the ebbing tide.

Once out upon the river, they found themselves in a sea of floating, grinding cakes of ice which mounted on each other's shoulders, jostled each other with angry crashings, came eddying and swirling down against the ferry's sides, sending long, thudding shivers throughout her sturdy little frame. In such a tide as that and in such a storm, no boats had crossed since noon. Now, freightless but crowded from stem to stern, the captain was putting out, to try his chances with the mighty river, swollen with storm and thick with the ice which rushed seaward with the ebbing tide. The snow, meanwhile, had nearly ceased to fall; and, through its scattered flakes, the lights from Citadel and terrace shone calmly down, throwing their placid beams across the raging, hissing river.

Blanchard's keen eyes were clouded, as he rejoined Rob inside the stuffy cabin. Just once before he had crossed the river on such a night. He knew how to read the captain's face, knew, too, the meaning of the signals flashed from the ferry-house at Levis to the distant shore. Inside the cabin, stuffy as it was, there was shelter from the gale. Nevertheless,—

"Roll yourself up in your rug and come outside," he bade Rob briefly. "A night like this, the ice is worth the watching."

And Rob found it so. Blanchard had led the way to a sheltered corner of the deck where, leaning on the rail, Rob lost himself, lost even the consciousness of Day, in watching the fierce strife of winter, watching the eddying, whirling cakes of ice, borne down by the tide, thrown back by the wind which came sweeping up the river; watching them roll and toss and grind together, now falling apart again, then clinging in an ever-widening sheet about the ferry's bow and sides. No thought of danger came to him; he was exulting in his every nerve and fibre in this mad fury of the winter storm. And beside him, Blanchard's answers to his words grew vague and brief, while he watched with practised eye the increasing coat of ice about their keel, the increasing size of the blocks of ice which came crashing down against them, then looked up at the opposite shore to measure by the dimming lights the speed of their course, as steadily, surely, swiftly, in spite of steam and steering gear, the plucky little ferry lost her headway and was borne farther and farther down the stream.

At length Rob roused himself and framed an objection.

"It's beastly cold out here. I've seen enough. What if we go inside?"

Blanchard hesited [sic], demurred. Then, as one huge black block and another came down upon them, he turned and looked Rob straight between the eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "We'd best stay here."

"But why? I'm chilled through and through."

"I know." And in that moment it flashed through Rob's mind that his companion's uniform was no mate for his own fur-lined coat. "It is cold. Still, I think it is safer here outside."

Rob faced him in surprise.

"You mean?"

"I mean," and Blanchard's steady touch was on his arm; "I mean, in case things happen." Then he forced the gravity from his tone and laughed cheerily. "They probably won't happen. In any case, I swim like a fish, and I'll hang on to you and see you safely over."

But, even as he spoke, both he and Rob were well aware that swimming in such an ice-locked tide was something beyond the reach of human power.

For one moment and for one moment only, Rob felt something come up in his throat and stop his breath. Then he steadied himself, straightened his shoulders and laughed out in his old cheery fashion. "We'll fight it out together to the end, Jack," he answered. Then silently, but with Blanchard's hand still on Rob's arm, the two young fellows stood there waiting, gazing out over the ink-black, tossing river.

Slowly the lights of the city were dimming in the distance; slowly the ice-sheets grew on bow and stern. Down across the chilly air the voice of the captain came strident, his orders mingled with the sound of jangling bells. The wheels of the little boat still beat the water; but impotently now, for progress meant the dragging with her of many tons of ice. And, if the ice held firm, all might be well. But if it once began to crumble? Blanchard's hand tightened upon Rob's arm. And not even a sound man could swim ashore in such a tide, still less a fellow crippled by a football strain. And the lights of the Citadel were growing fainter.

And then, of a sudden, a shrill little cheer from the pilot house was answered by a distant whistle. On the King's Wharf lights were stirring; out from the King's Wharf lights were starting, were being swept down the stream towards them,—swept fast and steadily. Through the chill, still air, above the crashing of ice-cakes, there came again the whistle, nearer now, and the throbbing of a mighty engine. And the lights came ever nearer until, outlined against the inky sky, a great black bulk showed itself, dimly at first and then with every mast and funnel standing out distinct. And then, with a tearing, rending noise, the huge ice-breaker came plunging into the floe which held the ferry motionless and impotent, plunged into it, cut across it, circled through it in two narrowing arcs; and then, with a whistle of supreme content, it turned southward and, forging slowly, steadily ahead, cut open a wide pathway up the river back to the distant ferry-house once more.

But Jack Blanchard's grasp of Rob's arm never relaxed its steady, reassuring pressure until the ferry came to her moorings, and Ronald Leslie, huge, ruddy and smiling at his own good news, came leaping over the rail before the gang-plank had been lowered.