Mountain Part 42

Jane leaned over the back railing of the observation platform, as the engine grunted a command to the wheels to take up their proletarian revolutions; the clanged gate quivered before her; her husband stood at her side. She leaned for a final finger-flutter to the two friends, peering at her out of the golden haze thrown by the big station lamps.

"Good luck," she called back. Her handful of the hailed rice, scooped desperately the last minute, was aimed badly; it baptized a bewildered family, chiefly children, still looking for the obtrusively obvious exit.

"Good luck," Pelham's deeper tones echoed hers.

The oiled switches, affectionately clearing the way for the long iron carriage and its coupling hearts, creaked beneath them, as the cars slid and jangled down the yards, between the furnacetown shanties, into the winter-shriven suburban streets. Jane's placid smile followed her man as he joined two of the comfortable chairs; her hands locked within his, her cheek rested against the warm roughness of his, her eyes watched the flying world curtsey and part behind them, then gradually coalesce into a welded and blurred oblivion. They were turning their backs upon the mountain her Pelham loved; not for good ... yes, for good, but not for all time.

West Adamsville 8.37

The mountain was going with them; its inscrutable ma.s.s, off to the left, still followed, a protection and a reminder. What a boyish fancy of his, that it mothered him! Well, it could safely leave the task to her, Jane reflected; he was worth mothering--her first child.... A sudden freshet of tenderness lifted her arm around his shoulder.

This station they had just left--to think that its scattered home-lights held striving hearts who had followed her Pelham through the harsh campaign, and looked to him as children to their leader. And now he was hers, hers! And she would see to it that she kept him theirs.

Hers ... as she must be his. She dared to inch her fancies beyond their previous bounds. As a modern woman, she reminded herself, she knew from her reading the essential facts of mated life; but feelings were of different breed: words could not communicate unfelt emotions, they could only evoke memories of those formerly experienced. The emotional Atlantic lay before her.... To-night? She could not tell.

Coalstock 8.57

"What are you thinking of, dear?" she asked.

"Geographically.... Reminiscing.... Bragg County ends in a few miles; my last speech, before the final one in Main Park, was in the Elks' Hall here."

She looked with added interest at the bare platform, the forlorn pair of station idlers, the morose baggage man trundling away a lone trunk. He looked up as they pa.s.sed, started, took off his hat to the recent candidate.

"I like that man," she declared inconsequentially. "He knows you."

The gla.s.sed s.p.a.ces of the observation platform were small defense against the subtle penetration of the winter night. The bland porter navigated down the car aisles, bundling steamer blankets, which radiated inward the body's waves of heat.

"The old life dead, the glad new one born," her husband mused aloud.

"Except a man become as a little child again----For it is a heaven we plan."

"A democracy, not a kingdom, dear?"

"Never a kingdom, unless with a queen equally powered; and no subjects.

The old subserviences are dying; with us they are dead. A real equality of mating; the slave-woman att.i.tude gone forever, as we are laboring on the mountain to end the slave-man att.i.tude."

"It is a friendly old universe, dear, to fling us together, on the uncertain upwhirl of the la.s.soed earth, to complement each other...."

"Blossom to blossom, bird to bird, man to woman," he paired.

"Jackson in two hours," he went on, after a pause.

Was he consciously making conversation, to keep her mind off of what must be the burden of its agitated thinking, the growing tumult stirred and heightened by the night's resistless progress toward their own intimate morning? She appreciated the diversion; soon he was deep in the rich memories of easy Jackson days.

Her mind twisted over other matters at the same time. Marriage meant so little to a man, compared to what it meant to a woman! Pelham, she believed, was chaste; he had told her so. There was no way of knowing.

But love accomplished changed woman irrevocably. It seemed unfair. She re-breathed a silent prayer that she would not find him coa.r.s.e ... even a little. It had been disillusioned Dorothy who had warned her that all men were.... Not her man.

Twice the porter had opened the door with suggestive obtrusiveness; it must be nearly eleven. s.h.i.+vering with a disquiet almost unbearable, she responded to the caressing modulations in his voice, as he told of his childhood; even though its warmth was caused by recollections of other arms than her own. His deep affection for his mother, despite the occasional flippancy he used now, was no secret to the wife.

The whistle wailed rhythmically across the level stubble fields.

His face lit up. "That was Newtown we whizzed by; my father started it.

Hideous place!" But the tone was affectionate.

Jackson 11.02

He consulted his watch; they were running four minutes behind.

As the train picked up speed, his eyes bored the obscurity. "That dark place ... somewhere there is the road to Uncle Jimmy Barbour's farm.

You'll see it all with me soon, dearest dear."

She looked ahead toward the darkness he indicated. Now they had plunged past it.

She heard the porter approach for the third time. Pelham's tone was a trifle uneven. "The stateroom's made up? Thanks very much. Will you call us in time for Pascagoula?"

Us!... Jane's heart thumped; she wondered if his ears could fail to hear it.

"Dearest," he said slowly, "will you go in?... I'll come in half an hour.... Will that be enough?"

Her reply was so low, she wondered if he could have heard. He held her to him for a moment, as if unhappy to lose one moment of her. And then she shut the door, and turned into the lighted isolation of the stateroom, soon to offer her to a panicky common publicity.

... She heard him open the outer door; her flurried fingers summoned the unbetraying darkness.

A. M.

Lower Peachtree 4.10

Jane stared out of the bare three inches of the misted window; she had raised the curtain that much. The train was gaining momentum again. The unbroken night sped by; only her imagination could give it form and life. The unbroken future lay ahead; drowsily she reflected that only her imagination, her shaping hand, could mold it to the heaven they both desired. Pelham was at last asleep ... her husband was asleep....

Her hand lowered the curtain again. Facing the chill blackness without the window, she tried to drowse off. At length she turned toward him, for the moment absent, yet still tangibly hers. She snuggled into the warmer place by his side, touching him to make sure he was still there.

MOBILE Ar. 4.45 MOBILE Lv. 4.53

There was no consciousness stirring in the breathing state-room, to note the stop and the few belated night-travelers for the western gulf region. But in their dreams these two, separated by sleep, were again united. There was a smile playing across Jane's cheek; and a deep content resting upon Pelham's face.

East Pascagoula 7.01

Pelham sat on the edge of a chair, his face downcast in mock despair.

"You make me feel so useless, Jane! Not even a dress to hook up the back----"

Altering a final hatpin, she smiled a query to him. "Is it on straight, beloved? The train wobbles so.... Dresses were hooked up the back ten years ago; of course, you've had practice on Mother Judson's.... Stand up a moment." With great gravity she readjusted his stick-pin. "There!"

He pulled her to the window. "Look--Back Bayou! Though it's really a pudgy finger of the gulf. And schooners ... this side.... Isn't it gorgeous?"

The train, perched on a spidery trestle, crawled high above the slos.h.i.+ng waves, broken by blackened oyster-bed stakes and a skiff slapping against the dismembered head of a narrow pier. Seabirds rose in glancing curves, the red face of the sun lit the waters on both sides of the three-masters tacking out beyond Horn Island. Abruptly the water was blotted out at the end of the bridge by stumpy sedge fields, stretching to a fringe of low pines framing the sparkling water beyond ... then trim white houses. The train slowed.

Pascagoula 7.13

"Here we are," Pelham's joyful tones fathered the last of the luggage, laboriously lowered by the stout porter.