Читать книгу Bed Rock - Jack Bethea - Страница 6

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Alice was alone in the dim library of her father's home when he came in quietly. Only the flickering blaze in the wide chimney lighted her face fitfully. She had refused lights.

The passing of the days had not made her trouble easier to bear, nor could she turn her mind to other things. She had recovered from her first numb dismay and now the corrosive of anger was eating at her heart.

Her face in the shadows was wan under her father's eyes as he moved up the room. He held his fingers to the blazing coals and eyed her keenly. Reubens, for the first time, had found himself unable to comfort his daughter, unable to get her to relax and weep out her sorrow.

"You ought to have lights in here, young fellow," he said.

"I didn't want them. I can think better like this."

"That's just why you should have them. You are doing too much thinking. You need something to do besides think."

"What else can I do?" she asked

"That is what I want to speak of. Can you talk with me yet? I shall not hurt you more than I can help. But we must decide. Are you still determined to go with your ... him?"

Alice nodded and a slight animation came into her manner. "I am. There isn't any use in going over that any more, Daddy. You see how it is here. I should go mad if I stayed."

Her father grunted. "I can understand your reasons if I cannot sympathize with them. You know what you are doing? I shall not always be able to stand between you and ... things, if you leave me."

"I'll face what I must. When will you know where I am going?"

"I know now. Have known all along, but I wouldn't tell you because I hoped you would change your mind."

"You should have known me better than that. Whose daughter am I?"

Reubens covered one of her listless hands with his own massive fingers. "Mine. And always will be. Never forget it. Promise."

Alice stooped and laid her lips on his fingers. "As if I could! And where am I going?"

"I shall send him to Cahaba. Day after to-morrow. Does that mean anything to you?"

"No. Should it?"

"Cahaba is not a place I would choose for my daughter's home. But I can't help myself. I want you to remember that when you get down there. Remember that everything I have done and shall do is for you and for your happiness. You will find yourself in a strange world. And when you want to come home, I shall be waiting. It will be lonely for me."

Alice kissed him. "I know it will, Daddy. And I'm sorry. But I can't do any other way either. I want you to forgive me. You understand! Don't you? Please, please do!"

Reubens patted her gravely. "Never mind. Whether I do or not, I love you just the same. Now one other thing. Will you tell him or shall I?"

"You, please, Daddy. I don't want to see him until I go to the station. And I don't want you to go with me. I would rather tell you good-bye here. Alone."

Blackford had not been happy as he waited for the orders that would plunge him into a contest against the Cahaba Coal and Iron Company. He was not afraid or reluctant; he strained for the struggle. It was the thought of his wife as he had seen her last that haunted him. If he could only make up to her the pain he had caused! Waiting now in the vast railroad station, he pondered his course.

After all, love was not so important, he told himself cynically. He had done without it thus far. His wife's respect, however, was a different thing. Having lost it, he began to attach value to it. Blackford all his life had cared little for what others thought of him, but this was strangely different. What Alice thought of him did matter.

Blackford was not in love with his wife. He did not want to be in love with any one. But the thought that he could do no wrong in her eyes had been comforting. He knew he was not the finest man in the world, but that she should think so had been sweet.

Something of this was in his face as he watched Alice leave the Reubens automobile at the entrance to the station and come toward him. He had half-expected her father to come with her, but she was alone, with no one to tell her good-bye, except the chauffeur, who touched his cap, changed gears with a noisy crash, and drove away. To Blackford, watching, the loneliness of the trim figure was pathetic. He went quickly toward her with a silent resolution. He had done harm enough; he would do no more.

"We have ten minutes," he told her. "Would you like to stroll about or to get on the car?"

"Let's get on," she answered, and added whimsically: "I've crossed the river and I don't want to look back." They found their seats in silence.

It was a strange journey for Blackford, the long trip from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, from Cincinnati to Birmingham, and from Birmingham to Cahaba over the Mineral. He found himself wondering at his wife's calm unconcern, her casual friendliness, her apparent forgetfulness of all that had passed. Most of all he wondered at the intangible barrier she raised between them.

He strove by incessant attention to her comfort to establish a closer, less impersonal relation. He wondered at times if Alice realized she was being made love to, subtly, very carefully. Not that Blackford loved her—he was still honest enough with himself to admit that—but he was offering the counterfeit and hoping to make it so nearly like the genuine she would not know.

He wondered if she knew. Sometimes he thought she did and was quietly enjoying his discomfort. Watching sidewise, he sometimes caught her eyes on him, her face lighted for an instant by quizzical amusement. Blackford wondered if she was laughing at him.

They spent much of their time on the observation car. Mostly in silence, but breaking occasionally into desultory conversation, they watched the landscape unreel behind them. Blackford's efforts to talk were sometimes successful, sometimes not. She was quite passive. If he suggested a stroll through the train, she went with him without protest; if he thought she would enjoy a nap, she submitted while he made her comfortable with pillows and magazines; if he proposed the observation platform, there was no demur.

As they were approaching Chattanooga, the last beams of the sun lighted the towering sides of Signal Mountain and threw into relief the white spires of the battle-field monuments. Leaning over the railing, Alice gazed eagerly up at the heights and then down to the gigantic Moccasin Bend of the Tennessee. Blackford watched the sweeping lines of the firm chin, the odd curve of the lips and the chiseled nose. But when he spoke, waving a hand toward the summit, her eyes were cold.

"See that rock way up yonder, the one that looks as if it was just about to tumble down the mountain?" he asked. "That is Umbrella Rock, and standing on it you can see seven States on a clear day."

"Yes."

Her answer, as usual, invited no response, but he kept on. "I am pretty familiar with this country through here. Years ago, when I was just a youngster, we traced the Cahaba vein of coal to its source and it took us up among these hills. We used to come to Chattanooga once or twice a week. I've tramped all over Lookout Mountain." He glanced at his wife to find her looking again at the huge peak. Half to himself, he continued. "It is like getting home to see these red hills. I was raised in them." His voice took on unusual animation as a new thought struck him. "How would you like to stop in Chattanooga and go over the mountains?"

Alice looked from the peak to the Bend and then to Blackford. "Would not that be lingering by the wayside? Aren't you eager to get to Cahaba?"

"Yes, I am," he said. "But I thought maybe you would like to see Lookout Mountain. Most Eastern people do when they come down here."

Alice laughed briefly. "Their mission is different from mine. I don't think I could do justice to the mountain. Aren't you spending a great deal more time than necessary in thinking what I would like?"

Blackford winced. "What do you mean?"

"When I decided to come to Alabama with you, I knew just what I was doing. I did not do it blindly. You need not feel the slightest obligation to look after me. I can do that myself, or, if I can't, Daddy has hired people who can. You look out for yourself." There was a hint of her father in her voice. "You need it more than I. I should be careful if I were you."

After a moment's silence, Blackford spoke: "You said we were not to bicker. Aren't we in danger of doing it? Suppose we talk of other things."

"Very well." Indifferently. "What, for instance?"

"We might consider what we are to do when we get to Cahaba. We are pretty close now to Birmingham and it is only forty miles from there."

"Do you know anything of the place?"

"Only what I was able to get from the files in the office. Your father said the superintendent's house is maintained furnished. I shall get along all right, but what of you?"

"I have told you not to worry about me. That is my concern."

"You can't get servants in Cahaba if it is anything like mining camps were when I left Alabama."

Alice laughed. "I'm not going to have any servant. I can get along."

Puzzled and rebuffed, Blackford lapsed into silence. Strange, he mused, that he should find himself considering his wife more than the opportunity he had bought so dearly. He was more interested in the soft body, reclining in the chair so close to him that a faint perfume was wafted to his nostrils, than in Cahaba. Strange that one's desires should change so suddenly. Of what was she thinking? Would she ever again give herself as freely as she had done? He had had such a chance for happiness and had tossed it so lightly away! He had been blind and now he was dumb, his lips sealed by his own words. But were they sealed? She had believed before. If he told her the truth and asked, not for justice, but for mercy, she might listen. If she did ...

The hours flicked by unnoticed. He was aroused by an exclamation from Alice, who was leaning out and staring ahead where the sky glared for miles. "What is that?" she asked, struck by the beauty of the far light.

Blackford glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. "Those are the blast furnaces at Birmingham. We are due there in twenty minutes. We change trains there, you know. We'll either have to go to a hotel or take the Coal Special over the Mineral at two-thirty. That would put us into Cahaba at seven in the morning. But you don't want to do that. You are tired and would not want to travel all night. There aren't any sleepers on the Mineral. They just hook a passenger coach behind the coal cars. We had better go to a hotel."

"But I don't want to go to a hotel!" cried Alice. "I had much rather go out to-night on the train. I like traveling at night. I don't mind sitting up. Besides, I had much rather get to Cahaba in the morning. It is so depressing to reach any place at night."

So, when they reached Birmingham, he bustled her into a taxicab and to the Mineral depot far over on the North Side.

Alice gazed eagerly about her when she had settled into her seat in the dilapidated passenger coach in the deserted train shed. Her interest was undampened by the red plush cushions, the ghastly light from the gas lamps, or the dozen men sprawled about in various attitudes of slumber, mouths open, snoring. Her nostrils contracted at the unmistakable burned-sugar odor of corn whisky mingled with strong tobacco.

In an instant, Blackford had a window up and the fresh, cool air pouring in. Seeing that the light in her eyes annoyed her, he prevailed on a surly flagman to lower it, leaving that end of the car in semi-darkness. He quelled by the mere force of his gaze the antics of two men who threatened to become boisterous.

Alice never forgot that journey in the cool April night. Years afterward, she was to know it so well that she could guess her location by the curves, but now it was all new. The peace of the low green hills, with their mysterious glades in half-light from the full moon, entered her soul. The Mineral ran along the shoulder of Red Mountain for miles, while below stretched the valley. In her nostrils was the fresh, green fragrance of pines.

The train climbed on a steady grade, finally to reach the summit and plunge triumphantly over the divide. Here a new set of wonders was revealed when the lonely farmhouses came into view; little ugly log-cabins, with tumbled-down outbuildings, infinitely more appealing than the neat countryside of her own Pennsylvania.

Her face revealed her thoughts and Blackford grew a little easier. At least, she would not hate the country. He, too, was drinking in the scene, long ago familiar. This was his home, and his heavy heart lifted a little as he listened to catch the song of the pines.

Almost before they knew it, daylight had come and with it the end of their journey. Watching the colors of the sunrise, Alice was too absorbed to notice that the train pulled around a jutting cliff that overhung the tracks, slipped through a gap in the mountain, and came to a panting stop. She lifted startled eyes, in which dreams still lingered, to her husband as he rose.

"Come on," he said. "Here we are. This is Cahaba."