Читать книгу Vandemark's Folly - Quick Herbert - Страница 24

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At last I found a man who freighted and drove stage between Milwaukee and Madison, who remembered Rucker; and had given him passage to Madison sometime, as he remembered it, in May or June--or it might have been July, but it was certainly before the Fourth of July.

"You hauled him--and his wife?" I asked.

"Him and his wife," said the man, "and a daughter."

"A daughter!" I said in astonishment. "They have no daughter."

"Might have been his daughter, and not her'n," said the stage-driver. "Wife was a good deal younger than him, an' the girl was pretty old to be her'n. Prob'ly his. Anyhow, he said she was his daughter."

"It wasn't his daughter," I cried.

"Well, you needn't get het up about it," said he; "I hain't to blame no matter whose daughter she wasn't. She can travel with me any time she wants to. Kind of a toppy, fast-goin', tricky little rip, with a sorrel mane."

"I don't understand it," said I. "Did you notice his wife--whether she seemed to be feeling well?"

"Looked bad," said he. "Never said nothing to nobody, and especially not to the daughter. Used to go off to bed while the old man and the girl held spiritualist doin's wherever we laid over. Went into trances, the girl did, and the old man give lectures about the car of progress that always rolls on and on and on, pervided you consult the spirits. Picked up quite a little money 's we went along, too."

I sat in the barroom and thought about this for a long time. There was something wrong about it. My mother's health was failing, that was plain from what I had heard in Southport; but it did not seem to me, no matter how weak and broken she might be, that she would have allowed Rucker to pass off any stray trollop like the one described by the stage-driver as his daughter, or would have traveled with them for a minute. But, I thought, what could she do? And maybe she was trying to keep the affair within bounds as far as possible. A good woman is easily deceived, too. Perhaps she knew best, after all; and maybe she was going on and on with Rucker from one misery to another in the hope that I, her only son, and the only relative she had on earth, might follow and overtake her, and help her out of the terrible situation in which, even I, as young and immature as I was, could see that she must find herself. I had seen too much of the under side of life not to understand the probable meaning of this new and horrible thing. I remembered how insulted my mother was that time so long ago when Rucker proposed that they join the Free-Lovers at Oneida; and how she had refused to ride home with him, at first, and had walked back on that trail through the woods, leading me by the hand, until she was exhausted, and how Rucker had tantalized her by driving by us, and sneering at us when mother and I finally climbed into the democrat wagon, and rode on with him toward Tempe. I could partly see, after I had thought over it for a day or so, just what this new torture might mean to her.

I was about to start on foot for Madison, and looked up my stage-driver acquaintance to ask him about the road.

"Why don't you go on the railroad?" he asked. "The damned thing has put me out of business, and I'm no friend of it; but if you're in a hurry it's quicker'n walkin'."

I had seen the railway station in Milwaukee, and looked at the train; but it had never occurred to me that I might ride on it to Madison. Now we always expect a railway to run wherever we want to go; but then it was the exception--and the only railroad running out of Milwaukee was from there to Madison. On this I took that day my first ride in a railway car, reaching Madison some time after three. This seemed like flying to me. I had seen plenty of railway tracks and trains in New York; but I had to come to Wisconsin to patronize one.

I rode on, thinking little of this new experience, as I remember, so filled was I with the hate of John Rucker which almost made me forget my love for my mother. Perhaps the one was only the reverse side of the other. I had made up my mind what to do. I would try hard not to kill Rucker, though I tried him and condemned him to death in my own mind several times for every one of the eighty miles I rode; but I knew that this vengeance was not for me.

I would take my mother away from him, though, in spite of everything; and she and I would move on to a new home, somewhere, living happily together for the rest of our lives.

I was happy when I thought of this home, in which, with my new-found, fresh strength, my confidence in myself, my knack of turning my hand to any sort of common work, my ability to defend her against everything and everybody--against all the Ruckers in the world--my skill in so many things that would make her old age easy and happy, I would repay her for all this long miserable time,--the cruelty of Rucker when she took me out of the factory while he was absent, the whippings she had seen him give me, the sacrifices she had made to give me the little schooling I had had, the nights she had sewed to make my life a little easier, the tears she dropped on my bed when she came and tucked me in when I was asleep, the pangs of motherhood, and the pains worse than those of motherhood which she had endured because she was poor, and married to a beast.

I would make all this up to her if I could. I went into Madison, much as a man goes to his wedding; only the woman of my dreams was my mother. But I felt as I did that night when I returned to Tempe after my first summer on the canal--full of hope and anticipation, and yet with a feeling in my heart that again something would stand in my way.