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Page 54
"We've lived and loved together,
Through many changing years."
It was a new tune, and he wanted practice, perhaps.
The train jarred and started slowly; the gloved exquisite, waiting
hackmen, baggage-masters, coffee-counter, and station-walls slid back;
engine-house and prison towers, and labyrinths of tracks slipped by;
lumber and shipping took their place, with clear spaces between, where
sea and sky shone through. The speed of the train increased with a
sickening sway; old wharves shot past, with the green water sucking at
their piers; the city shifted by and out of sight.
"We've lived and loved together,"
played Tommy in a little plaintive wail,
"We've lived and loved--"
"Confound the boy!" Harmon pushed up his hat with a jerk, and looked out
of the window. The night was coming on. A dull sunset lay low on the
water, burning like a bale-fire through the snaky trail of smoke that
went writhing past the car windows. Against lonely signal-houses and
little deserted beaches the water was plashing drearily, and playing
monotonous bases to Tommy's wail:--
"Through many changing years,
Many changing years."
It was a nuisance, this music in the cars. Why didn't somebody stop it?
What did the child mean by playing that? They had left the city far
behind now. He wondered how far. He pushed up the window fiercely,
venting the passion of the music on the first thing that came in his
way, and thrust his head out to look back. Through the undulating smoke,
out in the pale glimmer from the sky, he could see a low, red tongue of
land, covered with the twinkle of lighted homes. Somewhere there, in
among the quivering warmth, was one--
What was that boy about now? Not "Home, sweet Home?" But that was what
Tommy was about.
They were lighting the lamps now in the car. Harmon looked at the
conductor's face, as the sickly yellow flare struck on it, with a
curious sensation. He wondered if he had a wife and five children; if he
ever thought of running away from them; what he would think of a man who
did; what most people would think; what she would think. She!--ah, she
had it all to find out yet.
"There's no place like home,"
said Tommy's little fiddle,
"O, no place like home."
Now this fiddle of Tommy's may have had a crack or so in it, and I
cannot assert that Tommy never struck a false note; but the man in the
corner was not fastidious as a musical critic; the sickly light was
flickering through the car, the quiver on the red flats was quite out of
sight, the train was shrieking away into the west,--the baleful, lonely
west,--which was dying fast now out there upon the sea, and it is a fact
that his hat went slowly down over his face again, and that his face
went slowly down upon his arm.
There, in the lighted home out upon the flats, that had drifted by
forever, she sat waiting now. It was about time for him to be in to
supper; she was beginning to wonder a little where he was; she was
keeping the coffee hot, and telling the children not to touch their
father's pickles; she had set the table and drawn the chairs; his pipe
lay filled for him upon the shelf over the stove. Her face in the light
was worn and white,--the dark rings very dark; she was trying to hush
the boys, teasing for their supper; begging them to wait a few minutes,
only a few minutes, he would surely be here then. She would put the baby
down presently, and stand at the window with her hands--Annie's hands
once were not so thin--raised to shut out the light,--watching,
watching.
The children would eat their supper; the table would stand untouched,
with his chair in its place; still she would go to the window, and stand
watching, watching. O, the long night that she must stand watching, and
the days, and the years!
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