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Page 95
We were an excited group around the train's crew, when the
trackman came up with his torch. Everybody asked the same
question as the man approached.
"What caused the accident?"
"Spread rails," he said. "These big brutes," he pointed to the
mammoth engine sprawling like a child's top on its side, the
gigantic wheels in the air, "and these new steel coaches, are
awful heavy. There's an upgrade here. When they struck it,
they just spread out the rails."
And he pushed his closed hands out before him, slowly apart, in
illustration.
The man knew Marion, for he spoke directly to her in reply to our
concerted query. Then he added "If you step down the track, Miss
Warfield, I'll show you exactly how it happened."
We followed the big workman with his torch. Marion walked beside
him, and I a few steps behind. The girl had been plunged, on the
instant, headlong into the horror she feared, into the ruin that
she had lain awake over - and yet she met it with no sign, except
that grim stiffening of the figure that disaster brings to
persons of courage. She gave no attention to her exquisite gown.
It was torn to pieces that night; my own was a ruin. The
crushing effect of this disaster swept out every trivial thing.
In a moment we saw how the accident happened, the workman
lighting the sweep of track with his torch. Here were the plow
marks on the wooden cross ties, where the wheels had run after
they left the rails. One saw instantly that the thing happened
precisely as the workman explained it. When the heavy engine
struck the up-grade, the rails had spread, the wheels had gone
down on the cross-ties, and the whole train was derailed.
I saw it with a sickening realization of the fact.
Marion took the workman's torch and went over the short piece of
track on which the thing had happened. All the evidences of the
accident were within a short distance. The track was not torn up
when the thing began. There was only the displaced rail pushed
away, and the plow marks of the wheels on the ties. The spread
rails had merely switched the train off the track onto the level
of the highway roadbed into the flat field.
Marion and the workman had gone a little way down the track. I
was quite alone at the point of accident, when suddenly some one
caught my hand.
I was so startled that I very nearly screamed. The thing
happened so swiftly, with no word.
There behind me was a woman, an old foreign woman, a peasant from
some land of southern Europe. She had my hand huddled up to her
mouth.
And she began to speak, bending her aged body, and with every
expression of respect.
"Ah, Contessa, he is not do it, my Umberto. He is run away in
fear to hide in the Barrington quarry. It is accident. It is
the doing of the good God. Ah, Contessa," and her old lips
dabbed against my hand. "I beg him to not go, but he is
discharge; an' he make the threat like the great fool. Ah,
Contessa, Contessa," and she went over the words with absurd
repetition, "believe it is by chance, believe it is the doing of
the good God, I pray you." And so she ran on in her quaint
old-world words.
Instantly I remembered the man lying by the roadside, and the
threats of discharged workmen.
I told her the thing was a clean accident, and tried to show her
how it came about. She was effusive in gratitude for my belief.
But she seemed concerned about Marion and the others. She did
not go away; she went over and sat down beside the track.
Presently the others returned. They were so engrossed that they
did not notice my adventure or the aged woman seated on the
ground.
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