"But it ain"t likely," said the man, who now pushed his hat far back on his head, in the interest of self-possession, "that it"s gone wrong.
With all these wash-outs and devilments, the last fo"t-night, it might a" been travellin" straight and not got the"a, yet. What d"you say was the address?"
"Lower Merritt," said Gaites, beginning to feel a little uncomfortable.
"Name?" persisted the man.
"Miss Phyllis Desmond," Gaites answered, now feeling really silly, but unable to get away without answering.
"That ain"t your name?" the man suggested, with reviving sarcasm.
"No, it isn"t!" Gaites retorted, angrily, aware that he was giving himself away in fine shape.
"Oh, I see," the man mocked. "Friend o" the family. Well, I guess you"ll find your piano at Lower Merritt, all right, in two-three weeks." He was now openly offensive, as with a sense of having Gaites in his power.
A locomotive-bell rang, and Gaites started toward the doorway. "Is that my train?"
The man openly laughed. "Guess it is, if you"re goin" to Lower Merritt."
As Gaites shot through the doorway toward his train, he added, in an insolent drawl, "Miss--Des--mond!"
Gaites was so furious when he got back to the smoking-room of the parlor-car that he was sorry for several miles that he had not turned back and kicked the man, even if it lost him his train. But this was only while he was under the impression that he was furious with the man.
When he discovered that he was furious with himself, for having been all imaginable kinds of an a.s.s, he perceived that he had done the wisest thing he could in leaving the man to himself, and taking up the line of his journey again. What remained mortifying was that he had bought his ticket and checked his bag to Lower Merritt, which he wished never to hear of again, much less see.
He rang for the porter and consulted him as to what could be done toward changing the check on his bag from Lower Merritt to Middlemount Junction; and as it appeared that this was quite feasible, since his ticket would have carried him two stations beyond the Junction, he had done it. He knew the hotel at Middlemount, and he decided to pa.s.s the night there, and the next day to go back to Kent Harbor and June Alber, and let Lower Merritt and Phyllis Desmond take care of themselves from that time forward.
While the driver of the Middlemount House barge was helping the station-master-and-baggage-man (they were one) put the arriving pa.s.sengers" trunks into the wagon for the Middlemount House, Gaites paced up and down the long platform in the remnant of his excitement, and vowed himself to have nothing more to do with Miss Desmond"s piano, even if it should turn up then and there and personally appeal to him for help. In this humor he was not prepared to have anything of the kind happen, and he stood aghast, in looking absently into a freight-car standing on the track, to read, "Miss Phyllis Desmond, Lower Merritt, N.
H.," on the slope of the now familiar case just within the open doorway.
It was as if the poor girl were personally there pleading for his help with the eyes whose tenderness he remembered.
The united station-master-and-baggage-man, who appeared also to be the freight agent, came lounging down the platform toward him. He was so exactly of the rustic railroad type that he confused Gaites with a doubt as to which functionary, of the many he now knew, this was.
"Go"n" to walk over to the hotel?" he asked.
"Yes," Gaites faltered, and the man abruptly turned, and made the gesture for starting a locomotive to the driver of the Middlemount stage.
"All right, Jim!" he shouted, and the stage drove off.
"What time can I get a train for Lower Merritt this afternoon?" asked Gaites.
"Four o"clock," said the man. "This freight goes out first;" and now Gaites noticed that up on a siding beyond the station an engine with a train of freight-cars was fretfully fizzing. The engineer put a silk-capped head out of the cab window and looked back at the station-master, who began to work his arms like a semaph.o.r.e telegraph.
Then the locomotive tooted, the bell rang, and the freight-train ran forward on the switch to the main track, and commenced backing down to where they stood. Evidently it was going to pick up the car with Phyllis Desmond"s piano in it.
"When does this freight go out?" Gaites palpitated.
""Bout ten minutes," said the station-master.
"Does it stop at Lower Merritt?"
"Leaves this cah the"a," said the man, as if surprised into the admission.
"Can I go on her?" Gaites pursued, breathlessly.
"Well, I guess you"ll have to talk to this man about that," and the station-master indicated, with a nod of his head, the freight conductor, who was swinging himself down from the caboose, now come abreast of them on the track. A brakeman had also jumped down, and the train fastened on to the waiting car, under his manipulation, with a final cluck and jolt.
The conductor and station-master exchanged large oblong Manila-paper envelopes, and the station-master said, casually, "Here"s a man wants to go to Lower Merritt with you, Bill."
The conductor looked amused and interested. "Eva travel in a caboose?"
"No."
"Well, I guess you can stand it fo" five miles, anyway."
He turned and left Gaites, who understood this for permission, and clambered into the car, where he found himself in a rude but far from comfortless interior. There was a sort of table or desk in the middle, with a heavy chair or two before it; round the side of the car were some leather-covered benches, suitable for the hard naps which seemed to be taken on them, if he could guess from the man in overalls asleep on one.
The conductor came in, after the train started, and seemed disposed to be sociable. He had apparently gathered from the station-master so much of Gaites"s personal history as had acc.u.mulated since he left the express train at Middlemount.
"Thought you"d try a caboose for a little change from a pahla-cah," he suggested, humorously.
"Well, yes," Gaites partially admitted. "I did intend to stay over at Middlemount when I left the express there, but I changed my mind and decided to go on. It"s very good of you to let me come with you."
""Tain"t but a little way to Lowa Merritt," the conductor explained, defensively. "Eva been the"a?"
"Oh, yes; I pa.s.sed a week or so there once, after I left college. Are you acquainted there?"
"I"m _from_ the"a. Used to wo"k fo" the Desmonds--got that summa place up the side of the mountain--before I took to the ro-ad."
"Oh, yes! Have they still got it?"
"Yes. Or it"s got _them_. Be glad to sell it, I guess, since the old man lost his money. But Lowa Merritt"s kind o" gone down as a summa roso"t.
Tryin" ha"d to bring it up, though. Know the Desmonds?"
"No, not personally."
"Nice fo-aks," said the conductor, providing himself for conversational purposes with a splinter from the floor. He put it between his teeth and continued: "I took ca" thei" hosses, one while, as long"s they _had_ any, before I went on the ro-ad. Old gentleman kep" up a show till he died; then the fam"ly found out that they hadn"t much of anything but the place left. Girls had to do something, and one of "em got a place in a school out West--smaht, _all_ of "em; the second one kind o" runs the fahm; and the youngest, here, "s been fittin" for a music-teacha. Why, I"ve got a piano for her in this cah that we picked up at Middlemount, _now_. Been two wintas at the Conservatory in Boston. Got talent enough, they tell _me_. Undastand "t she means to go to Pohtland in the fall and try to get pupils, _the"a_."
"Not if _I_ can help it!" thought Gaites, with a swelling heart; and then he blushed for his folly.
VI.
Gaites found some notable changes in the hotel at Lower Merritt since he had last sojourned there. It no longer called itself a Hotel, but an Inn, and it had a brand-new old-fashioned swinging sign before its door; its front had been cut up into several gables, and shingled to the ground with shingles artificially antiquated, so that it looked much grayer than it naturally ought. Within it was equipped for electric lighting; and there was a low-browed aesthetic parlor, where, when Gaites arrived and pa.s.sed to a belated dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the closing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted a self-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pillars, and a college-student head waiter ushered Gaites through the gloom to his place with a warning and hushing hand which made him feel as if he were being shown to a pew during prayers.
He escaped as soon as possible from the refection which, from the soup to the ice-cream, had hardly grown lukewarm, and went out to walk by a way that he knew well, and which had for him now a romantically pathetic interest. It was, of course, the way past the Desmond cottage, which, when he came in sight of it round the shoulder of upland where it stood, was curiously strange, curiously familiar. It needed painting badly, and the grounds had a sadly neglected air. The naked legs of little girls no longer twinkled over the lawn, which was grown neglectedly up to low-bush blackberries.
Gaites hurried past with a lump in his throat, and returned by another road to the Inn, where his long ramble ended just as the dining-room doors were opened behind their nettings for supper. At this cheerfuler moment he found the head waiter much more conversible than at the hour of his r.e.t.a.r.ded dinner, and Gaites made talk with him, as the young follow lingered beside his chair, with one eye on the door for the behoof of other guests.
Gaites said he had found great changes in Lower Merritt since he had been there some years before, and he artfully led the talk up to the Desmonds. The head waiter was rather vague about their past; but he was distinct enough about their present, and said the young ladies happened all to be at home. "I don"t know," he added, "whether you noticed our lady orchestra when you came in to dinner to-day?"
"Yes, I did," said Gaites. "I was very much interested. I thought they played charmingly, and I was sorry that I got in only for the close of the last piece."