"I never worked before on Christmas."
"It"s a mistake. I don"t believe in it, but somehow it"s when my hardest work always comes. One Christmas, when I was on the Grand Trunk, there was a big wreck at a junction about sixty miles down the road."
She saw the memory coming into his eyes, and she leaned back against the desk, playing with her pen, and now and then looking up.
"I was chief wrecker, and I had an old Scotch engineer that you couldn"t move with a jack. We"d rubbed up together three or four times before I"d had him a month, and I was getting tired of it. We"d got about halfway to the junction that night, and I felt the brakes go on hard, and before I could get through the train and over the tender, we"d stopped dead.
The Scotchman was down by the drivers fussing around with a lantern. I hollered out:--
""What"s the matter there?"
""She"s a bit "ot," said he.
"You"d have thought he was running a huckleberry train from the time he took. I ordered him into the cab, and he just waved his hand and said:--
""Wait a bit, wait a bit. She"ll be cool directly.""
Bannon chuckled at the recollection.
"What did you do?" Hilda asked.
"Jumped for the lever, and hollered for him to get aboard."
"Did he come?"
"No, he couldn"t think that fast. He just stood still, looking at me, while I threw her open, and you could see his lantern for a mile back--he never moved. He had a good six-mile walk back to the last station."
There was a long silence. Bannon got up and walked slowly up and down the enclosure with his hands deep in his pockets.
"I wish this would let up," he said, after a time, pausing in his walk, and looking again at the window. "It"s a wonder we"re getting things done at all."
Hilda"s eye, roaming over the folded newspaper, fell on the weather forecast.
"Fair to-morrow," she said, "and colder."
"That doesn"t stand for much. They said the same thing yesterday. It"s a worse gamble than wheat."
Bannon took to walking again; and Hilda stepped down and stood by the window, spelling out the word "Calumet" with her finger on the misty gla.s.s. At each turn, Bannon paused and looked at her. Finally he stood still, not realizing that he was staring until she looked around, flushed, and dropped her eyes. Then he felt awkward, and he began turning over the blue prints on the table.
"I"ll tell you what I"ll have to do," he said. "I rather think now I"ll start on the third for Montreal. I"m telling you a secret, you know. I"m not going to let Brown or MacBride know where I"ll be. And if I can pick up some good pictures of the river, I"ll send them to you. I"ll get one of the Montmorency Falls, if I can. They"re great in winter."
"Why--why, thank you," she said. "I"d like to have them."
"I ain"t much at writing letters," he went on, "but I"ll send you the pictures, and you write and tell me how things are going."
She laughed softly, and followed the zigzag course of the raindrop with her finger.
"I wouldn"t have very much to say," she said, speaking with a little hesitation, and without looking around. "Max and I never do much."
"Oh, you can tell how your work goes, and what you do nights."
"We don"t do much of anything. Max studies some at night--a man he used to work for gave him a book of civil engineering."
"What do you do?"
"I read some, and then I like to learn things about--oh, about business, and how things are done."
Bannon could not take his eyes from her--he was looking at her hair, and at the curved outline of one cheek, all that he could see of her face.
They both stood still, listening to the patter of the rain, and to the steady drip from the other end of the office, where there was a leak in the roof. Once she cleared her throat, as if to speak, but no words came.
There was a stamping outside, and she slipped back to the ledger, as the door flew open. Bannon turned to the blue prints.
Max entered, pausing to knock his cap against the door, and wring it out.
"You ought to have stayed out, Mr. Bannon," he said. "It"s the greatest thing you ever saw--doesn"t sag an inch. And say--I wish you could hear the boys talk--they"d lie down and let you walk on "em, if you wanted to."
Max"s eyes were bright, and his face red with exercise and excitement.
He came to the gate and stood wiping his feet and looking from one to the other for several moments before he felt the awkwardness that had come over him. His long rubber coat was thrown back, and little streams of water ran down his back and formed a pool on the floor behind him.
"You"d better come out," he said. "It"s the prettiest thing I ever saw--a clean straight span from the main house to the tower."
Bannon stood watching him quizzically; then he turned to Hilda. She, too, had been looking at Max, but she turned at the same moment, and their eyes met.
"Do you want to go?" he said.
She nodded eagerly. "I"d like to ever so much."
Then Bannon thought of the rain, but she saw his thought as he glanced toward the window, and spoke quickly.
"I don"t mind--really. Max will let me take his coat."
"Sure," said Max, and he grinned. She slipped into it, and it enveloped her, hanging in folds and falling on the floor.
"I"ll have to hold it up," she said. "Do we have much climbing?"
"No," said Max, "it ain"t high. And the stairs are done, you know."
Hilda lifted the coat a little way with both hands, and put out one small toe. Bannon looked at it, and shook his head. "You"ll get your feet wet," he said.
She looked up and met Bannon"s eyes again, with an expression that puzzled Max.
"I don"t care. It"s almost time to go home, anyway."
So they went out, and closed the door; and Max, who had been told to "stay behind and keep house," looked after them, and then at the door, and an odd expression of slow understanding came into his face. It was not in what they had said, but there was plainly a new feeling between them. For the first time in his life, Max felt that another knew Hilda better than he did. The way Bannon had looked at her, and she at him; the mutual understanding that left everything unsaid; the something--Max did not know what it was, but he saw it and felt it, and it disturbed him.
He sat on the table, and swung his feet, while one expression chased another over his face. When he finally got himself together, he went to the door, and opening it, looked out at the black, dim shape of the elevator that stood big and square, only a little way before him, shutting out whatever he might else have seen of rushing sky or dim-lighted river, or of the railroads and the steamboats and the factories and rolling mills beyond. It was as if this elevator were his fate, looming before him and shutting out the forward view. In whatever thoughts he had had of the future, in whatever plans, and they were few, which he had revolved in his head, there had always been a place for Hilda. He did not see just what he was to do, just what he was to become, without her. He stood there for a long time, leaning against the door-jamb with his hands in his pockets, and the sharper gusts of rain whirled around the end of the little building and beat on him. And then--well, it was Charlie Bannon; and Max knew that he was glad it was no one else.
The narrow windows in the belt gallery had no gla.s.s, and the rain came driving through them into the shadows, each drop catching the white shine of the electric lights outside. The floor was trampled with mud and littered with sc.r.a.ps of lumber, tool boxes, empty nail kegs, and shavings. The long, gloomy gallery was empty when Bannon and Hilda stepped into it, excepting a group of men at the farther end, installing the rollers for the belt conveyor--they could be seen indistinctly against a light in the river house.