Lucy had gone to sleep with her arm around her mother"s neck and one hand resting softly on her cheek. Ruth"s heart had been deeply touched by this gentle and silent sympathy of the dawning s.e.x consciousness of her daughter"s soul. The quick little eyes had seen the tragedy, and a voice within whispered its soft words of new, mysterious kinship.
Soon after the train pulled out of Fayetteville it struck the long, straight run of the South Carolina low country. For thirty miles the track is as straight as an arrow, and before the gleaming headlight of the engine shows on the track the watchers at the stations can see the trembling light in the distant sky beyond the sixteen-mile line of the horizon.
The dark eyes were dozing in fitful sleep with the old spell of love once more enveloping the soul. She was dreaming of him, laughing at some boyish prank.
Over the straight track, down grade, the Limited was sweeping at full speed through the black storm.
Suddenly Ruth was awakened by a sickening crash as though the earth had collided with a star and been crushed as an egg-sh.e.l.l. The car seemed to leap a hundred feet into the air, plunge through s.p.a.ce, and strike the ground with a dull smash that sent dust and splinters flying through every inch of s.p.a.ce.
She instinctively seized the children, trembling and dazed, and hugged them close. Merciful G.o.d, would it never stop! Now the car was plowing through the earth--now falling end over end, straining, grinding, roaring, smashing into death and eternity!
At last--it had seemed an hour--it stopped with a shivering crash.
And then the blackness of night, the swash of gusts of rain overhead, and the moan of the wind. Not another sound. Not a groan or a cry or a human voice.
Was she dead or alive? Ruth felt she must scream this awful question or faint. The children began to sob and she gasped in grat.i.tude:
"Thank G.o.d, they are not dead!"
She attempted to get out of her berth and found she must climb. The car was lying on its side. She looked out into the aisle through her curtains and everything was dark. The air choked her with dust, and she caught the odour of burning wool. Deep down below somewhere she could hear, in the lull of the wind, the roar of waters, and feel the car sway as though it were hanging on the edge of an embankment or trestle and about to topple into a torrent.
She pulled the children out into the aisle and tried to crawl toward the end of the car, only to find it crushed into a shapeless ma.s.s and the way piled with debris.
A light suddenly flashed up and the steady crackle of flames began.
From the debris below came the scream of a woman for help.
She drew back her slender fist and tried to smash the double plate gla.s.s windows and only bruised her tapering fingers.
She found a step-ladder and broke the windows out.
Lifting herself on the seat, and peering through, she saw by the glare of the buring wreck the swirling waters of the river twenty feet below.
She rushed back to her berth, on the lower side, smashed the windows, and found the car resting on another sleeper. The blow had broken through both sets of windows.
She lightly sprang through and drew the children after her. A stifled groan, as from one straining the last muscle in some desperate effort, came from a berth. Rushing forward, still dragging the children, she found Kate pinned on her back, with the flames leaping closer each moment.
The violet eyes turned pitifully on Ruth, staring wide with the set agony of speechless fear and searched her face for the verdict of life.
A faint cry came from the full lips, white at the thought of death:
"Help me, for G.o.d"s sake; I"ll be burning in a moment!"
Did the dark eyes waver with an instant"s hesitation as she thought of her children imperiled by the delay and of the shame this woman"s life meant to her? If so, she who cried did not see it. Swiftly the lithe form sprang to the rescue. She ran her hands over Kate"s magnificent figure and tore her robe loose where it was pinioned between the timbers, loosed the wealth of auburn hair caught in the snap of the folding rack of the berth, and she was free.
She took Ruth"s hand and kissed it impulsively.
"Thank you. You are an angel."
"Come, we will be burned to death if we don"t get out of here in a minute," Ruth cried, excitedly.
She found the berth ladder she had thrown through the window and broke the windows out on the lower side of the car, and called:
"Is any one down there?"
Only the roar of the water and crackling flames answered.
She looked and saw a strip of ground on the bank of the river some eight feet below. They might slide down the trestle if no one could help.
The black eyes flashed into the blue for a moment and the little brunette face went white.
"Where is Frank?" she gasped.
Kate shivered and glanced at the flames.
"I don"t know. He was in the berth in front of mine. I hope he is gone for help."
Ruth handed her the children and leaped back to the berth. It was smashed upward and a great hole torn through the roof.
She hurried back and again peered down through the broken window at the narrow strip of ground on the river"s brink lit by the rising flames.
And then she gave a cry of joy at the sound of a voice somewhere amid the ma.s.s beneath,
"Ruth! Ruth! Is that you and the children in that car?"
"Yes, Frank," came back the steady answer.
"Are you hurt?" he cried, with breathless intensity.
"I think not," she replied, cheerfully.
"Thank G.o.d!" she heard his deep voice burst out with trembling fervour.
"Have you seen Kate?" he called.
"Yes; she is here."
"Come, get out of there quick. You will be burned to death!" he shouted. "Hand the children to me and then swing down--I can catch you, one at a time."
She held the boy"s hands and dropped him in his father"s arms, then swung Lucy through and saw her clasp his neck and kiss him.
She helped Kate hold and swing down into his arms. And when she felt him tremble at the touch of her own pet.i.te figure her arms tightened about his neck, she kissed him and whispered:
"My own dear love!"
They climbed up the river bank and walked around in the pouring rain, barefoot and treading on broken gla.s.s at every step.
Neither the conductor of the train or Pullman cars were anywhere to be seen. Only one porter appeared to have survived, and he sat moaning on a piece of debris.
The great engine, like a huge living monster that had seen with its single eye the abyss of the broken bridge in time, had leaped the chasm and gone plunging and faring over the ties and rails a half mile beyond the wreck, with the engineer and fireman clinging to it.