The Man in Lower Ten Read online

  CHAPTER VIII. THE SECOND SECTION

  Have you ever been picked up out of your three-meals-a-day life, whirledaround in a tornado of events, and landed in a situation so grotesqueand yet so horrible that you laugh even while you are groaning, andstraining at its hopelessness? McKnight says that is hysteria, and thatno man worthy of the name ever admits to it.

  Also, as McKnight says, it sounds like a tank drama. Just as therevolving saw is about to cut the hero into stove lengths, the secondvillain blows up the sawmill. The hero goes up through the roof andalights on the bank of a stream at the feet of his lady love, who ismaking daisy chains.

  Nevertheless, when I was safely home again, with Mrs. Klopton brewingstrange drinks that came in paper packets from the pharmacy, and thatsmelled to heaven, I remember staggering to the door and closing it, andthen going back to bed and howling out the absurdity and the madness ofthe whole thing. And while I laughed my very soul was sick, for thegirl was gone by that time, and I knew by all the loyalty that answersbetween men for honor that I would have to put her out of my mind.

  And yet, all the night that followed, filled as it was with theshrieking demons of pain, I saw her as I had seen her last, in the queerhat with green ribbons. I told the doctor this, guardedly, the nextmorning, and he said it was the morphia, and that I was lucky not tohave seen a row of devils with green tails.

  I don't know anything about the wreck of September ninth last. You whoswallowed the details with your coffee and digested the horrors withyour chop, probably know a great deal more than I do. I remember verydistinctly that the jumping and throbbing in my arm brought me back to aworld that at first was nothing but sky, a heap of clouds that I thoughthazily were the meringue on a blue charlotte russe. As the sense ofhearing was slowly added to vision, I heard a woman near me sobbing thatshe had lost her hat pin, and she couldn't keep her hat on.

  I think I dropped back into unconsciousness again, for the next thingI remember was of my blue patch of sky clouded with smoke, of a strangeroaring and crackling, of a rain of fiery sparks on my face and ofsomebody beating at me with feeble hands. I opened my eyes andclosed them again: the girl in blue was bending over me. With thatimperviousness to big things and keenness to small that is the firsteffect of shock, I tried to be facetious, when a spark stung my cheek.

  "You will have to rouse yourself!" the girl was repeating desperately."You've been on fire twice already." A piece of striped ticking floatedslowly over my head. As the wind caught it its charring edges leapedinto flame.

  "Looks like a kite, doesn't it?" I remarked cheerfully. And then, as myarm gave an excruciating throb--"Jove, how my arm hurts!"

  The girl bent over and spoke slowly, distinctly, as one might speak to adeaf person or a child.

  "Listen, Mr. Blakeley," she said earnestly. "You must rouse yourself.There has been a terrible accident. The second section ran into us. Thewreck is burning now, and if we don't move, we will catch fire. Do youhear?"

  Her voice and my arm were bringing me to my senses. "I hear," I said."I--I'll sit up in a second. Are you hurt?"

  "No, only bruised. Do you think you can walk?"

  I drew up one foot after another, gingerly.

  "They seem to move all right," I remarked dubiously. "Would you mindtelling me where the back of my head has gone? I can't help thinking itisn't there."

  She made a quick examination. "It's pretty badly bumped," she said. "Youmust have fallen on it."

  I had got up on my uninjured elbow by that time, but the pain threw meback. "Don't look at the wreck," I entreated her. "It's no sight for awoman. If--if there is any way to tie up this arm, I might be able to dosomething. There may be people under those cars!"

  "Then it is too late to help," she replied solemnly. A little shower offeathers, each carrying its fiery lamp, blew over us from some burningpillow. A part the wreck collapsed with a crash. In a resolute to playa man's part in the tragedy going on around, I got to my knees. Then Irealized what had not noticed before: the hand and wrist of the brokenleft arm were jammed through the handle of the sealskin grip. I gaspedand sat down suddenly.

  "You must not do that," the girl insisted. I noticed now that shekept her back to the wreck, her eyes averted. "The weight of thetraveling-bag must be agony. Let me support the valise until we get backa few yards. Then you must lie down until we can get it cut off."

  "Will it have to be cut off?" I asked as calmly as possible. There werered-hot stabs of agony clear to my neck, but we were moving slowly awayfrom the track.

  "Yes," she replied, with dumfounding coolness. "If I had a knife I coulddo it myself. You might sit here and lean against this fence."

  By that time my returning faculties had realized that she was going tocut off the satchel, not the arm. The dizziness was leaving and I wasgradually becoming myself.

  "If you pull, it might come," I suggested. "And with that weight gone, Ithink I will cease to be five feet eleven inches of baby."

  She tried gently to loosen the handle, but it would not move, and atlast, with great drops of cold perspiration over me, I had to give up.

  "I'm afraid I can't stand it," I said. "But there's a knife somewherearound these clothes, and if I can find it, perhaps you can cut theleather."

  As I gave her the knife she turned it over, examining it with a peculiarexpression, bewilderment rather than surprise. But she said nothing. Sheset to work deftly, and in a few minutes the bag dropped free.

  "That's better," I declared, sitting up. "Now, if you can pin my sleeveto my coat, it will support the arm so we can get away from here."

  "The pin might give," she objected, "and the jerk would be terrible."She looked around, puzzled; then she got up, coming back in a minutewith a draggled, partly scorched sheet. This she tore into a largesquare, and after she had folded it, she slipped it under the broken armand tied it securely at the back of my neck.

  The relief was immediate, and, picking up the sealskin bag, I walkedslowly beside her, away from the track.

  The first act was over: the curtain fallen. The scene was "struck."