Beauty for Ashes (24 page)

He lit a cheap cigarette, took a puff or two, and leaning back gave her a friendly side glance. “You work up at that place?”

Vanna caught her breath and was about to make a haughty negative reply when she realized a vantage. “No,” she said with a slight drawl of indifference, “I didn’t like the looks of things.”

“Don’t blame ya!” said the lad approvingly. “It’s a tough joint. Wouldn’t want my sister ta stay in a dump like that, though times are hard an’ ya can’t be too choosy of course. Come far?”

“Well, not so far,” said Vanna. “It’s this side of Portland,” she added, “in the country. I can’t thank you enough for taking me to the train. I just couldn’t see staying there all night.”

“Don’t blame ya a bit. Well, I’m glad to help ya out.”

The boy wasn’t much older than Brandon she decided, and she looked at him thankfully and wondered what attitude he would take, just supposing Emory Zane should come on after her and demand that the boy give her up, saying she was his wife or sister. She felt convinced now that he would stop at nothing to carry out his purposes. She recalled vague stories she had heard of his putting his last wife in the insane asylum, and since her experience of the afternoon and the look on his face when he had declined to take her back, she could easily believe them true. She shivered a little and drew farther back in her corner of the seat. If Zane should hold them up, how much help could she hope to get from this boy?

“You cold?” asked the lad suddenly. “I got a piece of burlap back here in the truck that come over a crate of oranges. It’s fairly clean ef ya want it round her shoulders.”

He reached back, in spite of her protest that she was all right, and brought it forward, shaking it out and laying it clumsily about her shoulders.

“It gets awful chilly sometimes of an evening coming down in these valleys,” said the boy. “See them wreaths of fog! Ain’t them purty? They look just like feathers sometimes, and then again it gets so thick, I can’t see a foot ahead of me when I’m bringin’ the truck down the mountain in the dark!”

Vanna, momentarily in fear of being followed, found herself nevertheless greatly entertained by this simple lad’s conversation, found it even a comfort to pose as a country girl seeking work. Well, if she heard Zane’s car following, she would just throw herself on the mercy of this boy, tell him she had run away from a man whom she feared, and perhaps he would stand by her and hide her somewhere.

But the moments went by, and Emory Zane did not arrive. The village in the valley drew nearer and nearer, till as they entered it they saw far on the upper road the lights of a powerful car shooting alone above the valley. Could that be the cream-colored car? Once it shot out into view with a strange glitter, and Vanna was sure and deeply thankful in her heart, that if it was Zane’s car, it had taken the high road and she was safely sheltered in the valley.

And so, Vanna Sutherland, daughter of a multimillionaire, rode thankfully up to the little country valley station in a delivery truck, wearing burlap about her shoulders to keep her warm.

But when she got out her purse to pay the truck driver his promised fee, he protested, the coveted “five bucks” almost in his grasp.

“Say, I hate to take this! You sure you can spare it? I’d hate ta rob ya. You’ve had a rotten deal, goin’ ta a place like that fer work. You ain’t their kind, anybody can see, and ya know I ain’t out nuthin’ bringing ya down. I druther hev company than not, and it didn’t cost me a cent. You better keep that five bucks. You’ll need it likely.”

But when Vanna insisted, he allowed his wistful eyes to linger on the bill again and his eager hand to grasp it.

“Well, ef you insist!” he drawled with a grin. “Of course I
kin
use it,” and he stuffed it nonchalantly into his pocket, leaving Vanna to reflect on the gallantry of a mere truck driver. Also the position to which a multimillionaire’s daughter could be reduced by circumstances.

V
anna had no difficulty in making the train. It was late. Later than usual. Before he left her, the truck driver discovered that fact for her from the loungers who usually made the platform their evening rendezvous.

They were sitting in a row on the edge of the platform with their feet comfortably settled on the nearest rail, earnestly talking, and they looked up with interest as she alighted from the truck.

Vanna drifted quickly around to the other side of the station and sought for haven within but found to her dismay that the station, though dimly lit was locked. She stood leaning dismally against the wall, first on one foot then on the other till she spied an empty strawberry crate and sank thankfully down upon it. Vanna, garbed in burlap and sitting on a strawberry crate! She laughed softly to herself at the irony of it all and realized that all her trouble was of her own making.

Just before the freight rambled in like a lazy old bum to whom time meant nothing at all, the young truck driver returned and put her in the caboose. She had to walk the track for about the distance of half a city block before she reached even this haven, and when the boy swung her up the steep steps that seemed like a ladder let down from the skies, she looked around her in dismay. Was that what a caboose was like inside? And that hard seat was all the provision there was for stray travelers like herself?

But nobody apologized, and she slipped into the only obvious seat and waited, hours more it seemed. While the train lingered on a sidetrack, shifted back and forth with many a bump and jerk, and outside men up and down the track shouted advice to one another, such things as “Lettur go!” and “Awright, hold her!,” it seemed to the weary frightened brain of Vanna that they were talking about her, and she shrank as far as she could within her burlap drapery behind a group of dirty, tattered bunting flags of red and green.

At her feet was a clutter of smelly, smoking lanterns, also red and green. She was cold and hungry and downhearted. She was still nervous lest Emory Zane would somehow find her before she got started on this terrible railroad journey. If he should find her, he would somehow get control of her again. The thought had become an obsession.

Then the train would seemingly start on its reluctant way, amble along to another brief location, and return to be shunted back and forth.

But finally men seemed to be embarking. The young truck driver returned and spoke a good word for Vanna to the questionable-looking man who seemed to be conducting affairs.

“Look after this dame for me, wontya, Ted? She’s all right, and she’s been havin’ a rocky time of it.”

Then to Vanna, who had tried to smile at the forbidding-looking conductor, he called as he swung off the now moving train, “So long, sister! Hope ya get through awright. Give all the folks my regards!”

With a grin, he threw a package of Lifesavers into her lap and disappeared into the darkness. Vanna felt as if she were bereft of her last friend.

She put her head back against the hard window frame that jutted behind her seat and closed her eyes. At least she was off, and that was something for which to be thankful. Not even the most zealous of followers could expect to find her at this hour of the night seated in the crude surroundings of a freight caboose. It was terrible, but it was safe, at least safe from Emory Zane.

The freight train clattered on with much the same sound and comfort that one might have in a spring wagon. Vanna ached from head to foot and was cold in spite of her burlap wrap. She was faint from hunger now, too. Presently she thought of her Lifesavers and ate them slowly one by one, reflecting on the kindness of a boy’s heart.

There was ample time for reflection during that long train ride, and Vanna went over her past life up to date and made a number of resolves about the future. She sat face-to-face with herself and saw that Emory Zane would never have dared go as far as he had that afternoon if she had not encouraged him back at home. Why did she do it? Why was she such a fool?

Then she fell to thinking of her friends in Afton. Would she ever be able to hold up her head among them again? What should she tell them? The whole truth, how she had been detained against her will? What would they think of her choice of friends, of her being willing to go out with a man like Zane?

Question after question beat its way through her weary mind as the train bumped on lazily through the night. Now and then it would come to a jerking halt and wait till she could hear the tree toads singing and the crickets in the grass by the tracks and now and then a marsh frog giving a lazy, sleepy croak. She looked out into the night and saw dark outlines of houses, a scattering handful here and there. Then the train would slat itself into action again and move on a little farther.

Three times they stopped at small towns and shuttled up and down the side tracks, making terrible collisions with a car they were picking up that shattered the little nerve Vanna had left. Then when she had almost given up hope, they moved on again.

She dared not look at her watch. She knew the hour was a frightful one for a woman alone to be returning to Afton. At home it would not have been such a dreadful thing, easily explainable, but she had been in the country long enough to get custom-wise, and her distress was great. She began to strain her eyes out into the darkness to watch for names on stations that she seldom could distinguish till after they were past. She finally ventured to question the grumpy conductor when he returned on one of his infrequent trips to the caboose to get another kind of lantern or flag for use in his mysterious machinations outside.

He assured her briefly that he would tell her when they reached Ripley, and he condescended to tell her the fare and accept it from her silently, almost as if it were a favor to take it.

And then at last, Ripley!

“This train don’t usually stop at Ripley unless there’s freight,” volunteered the conductor, clearly annoyed, “but we’ll let ya off all righty!”

He helped her down from an immense height when they at last came to an uncertain stop, and she found herself sliding down a bank of cinders to unknown depths of blackness below.

“You’d best stick up here ta the track,” he called back to her from the height of the last step of the caboose. “It’s better walking up here in the dark. There’s the station right down there a piece. You just foller on after the train.”

She looked up in dismay from her slippery position and saw him with his red lantern in his hand, the knotted blue handkerchief about his neck. His gruff countenance in the weird lantern light seemed almost like some seasoned old angel who had been sent down to drop her on the earth from a great height.

There she stood and watched him slip away into the night, herself slipping slowly, down, down, an inch at a time, and struggling to keep her balance. The train seemed to be going away from her so much faster than it had traveled while she was on it! It had gone around a curve now with one last wicked leer from the red lantern at the back, and she was alone! Alone in what seemed a vast crater of darkness. But presently when the clatter of the train died away, the earth about her resolved itself into natural night sounds again. The tree toads in the distance, the crickets near at hand, the chug of a bullfrog plunking into water. Water! There must be a pond or a swamp nearby, and if she should inadvertently fall into it, what terrible fate might be hers! She turned in fright and scrambled with difficulty up the cinder steep back to the track as she had been advised, whimpering softly as she went.

But once firmly standing on the track, she found herself trembling. How long would it be perhaps before another train would come rushing along? And where would she go, what would she do then? Yet there was nothing to do but walk that track till she came to something, and she had much trouble doing that. Ties were not laid with pleasant calculation for a lady’s walk in the dark, and she often missed her footing. Once she fell and ground the cinders into her hands and knees then picked herself up quickly with a frightened look behind and before for that possible train that might come along on this single-track railroad.

She peered into the darkness ahead and to either side. They had told her that this was Ripley, but she could see nothing that could be either Ripley or any other town. On and on she stumbled from tie to tie, and sometimes the ties were far apart and sometimes too near together, and then down she would go again.

The little crickets cricked on, the bullfrogs and the tree toads sang their night song regardless of her strait, and ahead there were only dark shapes, like black shadows.

But at last she saw to one side something like a shed, and now the steep bank sloped gently, till finally the track was on a level with the general earth and a plank loomed out of the darkness before her unsteady feet.

She groped her way across the platform and felt the door. Yes, that would seem to be a station door, but it was all dark within. In all her experience of railroad stations, she had not known that one would be closed and dark with no one around to direct. A railroad station had always seemed to be the place to go. She had counted on finding a telephone to call up friends and a place to wait until they came for her, and there was nothing but darkness!

A little way down the platform, there was a tiny, flickering, uncertain light. A common lantern on a pole, lighting a sign of some sort. She hastened to it and found the faded name of “Ripley” being illumined to the lonely night. Why would the night wish to know that this was Ripley? The chimney to the lantern was cracked, and a light breeze stole in now and then and wavered the flame till it was almost extinguished. But she managed to make out the lettering and so was glad to be sure at last that she was in Ripley. Well, that was something for which to be thankful.

She peered down at her little wristwatch, but the flickering lantern did not give light enough to identify the trifling hands of the trinket. Well, it didn’t matter much what time it was. The night had been years long already. And yet there was no trace of dawn in the sky.

She shivered and drew her burlap closer about her shoulders. She went around the end of the station and stood facing what ought to be the town of Ripley as she remembered it from her brief acquaintance in it, but there seemed to be no town, only blank darkness with occasionally a blacker shape looming.