The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (12 page)

She turned it about to slip it against the wall where she usually kept her own, and noticed the letters on the end, C. E. R., painted in black. Seizing her pen and the bottle of ink she turned her own suitcase up on end beside the other and copied them; then quickly slipping the stolen one against the wall by the chair she opened her door, listened a moment, and ventured across the hall again. It was not so easy to put the heavily packed suitcase back under the Schwarz bed behind all those boxes, and Hilda was panting, dusty and red in the face as she emerged from under the fringe of the counterpane once more and heard to her alarm the heavy footsteps of Mrs. Schwarz coming up the stairs. For a minute it seemed as though her heart would stop beating, and then she rushed wildly to the door and slipped out, closing it, but not taking time to lock it, and slid into the next room just as her mistress arrived at the top, barely escaping being seen. It was a close chance, and she was so upset by it that she could scarcely smooth the sheets as she hurriedly began to make the bed, She was just wondering what she should have done if Mrs. Schwarz had come sooner and found her crawling out from under the bed. Would it have been possible to get out of the window over the porch roof and away? Looking up she saw Mrs. Schwarz with an angry face standing in the door! It startled her so that she jumped and dropped the pillow she was puffing up.

“You pad, lazy gute-for-nodding girl!” scolded the mistress. “You haf nod made one ped! I cannot trust you oud of my side a minude! What haf you ben doing?”

With quick presence of mind Hilda drew out her handkerchief and put it to her eyes:

“Mrs. Schwarz, I am troubled all the time that I do not get a letter from my mother! It seems as if I could not stand it!

“Ach! Himmel! Is dat all? You vill haf worze drubbles pefore you get a liddle older. You haf pin a paby. Now you haf to pe a voman! You get downstairs and pud on them wegetables! Aftervords you get dem peds done qvick! You hear?”

The woman turned and went into her own room, but the sound of the closing door was suddenly drowned in the distant rumble of the eleven o'clock train coming on through the cut beyond the station. Hilda, knowing that her time had come if ever, sped to her own room, grabbed the stolen suitcase, with her hat and coat, and rushed down the stairs.

The note she had written to Mrs. Schwarz was in her coat pocket. She fumbled wildly for it, paused an instant to be sure Schwarz was not in the dining room, and flinging the note on the dining-room table hurried to the door. One frightened glance showed Schwarz vanishing down the path toward the cabbages with a hoe over his shoulder, and the other men hard at work in the distance with their backs to the house. The train had almost reached the station. Could she catch it?

She was off, speeding with the fleetness of a wild thing over the plowed ground, panting and clinging to the suitcase, over the roughest place in the field because it was a short cut.

Then, suddenly, out from the upper window, came a hoarse, angry scream! Mrs. Schwarz had discovered her flight, and now all the forces of hell would be put in motion to bring her back!

With breath coming short and eyes that tried to locate and register the doings of the train, and could not because everything swam before her in a kind of black mist, Hilda quickened her pace. She caught her toe in an ugly root and fell headlong across a furrow, striking her knees against a stony spot and grinding her chin into the earth. Dazed and sick with fear she clung to the suitcase, but her hat went whirling away several feet down a little knoll to the side, and she had no time to go out of the way for it. In imagination she could already see the men with Schwarz at their head, pursuing her, and the train moving off without her. If she did not get that train she had no refuge. They would catch her, for they were men, and powerful; and she was almost at the limit of her strength already. What were hats in such an emergency?

She sped on wildly, dragging her coat by its sleeve, and struggling blindly over furrow after furrow, the blood in her head, her breath coming painfully, her senses so stunned by the fall as to be unable to tell whether or not the train had started. Now and then a shrill cry, or a rough call reached her ears, and she knew that she was being pursued, but on she went till she reached the last little knoll above the station, where the train was in full view. She could see now that the wheels were beginning to turn and the train was moving slowly out. Her lips were moving in a gasping prayer: “Oh, God— make them stop! Save me! Save me! Save me!”

The passengers at the windows had an exciting moment as they gazed at the flying girl with streaming hair, wildly waving a little dark jacket in one hand and gripping to a suitcase with the other. She was coming on at a tremendous pace, while behind her came a file of four big men in working clothes, all running as hard as they could go, and wildly waving hoes and rakes and shovels in a threatening manner. It looked like a violent attempt to hold the train till the girl reached it.

But the conductor was cross that morning. He was already ten minutes behind him and had to make up; besides, he did not like Schwarz; so he gave no signal to stop and the train moved on.

“That's a nervy little girl!” exclaimed the passenger in the seat near the conductor. “She hasn't slackened her pace one iota. I believe she thinks you'll stop for her yet.”

“Well, she'll find herself mistaken!” growled the conductor as he ducked his long neck to watch her from the window.

“I believe she intends to jump the train!” said another passenger, rising in his excitement. “See! She's coming right at it, and she has that look in her face.”

“No!” said the conductor angrily. “She couldn't do that! She'd have too much sense. Those Dutchmen have got to learn a lesson. They're always bothering me with something. Sometimes it's a letter they want mailed special, sometimes it's some market stuff they haven't got ready. They are always trying to hold me up a minute or two late! I won't stop for anybody to-day!”

“She's going to jump!” said the excited passenger. “Look at her!”

The conductor gave a low horrified exclamation and reached for the bell-cord. The passengers rose in their seats with one accord, and a wave of horror and admiration went through the train.

On came Hilda, her second wind coming to her now and her head growing cooler with her danger. There was no turning back for her. She had gone too far. She must make that train or die under its wheels. She had an innate sense that such a death would be far preferable to what she would meet if she failed and fell into the hands of the Germans.

She was but a car's length from the platform now, but the train was under good headway and going faster all the time. She looked with calculating eye, coming straight on with bounds like a young deer, and marking well the rear platform of the next to the last car. One more spring, a step or two alongside, and she had caught the hand-rail with one hand and swung to the lower step, the suitcase in the other hand flung ahead up to the platform. What a mercy the conductor had been too busy watching her to put down the platform over the steps and make it impossible for her!

The dark blue jacket which had been hanging in her left hand slipped away when she took hold of the rail, quivered for an instant against the car and then shivered down under the rails and lay a crumpled, dusty ruin where the girl would have lain if she had missed her footing; but Hilda huddled on the lower step, clinging still to her suitcase and the hand-rail, panting and dazed from the shock of alighting.

The train was slowing down and the conductor had opened the car door. The girl lifted her head, saw the men still running toward the train frantically waving their farm implements and realized that her danger was not yet passed. She must hold out a little longer before relaxing. Rallying her senses she scrambled to her feet, the conductor helping her, and scolding her soundly in terms she did not even hear, so anxious was she to show him she was all right and he might go on his way. She was too far spent to speak, but she smiled bravely up into his face, utterly unnerving him, and stopping the flow of invectives he was heaping upon her unconscious head. He looked at her hard, thought how her sweet little flower face would have looked beneath the cruel wheels, brushed his big hand across his eyes and reached for the bell cord, giving it a mighty pull. The whistle sounded, the wheels turned again and the train started on its interrupted course. Nobody had noticed the stampede of oncoming men, and Schwarz was almost to the station, puffing like a porpoise and swearing as only Schwarz could swear when he really tried. When the passengers had assured themselves that the girl was safe, they turned for a belated vision of the men and saw Schwarz shaking an angry fist in the distance, and the other three men still wildly waving, respectively, a hoe, a rake and a pitchfork. They afforded an interesting moving-picture for a brief moment and then the train with Hilda passed quickly out of harm's way and they were forgotten.

Hilda, still puffing and panting, but smiling bravely, dropped into the little end seat at the back of the car, utterly unaware of the interest she was exciting among the passengers, who stood up, craned their necks, and spoke their commendation of her feat in no hushed tones. She was only aware of the conductor's cross, kind eyes upon her, and his gently gruff tones when he tried once more to tell her that she must never do such a thing again, that she might have been killed. She wanted to tell him that she wouldn't, no never, as long as she lived if she could help it; that she was fully as frightened as he at what she had done; but her breath wouldn't let her, and so she only smiled; and he, still scolding, made his way up the aisle taking tickets.

It was some time before he came back to her and Hilda had quite recovered her breath and her self-possession, although she was still trembling all over. She had become aware of the interest she was exciting and it made her uncomfortable. She looked down at herself. No wonder they stared. She was still wearing her brown denim apron, and she had no hat nor coat nor gloves! It was her first realization that her hat and coat were gone. The little purse, with its dollar and a few cents in change, too, was gone with the coat, tucked safely into the pocket! The little purse that her mother had given her at parting! It is strange how at a time like that the loss of a small thing that is dear will stand out with a sharp pain.

She set about making herself tidy. She could see in the glass of the window that her hair was rumpled, and she smoothed the braids and bound them trimly about her well-shaped head again. She leaned down and rubbed the thick mud from her shoes with a newspaper someone had left on the floor. She set the suitcase well inside the seat, changing around the end that bore the lettering so no one could see it, and spread her scant gingham skirts protectingly over it. Then she looked down at her apron and decided to remove it. She rolled it up neatly, pinning the ends of the belt about the bundle, and realized that she had done all that was possible toward bettering her appearance. The reflection of her bare head in the window glass troubled her. If she only had a hat! It looked so queer to go travelling bareheaded. Of course, some people did have their hats off now, but when she reached her destination how noticeable she would be! She looked wistfully down the aisle at a girl with a long black braid of hair hanging down her back and a little red and black swagger cap tilted on one side of her head. That was a simple little hat. If she only had something she could make one in a few minutes, but she was without a thing that could help! Nothing but a strange, locked suitcase, supposedly filled with dreadful papers, and an old brown denim kitchen apron rolled up and fastened with two pins! She couldn't very well make a hat out of an apron and two pins. Stay! Couldn't she? How was it she used to fold bits of kindergarten papers and make paper caps for her brother when he was little? Could she remember the trick of it? Why couldn't she fold her apron up somehow and pin it to form a cap? It was the same color as those brown trench caps the soldiers were wearing. It would be much better than nothing, and perhaps nobody would notice her very much. She would try, at least.

She unrolled the apron and began her task, folding it this way and that, experimenting a little, and presently, sure enough, she had a little brown denim cocked hat, the point of which she folded over to one side and slipped under a fold, pinning it firmly. She tucked the apron strings smoothly inside, folding them precisely and pinning them with the other pin. It wasn't a wonderful hat, of course, but it would pass for a hat at a casual glance, and it was really quite becoming to her pretty face when she ventured to fit it on her head. The kindly window glass reflected back a stylish contour as she surveyed it fearfully, deciding that it was certainly better than nothing.

The conductor was coming back, and Hilda hastened to fumble in her blouse and bring out her precious pass. As she handed it out she was beginning to be conscious again of her strange position, and to fear that everyone would suspect her. It was new to her to have anything to hide, and it troubled her deeply.

The conductor looked at the pass and then flashed a curious, surprised, deferential glance at her. His tone was respectful when he addressed her:

“Feeling all right, miss? That was a narrow chance you took. Sorry I didn't see you sooner!”

Then he made his way back to the other end of the car and stood with puzzled eyes on her and a speculative brow, his chin in his hand. When the brakeman came through he confided in him:

“Mighty queer for a girl like that to get on at that station. I never saw her around there before, did you? She doesn't look like the rest of that crew. She's travelling on a pass!”

The brakeman started.

“A pass!” he cast a quick, apprising glance down the car again.

“H’m! That's queer!” His voice had a shade of disappointment. He had thought he might just stop and ask if she felt shaken up by her scare or anything. He had noticed her pretty face and graceful movements and was nothing loath to have a word with her, but brakemen didn't make a practice of conversing with persons who travelled on passes. He braced himself against the door and folded his arms meditatively, his eyes on the outline of a brown denim trench cap.