IT was the night that Mona Meeks, the dressmaker, told him she didn't love him.He couldn't believe it at first, because he had so long been accustomed to the idea that she did, and no matter how rough the weather or how irascible the passengers, he felt a song in his heart as he punched transfers, and rang his bell punch, and signalled the driver when to let people off and on.
Now, suddenly, with no reason except a woman's, she had changed her mind.He dropped in to see her at five o'clock, just before time for the night shift, and to give her two red apples he had been saving for her.
She looked at the apples as if they were in-visible and she could not see them, and stand-ing in her disorderly little dressmaking parlor, with its cuttings and scraps and litter of fab-rics, she said:
"It is no use, John.I shall have to work here like this all my life -- work here alone.
For I don't love you, John.No, I don't.Ithought I did, but it is a mistake."
"You mean it?" asked John, bringing up the words in a great gasp.
"Yes," she said, white and trembling and putting out her hands as if to beg for his mercy.And then -- big, lumbering fool --he turned around and strode down the stairs and stood at the corner in the beating rain waiting for his car.It came along at length, spluttering on the wet rails and spitting out blue fire, and he took his shift after a gruff "Good night" to Johnson, the man he relieved.
He was glad the rain was bitter cold and drove in his face fiercely.He rejoiced at the cruelty of the wind, and when it hustled pedestrians before it, lashing them, twisting their clothes, and threatening their equilib-rium, he felt amused.He was pleased at the chill in his bones and at the hunger that tortured him.At least, at first he thought it was hunger till he remembered that he had just eaten.The hours passed confusedly.
He had no consciousness of time.But it must have been late, -- near midnight, --judging by the fact that there were few per-sons visible anywhere in the black storm, when he noticed a little figure sitting at the far end of the car.He had not seen the child when she got on, but all was so curious and wild to him that evening -- he himself seemed to himself the most curious and the wildest of all things -- that it was not surpris-ing that he should not have observed the little creature.
She was wrapped in a coat so much too large that it had become frayed at the bottom from dragging on the pavement.Her hair hung in unkempt stringiness about her bent shoulders, and her feet were covered with old arctics, many sizes too big, from which the soles hung loose.
Beside the little figure was a chest of dark wood, with curiously wrought hasps.From this depended a stout strap by which it could be carried over the shoulders.John Billings stared in, fascinated by the poor little thing with its head sadly drooping upon its breast, its thin blue hands relaxed upon its lap, and its whole attitude so suggestive of hunger, loneliness, and fatigue, that he made up his mind he would collect no fare from it.
"It will need its nickel for breakfast," he said to himself."The company can stand this for once.Or, come to think of it, Imight celebrate my hard luck.Here's to the brotherhood of failures!" And he took a nickel from one pocket of his great-coat and dropped it in another, ringing his bell punch to record the transfer.
The car plunged along in the darkness, and the rain beat more viciously than ever in his face.The night was full of the rushing sound of the storm.Owing to some change of tem-perature the glass of the car became obscured so that the young conductor could no longer see the little figure distinctly, and he grew anxious about the child.
"I wonder if it's all right," he said to him-self."I never saw living creature sit so still."He opened the car door, intending to speak with the child, but just then something went wrong with the lights.There was a blue and green flickering, then darkness, a sudden halt-ing of the car, and a great sweep of wind and rain in at the door.When, after a moment, light and motion reasserted themselves, and Billings had got the door together, he turned to look at the little passenger.But the car was empty.
