Free The Driver by Garet Garrett Page A

Bubbly Jock are writing pieces about?” he retorted. “You say there is more labor than work. I’ll show you more work to be done on the railroads than you can find labor in a generation for. All right, you say, but then it’s the money. The Great Midwestern hasn’t got the money to spend on that grade. True. Like all other roads with bad grades it’s hard up. But it could borrow the money and earn big dividends on it. Track levelling pays better than gold mining.”
    “You and Coxey ought to confer,” I said. “You are not so far apart. He wants the government to create work by the simple expedient of borrowing money to build good roads. And here you say the railroads, if they would borrow money to reduce their grades, might employ all the idle labor there is.”
    He gave me a queer look, as if undecided whether to answer in earnest. “Coxey is technically crazy,” he said, “and I’m technically sane. That may be the principal difference. Besides, it isn’t the government’s business.”
    This diversion gave his thoughts a more general character. For three hours he walked about talking railroads,—how they had got built so badly in the first place, why so many were bankrupt, errors of policy, capital cost, upkeep, the relative merits of different kinds of equipment, new lines of development, problems of operation. For this was the stuff of his dreams. He devoured it. The idea of a railroad as a means to power filled the whole of his imagination. It was man’s most dynamic tool. No one had yet imagined its possibilities. He became romantic. His feeling for a locomotive was such as some men have for horses. The locomotive, he said, suddenly breaking off another thought to let that one through,—the locomotive was more wonderful than any automotive thing God had placed on earth. According to the book of Job God boasted of the horse. Well, look at it alongside of a locomotive I
    He never went back to finish what he was saying when the image of a locomotive interrupted his thought Instead he became absent and began to look slowly about the room as if he had lost something. I understood what had happened. He was seized with the premonition of an idea. He felt it before he could see it; it had to be helped out of the fog. I made gestures of going, which he accepted. As we shook hands he became fully present for long enough to say: “I never talk like this to anyone. Just keep that in mind.... Good night.”
    ii
    He did not come down with me. He did not come even to the door of his own room. As I closed it I saw his back. He was leaning over the table in a humped posture, his head sideways in his left hand, writing or ciphering rapidly on a sheet of yellow paper. Good for the rest of the night, I thought, as I went down the dimly lighted stairs,. got my things and let myself into the vestibule.
    The inner door came to behind me with a bang because the outer door was partly open and a strong draught swept through. At the same instant I became aware of a woman’s figure in the darkness of the vestibule. She was dry; therefore she could not be just coming in, for a cold rain was falling. And if she had just come out, why hadn’t I seen her in the hallway? But why was I obliged to account for her at all? It was unimportant. Probably she had been hesitating to take the plunge into the nasty night. I felt rather silly. First I had been startled and then I had hesitated, and now it was impossible to speak in a natural manner. My impulse was to bolt it in silence. Then to my surprise she moved ahead of me, stood outside, and handed me her umbrella. I raised it and held it over her; we descended the steps together.
    “I’m going toward Fifth Avenue,” I said.
    She turned with me in that direction, saying: “I was waiting for you.”
    “You are Vera?”
    “Yes.”
    “The ferryboat girl,” I added.
    “The what?”
    “Nothing, Go on. Why were you waiting for me?”
    She did not answer immediately. We walked in