The Gold Shoe

Chapter II

Chapter II“Why, what’s all this?” said a great voice just above her. It wasn’t the brakeman come back—Or was it? A great gust of wind came hurricaning round the corner of the station and filled her mouth and her eyes with stifling flakes, and she was almost strangled. Then the hurricane and the snow seemed suddenly shut out. It grew more luminous about her, and the big voice was shouting through the storm over her head.

“Are you waiting for the train? How ever did you get here? It’s outrageous to close the station on a night like this!”

She was aware of a pair of kindly eyes shrouded in snow, bushy white eyebrows, cheeks plastered with flakes; eyelashes, too, fringed white. The rest was covered with a woolen scarf bound firmly about head and neck. But the sight of another human being suddenly broke her down. Even if it had been the impertinent brakeman she couldn’t have helped it.

“Oh, I’m soooo-ccc-ooo-llldddd!” she chattered, more tears flowing over the icicles on her face, “I can’t find the ca-ca-ca-rrrr-r!” she babbled feebly.

“What car?” asked the apparition, glancing keenly about the white distance.

“The Framstead c-c-arrrr!” answered Tasha trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “They promised to be here when the train came in!” There was a wail in the end of her words.

“Framstead!” said the man in a startled tone. “They can’t get down from Framstead’s to-night! The bridge is down and the other road is impassable! It is drifted twelve feet at least!”

“Oh! What shall I do-o-o-o-oo!” cried Tasha in terror. “I’m freezing! My feet are dead now. I ca-ca-can’t feel them any more at all. How l-l-l-long does it t-t-t-ake to fr-f-f-reeze?”

“You poor kid!” said the man stooping to lift her in his snowy arms, and feeling with one hand for her feet. “You poor little kid! No wonder! Why—you haven’t but one shoe—! Well that settles it! We’ll have to get inside here somehow at once. Just wait a minute and I’ll get this door open!”

He set her down again in the snow, but she was not conscious of feeling any colder. It seemed that she was numb all over except for the sharp point of hurt where the cold was still aching and stinging.

She felt as if she were come to the end of life in a terrible way. She gave a pitiful thought back to the gayety that had been hers but a few short hours before, and wondered that her butterfly existence had been so short. But it didn’t seem to matter any more; the cold was so terrible, as if it had her by the throat and were putting her out like a candle flame being snuffed.

She heard a crash of glass in the dark, and then saw the imp of light go flashing again and presently she was picked up and carried inside the little box of a station.

She felt the cessation of the storm, and the dry warm air of a room that had at least recently known fire, and then she was put down in the darkness on a wooden seat.

“Now,” said the man, as he seemed to be moving about a few feet from her, “we’ve got to get you warm first. Whoever let you out a night like this with so few clothes on?”

Tasha giggled hysterically. She had forgotten her haughtiness. In this warm darkness with the roar of the storm shut away, she could no longer hold her pride.

“Haven’t you any baggage with you?” asked the man’s voice. He seemed to be shaking some heavy garment on the other side of the room. A spatter of snow reached viciously and hit her cheek. The room was a very small one.

“No,” she said in answer to his question. “No,” almost stupidly, “I am going to a dance!”

“Oh!” said the man almost shortly. “Some dance!”

Then he came over to where she was sitting in the dark, and almost roughly lifted her to wrap a great rough garment about her. “It must be his overcoat,” she thought to herself, and tried to protest.

“You’ll nnnn-eee-ddd it!” she chattered.

“Not as much as you do!” he said shortly. “Now, what can we do about these feet?”

“They are dead!” she said, and shivered in the roughness of the overcoat. “It won’t matter.”

The man stepped out the door and brought in a bag. He set it down on the floor and flashed his torch into it, searching for something. She watched him apathetically. The snow had melted from his features now, though they were still well swathed in brown woolen scarf.

“Not entirely dead yet,” he answered as he laid the flash down on the floor and came toward her with something dark in his hand. He reached for her unslippered foot and began to rub it, finally tearing away the little rag of a gold silk chiffon stocking and chafing the foot with his big warm hands from which he had taken the heavy woolen mittens that now lay on the floor beside the flash light.

She watched him as if it were a sort of moving picture in which she had no part, but most surprisingly the foot began to feel alive again, and to prickle under the chafing. And when he had it quite dry and warm again he drew on a long thick woolen stocking, that came well up to her little cold knee.

“My mother insisted on my taking these golf stockings with me to-night,” he meditated, “and now I’m glad I brought them.”

Tasha did not say anything. She was wondering how she would look going through life with only one foot. One foot had come alive but the other was stone dead. And she was so cold all over in spite of the great rough overcoat that she felt as if she were made of ice with a hot hot fire inside of it.

“Now!” said the man, “that’s better. Do you begin to feel a little more comfortable?” and he began his ministrations toward the other foot.

She did not see the look on his face as he unbuttoned and laid down the other little gold slipper, a mixture of awe and contempt upon him. He went on silently chafing the cold little foot till it too responded to treatment and came alive.

“Now,” said he, “I suppose you’d like me to telephone to Framstead’s. They’ll be wondering what has become of you. We’ll see whether I can pick the lock of the inner office and get at the telephone. What name shall I say?”

“Endicott,” said Tasha stupidly, “Miss Endicott.” Somehow the dance no longer seemed real. She was getting a little warm again in spots, and longed only to get somewhere and lie down to rest. She felt as if she had been battling against wild beasts.

There was a sound of some little metal instrument trying to force a lock. An interval of silence and the dancing flash light; more metal grinding against resisting locks, then the shudder of a thick door against a great forceful shoulder. Presently the man returned to her.

“Well, it’s no use. I think there is a big bolt or bar to that door. Anyhow I can’t budge it. I suppose they have to be extra careful for they keep a safe in there I think, and it is rather lonely around here.”

“Oh, what shall I do? Shall I have to stay in this awful place all night? Are you going away?” she asked in sudden fright.

“No, you can’t stay here,” he said decidedly. “I’ll have to take you home to Mother. There’s no other house nearer where you could stay. I’ll have time to take you back before my train gets here.” He turned the flash light on his wrist watch now, and she could see his face studying the dial anxiously, then he lifted his wrist and listened.

“What train did you come on?” he asked suddenly. “Did you come up from the city?”

“Yes, on the six-five. But my train was late. We just got in. I had not been here but a few minutes when you came, though it seemed like hours it was so cold.”

She shuddered at the memory, and realized that a slight sense of warmth was really stealing over her.

“Why?” she asked suddenly. “Is there a train back now? Oh, are you going to the city? I must go too. I can’t stay here alone, since there is no way to get to Framstead’s.”

“No,” he said gravely, “I’m not going to the city; I’m going up the road about fifty miles where I’m supposed to preach to-morrow. There is no train back to the city that stops at this station to-night. The only down train is an express and you have to go five miles up the road to get it. But I was thinking. If your train was as late as that, the next train will be still later. I shall have plenty of time to get back, but we can’t lose a minute talking about it. I’ll take you to Mother, but you’ll have to do just as I say and be quick about it!”

Tasha had no time to resent this dictatorial speech, for he came over, picked her up summarily, and slung her over his shoulder as if she had been a bag of meal.

“Excuse me,” he said as she gasped. “It isn’t very pleasant but it’s the only way, and I simply must get that train.”

She tried to struggle, to protest, to say she could not let him take so much trouble, but he strode to the door, and was out before she had finished a sentence.

“Your bag!” she called. “Stop! You must not leave your bag!”

“It’s all right till I get back!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Lie still, can’t you, and put your arm around my neck, that way. Now, keep your face down and you won’t get the worst of the blast.”

He plunged off the platform, and wallowed for a moment till he found the solid path, dancing the flash light ahead of him weirdly through the storm.

The girl gasped, and hid her face perforce on the broad shoulder that held her. The touch of the rough wool made her conscious that she was wearing this man’s overcoat, and that he was unprotected himself. She tried to say something about this, but her words were flung back into the soft plush cold of the storm, and caught away into space. She made a feeble effort to reach the top button of the coat and show him that she wished to take it off, but he shouted back, “Lie still, can’t you?” and struggled on.

And it was a struggle, she could see. Slender though she was and lightly clothed, yet wrapped in that great heavy overcoat she made a burden that was by no means easily carried through such going.

As her eyes became accustomed to the strange white darkness, she could peer out occasionally, and catch a glimpse of the depth of the drifts through which he had to wade. Up to his knees, above his knees sometimes. Once when he almost lost his footing and very nearly went down with her, she saw he had to lift her high above his head to keep her above the snow.

And the way seemed interminable.

He had said it was the nearest house, but how far away it seemed! Occasionally she thought of his train, and thought she heard the roar of its coming. But the darkness kept on being thick and white and impenetrable, and the little firefly of light danced on and made no impression except to illumine a step at a time.

It strangely did not enter her head to be afraid, even though she could not see the man who was carrying her, had never really got a view of his face, yet she knew she could trust him. It occurred to her that perhaps she was being kidnapped. Perhaps he might have seen the flash of her jewels at throat and wrist. But she dismissed that as foolish. If he had wanted her jewels it would have been easy to overpower her and take them, even to have killed her. There was no one by to see, and the snow would have covered all tracks by morning. No, she was strangely at peace, almost even interested, as she hung there over his shoulder, her arms clasped around his neck, trying to help all she could in the struggle he was having to take her to safety and warmth.

She was by no means warm even now, for the wind swooped around and roared down the neck of the overcoat, and even the thick golf stockings seemed but flimsy protection. But the feeling of the strength that bore her, helped her to bear the deadly cold that swirled all about her and chilled her to the heart; and when it grew too awful she could hide her face entirely and breathe through the thick rough wool of his coat, to gain a moment’s respite from the agony of breathing in the cold.

It seemed a space set apart in her lifetime never to be forgotten, that journey through the storm on the shoulder of an unknown man. She was growing drowsy with the cold and excitement, and had ceased to wonder if it would never end, when she felt him turn sharply from the road, a pace or two, then up some snow-muffled steps to a porch, and stamp, and knock at the door.

“It’s I, Mother, open the door please! I can’t get at my key!” he called. She roused and noticed that he was panting. How hard it must have been for him! And he was in a hurry. It came to her that the minister of their fashionable church in the city, which they attended semi-occasionally, would never have attempted a thing like this, would not have been able physically to carry it out if he had. Then hurrying footsteps interrupted her thoughts and a flood of light broke over the little porch, and blinded her eyes.

“Oh, my laddie!” she heard a sweet voice exclaim, “and what have you got? Did you lose your train?”

“No, Mother, the train is late. But I found this alone in the snow at the station, and brought her to you. Take care of her please, till the storm is over or I get back, for now I must hurry.”

He turned to the girl and began unbuttoning the great coat, blinking his eyes that still were blinded from coming into the light.

“I’ll have to have my coat now, if you please,” he said pleasantly, “and I hope I wasn’t over rough with you. I hope you’ll not suffer from the exposure.”

The coat fell away and she looked up and tried to say the conventional thing—what was the conventional thing for such a time as this?—but she could only blink and give a sorry little smile. Then her velvet wrap slipped back, and fell away around her feet, and she stood there in the bright little cottage room in her rosy silk and tulle dance frock, like some lovely draggled flower plucked out of its garden.

The young man stepped back and looked at her for an instant with a drawing in of his breath, for she was lovely. Her delicate make-up was a wreck, with the storm and her crying, her wisps of coral tulle were trailing limply about her feet, her hair was tousled and falling about her face, yet she was lovely, and he looked.

His mother too, looked, and was filled with dismay.

“But—Thurly!—” she gasped, and the word brought him to his senses.

He turned, picked up the coat from the floor, and swung into it with a single motion, buttoning it high around his chin which was still swathed in the brown woolen scarf.

“But Mother, I must go!” he said, “I’ve not an instant to waste. The lady will explain!” and he stooped and kissed his mother’s forehead. “I’m all right, Mother! There’s nothing to worry about.”

“But, Thurly! The storm! It’s so terrible! Just give it up and telegraph them it’s impossible!” she pleaded, following him to the door. “Do, Thurly, do! For my sake!”

“But, Mother, you know we had all that out on our knees awhile back. You know I must go, dearest. Now away to the lady, for she’s well nigh frozen and needs a hot drink at once, and warm blankets or she’ll be ill!”

He smiled and was gone, and the mother stood for an instant watching him down the white path vanishing into the white darkness, till even the little twinkle of the flash light was invisible. Then the mother turned and shut the door and came back to her strange and unexpected guest.