TO MY BABY HILDA (With Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book") BY GRACE HAZARD CONKLING WITHIN your eyes are memories Of foam-ringed isles in azure seas, To-day you were remembering So when your eyes more thoughtfully I feel your heart go hungering home And since I would not have you miss In any garden, and the white, Small bloom Quicksilver cherished spring To beauty at your summoning. Stoop deftly down, my wonder-maid, "Sir, will you bless her with your care THEY grew up, with the tenacious vitality of the Scotch-Canadian, despite the adventures. At nineteen Loch was six feet one, slant-shouldered, as silent as an Indian, and, according to his aunts in Caledoniaville, of an affectionate disposition. His people started him in a bank in the far West, and Jimsy went with him. But the bank was only "held up" twice, so Loch found it dull, and went. He took Jimsy. Then-it happened some years ago-he enlisted in Somebody's Horse, and went to South Africa for the war. He took Jimsy. When I say that he took Jimsy, I mean it; he took him as a cyclone takes a barn-roof. They and a man from Wolf Creek were separated from their troop, held a kopje for a week, were captured by an angry commando, escaped, and arrived in Kimberley in nice time for the siege. When the war was over, the man from Wolf Creek took up land in Natal to raise pineapples. Jimsy rather liked the idea of pineapples; but Loch was gathered in by the railway, and took Jimsy. When I say the railway, I mean the Great Railway, vision of a great man. Their work pushed them farther and farther north into a new Africa, an enchanted Africa of high forest and grass-plain, of a vertical sun and frosty nights. They learned the blessing and the bitterness of work. They lived through that rainy season, which came a month late, when the green jungle grew over the right of way, as it seemed, in a night, and the elephants tore down the telegraphwires, and the fever followed the rain, and the black men grew weary of cutting and carrying fuel, so sat them down and died. Jimsy was clever at many things; he was given charge of a siding, a telegraph-instrument, six account-books, and two assistants of sorts. Loch had no gift but that of handling men, which made him so much more valuable than Jimsy that he was presently put in charge at Gondoko. For one dry season they saw nothing of each other. Jimsy bullied his assistants, collected butterflies, and thought of Loch. Loch did not think nearly as much of Jimsy; he was too busy. But every Saturday night he went into Gondoko and wired Jimsy, "Are you all right, Kid?" "All right, Loch." Then would follow gossip of the great line-lions, a washout, a plague of witchdoctors. But the end was as invariable as the beginning: "Let me know if you want me, Kid, and I 'll come." "All right, Loch." "Good night, Gondoko." Then Loch would stumble to his mudand-iron hut and sleep in peace, a gun loaded with bird-shot under his head in case of leopards.. The second year of his sojourning, Loch had trouble with jujus, more trouble than usual. He also had fever worse than usual; but the jujus worried him most. No. 537, pulling out from a siding, had cut down a string stretched across the line, from which fluttered a red rag and two guinea-fowl feathers. As a result, the black people fled to their forests, and the woodpiles shrank to nothing. Fuel had to be brought from afar until the juju was pacified, which took time. There is no space to tell how Loch managed this by setting up an opposition juju, in the constitution of which a home-made magiclantern played a chief part. But he went into Gondoko one Saturday night with the happy knowledge that he had put the fear of all the devils into his section, and that the woodpiles at the side of the railroad grew like mushrooms. It was the third week of the stormy season, and Loch was soaked in fever; the juju war had tired him in body and soul. He looked at the sky, and as he looked, the moon showed like a plunging white disk amid driving steam; he thought how often he had seen it so above the northern lakes of his boyhood, when the first snow came down from the north and the wild geese had flown south. But Huron's cold surf was far from the station at Gondoko, and the glimmer of light shone only on the nameless uplands, the drenched scrub of the north; and southward, welt on welt, league on league, the roll of the African forest like a sea. His right-hand man, an escaped convict, met him, and touched his cap. "A call from Mr. Lewis, sir," he said. Loch frowned. He had forgotten it was Saturday night, forgotten Jimsy, forgotten everything but his own overwhelming need of food and sleep. The ground rocked under his feet, and the ex-convict wavered like smoke. "Did he leave any message?" The ex-convict, who was also a deserter, saluted. "No, sir. In fact, something 's wrong with the line. Probably helephants, sir. Williams took it, but nothing come through but the word 'Lewis,' sir, and the Gondoko call." "Thank you." Loch went slowly to the iron shed, and sat down at the instrument. He called, "Lewis, Lewis, Lewis," in his clumsy fashion, now clumsier than usual in that his fingers seemed to be as big and stiff as pincushions. He called for several minutes, waited, and called again. He was beginning to forget about the fever. and the weariness. The instrument clattered, stammered, hesitated. At last came the answer, "Is that you, Gondoko ?" "Yes, Gondoko. Gondoko. Have you got that? Gondoko. Is that you, Jimsy? Jimsy, is that you?" There was a space of meaningless clickings and stutterings; then suddenly, clear and sharp, "Loch, I want-" and then silence. un Loch sat for perhaps five minutes, patiently calling, but the silence was broken. He sat for another five minutes, thinking, and the burden of his thoughts was a white-headed little boy who used to follow him round the school playground, saying, "Loch, I want you, Loch." Often the little boy was smitten for his pains, but no other boy dared smite him. Loch went out on the platform and shouted. The convict-deserter, who was presently known as Hatch, came running. "Is there anything with steam up?" "No. 8, she has steam up." Hatch spoke proudly. No. 8 was a complexcompo-compound loco, collected from the scrap-heaps of half a continent, and put together at Gondoko. "She's to pull out, with sheet-iron for Banda, at midnight or thereabouts." of a war drum, and lightning that splashed on the rails like a thrown egg. It showed "Uncouple, then," said Loch, curtly, the forest and the sky, violet-white picked "I want her." "Mr. Lewis in trouble, sir?" "I'm going to see." Loch spoke more curtly than ever, but his men knew him. Hatch spoke persuasively. "You'd better have me to fire for you, sir. I'm off duty, and there has n't been no variosity, sir, so to say, for a month." Loch nodded. out in jet. Then the darkness shut down again so swiftly that Hatch winced as he had not from the flash. But Loch's steady hand did not move on the throttle. "'Ard on the old lady," muttered Hatch again, mournfully. "I knew this was a bad bit o' track, but she's runnin' as if her wheels was square." The rain ended, the thunder rolled into "All right. And bring your twelve- the distance, but still, at regular intervals, bore." the world was dipped and drenched in the Hatch beamed and fled. There were unbearable brilliance of the lightning. outcries and footsteps. Loch spent an- Hatch began nervously to time the flashes. other five minutes thinking of the little He saw a vivid vision of little buildings, boy who had grown into a young man, the iron roofs blazing like silver, streamand who might have been peacefully and ing past, and of the black silhouettes of safely raising pineapples in Natal. He the men on the platform. He saw the started as No. 8 swung on the switch and dripping leaves flashing back the electricity pulled up beside him, groaning in all her like looking-glass. He saw a sinuous rivets, Hatch swinging joyously on the shadow that shrank and fled by the left rickety foot-plate. driving-wheel. "'Passengers,' he said, "is forbidden to cross the line except by the over'ead bridge,' but this ain't the London and Southwestern, thank Gord!" He took a glance at the gage, and stoked, stoked, stoked. His mouth was so tightly screwed into the form of whistling it seemed unlikely ever to come unscrewed. It was quite stiff when he ventured to address Loch's immovable back. "Clear line for four hours, sir," said Hatch. "We sha'n't need so much," answered Loch; and Hatch, seeing his face, said no more, but went through silent movements of whistling. They crawled out of Gondoko, clattering and banging. The open line lay before them as straight as a ruler, between walls of forest, varied only by the paths of the wood-cutters. Outside the radius of No. 8's headlight was a swinging, uncertain darkness. Loch steadily put the throttle over, and Hatch whistled again. Presently he had no time even to whistle. He was stoking furiously. No. 8 roared up the line, rocking over the faulty riveting like a ship on a wave. Her illassorted parts groaned and rattled as if they would fly apart. Loch, peering through the glass, saw nothing but the reeling glimmer of steel running liquidly toward him, heard nothing but a boy's voice crying: "Loch, where are you, Loch? Loch, I want you." But Hatch had time to hear many things, for he knew and revered No. 8. "'Ard on the old lady, this is," he said to himself, brushing the sweat out of his eyes. A squall drove down, blinding the glass, and sending a surf of mud into the cab. It ended in a roll of thunder like the roll "Lions is out," roared Hatch, "or something." Loch caught the words, and nodded over his shoulder. The grade was mounting, and No. 8 rattled and rocked worse than ever. They were both powdered white to the hair with wood-ash. Loch's face looked gray in the lightning flash, his every nerve and sinew strained to the snapping-point, as he strove to fire the clamoring iron beneath him with the hurry of his own soul. The wheels sang monotonously: "I want you, Loch. I want you, Loch." "I'm coming, Jimsy," he answered. "I'm coming, Jimsy, as fast as I can." He did not know that he spoke aloud. The fever ran over him in waves, and at the crest of every wave was a picture—a picture of Jimsy, deserted and stricken with illness; a picture of Jimsy sitting bowed over the telegraph-instrument, speared through the heart, as he had once seen a man sit; a picture of Jimsy injured, |