Part 26 (1/2)

He smiled and slapped the Italian on the back almost affectionately.

t.i.to saw that radiant light for the first time--the light smile. The old gentleman had said a man could win the world with an expression like that upon his face.

”Keep your knife, Falutini; cut up garlic with it: don't use it on me, amico--partner.”

They went to work without a word further on the part of either, and Number Twenty-four slipped out on to the switch and was wedded to the local on the main line.

Fairfax was relieved in mind, and the morbid horror of his crisis had been beaten and shaken out.

”What brutes we are,” he thought, ”what brutes and animals. It is a wonder that any spirit can grow its wings at any time.”

He drew up into a station and stopped, and, leaning out of his window, watched the pa.s.sengers board the train. Pluff, pluff, pant, pant. The steal and flow and glide, the run and the motion that his hand on the throttle controlled and regulated, became oftentimes musical to him, and when he was morose he would not let the glide and the roll run to familiar melodies in his head, above all, no Southern melodies. ”Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,” that was the favourite with Number Twenty-four. He had used to whistle it as he modelled in his room in New Orleans, where the vines grew around his window and Maris made mola.s.ses cake and brought it up hot when the syrup was thick on the side, and downstairs a voice would call, ”Emmeline, oh, Emmeline.” That sacred voice...! When Number Twenty-four was doing her thirty miles an hour, that was the maximum speed of the local, her wheels were inclined to sing--

”Flow gently, sweet Afton, Among thy green braes: Flow gently, I'll sing thee A song in thy praise.

My Mary's asleep By thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, Disturb not her dream.”

And little Gardiner leaned hard against his arm and Bella ran upstairs to escape the music because she did not like to cry, and his aunt's dove-like eyes reproached him for his brutal flight. He would not hear any ballads; but to-night, no sooner had he rolled out again into the open country than he began to hum unconsciously the first tune the wheels suggested. They were between the harvest fields and in the moonlight lay the grain left by the reapers.

”Cielo azuro Giornata splendida, Mia Maddalena.”

Fairfax laughed when he recognized it. He glanced over at Falutini who was leaning out of his window dejectedly. At the next station, whilst the engine let off steam, Fairfax called to his fireman, and the man, as he turned his face to his chief, looked more miserably homesick than revengeful.

”_I_ used to know a chap from Italy!” Fairfax said in his halting Italian, ”a molto bravo diavolo. Shake her down, t.i.to, and brace her up a little, will you?”

The fireman bent to the furnace, its blast red on his face; from under the belly of the engine the sparks sang as they fell into the water gutter along the track.

”My chap was a marble cutter from Carrara.”

t.i.to banged the door of the furnace. ”_I_ too am from Carrara.”

”Good!” cried Fairfax, ”good enough.” And to himself he said: ”I'll be darned if I ever knew Benvenuto Cellini's real name!”

”Carrara,” continued his companion, ”is small. He may have been a cousin. What was his name?”

”Benvenuto Cellini,” replied Tony, easily, and rang his bell.

Once more they rolled out into the night. As they drove through the country Fairfax saw the early moonlight lie along the tracks, sifting from the heavens like a luminous snow. No breeze stirred and over the grain fields the atmosphere hung hot and heavy, and they rushed through a sea of heat and wheat and harvest smells. The wind of their going made a stir, and as Fairfax peered out from his window his head was blown upon by the wind of the speed.

Falutini from his side of the cab said, ”Benvenuto Cellini. That is not a Carrara man, no, no.”

”I never knew him by any other name,” said the engineer. ”I like Italians.” He threw this cheerfully over his shoulder at his inferior.

There was a childlike and confiding smile on the Italian's face; brutal as all Italian peasants are, brutal but kindly and unsuspicious as a child, ready to love and ready to hate.

”Only you mustn't use your knife; it's not well thought of in America.

You'll get sent to gaol.”

The Limited whistled from around a curve, came roaring toward them, tore past them, cutting the air, and Fairfax's local plugged along when the mile-a-minute left them. Tony was conscious that as he hummed the sound grew full and louder; he was accompanied by a voice more a.s.sured than his own, and in melodious fraternity the two men sang together. So they took their train in.