Part 42 (1/2)

He asked her to help him, but he did not say ”I will do this”--only ”I may.”

In the steady bright June suns.h.i.+ne, in the sifting dust of a city corner, in the dissonant, confused noise of the traffic below, they stood and looked at one another.

His eyes brightened and deepened as he watched her changing color.

Softly he drew her towards him. ”Even if you do not love me now, you shall in time, you shall, my darling!”

But she drew back from him with a frightened start, a look of terror.

”What has happened!” she cried. ”It's so still!”

They both rushed to the window. The avenue immediately below them was as empty as midnight, and as silent. A great stillness widened and spread for the moment around one vacant motionless open car. Without pa.s.senger, driver, or conductor, it stood alone in the glaring s.p.a.ce; and then, with a gasp of horror, they both saw.

Right under their eyes, headed towards them, under the middle of the long car--a little child.

He was quite still, lying face downward, dirty and tumbled, with helpless arms thrown wide, the great car holding him down like a mouse in a trap.

Then people came rus.h.i.+ng.

She turned away, choking, her hands to her eyes.

”Oh!” she cried, ”Oh! It's a child, a little child!”

”Steady, Mary, steady!” said he, ”the child's dead. It's all over.

He's quite dead. He never knew what hit him.” But his own voice trembled.

She made a mighty effort to control herself, and he tried to take her in his arms, to comfort her, but she sprang away from him with fierce energy.

”Very well!” she said. ”You are right! The child is dead. We can not save him. No one can save him. Now come back--come here to the window--and see what follows. I want to see with my own eyes--and have you see--what is done when your cars commit murder! Child murder!”

She held up her watch. ”It's 12:10 now,” she said.

She dragged him back to the window, and so evident was the struggle with which she controlled herself, so intense her agonized excitement, that he dared not leave her.

”Look!” she cried. ”Look! See the them crowd now!”

The first horrified rush away from the instrument of death was followed by the usual surging mult.i.tude.

From every direction people gathered thickly in astonis.h.i.+ng numbers, hustling and pus.h.i.+ng about the quiet form upon the ground; held so flat between iron rails and iron wheels, so great a weight on so small a body! The car, still empty, rose like an island from the pus.h.i.+ng sea of heads. Men and women cried excited directions. They tried with swarming impotent hands to lift the huge ma.s.s of wood and iron off the small broken thing beneath it, so small that it did not raise the crus.h.i.+ng weight from the ground.

A whole line of excited men seized the side rail and strove to lift the car by it, lifting only the rail.

The crowd grew momently, women weeping, children struggling to see, men pus.h.i.+ng each other, policemen's helmets rising among them. And still the great car stood there, on the body of the child.

”Is there no means of lifting these monsters?” she demanded. ”After they have done it, can't they even get off.”

He moistened his lips to answer.