Chapter Eight A Meadowlark in May #2
The rest of the sleeper car lay wrapped in the ordinary chorus of a train at rest — snores of varying pitch and conviction, a dim night-light losing its long battle with the flood of morning now pouring in through the transoms. Graham made his way to the open vestibule door, where the conductor stood conferring with two brakemen.
He caught the tail end of it — three-quarters of an hour, maybe more — before the men wandered off toward the stalled engine.
He stepped down onto the cinder embankment and, for the first time since Washington, let himself actually notice that it was spring — a real, riotous, undeniable May morning, sun striking every blade of grass into something like a small green jewel, a stream far off in the valley catching the light and holding it.
A meadowlark rose from a fencepost somewhere nearby, sang one clean, unhurried note, and was gone.
Psalm 118:24 rose in him unbidden, plain and whole: "This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
" He had not felt much like rejoicing in longer than he cared to admit.
This morning, standing on a cinder embankment in the middle of nowhere with a stolen government secret against his chest and another man's bride asleep behind him, he found, to his own considerable surprise, that he did.
And here, plainly, was the chance he'd been waiting for — a stalled train, open country, and enough of a delay to slip away unnoticed before Buffalo, where he had no doubt at all that Halifax's people would be waiting with a full description and no particular scruples about how they collected on it.
I could go now, he thought, turning the possibility over with real, hard calculation.
Leave the suitcase — no, I can't leave the suitcase, it's got my real name on half the letters in it — go on foot, cross that road down there to the village, hire whatever passes for transport in a place this size, and be in Pittsburgh by dark, Washington not long after.
He looked back once at the sleeping car behind him.
And leave her — how? Asleep, and alone, and wake to find herself abandoned on a stalled train in open country by a husband she has no earthly reason to trust in the first place?
The thought soured in him almost before it finished forming.
Whatever wisdom the plan carried on paper, he could not make himself want it.
He owed her — owed someone, at least, though he could no longer entirely separate duty from desire in the matter — better than that.
He was still turning the impossible math of it over, staring off at the small village nestled between the meadows, when the unmistakable sense of being watched settled over him.
He resisted the urge to turn for one stubborn instant, telling himself he was only nervous, overtired, imagining things — and then turned anyway.
She stood in the vestibule doorway, fully dressed down to hat and gloves, her hair swept up with a haste her steady, careful appearance did its best to disguise.
A faint, becoming color had come back into her cheeks, and her eyes, fixed on him, held a kind of puzzled, searching attention he could not quite read.
She had, in fact, sprung from her berth the moment she heard the door latch behind him, thrown cold water on her face, wrestled her hair into some presentable order with whatever pins she could find scattered on the floor, and dressed in frantic haste — driven by nothing more complicated than a desperate need for air before he returned.
She had told herself she only meant to breathe a few minutes of morning before facing whatever difficult conversation waited for them both.
She had not expected to find him standing so still, so unguarded, so plainly delighted by the plain beauty of an ordinary spring morning.
How different he seems, she thought again, watching him from the doorway exactly as she'd watched his sleeping face an hour before.
How could ten years change a man's very bearing, and not his heart beneath it?
Unless — unless the letters lied, somehow, about which of these is the truth.
But that made no sense at all. She had read them in his own hand.
She knew his signature as well as her own.
Then he turned fully toward her, and his whole face lit, unguarded and genuinely glad, and before she could stop it, some small answering warmth rose in her own.
"You're up!" he said, moving quickly toward the steps. "How are you feeling — better, I hope, if you're out here already."
"I couldn't bear the car another minute," she admitted. "I needed air. I almost wish we could simply walk the rest of the way."
"Do you?" Something quick and pleased crossed his face.
"I was thinking exactly that. Do you see that road down there, running along by the water?
I was tempted to slide right down this bank and walk into the village for breakfast — find a car or a wagon there to carry us on to another line.
I'd have suggested it last night, if you hadn't been so unwell. "
"Could we really?" Her voice came out with more eagerness than she meant to show. "I'd like that more than I can say. What a beautiful morning."
"Of course we could," he said, "if you're truly well enough."
"I'm perfectly well enough. I'd far rather walk than go back into that stuffy car another minute." She hesitated. "Wouldn't people think it strange, though — running off from the train this way?"
"They needn't know a thing about it," he said, with the sudden, boyish delight of a man plotting a piece of harmless truancy. "I'll go back for our cases. Is there anything you'd hate to leave behind?"
"No — I packed everything before I came out," she said, though something in her voice had already gone a little distant, as though the small burst of eagerness had cost her more than she'd expected.
"I'm not sure you're really strong enough for this," he said, pausing halfway up the steps, real concern plain in his face.
She looked at him, faintly surprised by the depth of that concern. "I promise you I am. I've taken longer walks than that on far worse days. I think the air will do me a world of good."
"Then we'll try it," he said, and disappeared inside for the bags, leaving her alone on the cinder roadbed, looking out at the glory of the opening morning as though she had not, until this very moment, remembered that mornings could still be beautiful.