"Move over," he said suddenly, climbing up and practically shoving her to the far side of the seat. "Better hold the rail. I'm going to catch that train. Hah!"
He slapped the reins over the horse. Mrs. Caldwell screeched, clutching both her hat and the rail as the buggy shot forward like a bolt released from a crossbow.
Mrs. Caldwell was convinced she would die on the breakneck ride to the depot. The bearded man, the one Brigadier Duncan had sought so diligently, then given up for lost or dead, rammed the buggy through impossibly narrow spaces in evening traffic, causing pedestrians to scatter, hackney drivers to swear, dray horses to rear up and whinny. Rounding the corner into New Jersey, driver and passenger saw a water wagon looming ahead. Charles hauled on the reins, braked, veered, and stood the buggy on its left wheels for a moment. Mrs. Caldwell uttered a scream as the right ones came crashing down, the buggy missing the back end of the water wagon by inches.
Axles howling, wheel hubs smoking, the buggy jerked to a stop directly in front of the station, whose outdoor clock showed a minute after six. Leaping out, Charles flung the reins at the stunned woman, remembering to shout, "Thank you." He plunged into the depot like a distance runner.
''Train for Baltimore?" he yelled at a uniformed man rolling an iron gate shut.
"Just left," the man said, pointing down the platform toward an observation car receding behind billows of steam. Charles turned sideways to squeeze through the opening. "Here, you can't —
Almost at once, he had three station officials in pursuit. They were older and in poor condition; he was lean and desperate. Still, his lungs quickly began to hurt from the exertion. And he was losing the race. The train was already out of the roofed shed.
He saw the end of the passenger platform ahead. It was too late to brake his momentum. He jumped for the tracks.
He landed crookedly. His wounded leg twisted, hurling him onto the ties. "Get that man!" one of the pursuers howled.
Hurt and panting, Charles pushed up, gained his feet, and ran again, harder than he had ever run in his life. His beard flew over his shoulder. He thought of Sport. Sport could do it. Sport would have the stamina —
That drove him to greater effort. He came within a hand's length of the rear car. Reached for the handrail of the steps. Missed his stride again and almost fell — The rail receded. Concentrating on a memory of Gus's face, he put everything into a last long step.
He caught hold of the step rail with both hands. The train dragged him, his boots bouncing and bumping. He kicked upward with both legs, knowing that if he didn't, his legs might be pulped under the train.
One boot slipped on the metal step. He nearly fell off. His wrists and forearms felt fiery, tortured by the strain. But he pulled —
Pulled —
Weak and gasping, he staggered upright on the rear platform, only to see the car door open and a broad-shouldered conductor step through, barring him. The trainman saw the pursuers staggering down the track, understood their shouts and gestures.
"Please," Charles said, "let me go inside."
"Get off this train."
"You don't understand. It's an emergency. One of your passengers —"
"Get off or I'll throw you off," the conductor said, starting to push. Charles lurched backward, his left boot finding just empty air above the second step. Frantically, he grabbed the handrail and only in that way kept himself from tumbling into space.
"Get off!" the conductor yelled, raising his hands for a second, final, shove. Something hard rammed the center of his vest. He looked down and went rigid at the sight of Charles's army Colt pressed into his stomach.
"You have ten seconds to stop this train."
"I can't possibly —"
Charles drew the hammer back to full cock.
'Ten seconds."
With a flurry of signal flags and alarm whistles, the train stopped.
146
Only Brigadier Duncan's intervention and influence prevented Charles's immediate arrest and imprisonment. At half past ten that night, the two men sat in the parlor of the reopened house, their faces grim as those of opponents still at war. The Irish wet nurse was upstairs with the child Charles had looked at twice, the second time with feelings of confusion and even revulsion. After returning from the depot, Duncan had told him the whole story, and Charles wished he hadn't.
The evening had grown sultry, with rumbles of an approaching storm in the northwest. His neck button still fastened, Charles sat in a plush chair, an untasted shot of whiskey on a small table to his right. His lamplit eyes looked dead. As dead as he felt inside.
Suddenly, with fury, he leaned forward. "Why didn't she tell me?"
"Major Main," the brigadier replied with icy correctness, "that is the third, possibly the fourth time you have asked the same question. She loved you very much — as I stated in the letters you never received. She grieved because the war had — damaged you, to use her phrase. Damaged you to the point where you mistakenly believed you could not continue your relationship with her. But my niece was a decent and honorable young woman." Unmistakably, there was the suggestion that Charles had neither of those characteristics.
Duncan continued, "She refused to hold her — condition as a club over your head. Now I shall not explain all that again. Indeed, I am beginning to regret you found me. I cannot understand your coldness toward your own flesh and blood."
"The baby killed her."
"There is indeed something wrong in your head, Main. Circumstance killed her. Her frailness killed her. She wanted the child. She wanted to bear your son — she named him after you. Do you seriously mean to tell me you want nothing to do with him?"
Anguished, Charles said, "I don't know."
"Well, I have no intention of remaining in Washington while you undertake your bizarre deliberations on the matter. I thought that if I ever found you, the reunion would be a joyous moment. It is anything but that."
"Give me just a little time —"
"Hardly worth my while, Major — having heard your remarks of a moment ago. I shall be on tomorrow evening's six o'clock express for Baltimore and the West. If you do not want your son, I do."
A dazed blink. "The West —?"
"Duty with the plains cavalry, if it's any of your affair. Now, if you will excuse me, I find this conversation odious. I shall retire." He stalked to the parlor door, where strained politeness made him pause and say, "There is an unused bedroom at the second floor rear. You may spend the night if you wish." Duncan's eyes flayed him. "Should your son cry out, you needn't trouble yourself. Maureen and I will look after him."
"Goddamn you, don't take that tone with me," Charles yelled, on his feet. "I loved her! I never loved anyone so much! I thought I should break things off for her sake, so I could do my job and she wouldn't worry constantly. Now if that's a crime in your estimation, the hell with you. When I stopped your train and found you inside, I didn't know I had a son. All I wanted was to learn where she is — was —"
"She is buried in the private cemetery in Georgetown. There is a marker. I shall ask you tomorrow, Major, before my departure, to give me your decision about young Charles."
''I can't. I don't know what it is."
"God pity any man who must say words like those."
The brigadier marched up the stairs. On the upper landing, he heard the front door slam, then a rumble of thunder, then silence. White light glittered through the house. Duncan raised his head as the hard pelting rain hit the roof. He heard no further sound from below.
With a shake of his head and a sudden sag of his shoulders, he continued to his room, a grieving and dismayed man.