The Trainmasters Read online

  Naturally, the men resisted Collins’s new regime. But they were powerless to change it. So their resistance went undercover. There were more accidents, more fights and other incidents of violence, more acts of sabotage against company property, more drunkenness on and off the job, more whores in the camp, and more men simply walking off and vanishing into the vast, open, znAfree countryside.

  This kind of resistance was bad enough. But John feared that it would grow into active rebellion. He feared an explosion among the men.

  “The new rules will have a positive effect on the men,” Collins promised, “in time.”

  “That’s interesting,” John said. “It is, in fact, a surprising interpretation of events, when you think a little about it. Your new rules have been in effect for close to two months, and work has slowed down. At this rate, there’ll be no work on the tunnel at all by July.”

  “Ah yes,” Collins said blandly, “one could look at it that way, if one did not have all the facts. But, as I said, there’s more to it than—apparently—meets your eye, Mr. Carlysle.”

  “Yes?” John said.

  “There’s a bad bunch of men festering among the good. Soon, I’ll be rid of the bad ones. The work’ll proceed as fast as you’d ever desire once I’ve managed to weed out the rotten element.”

  “It’s the bad apples that’s makin’ all the trouble,” Tom Henneberry said.

  Collins gave him an approving look, as though he were a seal who had just successfully balanced a ball on his nose.

  “Some of the men dream extravagant dreams,” Collins said in the tone of a pastor delivering a homily. “They encourage the others who are weaker and more easily led to expect for themselves privileges that they have no right to desire. If we allow these ringleaders to go on unchecked, you’re liable to find yourself with a strike on your hands, Mr. Carlysle.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “It’s bastards like Egan O’Rahilly that’s causin’ all the trouble,” Tom Henneberry said. “We got to get rid of him and those like him if we’re gonna finish the job on time.”

  “If they’re out of the way,” Collins added, “the others will be as docile as you’d ever want, and you’ll see your tunnel built in no time, I can promise you that.”

  “Egan O’Rahilly is a leader,” John said. “I agree with you there.”

  “He’s a pernicious influence,” Collins said. “And he has to go.”

  “Then let him go,” John said calmly. “He works for you.” And I can find plenty of work for Egan O’Rahilly to do, John thought to himself.

  “I have your approval,” Collins asked quietly, “to do that?”

  “Why do you need my approval?”

  John asked the question with apparent innocence. But he was beginning to see what Collins was up to. Collins wanted the railroad management to back his actions. He wanted all such responsibility shared.

  “We all need to be united in this matter,” Collins said innocently. “Don’t you think? Shouldn’t we all hang together?”

  John had had enough of the game; he now removed his mask of calmness. “We don’t need to be united, Mr. Collins,” he flared. “We need to be on time. I’ve told you this before, so it won’t come as a shock to you: Your work rules have been the chief cause of the delays we are now experiencing. And I want the madness you have started to stop. Instantly.”

  Collins smiled his cherub’s smile. “I really must disagree with you,” he said reasonably. “Totally. Totaliter, as they say in Latin. The rules—if properly administered and applied— will bring you the order that you hope for.” He paused to let that sink in, and then he resumed in his sermon-maker’s voice. “But the bad seeds have been allowed to take root. They must be weeded out.”

  “The men you want to dismiss, Mr. Collins, are the very men I would put in charge of the work. You want to throw the best men out.”

  “How long have you been in this country, Mr. Carlysle?” Collins asked in his most kindly and condescending voice, fastening onto a logic that had bothered John earlier. “It’s not yet three months is it? And you have been given great responsibility… I won’t say it’s more responsibility than you can handle,” he said with a knowing look toward Tom Henneberry, “you bein’ a smart man with a university education and all. But you are still new in this place, and I’ve been here for over twenty years. I think I should know my way around much better than you.

  “What I’m tellin’ you is that you should watch over your engineerin’ and your surveyin’, and I’ll take care of the men.” He paused and gave John a bland look. “Isn’t that fair?”

  “Absolutely not,” John said, spitting the words out. “You keep doing what you are doing, Collins, and there’ll be an explosion. And I can’t allow that to happen.”

  “Ah well, then, Mr. Carlysle, so you say. And what are you going to do about it… if you are correct?”

  “I’ll destroy you,” John said.

  Collins smiled. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  John shook his head. “Madness,” he muttered, wanting to take control yet knowing there was nothing he could do for the time being. Collins had his contract, and he had not yet violated any of its terms.

  John rose to dismiss the two men. “I donT think there’s anything to be gained by continuing this conversation. But I do want to make one final thing clear. You can do as you please with the men now. I won’t back you; but I won’t stand in your way, either.

  “However, according to your agreement with the railroad, your time is running out. If you remain significantly behind schedule at the end of July, the contract becomes void. Do you follow me?” John knew that it was to Collins’s advantage to finish the work on time. If he was deliberately slowing it down, it was for a reason he did not want Carlysle to know.

  Collinsstoodup withoutanswering John’s question. “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,” he said, smiling. “I know how busy you are and how many worries you have.”

  Then he reached over and pinched Tom Henneberry’s shirt at the shoulder. “Let’s be off then, Tom,” he said, pulling Henneberry to his feet.

  “I’d like a response from you before you go,” John said. “I asked you a question.”

  “I suggest, Mr. Carlysle,” he said, his voice unusually abrasive, “that you stick to what you do best and leave to me what I do best.” Then he and Henneberry left the room.

  After the two men were gone, John went again to the window. “Damn!” he said to himself softly, quietly, for he was in a place where it would not do to release the scream that was building up inside him. His fists were clenched and his stomach was in knots.

  Why? he asked himself over and over. Why does he do it? What drives this man Collins? What makes him move?

  John had known hard taskmasters, oppressive foremen, capricious superiors, but Collins was different. Something out of John’s ken wound Collins’s springs.

  What is it? he asked himself. Or who.. .is it? Could that person also be behind…? The thought trailed off, but it remained pregnant in his mind.

  The construction delays and the growing labor troubles weren’t the only crisis pressing on John that afternoon. There was trouble all down the Pennsylvania line with the roadbed, the tracks, and with the equipment. Such was not unusual; they were the kinds of misfortunes every railroad encountered. Switches jammed, rails worked loose from the ties, gravel washed away from the roadbed, and locomotives broke down. This was all normal wear and tear, and coupled with the third law of thermodynamics, it accounted for much of what was going wrong. But there were too many of these “normal” occurrences to be explained easily as the processes of dissolution and disorganization and decay.

  Yet there was no evidence of any deliberate damage.

  John remembered his first careful inspections of the Philadelphia rail yard and the equipment there soon after his arrival in the United States.He remembered well how impressed he was with the way things were managed on the Pennsylvania.
Machinery and tracks were all impeccably cared for and kept in good repair.

  John had seen no recent evidence of any change in the way such things were done on the line. Yet now the trains were breaking down; daily it seemed. And if the machinery of the locomotives and cars was operating normally, the trains still met delays from bad track or jammed switches or empty wood lots and drained water towers.

  John had traveled back and forth several times along the entire length of the line and had inspected everything, but he had been able to arrive at no firm conclusions about the cause of the destruction.

  Still, he felt he knew what was wrong. He knew that there were people somewhere who, for some reason, were causing setbacks. There was too much destruction and chaos for either chance or the third law of thermodynamics to explain. So much chaos required a destroyer.

  Fortunately for John, there was a quiet escape for him within all the turmoil where he could restore himself and gather his strength and his wits. He had his family with him. Alex, David, and Graham had remained at Gallitzin after the runnel disaster was over. John had found an engineering job for Graham. And the two younger boys had been given over to Teresa O’Rahilly, who had in the months since the cave-in become very nearly a fifth Carlysle.

  Soon after Kitty Lancaster and her party had arrived at Gallitzin, John had hired Teresa as governess for Alex and David. And Teresa had succeeded better than splendidly with the two youngest Carlysles. They adored her, and she adored them.

  Her relationship with the two youngest Carlysles had carried with it an unexpected benefit for John. It kept her in Gallitzin to be with the eldest of his sons, caring for Graham when he most needed someone. She gave him the strength and love that allowed him to pull himself out of the deep melancholy he fell into as a result of the wounds the Keans had inflicted on both his body and soul.

  During the first days of his recovery, all of Graham’s life energy seemed to have been sucked out of him. Nothing interested him. No one mattered to Graham but himself and the pain he was suffering.

  Later, as the injuries to his body mended, the injuries to his soul festered. Without Teresa, these would have healed only with great difficulty, if at all. But Teresa did not permit Graham to feel sorry for himself or indulge in the pleasures of despair. Graham didn’t fall into the traps and enchantments that the groggery and the card tables offered.

  And so in his family, in the unexpected but much welcome strength and womanly skills of Teresa O’Rahilly, and in the recovery of Graham from all his injuries, John Carlysle had found at least some rest from the distress brought on by the labor troubles, the construction delays, and the apparent sabotage to the line.

  After Collins and Henneberry had left, John paced restlessly and uneasily around his office, reflecting, brooding, trying—and failing—to fix his mind on the enigmas that besieged him.

  He could not concentrate now. He could not focus. His brain did not want to function.

  He slammed the palm of his hand against the top of his desk in frustration and anger, for this was not the first time in recent weeks that the power of thought escaped him. It had happened before, with increasing frequency, as the problems mounted.

  It was not as though his intelligence was failing him, and he was sure that he was not going mad. Rather, when these moments struck him, it was as though there was a dark gulf, an emptiness, between himself and the problems with which he was grappling.

  It was the dark emptiness that disturbed him more than anything else.

  John was not aware of it, or at least he could never have admitted it to himself, but the source of the emptiness was his own loneliness. He was new in a strange land among strange people and customs, and he had only himself to turn to. He was alone and at the same time beset by more crises than most men have to handle in a lifetime. Collins’s barbs earlier had jolted him, not because John was unsure of his competence, but because he was lonely.

  He had no one to give him support and consolation, or even dependable advice.He missed that very much, for he was not a man who cherished solitude. He had no peers at his level to share his troubles with, and he missed especially the companionship of Edgar Thomson, who had not left Philadelphia since he had returned there in April. In particular, he missed Kitty Lancaster. Even though she and John had only been alone together for a few, brief days, John knew that there was—or at least there could be—something special between them.

  If Kitty had been present, John would have felt more confident and at ease in his troubles.

  But Kitty Lancaster had departed abruptly for Philadelphia the day after she and her party arrived at Gallitzin. She remained there with her father.

  She had left Gallitzin with scarcely a word of explanation to John. The swiftness and silence of her departure hurt him, though he was too much the stoic to let on that he was in pain. At the beginning of May Kitty wrote John a long, warm, lively letter, with a wealth of concrete news and specific details about what she and her father were doing. In it she remained silent about her abrupt departure from Gallitzin, but she did explain —or give an excuse anyway—why she felt she must not leave Philadelphia. She was forced to remain close to her father, she told John, during his time of trial.

  John did not doubt this; he was well aware that Kitty and Edgar Thomson were deeply attached to one another. But John was also aware that there was more to Kitty’s absence than she had written. It had to do with the relationship that had once existed between Kitty and Francis Stockton. He knew, though she never said this to him either directly or indirectly, that she couldn’t bear remaining in Gallitzin as long as Francis was there.

  John sent a quick reply to Kitty’s letter; and that had led to a weekly correspondence between them. It had been from John’s point of view a good correspondence. Kitty had revealed herself in ways she doubtless would not have done in face-to-face encounters. She talked about her dead husband, for instance, and about how her early love for him had turned to disappointment. She repeated in her letters what she had already told John: She was glad she was no longer bound to Charles. She also wrote about her father’s battles with William Patterson and the directors who supported him. And she talked of her hopes for herself and her own future. She made it clear that she was looking for a man who could not only share in her life but who could match her own power, a man who could satisfy her ambitions. And it was also clear that she was beginning to believe that John Carlysle was probably that man.

  Yet, among all these revelations, there was never a hint of the details of the link between Kitty Lancaster and Francis Stockton.

  John considered Stockton a fascinating man, handsome and attractive, yet self-willed, conceited, and most difficult. He was even a man who could be put to many uses. John found himself liking Francis Stockton, even in spite of whatever had once happened between Francis and Kitty. In fact, as his own thoughts and dreams about Kitty grew stronger and warmer, his liking and respect for Francis increased. Kitty, after all, had never said a hostile word about Francis.

  In a way it would have been easier if Kitty hated Francis Stockton. But she didn’t.

  So John’s thoughts and fears swung wildly from hope to disaster, as lovers’ thoughts will do. Could Kitty’s love for Francis be reignited? he wondered. Could meeting Francis again start up the old, once-rejected feeling?

  Whenever the image of the two of them together swam up into his imagination, John started to worry. There were too many unanswered questions, not just about Francis and Kitty but about Kitty and John Carlysle.

  How can I use him? John wondered as he paced about his office. If I can get him away from here, then maybe I can entice Kitty at least to visit Gallitzin again.

  The dark lady waited silently under the shadows of the glade. She was smiling impishly, for she expected lively companions soon. And she was not disappointed.

  In a few moments, there was a rustling in the forest. It was the stalwart tread of noble men at arms entering the glade.

&nbs
p; “Hark, who goes there?” cried a high-pitched yet imperious voice.

  The dark lady, smiling more broadly now that she knew her presence was recognized, withdrew deeper into the shadows and partially hid herself in the foliage.

  “You there,” cried the imperious voice, “cease your concealment and reveal yourself to your king.”

  The dark lady giggled but managed to keep herself from breaking into full laughter. There were three figures on the other side of the glade searching for her unsuccessfully. Her clothes were green and brown, and they blended into the foliage.

  “Do not continue to thwart me,” ordered the imperious voice. “This reckless concealment will go badly for you when ere we meet.”

  The dark lady made a sound like a strangling duck.

  “Hark!” cried the great voice. “I hear a sound of varlets in the darkness!”

  “Whither is it coming?” asked a smaller person with a less imperious voice.

  “Thither,” said an even lesser person, this one a little girl. She was pointing to a young woman covered with shadows.

  “Aha!” cried the great voice—it belonged to Alex Car-lysle. “At last, we are met!” And he rushed toward the dark lady, brandishing his upraised sword—a pine branch.

  As he approached her, the lady emerged from the shadows into the sunlight. She was erect and haughty but at the same time sinuous and cruelly evil.

  The boy was now standing in front of the lady, and the point of his sword rested midway between her breasts. She lifted herself even higher than before and thrust her breasts regally out toward him.

  “Your name, lady,” he said, “or your life.”

  The lady laughed a great peal that echoed through the forest. “Don’t give your puny commands to me, puny man.” And she laughed again. “For I am Morgan le Fey… The Morgan le Fey.”

  “Aha!” cried the boy. “It is you for whom we have searched! For I am Arthur, the king! And this is my sword Excalibur. Prepare to meet thy doom, le Fey.”

  “Never!” she cried and stepped quickly backward out of reach of the sword. “You’ll never take me, little man. For I am stronger than you … I am the Queen of the Night… I have the powers of darkness and witchcraft at my command!” The dark lady then seized her own sword (recently oak) that she had laid against the trunk of an elm tree. “Prepare to die, Arthur!”