Chapter I

Anastasia Endicott shivered and drew her velvet evening wrap closer
about her shoulders, as she sat forward in the Pullman chair and tried
to look through the snow-blotched window at her side.

The train seemed to be crawling, like a baffled invalid that gained a
few inches and then stopped to cough. It had been going on that way for
an hour, and did not seem to be getting anywhere. It was outrageous,
such service! A ride of only thirty-five miles taking all this time!
What would her friends think of her? They would be waiting in their car
at the station, and in such a storm!

But surely the train must be almost there!

She glanced down anxiously at the little trifle of platinum and diamonds
on her wrist that stood for a time piece, and then out the baffling
window again; but no friendly light outside illumined the blanket of
snow that covered the glass, and she shivered again.

How cold it was!

She leaned down and touched the heat pipes that ran along under the
window, and drew back with a shudder. They were cold as stone. The heat
had gone out! How unpardonable in the railroad company to let a thing
like that happen on such a cold stormy night!

She leaned forward and summoned the official who was passing rapidly
through the car, speaking in a tone of accusation as if the fault
belonged to him personally.

“Yes, Miss,” he said, “fire’s out. She’s broke. We’re trying to patch
her up, but we can’t make much headway. Something wrong with her
connections. This ain’t the only car is cold, Miss; the whole train is
in the same fix.”

She felt the lack of sympathy in his cold blue eyes as he started on
again. She resented his suggestion that others were suffering. What had
that to do with her?

“When are we going to get to Stonington?” she asked sharply. “We’ve been
an hour and a quarter already from the city and this train is scheduled
to do it in fifty-five minutes.”

“Not on a night like this, Miss,” said the brakeman. “Schedules ain’t in
it. The snow plow is ahead of us, and it’s stuck in a drift high as a
house. We got twelve men out there shoveling an’ the wind blowin’ forty
knots a minute.”

“But I’m going to a dance!” said the girl stupidly. “I shall be late!”
Her voice was most impatient. “And I’m freezing!” she added and shivered
again visibly.

The brakeman grinned.

“Better have yer dance in here then an’ keep warm!” he advised. “There’s
a man in the next car goin’ to his dyin’ child!” His tone was
significant, and he passed out of the car and slammed the door.

She was alone in the parlor car. The only other occupant had gone out to
help with the shoveling. She drew her velvets closer and shuddered back
into the plush of the chair, drawing her feet up and tucking one under
her to get it warm. Then she remembered her delicate dance frock and put
it quickly down again.

Dying child! What did he want to tell her that for? How horrid of him
when he knew she was going to a dance. A dance and a dying child did not
fit together. Oh, how cold it was! Why had she not brought her fur coat?
But she had counted on driving back in the Lymans’ limousine with her
friend Adrienne, and there were always plenty of fur robes in the
Lymans’ car. She had not dreamed of being cold. She had come to the
station in a taxi from her overheated home; there had been heat in the
taxi. The parlor car was always warm enough in her experience and she
felt ill-used that it had suddenly failed her. She was expecting to be
met at her journey’s end by a heated limousine and conveyed to the
country house some five miles from the station, where the dance was to
be held. There really had been no need for a fur coat, for her evening
wrap was lined with rich silk and warmly interlined.

She glanced helplessly about her. She had no hand baggage save a
delicate beaded bag containing her compact, handkerchief, and gloves.

She had arrived home from a trip to Washington but that afternoon, to
find awaiting her this invitation to a dance at a friend’s magnificent
country estate; had telephoned her friend Adrienne Lyman who was also an
invited guest and arranged to return with her, and her friends; had
dressed hurriedly, been driven to this train just in time, and here she
was! Shivering! Snow banks on every side!

It began to occur to her that the return trip might not be so easy even
in Adrienne’s big limousine. Why, if a great iron train on a railroad
track found it difficult going, how could an automobile manage? But
then, railroads were different of course. Railroads had drifts on them.
They went out in the country through queer places where there were winds
that blew a lot and made a very little snow seem much. Of course a track
got clogged up sooner than just a road where cars were going back and
forth all the time. And the road between Stonington and the city was a
main highway, with a great deal of traffic. Of course there wouldn’t be
any trouble in getting home.

She took her delicate handkerchief and mopped away at the window pane,
breathing on the glass, trying to melt the clogging feathers and see
through to the storm, but everything seemed a blot of impenetrable
whiteness.

She settled back disconsolately into her cold chair and felt more like
crying than she had since she was a child and broke her doll. To think
that she, Tasha Endicott, should be caught in a fix like this! And then,
just as she was in despair the brakeman came back through the car,
slamming the door after him and stamping off snow from his feet. He gave
her a familiar grin as he passed her, and lurched on out at the other
end, slamming that door too. She felt a helpless fury rise within her.
The impertinence! For a man like that to presume to grin at her in that
leering triumphant way! He ought to be reported and discharged. She
would tell her father about it. He should be discharged!

She got up and tried to walk up and down the aisle, stamping her gold
slippered feet impatiently, trying to bring back life into them. It
would be awful if she got her feet frost bitten. How could she dance? It
was very painful to have frost bitten feet!

Then, without warning, the train gave a great lurch which sent her in a
little rustling heap of rose color and gold in the aisle.

Angry and dishevelled she arose quickly, for a sudden draft of air told
her that someone had opened the door; and looking anxiously she saw the
grinning brakeman with a lantern in his hand, standing in the open door,
a twinkle of merriment in his eyes.

More furious than ever she essayed to be seated, with dignity, but just
at that instant the train gave another tremendous lurch that
precipitated her into her chair in a hurry and completely robbed the act
of all dignity. In fact one gold slipper flew off in the aisle and she
had to catch herself with inglorious haste to keep from sliding back
onto the floor again.

She did not look up at the brakeman again, but when she had rescued and
donned her slipper she felt that the door was closed and she was alone.
Also, she realized that the train was moving once more slowly,
creakingly, but steadily with a pause now and then, and a lurch, but
moving.

They had gone perhaps a hundred yards or more when the train slowed down
and stopped with something of its old decision, and the door opened and
the brakeman called out:

“Stonington! Stoooooo-ning-toooon! All out for Stonington!”

Tasha arose hastily, excitedly, and made her shaky way down the aisle.
She seemed somehow weak in the knees, and trembling. Perhaps it was the
fall, or her anger. She came to the platform, and the obnoxious brakeman
with his lantern stood on the bottom step looking as if he meant to
assist her.

She stiffened and threw her shoulders back.

“Is this really Stonington?” she asked sharply, trying to peer into the
blear of blanket whiteness that constituted the air. It had not been
snowing like this in town when she started. At least she had not noticed
that it was so thick.

“Yep!” answered the brakeman. “Jump, an’ I’ll put you over where the
snow ain’t so deep.”

Tasha drew back.

“Where is the porter?” she asked haughtily.

“Out shovelin’!” said the brakeman. “Better jump quick ef you wanta git
off. We ain’t stoppin’ long!”

Tasha advanced to the steps and looked down into the sea of whiteness,
then drew back again:

“Why, this is outrageous!” she said crisply. “The railroad company has
no right to stop in a place like this. Where is the platform? I’d rather
go to the other end of the car.”

“Say, Miss, ef you don’t git off here you git carried to Elkins station.
We’re only ’commodation this far, and then we’re ’xpress. You sure you
wanta git off at Stonington?”

“I certainly do!” she said freezingly. “But I want you to go and get the
porter for me!”

A snort from the engine and a slight lurch of the train broke upon the
conversation.

“Nothin’ doin’!” said the brakeman. “Either you git off ur you don’t!”

He gave a quick glance around, peering beyond the station into the white
darkness.

“Say, Miss, is anyone meeting you? Because this station is closed for
the night.”

“There certainly is someone meeting me,” said Tasha, still haughtily.

The brakeman cast another uncertain glance about, and saw a tiny spark
of light wavering toward them several rods away.

“Oh, all right then!” he said with a relieved tone, “here you go! We
ain’t got any more time for fooling!” and to her horror he caught her in
his burly arm like a bundle of baggage and swung her across the steps
and far out over the billows of whiteness, setting her down under what
seemed like a great shadow, in comparative shelter, where only a few of
the stinging snow-flakes cut into her unprotected face, and bit her lips
and her eyes. And then he was gone, clinging to the lower step of the
car, his lantern swinging out into the white storm, signaling to some
force in the impenetrable whiteness beyond. She saw him moving slowly
away from her, leaving her in sudden awful loneliness.

It had all happened so quickly that she had not realized. The chill of
the snow on her silken ankles seemed to enfold her as if she were in the
grasp of a new and awful power. She realized that she was standing
almost knee deep in snow, and she tried to take a step out of it, but
nowhere was there a shallower place to put her foot.

In new horror she cried out and tried to run toward the train that was
slipping past her now with its lighted windows, the very window where
her breath a few minutes before had melted a black circle on the pane,
was leering mockingly down upon her now like a bright eye, and her soul
suddenly knew how safe and warm she had been inside and how fearfully
perilous was her present position. She cried again and waved her arms
toward the brakeman whose lantern was giving its final swing, as he
jerked himself in out of the storm, but her voice was flung back upon
the blanket stillness and frightened her the more.

The tears were running down her cheeks and freezing as they fell, but
she did not know it. She was stung to sudden panic and began to run
after the train, but she fell in the first attempt and lay there
helpless for a moment, her bare hands plunging elbow deep into the heavy
snow, her face even going down into its smothering chill. Snow inside
her flimsy inadequate garments, snow round her throat like icy fingers,
snow in her eyes and her mouth and her hair, smothering, icy snow!

One of her little gold slippers, the loose one that had come off before,
came off again and was lost in the whiteness. The snow bit into the
little gold silk foot that felt in vain for its covering.

Tasha cried aloud and knew not what she said as she sobbed, but it
seemed to come to her dimly through it all that there was no one by to
help her and she must help herself. She had never had to help herself in
any trying situation before, but now she must. There had always been
servants, or persons whose business it was to care for her, close at
hand, in any predicament before. Now she was alone! It was somebody’s
fault of course that she was, and they should suffer for it when she got
home, but now she must take care of herself. Home! Would she ever be
home again? A fear gripped her! Snow killed people sometimes. They froze
to death in it. Even now she could feel it would be easier to lie still
and sink, sink, and forget it all. She was so cold! Oh, how her feet
hurt! She wouldn’t be able to dance to-night! But that didn’t matter!
Oh, why didn’t the chauffeur come after her? He must have seen her get
off. Was he waiting around the other side of the station?

She looked up and the dark shadow of a snow draped building loomed above
her. She must get up and find that slipper. She must get around to the
other side of the station quickly before the chauffeur decided she
hadn’t come and went home without her. She must! She must!

She called as she struggled to her feet:

“Hello! Hello! I’m here! Wait! Wait! I’m coming!” But the wind caught
her voice and flung it back into her own ears, and the snow flung a
blanket over the echo too so that she knew she had not been heard.

At last she got to her feet again, her poor insensate feet, and then
with a mighty resolve, she clutched around in the snow with her bare
hands until she came upon the little slipper. She drew it to her breast
and hugged it with her bead purse as if it were something precious, and
turned stumbling, cautious, moving slowly, with difficulty, toward the
station till she almost fell against the stone wall, and her feet came
unexpectedly upon shallower going. She stood for an instant to get her
breath, leaning against the wall, and finding that the wind here did not
swoop and search her quite so violently, as out by the tracks. Perhaps
if she could get around to the other side it might be even more
sheltered. Oh, why did they close stations in places like this! If she
could only get inside the door!

But when she reached the other side of the building and came
unexpectedly in contact with a latch she found it would not open. She
stood within the doorway, braced against it, one little gold slipper and
her bead bag still pressed against her breast, one little icy foot drawn
up against her cold cold knee. The other icy foot was trying to balance
on a tiny gold spike of a heel, and one slender arm was frantically
clutching the big bronze knob of the closed door for support as she
tried to peer into the blank whiteness beyond.

But nowhere could she see a sign of a car! It was all a level whiteness,
earth and air and sky, all full of whirling whiteness, stinging and
snatching and biting at her, and how long could she hold out?

Suddenly out of the terrible white darkness before her a light danced,
glared and danced away again, like a new menace. Was it the headlight of
a car? It did not seem large enough for that and yet as she looked,
there it was again, still larger, glaring into her eyes like some beast
of prey. She shook off the new fear that took hold of her. Of course it
was the car which was to have come for her, and she must make them know
where she was.

She lifted up her voice and shouted:

“Here! Here! Here I am!”

The wind flung her words down her throat. They could not get by the
blanket that hung between her and all human kind. It was silly! It was
nightmare! She must rouse herself and make them hear or they would go
away again and leave her here all night. She doubted not she was in the
first stages of freezing, else why could she not get her words across to
that stupid chauffeur? She must!

Down went the little cold gold chiffon-stockinged foot, into the
feathery snow, almost comforted from the bitter cold above, and she
caught her breath and called again:

“Heee-rrrr!—”

But she stopped suddenly as a tall dark figure loomed above her and one
bright eye stared into her face, a great burning eye that seemed to be
looking down into her very soul.