Page:Teeftallow-1926.djvu/210

TWO days later the labourers of the railroad construction works, their families, and all their household goods were loaded into box cars at Irontown and were shipped to a camp site some sixteen miles to the west of the village.

The ordeal of parting brought Nessie Sutton to the station with Abner, and the two stood in the shade of the depot watching the trucks and wagons back up to the waiting cars and deliver their loads. The furniture of the labourers was shabby and seemed on the verge of falling apart. As it arrived in wagons, the two lovers would identify it mechanically as "That belongs to the Davises; that to the McLemores," but this was done without the slightest personal interest. It was a mere ticketing which went on mechanically in the strange trance of their leave-taking.

It seemed to Abner as if Time had paused, that it hung in a pool above the cataract of their parting. Down the line of cars sweaty labourers heaved and shoved at rickety furniture; the little engine of the new railroad panted intermittently; a brakeman in greasy overalls lay under a car wheel repacking a hot box with oily waste. The whole scene was laid on in pale yellow sunshine and soft bluish shadows. It seemed to Abner that he and Nessie would go on thus for ever, standing with their hands secretly clasped behind a fold of Nessie's skirt, watching the men, the wagons, the train, with all his senses wrapped up in the intimacy and sympathy of the girl. The touch of her small warm palm pressed against his own, their interlaced fingers filled him with a sense of unity with Nessie which he had never known even in moments of their closest embraces. A quietness, a