SPEAKING of commuting, the Long Island Railroad owes us $7, and we are wondering how long it will take us to collect it.
The incident, tragic as it was, will prove a lesson to us never again to be unfaithful to our beloved Brooklyn.
On Wednesday evening we had to decide whether we would take the train for Salamis from the Penn. Station or from Brooklyn. We decided we would take it from Penn. Station, because we were without reading matter, and knew that at Penn. Station we could stop in at the bookshop in the Arcade and get something to amuse us en route. All began merrily. We got to the station at 9 o’clock, bought an Everyman edition of Kit Marlowe’s plays, and, well supplied with tobacco, we set sail on the 9:10 vehicle. How excellent are the resources of civilization, said we to ourself, as we retraced the sorrows of Dr. Faustus. Here we are, we cried, sitting at ease in a brilliantly lighted smoker reading “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,” and in fifty minutes we will greet again the shabby but well-loved station at Salamis. We even meditated writing a little verse in Marlowe’s own vein, to be called “The Passionate Long Islander to His Love”:
Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That Patchogue, Speonk, Hempstead fields,
Ronkonkoma or Yaphank yields.
At this moment, which was 9:15, and just issuing from the tunnel, the train stopped, all lights went out, and we sat gazing at the dreary dormitory of Pullman cars in Long Island City.
For thirty-six minutes we sat so. Occasionally there would be the sound of a heavy sigh, a long-drawn suspiration of some mentally troubled commuter whose feels (in the language of Opal Whiteley) were not satisfaction feels; but commuters are a tested and toughened lot. The time lagged heavily and darkly by, but there was no shrill outcry, no futile beating of the breast. One shining thought there was to console, and the conductor ratified it (we asked him ourself). “Oh, yes,” he said, “the Oyster Bay connection waits for this train at Jamaica.” We envisaged the picture of that battered and faithful old Oyster Bay loco, waiting patiently for its lovers along the windy platform, and we were heartened.
But when we got to Jamaica, the old harridan steam train had gone.
Then, indeed, hearts were broken. Then there was scudding to and fro, and voices raised in menace and imprecation. The next train to Oyster Bay, said the officials, leaves at 12:10. The mourners gathered in little groups, drawn by their several affinities. Those who yearned for Garden City formed one posse. Those who yearned for Babylon and Bayshore, another. But, let it proudly be said, the Oyster Bay group were the loudest in outcry, the angriest in mood. We have a pride of our own on the Oyster Bay branch. (“Cut was the branch that might have gone full straight.”) In Salamis alone, Gen. Pershing is living there, and Dorothy Gish visits sometimes. Are we to be trifled with? Off went the Oyster Bay contingent, some twenty angry, to see the Station Master. Words were passed, without avail.
We ourself are a realist at such moments. We saw that the Station Master held no balm for the sufferers. We fled from the brutal scene. Downstairs one taxi, the only one, was just embarking a passenger and wheeling off. For an instant (we confess it) our nerve was shaken. We screamed, and there was in that scream the dreadful keening note of a lioness balked of her whelps or a commuter ravished of his train. Ha! the taxi halted. It was, strangely enough, a lady chauffeur, and tender of heart. No man chauffeur would have halted at such a time, but this madonna of taxi drivers had a bosom of pity. Her fare, already in situ, was bound for Garden City. They agreed to take us along, and after Garden City had been made she would steer for Salamis.
O Lady Taxi Driver of Jamaica, a benison befall thee. The wind roared stiffly across the plains, and the small henry made leeway. The small henry scuttled like a dog, half sideways, nosing several points upward into the gale in order to pursue a straight course. The other passenger was plainly a Man of Large Affairs, sunk in a generous melancholy. There was little talk. We sat, or, when the roadway required it, leaped aloft like striking trout. Garden City was duly reached, and then, by and by, the woody glens of Salamis Heights. The fare we paid our saviour was $7. We did not grudge it her. She has a seven-year-old boy, and all day she keeps house, all night she runs her taxi. But, in candour, we think the railroad owes us that $7. It has ever been held a point of honour that the Oyster Bay train shall wait for its children. When there are only two after-dinner trains, that seems not much to ask.
If we had gone from Brooklyn, all would have been well.
