Part 5 (1/2)
”I presume you are very familiar with this part of the country--along your own line, Mr. Brockway,” she said, when the waiter came in to lay the plates.
”In the way that I have just indicated, yes. I know so much of its face as you can see from this window. But my knowledge doesn't go much beyond the visible horizon.”
”Neither does mine, but I can imagine,” Gertrude said.
”Ah, yes; but imagination isn't knowledge.”
”No; it's often better.”
”Pleasanter, you mean; I grant you that.”
”No, I meant more accurate.”
”For instance?”
Gertrude smiled. ”You are quite merciless, aren't you? But if I must defend myself I should say that imagination paints a composite picture, out of drawing as to details, perhaps, but typically true.”
Brockway objected. ”Being unimaginative, I can't quite accept that.”
”Can't you? That is what Priscilla Beaswicke would call the disadvantage of being Occidentalized.”
”I suppose I am that,” Brockway admitted cheerfully. ”I can always breathe freer out here between these wide horizons; and the majesty of this Great Flatness appeals to me even more than that of the mountains.”
They followed his gesture. The sun was dipping to the western edge of the bare plain, and the air was filled with ambient gold. The tawny earth, naked and limitless, melted so remotely into the dusty glow of the sky as to leave no line of demarcation. The lack of shadows and the absence of landmarks confused the senses until the flying train seemed to stand with ungripping wheels in the midst of a slowly revolving disk of yellow flatness, through which the telegraph-poles and mile-posts darted with sentient and uncanny swiftness.
”I can feel its sublimity,” Gertrude said, softly, answering his thought; ”but its solemn unchangeableness depresses me. I love nature's moods and tenses, and it seems flippant to mention such things in the presence of so much fixity.”
Brockway smiled. ”The prairie has its moods, too. A little later in the year we should be running between lines of fire, and those big b.a.l.l.s of tumbleweed would be racing ahead of the wind like small meteors. Later still, when the snows come, it has its savage mood, when anything with blood in its veins may not go abroad and live.”
”I suppose you have been out here in a blizzard, haven't you?” said the chaperon; but when he would have replied there was a general stir, and the waiter announced:
”Dinner is served.”
VII
A DINNER ON WHEELS
When the President's party gathered about the table, Mrs. Dunham placed Brockway at her right, with Gertrude beside him. Mr. Vennor disapproved of the arrangement, but he hoped that Priscilla Beaswicke, who was Brockway's _vis-a-vis_, might be depended upon to divert the pa.s.senger agent's attention. Miss Beaswicke confirmed the hope with her second spoonful of soup by asking Brockway what he thought of Tourguenief.
Now, to the pa.s.senger agent, the great Russian novelist was as yet no more than a name, and he said so frankly and took no shame therefore.
Whereupon Mr. Vennor:
”Oh, come, Priscilla; you mustn't begin on Mr. Brockway like that. I fancy he has had scant time to dabble in your little intellectual fads.”
Gertrude looked up quickly, and the keen sense of justice began to a.s.sert itself. Having escaped the pillory in his character of artisan, the pa.s.senger agent was to be held up to ridicule in his proper person.
Not if she could help it, Gertrude promised herself; and she turned suddenly upon the collegian.