Part 11 (1/2)
In the privacy of her own stateroom she sat at the window to think it all out. It was all very undutiful, doubtless, and she was sorry for her part in the quarrel almost before the words were cold. She could scarcely forgive herself for having allowed her father to carry his a.s.sumption to such lengths, but the temptation had proved irresistible.
It was such a delicious little farce, and if it might only have stopped short of the angry conclusion--but it had not, and therein lay the sting of it. Whereupon, feeling the sting afresh, she set her face flintwise against the prearranged marriage.
”I sha'n't do it,” she said aloud, pressing her hot cheek against the cool gla.s.s of the window. ”I don't love Chester, and I never shall--not in the way I should. And if I marry him, I shall be just what papa called Mr. Brockway--only he isn't that, or anything of the kind. Poor Mr. Brockway! If he knew what we have been talking about----”
From that point reflection went adrift in pleasanter channels. How good-natured and forgiving Mr. Brockway had been! He must have known that he was purposely ignored at the dinner-table, where he was an invited guest, and yet he had not resented it; and what better proof of gentle breeding than this could he have given? Then, in that crucial moment of danger, how surely his presence of mind and trained energies had forestalled the catastrophe. That was grand--heroic. It was well worth its cost in terror to look on and see him strive with and conquer the great straining monster of iron and steel. After that, one couldn't well listen calmly to such things as her father had said of him.
And, admitting the truth of what had been said about his intellectual shortcomings, was a certain glib familiarity with the modern catch-words of book-talk and art criticism a fair test of intellectuality? Gertrude, with her cheek still touching the cool window-pane, thought not. One might read the reviews and talk superficially of more books than the most painstaking student could ever know, even by sight. In like manner, one might walk through the picture galleries and come away freighted with great names wherewith to awe the untravelled lover of art. It was quite evident that Mr. Brockway had done neither of these things, and yet he was thoughtful and keenly observant; and if he were ignorant of art, he knew and understood nature, which is the mother of all art.
From reinstating the pa.s.senger agent in his rights and privileges as a man, she came presently upon the little incident in the cab of the 926.
How much or how little did he mean when he said he was happy to his finger-tips? On the lips of the men of her world, such sayings went for naught; they were but the tennis-b.a.l.l.s of persiflage, served deftly, and with the intent that they should rebound harmless. But she felt sure that such a definition went wide of Mr. Brockway's meaning; of compliments as such, he seemed to know less than nothing. And then he had said that whatever came between them--no, that was not it--whatever happened to either of them.... Ah, well, many things might happen--would doubtless happen; but she would not forget, either.
The familiar sighing of the air-brake began again, and the low thunder of the patient wheels became the diapason beneath the shrill song of the brake-shoes. Then the red eye of a switch-lamp glanced in at Gertrude's window, and the train swung slowly up to the platform at another prairie hamlet. Just before it stopped, she caught a swift glimpse of a man standing with outstretched arms, as if in mute appeal. It was Brockway.
He was merely standing in readiness to grasp the hand-rail of the Tadmor when it should reach him; but Gertrude knew it not, and if she had, it would have made no difference. It was the one fortuitous touch needed to open that inner chamber of her heart, closed, hitherto, even to her own consciousness. And when the door was opened she looked within and saw what no woman sees but once in her life, and having once seen, will die unwed in very truth if any man but one call her wife.
Once more the drumming wheels began the overture; the lighted bay-window of the station slipped backward into the night, and the bloodshot eye of another switch-lamp peered in at the window and was gone; but Gertrude neither saw nor heard. The things of time and place were around and about her, but not within. A new song was in her heart, its words inarticulate as yet, but its harmonies singing with the music of the spheres. A little later, when the ”Flying Kestrel” was again in mid-flitting, and the separate noises of the train had sunk into the soothing under-roar, she crept into her berth wet-eyed and thankful, and presently went to sleep too happy to harbor anxious thought for the morrow of uncertainties.
XII
THE ANCIENTS AND INVALIDS
Brockway was up betimes the following morning, though not of his own free will. Two hours before the ”Flying Kestrel” was due in Denver, the porter of the Tadmor awakened him at the command of the irascible gentleman with the hock-bottle shoulders and diaphanous nose. While the pa.s.senger agent was sluicing his face in the wash-room some one prodded him from behind, and a thin, high-pitched voice wedged itself into the thunderous silence.
”Mr. ah--Brockway; I understand that you are purposing to take the party to ah--Feather Plume or ah--Silver Feather, or some such place to-day, and I ah--protest! I have no desire to leave Denver until my ticket is made to conform to my stipulations, sir.”
Brockway had soap in his eyes, and the porter had carefully hidden the towels; for which cause his reply was brief and to the point.
”Please wait till I get washed and dressed before you begin on me, won't you?”
”Wait? Do you say ah--wait? I have been doing nothing but wait, sir, ever since my ah--stipulations were ignored. It's an outrage, sir, I----”
Brockway had found a towel and was using it vigorously as a counter-irritant.
”For Heaven's sake, go away and let me alone until I can get my clothes on!” he exclaimed. ”I promised you yesterday you should have the thirty days that you don't need.”
The aggrieved one had his ticket out, but he put it away again in tremulous indignation. ”Go away? Did I ah--understand you to tell me to go away, sir? I ah-h-h----” but words failed him, and he shuffled out of the wash-room, cannoning against the little gentleman in the gra.s.s-cloth duster and velvet skull-cap in the angle of the vestibule.
”Good-morning, Mr. Brockway,” said the comforter, cheerily. ”Been having a tilt with Mr. Ticket-limits to begin the day with?”
”Oh, as a matter of course,” Brockway replied, flinging the damp towel into a corner, and brus.h.i.+ng his hair as one who trans.m.u.tes wrath into vigorous action.
”Find him a bit trying, don't you? What particular form does his mania take this morning?”
”It's the same old thing. I promised him, yesterday, I'd get the extension on his ticket, and now he says he won't leave Denver till it's done. He 'ah-protests' that I sha'n't go to Silver Plume with the party; wants me to stay in Denver and put in the day telegraphing.”
”Of course, you'll do it; you do anything anybody asks you to.”
”Oh, I suppose I'll have to--to keep the peace. And if I don't go and 'personally conduct' the others, there'll be the biggest kind of a row.
Isn't it enough to wear the patience of a good-natured angel to frazzles?”