Part 20 (2/2)
ON THE HEIGHTS
John Burton was scandalized, and he said as much to his wife when the train was once more on its way up the canyon.
”Emily, there's going to be a fracas when we get back to-night. It's my opinion that the President sent his daughter with us to get her out of Fred's reach.”
”Then it serves him right,” said Mrs. Burton, complacently. ”She is not a child; she's old enough to know her own mind.”
”That may be, but it doesn't let us out. I wish you'd go back and sit with them awhile.”
”And get myself disliked? No, thank you. I may not s.h.i.+ne as a star in the chaperonic firmament, but I'm a human being. Think of it; put yourself in Fred's place, if you haven't hopelessly outlived the possibility, and see how you'd like to be duennaed at such a time.”
”It isn't a question of likes and--” but at that moment the truants appeared to speak for themselves.
”It's chilly out there in the open car, and we came in to talk and get warm,” said Gertrude. ”Did you get any pie, Mrs. Burton?”
”No; Mr. Burton wasn't as thoughtful as Fr--as Mr. Brockway.”
”Mr. Brockway was twice thoughtful,” laughed Gertrude, as the pa.s.senger agent drew a pie from under his coat and proceeded to cut it into quarters with his pocket-knife.
Burton said, ”Oh, pshaw!” with deprecatory emphasis, but he accepted his allotment and ate it with the others. Afterward, when the talk took flight into the region of badinage, he went away and devoted himself dutifully to the Tadmorians.
When he was gone, the trio made merry with true holiday zest. For Gertrude, the little plunge into the stream of unconventionality was refres.h.i.+ng and keenly exhilarating, and she bore her part joyously, forgetting the day of reckoning, and seeking only to make the most of the few hours of outlawry.
Brockway, too, drank of the cup of levity, but in his inmost parts he stood amazed with sheer joy in the presence of the real Gertrude--of the woman he loved divested of the mask of conventionality. He had loved her well for what he thought she was, and had been content to set her upon a pedestal to be wors.h.i.+pped from afar as the apotheosis of adorable womanhood. But the light of this later revelation individualized her; ideals and abstractions vanished before her living, breathing personality, and Brockway was made to know that she could never again be to him the mere archetype of lovable woman-kind. She was infinitely more. She was the one woman in all the world whose life might be the complement of his; the other half of the broken talisman; the major and truer portion of a mystic circle of which his being was the other segment.
All of which was doubtless very romantic and unmodern in a sensible young man of Brockway's practical and workaday upbringing; but there are more curious seeds lying dormant in the soil of human nature than the a.n.a.lyst has ever yet cla.s.sified; and ideality and romanticism are but skin-masked in many a man whose outward presentment is merely the _abc_ of modern realism.
So Brockway beheld and rhapsodized in secret, and laughed and chatted openly, and sank deeper and deeper in the pit of perplexity as the train burrowed its way into the heart of the mountains. For, keeping even pace with the gallop of love, pride rode militant. Life without Gertrude would be but a barren waste, said one; and, better a desert and solitude therein than an Eden envenomed by the serpent of inequality, retorted the other. Which proves that cla.s.s distinctions are b.u.t.tressed from below no less securely than they are suspended from above; and that feudalism in the subject has become extinct in one form only to flourish quite vigorously in another.
But these were under-thoughts. In his proper person, the pa.s.senger agent was doing his best to keep his promise to Gertrude; to make the day a little oasis of care-free enjoyment in the humdrum desert of commonplace.
At Georgetown, Burton proposed the transfer of the entire party to one of the observation-cars for the better viewing of the Loop, and the thing was done forthwith. But at the last moment Gertrude decided to remain in the coach, and Brockway stayed with her, as a matter of course.
”I've seen it twice, and I don't care to hang over the edge of it,” she said. ”Besides, it's very comfortable in here; don't you think so?”
”I'm not finding any fault,” Brockway rejoined. ”I wish we might have the coach to ourselves for the rest of the day.”
”Do you? I thought you had been enjoying yourself all along.”
”So I have, in a way; but I hate and abhor a crowd--I've had to be the nucleus of too many of them, I suppose.”
”What do you call a crowd?” she inquired, laughing at the outburst of vindictiveness.
”Three people--sometimes. Half the pleasure of this forenoon has been slain by the knowledge that we'll have to fight for our dinners with the mob at that wretched little _table d'hote_ at Graymont.”
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