Part 2 (1/2)
”Where? In Cuba?”
”Oh, no; I am not going to Cuba. I am going to live the simple life; building dams and digging ditches in Arcadia.”
He was well used to her swiftly changing moods. What Miss Elsa's critics, who were chiefly of her own s.e.x, spoke of disapprovingly as her flightiness, was to Ballard one of her characterizing charms. Yet he was quite unprepared for her grave and frankly reproachful question:
”Why aren't you going to Cuba? Didn't Mr. La.s.sley telegraph you not to go to Arcadia?”
”He did, indeed. But what do you know about it?--if I may venture to ask?”
For the first time in their two years' acquaintance he saw her visibly embarra.s.sed. And her explanation scarcely explained.
”I--I was with the La.s.sleys in New York, you know; I went to the steamer to see them off. Mr. La.s.sley showed me his telegram to you after he had written it.”
They had come to the little coffees, and the other members of Miss Craigmiles's party had risen and gone rearward to the sleeping-car.
Ballard, more mystified than he had been at the Boston moment when La.s.sley's wire had found him, was still too considerate to make his companion a reluctant source of further information. Moreover, Mr.
Lester Wingfield was weighing upon him more insistently than the mysteries. In times past Miss Craigmiles had made him the target for certain little arrows of confidence: he gave her an opportunity to do it again.
”Tell me about Mr. Wingfield,” he suggested. ”Is he truly Jack Forsyth's successor?”
”How can you question it?” she retorted gayly. ”Some time--not here or now--I will tell you all about it.”
”'Some time,'” he repeated. ”Is it always going to be 'some time'? You have been calling me your friend for a good while, but there has always been a closed door beyond which you have never let me penetrate. And it is not my fault, as you intimated a few minutes ago. Why is it? Is it because I'm only one of many? Or is it your att.i.tude toward all men?”
She was knotting her veil and her eyes were downcast when she answered him.
”A closed door? There is, indeed, my dear friend: two hands, one dead and one still living, closed it for us. It may be opened some time”--the phrase persisted, and she could not get away from it--”and then you will be sorry. Let us go back to the sleeping-car. I want you to meet the others.” Then with a quick return to mockery: ”Only I suppose you will not care to meet Mr. Wingfield?”
He tried to match her mood; he was always trying to keep up with her kaleidoscopic changes of front.
”Try me, and see,” he laughed. ”I guess I can stand it, if he can.”
And a few minutes later he had been presented to the other members of the sight-seeing party; had taken Mrs. Van Bryck's warm fat hand of welcome and Dosia's cool one, and was successfully getting himself contradicted at every other breath by the florid-faced old campaigner, who, having been a major of engineers, was contentiously critical of young civilians who had taken their B.S. degree otherwhere than at West Point.
III
THE REVERIE OF A BACHELOR
It was shortly after midnight when the ”Overland Flyer” made its unscheduled stop behind a freight train which was blocking the track at the blind siding at Coyote. Always a light sleeper, Ballard was aroused by the jar and grind of the sudden brake-clipping; and after lying awake and listening for some time, he got up and dressed and went forward to see what had happened.
The accident was a box-car derailment, caused by a broken truck, and the men of both train crews were at work trying to get the disabled car back upon the steel and the track-blocking train out of the ”Flyer's” way.
Inasmuch as such problems were acutely in his line, Ballard thought of offering to help; but since there seemed to be no special need, he sat down on the edge of the ditch-cutting to look on.
The night was picture fine; starlit, and with the silent wideness of the great upland plain to give it immensity. The wind, which for the first hundred miles of the westward flight had whistled shrilly in the car ventilators, was now lulled to a whispering zephyr, pungent with the subtle soil essence of the gra.s.s-land spring.
Ballard found a cigar and smoked it absently. His eyes followed the toilings of the train crews prying and heaving under the derailed car, with the yellow torch flares to pick them out; but his thoughts were far afield, with his dinner-table companion to beckon them.
”Companion” was the word which fitted her better than any other. Ballard had found few men, and still fewer women, completely companionable. Some one has said that comrades.h.i.+p is the true test of affinity; and the Kentuckian remembered with a keen appreciation of the truth of this saying a summer fortnight spent at the Herbert La.s.sleys' cottage on the North Sh.o.r.e, with Miss Craigmiles as one of his fellow-guests.