At the precise moment when Gertrude and Brockway, pausing in their breath-cutting scramble up the bowlder-strewn mountain-side, were casting about for a suitable place in which to eat their luncheon, President Vennor and his guests were rising from the table after a rather early midday meal in car Naught-fifty. When the ladies had gone to their staterooms, the President sent Quatremain upon a wholly unnecessary errand to the post-office, and drew up a chair to smoke a cigar with Fleetwell.
It was not for nothing that he banished the secretary. The forenoon train from Clear Creek Canyon had arrived without bringing Gertrude; and the wires, which he had waited upon with increasing disquietude, still remained churlishly silent. A crisis in Gertrude's affair seemed imminent, and, as a last resort, Mr. Vennor had resolved to admonish Fleetwell, to the end that the collegian's wooing might be judiciously accelerated.
"I am afraid you have been lukewarm with Gertrude once too often, Chester, my boy," he began, with studied bluntness. "You ought by all means to have gone up in the mountains with her to-day."
Fleetwell tried to look properly aggrieved, and succeeded fairly well. "That's rather hard on me, isn't it? when I didn't so much as know she was going?"
"That is precisely the point I wished to arrive at," the President asserted, blandly. "You should have known. You can scarcely expect her to thrust her confidence upon you."
In his way, Fleetwell could be quite as plain-spoken as his hard-eyed cousin, and he answered the President's implication without pretending to misunderstand it.
"You mean that I've been shirking; that I haven't been properly reading my lines in the little comedy planned by my grandfather; is that it?"
"Well, not exactly shirking, perhaps, but the most observant person would never suspect that you and Gertrude were anything more than civilly tolerant cousins. I know her better than you do, my boy, and I can assure you that she's not to be so lightly won. Ours is a fairly practical family. I think I may say, but there is a streak of romance in it which comes to the surface now and then in the women, and Gertrude has her full share of it. Moreover, she doesn't care a pin for the provisions of the will."
"Confound the will!" said the collegian. "I don't see why the old gentleman had to fall back on a medieval dodge that always defeats itself."
"Nor I; the matter would have been very much simplified if he had not. But, unfortunately, we have to do with the fact."
"It strikes me that we've had to do with it all along. I used to think Gertrude was rather fond of me, but since this money affair has come up, I'm not so sure of it."
"Have you ever asked her?" inquired the President, with an apparent lack of interest which was no index to his anxiety.
"Why—no; not in so many words, I believe. But how the deuce is a fellow to make love to a girl when his grandfather has done it for him?"
"That, my dear Chester, is a question you ought to be able to answer for yourself. You can hardly expect Gertrude to beg you to save her little patrimony for her."
It was an unfortunate way of putting it, and Mr. Vennor regretted his unwisdom when Fleetwell carried the thought to its legitimate conclusion.
"There it is again, you see. That cursed legacy tangles the thing every time you make a rush at it. I can understand just how she feels about it. If she refuses me it will cost her something; if she doesn't there will be plenty of the clan who will say that she had an eye to the money."
"What difference will that make, so long as you know better?"
The question was so deliberate and matter-of-fact that Fleetwell forgot himself and let frankness run away with him.
"That's just it; how the deuce is a fellow going to know——" but at this point the cold eyes checked him, and he suddenly remembered that he was speaking to Gertrude's father. Whereupon he stultified himself and made a promise.
"Perhaps you are right, after all," he added. "Anyway, I'll have it out with her to-night, after she comes back."
"'Have it out with her' doesn't sound very lover-like," suggested the President, mildly. "I can assure you beforehand that you will have to take a different tone with her, whether you are sincere or not; otherwise you will waste your breath and enrich half a dozen charities we know of."
"Oh, I'll do it right," said Fleetwell, nonchalantly; "but I'd give my share of the money twice over if it didn't have to be done at all—that is, if the money matter could be taken out of it entirely, I mean."
They smoked on in reflective silence for five full minutes before the President saw fit to resume the conversation. Then he said, slowly and in his levellest tone:
"You are going to speak to her to-night; very good—you have my best wishes, as you know. But if anything should happen; if you should agree to disagree; it is you who must take the initiative. If you don't mean to marry her, you must tell her so plainly, and before you have given her a chance to refuse you. Do you understand?"
Fleetwell sprang to his feet as if he had received a blow. He was a young giant in physique, and he looked uncomfortably belligerent as he towered above the President's chair.
"By Jove, I do understand you, Cousin Francis, and I'm ashamed to admit it!" he burst out, wrathfully. "The men on my side of the family have all been gentlemen, so far as I know, and I'll not be the first to break the record. I shall do what my grandfather expected me to do—what Gertrude has a right to expect me to do—and in good faith; you may be very sure of that!" And having thus spoken his mind, he went out, leaving Mr. Francis Vennor to his own reflections, which were not altogether gladsome.
"Here is the place I was looking for," said Brockway, handing Gertrude to a seat on a great fallen fir which had once been a sentinel on the farthest outpost of the timber-line. "It's three years since I was here, but I remember this log and the little stream of snow-water. Isn't it clear and pure?"
"Everything ought to be that, up here in the face of that great shining mountain," she said; and then they spread their luncheon on the tree-trunk between them, and pitied the crowded Tadmorians in the little hotel below.
"I feel as if I could look down benignantly on the whole world," Gertrude declared, searching for the paper of salt and finding it not. "The things of yesterday seem immeasurably far away; and as for to-morrow, I could almost persuade myself there isn't going to be any."
"I wish there wasn't going to be any," said Brockway; but the manner in which he attacked the cold chicken slew the pessimism in the remark.
"Do you? I could almost say Amen to that," she rejoined, soberly.
"You? I should have thought you would be the last person in the world to want to stop Time's train."
She laughed softly. "That is very human, isn't it? I was thinking precisely the same thing of you. Tell me why you would like to abolish the to-morrows—or is it only the very next one that ever will be that you want to escape?"
"It's all of them, I think: but you mustn't ask me to tell you why."
"Why mustn't I?"
"Because I can't do it and keep my promise to tell you the truth."
"That is frank, at least," she retorted. "I hope you are not a conscience-stricken train-robber, or a murderer, or anything of that kind."
"Hardly," Brockway replied, helping himself to another sandwich; "but you would be quite horrified if I should tell you what I have really done."
"Do you think so? You might try me and see," she said, half pleading and half jesting.
Brockway thought about it for a moment.
"I'll do it—on one condition."
"You ought to be ashamed to propose conditions to me. What is it?"
"That you will tell me quite as truthfully why you agreed with me about the abolition of the to-morrows."
It was Gertrude's turn to consider, but she ended by accepting the proviso.
"After you," she said, with a constrained little laugh. "But who would ever think of exchanging confidences at this altitude over a stolen luncheon!"
"Not many, perhaps; but it's quite in keeping with our compact; we were not to do ordinary things, you know. And I'm sure this confession I am going to make is unpremeditated."
"Is it so very dreadful?"
"It is, I assure you, though I can make it in five words. I am hopelessly in love—don't laugh, please; there isn't the slightest element of levity in it for me."
Nevertheless, she did laugh, albeit there was pain at the catching of her breath.
"Forgive me," she said, quickly. "I don't mean to be silly if I can help it. Tell me about it, and why it is hopeless."
"It's the old story of Jack and his master," Brockway continued. "I have had the audacity to fall in love with the daughter of one of my betters."
"One of your betters? I'm afraid I can't quite understand that. Don't we live in a golden age when Jack is as good as his master, if he choose to make himself so?"
"By no manner of means," asserted this modern disciple of feudalism; "the line is drawn just as sharply now as it was when Jack was a bond thrall and his master was a swashbuckling baron."
"Who draws it? the thrall or the baron?"
The question opened up a new view of the matter, and Brockway took time to think about it.
"I'm not sure as to that," he said, doubtfully. "I've always taken it for granted it was the baron; but perhaps it's both of them."
"You may be very sure there are two sides to that shield, as to all others," she asserted. "But tell me more about your own trouble. Is it altogether impossible? Does the—the young woman think as you do?"
"It is; and I don't know what she thinks. I've never asked her, you know."
"You haven't? And still you sit here on this log and eat cold chicken and tell me calmly that it's hopeless! I said awhile ago that you were very daring, but I'll retract in deference to that."
"It's not exactly a lack of courage," Brockway objected, moved to defend himself when he would much rather have done something else. "There is another obstacle, and it is insurmountable. She is rich—rich in her own right, I'm told; and I am a poor man."
"How poor?"
"Pitifully so, from her point of view. So poor that if I gave her a five-room cottage and one servant, I could do no more."
"Many a woman has been happy with less."
"Doubtless, but they were not born in the purple."
"Some of them were, if by that you mean born with money to throw away. I suppose you might say that of me."
Brockway suddenly found the Denver eating-house cake very dry, but he could not take his eyes from her long enough to go and get a drink from the rill at the log-end.
"But you would never, marry a poor man," he ventured to say.
"Wouldn't I? That would depend very much upon circumstances," she rejoined, secure in the assurance that her secret was now double-locked in a dungeon of Brockway's own building. "If it were the right thing to do I shouldn't hesitate, though in that case I should go to him as destitute as the beggar maid did to King Cophetua."
Brockway's heart gave a great bound and then seemed to forget its office.
"How is that? I—I don't understand," he stammered.
Gertrude gazed across at the shining mountain and took courage from its calm passivity.
"I will tell you, because I promised to," she said. "I, too, have money in my own right, but it is only in trust, and it will be taken from me if I do not marry in accordance with the provisions of my granduncle's will. So you see, unless I accept my—the person named in the will, I shall be as dowerless as any proud poor man could ask."
"But you will accept your cousin," said Brockway, quickly putting Fleetwell's name into the hesitant little pause.
She looked steadfastly at the great peak and shook her head.
"I shall not," she answered, and her voice was so low that Brockway saw rather than heard the denial.
"Why?" he demanded.
She turned to him with sudden reproach in her eyes. "You press me too hardly, but I suppose I have given you the right. The reason is because I—I don't think enough of him in the right way."
"Tell me one other thing, if you can—if you will. Do you love someone else?" His voice was steadier now, and his eyes held her so that she could not turn back to the shining mountain, as she wanted to. None the less, she answered him truthfully, as she had promised.
"I do."
"Is he a poor man?"
"He says he is."
"How poor?"
"As poor as you said you were a moment ago."
"And you will give up all that you have had—all that you could keep—and go out into the world with him to take up life at its beginnings?"
"If he asks me to. But he will not ask me; he is too proud."
"How do you know?"
His gaze wavered for an instant, and she turned away quickly. "Because he has told me so."
Brockway rose rather unsteadily and went to the rivulet to get a drink. The sweetly maddening truth was beginning to beat its way into his brain, and he stood dazed for a moment before he remembered that he had brought no drinking-cup. Then he knelt by the stream, and, turning his silk travelling-cap inside out, filled it to the brim with the clear, cold water. His hands trembled a little, but he made shift to carry it to her without spilling much.
"It is a type of all that I have to offer you, besides myself—not even so much as a cup to drink out of," he said, and his voice was steadier than his hands. "Will you let me be your cup-bearer—always?"
She was moved to smile at the touch of old-world chivalry, but she fell in with his mood and put his hands away gently.
"No—after you; it is I who should serve." And when he had touched his lips to the water, she drank deeply and thanked him.
Brockway thrust the dripping cap absently into his pocket, and stood looking down on her like a man in a maze; stood so long that she glanced up with a quizzical little smile and said, "Are you sorry?"
He came to himself with a start and sat down on the tree-trunk beside her. "Sorry? You know better than that. But I do believe I'm a bit idiotic with happiness. Are you quite sure you know what you have done?"
"Quite. I think I made up my mind last night to do it—if you should ask me. It was after our ride on the engine; after my father had let me see what was in his mind."
"Ah, yes—your father. He will be very angry, won't he?"
"Yes"—reluctantly.
"But you will not let him make you recant?"
She laughed joyously. "You think you are in love with me, and yet that shows how little you really know of me, or of the family characteristics. We have plenty of unlovelinesses, but fickleness isn't one of them."
"Forgive me," he said, humbly; "but it seems to me there is so little to hold you, and so much to turn you aside. I——"
A series of shrill shrieks from the locomotive in the valley below interrupted him, and he rose reluctantly. "They're calling us in; we'll have to go."
She took his arm and they ran down the steep declivity, across the small plateau, and so on to the bottom of the railway cutting. Just before they reached the train, Brockway asked if he should tell the Burtons.
"As you please," she replied. "I shall tell my father and Cousin Jeannette as soon as we get back."
They found the passengers all aboard and the train waiting for them, and Mrs. Burton scolded them roundly for their misdeeds.
"We had a mind to go off and leave you," she said; "it would have served you right for running away. Where ever have you been?"
"Up on the hill, taking in the scenery," Brockway replied; and Gertrude abetted him with an enthusiastic description of Gray's Peak as seen from the plateau—a description which ran on without a break until the train paused at Silver Plume, where the Tadmorians debarked to burrow in a silver mine. Burton burrowed with them, as a matter of course, but his wife declined to go.
"I shall stay right here and keep an eye on these truants," she declared, with great severity. And Brockway and Gertrude exchanged comforting glances—as who should say, "What matters it now?"—and clasped hands under cover of the stir of debarkation. And Mrs. Burton saw all this without seeming to, and rejoiced gleefully at the bottom of her match-making heart.
When the Tadmorians had inspected the mine, and had come back muddy and besprinkled with water and besmirched with candle-drippings, the train went on its way down the canyon. Having done what he might toward pumping the well of tourist curiosity dry on the outward journey, Burton was given a little rest during the afternoon; and the quartette sat together in the coach and talked commonplace inanities when they talked at all. And the burden of even this desultory conversation fell mainly upon the general agent and his wife. The two young people were tranquilly happy, quite content to be going or staying, or what not, so long as they could be together.
At Golden, Brockway ran out and secured a copy of the President's telegram as it stood when written; and when opportunity offered, he showed it to Gertrude.
"It was purposely garbled by a friend of mine," he confessed, shamelessly; "but how much or how little I didn't know till now. I have no excuse to offer but the one you know. I thought it was my last chance to ever spend a day with you, and I would have done a much worse thing rather than lose it. Can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you for daring to make me happy? I should be something more or less than a woman if I didn't. But my father won't."
"No, I suppose not. But you must not try to shield me. When you tell him, let it be clearly understood that I alone am to blame. Is there any probability that he has carried out his threat of leaving you behind?"
"Not the least," she replied, confidently; "it was only what you of the West would call a—a little bluff, I think."
"You still think it will be better for you to tell him first? that I'd better not go to him at once?"
"I do; but you may speak to him afterward, if you think best."
"It must be this evening. When shall I come?"
"Any time after dinner. If you will watch the window of my stateroom, I'll let you know when you can find him alone."
The day was going out in a dusty twilight, and they were again standing on the rear platform of the second observation-car.
When the train clattered in over the switches and stopped on the outer track of the Denver station platform, this last car was screened by the dimly lighted hulk of the Tadmor switched in to receive its lading. Brockway ran down the steps and swung Gertrude lightly to the platform; after which he put his arms about her and kissed her passionately.
"God knows when the next time will be," he said, with a sudden foreboding of evil; and then he took her arm and led her swiftly across to the private car, leaving the Burtons to go whither they would.
The waiter was laying the plates for dinner when Gertrude came out of her stateroom, and Fleetwell rose and placed a chair for her where they would be out of earshot of the others.
"Had a comfortably good time to-day?" he inquired, stretching himself lazily on the lounge at her side.
"Yes. What have you been doing?"
"'Socializing,' as Priscilla says; cantering about all over Denver, looking up people we shouldn't nod to at home. Where are your friends?"
"The Burtons? I think they went to a hotel. They are not going on till to-morrow night."
"I wonder what became of the passenger agent; I haven't seen him since morning," said the collegian, with his eyes lying in wait to pounce upon her secret.
"He was with us," she replied, calmly, and Fleetwell sat up immediately.
"Oughtn't I to be jealous?" he demanded.
"I don't know why you should be?"
"I fancy the others would say I ought to be."
"Why?"
"For obvious reasons; aren't we supposed to be as good as engaged?"
"I don't know about the supposition; but we are not engaged."
"No; and your father says it's my fault. Will you set the day?"
Her smile was sweet and ineffable. "What an enthusiastic wooer you are, Cousin Chester. Couldn't you rake up the embers and fan them into a tiny bit of a blaze? just for form's sake, you know."
"That's nonsense," he answered, placidly. "We've known each other too long for anything of that sort. But you haven't answered my question."
"About the day? That is nonsense, too. You know perfectly well there isn't going to be any day—not for us."
Fleetwell drew a long breath and ran his fingers through his hair.
"Don't let us make any mistake about this," he said, soberly. "I'm asking you in good faith to be my wife, you know."
"And I am refusing you in equally good faith. I don't love you at all—not in that way."
"You are quite sure of that?"
"Yes, surer now than ever before, though I've known it all along."
"Then you refuse me point blank?"
"I do."
He fetched another long breath and took her hand.
"That's the kindest thing you ever did for me, Gerty," he said, out of a full heart. "I—I'm ashamed to confess it, but I've been disloyal all along. It's——"
"It's Hannah Beaswicke; I knew it," she said, smiling wisely. "But don't humiliate yourself; I, too, have been 'disloyal,' as you call it."
"You?"
"Yes; I'll tell you about it some time—no, not now"—shaking her head—"dinner is ready."
It was thus that Fleetwell kept his promise to his cousin, and there had been never so much as a word about what Mr. Francis Vennor considered the main question at issue, namely, the fate of Gertrude's legacy. And when they came to the table together they were so evidently at peace that the President drew another false conclusion and wore his best King George smile throughout the entire dinner-hour.
At the conclusion of the meal, Fleetwell dodged the customary cigar with his cousin. Under the circumstances he deemed it prudent to give the chapter of accidents a clear field. Moreover, he conjectured that Gertrude had somewhat to say to her father, and would be grateful for an undisturbed half-hour; wherefore he proposed a stroll up-town to Mrs. Dunham and the Misses Beaswicke, and presently left the car with the three of them in tow.
The President was in his stateroom, refilling his cigar-case; and when he came out, Gertrude and Quatremain were alone in the large compartment.
"Where are the others?" he asked, pausing at her chair to light his cigar.
"They have gone up-town for a walk."
"H-m; and left you behind?"
"I didn't care to go." She saw that her opportunity was come, and gave the secretary a look which should have made him vanish at once. It did not, but her father cut the knot of that difficulty.
"It's a fine night; will you take a turn outside with me, while I smoke?" he said.
She acquiesced, and they went out to pace up and down the long platform. Two turns they made in silence while Gertrude sought vainly for words confessional, and at the third her father helped her without intending to.
"When is it to be?" he asked, abruptly.
She supposed he meant her marriage to Brockway, but she determined to make him speak plainly. So she said, "When is what to be?"
"Your marriage. Didn't you and Chester settle matters between you just before dinner?"
She laid fresh hold of her courage and answered, truthfully. "Yes, but not as you imagine. Chester asked me, because, I fancy, you told him to; and I refused him."
She expected nothing less than an outpouring of bitter words, but she was disappointed. Once and again they measured the length of the great platform before he spoke. Then he said, quite temperately, she thought, "So it is the passenger agent, after all, is it?"
"Yes." She said it resolutely, as one who may not be moved.
"Very good; you are your own mistress, and if you elect to be the wife of a wage-earning mechanic, I suppose it's your own affair."
There was so little heat in the innuendo that it seemed scarcely worth while to resent it; nevertheless she ventured to say: "Great-grandfather Vennor was a carpenter, and I suppose he worked for wages."
"Doubtless; but there is the better part of a century between then and now. However, I presume you have counted the cost. You lose your money, and that's the end of it—unless Chester happens to marry first."
"What difference would that make? It was I who set the conditions of the will aside."
"All the difference in the world. In this case, the law takes no cognizance of intention. If Chester marries first, it would be taken asprima facieevidence that he had prevented you from fulfilling your part of the conditions. But that is neither here nor there; Chester is not exactly the kind of man to be caught in the rebound; and I presume you wouldn't be mercenary enough to wait for anything so indefinite as his marriage, anyway."
"No."
"Then you lose your money." He could not forbear the repetition.
"I know it."
"Does your—does the young man know it?"
"Yes; otherwise he would not have spoken."
"No?" There was the mildest suggestion of incredulity in the upward inflection. "Since you have made your decision, it is as well you should think so. You are quite willing to begin at the bottom with him, are you?"
"I am."
"Because I meant what I said last night. You have made your bed, and you will have to lie on it; you will get nothing from me."
"We ask nothing but—but your good will." Gertrude was as undemonstrative as the daughter of Francis Vennor had a right to be, but his coldness went near to breaking down her fortitude.
"My good will!" He turned upon her almost fiercely. "You have no right to expect it. What has come over you in the last twenty-four hours that you should override the traditions and training of your whole life? Has this fellow but to crook his finger at you to make you turn your back upon everything that is decent and respectable?"
"Don't," she said, with a little sob in her voice; "I can't listen if you abuse him. I love him; do you understand what that means?"
"No, I don't; you are daft, crazy, hypnotized." The gathering throng was beginning to make privacy impossible on the platform, and he led her back to the car. "You'll do as you please in the end, I suppose, but not here or now." He handed her up the steps of the private car and turned to go away.
"Papa—one word," she pleaded. "Won't you see Mr. Brockway to-night?"
"No; and if I do, it will be the worse for him." And when she had entered the car, he went away quickly and climbed the stairs to the train-despatcher's office on the second floor of the Union Depot.
Meanwhile, Brockway had eaten his supper and posted himself where he could watch what he supposed to be the window of Gertrude's stateroom for the promised signal. He saw the car empty itself, first of Fleetwell and the ladies, and then of the President and his daughter, and while he was waiting for the latter to return, Fleetwell came back, breathless.
"By Jove, Mr. Brockway, this is great luck!" he exclaimed. "You know Denver pretty well, don't you?"
"Fairly well. I knew it better when I lived here."
"Do you happen to know this gentleman?" handing Brockway a card with a name written across it.
"Yes; very well, indeed."
"Then I wish you'd come and help me find him. I've been out in a cab once, and the driver got lost. Will you do it?"
"With pleasure, if you'll get me back here quick. I have an engagement that can't be put off."
They ran out through the building and took a carriage. "Just get me to the house," said the collegian, "and you can come straight away back in the cab," but beyond this he offered no explanations, and Brockway gave the order to the driver.
When they reached the house in question, Fleetwell rang the bell, and the answer from within seemed to be satisfactory. "All right," he called back from the doorway; and a few minutes later Brockway was again on the station platform, watching the non-committal windows of the private car.
It was while the passenger agent was up-town with Fleetwell that President Vennor went to the despatcher's room. The result of his visit may be told in the words of a terse order which presently clicked through the sounder in the yardmaster's office.
"J. H. M.,"Denver Yard."Send out Car Naught-fifty, President Vennor and party, on Number 103, ten-five this P.M."A. F. V."
"J. H. M.,
"Denver Yard.
"Send out Car Naught-fifty, President Vennor and party, on Number 103, ten-five this P.M.
"A. F. V."
Of this Brockway knew nothing, and he haunted the vicinity of the spur-track with great patience for the better part of two hours. At nine-forty-five, Fleetwell and the ladies returned. They were all laughing and chatting gayly, and when they entered the car, Brockway gave up his vigil. It was too late to hope for a private interview with Mr. Vennor, and he concluded to go over to the Tadmor to see if his people were settled for the night.
Passing the telegraph office, he asked if there were any messages. There was one; the much requested extension of the gadfly's ticket; and thrusting it into his pocket, the passenger agent hurried across to the special sleeper.
Two minutes afterward, a switching-engine ran around on the spur-track, bumped gently against the Naught-fifty, and presently backed out into the yard with the private car in tow.
When Brockway boarded the Tadmor, most of the thirty-odd had gone to bed; but a committee of three was waiting in the smoking-room on the chance that the passenger agent would put in an appearance before the departure of the night train for the west. The little gentleman in the grass-cloth duster and velvet skull-cap was chairman of this committee, and he stated its object.
"We've been trying to make you more trouble, Mr. Brockway," he said, pleasantly. "Before the others went to bed, we discussed the advisability of leaving Denver to-night, instead of in the morning. It would give us an extra day in Salt Lake City, and that is what most of us would like. Can it be done?"
Brockway glanced at his watch and answered promptly. "It'll take sharp work; the train leaves in ten minutes. I'll try it, but if I make it, I can't go with you. My hand-baggage is at the hotel, and there's no time to send for it."
Ordinarily, the amendment would have killed the original proposition; but Mr. Somers saw that in Brockway's eyes which made him hasten to forestall argument.
"I was afraid of that," he said; "but it can't be helped. Of course, we'd like to have you with us, but I believe the extra day is of greater importance."
Brockway made a dumb show expressive of his gratitude. "All right; then I'll bid you all good-by, and get you out to-night, if I can."
"But I ah—protest!" came with shrill emphasis from the vestibule, and the night-capped head of the gadfly was thrust around the door-jamb. "I ah—stipulated——"
Brockway snatched the ticket-extending telegram from his pocket, thrust it into Mr. Somers's hand, and fled without another word. One minute later he was pleading eloquently with the train-despatcher.
"Oh, say, Fred, let up!" protested the man of orders. "It's too late, I tell you. The train'll pull out in two minutes, and I couldn't raise the yard in that time."
But the passenger agent would not be denied. He carried his point, as he usually did, and was shortly racing out across the platform, clothed with authority to hold the train until the Tadmor could be coupled thereto. Graffo, the conductor, was found just as he was about to give the signal, but he waited while the switching-engine whipped the Tadmor around and coupled it to the rear of the train, grumbling meanwhile, as was his time-honored prerogative.
"Like to know how the blazes I'm going to make time to-night, with them two extras hooked on at the last minute!" he growled; but Brockway corrected him.
"There's only one," he began; and when Graffo would have contradicted him, two belated passengers came in sight, hurrying across the platform to catch the waiting train. Brockway considerately ran back to help them aboard. It was the general agent and his wife; and Mrs. Burton made breathless explanations.
"Changed our minds at the last minute," she gasped. "John was afraid the President might not find him with his nose in his desk when he gets there." Then, with truly feminine irrelevance: "I've been dying to get a chance to ask you how you made out—to-day—with Gertrude; quick—the train's going!"
Brockway grinned. "You're the best chaperon in the world, Mrs. Burton—after the fact."
"Oh, I'msoglad. Can't you come along and visit with us in Salt Lake?"
"Not for a king's ransom," retorted Brockway, laughing. "You may be very sure I sha'n't leave Denver while the Naught-fifty stays over there on——" He turned to point out the President's car and went speechless in the midst of his declaration at sight of the empty spur-track. The glare of the masthead arc-lights left no room for uncertainty. The private car was gone.
"Why, Fred! what is the matter?" queried Mrs. Burton anxiously from the step of the sleeping-car; but at that moment Graffo swung his lantern and the train began to move.
Brockway stood staring across at the empty spur in witless amazement, but he sprang back out of the way when the step of the car next to the regular sleeper brushed him in passing. The touch broke the spell. As he started back, the sheen of the nearest electric lamp fell fairly upon the oval medallion on the side of the moving car, and he saw the gilt figures "050" flash for a half-second before his eyes.
In a twinkling he knew what had been done, and what he should do. When the Tadmor came up, he caught the hand-rail and boarded the train without so much as a thought for his belongings left behind at the up-town hotel. The Tadmor's smoking-room was deserted, and he went in to burn a reflective cigar, and to ponder over the probable outcome of this latest proof of the President's resentment.
Having failed to get speech with Gertrude, he could only guess at the result of her interview with her father, but the sudden change in the itinerary spoke for itself, and thus far the guess was twin brother to the truth. But two hours had intervened between Mr. Vennor's hasty decision and the departure of Train Number 103, and many things may befall in two hours.
When the President went back to the Naught-fifty after his visit to the despatcher, he meant to tell Gertrude at once what he had done, and the reason therefore; but she had retreated to her stateroom, and in reply to his tap at the door had begged to be excused. After that, there was ample time for reflection, and the President walked the floor of the central compartment, smoking many cigars, and dividing the time impartially between wondering what had become of the other members of the party, and speculating as to the probable effect upon Gertrude's hallucination of the sudden and unannounced flitting.
Almost at the last moment, when he had begun to fear they had gone to the theatre, Mrs. Dunham and the young people returned, full to the lips with suppressed excitement; and in the midst of the bustle of departure the two young women made a descent upon Gertrude's room, while Mrs. Dunham took the President aside. What passed between them, Quatremain, who was pretending to be asleep in the nearest chair, could not overhear; but that Mrs. Dunham's news was startling and not altogether unpleasant was plainly evident to the secretary.
By this time the private car had been switched to its place in the train, and when the steady rumbling of the wheels betokened the beginning of the westward journey, Gertrude appeared with the two young women, and there was a dramatic little scene in the central compartment, through which the secretary did not even pretend to sleep. The President's daughter demanded to know where they were going, and why she had not been told, ending by throwing herself into Mrs. Dunham's arms and crying as if her heart would break. And, for the first time in Quatremain's knowledge of him, the President had nothing to say, while Fleetwell spoke his mind freely, though in terms unintelligible to the secretary, and Mrs. Dunham bore the weeping young woman away to the privacy of her own stateroom. After which, Mr. Vennor, deserted of all of them, lighted another cigar and betook himself to the rear vestibule, to what meditative end Quatremain could only guess.
The train was well out of Denver and speeding swiftly through the night on its flight over the swelling plain. The President stood at the rear door of his car, gazing abstractedly at the bobbing and swaying front end of the sleeper which had been coupled to the Naught-fifty at the moment of departure. After a time the train paused at a station, and when it moved on again the light from the operator's bay-window flashed upon the name over the door of the following car. The President saw it and started back with an ejaculation which would have sounded very like an oath, had there been any one to hear it. Then he came close to the glass-panelled door and scowled out at the Tadmor as if it were a thing alive and perversely and personally responsible for this latest interference with his plans.
He was fond of boasting that he had no creed, but, in his way, Francis Vennor was a better fatalist than many who assume the name. When the grim humor of the relentless pursuit began to appeal to him, the wrathful scowl relaxed by degrees and gave place to the metallic smile. It could scarcely be prearrangement this time, he decided; it was fate and no less; and having admitted so much, he crossed the platforms and let himself into the ante-room of the Tadmor.
Brockway was still sitting in the smoking-room, and he was so taken aback that he returned the President's nod of recognition no less stiffly than it was given. Whereupon Mr. Vennor entered the compartment, gathered up his coat-tails, and sat down beside the passenger agent to finish his cigar.
Now Brockway inferred, naturally, that Gertrude's father had come to have it out with him, and for the first five minutes he waited nervously for the President to begin. Then it occurred to him that possibly Mr. Vennor had come to accord him the interview which Gertrude had promised to procure for him; and he spent five other minutes of tongue-tied embarrassment trying to pull himself together sufficiently to state his case with becoming clarity and frankness. The upshot of all this was that they sat smoking solemnly and in phlegmatic silence for upwards of a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time the President rose and tossed his cigar-butt out of the window.
"Going on through with your people, are you?" he said, steadying himself by the door-jamb.
"Yes; as far as Salt Lake," Brockway replied, wondering if he ought to apologize for the intention.
"H-m; changed your plans rather suddenly, didn't you?"
"The party changed them; I wasn't notified till ten minutes before train-time."
"No? I suppose you didn't know we were going on to-night, either, did you? or did the despatcher tell you?"
"No one told me. I knew nothing of it till I saw the Naught-fifty in the train."
"And that was?——"
"Just at the last moment—after the train had started, in fact."
"Ah. Then I am to understand that our movements have nothing to do with your being here now?"
Brockway had begun by being studiously deferential and placable, but the questions were growing rather personal.
"You are to understand nothing of the sort," he replied. "On the contrary, I am here solely because you saw fit to change your itinerary."
President Vennor was so wholly unused to anything like a retort from a junior and an inferior that he sat down in the opposite seat and felt mechanically in his pockets for a cigar. Brockway promptly capped the climax of audacity by offering one of his own, and the President took it absently.
"It is scarcely worth your while to be disrespectful, Mr. Brockway," he said, when the cigar was alight.
"I don't mean to be."
"But you intercepted my telegram this morning, and sent me a most impertinent reply."
"I did; and a little while before that, you had tried to knock me down."
"So I did, but the provocation was very considerable; you must admit that."
"Cheerfully," said Brockway, who was coming to his own in the matter of self-possession with gratifying rapidity. "But I take no shame for the telegram. As I told Miss Gertrude, I would have done a much worse thing to compass the same end."
The President frowned and coughed dryly. "The incentive was doubtless very strong, but I am told that you have since been made aware of the facts in the case—relative to my daughter's forfeiture of her patrimony, I mean."
"The 'incentive,' as you call it, was the only obstacle. When I learned that it did not exist, I asked your daughter to be my wife."
"Knowing that my consent would be withheld?"
"Taking that for granted—yes."
"Very good; your frankness is commendable. Before we go any farther, let me ask one question. Would anything I could give you induce you to go about your business—to disappear, so to speak?"
"Yes."
"Name it," said the President, with ill-concealed satisfaction.
"Your daughter's hand in marriage."
"Ah;"—he lost his hold upon the hopeful alternative and made no sign—"nothing less?"
"Nothing less."
"Very good again; then we may go on to other matters. How do you expect to support a wife whose allowance of pin-money has probably exceeded your entire income?"
"As many a better man has done before me, when the woman of his choice was willing to put love before luxury," quoth Brockway, with more philosophy than he could properly lay claim to.
"H-m; love in a cottage, and all that, I suppose. It's very romantic, but you'll pardon me if I confess I'm not able to take any such philosophical view of the matter."
"Oh, certainly; I didn't suppose you would be. But if you don't like it, the remedy is in your own hands," said Brockway, with great composure.
"Ah; yesterday you told me I was mistaken in my man; this time it is you who are mistaken. Gertrude will get nothing from me."
Brockway met the cool stare of the calculating eyes without flinching, and refused to be angry.
"You know very well I didn't mean that," he said, calmly. "I wouldn't touch a penny of your money under any circumstances that I can imagine just now."
"Then what do you mean?" demanded the President.
Brockway thought he might as well die fighting, so he shrugged his shoulders and made shift to look indifferent and unconcerned.
"I'm well enough satisfied with my present income and prospects, and Gertrude is quite willing to share them with me; but if you think I'm not earning enough money, why, you are the President of a very considerable railway company, and I'll cheerfully attack anything you see fit to give me from the general passenger agency down."
"Ha!" said the President, and for once in a way he acknowledged himself fairly outdone in cold-blooded assurance; "you have the courage of your convictions to say that to me."
"Not at all," replied Brockway, riding at a gallop along the newly discovered road to the President's favor; "I merely suggest it to help you out. I'm very well contented where I am."
"Oh, you are. And yet you would consent to take service under me, after what has passed between us? I say you have courage; I could break you in a year."
"Possibly; but you wouldn't, you know."
The President rose and held out his hand with a smile which no man might analyze.
"You refuse to be bullied, don't you? and you say you would attack anything. I believe you would, and I like that; you shall be given the opportunity, and under a harder master than you have ever had. You may even find yourself required to make bricks without straw. Come, now, hadn't you better retract and go about your business?"
"Never a word; and where Gertrude goes, I go," said Brockway, taking the proffered hand with what show of indifference he could command.
"Very well, if you will have it so. If you are of the same mind in the morning, perhaps you'd better join us at breakfast and we can talk it over. Will you come?"
"Yes, if you will tell the other members of your party why I am there."
The President smiled again, sardonically this time.
"I think the occasion for that has gone by," he said. "Good-night."
When the outer door closed behind his visitor, Brockway collapsed as was his undoubted privilege. Then he revived under the stimulus of an overwaxing and masterful desire to see Gertrude again before he slept—to share the good news with her before the burden of it should crush him. And he was considering how it might be brought about when the engineer blew the whistle for Bending Bow.
Bending Bow is but an insignificant side-track on the mountain-buttressed plain some thirty miles from Denver; and I would for the sake of the two young persons whose romance this is, that it might have been a meeting-point with a delayed train.
When the first of the switch-lights flashed past the windows of the Tadmor, Brockway went out and stood on the step ready to drop off when the speed should slacken sufficiently to permit it. While hanging from the hand-rail he glanced ahead and saw that which made his heart glad. The signal-lamp at the station turned a crimson eye toward the train, and that meant orders, and a few more seconds of precious time.
At the first shrill sigh of the air-brakes, he sprang off and ran beside the private car, trying to peer into the darkened windows, and taking all sorts of risks considering the hazard he ran of lighting upon the wrong one.
But good fortune was with him. Before the smoking wheels had quite ceased grinding fire out of the brake-shoes, he came to a window with a tiny corner of a handkerchief fluttering beneath it. It was Gertrude's signal, and he understood then that he had been keeping tryst on the wrong side of the car as it stood on the spur-track in Denver. The window was closed and curtained like the others, but it went up noiselessly when he tapped on the glass.
Now it was pitchy dark, both within and without, but love has sharpened senses and eyes which no night has ever yet been black enough to befool. "Frederick!" said a soft voice from within, and there was joyful surprise in the single word. Then a hand came out to him, and he possessed himself of it as one who will keep that which is his.
"God bless you," he whispered; "I hardly dared hope to find you up."
"I wasn't up," said the tender voice, with a touch of sweet shyness in it; "but I couldn't go to sleep for thinking how disappointed you must be. How did you find out we were going?"
"By the merest chance; but it's all right now—your father has just been in to see me."
"Has he? Oh, I hope you didn't quarrel!"
"Not at all," said Brockway, reassuringly. "We sat together and smoked like two Indians at a pow-wow, and neither of us said a word for nearly half an hour. After that, he got up to go away, and then he thought better of it and sat down again, and we had it out about the telegrams and other things. That cleared the air a bit, and before he left, he accepted the situation without saying so in so many words, and promised to graft me on the C. & U. in some place where I can earn more money. Don't cry; it's too good to be true, but the fact remains."
"I'm not crying, but I'm glad enough to do a much more foolish thing. You won't let my money make any difference now, will you?"
"Your money isn't in it, and I think I made your father understand that I'd never have spoken if I hadn't known you were going to lose it."
"But I—I haven't lost it. Didn't he tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"About Cousin Chester and Hannah Beaswicke; they were married this evening. I don't understand the legal part of it, but papa says that saves my money. You won't let it make any difference?"
Brockway gripped the small hand as if he were afraid it might escape him after all, and tried to flog himself around to the new point of view. It was a breath-taking process, but he compassed it more quickly since there was no time for the nice weighing of scruples. Moreover, it was too late to give poverty-pride a second hearing. So he said:
"I can't let it make a difference now, but I shall always be glad that I asked you when we both believed you were going to lose it. And I ought to have guessed about your cousin's marriage, but I didn't—I helped him find the County Clerk, and wondered why he was so anxious about it. I'm glad you didn't have to break his heart."
She laughed happily. "There was no question of hearts between us; he knew it, and I knew it; and when he spoke to me to-night, we settled it definitely. Are you glad or sorry? about the money, I mean."
"Both, I think; glad for your sake, though."
"I'll go and live in the five-roomed cottage with you, if you like, and we'll forget all about it."
"I believe you'd do it"—Brockway glanced up, and, seeing the red signal still displayed, blessed the tardy operator who was doubtless bungling the train-order—"but I shan't insist." Then with a touch of graver earnestness: "We are properly engaged now, aren't we?"
"I should hope so"—shyly.
He took a ring from his pocket and slipped it over the finger of the captive hand.
"It isn't every one who goes prepared," he said, with quiet humor; "it was a gift from a train-load of Grand Army people I took across last year; and I've carried it in my pocket ever since because I didn't think I had any right to wear diamonds. Will you wear it for me?"
"Always."
"Will you wear it to-morrow—before all the others? I'm coming in to breakfast, you know. Your father asked me."
"I said always."
Conductor Graffo, coming out of the telegraph office with a scrap of tissue paper in his hand: "All abo-o-ard!"
"That parts us again," said Brockway, sorrowfully. "Good-night, dear; God keep you safe"—the air-brakes sighed sympathetically, and he kissed her hand and released it—"till to-morrow." His face was at the window, and two soft arms came out of the square of darkness and went about his neck, and two lips that he could not see brushed his cheek.
"Till to-morrow," she repeated; and then the train began to move and she let him go quickly that he might run no risk of stumbling.
The engine groaned and strained, filling the air with a jarring as of nearby thunder; the steam hissed from the cylinders, and the great driving-wheels began once more to measure the rails. Brockway swung lightly up to the step of the Tadmor, and when the last switch-lamp had shot backward into the night, went to his berth to wrestle with his happiness until tardy sleep came, bringing in its train a beatific vision in which the song of the drumming wheels became the overture to a wedding march, and the mellow blasts of the whistle rang a merry peal of joy-bells.