A Romance in Transit

IV

THE DINNER STATION

The railway company's hotel at Moreno is a pretentious Queen Anne cockle-shell, confronted by a broad platform flowing in an unrippled tide of planking between the veranda and the track, with tributary wooden streams paralleling the rails.

Brockway knew this platform by length and by breadth; and when the "Flying Kestrel" ranged alongside he meant to project himself into the procession of dinner-seekers what time Miss Vennor should be passing the Tadmor. But l'homme propose, et la femme—

"Oh, Mr. Brockway; will you help me find my satchel? the one with the monogram, you know. I can't find it anywhere." Thus one of the unescorted ladies whose major weakness was a hopeless inability to keep in touch with her numerous belongings.

The train was already at a stand, but Brockway smothered his impatience and joined the search for the missing hand-bag, contenting himself with a glimpse of the President's daughter as she passed the windows of the Tadmor. Fleeting as it was, the glimpse fired his heart anew. The year had brought her added largesse of beauty and winsomeness. The wind was blowing free and riotous, caressing the soft brown hair under the dainty travelling hat, and twisting the modest gray gown into clinging draperies as she breasted it. Brockway gazed and worshipped afresh, and prudence and poverty-pride vanished when he observed that she was leaning upon the arm of an athletic young man, whose attitude was sufficiently lover-like to make the passenger agent abjure wisdom and curse common sense.

"That's what I get for playing the finical idiot!" he groaned. "A year ago I might have had it all my own way if I hadn't been a pride-ridden fool. Confound the money, anyway; it's enough to make a man wish it were all at the bottom of the sea!"

With which anarchistic reflection he went out to arrange for transferring the Tadmor, and, incidentally, to get his own dinner. When the first was done there was scant time for the second, and he was at the lunch counter when the President's party went back to the Naught-fifty.

"Why, they've taken on another car," said Gertrude, noticing the change.

"No," her father rejoined, shortly; "we have a passenger agent on board, and he has seen fit to put his excursionists' car in the rear."

At the word, Gertrude's thoughts went back to a certain afternoon filled with a swift rush down a precipitous canyon, with a brawling stream at the track-side, and a simple-hearted young man, knowing naught of the artificialities and much of the things that are, at her elbow.

The train of reflection paused when they reached the sitting-room of the private car, but it went on again when the President's daughter had curled herself into the depths of a great wicker sleepy-hollow to watch the unending procession of stubble-fields slipping past the car window. How artlessly devoted he had been, this earnest young private in the great business army; so different from – well, from Chester Fleetwell, for example. Chester's were the manners of a later day; a day in which the purely social distinctions of sex are much ignored. That, too, was pleasant, in its way. And yet there was something very charming in the elder fashion.

And Mr. Brockway knew his rôle and played it well – if, indeed, it were a rôle, which she very much doubted. Old school manners are not to be put on and off like a garment, nor is sincerity to be aped as a fad. Just here reflection became speculative. What had become of Mr. Brockway since their "Mormon day"? Had he gone on with his school-mistresses and ended by marrying one of them? There was something repellent in the thought of his marrying any one, but when reason demanded a reason, Gertrude's father had joined her.

"I hope we shall be able to have dinner in the car," the President said, drawing up a chair. "I stumbled upon a young mechanic when I went forward to inquire about the eating-station, and he agreed to repair the range this afternoon."

"How fortunate!"

"Yes," the President rejoined; and then he began to debate with himself as to the strict truth of the affirmative, and the conversation languished.

Meanwhile, Brockway had hastened out to the engine at the cry of "All aboard!" The 828 was sobbing for the start when he climbed to the foot-board, and the engineer, who knew him, grinned knavishly.

"Better get you some overclothes if you're goin' to ride up here," he suggested.

"I'm not going to stay. Lend me a pair of overalls, and a jumper, and a pair of pipe-tongs, and a hammer, and a few other things, will you?"

"Sure thing," said the man at the throttle. "What's up? One o' your tourists broke a side-rod?"

Brockway laughed and dropped easily into the technical figure of speech.

"No; crown-sheet's down in the Naught-fifty's cook-stove, and I'm going to jack it up."

"Good man," commented the engineer, who rejoiced in Brockway's happy lack of departmental pride. "Help yourself to anything you can find."

Brockway found a grimy suit of overclothes and took off his coat.

"Goin' to put 'em on here and go through the train in uniform?" laughed the engineer.

"Why not?" Brockway demanded. "I'm not ashamed of the blue denim yet. Wore it too long."

He donned the craftsman's uniform. The garments were a trifle short at the extremities, but they more than made up for the lack equatorially.

"How's that for a lightning change?" he shouted, trying to make himself heard above the din and clangor of the engine. "Just hang on to my coat and hat till I get back, and I'll swap with you again." And gathering up the handful of tools, he climbed back over the coal and disappeared through the door of the mail car.

V

AT THE MEETING-POINT

Brockway made his way unrecognized through the train, and found the Falstaffian cook awaiting him in the kitchen of the Naught-fifty. Five minutes later, he was hard at work on the disabled stove, quite reckless of soot and grime, and intent only upon making a workmanlike job of the repairs. The narrow compartment was none too well ventilated, and he was soon working in an atmosphere rivalling that of the hot-room in a Turkish bath. Wherefore he wrought arduously, and in due time the leaky joint was made whole.

After turning the water on and satisfying himself of the fact, Brockway crawled out from behind the range and got upon his feet with a sigh of relief. Just then the portway into the waiter's pantry filled with faces like the arch of a proscenium-box in a theatre. Brockway wheeled quickly at the sound of voices and saw the President, one young woman with eye-glasses and another without, a clean-faced young man with uncut hair, and – Miss Vennor.

"Ha!" said the President, with the King George Fourth smile and his coldest stare; "we caught you fairly in the midst of it, didn't we, Mr. Brockway? Do you still assert that we shall dine at our own table this evening?"

The effect of Mr. Vennor's dramatic little surprise was varied and not altogether as he had prefigured. As for the person most deeply concerned, no one was ever less ashamed of a craftsman's insignia than was Brockway; but when he saw that the President had permitted him to do a service for the sole purpose of making him appear ridiculous, his heart was hot in just proportion to the magnitude of the affront.

As for Gertrude, she could have wept with pity and indignation. This was the "young mechanic" her father had found and used, only to make him a laughing-stock! The light of a sudden purpose flashed in the steady gray eyes, and she spoke quickly, before Brockway could reply to her father's gibe.

"Why, Mr. Brockway! where did you come from? It really seems that you are fated to be our good angel. Have you actually got it repaired?" The winsome face disappeared from the portway, and before Brockway could open his lips she was standing beside him. "Show me what was the matter with it," she said.

He obeyed, with proper verbal circumstance, gaining a little self-possession with every added phrase. Gertrude led him on, laughing and chatting and dragging the others into the rescue until Brockway quite forgot that he was supposed to be a laughing-stock for gods and men.

"I'm very glad to meet you, I'm sure," he said, bowing gravely to the Misses Beaswicke, when Gertrude had actually gone the length of introducing him; "Mr. Fleetwell, I've heard of you – and that's probably more than you can say of me. Mr. Vennor, I think you may safely count upon having your dinner in the Naught-fifty."

"Yes, thanks to you," said Gertrude, quickly. "Have you – will your other engagements let you join us?"

Brockway was of four different minds in as many seconds. Here was a chance to defeat Mr. Vennor at his own game; and love added its word. But he could not consent to break unwelcome bread, and was about to excuse himself when the President, in answer to an imperative signal flying in Gertrude's eyes, seconded the invitation.

"Yes, come in and join us, Mr. Brockway; we shall be glad to have you, I'm sure." The stony stare which accompanied the words was anything but hospitable, but the President felt that he had done his whole duty and something over and above.

Brockway hesitated a moment, glanced at Gertrude, and accepted. Then he began to gather up the tools. Gertrude caught up her skirts and stepped into the vestibule to give him room.

"You'll not disappoint us, will you?" she said, by way of leave-taking. "You may come as early as you please. I want you to meet Cousin Jeannette."

The portway proscenium-box was empty by this time, and Brockway dropped his tools and spoke his mind.

"Miss Vennor, I know, and you know, that I ought not to come at all. It was awfully good of you to ask me, but – "

"But what?" she said, encouragingly.

"I think you must understand what I want to say and can't," he went on. "You saw that I was like to be overtaken by a fit of very foolish self-consciousness, and you were kind enough to come to my rescue. I appreciate it, but I don't want to take undue advantage of it."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she laughed. "We shall look for you between six and seven. And you'll come, because I'm going to run away now, before you have a chance to retract. Good-by – till this evening."

VI

REGARDLESS ORDERS

Ten hours' westing from the Missouri River takes a moderately fast train well into the great grazing region whose name is Length and Breadth, and whose horizon is like that of the sea. Since leaving Antelope Springs, however, the "Flying Kestrel" had been lagging a little. For this cause, the supper station was still more than an hour away when Brockway deserted his ancients and invalids and crossed the platforms to the rear door of the private car.

The admission that he dreaded the ordeal is not to be set down to his discredit. His life had been an arduous struggle, for an education and the necessities first, and for advancement afterward. In such a conflict, utility speedily becomes the watchword, and if the passenger agent were less of a workaday drudge than his fellows, he was modestly unaware of the fact.

In the course of the afternoon all the reasons why he should manage to get himself left behind at some convenient station were given a hearing, but love finally triumphed, and half-past six o'clock found him at the door of the Naught-fifty. Fortunately for his introduction, the occupants of the sitting-room were well scattered; and Gertrude came forward at once to welcome him.

"Thank you for coming," she said, putting her hand in his with the cordiality of an old friend; "I was afraid you might forget us, after all. Let me introduce you to my cousin, Mrs. Dunham; Cousin Jeannette, this is Mr. Brockway."

Brockway bent low in the direction of an elderly lady with a motherly face; bowed to the Misses Beaswicke and to Fleetwell, and acknowledged the President's nod.

"I'm only too happy to be permitted to come," he said to Gertrude, drawing up a chair to make a group of three with the chaperon. "The social side of a business man's life is so nearly a minus quantity that your thoughtfulness takes rank as an act of Christian charity."

Gertrude laughed softly. "Tell me how a business man finds time to acquire the art of turning compliments," she said; but Mrs. Dunham came to his rescue.

"I suppose your occupation keeps you away from home a great deal, doesn't it?" she asked.

"It certainly would if I had a home," Brockway replied.

"Do you have to travel all the time?"

"Rather more than nine-tenths of it, I should say."

"How dreadfully tiresome it must become! Of course, when one is seeing things for the first time it is very interesting; but I should imagine the car-window point of view would become hackneyed in a very little while."

"It does; and it is pathetically unsatisfying if one care for anything more than a glimpse of things. I have gone up and down in my district for four years, and yet I know nothing of the country or the people outside of a narrow ribbon here and there with a railway line in the centre."

"That is a good thought," Gertrude said. "I have often boasted of having seen the West, but I believe I have only threaded it back and forth a few times."

"That is all any of us do," Brockway asserted. "Our knowledge of the people outside of the railway towns is very limited. I once made a horseback trip through the back counties of East Tennessee, and it was a revelation to me. I never understood until then the truth of the assertion that people who live within sight of a railway all have the 'railway diathesis'."

"Meaning that they lose in originality what they gain in sophistication?" said Gertrude.

"Just that. They become a part of the moving world; and as the railway civilizing process is much the same the country over, they lose their identity as sectional types."

Mrs. Dunham leaned back in her chair and began to make mental notes with queries after them. Mr. Vennor had given her to understand that they were to have a rara avis, served underdone, for dinner; and, in the kindness of her heart, she had determined to see that the "young artisan," as her cousin had called him, was not led on to his own undoing. Now, however, she began to suspect that some one had made a mistake. This young man seemed to be abundantly able to fight his own battles.

"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 balls 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-à-vis, might be depended upon to divert the passenger agent's attention. Miss Beaswicke confirmed the hope with her second spoonful of soup by asking Brockway what he thought of Tourguénief.

Now, to the passenger 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 assert itself. Having escaped the pillory in his character of artisan, the passenger 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.

"What do you think of Tourguénief, Cousin Chester?" she asked, amiably.

"A good bit less than nothing," answered the athlete, with his eyes in his plate. "What is there about him that we ought to know and don't?"

"Tell us, Priscilla," said Gertrude, passing the query along.

But the elder Miss Beaswicke refused to enlighten anyone. "Go and get his book and read it, as I did," she said.

"I sha'n't for one," Fleetwell declared. "I can't read the original, and I won't read a translation."

"Have you read him in the original, Priscilla?" Gertrude inquired, determined to push the subject so far afield that it could never get back.

"Oh, hush!" said the elder Miss Beaswicke. "What is the matter with you two. I refuse positively to be quarrelled with."

That ended the Russian divagation, and it had the effect of making the table-talk impersonal. This was precisely what Mr. Vennor desired. What he meant to do was to set a conversational pace which would show Gertrude that Brockway was hopelessly out of his element in her own social sphere.

The plan succeeded admirably. So far as the social aspect of the meal was concerned, the passenger agent might as well have been dining at the table of the Olympians. Art, literature, Daudet's latest book, and Henriette Ronner's latest group of cats, the decorative designs in the Boston Public Library, and the renaissance of Buddhism in the nineteenth century – before these topics Brockway went hopelessly dumb. And not once during the hour was Mrs. Dunham or Gertrude permitted to help him, though they both tried with charitable and praiseworthy perseverance, as thus:

Mrs. Dunham, in a desperate effort to ignore the Public Library: "I'm afraid all this doesn't interest you very much, Mr. Brockway. It's so fatally easy – "

Fleetwell, whose opinion touching a portion of the design has been contravened by Mr. Vennor: "I say, Cousin Jeannette, isn't the Sargent decoration for the staircase hall – " et sequentia, until Brockway sinks back into oblivion to come to the surface ten minutes later at a summons from the other side.

Gertrude, purposely losing the thread of Priscilla Beaswicke's remarks on the claims of theosophy to an unprejudiced hearing: "What makes you so quiet, Mr. Brockway? Tell me about your other adventures with the school-teachers – after you left Salt Lake City, you know."

Brockway, catching at the friendly straw with hope once more reviving: "Then you haven't forgotten – excuse me; Miss Beaswicke is speaking to you." And the door shuts in his face and leaves him again in outer darkness.

In the nature of things mundane, even the most leisurely dinner cannot last forever. Brockway's ordeal came to an end with the black coffee, and when he was free he would have vanished quickly if Gertrude had not detained him.

"You are not going to leave us at once, are you?" she protested.

"I – I think I'd better go back to my 'ancients and invalids,' if you'll excuse me."