The westward journey began at the appointed hour in the evening with the
resourceful Ormsby in command; and when the outsetting, in which she had
to sustain only the part of an obedient automaton, was a fact
accomplished, Elinor settled back into the pillowed corner of her
sleeping-car section to enjoy the unwonted sensation of being the one
cared for instead of the caretaker.
She had traveled more or less with her mother and Penelope ever since her
father's death, and was well used to taking the helm. Experience and the
responsibilities had made her self-reliant, and her jesting boast that she
was a dependable young woman was the simple truth. Yet to the most modern
of girl bachelors there may come moments when the soul harks back to the
eternal-womanly, and the desire to be petted and looked after and
safe-conducted is stronger than the bachelor conventions.
Two sections away the inevitable newly married pair posed unconsciously to
point the moral for Miss Brentwood. She marked the eagerly anticipative
solicitude of the boyish groom, contrasting it now and then with Ormsby's
less obtrusive attentions. It was all very absurd and sentimental, she
thought; and yet she was not without a curious heart-stirring of envy
provoked by the self-satisfied complacency of the bride.
What had that chit of a girl done to earn her immunity from
self-defendings and the petty anxieties? Nothing, Elinor decided; at
least, nothing more purposeful than the swimmer does when he lets himself
drift with the current. None the less, the immunity was hers, undeniably,
palpably. For the first time in her life Miss Brentwood found herself
looking, with a little shudder of withdrawal and dismay, down the possible
vista--possible to every unmarried woman of twenty-four--milestoned by
unbroken years of spinsterhood and self-helpings.
Was she strong enough to walk this hedged-up path alone?--single-hearted
enough to go on holding out against her mother's urgings, against Ormsby's
masterful wooing, against her own unconquerable longing for a sure
anchorage in some safe haven of manful care and supervision; all this that
she might continue to preserve her independence and live the life which,
despite its drawbacks, was yet her own?
There were times when she doubted her resolution; and this first night of
the westward journey was one of them. She had thought at one time that she
might be able to idealize David Kent, but he had gone his way to hew out
his fortune, taking her upstirrings of his ambition in a purely literal
and selfish sense, so far as she could determine. And now there was
Brookes Ormsby. She could by no possibility idealize him. He was a fixed
fact, stubbornly asserted. Yet he was a great-hearted gentleman, unspoiled
by his millions, thoughtful always for her comfort, generous,
self-effacing. Just now, for example, when he had done all, he had seemed
to divine her wish to be alone and had betaken himself to the
smoking-compartment.
"I promised not to bore you," he had said, "and I sha'n't. Send the porter
after me if there is anything I have forgotten to do."
She took up the magazine he had left on the seat beside her and sought to
put away the disquieting thoughts. But they refused to be dismissed; and
now among them rose up another, dating back to that idealizing summer at
the foot of Old Croydon, and having its genesis in a hard saying of her
mother's.
She closed her eyes, recalling the words and the occasion of them. "You
are merely wasting time and sentiment on this young upstart of a country
lawyer, Elinor. So long as you were content to make it a summer day's
amusement, I had nothing to say; you are old enough and sensible enough to
choose your own recreations. But in justice to yourself, no less than to
him, you must let it end with our going home. You haven't money enough for
two."
Her eyes grew hot under the closed lids when she remembered. At the time
the hard saying was evoked there was money enough for two, if David Kent
would have shared it. But he had held his peace and gone away, and now
there was not enough for two.
Elinor faced her major weakness unflinchingly. She was not a slave to the
luxuries--the luxuries of the very rich. On the contrary, she had tried to
make herself believe that hardness was a part of her creed. But latterly,
she had been made to see that there was a formidable array of things which
she had been calling comforts: little luxuries which Brookes Ormsby's wife
might reckon among the simplest necessities of the daily life, but which
David Kent's wife might have to forego; nay, things which Elinor Brentwood
might presently have to forego. For she compelled herself to front the
fact of the diminished patrimony squarely. So long as the modest Western
Pacific dividends were forthcoming, they could live comfortably and
without pinching. But failing these----
"No, I'm not great enough," she confessed, with a little shiver. "I should
be utterly miserable. If I could afford to indulge in ideals it would be
different; but I can't--not when one word of mine will build a barrier so
high that all the soul-killing little skimpings can never climb over it.
And besides, I owe something to mother and Nell."
It was the final straw. When any weakness of the human heart can find a
seeming virtue to go hand in hand with it, the battle is as good as lost;
and at that moment Brookes Ormsby, placidly refilling his short pipe in
the smoking-room of the Pullman, was by no means in the hopeless case he
was sometimes tempted to fancy himself.
As may be surmised, a diligent suitor, old enough to plan thoughtfully,
and yet young enough to simulate the youthful ardor of a lover whose hair
has not begun to thin at the temples, would lose no ground in a three
days' journey and the opportunities it afforded.
In Penelope's phrase, Elinor "suffered him", enjoying her freedom from
care like a sleepy kitten; shutting the door on the past and keeping it
shut until the night when their through sleeper was coupled to the Western
Pacific Flyer at A.& T. Junction. But late that evening, when she was
rummaging in her hand-bag for a handkerchief, she came upon David Kent's
letter and read it again.
"Loring tells me you are coming West," he wrote. "I assume there is at
least one chance in three that you will pass through Gaston. If you do,
and if the hour is not altogether impossible, I should like to meet your
train. One thing among the many the past two years have denied me--the
only thing I have cared much about, I think--is the sight of your face. I
shall be very happy if you will let me look at you--just for the minute or
two the train may stop."
There was more of it; a good bit more: but it was all guarded commonplace,
opening no window in the heart of the man David Kent. Yet even in the
commonplace she found some faint interlinings of the change in him; not a
mere metamorphosis of the outward man, as a new environment might make,
but a radical change, deep and biting, like the action of a strong acid
upon a fine-grained metal.
She returned the letter to its envelope, and after looking up Gaston on
the time-table fell into a heart-stirring reverie, with unseeing eyes
fixed on the restful blackness of the night rushing rearward past the car
windows.
"He has forgotten," she said, with a little lip-curl of disappointment.
"He thinks he ought to remember, and he is trying--trying because Grantham
said something that made him think he ought to try. But it's no use. It
was only a little summer idyl, and we have both outlived it."
She was still gazing steadfastly upon the wall of outer darkness when the
porter began to make down the berths and Penelope came over to sit in the
opposite seat. A moment later the younger sister made a discovery, or
thought she did.
"Why, Elinor Brentwood!" she said. "I do believe you are crying!"
Elinor's smile was serenity undisturbed.
"What a vivid imagination you have, Nell, dear," she scoffed. Then she
changed the subject arbitrarily: "Is mother quite comfortable? Did you
have the porter put a screen in her window?--you know she always insists
she can't breathe without it."
Penelope evaded the queries and took her turn at subject-wrenching--an art
in which she excelled.
"We are on our own railroad now, aren't we?" she asked, with purposeful
lack-interest. "And--let me see--isn't Mr. Kent at some little town we
pass through?"
"It is a city," said Elinor. "And the name is Gaston."
"I remember now," Penelope rejoined. "I wonder if we shall see him?"
"It is most unlikely. He does not know we are coming, and he wouldn't be
looking for us."
Penelope's fine eyes clouded. At times Elinor's thought-processes were as
plain as print to the younger sister; at other times they were not.
"I should think the least we could do would be to let him know," she
ventured. "Does anybody know what time the train passes Gaston?"
"At seven-fifteen to-morrow evening," was the unguarded reply; and
Penelope drew her own conclusions from the ready answer and the folded
time-table in Elinor's lap.
"Well, why don't you send him a wire? I'm sure I should."
"Why should I?" said Elinor, warily.
"Oh, I don't know: any other young woman of his acquaintance would, I
fancy. I have half a mind to do it myself. _I_ like him, if you don't care
for him any more."
Thus Penelope; and a little while afterward, finding herself in the
library compartment with blanks and pen and ink convenient and nothing
better to do, she impulsively made the threat good in a ten-word message
to Kent.
"If he should happen to drop in unexpectedly it will give Ellie the shock
of her life," she mused; and the telegram was smuggled into the hands of
the porter to be sent as occasion offered.
* * * * *
Those who knew Mr. Brookes Ormsby best were wont to say that the world of
action, a world lusting avidly for resourceful men, had lost the chance of
acquiring a promising leader when he was born heir to the Ormsby millions.
Be that as it may, he made the most of such opportunities for the
exercising of his gift as came to one for whom the long purse leveled most
barriers; had been making the most of the present leaguer of a woman's
heart--a citadel whose capitulation was not to be compassed by mere
money-might, he would have said.
Up to the final day of the long westward flight all things had gone well
with him. True, Elinor had not thawed visibly, but she had been tolerant;
Penelope had amused herself at no one's expense save her own--a boon for
which Ormsby did not fail to be duly thankful; and Mrs. Brentwood had
contributed her mite by keeping hands off.
But at the dining-car luncheon on the last day's run, Penelope,
languishing at a table for two with an unresponsive Ormsby for a
vis-à-vis, made sly mention of the possible recrudescence of one David
Kent at a place called Gaston: this merely to note the effect upon an
unresponsive table-mate.
In Penelope's observings there was no effect perceptible. Ormsby said
"Ah?" and asked if she would have more of the salad. But later, in a
contemplative half-hour with his pipe in the smoking-compartment, he let
the scrap of information sink in and take root.
Hitherto Kent had been little more than a name to him; a name he had never
heard on Elinor's lips. But if love be blind in the teens and twenties, it
is more than apt to have a keen gift of insight in the thirties and
beyond. Hence, by the time Ormsby had come to the second filling of his
pipe, he had pieced together bits of half-forgotten gossip about the
Croydon summer, curious little reticences on Elinor's part, vague hints
let fall by Mrs. Brentwood; enough to enable him to chart the rock on
which his love-argosy was drifting, and to name it--David Kent.
Now to a well-knit man of the world--who happens to be a heaven-born
diplomatist into the bargain--to be forewarned is to be doubly armed. At
the end of the half-hour of studious solitude in the smoking-room, Ormsby
had pricked out his course on the chart to a boat's-length; had trimmed
his sails to the minutest starting of a sheet. A glance at his watch and
another at the time-table gave him the length of his respite. Six hours
there were; and a dining-car dinner intervened. Those six hours, and the
dinner, he decided, must win or lose the race.
Picturing for ourselves, if we may, how nine men out of ten would have
given place to panic-ardor, turning a possible victory into a hopeless
rout, let us hold aloof and mark the generalship of the tenth, who chances
to be the heaven-born.
For five of the six precious hours Ormsby merely saw to it that Elinor was
judiciously marooned. Then the dining-car was reopened and the evening
meal was announced. Waiting until a sufficient number of passengers had
gone forward to insure a crowded car, Ormsby let his party fall in with
the tail of the procession, and the inevitable happened. Single seats only
could be had, and Elinor was compelled to dine in solemn silence at a
table with three strangers.
Dinner over, there remained but twenty minutes of the respite; but the
diplomatist kept his head, going back to the sleeping-car with his charges
and dropping into the seat beside Elinor with the light of calm assurance
in his eye.
"You are quite comfortable?" he began. "Sha'n't I have the Presence in the
buffet make you a cup of tea? That in the diner didn't deserve the name."
She was regarding him with curious anger in the gray eyes, and her reply
quite ignored the kindly offer of refreshment.
"You are the pink of dragomans," she said. "Don't you want to go and
smoke?"
"To be entirely consistent, I suppose I ought to," he confessed, wondering
if his throw had failed. "Do you want me to go?"
"I have been alone all the afternoon: I can endure it a little while
longer, I presume."
Ormsby permitted himself a single heart-throb of exultation. He had
deliberately gone about to break down her poise, her only barrier of
defense, and it began to look as if he had succeeded.
"I couldn't help it, you know," he said, catching his cue swiftly. "There
are times when I'm obliged to keep away from you--times when every fiber
of me rebels against the restraints of the false position you have thrust
me into. When I'm taken that way I don't dare play with the fire."
"I wish I could know how much you mean by that," she said musingly. Deep
down in her heart she knew she was as far as ever from loving this man;
but his love, or the insistent urging of it, was like a strong current
drifting her whither she would not go.
"I mean all that an honest man can mean," he rejoined. "I have fought like
a soldier for standing-room in the place you have assigned me; I have
tried sincerely--and stupidly, you will say--to be merely your friend,
just the best friend you ever had. But it's no use. Coming or going, I
shall always be your lover."
"Please don't," she said, neither coldly nor warmly. "You are getting over
into the domain of the very young people when you say things like that."
It was an unpleasant thing to say, and he was not beyond wincing a little.
None the less, he would not be turned aside.
"You'll overlook it in me if I've pressed the thing too hard on the side
of sentiment, won't you? Apart from the fact that I feel that way, I've
been going on the supposition that you'd like it, if you could only make
up your mind to like me."
"I do like you," she admitted; "more than any one I have ever known, I
think."
The drumming wheels and a long-drawn trumpet blast from the locomotive
made a shield of sound to isolate them. The elderly banker in the opposite
section was nodding over his newspaper; and the newly married ones were
oblivious, each to all else but the other. Mrs. Brentwood was apparently
sleeping peacefully three seats away; and Penelope was invisible.
"There was a time when I should have begged hard for something more,
Elinor; but now I'm willing to take what I can get, and be thankful. Will
you give me the right to make you as happy as I can on the unemotional
basis?"
She felt herself slipping.
"If you could fully understand----"
"I understand that you don't love me, in the novelist's sense of the word,
and I am not asking more than you can give. But if you can give me the
little now, and more when I have won it--don't curl your lip at me,
please: I'm trying to put it as mildly as I can."
She was looking at him level-eyed, and he could have sworn that she was
never calmer or more self-possessed.
"I don't know why you should want my promise--or any woman's--on such
conditions," she said evenly.
"But I do," he insisted.
The lights of a town suburb were flitting past the windows, and the
monotonous song of the tires was drowned in the shrill crescendo of the
brakes. She turned from him suddenly and laid her cheek against the
grateful cool of the window-pane. But when he took her hand she did not
withdraw it.
"Is it mine, Elinor?" he whispered. "You see, I'm not asking much."
"Is it worth taking--by itself?"
"You make me very happy," he said quietly; and just then the train stopped
with a jerk, and a shuffling bustle of station-platform noises floated in
through the open deck transoms of the car.
As if the solution of continuity had been a call to arouse her, Elinor
freed her hand with a swift little wrench and sat bolt upright in her
corner.
"This station--do you know the name of it?" she asked, fighting hard for
the self-control that usually came so easily.
Ormsby consulted his watch.
"I am not quite sure. It ought to be----"
He broke off when he saw that she was no longer listening to him. There
was a stir in the forward vestibule, and the porter came in with a
hand-bag. At his heels was a man in a rough-weather box-coat; a youngish
man, clean-shaven and wind-tanned to a healthy bronze, with an eager face
and alert eyes that made an instant inventory of the car and its
complement of passengers. So much Ormsby saw. Then Penelope stood up in
her place to greet the new-comer.
"Why, Mr. Kent!" she exclaimed. "Are you really going on with us? How nice
of you!"
Elinor turned coolly upon her seat-mate, self-possession once more firmly
seated in the saddle.
"Did you know Mr. Kent was going to board the train here?" she asked
abruptly.
"Do you mean the gentleman Penelope has waylaid? I haven't the pleasure of
his acquaintance. Will you introduce us?"
V