yellow torrent roared and fled backward, and the gray cliffs on either
hand flung back the clamorous echoes, and the cool damp air of the
canyon, flushed now and then with a jet of spray, blew in at the car
windows.
For the first time since her father had suggested the trip with the
Burtons, Gertrude began to understand that it could scarcely have been
his intention to give her an uninterrupted day in the company of the
passenger agent. But in that case, why had he proposed the trip, knowing
that Brockway's party would be on the train? The answer to this query
did not tarry. She had caught the surprised exclamations of the
Tadmorians when Brockway made his appearance, and they pointed to the
supposition that his presence on the train was unexpected. And he had
been evidently embarrassed; and Mrs. Burton was curiously distrait and
unmistakably anxious to get them out of the way before her husband
should return.
These things were but straws, but they all pointed to one conclusion.
Her father knew, or thought he knew, that the passenger agent was to
stay behind in Denver, and he had deliberately sent her away for the day
to preclude the possibility of another meeting. And when he had
discovered that the little plan had miscarried, he had quite as
deliberately ordered her return.
Speaking broadly, the President's daughter was not undutiful; but she
was sufficiently like her father to be quickly resentful of coercive
measures. Wherefore, when she had cleared up the small mystery to her
own satisfaction, she hardened her heart and promised herself that
nothing short of a repetition of the peremptory order should make her
return on the forenoon train. And the shriek of the engine, whistling
for Beaver Brook, punctuated the resolve.
XIX
THE FOOLISH WIRES
When President Vennor returned to his stateroom in the private car after
the choleric little incident on the platform, he found his secretary
waiting with open note-book and a sheaf of well-sharpened pencils.
Quatremain's hands were a trifle unsteady when he began to write at the
President's dictation, but his employer did not observe it. As a matter
of fact, Mr. Francis Vennor was deep in the undercurrent of his private
thoughts--thoughts which were quite separate and apart from the unbroken
flow of words trickling out through Quatremain's pencil-point upon the
pages of the note-book. Mere business was very much a matter of habit
with the President, and the dictating of a few letters to be signed
"Francis Vennor, President," did not interfere with a coincident search
for some means of retrieving the morning's disaster.
It was a disaster, and no less. He began by calling it a mistake, but
mistakes which involve the possible loss of fortunes, small or great,
are not to be lightly spoken of. By the time he reached the end of the
fifth letter, he had run the gamut of expedients and concluded to try
the effect of a little wholesome parental authority.
"Go out and get me a Colorado Central time-card," he said to Quatremain;
and when the secretary returned with a copy of the official time-table,
Mr. Vennor traced out the schedule of the morning trains, east and west.
Number Fifty-one was not yet due at Golden, and a telegram to that
station would doubtless reach Gertrude.
"Take a message to Miss Gertrude, Harry," he began; but while he was
trying to formulate it in words which should be peremptory without being
incendiary, he thought better of it and went out to send it himself.
There was a querulous old gentleman in the telegraph office who was
making life burdensome for the operator, and it was with no little
difficulty that the President secured enough of the young man's time and
attention to serve his purpose.
"You are quite sure you can reach Golden before the train gets there,
are you?" he said, writing the number of his telegraph frank in the
corner of the blank.
"Oh, yes," replied the operator, with an upward glance at the clock;
"there's plenty of time. I'll send it right away."
"But I ah--protest!" declared the querulous gentleman, and he failed not
to do so most emphatically after the President left the office.
The operator turned a deaf ear, and sent the message to Miss Vennor; and
when, in due course of time, Brockway's answer came, he sent it out to
the private car. The President was still dictating and was in the midst
of a letter when the yellow envelope was handed him, but he stopped
short and opened the telegram. The reading of Brockway's insolent
question imposed a severe test upon Mr. Vennor's powers of self-control,
and the outcome was not wholly a victory on the side of stoicism.
"Curse his impudence!" he broke out, wrathfully; "I'll make this cost
him something before he's through with it!" and he sprang to his feet
and hurried out with the inflammatory message in his hand.
It is a trite saying that anger is an evil counsellor, and whoso
hearkens thereto will have many things to repent of. No one knew the
value of this aphorism better than Francis Vennor, but for once in a way
he allowed himself to disregard it. He knew well enough that a
delicately worded hint to Burton would bring the general agent and his
wife and Gertrude back to Denver on the next train, but wrath would not
be satisfied with such a placable expedient. On the contrary, he
resolved to communicate directly with Gertrude herself, and to rebuke
her openly, as her undutiful conduct deserved.
In the telegraph office the operator was still having trouble with the
querulous gentleman, but the President went to the desk to write his
message, shutting his ears to the shrill voice of the gadfly.
"But, sir, I must ah--protest. I distinctly heard Mr. ah--Brockway tell
you to send anything I desired, and I demand that you send this; it was
part of the ah--stipulation, sir!"
"This" was a message of five hundred-odd words to the local railway
agent in the small town where Mr. Jordan had purchased his ticket,
setting forth his grievance at length; and the operator naturally
demurred. While he was trying to persuade the pertinacious gentleman to
cut the jeremiad down to a reasonable length, the President finished his
telegram to his daughter. It was curt and incisive.
"TO MISS GERTRUDE VENNOR,
"On Train 51.
"If you do not return this forenoon we shall not wait for you.
"FRANCIS VENNOR."
The operator took it, and the President glanced at his watch.
"Can you catch that train at Beaver Brook?" he inquired.
"Yes, just about."
"Do it, then, at once. Excuse me--" to the gadfly--"this is very
important, and you have all day for your business."
The brusque interruption started the fountain of protests afresh, but
the operator turned away and sat down to his instrument. Beaver Brook
answered its call promptly, and the message to Miss Vennor clicked
swiftly through the sounder.
For a quarter of an hour or more, Brockway's friend in the Golden office
had been neglecting his work and listening intently to the irrelevant
chattering of his sounder. He heard Denver call Beaver Brook, and when
the station in the canyon answered, he promptly grounded the wire and
caught up his pen. The effect of this manoeuvre was to short-circuit
that particular wire at Golden, cutting off all stations beyond; but
this the Denver operator could not know. As a result, the President's
telegram got no farther than Golden, and Brockway's friend took it down
as it was sent. At the final word he opened the wire again in time to
hear Beaver Brook swear at the prolonged "break," and ask Denver what
was wanted.
Thereupon followed a smart quarrel in telegraphic shorthand, in which
Denver accused Beaver Brook of going to sleep over his instrument, and
Beaver Brook intimated that Denver was intoxicated. All of which gave
the obstructionist at Golden a clear minute in which to determine what
to do.
"If I only knew what Fred wants to have happen," he mused, "I might be
able to fix it up right for him. As I don't, I'll just have to make hash
of it--no, I won't, either; I'll just trim it down a bit and make it
talk backward--that's the idea! and three words dropped will do it, by
jing! Wonder if I can get the switchboard down fine enough to cut them
out? Here she comes again."
The quarrel was concluded and Denver began to repeat the message.
Brockway's friend bent over his table with his soul in his ears and his
finger-tips. Denver was impatient, and the preliminaries chattered
through the sounder as one long word. At the final letter in the
address, the Golden man's switch-key flicked to the right and then back
again; and at the tenth word in the message the movement was repeated.
"O. K.," said Beaver Brook.
"Repeat," clicked Denver.
"No time; train's here," came back from the station in the canyon; and
Brockway's friend sat back and chuckled softly.
XX
CHIEFLY SCENIC
When the train drew up to the platform at Beaver Brook, Brockway asked
Gertrude if he should go and see if there were a message for her.
"No," she said, perversely; "let it find me, if it can."
It came, a minute later, by the hand of Conductor Halsey. She read it
with a little frown of perplexity gathering between the straight brows.
"Do we live or die?" Brockway asked, crucially anxious to know what his
friend had been able to do for him.
"Why, I don't understand it at all; it's simply Greek, after the other
one. Papa says: 'Do not return on forenoon train. We shall wait for
you.'"
"Good; I am a true prophet, and our white day is assured."
"Y--yes, but I don't begin to understand how he came to change his mind
so quickly."
"Perhaps it was the moral force of my impudence," ventured Brockway.
"Don't make any such mistake as that," she said, quickly. "Papa will not
forgive or forget that, and I am sorry you did it."
"You are a bundle of inconsistencies, as you promised to be," Brockway
retorted. "But I'm not sorry, and I don't pretend to be. If I had
smothered my little inspiration and given you your telegram at Golden,
you wouldn't be enjoying this magnificent scenery now."
"No; and it is grand beyond words, isn't it? If it wasn't for the name
of it, I could rave over it like a veritable 'Cooky.' Can't we go out on
the platform?"
"Yes; but you'll get your eyes full of cinders."
"I don't care. Let's go, anyway."
They did it and, for a wonder, found the rear platform of the second
observation-car unoccupied. Gertrude wanted to sit on the step, but
Brockway objected, on the score of danger from the jutting rocks; so
they stood together, bracing themselves and clinging to the hand-rails.
"Show me the 'Old Man of the Mountain' when we come to it," she said;
"of course, there _is_ an 'Old Man of the Mountain'?"
"There is, indeed, but we passed him long ago--at least, the one that is
always pointed out to the 'Cookies' as you call them. But if you will
watch the outlines of the cliffs you can find one of your own in any
half-mile of the canyon."
"I don't want one if they are as cheap as that. I suppose you have made
them at a pinch, haven't you? when you had forgotten to point out the
real one?"
"I'm afraid I have; just as I have been obliged to invent statistics.
But that is the fault of the man with a note-book; he will have them,
you know."
"Why don't you tell him the truth?"
"Because he is too numerous in my calling; and again, because I don't
often know enough of the truth to satisfy him."
"But it is wrong to invent things," she protested, dropping her
irresponsible role to fight for the love of truth which was her Puritan
birthright.
"I agree with you; but ciceronic lying is almost a disease. It's a
paragrapher's proverb that railwaymen can't tell the truth, though I
think a good many of us try to confine ourselves to the scenic lie. That
seems to be almost necessary."
Gertrude did not reply. The bounding, swaying rear platform of a moving
train which is reeling off miles and mountain heights of a stupendous
natural panorama is not exactly the place for a dispassionate discussion
of ethical principles. It hurt her to believe that her companion did not
love truth in the abstract, and she meant to have it out with him later;
but for the moment she put duty aside and opened the door to enthusiasm.
"Just think!" she exclaimed; "yesterday the horizon was so far away that
it was actually invisible; and now you can almost reach out and touch
it. Please don't let me miss anything that I ought to see."
"Did anyone show you 'The Mule' when you were up here last year?"
"No."
"It is just around the second curve ahead. Look well up the
mountain-side for a big bowlder facing the canyon; it's a picture, not a
figure."
She followed his directions, grasping the hand-rails and leaning far out
to get a wider view. Brockway wanted to put his arm around her and hold
her, but not daring to, stood by to catch her if she should lose her
balance. Presently the great bowlder circled into view, and she got a
very satisfactory sight of the pictured mule on its face before a sudden
swerve of the train swept it out of range.
"How wonderful!" she exclaimed. "How did anyone ever get up there to
paint it?"
"It is only a 'water-painting,' as the people up here call it; a natural
discoloration on the face of the rock," he answered. "Isn't it
life-like, though?"
"Indeed, it is; it is almost incredible." Then, suddenly: "That isn't a
scenic fib, is it?"
"No. If you'll agree not to flog me with my own whip, I'll promise to
tell you the truth and nothing but the truth, all day."
"Isn't that a very large promise?"
Brockway had a fleeting glimpse into the book of prophecy and saw that
it might easily become so. None the less, he would not go back.
"Large or small, I'll keep it to the letter. But now I want to show you
something else. Stand right here beside me and watch the outlines of
those cliffs on the right; just the outline against the sky, I mean.
Follow it steadily and tell me what you see when I give the word."
The train darted around a sharp curve and sped away up one of the few
tangents in its tortuous path. "Now!" said Brockway, as the timbers of a
culvert roared under the trucks of the observation-car.
"It's the Sphynx!" she said, with a little tremor of awe in her voice;
"solemn, and majestic, and grander than anything I ever imagined! And I
never even heard of it before. Do people know about it?"
"Not many; and those who do are hardened by familiarity. I have seen it
a great many times, but it always gets near to me, just as it did to
you."
"I shall never forget it. Please don't show me any more wonders just
now. I shall rave like the most foolish 'Cooky' of them all if you do."
"I can't," said Brockway; "I don't know any more." A shrill whistle from
the engine cut the sentence short, and Gertrude asked if they were
coming to a station.
"Yes, it's Forks Creek, famous for its pies. Everybody eats pie at the
Forks. Will you climb down from the heights of the sublime and go and
eat pie with me?"
"Anything you say," she rejoined, laughing; and a few minutes later,
John Burton the canny was scandalized to see the President's daughter
walking up and down the narrow platform with the passenger agent, eating
her half of an apple turnover which Brockway had bought and shared with
her.
XXI
ON THE HEIGHTS
John Burton was scandalized, and he said as much to his wife when the
train was once more on its way up the canyon.
"Emily, there's going to be a fracas when we get back to-night. It's my
opinion that the President sent his daughter with us to get her out of
Fred's reach."
"Then it serves him right," said Mrs. Burton, complacently. "She is not
a child; she's old enough to know her own mind."
"That may be, but it doesn't let us out. I wish you'd go back and sit
with them awhile."
"And get myself disliked? No, thank you. I may not shine as a star in
the chaperonic firmament, but I'm a human being. Think of it; put
yourself in Fred's place, if you haven't hopelessly outlived the
possibility, and see how you'd like to be duennaed at such a time."
"It isn't a question of likes and--" but at that moment the truants
appeared to speak for themselves.
"It's chilly out there in the open car, and we came in to talk and get
warm," said Gertrude. "Did you get any pie, Mrs. Burton?"
"No; Mr. Burton wasn't as thoughtful as Fr--as Mr. Brockway."
"Mr. Brockway was twice thoughtful," laughed Gertrude, as the passenger
agent drew a pie from under his coat and proceeded to cut it into
quarters with his pocket-knife.
Burton said, "Oh, pshaw!" with deprecatory emphasis, but he accepted his
allotment and ate it with the others. Afterward, when the talk took
flight into the region of badinage, he went away and devoted himself
dutifully to the Tadmorians.
When he was gone, the trio made merry with true holiday zest. For
Gertrude, the little plunge into the stream of unconventionality was
refreshing and keenly exhilarating, and she bore her part joyously,
forgetting the day of reckoning, and seeking only to make the most of
the few hours of outlawry.
Brockway, too, drank of the cup of levity, but in his inmost parts he
stood amazed with sheer joy in the presence of the real Gertrude--of the
woman he loved divested of the mask of conventionality. He had loved her
well for what he thought she was, and had been content to set her upon a
pedestal to be worshipped from afar as the apotheosis of adorable
womanhood. But the light of this later revelation individualized her;
ideals and abstractions vanished before her living, breathing
personality, and Brockway was made to know that she could never again be
to him the mere archetype of lovable woman-kind. She was infinitely
more. She was the one woman in all the world whose life might be the
complement of his; the other half of the broken talisman; the major and
truer portion of a mystic circle of which his being was the other
segment.
All of which was doubtless very romantic and unmodern in a sensible
young man of Brockway's practical and workaday upbringing; but there are
more curious seeds lying dormant in the soil of human nature than the
analyst has ever yet classified; and ideality and romanticism are but
skin-masked in many a man whose outward presentment is merely the _abc_
of modern realism.
So Brockway beheld and rhapsodized in secret, and laughed and chatted
openly, and sank deeper and deeper in the pit of perplexity as the train
burrowed its way into the heart of the mountains. For, keeping even pace
with the gallop of love, pride rode militant. Life without Gertrude
would be but a barren waste, said one; and, better a desert and solitude
therein than an Eden envenomed by the serpent of inequality, retorted
the other. Which proves that class distinctions are buttressed from
below no less securely than they are suspended from above; and that
feudalism in the subject has become extinct in one form only to flourish
quite vigorously in another.
But these were under-thoughts. In his proper person, the passenger agent
was doing his best to keep his promise to Gertrude; to make the day a
little oasis of care-free enjoyment in the humdrum desert of
commonplace.
At Georgetown, Burton proposed the transfer of the entire party to one
of the observation-cars for the better viewing of the Loop, and the
thing was done forthwith. But at the last moment Gertrude decided to
remain in the coach, and Brockway stayed with her, as a matter of
course.
"I've seen it twice, and I don't care to hang over the edge of it," she
said. "Besides, it's very comfortable in here; don't you think so?"
"I'm not finding any fault," Brockway rejoined. "I wish we might have
the coach to ourselves for the rest of the day."
"Do you? I thought you had been enjoying yourself all along."
"So I have, in a way; but I hate and abhor a crowd--I've had to be the
nucleus of too many of them, I suppose."
"What do you call a crowd?" she inquired, laughing at the outburst of
vindictiveness.
"Three people--sometimes. Half the pleasure of this forenoon has been
slain by the knowledge that we'll have to fight for our dinners with the
mob at that wretched little _table d'hote_ at Graymont."
"Can't we escape it?"
"Not without going hungry."
"I think Mr. and Mrs. Burton are going to escape it."
"What makes you think that?"
"This," said Gertrude, pointing to a well-filled lunch-basket under the
seat.
"Praised be Allah!" Brockway exclaimed, fervently. "You can trust Burton
to look out for the small personal comforts. And he never so much as
hinted at this when I was grumbling about the dinner awhile ago. I've a
mind to punish him."
"How?"
"By confiscating the basket. We could run away by ourselves and have a
quiet little picnic dinner while they wrestle with the mob."
But Gertrude demurred. "That would be too callously villanous," she
objected. "Can't we divide with them?"
"And go away by ourselves with the spoils?"
"Yes, if you like."
"I do like. I know a place, and the way to get there. Are you good for a
climb?"
Brockway possessed himself of the basket, spread a newspaper on the
opposite seat, and began to make a very fair and equitable division of
the eatables.
"I'm good for anything," she said; then she pulled off her gloves and
helped him divide the luncheon.
When the train stopped at Graymont, Burton went forward to get the
luncheon. The coach was empty when he reached it, and the looted basket
bore witness to the designs of the two young people. The general agent
wagged his head dubiously, and when he had seen the last of the
Tadmorians securely wedged into his place at the crowded table in the
hotel dining-room, he failed not to lay the burden of gloomy prophecy
once more upon the shoulders of the small person who, as he more than
half suspected, was responsible for Brockway's presence.
By that time the subjects of the prophecy were well out of sight and
hearing in the narrow ravine in which the great canyon has its
beginnings. They walked the ties to the end of the track, and beyond
that point picked their way over the rough ground until they came to a
trail leading up the northern acclivity. Here Brockway took Gertrude's
arm and together they began the ascent.
"Don't forget what I told you", he cautioned; "you are not to look back
until I give the word."
"Should I turn into a pillar of salt if I did?" she asked.
"Possibly."
"Then I'll not do it; it would be rather awkward for both of us."
A hundred feet or more above the level of the railway track they came to
a small plateau, and in the midst of it, Brockway stopped suddenly and
spun her around with her face to the southward. No uninspired pen may
set down in unmalleable phrase a description of what she saw; nor can
any tide-gauge of language, spoken or written, measure the great wave of
emotion which swept over her, choking the flood-gates of expression.
From the moment the ascending train enters the canyon at Golden until it
pauses opposite the hotel at Graymont, the scenery is rugged and
inspiring, but it belittles itself by its very nearness. But from the
plateau where they were standing, the vista expands as if by magic. The
mighty mountain at whose foot the train pauses becomes but a foothill,
and just beyond it, in indescribable grandeur and majesty, rises the
huge, snow-clad bulk of Gray's Peak, stupendous, awe-inspiring, dazzling
the eye with its unspotted mantle of shimmering white, and slaying the
sense of proportion with its immeasurable vastness.
Gertrude caught her breath, and Brockway stood uncovered beside her,
silent and watchful. When her eyes began to fill with tears, he broke
the spell.
"Forgive me," he said, quickly; "it was almost cruel not to prepare you,
but I wanted to see if it would appeal to you as it does to me."
"It is unspeakable," she said, softly. "Shall we stop here?"
"No." He took her arm again and together they climbed higher on the
mountain-side; silently, as befitted time and place, but each with a
heartful of thoughts too large for speech.
XXII
ON THE SPUR-TRACK
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.