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.
XXIII
THE LAND OF HEART'S DELIGHT
"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.
XXIV
THE END OF A STOP-OVER
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 as
_prima facie_ evidence 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."