A Romance in Transit Part 14

It was while Brockway was making his second circuit of the private car that Mrs. Burton looked up and encountered the calculating gaze of the President.

"Ah--good-morning, Mrs. Burton; you remember me, I see. On your way back to Utah, are you?"

"Yes--" the "sir" was on the tip of her tongue, but she managed to suppress it. "We have been to Chicago, to the pa.s.senger meeting."

"So I inferred. Do you enjoy Chicago, Mrs. Burton?"

She felt that five minutes of this would unhinge her reason, but she made shift to answer, intelligently: "Yes, in a way; but I've never been about much. Mr. Burton is always so busy when we are there."

"Precisely; always busy; that is the whole history of civilized man in two words, isn't it? But where is your good husband?"

"He is in the wash-room," she began; but at that moment Burton appeared.

"Ha!" said the President; "good-morning, Mr. Burton. You didn't expect to find me here chatting with your wife, did you?"

"Well, no, not exactly--that is--" Burton's one weakness lay in undue deference to his superior officers, and he stumbled helplessly. But his wife came promptly to the rescue.

"It's such a distinction, Mr. Vennor, that we don't know how to properly acknowledge it," she retorted, laughing, "Will you excuse me if I finish b.u.t.toning my shoe?"

"Certainly, certainly"--the President's tone was genially paternal; "I merely wanted to have a word with Mr. Burton;" and he rose and drew the general agent across to the opposite section.

"Sit down, sit down, Burton; don't stand on ceremony with me," he said, patronizingly. "I came to ask a favor of you, and positively you embarra.s.s me."

Burton sat down mechanically.

"I learned a few minutes ago through young Brockway that you were on the train," the President continued, lowering his voice, "and I understand that he wishes you to take charge of his party for the day on the trip up Clear Creek Canyon. Has he spoken to you about it?"

"Yes; he was here just now." Burton answered as he had sat down--mechanically.

"And you consented to do it, I presume?"

"Why, yes; he asked it as a personal favor, and I thought I might make a few new friends for our line. But if you don't approve----"

"Don't misunderstand me," interrupted the President, with well-feigned magnanimity; "as I said, I came to ask a favor. You met my daughter, Gertrude, when we were out last summer, I believe?"

"Yes, at Manitou." The general agent was far beyond soundings on the sea of mystery by this time.

"Well, you must know she took a great fancy to your wife, and when I heard of this arrangement, I determined to ask you to take her along with you for the day. May I count upon it?"

"Why, certainly; we shall be delighted," Burton rejoined. "Let me tell----"

But the President stopped him. He had taken time to reflect that a little secrecy might be judicious at this point; and he was shrewd enough to distrust women in any affair bordering upon the romantic. So he said:

"Suppose we make it a little surprise for both of them. Keep it to yourself, and when your train is ready to leave, I'll bring Gertrude over to you. How will that do?"

Burton was in a fair way to lose his head at being asked to share a secret with his President, and he promised readily.

"Not a word. Mrs. Burton will be delighted. I'll be on the lookout for you."

So it was arranged; and with a gracious word of leave-taking for the wife, Mr. Vennor went back to his car, rubbing his hands and smiling inscrutably. He found his daughter curled up in the great wicker chair in an otherwise unoccupied corner of the central compartment.

"Under the weather this morning, Gertrude?" he asked, wisely setting aside the constraint which might naturally be supposed to be an unpleasant consequence of their latest interview.

"Yes, a little," she replied, absently.

"I presume you haven't made any plans for the day," he went on; "I fancy you don't care to go visiting with the Beaswicke girls."

"No, indeed; I can do that at home."

"How would you like to go up to Silver Plume with Mr. Brockway's party?"

She knew well enough that her father's cold eyes had surprised the sudden flash of gladness in hers, but she was not minded to reopen the quarrel.

"Oh, that would be delightful," she said, annulling the significance of the words with the indifference of her tone; "quite as delightful as it is impossible."

"But it isn't impossible," said the President, blandly; "on the contrary, I have taken the liberty of arranging it--subject to your approval, of course. I chanced upon two old friends of ours who are going with the party, and they will take care of you and bring you back this evening."

"Friends of ours?" she queried; "who are they?"

"Ah, I promised not to tell you beforehand. Will you go?"

"Certainly, if you have arranged it," she rejoined, still speaking indifferently because she was unwilling to show him how glad she was.

For she was frankly glad. The glamour of last night's revelation was over the recollection of those other days spent with Brockway, and she was impatiently eager to put her impressions quickly to the test of repet.i.tion--to suffer loss, if need be, but by all means to make sure.

And because of this eagerness, she quite overlooked the incongruity of such a proposal coming from her father--an oversight which Mr. Vennor had shrewdly antic.i.p.ated and reckoned upon.

It was 7.30, and the train was clattering through the Denver yards, measuring the final mile of the long westward run. Gertrude rose to go and get ready.

"You needn't hurry," said her father; "the narrow-gauge train doesn't leave for half an hour. I'll come for you when it is time to go."

He watched her go down the compartment and enter her stateroom without stopping to speak to any of the others. Then he held up his finger for the secretary.

"Harry, when the train stops, I want you should get off and see where Brockway goes. You know him, and you might make an excuse to talk with him. When you have found out, come and tell me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Quatremain; and when he had kicked his pride into a proper att.i.tude of submission, he went about the errand.

XVI

THE MADDING CROWD

Twice a day, in the time whereof these things are written, the platform of the Denver Union Depot gave the incoming migrant his first true glimpse of the untrammelled West. A broad sea of planking, open to the heavens--and likewise to the world at large--was the morning and evening arena of a moving spectacle the like of which is not to be witnessed in any well-ordered railway station of the self-contained East.

Trains headed north, east, south, and west, backed across the platform and drawn apart in the midst to leave a pa.s.sageway for the crowds; other trains going and coming, with shouting yard-men for outriders to clear the tracks; huge shifting pyramids of baggage piled high on tilting trucks, dividing with the moving trains the attention of the dodging mult.i.tude; the hurrying throngs imbued for the moment with the strenuous travail-spirit of the New West; these were the persons and the properties. And the shrieking safety-valves, the clanging bells, the tinnient gong of the breakfast-room, the rumbling trucks, and the under-roar of matter in motion, were the pieces in the orchestra.

It is all very different now, I am told. They have iron railings with wicket-gates and sentinels in uniform who ask to see your ticket, and a squad of policemen to keep order, and rain-sheds over the platforms (it used not to rain in the Denver I knew), and all the other appurtenances and belongings of a well-conducted railway terminus. But the elder order of disorder obtained on the autumn morning when the "Flying Kestrel"

came to rest opposite the gap in the bisected trains filling the other tracks. Brockway was the first man out of the Tadmor, but the gadfly was a close second.