The Brown Study Part 23

He then escorted her to a florist's and himself insisted upon pinning upon the blue serge coat a gorgeous corsage knot of deep-hued red roses and mignonette, which added to her quiet costume the one brilliant note that was needed to bring out her beauty as his artistic young eye approved.

She protested in vain. "I don't want to wear flowers--to-night, my dear boy."

"Why not? There's nothing conspicuous about that, these days. More conspicuous not to, you might say. You often do it yourself."

"I know, but--to-night!"

"He won't know what you have on. He's slightly delirious at this very minute, I have no doubt at all. When he sees you he'll go off his head.

Oh, n.o.body'll know it to look at him; you needn't be afraid of that."

"Please stop talking about it," commanded his sister. But she did not refuse to wear the red roses. No sane young woman could after having caught a glimpse of herself in the florist's mirror. Even an indifferent shopgirl stared with interest after the pair as they left the place, wondering if, after all, flowers weren't more effective on the quiet swells than on those of the dashing attire.

"We're to meet him on the train, not in the station," Julius observed, as he hurried his sister across the great concourse. "He has to make rather a close connection. So we'll be in our seats when he arrives. Or, better yet, we'll get back on the observation platform and see him when he comes out the gates. That'll give you the advantage of the first look!"

Their car, it turned out, was the end one and their seats at the rear end, as Julius had tried to arrange but had not been sure of accomplishing. Dorothy followed him through the car and out upon the platform. Here the two watched the crowds hurrying through the gates toward their own and other trains, while the minutes pa.s.sed. Julius, watch in hand, began to show signs of anxiety.

"He'd better be showing up soon," he announced as the stream of oncoming pa.s.sengers began to thin. "It's getting pretty close to--There he is though! Good work. Come on, old fellow, don't be so leisurely! By George, that's not Kirke after all! Those shoulders--I thought it certainly was.

But he'll come--oh, he'll come all right or break a leg trying!"

But he did not come. The last belated traveller dashed through the gates, the last signal was given, the train began very slowly to move.

"He's missed the connection," said Julius solemnly. "But we'll hear from him at the first stop; certainly we'll hear from him. We'll go inside the car and be prepared to answer up."

But neither at the first stop nor the second did the porter appear with a message for Mr. Broughton or for Miss Broughton, or for anybody whomsoever.

Dorothy sat quietly looking out of the window into the darkness, her cheek supported by her hand and shaded from her brother. She was perfectly cheerful and composed, but Julius guessed rightly enough that it was not a happy hour for her. She had come more than half-way to meet a man who had asked it of her, only to have him fail to appear. Of course there was an explanation--of course; but--well, it was not a happy hour.

The red roses on her breast drooped a very little; their counterparts in her cheeks paled slowly as the train flew on. An hour went by.

Some miles after stopping at a station the train slowed down again.

"Where are we?" queried Julius, peering out of the window, his hand shading his eyes. "Nowhere in particular, I should say."

The train stopped, began to move again, backing; it presently became apparent that it was taking a siding.

"That's funny for this train," said Julius, and went out on the rear platform to investigate.

In a minute or two another train appeared in the distance behind, rushed on toward them, slowed down not quite to a stop, and was instantly under way again. A minute later their own train began to move once more.

"Perhaps he's chartered a special and caught up," said Julius, returning to his sister. "Perhaps he's made so much money down in Colombia that he can afford to hire specials. That was a special, all right--big engine and one Pullman. We wouldn't be sidetracked for anything less important, I'm quite sure."

He stretched himself comfortably in his chair again with a furtive glance at his sister. He sat with his back to the car, facing her. He now saw her look down the car with an intent expression; then suddenly he saw the splendid colour surge into her face. Her eyes took fire--and Julius swung about in his chair to find out the cause. Then he sprang up, and if he did not shout his relief and joy it was because well-trained young men, even though they be not yet out of college, do not give vent to their emotions in public.

"By George!" he said under his breath. "How in time has he made it?"

But Waldron, as he came back through the car, was not looking at Julius.

Dorothy had risen and was standing by her chair, and though the newly arrived traveller shook hands with Julius as he met him in the aisle, it was only to look past him at the figure at the back of the car. The next instant his hand had grasped hers, and he was gazing as straight down into her eyes as a man may who has seen such eyes for the last nine months only in his dreams. "You came!" he said; and there were wonder and grat.i.tude and joy in his voice, so that it was not quite steady.

She nodded. "There seemed to be nothing else to do," she answered, and her smile was enchanting.

"Did you want to do anything else?"

There must certainly have been something about him which inspired honesty. Quite naturally, from the feminine point of view, Dorothy would have liked not to answer this direct and meaning question just then. But, as once before, the necessity of speaking to this man only the truth was instantly strong upon her. Deep down, evade the issue as she might by saying that she would have preferred to have him come to her, she knew that she was glad to do this thing for him, since the other had been impossible.

So she lifted her eyes for an instant and let him see her answer before she slowly shook her head, while the quick breath she could not wholly control stirred the red roses on her breast.

"Now see here, old man," said Julius Broughton, "I know the time is short and all that, and I'm going to spend this next hour in the smoking-room and let you two have a chance to talk. But before I go my natural curiosity must be satisfied or I shall burst. Am I to understand that that gilt-edged special that pa.s.sed us just now brought you to your appointment? And are you King of Colombia down there, or anything like that?"

Waldron turned, laughing. His browned cheek had a touch of a still warmer colour in it, his eyes were glowing.

"That certainly was wonderful luck," said he. "I reached the gate just as the tail-lights of this train were disappearing. As I turned away a man at my elbow asked if I minded missing it. I said I minded so much that if I could afford it I would hire a special to catch it. He said, very much as if he had been offering me a seat in his motor, that a special was to leave in a few minutes and that it would pa.s.s this train somewhere within an hour. He turned out to be the president of the road. We had a very interesting visit on the way down--or it would have been interesting if it had happened at any other tune. I was so busy keeping an eye out for sidetracked trains that I now and then lost the run of the conversation."

"If the president of the road hadn't turned up," suggested Julius, "would you mind saying what other little expedient would have occurred to you?"

"I should have wired you, begging you to give me one more chance,"

admitted Waldron. "I should have wired you anyway, if I hadn't felt that it would have spoiled my dramatic entrance at some siding. And I wanted all the auxiliaries on my side."

Julius went away into the smoking compartment forward with a sense of having had Fate for the second time take a hand in a more telling management of other people's affairs than even he, with all his love of pulling wires, could effect. He looked back as he went, to see Waldron taking Dorothy out upon the observation platform.

"It's lucky it's a mild April night," he said to himself. "I suppose it wouldn't make any difference if a northeast blizzard were on."

"Will it chill the roses?" Waldron asked with a smile as he closed the door behind them, shutting himself and Dorothy out into the cool, wet freshness of the night, where the two gleaming rails were slipping fast away into the blackness behind and only distant lights here and there betokened the existence of other human beings in a world that seemed all theirs.

"It wouldn't matter if it did," she answered.

"Wouldn't it? Can you possibly feel, as I do, that nothing in the world matters, now that we are together again?"

Again the direct question. But somehow she did not in the least mind answering; she wanted to answer. The time was so short!

With other men Dorothy Broughton had used every feminine art of evasion and withdrawal at moments of crisis, but she could not use them with this man.

She shook her head, laying one hand against her rose-red cheek, like a shy and lovely child--yet like a woman, too.

He gently took the hand away from the glowing cheek, and kept it fast in his.

"I fell desperately in love with you when I was fifteen," said Kirke Waldron. "I carried the image of you all through my boyhood and into manhood. I saw you at different times while you were growing up, although you didn't see me. I kept track of you. I thought you never could be for me. But when we met last summer I knew that if I couldn't have you I should never want anybody. And when--something happened that made you glad for just a minute to be with me, I knew I should never let you go.

Then you gave me that last look and I dared to believe that you could be made to care. Dorothy--they were pretty poor letters from a literary point of view that I've been sending you all these months, but I tried to put myself into them so that you could know just what sort of fellow I was. And I tried to make you see, without actually telling you, what you were to me. Did I succeed?"

"They were fine letters," said Dorothy Broughton. "Splendid, manly letters. I liked them very much. I--loved them!"

"Oh!" said Kirke Waldron, and became suddenly silent with joy.

After a minute he looked up at the too brilliant electric lights which flooded the platform. He glanced in at the occupants of the car, nearly all facing forward, except for one or two who were palpably asleep--negligible certainly. Then he put his head inside the door, scanning the woodwork beside it. He reached upward with one hand and in the twinkling of an eye the observation platform was in darkness.

"Oh!" breathed Dorothy in her turn. But the next thing that happened was the thing which might have been expected of a resourceful young mining engineer, trained, as he himself had said, "to action--all the time!"

THE END