A Romance in Transit Page 6

  VI

  REGARDLESS ORDERS

  Ten hours' westing from the Missouri River takes a moderately fast trainwell into the great grazing region whose name is Length and Breadth, andwhose horizon is like that of the sea. Since leaving Antelope Springs,however, the "Flying Kestrel" had been lagging a little. For this cause,the supper station was still more than an hour away when Brockwaydeserted his ancients and invalids and crossed the platforms to the reardoor of the private car.

  The admission that he dreaded the ordeal is not to be set down to hisdiscredit. His life had been an arduous struggle, for an education andthe necessities first, and for advancement afterward. In such aconflict, utility speedily becomes the watchword, and if the passengeragent were less of a workaday drudge than his fellows, he was modestlyunaware of the fact.

  In the course of the afternoon all the reasons why he should manage toget himself left behind at some convenient station were given a hearing,but love finally triumphed, and half-past six o'clock found him at thedoor of the Naught-fifty. Fortunately for his introduction, theoccupants of the sitting-room were well scattered; and Gertrude cameforward at once to welcome him.

  "Thank you for coming," she said, putting her hand in his with thecordiality of an old friend; "I was afraid you might forget us, afterall. Let me introduce you to my cousin, Mrs. Dunham; Cousin Jeannette,this is Mr. Brockway."

  Brockway bent low in the direction of an elderly lady with a motherlyface; bowed to the Misses Beaswicke and to Fleetwell, and acknowledgedthe President's nod.

  "I'm only too happy to be permitted to come," he said to Gertrude,drawing up a chair to make a group of three with the chaperon. "Thesocial side of a business man's life is so nearly a minus quantity thatyour thoughtfulness takes rank as an act of Christian charity."

  Gertrude laughed softly. "Tell me how a business man finds time toacquire the art of turning compliments," she said; but Mrs. Dunham cameto his rescue.

  "I suppose your occupation keeps you away from home a great deal,doesn't it?" she asked.

  "It certainly would if I had a home," Brockway replied.

  "Do you have to travel all the time?"

  "Rather more than nine-tenths of it, I should say."

  "How dreadfully tiresome it must become! Of course, when one is seeingthings for the first time it is very interesting; but I should imaginethe car-window point of view would become hackneyed in a very littlewhile."

  "It does; and it is pathetically unsatisfying if one care for anythingmore than a glimpse of things. I have gone up and down in my districtfor four years, and yet I know nothing of the country or the peopleoutside of a narrow ribbon here and there with a railway line in thecentre."

  "That is a good thought," Gertrude said. "I have often boasted of havingseen the West, but I believe I have only threaded it back and forth afew times."

  "That is all any of us do," Brockway asserted. "Our knowledge of thepeople outside of the railway towns is very limited. I once made ahorseback trip through the back counties of East Tennessee, and it was arevelation to me. I never understood until then the truth of theassertion that people who live within sight of a railway all have the'railway diathesis'."

  "Meaning that they lose in originality what they gain insophistication?" said Gertrude.

  "Just that. They become a part of the moving world; and as the railwaycivilizing process is much the same the country over, they lose theiridentity as sectional types."

  Mrs. Dunham leaned back in her chair and began to make mental notes withqueries after them. Mr. Vennor had given her to understand that theywere to have a _rara avis_, served underdone, for dinner; and, in thekindness of her heart, she had determined to see that the "youngartisan," as her cousin had called him, was not led on to his ownundoing. Now, however, she began to suspect that some one had made amistake. This young man seemed to be abundantly able to fight his ownbattles.

  "I presume you are very familiar with this part of the country--alongyour own line, Mr. Brockway," she said, when the waiter came in to laythe plates.

  "In the way that I have just indicated, yes. I know so much of its faceas you can see from this window. But my knowledge doesn't go much beyondthe visible horizon."

  "Neither does mine, but I can imagine," Gertrude said.

  "Ah, yes; but imagination isn't knowledge."

  "No; it's often better."

  "Pleasanter, you mean; I grant you that."

  "No, I meant more accurate."

  "For instance?"

  Gertrude smiled. "You are quite merciless, aren't you? But if I mustdefend myself I should say that imagination paints a composite picture,out of drawing as to details, perhaps, but typically true."

  Brockway objected. "Being unimaginative, I can't quite accept that."

  "Can't you? That is what Priscilla Beaswicke would call the disadvantageof being Occidentalized."

  "I suppose I am that," Brockway admitted cheerfully. "I can alwaysbreathe freer out here between these wide horizons; and the majesty ofthis Great Flatness appeals to me even more than that of the mountains."

  They followed his gesture. The sun was dipping to the western edge ofthe bare plain, and the air was filled with ambient gold. The tawnyearth, naked and limitless, melted so remotely into the dusty glow ofthe sky as to leave no line of demarcation. The lack of shadows and theabsence of landmarks confused the senses until the flying train seemedto stand with ungripping wheels in the midst of a slowly revolving diskof yellow flatness, through which the telegraph-poles and mile-postsdarted with sentient and uncanny swiftness.

  "I can feel its sublimity," Gertrude said, softly, answering histhought; "but its solemn unchangeableness depresses me. I love nature'smoods and tenses, and it seems flippant to mention such things in thepresence of so much fixity."

  Brockway smiled. "The prairie has its moods, too. A little later in theyear we should be running between lines of fire, and those big balls oftumbleweed would be racing ahead of the wind like small meteors. Laterstill, when the snows come, it has its savage mood, when anything withblood in its veins may not go abroad and live."

  "I suppose you have been out here in a blizzard, haven't you?" said thechaperon; but when he would have replied there was a general stir, andthe waiter announced:

  "Dinner is served."