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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."

"No?" There was the mildest suggestion of incredulity in the upward inflection. "Since you have made your decision, it is as well you should think so. You are quite willing to begin at the bottom with him, are you?"

"I am."

"Because I meant what I said last night. You have made your bed, and you will have to lie on it; you will get nothing from me."

"We ask nothing but – but your good will." Gertrude was as undemonstrative as the daughter of Francis Vennor had a right to be, but his coldness went near to breaking down her fortitude.

"My good will!" He turned upon her almost fiercely. "You have no right to expect it. What has come over you in the last twenty-four hours that you should override the traditions and training of your whole life? Has this fellow but to crook his finger at you to make you turn your back upon everything that is decent and respectable?"

"Don't," she said, with a little sob in her voice; "I can't listen if you abuse him. I love him; do you understand what that means?"

"No, I don't; you are daft, crazy, hypnotized." The gathering throng was beginning to make privacy impossible on the platform, and he led her back to the car. "You'll do as you please in the end, I suppose, but not here or now." He handed her up the steps of the private car and turned to go away.

"Papa – one word," she pleaded. "Won't you see Mr. Brockway to-night?"

"No; and if I do, it will be the worse for him." And when she had entered the car, he went away quickly and climbed the stairs to the train-despatcher's office on the second floor of the Union Depot.

Meanwhile, Brockway had eaten his supper and posted himself where he could watch what he supposed to be the window of Gertrude's stateroom for the promised signal. He saw the car empty itself, first of Fleetwell and the ladies, and then of the President and his daughter, and while he was waiting for the latter to return, Fleetwell came back, breathless.

"By Jove, Mr. Brockway, this is great luck!" he exclaimed. "You know Denver pretty well, don't you?"

"Fairly well. I knew it better when I lived here."

"Do you happen to know this gentleman?" handing Brockway a card with a name written across it.

"Yes; very well, indeed."

"Then I wish you'd come and help me find him. I've been out in a cab once, and the driver got lost. Will you do it?"

"With pleasure, if you'll get me back here quick. I have an engagement that can't be put off."

They ran out through the building and took a carriage. "Just get me to the house," said the collegian, "and you can come straight away back in the cab," but beyond this he offered no explanations, and Brockway gave the order to the driver.

When they reached the house in question, Fleetwell rang the bell, and the answer from within seemed to be satisfactory. "All right," he called back from the doorway; and a few minutes later Brockway was again on the station platform, watching the non-committal windows of the private car.

It was while the passenger agent was up-town with Fleetwell that President Vennor went to the despatcher's room. The result of his visit may be told in the words of a terse order which presently clicked through the sounder in the yardmaster's office.

"J. H. M.,

"Denver Yard.

"Send out Car Naught-fifty, President Vennor and party, on Number 103, ten-five this P.M.

"A. F. V."

Of this Brockway knew nothing, and he haunted the vicinity of the spur-track with great patience for the better part of two hours. At nine-forty-five, Fleetwell and the ladies returned. They were all laughing and chatting gayly, and when they entered the car, Brockway gave up his vigil. It was too late to hope for a private interview with Mr. Vennor, and he concluded to go over to the Tadmor to see if his people were settled for the night.

Passing the telegraph office, he asked if there were any messages. There was one; the much requested extension of the gadfly's ticket; and thrusting it into his pocket, the passenger agent hurried across to the special sleeper.

Two minutes afterward, a switching-engine ran around on the spur-track, bumped gently against the Naught-fifty, and presently backed out into the yard with the private car in tow.