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 circ.u.mstances," she rejoined, secure in the a.s.surance 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 dest.i.tute 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 pa.s.sivity.
"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 pa.s.sengers 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."