"I presume you are very familiar with this part of the country--along your own line, Mr. Brockway," she said, when the waiter came in to lay the plates.
"In the way that I have just indicated, yes. I know so much of its face as you can see from this window. But my knowledge doesn"t go much beyond the 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 must defend 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 disadvantage of being Occidentalized."
"I suppose I am that," Brockway admitted cheerfully. "I can always breathe freer out here between these wide horizons; and the majesty of this Great Flatness appeals to me even more than that of the mountains."
They followed his gesture. The sun was dipping to the western edge of the bare plain, and the air was filled with ambient gold. The tawny earth, naked and limitless, melted so remotely into the dusty glow of the sky as to leave no line of demarcation. The lack of shadows and the absence of landmarks confused the senses until the flying train seemed to stand with ungripping wheels in the midst of a slowly revolving disk of yellow flatness, through which the telegraph-poles and mile-posts darted with sentient and uncanny swiftness.
"I can feel its sublimity," Gertrude said, softly, answering his thought; "but its solemn unchangeableness depresses me. I love nature"s moods and tenses, and it seems flippant to mention such things in the presence of so much fixity."
Brockway smiled. "The prairie has its moods, too. A little later in the year we should be running between lines of fire, and those big b.a.l.l.s of tumbleweed would be racing ahead of the wind like small meteors. Later still, when the snows come, it has its savage mood, when anything with blood in its veins may not go abroad and live."
"I suppose you have been out here in a blizzard, haven"t you?" said the chaperon; but when he would have replied there was a general stir, and the waiter announced:
"Dinner is served."
VII
A DINNER ON WHEELS
When the President"s party gathered about the table, Mrs. Dunham placed Brockway at her right, with Gertrude beside him. Mr. Vennor disapproved of the arrangement, but he hoped that Priscilla Beaswicke, who was Brockway"s _vis-a-vis_, might be depended upon to divert the pa.s.senger agent"s attention. Miss Beaswicke confirmed the hope with her second spoonful of soup by asking Brockway what he thought of Tourguenief.
Now, to the pa.s.senger agent, the great Russian novelist was as yet no more than a name, and he said so frankly and took no shame therefore.
Whereupon Mr. Vennor:
"Oh, come, Priscilla; you mustn"t begin on Mr. Brockway like that. I fancy he has had scant time to dabble in your little intellectual fads."
Gertrude looked up quickly, and the keen sense of justice began to a.s.sert itself. Having escaped the pillory in his character of artisan, the pa.s.senger agent was to be held up to ridicule in his proper person.
Not if she could help it, Gertrude promised herself; and she turned suddenly upon the collegian.
"What do you think of Tourguenief, Cousin Chester?" she asked, amiably.
"A good bit less than nothing," answered the athlete, with his eyes in his plate. "What is there about him that we ought to know and don"t?"
"Tell us, Priscilla," said Gertrude, pa.s.sing the query along.
But the elder Miss Beaswicke refused to enlighten anyone. "Go and get his book and read it, as I did," she said.
"I sha"n"t for one," Fleetwell declared. "I can"t read the original, and I won"t read a translation."
"Have you read him in the original, Priscilla?" Gertrude inquired, determined to push the subject so far afield that it could never get back.
"Oh, hush!" said the elder Miss Beaswicke. "What is the matter with you two. I refuse positively to be quarrelled with."
That ended the Russian divagation, and it had the effect of making the table-talk impersonal. This was precisely what Mr. Vennor desired. What he meant to do was to set a conversational pace which would show Gertrude that Brockway was hopelessly out of his element in her own social sphere.
The plan succeeded admirably. So far as the social aspect of the meal was concerned, the pa.s.senger agent might as well have been dining at the table of the Olympians. Art, literature, Daudet"s latest book, and Henriette Ronner"s latest group of cats, the decorative designs in the Boston Public Library, and the renaissance of Buddhism in the nineteenth century--before these topics Brockway went hopelessly dumb. And not once during the hour was Mrs. Dunham or Gertrude permitted to help him, though they both tried with charitable and praiseworthy perseverance, as thus:
_Mrs. Dunham_, in a desperate effort to ignore the Public Library: "I"m afraid all this doesn"t interest you very much, Mr. Brockway. It"s so fatally easy----"
_Fleetwell_, whose opinion touching a portion of the design has been contravened by Mr. Vennor: "I say, Cousin Jeannette, isn"t the Sargent decoration for the staircase hall--" _et sequentia_, until Brockway sinks back into oblivion to come to the surface ten minutes later at a summons from the other side.
_Gertrude_, purposely losing the thread of Priscilla Beaswicke"s remarks on the claims of theosophy to an unprejudiced hearing: "What makes you so quiet, Mr. Brockway? Tell me about your other adventures with the school-teachers--after you left Salt Lake City, you know."
_Brockway_, catching at the friendly straw with hope once more reviving: "Then you haven"t forgotten--excuse me; Miss Beaswicke is speaking to you." And the door shuts in his face and leaves him again in outer darkness.
In the nature of things mundane, even the most leisurely dinner cannot last forever. Brockway"s ordeal came to an end with the black coffee, and when he was free he would have vanished quickly if Gertrude had not detained him.
"You are not going to leave us at once, are you?" she protested.
"I--I think I"d better go back to my "ancients and invalids," if you"ll excuse me."
Gertrude was conscience-stricken, and her hospitable angel upbraided her for having given her guest an unthankful meal. Wherefore she sought to make amends.
"Don"t go just yet unless you are obliged to," she pleaded. "Sit down and tell me about the schoolma"ams. How far did you go with them?"
"I had to make the whole blessed circuit," he said, tarrying willingly enough.
"Do you often have such deliciously irresponsible people to convoy?"
"Not often; but the regular people usually make up for it in--well, in cantankerousness; that"s about the only word that will fit it." Brockway was thinking of the exacting majority in the Tadmor.
"And yet it doesn"t make you misanthropic? I should think it would. What place is this we are coming to?"
"Carvalho--the supper station."
Gertrude saw her father coming toward them; she guessed his purpose and resented it. If she chose to make kindly amends to the pa.s.senger agent for his sorry dinner, she would not be prevented.