"Mrs. Fraser came to-day. What is she? Tin-plate or coal?"
"He"s the most important banker here," her husband explained seriously.
"Oh,--well, she asked me to join the "travel-cla.s.s." They are going through the Holy Land. What do you suppose a "travel-cla.s.s" is?"...
Again it was the wife of the chief coal operator, Freke, "who wanted me to know that she always got her clothes from New York." She added gently, "I think she wished to find out if we are fit for Torso society. I did my best to give her the impression we were beneath it."...
These people, all the "society" of Torso, they met also at the country club, where they went Sundays for a game of golf, which Lane was learning.
The wife of the A. and P. superintendent could not be ignored by Torso, and so in spite of Isabelle"s efforts there was forming around her a social life. But the objective point of the day remained John,--his going and coming.
"Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her.
"They"re all busy days!"
"Tell me what you did."
"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and telegrams,--yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner.
She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanct.i.ty of business reserve in her father"s house: men disappeared in the morning to their work and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose the secrets of the office to women.
It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, activity, which he would meet competently....
"Well, what have _you_ been doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his bath, and relaxed comfortably in antic.i.p.ation of a pleasant dinner.
Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two maids, with five "Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her.
"They"re all busy days!"
"Tell me what you did."
"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and telegrams,--yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner.
She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanct.i.ty of business reserve in her father"s house: men disappeared in the morning to their work and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose the secrets of the office to women.
It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, activity, which he would meet competently....
"Well, what have _you_ been doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his bath, and relaxed comfortably in antic.i.p.ation of a pleasant dinner.
Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two maids, with five courses and at least one wine, "to get used to living properly," as she explained vaguely.
"Mrs. Adams called." She was the wife of the manager of the baking-powder works and president of the country club, a young married woman from a Western city with pretensions to social experience. "John," Isabelle added after mentioning this name, "do you think we shall have to stay here long?"
Her husband paused in eating his soup to look at her. "Why--why?"
"It"s so second-cla.s.sy," she continued; "at least the women are, mostly.
There"s only one I"ve met so far that seemed like other people one has known."
"Who is she?" Lane inquired, ignoring the large question.
"Mrs. Falkner."
"Rob Falkner"s wife? He"s engineer at the Pleasant Valley mines."
"She came from Denver."
"They say he"s a clever engineer."
"She is girlish and charming. She told me all about every one in Torso.
She"s been here two years, and she seems to know everybody."
"And she thinks Torso is second-cla.s.s?" Lane inquired.
"She would like to get away, I think. But they are poor, I suppose. Her clothes look as if she knew what to wear,--pretty. She says there are some interesting people here when you find them out.... Who is Mr. Darnell? A lawyer."
"Tom Darnell? He"s one of the local counsel for the road,--a Kentuckian, politician, talkative sort of fellow, very popular with all sorts. What did Mrs. Falkner have to say about Tom Darnell?"
"She told me all about his marriage,--how he ran away with his wife from a boarding-school in Kentucky--and was chased by her father and brothers, and they fired at him. A regular Southern scrimmage! But they got across the river and were married."
"Sounds like Darnell," Lane remarked contemptuously.
"It sounds exciting!" his wife said.
The story, as related by the vivacious Mrs. Falkner, had stirred Isabelle"s curiosity; she could not dismiss this Kentucky politician as curtly as her husband had disposed of him....
They were both wilted by the heat, and after dinner they strolled out into the garden to get more air, walking leisurely arm in arm, while Lane smoked his first, cigar. Having finished the gossip for the day, they had little to say to each other,--Isabelle wondered that it should be so little! Two months of daily companionship after the intimate weeks of their engagement had exhausted the topics for mere talk which they had in common. To-night, as Lane wished to learn the latest news from the wreck, they went into the town, crossing on their way to the office the court-house square. This was the centre of old Torso, where the distillery aristocracy still lived in high, broad-eaved houses of the same pattern as the Colonel"s city mansion.
In one of these, which needed painting and was generally neglected, the long front windows on the first story were open, revealing a group of people sitting around a supper-table.
"There"s Mrs. Falkner," Isabelle remarked; "the one at the end of the table, in white. This must be where they live."
Lane looked at the house with a mental estimate of the rent.
"Large house," he observed.
Isabelle watched the people laughing and talking about the table, which was still covered with coffee cups and gla.s.ses. A sudden desire to be there, to hear what they were saying, seized her. A dark-haired man was leaning forward and emphasizing his remarks by tapping a wine gla.s.s with along finger. That might be Tom Darnell, she thought.... The other houses about the square were dark and gloomy, most of them closed for the summer.
"There"s a good deal of money in Torso," Lane commented, glancing at a brick house with wooden pillars. "It"s a growing place,--more business coming all the time."
He looked at the town with the observant eye of the railroad officer, who sees in the prosperity of any community but one word writ large,--TRAFFIC.
And that word was blown through the soft night by the puffing locomotives in the valley below, by the pall of smoke that hung night and day over this quarter of the city, the dull glow of the c.o.ke-ovens on the distant hills.
To the man this was enough--this and his home; business and the woman he had won,--they were his two poles!
CHAPTER VI
"You see," continued Bessie Falkner, drawing up her pretty feet into the piazza cot, "it was just love at first sight. I was up there at the hotel in the mountains, trying to make up my mind whether I could marry another man, who was awfully rich--owned a mine and a ranch; but he was so dull the horses would go to sleep when we were out driving ... And then just as I concluded it was the only thing for me to do, to take him and make the best of him,--then Rob rode up to the hotel in his old tattered suit--he was building a dam or something up in the mountains--and I knew I couldn"t marry Mr. Mine-and-Ranch. That was all there was to it, my dear. The rest of the story? Why, of course he made the hotel his headquarters while he was at work on the dam; I stayed on, too, and it came along--naturally, you know."