A Romance in Transit Part 10

"I can never quite forgive myself for being poor, since it's going to cost me so much."

"You are too equivocal for any use. Answer my question," snapped the small inquisitor.

"How can I?" Brockway inquired, with masculine density. "Forgiveness implies an injury, and----"

"Oh, _oh_--how stupid you can be when you try! You know perfectly well what I mean."

"I'm not sure that I do," said Brockway, whose wit was easily confounded by a sharp tongue.

"Then I'll put it in words of one syllable. Do you mean to ask Miss Vennor to be your wife?"

"I couldn't, and keep my self-respect."

"Not if you knew she wanted you to?" persisted the small tormentor.

"Oh, I say--that couldn't be, you know," he protested. "I'm nothing more than a pleasant acquaintance to her, at the very most."

"But if you knew she did?"

"How could I know it?"

"We are not discussing ways and means; answer the question."

Thereat the man, tempted beyond what he could bear, abdicated in favor of the lover. "If I could be certain of that, Mrs. Burton--if I could be sure she loves me, nothing on earth should stand in the way of our happiness. Is that what you wanted me to say?"

The little lady clapped her hands enthusiastically. "I thought I could find the joint in your armor, after awhile. Now you may go; I want to be by myself and think. Good-night."

Brockway took the summary dismissal good-naturedly, and, as the train was just then slowing into a station, he ran out to drop off and catch the upcoming hand-rail of the Tadmor.

XI

AN ARRIVAL IN TRANSIT

When Gertrude bade Brockway good-night, she changed places for the moment with a naughty child on its way to face the consequences of a misbehavior, entering the private car with a childish consciousness of wrong-doing fighting for place with a rather militant determination to meet reproof with womanly indifference. Much to her relief, she found her father alone, and there was no distinguishable note of displeasure in his greeting.

"Well, Gertrude, did you enjoy your little diversion? Sit down and tell me about it. How does the cab compare with the sitting-room of a private car?"

The greeting was misleading, but she saw fit to regard it as merely the handshaking which precedes a battle royal.

"I enjoyed it much," she answered, quietly. "It was very exciting; and very interesting, too."

"Ah; I presume so. And your escort took good care of you--made you quite comfortable, I suppose."

"Yes."

Mr. Vennor leaned back in his chair and regarded her gravely through the swirls of blue smoke curling upward from his cigar. "Didn't it strike you as being rather--ah--a girlish thing for you to do? in the night, you know, and with a comparative stranger?"

Gertrude thought the battle was about to open, and began to throw up hasty fortifications. "Mr. Brockway is not a stranger; you may remember that we became quite well acquainted----"

"Pardon me," the President interrupted; "that is precisely the point at which I wished to arrive--your present estimate of this young man. I have nothing to say about your little diversion on the engine. You are old enough to settle these small questions of the proprieties for yourself. But touching this young mechanic, it might be as well for us to understand each other. Have you fully considered the probable consequences of your most singular infatuation?"

It was a ruthless question, and the hot blood of resentment set its signals flying in Gertrude's cheeks. Up to that evening, she had thought of the pa.s.senger agent only as an agreeable young man of a somewhat unfamiliar type, of whom she would like to know more; but Brockway's moment of abandonment in the cab of the 926 had planted a seed which threatened to germinate quickly in the warmth of the present discussion.

"I'm not quite sure that I understand you," she said, picking and choosing among the phrases for the least incendiary. "Would you mind telling me in so many words, just what you mean?"

"Not in the least. A year ago you met this young man in a most casual way, and--to put it rather brutally--fell in love with him. I haven't the slightest idea that he cares anything for you in your proper person, or that he would have thrust himself upon us to-day if he had known that your private fortune hangs upon the event of your marriage under certain conditions which you evidently purpose to ignore. If, after the object-lesson you had at the dinner-table this evening, you still prefer this young fortune-hunter to your cousin Chester, I presume we shall all have to submit; but you ought at least to tell us what we are to expect."

If he had spared the epithets, she could have laughed at the baseless fabric of supposition, but the contemptuous sentence pa.s.sed upon Brockway put her quickly upon his defence, and, incidentally, did more to further that young man's cause than any other happening of that eventful day.

"I suppose you have a right to say and think what you please about me,"

she said, trying vainly to be dispa.s.sionate; "but you might spare Mr.

Brockway. He didn't invite himself to dinner; and it was I who proposed the walk on the platform and the ride on the engine."

"Humph! you are nothing if not loyal. Nevertheless, I wish you might look the facts squarely in the face."

Gertrude knew there were no facts, of the kind he meant, but his persistence brought forth fruit after its kind, and she stubbornly resolved to neither affirm nor deny. Wherefore she said, a little stiffly:

"I'm quite willing to listen to anything you wish to say."

"Then I should like to ask if you have counted the cost. a.s.suming that this young man's intentions are unmercenary--and I doubt that very much--it isn't possible that there can be anything in common between you. The social world in which you move, and that to which he belongs, are as widely separated as the poles. I do not say yours is the higher plane, or his the lower--though I may have my own opinion as to that--but I do say they are vastly different; and the woman who knowingly marries out of her cla.s.s has much to answer for. Admitting that you will do no worse than this, how can you hope to find anything congenial in a man who has absolutely nothing to say for himself at an ordinary family dinner-table?"

"I'm not at all sure that Mr. Brockway hadn't anything to say for himself, though he couldn't be expected to know or care much about the things we talked of. And it occurred to me at the time that it wasn't quite kind in us to talk intellectual shop from the soup to the dessert, as we did."

The President smiled, but the cold eyes belied the outward manifestation of kindliness. "You may thank me for that, if you choose," he went on, in the same calm argumentative tone. "I wanted to point a moral, and if I didn't succeed, it wasn't the fault of the subject. But that is only the social side; a question of taste. Unfortunately, there is a more serious matter to be considered. You know the terms of your granduncle's will; that your Cousin Fleetwell's half of the estate became his unconditionally on his coming of age, and that your portion is only a trust until your marriage with your cousin?"

"I ought to know; it's been talked of enough."

"And you know that if the marriage fail by your act, you will lose this legacy?"

"Yes."

"And that it will go to certain charitable inst.i.tutions, and so be lost, not only to you, but to the family?"

"I know all about it."

"You know it, and yet you would deliberately throw yourself away on a fortune-hunting mechanic--a man whom you have known only since yesterday? It's incredible!"

"It is you who have said it--not I," she retorted; "but I'm not willing to admit that it would be all loss and no gain. There would at least be a brand-new set of sensations, and I'm very sure they wouldn't all be painful."

It was rebellion, pure and simple, and for once in his life Francis Vennor gave place to wrath--plebeian wrath, vociferous and undignified.

"Shame on you!" he cried; "you are a disgrace to the name--it's the blood of that cursed socialist on your mother's side. Sit still and listen to me--" Gertrude, knowing her own temper, was about to run away--"If you marry that infernal upstart, you'll do it at your own expense, do you hear? You sha'n't finger a penny of my money as long as I can keep you out of it. Do you understand?"

"I should be very dull if I didn't understand," she replied, preparing to make good her retreat. "If you are quite through, perhaps you will let me say that you are tilting at a windmill of your own building. So far as I know, Mr. Brockway hasn't the slightest intention of asking me to marry him; and until you took the trouble to demonstrate the possibility, I don't think it ever occurred to me. But after what you've said, I don't think I can ever consent to be married to Cousin Chester--it would be too mercenary, you know;" and with this parting shot she vanished.