II
THE TRIPPERS
It was on the Monday afternoon that Breckenridge Ballard made thebase-runner's dash through the station gates in the Boston terminal, andstood in the rearmost vestibule of his outgoing train to watch for thepassing of a certain familiar suburb where, at the home of thehospitable Lassleys, he had first met Miss Craigmiles.
On the Wednesday evening following, he was gathering his belongings inthe sleeper of a belated Chicago train preparatory to another dashacross platforms--this time in the echoing station at Council Bluffs--tocatch the waiting "Overland Flyer" for the run to Denver.
President Pelham's telegram, which had found him in Boston on the eve ofclosing a contract with the sugar magnates to go and build refineries inCuba, was quite brief, but it bespoke haste:
"We need a fighting man who can build railroads and dams and dig ditches in Arcadia. Salary satisfactory to you. Wire quick if you can come."
This was the wording of it; and at the evening hour of train-changing inCouncil Bluffs, Ballard was sixteen hundred miles on his way, racingdefinitely to a conference with the president of Arcadia Irrigation inDenver, with the warning telegram from Lassley no more than a vaguedisturbing under-thought.
What would lie beyond the conference he knew only in the large. As anindustrial captain in touch with the moving world of great projects, hewas familiar with the plan for the reclamation of the Arcadian desert. Adam was in process of construction, the waters of a mountain torrentwere to be impounded, a system of irrigating canals opened, and aconnecting link of railway built. Much of the work, he understood, wasalready done; and he was to take charge as chief of construction andcarry it to its conclusion.
So much President Pelham's summons made clear. But what was the mysteryhinted at in Lassley's telegram? And did it have any connection withthat phrase in President Pelham's wire: "We need a fighting man"?
These queries, not yet satisfactorily answered, were presentingthemselves afresh when Ballard followed the porter to the sectionreserved for him in the Denver sleeper. The car was well filled; andwhen he could break away from the speculative entanglement long enoughto look about him, he saw that the women passengers were numerous enoughto make it more than probable that he would be asked, later on, to giveup his lower berth to one of them.
Being masculinely selfish, and a seasoned traveller withal, he wassteeling himself to say "No" to this request what time the train wasrumbling over the great bridge spanning the Missouri. The bridge passagewas leisurely, and there was time for a determined strengthening of theselfish defenses.
But at the Omaha station there was a fresh influx of passengers for theDenver car, and to Ballard's dismay they appeared at the first hastyglance to be all women.
"O good Lord!" he ejaculated; and finding his pipe retreatedprecipitately in the direction of the smoking-compartment, vaguelyhoping to dodge the inevitable.
At the turn around the corner of the linen locker he glanced back. Twoor three figures in the group of late comers might have asked forrecognition if he had looked fairly at them; but he had eyes for onlyone: a modish young woman in a veiled hat and a shapeless gray boxtravelling-coat, who was evidently trying to explain something to thePullman conductor.
"Jove!" he exclaimed; "if I weren't absolutely certain that ElsaCraigmiles is half-way across the Atlantic with the Lassleys--but sheis; and if she were not, she wouldn't be here, doing the 'personallyconducted' for that mob." And he went on to smoke.
It was a very short time afterward that an apologetic Pullman conductorfound him, and the inevitable came to pass.
"This is Mr. Ballard, I believe?"
A nod, and an uphanding of tickets.
"Thank you. I don't like to discommode you, Mr. Ballard; but--er--youhave an entire section, and----"
"I know," said Ballard crisply. "The lady got on the wrong train, or shebought the wrong kind of ticket, or she took chances on finding thegood-natured fellow who would give up his berth and go hang himself on aclothes-hook in the vestibule. I have been there before, but I have notyet learned how to say 'No.' Fix it up any way you please, only don'tgive me an upper over a flat-wheeled truck, if you can help it."
An hour later the dining-car dinner was announced; and Ballard, who hadbeen poring over a set of the Arcadian maps and profiles and a thickpacket of documents mailed to intercept him at Chicago, brought up therear of the outgoing group from the Denver car.
In the vestibule of the diner he found the steward wrestling suavelywith a late contingent of hungry ones, and explaining that the tableswere all temporarily full. Ballard had broad shoulders and the Kentuckystature to match them. Looking over the heads of the others, he marked,at the farther end of the car, a table for two, with one vacant place.
"I beg your pardon--there is only one of me," he cut in; and the stewardlet him pass. When he had dodged the laden waiters and was taking thevacant seat he found himself confronting the young woman in the veiledhat and the gray box-coat, identified her, and discovered in apetrifying shock of astoundment that she was not Miss Elsa Craigmiles'sfancied double, but Miss Craigmiles herself.
"Why, Mr. Ballard--of all people!" she cried, with a brow-lifting ofgenuine or well-assumed surprise. And then in mock consternation: "Don'ttell me that _you_ are the good-natured gentleman I drove out of hissection in the sleeping-car."
"I sha'n't; because I don't know how many more there are of me," saidBallard. Then, astonishment demanding its due: "Did I only dream thatyou were going to Europe with the Herbert Lassleys, or----"
She made a charming little face at him.
"Do you never change your plans suddenly, Mr. Ballard? Never mind; youneedn't confess: I know you do. Well, so do I. At the last moment Ibegged off, and Mrs. Lassley fairly scolded. She even went so far as toaccuse me of not knowing my own mind for two minutes at a time."
Ballard's smile was almost grim.
"You have given me that impression now and then; when I wanted to beserious and you did not. Did you come aboard with that party at Omaha?"
"Did I not? It's my--that is, it's cousin Janet Van Bryck's party; andwe are going to do Colorado this summer. Think of that as an exchangefor England and a yachting voyage to Tromsoe!"
This time Ballard's smile was affectionately cynical.
"I didn't suppose you ever forgot yourself so far as to admit that therewas any America west of the Alleghany Mountains."
Miss Elsa's laugh was one of her most effective weapons. Ballard wasmade to feel that he had laid himself open at some vulnerable point,without knowing how or why.
"Dear me!" she protested. "How long does it take you to really getacquainted with people?" Then with reproachful demureness: "The man hasbeen waiting for five full minutes to take your dinner order."
One of Ballard's gifts was pertinacity; and after he had told the waiterwhat to bring, he returned to her question.
"It is taking me long enough to get acquainted with you," he ventured."It will be two years next Tuesday since we first met at the HerbertLassleys', and you have been delightfully good to me, and even chummywith me--when you felt like it. Yet do you know you have never once goneback of your college days in speaking of yourself? I don't know to thisblessed moment whether you ever had any girlhood; and that being thecase----"
"Oh, spare me!" she begged, in well-counterfeited dismay. "One wouldthink----"
"One would not think anything of you that he ought not to think," hebroke in gravely; adding: "We are a long way past the Alleghanies now,and I am glad you are aware of an America somewhat broader than it islong. Do I know any of your sight-seers, besides Mrs. Van Bryck?"
"I don't know; I'll list them for you," she offered. "There are MajorBlacklock, United States Engineers, retired, who always says, 'H'm--ha!'before he contradicts you; the major's nieces, Madge and MargeryCantrell--the idea of splitting one name for two girls in the samefamily!--and the major's son, Jerry, most hopeful when he is pittedagainst other young savages on the foo
tball field. All strangers, sofar?"
Ballard nodded, and she went on.
"Then there are Mrs. Van Bryck and Dosia--I am sure you have met them;and Hetty Bigelow, their cousin, twice removed, whom you have never met,if Cousin Janet could help it; and Hetty's brother, Lucius, who issomething or other in the Forestry Service. Let me see; how many isthat?"
"Eight," said Ballard, "counting the negligible Miss Bigelow and hertree-nursing brother."
"Good. I merely wanted to make sure you were paying attention. Last, butby no means least, there is Mr. Wingfield--_the_ Mr. Wingfield, whowrites plays."
Without ever having been suffered to declare himself Miss Elsa's lover,Ballard resented the saving of the playwright for the climax; also, heresented the respectful awe, real or assumed, with which his name wasparaded.
"Let me remember," he said, with the frown reflective. "I believe it wasJack Forsyth the last time you confided in me. Is it Mr. Wingfield now?"
"Would you listen!" she laughed; but he made quite sure there was ablush to go with the laugh. "Do you expect me to tell you about it hereand now?--with Mr. Wingfield sitting just three seats back of me, on theright?"
Ballard scowled, looked as directed, and took the measure of his latestrival.
Wingfield was at a table for four, with Mrs. Van Bryck, her daughter,and a shock-headed young man, whom Ballard took to be thefootball-playing Blacklock. In defiance of the clean-shaven custom ofthe moment, or, perhaps, because he was willing to individualisehimself, the playwright wore a beard closely trimmed and pointed in theFrench manner; this, the quick-grasping eyes, and a certain vulpineshowing of white teeth when he laughed, made Ballard liken him to anunnamed singer he had once heard in the part of _Mephistopheles_.
The overlooking glance necessarily included Wingfield's tablecompanions: Mrs. Van Bryck's high-bred contours lost in adipose; Dosia'scool and placid prettiness--the passionless charms of unrelievedmilk-whiteness of skin and masses of flaxen hair and baby-blue eyes; theBlacklock boy's square shoulders, heavy jaw, and rather fine eyes--whichhe kept resolutely in his plate for the better part of the time.
At the next table Ballard saw a young man with the brown of an out-dooroccupation richly colouring face and hands; an old one with thecontradictory "H'm--ha!" written out large in every gesture; and twoyoung women who looked as if they might be the sharers of the singleChristian name. Miss Bigelow, the remaining member of the party, hadapparently been lost in the dinner seating. At all events, Ballard didnot identify her.
"Well?" said Miss Craigmiles, seeming to intimate that he had lookedlong enough.
"I shall know Mr. Wingfield, if I ever see him again," remarked Ballard."Whose guest is he? Or are you all Mrs. Van Bryck's guests?"
"What an idea!" she scoffed. "Cousin Janet is going into the absolutelyunknown. She doesn't reach even to the Alleghanies; her America stopsshort at Philadelphia. She is the chaperon; but our host isn't with us.We are to meet him in the wilds of Colorado."
"Anybody I know?" queried Ballard.
"No. And--oh, yes, I forgot; Professor Gardiner is to join us later. Iknew there must be one more somewhere. But he was an afterthought.I--Cousin Janet, I mean--got his acceptance by wire at Omaha."
"Gardiner is not going to join you," said Ballard, with the cooleffrontery of a proved friend. "He is going to join me."
"Where? In Cuba?"
"Oh, no; I am not going to Cuba. I am going to live the simple life;building dams and digging ditches in Arcadia."
He was well used to her swiftly changing moods. What Miss Elsa'scritics, who were chiefly of her own sex, spoke of disapprovingly as herflightiness, was to Ballard one of her characterizing charms. Yet he wasquite unprepared for her grave and frankly reproachful question:
"Why aren't you going to Cuba? Didn't Mr. Lassley telegraph you not togo to Arcadia?"
"He did, indeed. But what do you know about it?--if I may venture toask?"
For the first time in their two years' acquaintance he saw her visiblyembarrassed. And her explanation scarcely explained.
"I--I was with the Lassleys in New York, you know; I went to the steamerto see them off. Mr. Lassley showed me his telegram to you after he hadwritten it."
They had come to the little coffees, and the other members of MissCraigmiles's party had risen and gone rearward to the sleeping-car.Ballard, more mystified than he had been at the Boston moment whenLassley's wire had found him, was still too considerate to make hiscompanion a reluctant source of further information. Moreover, Mr.Lester Wingfield was weighing upon him more insistently than themysteries. In times past Miss Craigmiles had made him the target forcertain little arrows of confidence: he gave her an opportunity to do itagain.
"Tell me about Mr. Wingfield," he suggested. "Is he truly Jack Forsyth'ssuccessor?"
"How can you question it?" she retorted gayly. "Some time--not here ornow--I will tell you all about it."
"'Some time,'" he repeated. "Is it always going to be 'some time'? Youhave been calling me your friend for a good while, but there has alwaysbeen a closed door beyond which you have never let me penetrate. And itis not my fault, as you intimated a few minutes ago. Why is it? Is itbecause I'm only one of many? Or is it your attitude toward all men?"
She was knotting her veil and her eyes were downcast when she answeredhim.
"A closed door? There is, indeed, my dear friend: two hands, one deadand one still living, closed it for us. It may be opened some time"--thephrase persisted, and she could not get away from it--"and then you willbe sorry. Let us go back to the sleeping-car. I want you to meet theothers." Then with a quick return to mockery: "Only I suppose you willnot care to meet Mr. Wingfield?"
He tried to match her mood; he was always trying to keep up with herkaleidoscopic changes of front.
"Try me, and see," he laughed. "I guess I can stand it, if he can."
And a few minutes later he had been presented to the other members ofthe sight-seeing party; had taken Mrs. Van Bryck's warm fat hand ofwelcome and Dosia's cool one, and was successfully getting himselfcontradicted at every other breath by the florid-faced old campaigner,who, having been a major of engineers, was contentiously critical ofyoung civilians who had taken their B.S. degree otherwhere than at WestPoint.
The King of Arcadia Page 2