A Romance in Transit

"It's the old story of Jack and his master," Brockway continued. "I have had the audacity to fall in love with the daughter of one of my betters."

"One of your betters? I'm afraid I can't quite understand that. Don't we live in a golden age when Jack is as good as his master, if he choose to make himself so?"

"By no manner of means," asserted this modern disciple of feudalism; "the line is drawn just as sharply now as it was when Jack was a bond thrall and his master was a swashbuckling baron."

"Who draws it? the thrall or the baron?"

The question opened up a new view of the matter, and Brockway took time to think about it.

"I'm not sure as to that," he said, doubtfully. "I've always taken it for granted it was the baron; but perhaps it's both of them."

"You may be very sure there are two sides to that shield, as to all others," she asserted. "But tell me more about your own trouble. Is it altogether impossible? Does the – the young woman think as you do?"

"It is; and I don't know what she thinks. I've never asked her, you know."

"You haven't? And still you sit here on this log and eat cold chicken and tell me calmly that it's hopeless! I said awhile ago that you were very daring, but I'll retract in deference to that."

"It's not exactly a lack of courage," Brockway objected, moved to defend himself when he would much rather have done something else. "There is another obstacle, and it is insurmountable. She is rich – rich in her own right, I'm told; and I am a poor man."

"How poor?"

"Pitifully so, from her point of view. So poor that if I gave her a five-room cottage and one servant, I could do no more."

"Many a woman has been happy with less."

"Doubtless, but they were not born in the purple."

"Some of them were, if by that you mean born with money to throw away. I suppose you might say that of me."

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 circumstances," she rejoined, secure in the assurance 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 destitute 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 passivity.

"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."