Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

"WHAT a glorious, all-satisfying country this Nevada desert would be if one were only all eyes, and had no need of food, drink and shelter! Wouldn't it, Miss Dwyer? Do you know, I've no doubt that this is the true location of heaven. You see, the lack of water and vegetation would be no inconvenience to spirits, while the magnificent scenery and the cloudless sky would be just the thing to make them thrive."

"But what I can't get over," responded the young lady addressed, "is that these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and uninteresting, should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully impressive and beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers or what awfully dull people they must have been whose descriptions have so misled the public! It is perfectly unaccountable. Here, I expected to doze all the way across the desert, while, in fact, I've grudged my eyes time enough to wink ever since I left my berth this morning."

"The trouble is," replied her companion, "that persons in search of the picturesque, or with much eye for it, are rare travellers along this route. The people responsible for the descriptions you complain of are thrifty business-men, with no idea that there can be any possible attraction in a country where crops can't be raised, timber cut or ore dug up. For my part, I thank the Lord for the beautiful barrenness that has consecrated this great region to loneliness. Here there will always be a chance to get out of sight and sound of the swarming millions who have already left scarcely standing-room for a man in the East. I wouldn't give much for a country where there are no wildernesses left."

"But I really think it is rather hard to say in just what the beauty of the desert consists," said Miss Dwyer. "It is so simple. I scribbled two pages of description in my note-book this morning, but when I read them over, and then looked out of the window, I tore them up. I think the wonderfully fine, clear, brilliant air transfigures the landscape and makes it something that must be seen and can't be told. After seeing how this air makes the ugly sagebrush and the patches of alkali and brown earth a feast to the eye, one can understand how the light of heaven may make the ugliest faces beautiful."

The pretty talker is sitting next the window of palace-car No. 30 of the Central Pacific line, which has already been her flying home for two days. The gentleman who sits beside her professes to be sharing the view, but it is only fair I should tell the reader that under this pretence he is nefariously delighting in the rounded contour of his companion's half-averted face as she, in unfeigned engrossment, scans the panorama unrolled before them by the swift motion of the car. How sweet and fresh is the bright tint of her cheek against the ghastly white background of the alkali-patches as they flit by! Still, it can't be said that he isn't enjoying the scenery too, for surely there is no such Claude-Lorraine glass to reflect and enhance the beauty of a landscape as the face of a spirituel girl.

With a profound sigh, summing up both her admiration and that despair of attaining the perfect insight and sympathy imagined and longed for which is always a part of intense appreciation of natural beauty, Miss Dwyer threw herself back in her seat and fixed her eyes on the car-ceiling with an expression as if she were looking at something at least as far away as the moon.

"I'm going to make a statue when I get home," she said—"a statue which will personify Nevada and represent the tameless, desolate, changeless, magnificent beauty and the self-sufficient loneliness of the desert. I can see it in my mind's eye now. It will probably be the finest statue in the world."

"If you'd as lieve put your ideal into a painting I will give you a suggestion that will be original if nothing else," he observed.

"What's that?"

"Why, having in view these white alkali-patches that chiefly characterize Nevada, paint her as a leper."

"That's horrid! You needn't talk to me any more," she exclaimed emphatically.

With this sort of chatter they had beguiled the time since leaving San Francisco the morning of the day before. Acquaintances are indeed made as rapidly on an overland train as on an ocean steamship, but theirs had dated from the preceding winter, during which they had often met in San Francisco. When Mr. Lombard heard that Miss Dwyer and Mrs. Eustis, her invalid sister, were going East in April, he discovered that he would have business to attend to in New York at about that time; and oddly enough—that is, if you choose to take that view of it—when the ladies came to go it turned out that Lombard had taken his ticket for the selfsame train and identical sleeping-car. The result of which was that he had the privilege of handing Miss Dwyer in and out at the eating-stations, of bringing Mrs. Eustis her cup of tea in the car, and of sharing Miss Dwyer's seat and monopolizing her conversation when he had a mind to, which was most of the time. A bright and congenial companion has this advantage over a book, that he or she is an author whom you can make discourse on any subject you please, instead of being obliged to follow an arbitrary selection by another, as when you commune with the printed page.

By way of peace-offering for his blasphemy in calling the Nevada desert a leper, Lombard had embezzled a couple of chairs from the smoking-room and carried them to the rear platform of the car, which happened to be the last of the train, and invited Miss Dwyer to come thither and see the scenery. Whether she had wanted to pardon him or not, he knew very well that this was a temptation which she could not resist, for the rear platform was the best spot for observation on the entire train, unless it were the cowcatcher of the locomotive.

The April sun mingled with the frosty air like whiskey with ice-water, producing an effect cool but exhilarating. As she sat in the door of the little passage leading to the platform she scarcely needed the shawl which he wrapped about her with absurdly exaggerated solicitude. One of the most unmistakable symptoms of the lover is the absorbing and superfluous care with which he adjusts the wraps about the object of his affections whether the weather be warm or cold: it is as if he thought he could thus artificially warm her heart toward him. But Miss Dwyer did not appear vexed, pretending indeed to be oblivious of everything else in admiration of the spectacle before her.

The country stretched flat and bare as a table for fifty miles on either side the track—a distance looking in the clear air not over one-fifth as great. On every side this great plain was circled by mountains, the reddish-brown sides of some of them bare to the summits, while others were robed in folds of glistening snow and looked like white curtains drawn part way up the sky. The whitey-gray of the alkali-patches, the brown of the dry earth and the rusty green of the sagebrush filled the foreground, melting in the distance into a purple-gray. The wondrous dryness and clearness of the air lent to these modest tints a tone and dazzling brilliance that surprised the eye with a revelation of possibilities never before suspected in them. But the mountains were the greatest wonder. It was as if the skies, taking pity on their nakedness, had draped their majestic shoulders in imperial purple, while at this hour the westering sun tipped their pinnacles with gilt. In the distance half a dozen sand-spouts, swiftly-moving white pillars, looking like desert genii with too much "tanglefoot" aboard, were careering about in every direction.

But as Lombard pointed out the various features of the scene to his companion, I fear that his chief motive was less an admiration of Nature that sought sympathy than a selfish delight in making her eyes flash, seeing the color come and go in her cheeks, and hearing her charming unstudied exclamations of pleasure—a delight not unmingled with complacency in associating himself in her mind with emotions of delight and admiration. It is appalling, the extent to which spoony young people make the admiration of Nature in her grandest forms a mere sauce to their lovemaking. The roar of Niagara has been notoriously utilized as a cover to unlimited osculation, and Adolphus looks up at the sky-cleaving peak of Mont Blanc only to look down at Angelina's countenance with a more vivid appreciation of its superior attractions.

It was delicious, Lombard thought, sitting there with her on the rear platform, out of sight and sound of everybody. He had such a pleasant sense of proprietorship in her! How agreeable—flatteringly so, in fact—she had been all day! There was nothing like travelling together to make people intimate. It was clear that she understood his intentions very well: indeed, how could she help it? He had always said that a fellow had shown himself a bungler at lovemaking if he were not practically assured of the result before he came to the point of the declaration. The sensation of leaving everything else so rapidly behind that people have when sitting on the rear platform of a train of cars makes them feel, by force of contrast, nearer to each other and more identified. How pretty she looked sitting there in the doorway, her eyes bent so pensively on the track behind as the car-wheels so swiftly reeled it off! He had tucked her in comfortably. No cold could get to the sweet little girl, and none ever should so long as he lived to make her comfort his care.

One small gloved hand lay on her lap outside the shawl. What a jolly little hand it was! He reached out his own and took it, but, without even a moment's hesitation for him to extract a flattering inference from, she withdrew it. Perhaps something in his matter-of-course way displeased her.

To know when it is best to submit to a partial rebuff, rather than make a bad matter worse by trying to save one's pride, is a rare wisdom. Still, Lombard might have exercised it at another time. But there are days when the magnetisms are all wrong, and a person not ordinarily deficient in tact, having begun wrong, goes on blundering like a schoolboy. Piqued at the sudden shock to the pleasant day-dream, in which he had fancied himself already virtually assured of this young lady—a day-dream which she was not really accountable for spoiling, since she had not been privy to it—what should he do but find expression for his mingled vexation and wounded affection by reminding her of a previous occasion on which she had allowed him the liberty she now denied? Doubtless helping to account for this lack of tact was the idea that he should thus justify himself for so far presuming just now. Not, of course, that there is really any excuse for a young man's forgetting that ladies have one advantage over Omniscience, in that not only are they privileged to remember what they please, but also to ignore what they see fit to forget.

"You have forgotten that evening at the California Theatre," was what this devoted youth said.

"I'm sure I don't know to what you refer, sir," she replied freezingly.

He was terrified at the distant accent of her voice. It appeared to come from somewhere beyond the fixed stars, and brought the chill of the interstellar spaces with it. He forgot in an instant all about his pique, vexation and wounded pride, and was in a panic of anxiety to bring her back. In a moment more he knew that she would rise from her chair and remark that it was getting cold and she must go in. If he allowed her to depart in that mood he might lose her for ever. He could think of but one way of convincing her instantaneously of his devotion; and so what should he do but take the most inopportune occasion in the entire course of their acquaintance to make his declaration? He was like a general whose plan of battle has been completely deranged by an utterly unexpected repulse in a preliminary movement, compelling him to hurry forward his last reserves in a desperate attempt to restore the battle.

"What have I done, Miss Dwyer? Don't you know that I love you? Won't you be my wife?"

"No, sir," she said flatly, her taste outraged and her sensibilities set on edge by the stupid, blundering, hammer-and-tongs onset which from first to last he had made. She loved him, and had meant to accept him, but if she had loved him ten times as much she couldn't have helped refusing him just then, under those circumstances—not if she died for it. As she spoke she rose and disappeared within the car.

It is certainly to be hoped that the noise of the wheels, which out on the platform was considerable, prevented the recording angel from getting the full force of Lombard's ejaculation.

It is bad enough to be refused when the delicacy and respectfulness of the lady's manner make "No" sound so much like "Yes" that the rejected lover can almost persuade himself that his ears have deceived him. It is bad enough to be refused when she does it so timidly and shrinkingly and deprecatingly that it might be supposed she were the rejected party. It is bad enough to be refused when she expresses the hope that you will always be friends, and shows a disposition to make profuse amends in general agreeableness for the consummate favor which she is forced to decline you. Not to put too fine a point upon it, it is bad enough to be refused anyhow you can arrange the circumstances, but to be refused as Lombard had been, with a petulance as wounding to his dignity as was the refusal itself to his affections, is to take a bitter pill with an asafœtida coating.

In the limp and demoralized condition in which he was left the only clear sentiment in his mind was that he did not want to meet her again just at present. So he sat for an hour or more longer out on the platform, and had become as thoroughly chilled without as he was within when at dusk the train stopped at a little three-house station for supper. Then he went into one of the forward day-cars, not intending to return to the sleeping-car till Miss Dwyer should have retired. When the train reached Ogden the next morning; instead of going on East he would take the same train back to San Francisco, and that would be the end of his romance. His engagement in New York had been a myth, and with Miss Dwyer's "No, sir," the only business with the East that had brought him on this trip was at an end.

About an hour after leaving the supper-station the train suddenly stopped in the midst of the desert. Something about the engine had become disarranged which it would take some time to put right. Glad to improve an opportunity to stretch their legs, many of the passengers left the cars and were strolling about, curiously examining the sagebrush and the alkali, and admiring the ghostly plain as it spread, bare, level and white as an ice-bound polar sea, to the feet of the far-off mountains.

Lombard had also left the car, and was walking about, his hands in his overcoat pockets, trying to clear his mind of the wreckage that obstructed its working; for Miss Dwyer's refusal had come upon him as a sudden squall that carries away the masts and sails of a vessel and transforms it in a moment from a gallant bounding ship to a mere hulk drifting in an entangled mass of débris. Of course she had a perfect right to suit herself about the kind of a man she took for a husband, but he certainly had not thought she was such an utter coquette. If ever a woman gave a man reason to think himself as good as engaged, she had given him that reason, and yet she refused him as coolly as she would have declined a second plate of soup. There must be some truth, after all, in the rant of the poets about the heartlessness and fickleness of women, although he had always been used to consider it the merest bosh. Suddenly he heard the train moving. He was perhaps fifty yards off, and, grumbling anathemas at the stupidity of the conductor, started to run for the last car. He was not quite desperate enough to fancy being left alone on the Nevada desert with night coming on. He would have caught the train without difficulty if his foot had not happened to catch in a tough clump of sage, throwing him violently to the ground. As he gathered himself up the train was a hundred yards off, and moving rapidly. To overtake it was out of the question.

"Stop! ho! stop!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. But there was no one on the rear platform to see him, and the closed windows and the rattle of the wheels were sufficient to render a much louder noise than he could make inaudible to the dozing passengers. And now the engineer pulled out the throttle-valve to make up for lost time, and the clatter of the train faded into a distant roar and its lights began to twinkle into indistinctness.

"Damnation!"

A voice fell like a falling star: "Gentlemen do not use profane language in ladies' company."

He first looked up in the air, as on the whole the likeliest quarter for a voice to come from in this desert, then around. Just on the other side of the track stood Miss Dwyer, smiling with a somewhat constrained attempt at self-possession. Lombard was a good deal taken aback, but in his surprise he did not forget that this was the young lady who had refused him that afternoon.

"I beg your pardon," he replied with a stiff bow: "I did not suppose that there were any ladies within hearing."

"I got out of the car supposing there was plenty of time to get a specimen of sagebrush to carry home," she explained, "but when the cars started, although I was but a little way off, I could not regain the platform;" which, considering that she wore a tie-back of the then prevalent fashion, was not surprising.

"Indeed!" replied Lombard with the same formal manner.

"But won't the train come back for us?" she asked in a more anxious voice.

"That will depend on whether we are missed. Nobody will miss me. Mrs. Eustis, if she hasn't gone to bed, may miss you."

"But she has. She went to bed before I left the car, and is asleep by this time."

"That's unfortunate," was his brief reply as he lit a cigar and began to smoke and contemplate the stars.

His services, so far as he could do anything for her, she should, as a lady, command, but if she thought that he was going to do the agreeable after what had happened a couple of hours ago, she was mightily mistaken.

There was a silence, and then she said, hesitatingly, "What are we going to do?"

He glanced at her. Her attitude and the troubled expression of her face as well as her voice indicated that the logic of the situation was overthrowing the jaunty self-possession which she had at first affected. The desert was staring her out of countenance. How his heart yearned toward her! If she had only given him a right to take care of her, how he would comfort her! what prodigies would he be capable of to succor her! But this rising impulse of tenderness was turned to choking bitterness by the memory of that scornful "No, sir." So he replied, coldly, "I'm not in the habit of being left behind in deserts, and I don't know what is customary to do in such cases. I see nothing except to wait for the next train, which will come along some time within twenty-four hours."

There was another long silence, after which she said in a timid voice, "Hadn't we better walk to the next station?"

At the suggestion of walking he glanced at her close-fitting dress, and a sardonic grin slightly twitched the corners of his mouth as he dryly answered, "It is thirty miles one way and twenty the other to the first station."

Several minutes passed before she spoke again, and then she said, with an accent almost like that of a child in trouble and about to cry, "I'm cold."

The strong, unceasing wind, blowing from snowy mountain-caverns across a plain on which there was not the slightest barrier of hill or tree to check its violence, was indeed bitterly cold, and Lombard himself felt chilled to the marrow of his bones. He took off his overcoat and offered it to her.

"No," said she, "you are as cold as I am."

"You will please take it," he replied in a peremptory manner; and she took it.

"At this rate we shall freeze to death before midnight," he added as if in soliloquy. "I must see if I can't contrive to make some sort of a shelter with this sagebrush."