CHAPTER IV
TRUCE
The Eastern Express, mantled in a seething whirl of snow, but stillmaintaining very nearly its scheduled time and even regaining a fewlost minutes from hour to hour as, now well past the middle of theState, it sped on across the flatter country in its approach to themountains, proceeded monotonously through the afternoon. Eaton watchedthe chill of the snow battle against the warmth of the double windowson the windward side of the car, until finally it conquered and thewindows became--as he knew the rest of the outside of the cars musthave been long before--merely a wall of white. This coating,thickening steadily with the increasing severity of the storm as theyapproached the Rockies, dimmed the afternoon daylight within the car todusk.
Presently all became black outside the windows, and the passengers fromthe rear cars filed forward to the dining car and then back to theirplaces again. Eaton took care to avoid the Dorne party in the diner.Soon the porter began making up the berths to be occupied that night;but as yet no one was retiring. The train was to reach Spokane late inthe evening; there would be a stop there for half an hour; and afterthe long day on the train, every one seemed to be waiting up for a walkabout the station before going to bed. But as the train slowed, andwith a sudden diminishing of the clatter of the fishplates under itswheels and of the puffings of exhausted steam, slipped into the lightedtrainsheds at the city, Eaton sat for some minutes in thought. Then hedragged his overcoat down from its hook, buttoned it tightly about histhroat, pulled his traveling cap down on his head and left the car.All along the train, vestibule doors of the Pullmans had been opened,and the passengers were getting out, while a few others, snow-coveredand with hand-luggage, came to board the train. Eaton, turning tosurvey the sleet-shrouded car he had left, found himself face to facewith Miss Dorne, standing alone upon the station platform.
Her piquant, beautiful face was half hidden in the collar of the greatfur coat she had worn on boarding the train, and her cheeks were ruddywith the bite of the crisp air.
"You see before you a castaway," she volunteered, smiling.
He felt it necessary to take the same tone. "A castaway?" hequestioned. "Cast away by whom?"
"By Mr. Avery, if you must know, though your implication that anybodyshould have cast me away--anybody at all, Mr. Eaton--is unpleasant."
"There was no implication; it was simply inquiry."
"You should have put it, then, in some other form; you should haveasked how I came to be in so surprising a position."
"'How,' in this part of the country, Miss Dorne, is not regarded as aquestion, but merely as a form of salutation," he bantered. "It wasformerly employed by the Indian aborigines inhabiting these parts, whoexchanged 'How's' when passing each other on the road. If I had said'How,' you might simply have replied 'How,' and I should have beenunder the necessity of considering the incident closed."
She laughed. "You do not wish it to be closed."
"Not till I know more about it."
"Very well; you shall know more. Mr. Avery brought me out to take awalk. He remembered, after bringing me as far as this, that we had notasked my father whether he had any message to be sent from here or anycommission to execute; so he went back to find out. I have now waitedso many minutes that I feel sure it is my father who has detained him.The imperfectly concealed meaning of what I am telling you is that Iconsider that Mr. Avery, by his delay, has forfeited his right. Thefurther implication--for _I_ do imply things, Mr. Eaton--is that youcannot very well avoid offering to take the post of duty he hasabandoned."
"You mean walk with you?"
"I do."
He slipped his hand inside her arm, sustaining her slight, active bodyagainst the wind which blew strongly through the station and scatteredover them snow-flakes blown from the roofs of the cars, as they walkedforward along the train. Her manner had told him that she meant toignore her resentment of the morning; but as, turning, they commencedto walk briskly up and down the platform, he found he was not whollyright in this.
"You must admit, Mr. Eaton, that I am treating you very well."
"In pardoning an offense where no offense was meant?"
"It is partly that--that I realized no offense was meant. Partly it isbecause I do not pass judgment on things I do not understand. I couldimagine no possible reason for your very peculiar refusal."
"Not even that I might be perhaps the sort of person who ought not tobe introduced into your party in quite that way?"
"That least of all. Persons of that sort do not admit themselves to besuch; and if I have lived for twen--I shall not tell you just how manyyears--the sort of life I have been obliged to live almost since I wasborn, without learning to judge men in that respect, I must have failedto use my opportunities."
"Thank you," he returned quietly; then, as he recollected hisinstinctive prejudice against Avery: "However, I am not so sure."
She plainly waited for him to go on, but he pretended to be concernedwholly with guiding her along the platform.
"Mr. Eaton!"
"Yes."
"Do you know that you are a most peculiar man?"
"Exactly in what way, Miss Dorne?"
"In this: The ordinary man, when a woman shows any curiosity abouthimself, answers with a fullness and particularity and eagerness whichseems to say, 'At last you have found a subject which interests me!'"
"Does he?"
"Is that the only reply you care to make?"
"I can think of none more adequate."
"Meaning that after my altogether too open display of curiosityregarding you, I can still do nothing better than guess, without anyexpectation that you, on your part, will deign to tell me whether I amright or wrong. Very well; my first guess is that you have not donemuch walking with young women on station platforms--certainly not muchof late."
"I'll try to do better, if you'll tell me how you know that?"
"You do very well. I was not criticising you, and I don't have to tellwhy. Ask no questions; it is a clairvoyant diviner who is speaking."
"Divinity?"
"Diviner only. My second guess is that you have been abroad in farlands."
"My railroad ticket showed as much as that."
"Pardon me, if it seriously injures your self-esteem; but I was notsufficiently interested in you when you came aboard the train, toobserve your ticket. What I know is divined from the exceedingly oddand reminiscent way in which you look at all things about you--at thistrain, this station, the people who pass."
"You find nothing reminiscent, I suppose, in the way I look at you?"
"You do yourself injustice. You do not look at me at all, so I cannottell; but there could hardly be any reminiscence extending beyond thismorning, since you never saw me before then."
"No; this is all fresh experience."
"I hope it is not displeasing. My doubt concerning your evidentlyrather long absence abroad is as to whether you went away to get or toforget."
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."
"Those are the two reasons for which young men go to Asia, are theynot?--to get something or to forget something. At least, so I havebeen given to understand. Shall I go on?"
"Go on guessing, you mean? I don't seem able to prevent it."
"Then my third guess is this--and you know no one is ever allowed morethan three guesses." She hesitated; when she went on, she had entirelydropped her tone of banter. "I guess, Mr. Eaton, that you have been--Ithink, are still--going through some terrible experience which hasendured for a very long time--perhaps even for years--and has nearlymade of you and perhaps even yet may make of you something fardifferent and--and something far less pleasing than you--you must havebeen before. There! I have transcended all bounds, said everything Ishould not have said, and left unsaid all the conventional things whichare all that our short acquaintance could have allowed. Forgiveme--because I'm not sorry."
He made no answer. They walked as far as the rear of the train, turnedand
came back before she spoke again:
"What is it they are doing to the front of our train, Mr. Eaton?"
He looked. "They are putting a plow on the engine."
"Oh!"
"That seems to be only the ordinary push-plow, but if what I have beenoverhearing is correct, the railroad people are preparing to give youone of the minor exhibitions of that everyday courage of which youspoke this morning, Miss Dorne."
"In what particular way?"
"When we get across the Idaho line and into the mountains, you are toride behind a double-header driving a rotary snow-plow."
"A double-header? You mean two locomotives?"
"Yes; the preparation is warrant that what is ahead of us in the way oftravel will fully come up to anything you may have been led to expect."They stood a minute watching the trainmen; as they turned, his gazewent past her to the rear cars. "Also," he added, "Mr. Avery, with hisusual gracious pleasure at my being in your company, is hailing youfrom the platform of your car."
She looked up at Eaton sharply, seemed about to speak, and then checkedwhat was upon her tongue. "You are going into your own car?" She heldout to him her small gloved hand. "Good-by, then--until we see oneanother again."
"Good night, Miss Dorne."
He took her hand and retaining it hardly the fraction of an instant,let it go. Was it her friendship she had been offering him? Men usebadinage without respect to what their actual feelings may be;women--some memory from the past in which he had known such girls asthis, seemed to recall--use it most frequently when their feelings,consciously or unconsciously, are drawing toward a man.
Eaton now went into the men's compartment of his car, where he satsmoking till after the train was under way again. The porter looked inupon him there to ask if he wished his berth made up now; Eaton noddedassent, and fifteen minutes later, dropping the cold end of his cigarand going out into the car, he found the berth ready for him. "D.S.'s" section, also made up but with the curtains folded backdisplaying the bedding within, was unoccupied; jerkings of thecurtains, and voices and giggling in the two berths at the end of thecar, showed that Amy and Constance were getting into bed; theEnglishman was wide awake in plain determination not to go to bed untilhis accustomed Nottingham hour. Eaton, drawing his curtains togetherand buttoning them from the inside, undressed and went to bed. Ahalf-hour later the passage of some one through the aisle and thesudden dimming of the crack of light which showed above the curtainstold him that the lights in the car had been turned down. Eaton closedhis eyes, but sleep was far from him.
Presently he began to feel the train beginning to labor with theincreasing grade and the deepening snow. It was well across the Stateline and into Idaho; it was nearing the mountains, and the weather wasgetting colder and the storm more severe. Eaton lifted the curtainfrom the window beside him and leaned on one elbow to look out. Thetrain was running through a bleak, white desolation; no light and nosign of habitation showed anywhere. Eaton lay staring out, and now thebleak world about him seemed to assume toward him a cruel and mercilessaspect. The events of the day ran through his mind again with sinistersuggestion. He had taken that train for a certain definite, dangerouspurpose which required his remaining as obscure and as inconspicuous aspossible; yet already he had been singled out for attention. So far,he was sure, he had received no more than that--attention, curiosityconcerning him. He had not suffered recognition; but that might comeat any moment. Could he risk longer waiting to act?
He dropped on his back upon the bed and lay with his hands claspedunder his head, his eyes staring up at the roof of the car.
In the card-room of the observation car, playing and conversation stillwent on for a time; then it diminished as one by one the passengerswent away to bed. Connery, looking into this car, found it empty andthe porter cleaning up; he slowly passed on forward through the train,stopping momentarily in the rear Pullman opposite the berth of thepassenger whom President Jarvis had commended to his care. Hisscrutiny of the car told him all was correct here; the even breathingwithin the berth assured him the passenger slept.
Connery went on through to the next car and paused again outside theberth occupied by Eaton. He had watched Eaton all day with resultsthat still he was debating with himself; he had found in a newspaperthe description of the man who had waited at Warden's, and he rereadit, comparing it with Eaton. It perfectly confirmed Connery's firstimpression; but the more Connery had seen of Eaton, and the more he hadthought over him during the day, the more the conductor had becomesatisfied that either Eaton was not the man described or, if he was,there was no harm to come from it. After all, was not all that couldbe said against Eaton--if he was the man--simply that he had notappeared to state why Warden was befriending him? Was it not possiblethat he was serving Warden in some way by not appearing? Certainly Mr.Dorne, who was the man most on the train to be considered, hadsatisfied himself that Eaton was fit for an acquaintance; Connery hadseen what was almost a friendship, apparently, spring up between Eatonand Dorne's daughter during the day.
The conductor went on, his shoulders brushing the buttoned curtains onboth sides of the narrow aisle. Except for the presence of thepassenger in the rear sleeper, this inspection was to the conductor theuttermost of the commonplace; in its monotonous familiarity he hadnever felt any strangeness in this abrupt and intimate bringingtogether of people who never had seen one another before, who afterthese few days of travel together, might probably never see one anotheragain, but who now slept separated from one another and from thepersons passing through the cars by no greater protection than thesecurtains designed only to shield them from the light and from eachother's eyes. He felt no strangeness in this now. He merely assuredhimself by his scrutiny that within his train all was right. Outside--
Connery was not so sure of that; rather, he had been becoming morecertain hour by hour all through the evening, that they were going tohave great difficulty in getting the train through. Though he knew byPresident Jarvis' note that the officials of the road must be watchingthe progress of this especial train with particular interest, he hadreceived no train-orders from the west for several hours. His inquiryat the last stop had told him the reason for this; the telegraph wiresto the west had gone down. To the east, communication was still open,but how long it would remain so he could not guess. Here in the deepheart of the great mountains--they had passed the Idaho boundary-lineinto Montana--they were getting the full effect of the storm; theirprogress, increasingly slow, was broken by stops which were becomingmore frequent and longer as they struggled on. As now they foughttheir way slower and slower up a grade, and barely topping it,descended the opposite slope at greater speed as the momentum of thetrain was added to the engine-power, Connery's mind went back to thesecond sleeper with its single passenger, and he spoke to the Pullmanconductor, who nodded and went toward that car. The weather hadprevented the expected increase of their number of passengers atSpokane; only a few had got aboard there; there were worse gradesahead, in climbing which every pound of weight would count; soConnery--in the absence of orders and with Jarvis' note in hispocket--had resolved to drop the second sleeper.
At Fracroft--the station where he was to exchange the ordinary plowwhich so far had sufficed, and couple on the "rotary" to fight themountain drifts ahead--he swung himself down from the train, looked inat the telegraph office and then went forward to the two giantlocomotives, on whose sweating, monstrous backs the snow, suddenlyvisible in the haze of their lights, melted as it fell. He waited onthe station platform while the second sleeper was cut out and the trainmade up again. Then, as they started, he swung aboard and in thebrightly lighted men's compartment of the first Pullman checked up hisreport-sheets with a stub of pencil. They had stopped again, henoticed; now they were climbing a grade, more easily because of thedecrease of weight; now a trestle rumbled under the wheels, telling himjust where they were. Next was the powerful, steady push againstopposition--the rotary was cutting its way thr
ough a drift.
Again they stopped--once more went on. Connery, having put his papersinto his pocket, dozed, awoke, dozed again. The snow was certainlyheavy, and the storm had piled it up across the cuts in great driftswhich kept the rotary struggling almost constantly now. The progressof the train halted again and again; several times it backed, chargedforward again--only to stop, back and charge again and then go on. Butthis did not disturb Connery. Then something went wrong. All at oncehe found himself, by a trainman's instinctive and automatic action,upon his feet; for the shock had been so slight as barely to be felt,far too slight certainly to have awakened any of the sleepingpassengers in their berths. He went to the door of the car, lifted theplatform stop, threw open the door of the vestibule and hanging by onehand to the rail, swung himself out from the side of the car to lookahead. He saw the forward one of the two locomotives wrapped in cloudsof steam, and men arm-deep in snow wallowing forward to the rotarystill further to the front, and the sight confirmed fully hisapprehension that this halt was more important and likely to last muchlonger than those that had gone before.