The Daughter of a Magnate Part 30

Last to come up, because he still gave the orders, Glover, cus.h.i.+oned and strapped in the tackle, was lifted out of the blackness of the night into the streaming glare of the headlights. Very carefully he was swung down to the mattresses piled on the track, and, before all that looked and waited, a woman knelt and kissed his sunken eyes. Not then did the men, dim in the circle about them, show what they felt, though they knew, to the meanest trackhand, all it meant; not when, after a bare moment of hesitation, Gertrude's father knelt opposite on the mattress-pile, did they break their silence, though they shrewdly guessed what that meant.

But when Glover pulled together his disordered members and at Gertrude's side walked without help to the step of the car, the murmur broke into a cheer that rang from Pilot to Glen Tarn.

"It was more than half my fault," he breathed to her, after his broken arms had been set and the long gash on his head st.i.tched. "I need not have lost my balance if I had kept my head. Gertrude, I may as well admit it--I'm a coward since I've begun to love you. I've never told you how I saw your face once between the curtains of an empty sleeper.

But it came back to me just as Dancing's shoulder slipped--that's why I went. I'm done forever with long chances." And she, silent, tried only to quiet him while the car moved down the gap bearing them from Pilot together.

"Do you know what day to-morrow is?" Gertrude was opening a box of flowers that Solomon had brought from the express-office; Glover, plastered with bandages, was standing before the grate fire in the hotel parlor.

"To-morrow?" he echoed. "Sunday."

"Sunday! Why do you always guess Sunday when I ask you what day it is?"

"You would think every day Sunday if you had had as good a time as I have for six weeks."

"The doctor does say you're doing beautifully. I asked him yesterday how soon you would be well and he said you never had been so well since he knew you. But what is to-morrow?"

"Thanksgiving."

"Thanksgiving, indeed! Yes, every day is Thanksgiving for us. But it's not especially _that_."

"Christmas."

"Nonsense! To-morrow is the second anniversary of our engagement."

"My Lord, Gertrude, have we been engaged two years? Why, at that rate I can't possibly marry you till I'm forty-four."

"It isn't two years, it's two months. And to-night they have their memorial services for poor Paddy McGraw. And, do you know, your friend Mr. Foley has our engine now? Yes; he came up the other day to ask about you, but in reality to tell me he had been promoted. I think he ought to have been, after I spoke myself to Mr. Archibald about it.

But what touched me was, the poor fellow asked if I wouldn't see about getting some flowers for the memorial at the engineer's lodge to-night--and he didn't want his wife to know anything about it, because she would scold him for spending his money--see what you are coming to! So I suggested he should let me provide his flowers and ours together, and when I tried to find out what he wanted, he asked if a throttle made of flowers would be all right."

"Your heart would not let you say no?"

"I told him it would be lovely, and to leave it all to me."

She brought forward the box she was opening. "See how they have laid this throttle-bar of violets across these Galax leaves--and latched it with a rose. Here, Solomon," she exiled the boy from an adjoining room, "take this very carefully. No. There isn't any card. Oh," she exclaimed, as he left, and she clasped her lifted hands, "I am glad, I am glad we are leaving these mountains. Do you know papa is to be here to-morrow? And that your speech must be ready? He isn't going to give his consent without being asked."

"I suppose not," said Glover, dejectedly.

"What are you going to say?"

"I shall say that I consider him worthy of my confidence and esteem."

"I think you would make more headway, dearest, if you should tell him you considered yourself worthy of _his_ confidence and esteem."

"But, hang it, I don't."

"Well, couldn't you, for once, fib a little? Oh, Ab; I'll tell you what I wish you _could_ do."

"Pray what?"

"Talk a little business to him. I feel sure, if you could only talk business awhile, papa would be _all_ right."

"Business! If it's only a question of talking business, the thing's as good as done. I can't talk anything but business."

"Can't you, indeed! I like that. Pray what did you talk to me on the platform of my father's own car?"

"Business."

"You talked the silliest stuff I ever listened to----"

"Not reflecting on anyone present, of course."

"And, Ab----"

"Yes."

"If you could take him aback somehow--nothing would give him such an idea of you. I think that was what--well, I was so _completely_ overcome by your audacity----"

"You seemed so," commented Glover, rather grimly. "Very well, if you want him taken aback, I will take him aback, even if I have to resort to force." He withdrew his right arm from its sling and began unwrapping the bandages and throwing the splints Into the fire.

"What in the world are you doing?" asked Gertrude, in consternation.

"There's no use carrying these things any longer. My right arm is just as strong as it ever was--and to tell the truth----"

"Now keep your distance, if you please."

"To tell the truth, I never could play ball left-handed, anyway, Gertrude. Now, let's begin easy. Just shake hands with me."

"I'll do nothing of the sort. It's bad form, anyway. You may just shake hands with yourself. All things considered, I think you have good reason to."

"I understand you were chief engineer of this system at one time,"

began Mr. Brock, at the very outset of the dreaded interview.

"I was," answered Glover.

"And that you resigned voluntarily to take an inferior position on the Mountain Division?"

"That is true."

"Railroad men with ambition," commented Mr. Brock, dryly, "don't usually turn their faces from responsibility in that way. They look higher, and not lower."

"I thought I was looking higher when I came to the mountains."

"That may do for a joke, but I am talking business."

"I, too; and since I am, let me explain to you why I resigned a higher position for a lower one. The fact is well known; the reason isn't. I came to this road at the call of your second vice-president, Mr. Bucks.

I have always enjoyed a large measure of his confidence. We saw some years ago that a reorganization was inevitable, and spent many nights discussing the different features of it. This is what we determined: That the key to this whole system with its eight thousand miles of main line and branches is this Mountain Division. To operate the system economically and successfully means that the grades must be reduced and the curvature reduced on this division. Surely, with you, I need not dwell on the A B C's of twentieth century railroading. It is the road that can handle the tonnage cheapest that will survive. All this we knew, and I told him to put me out on this division. It was during the receivers.h.i.+p and there was no room for frills.