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She has had nobody to tell nobody to cry with her and sympathize with her." When his wife concluded, H. D. Appleton had received a very accurate chronicle of the doings of Bill Carmody from the time of his boyhood until chance threw them together in the smoking-compartment of the west-bound sleeper. The lumberman listened attentively, without interrupting, until his wife finished.
The two lads crossed the bridge, and, to her intense annoyance, entered a smoking-compartment. "I daresay, perhaps" recovering from this blow "that we shall manage to run across some others before the day's out." "Hope not." "Well, upon my word," declared the astonished Miss Radford, "you grow more and more peculiar every day!"
That chance, easy, smoking-compartment meeting, at which each had studied the other dispassionately, was most fortunate for us both.
A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were full he stood up while he smoked his cigarette. He was an Outsider; he was not one of the Old Families of the smoking-compartment. They looked upon him bleakly and, after trying to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror, he gave it up and went out in silence. "Just been making a trip through the South.
Last year the Sunday Spokane paper used to have nearly a column under the heading 'Social Doings of Red Gap's Smart Set. This year we'll have a good two columns, if I don't miss my guess." In the smoking-compartment I found Cousin Egbert staring gloomily into vacancy, as one might say, the reason I knew being that he had vainly pleaded with Mrs.
Ormsby said "Ah?" and asked if she would have more of the salad. But later, in a contemplative half-hour with his pipe in the smoking-compartment, he let the scrap of information sink in and take root. Hitherto Kent had been little more than a name to him; a name he had never heard on Elinor's lips.
She could by no possibility idealize him. He was a fixed fact, stubbornly asserted. Yet he was a great-hearted gentleman, unspoiled by his millions, thoughtful always for her comfort, generous, self-effacing. Just now, for example, when he had done all, he had seemed to divine her wish to be alone and had betaken himself to the smoking-compartment.
Men were putting on their overcoats, and women snuggled deeper in their furs. Over it all, the tops of the black pine-trees moaned and whistled in sounds that seemed filled both with menace and with savage laughter. In the smoking-compartment of the Pullman sat five men, gathered in a group.
"They are her gifts," he said. "I was blind, and she has made me see." Not until he was settled in the car did Laine let himself take in the meaning of the journey he was taking. The past few hours had been too hurried to think; but as he sat in the smoking-compartment thought was no longer to be held in abeyance, and he yielded to it with no effort at restraint. Sleep was impossible.
Lister returned to the smoking-compartment, but the adventure had given him a pleasant thrill and he did not feel sleepy. He got out his calculations and tried to interest himself until a man entered the car. The fellow was rather handsome and his clothes were good, but Lister thought he looked perplexed. He gave Lister a keen glance and went on through the car.
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