A private chivalry

It is not always given to prescience, friendly or other, to reap where it has sown; or to the worthiest intention to see of the travail of its soul and be satisfied. But if the time, place, and manner of Brant’s sequestration had been foreordained from the beginning, the conditions could scarcely have been more favourable for bulwark building between an evil past and some hopeful future of better promise.

The new mining district to which Hobart’s suggestion sent him was a sky-land wilderness unpeopled as yet, save by a few pioneer prospectors; his fellow-measurer of mining claims was a zealot of his profession, who was well content to take his friend’s friend at his friend’s valuation, asking no questions; and the work itself was such a fierce struggle with Nature in her ruggedest aspect as to afford a very opiate of antidotes to reflection, reminiscent or forecasting.

So it came about that the heart-hardening past with its remorseful reminders withdrew more and more into the dimnesses of willing forgetfulness, and the bulwark between that which had been and that which might be grew with the uncalendared days and nights till it bade fair in time to shut out some of the remorseful vistas.

The claim-measuring came to an end one flawless day in August, when the aspens were yellow on the high-pitched slopes and the streams ran low and summer clear in the gulches. Brant helped in the preparations for the retreat from the sky land of forgetfulness with a distinct sense of regret, which grew with every added mile of the day-long tramp toward Aspen, the railway, and civilization, until it became no less than a foreboding. Davenport, well satisfied with an assistant whose capacity for hard work was commensurate with his apparent love for it, had made him a proposal pointing to a partnership survey in a still more remote field, but Brant had refused. He knew well enough that his battle of reinstatement was yet to be fought, and that it must be fought in the field of the wider world. And toward that field he set his face, though not without misgivings—the misgivings of one who, having given no quarter, need expect none.

“So you have made up your mind to go to Denver, have you?” said Davenport, when they were smoking the pipe of leave-taking in the lobby of the Aspen hotel.

“Yes. I have made arrangements to go down on the night train.”

Davenport looked at his watch. “It is about time you were moving,” he said. “I’ll walk over to the station with you if you don’t mind.”

Brant did not mind. On the contrary, he was rather sorry to part from the man who had been the first to help raise the bulwark of forgetfulness. But their walk to the station was wordless, as much of their companionship had been.

They found the train ready to leave, and at the steps of the Pullman a party of four, an elderly man and three women. One of the women was young and pretty, and she was cloaked and hatted for a journey. So much Brant saw, and then he came alive to the fact that Davenport was introducing him. Of the four names he caught but one—that of the young woman who, it appeared, was to be his travelling companion.

“Well, now, that is lucky all around,” the elderly man was saying. “We have been hoping that some one would turn up at the last minute. Dorothy would go, whether or— Hello, there!”

The wheels were beginning to turn, and whatever poor excuse for a launching the acquaintance might have had in a few minutes of general conversation was denied it. Brant had no more than time to hand his charge up the steps of the Pullman, to stand for a moment beside her while she waved a farewell to the group on the platform, and his responsibility, such as it was, was upon him full fledged.

He did not make the most of it, as a better man might. So far from it, he erred painstakingly on the side of formality, leading the way with the young woman’s belongings to her section, asking her rather stiffly if he could be of any further service to her, and vanishing promptly to the solitude of the smoking compartment when her negation set him free.

But once alone in the stuffy luxury of the smoking den it was inevitable that the tale of the weeks of voluntary exile should roll itself up like a scroll and vanish, and that the heart-hardening past, and chiefly the tragic valedictory of it, should demand the hearing postponed by the toil-filled interlude in the wilderness. He was well used to scenes of violence, and there was a strain of atavistic savagery in him that came to the surface now and then and bade him look on open-eyed when stronger men blenched and turned away. But now the memory of the tragedy in Gaynard’s kennel laid hold of him and shook him in the very stronghold of ruthlessness. He could not pretend to be deeply grieved, for the woman had been little better than an evil genius to him; and yet he would willingly have thrust his own life between her and the destroyer. Instead, she had done that for him, though he did not harrow himself needlessly with the thought that she had intentionally given her life for his. He knew her well enough to be sure that she was only trying to save herself. None the less, when all was said, it was a tragedy of the kind to leave scars deep and abiding, and the remembrance of it might well threaten to be the dregs in any cup of hope.

For his swift retaliation on the slayer he took no remorseful thought, and for this environment was responsible. In the frontier mining camps, where law is not, men defend their lives and redress their wrongs with the strong hand, and one needs not to be an aggressive brawler to learn to strike fierce blows and shrewd. So in the matter of retaliation Brant was sorry only that, for all his good will, he had not slain the ruffian outright.

That the heart-hardening past with its grim pictures should thus obtrude itself upon his return to civilization seemed natural enough, and Brant suffered it as a part of the penalty he must pay. Not in any moment of the long evening did he remotely connect the sorry memories with the young woman in Section Six, who was at most no more than a name to him. Nevertheless, though he knew it not, it was the young woman who was chiefly responsible. If a good man’s introduction had not made him accountable for the welfare of a good woman, Brant might have smoked a cigar and gone to bed without this first reckoning with the past.

As it was, he smoked many cigars and was driven forth of the smoking-room only when the porter, avid of sleep himself, had suggested for the third time that the gentleman’s berth was ready. Even then sleep was not to be had for the wooing, and the gray dawn light sifting through the chinks around the window shades found him still wakeful.

The sun of a new day was half-meridian high when the porter parted the curtains of the berth and shook his single man passenger.

“Time to get up, sah; twenty minutes to de breakfas’ station.”

Brant yawned sleepily and looked at his watch.

“Breakfast? Why, it’s ten o’clock, and we ought to have been in Denver an hour ago.”

“Yes, sah. Been laid out all night, mostly, sah; fust wid a freight wreck, and den wid a hot box.”

Brant remembered vaguely that there had been stoppages many and long, but with the memory mill agrind he had not remarked them.

In the lavatory he found the porter ostentatiously putting towels in the racks for his single man passenger.

“Light car this morning, John?” he asked.

The negro grinned. “Yes, sah; you’ right about dat, sholy, sah. You-all come mighty close to hab’n a special cyar last night, sah.”

“So?”

“Yes, sah. De young lady and you-all had de Hesp’rus all to you’ own selves. Po’ portah ain’t gwine get rich out o’ dis trip, sholy.”

“No, I should say not.” Brant was sluicing his face in the dodging basin at the moment, but a little later, when he had a dry pocket hand, he gave the porter a coin of price.

“Take good care of the lady, John; they don’t remember about these little things, you know.”

“No, sah—t’ank you kin’ly, sah—dat dey don’t. But I’s take mighty good keer o’ dat young lady now, sah. Is—is you-all ’quaintin’ wid her, sah?”

“I haven’t so much as seen her face,” said Brant, which was near enough the literal truth to stand uncorrected. And a few minutes later he went back into the body of the car to repair the omission.

What he saw stirred that part of him which had long lain dormant. She was sitting in lonely state in the otherwise unoccupied car, and his first impression, at half-car-length range, was that she was a sweet incarnation of goodness of the protectable sort. Whereupon he shut the door upon the past and betook himself to her section with a kindly offer of service.

“Good morning, Miss Langford,” he began. “I hope you rested well. We are coming to the breakfast station, and there will doubtless be the usual scramble. May I have the pleasure of looking after your wants?”

Her smile was of answering good will, and he had time to observe that the honest gray eyes were deep wells of innocent frankness; and when she made answer, there was something in her speech to tell him that she was neither of the outspoken West nor of the self-contained East.

“It was kind of you to think of me,” she said. “But I think I needn’t trouble you.”

“Don’t call it trouble—it will be a pleasure,” he insisted; and when she had made room for him on the opposite seat he sat down.

“We are very late, are we not?” she asked.

“So late that we are not likely to get in before night, I’m afraid. A freight wreck and a hot box, the porter says.”

“I thought something was the matter. The train has been stopping all through the night, and I could hear them working at the car every time I awoke.”

“I heard them, too,” said Brant, though his memory of the stoppages was of the vaguest. “It didn’t impress me at the time, but it does now. I’m hungry.”

She laughed at this, and confessed a fellow-feeling.

“So am I; and I was just hoping for two things: a good breakfast, and time enough to enjoy it.”

“We are pretty sure of the first, because the Van Noy people always set a good table; but as to the time, our being so late will probably cut it short. If you please, we’ll go out to the front platform and so be ready to get in ahead of the rush.”

She went with him willingly enough, and a little later they were partakers of the swift down-grade rush of the train in the open air. It was before the day of vestibuled platforms on the mountain lines, and when the lurching and swaying of the car made the footing precarious he slipped his arm through hers for safety’s sake.

And she permitted it, does some one gasp? Yea, verily; and, since she was much too clean-hearted to be constantly on the watch for unworthy motives in others, thought no harm of it. Moreover, Brant’s conclusion that she was neither of the East nor the West was well founded in fact, and this had something to do with her frank trust in him. She was Tennessee born and bred, and to a Southern girl all men are gentlemen until they prove themselves otherwise.

And as for Brant, if she had been an angel of light, preaching repentance and a better mind to the hardened sinner of the mining camps, nothing she could have said or done would have touched him so nearly as this tacit acceptance of his protection. But also it gave him a soul-harrowing glimpse of the bottomless chasm separating the chivalrous gentleman of her maidenly imaginings from one George Brant, late of Silverette and Gaynard’s faro bank. How this clean-hearted young woman would shrink from him if she could but dimly imagine the manner of man he was! There was honest shame and humiliation in the thought; and in so far as these may give a moral uplift, Brant was the better man for the experience. None the less, he was glad when the train slowed into the breakfast station and the demands of the present once more shut the door upon the past and its disquieting reminders.

Having a clear field for the run across the station platform, Brant and his charge were the first to reach the dining room, and they had chosen their table and given their order before the other seats were taken. As a matter of course, Brant’s order was filled first, and thereat his vis à vis, a hard-featured man in a linen duster and a close-fitting skullcap, broke forth in remonstrance.

“That is the curse of the tip system!” he growled, looking pointedly at Brant and addressing no one in particular. “I object to it on principle, and every self-respecting traveller ought to help put it down.”

Brant’s eyelids narrowed and the steel-gray eyes behind them shot back a look that aforetime had quelled more than one wild beast of the gaming tables. But he held his peace, and here the matter might have rested if the irascible fault-finder had not seen the look and accepted it as a challenge.

“Yes, sir, I referred to you!” he exploded, hurling the explanation at Brant’s head. “I submit it to the entire company if it is fair for you to monopolize the attention of the servants while the rest of us go hungry?”

Now Brant was by nature a very madman of impulse, but the one good thing he had brought out of the hard school of lawlessness was the ability to be fiercely wrathful without showing it. So he said, placably enough: “I am sure you will excuse me if I decline to discuss the question with you. We were the first comers, and my order was given before you sat down.”

Here again the matter might have rested, but the hard-featured critic must needs have the last word:

“What I said, sir, had no reference to the matter of precedence. What I particularly object to is the shameless subsidizing of the servants.”

Whereupon Brant, who was as yet innocent of the implied charge, took occasion to call the waiter who had served him and to fee him openly in sight of all and sundry. The man in the linen duster scowled his disapproval, but, inasmuch as his own breakfast was served, said nothing. There was a lull in the threatened storm, and Brant was still congratulating himself on his own magnanimity, when hostilities broke out afresh. His charge had finished her breakfast, and he had prevailed upon her to take a second cup of coffee. When it came, the man across the table, who had given a similar order, claimed it for his own. Brant expostulated, still in set terms exuding the very honey of forbearance. The tyrant of breakfast tables fell into the trap, mistook his man completely, and in a sharp volley of incivilities proved that a soft answer may not always deflect the course of righteous indignation. In the midst of the volley Miss Langford rose to leave the table.

That was the final straw, and it broke the back of Brant’s self-control. Rising quickly, he leaned across the table and smote the offender out of his chair; one open-handed blow it asked for, and it was given with red wrath to speed it. That done, he took the arm of his companion and stalked out of the dining room before the smitten one could gather breath for an explosion.

Brant marched his charge straight to the Pullman, drawing deep warrior breaths of defiance world-inclusive; but by the time they were halfway across the platform he came to his senses sufficiently to be heartily ashamed of himself; nay, more, to be ready to welcome anything which might come by way of reproach. But whatever Miss Langford thought of it, she was self-contained enough to keep her own counsel, and they boarded the train in silence. In the seclusion of the deserted sleeping car Brant laid fast hold of his courage and said what he might by way of apology.

“I can’t ask your forgiveness, Miss Langford,” he began; “I know I have put myself beyond that. But I beg you to let me say just one word in my own defence. For years I have been roughing it in these mountains, eating at tables where that man’s insolence would cost him his life before he could measure words with the mildest man in the camp. And so I forgot myself for the moment—forgot what was due you. Now I’ll make the only reparation I can, and keep out of your sight for the rest of the day.”

And straightway he vanished without giving her a chance to reply.