Talking, Glover and Marie followed Gertrude and Stumah out on the grass
and across to the big platform where an overland train had pulled in
from the west. They watched the changing of the engines and the crews,
and the promenade of the travellers from the Pullmans.
While Gertrude amused herself with the dog, and Marie asked questions
about the locomotive, Mrs. Whitney and Louise spied them and walked
over. Glover, to make his peace, was compelled to take dinner with the
party in their car. The atmosphere of the special train had never
seemed so attractive as on that night. To cordiality was added
deference. The effect of his success in the cañon--only striking
rather than remarkable--was noticeable on Mr. Brock. At dinner, which
was served at one table in the dining-car, Glover was brought by the
Pittsburg magnate to sit at his own right hand, Bucks being opposite.
No one may ever say that the value of resource in emergency is lost on
the dynamic Mr. Brock. But having placed his guest in the seat of
honor he paid no further attention to him unless his running fire of
big secrets, discussed before the engineer unreservedly with Bucks,
might be taken as implying that he looked on the constructionist of the
Mountain Division as one of his inner official family.
Glover understood the abstraction of big men, and this forgetfulness
was no discouragement. There was an abstraction on his left where
Gertrude sat that was less comfortable.
At no moment during the time he had spent with the company had he been
able to penetrate her reserve enough to make more than an attempt at an
apology for his appalling blunder in the office. With the others he
never found himself at a loss for a word or an opportunity; with
Gertrude he was apparently helpless.
The talk at the lower end of the table ran for a while to comment on
the washout, to Glover's wrist, and during lulls Mrs. Whitney across
the table asked questions calculated to draw a family history from her
uneasy guest. Even Glover's waiter gave him so much attention that he
got little to eat, but the engineer concealed no effort to see that
Gertrude Brock was served and to break down by unobtrusive courtesies
her determined restraint.
When the evening was over he found himself at the pass to which every
evening in her company brought him--the unpleasant consciousness of a
failure of his endeavors and a return of the rage he felt at himself
for having blundered into her bad graces. Her father wanted him to
return with them in the morning to Sleepy Cat to go over the tunnel
plans again. That done, Glover resolved at all costs to escape from
the punishment which every moment near her brought.