Mr. Henry B. Boltwood was decorously asleep in a chair in the
observation car, and Claire, on the wide back platform, sat unmoving,
apparently devoted to agriculture and mountain scenery. But it might
have been noted that her hand clenched one of the wooden supports of her
camp-stool, and that her hunched back did not move.
When she had turned to follow her father into the train, Milt had caught
her shoulders and kissed her.
For half an hour that kiss had remained, a perceptible warm pressure on
her lips. And for half an hour she had felt the relief of gliding
through the mountains without the strain of piloting, the comfort of
having the unseen, mysterious engineer up ahead automatically drive for
her. She had caroled to her father about nearing the Pacific. Her
nervousness had expressed itself in jerky gaiety.
But when he had sneaked away for a nap, and Claire could no longer hide
from herself by a veil of chatter the big decision she had made on the
station platform, then she was lonely and frightened--and very anxious
to undecide the decision. She could not think clearly. She could see
Milt Daggett only as a solemn young man in an inferior sweater,
standing by the track in a melancholy autumnal light, waving to her as
the train pulled out, disappearing in a dun obscurity, less significant
than the station, the receding ties, or the porter who was, in places
known only to his secretive self, concealing her baggage.
She could only mutter in growing panic, "I'm crazy. In-sane! Pledging
myself to this boy before I know how he will turn out. Will he learn
anything besides engineering? I know it--I do want to stroke his cheek
and--his kiss frightened me, but---- Will I hate him when I see him with
nice people? Can I introduce him to the Gilsons? Oh, I was mad; so
wrought up by that idiotic chase with Dlorus, and so sure I was a
romantic heroine and---- And I'm simply an indecisive girl in a
realistic muddle!"
Threatened by darkness and the sinister evening chill of the mountains,
with the train no longer cheerfully climbing the rocky ridge but
rumbling and snorting in the defiles, and startling her with agitating
forward leaps as though the brakes had let go, she could not endure the
bleak platform, and even less could she endure sitting in the chair car,
eyed by the smug tourists--people as empty of her romance as they were
incapable of her sharp tragedy. She balanced forward to the vestibule.
She stood in that cold, swaying, darkling place that was filled with the
smell of rubber and metal and grease and the thunderous clash of steel
on steel; she tried to look out into the fleeing darkness; she tried to
imagine that the train was carrying her away from the pursuing
enemy--from her own weak self.