Eleven Possible Cases Part 20

"Perhaps," I persisted, "you, too, think I am stupidly unreasonable because I will not consent to be dishonestly chimerical."

I well remember the look of sad reproach with which she silently regarded me, and I well remember, too, the thought that came into my mind. I said to myself: "This is the same obduracy that her father has shown. Odd it is that I never noticed the trait in her before." Then I added, with an equal obduracy that I was not conscious of:

"Perhaps you, too, have discovered some peculiarity of good sense in me that is offensive, and you are afraid that something will happen if we----"

Here she interrupted me in her quiet, resolute, and reproachful way.

"Something has happened," she said.

I was amazed. If I had suddenly discovered that the woman I loved was unfaithful to me it could not have produced, in my frame of mind at that moment, a greater shock. It seemed to me then that the wooing of months, the confidence and affection of a year, were to be sacrificed in a moment of infatuated stubbornness. The very thought was so unnatural that it produced a revulsion in my own feelings.

"My darling," I said, as I went toward her impulsively, "we are playing the unworthy part of fools. Nothing can ever happen that will make us love each other less, or prevent you from being my wife."

I put my arm around her in the old familiar way. She was pa.s.sive and irresponsive. She stood there, limply holding the curtain, with one white arm upraised, her beautiful head bent over and her eyes cast down so that I could not look into her face. This stony obduracy was so new and unlike her that I withdrew my arm and stepped back a little to regard her with astonishment, not unmingled with pique. At that moment she lifted her head slowly, and as she looked at me with a dreamy and far-away pathos I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

"It seems to me," she said, with a voice that sounded as if it was addressed to an invisible phantom way beyond me. "It seems to me that I shall never be your wife!"

I must have stared at her several seconds in silence. Then I said:

"You are ill. You are not yourself. When you have recovered your normal condition I will come back."

I s.n.a.t.c.hed a kiss from her lips, that were strangely cold, and rushed from the house.

It was not till the next morning, when I woke up after a short and disturbed sleep, that my mind reverted to the cause of all this purely sentimental disagreement, and I felt a strong desire to have events prove that the Judge was slightly monomaniacal, and that I was right. I went to Riccadonnas' for my breakfast and got all the morning papers, as usual, but this time with a distinct confidence that the news would be the best vindication of my good sense, and that I should yet have a good laugh at the Judge.

I opened the paper as I sipped my coffee, and the first thing my eyes fell on were the headlines of a dispatch from St. Louis. I read them with an inexplicable sense of something sinking in me. As I recall them they ran as follows:

"Strange news from the West. All communication west of Salt Lake City ceases. Meteorological puzzle. What is the matter with the wires?"

Then followed the dispatch, which I have not forgotten:

ST. LOUIS, June 26, 8 P. M.--A dispatch received here from Yuma on the Texas Pacific announces that no eastern-bound train has come in since morning, and all attempts to open communication by telegraph with points west of that place have failed. It is the opinion of railroad men that a great storm is raging in California. Weather here pleasant, with a steady, dry wind from the east blowing.

Immediately following this was another news item which I can quote from memory:

DENVER, June 26, 9 P. M.--Intelligence from Cheyenne is to the effect that railway travel and telegraphic communication west of Pocatello on the Union Pacific and Ogden and on the Central Pacific have been interrupted by a storm. The telegraph wires are believed to be in good condition, but up to nine o'clock there has been no return current.

I read these paragraphs over three or four times. Ordinarily I should have pa.s.sed them by and given my attention to other and more congenial news. But now a dull fear that events were conspiring to widen the breach between myself and the Brisbanes focussed my interest on them.

There was that easterly wind blowing again; was I, too, growing superst.i.tious? I turned over all the papers. The news was the same in all, but there was not an editorial paragraph of comment in any of the sheets, which, indeed, teamed with all the details of active commercial, political, and social life.

I went down town after eating my breakfast and found that the intelligence had not awakened any public attention that was observable.

The two or three persons to whom I spoke with regard to it treated it as one of the pa.s.sing sensations of the hour that would be explained sooner or later. It was not till the evening papers of the 27th came out that the matter began to be discussed. The dispatches in these papers were of a nature to arouse widespread anxiety. It was very obvious from their construction and import that the feeling west of the Mississippi was more intense than had up to this time been suspected. The columns of the papers were filled with brief but rather startling telegrams from various points. Denver, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, St. Paul, St.

Louis, and Chicago sent anxious sentences which had a thrill of trepidation in their broken phrases. And it was easy to see that this feeling of deep concern increased with each dispatch from a point further west.

Telegrams sent to St. Louis, Chicago, and St. Paul represented the condition of anxiety in Ogden and Pocatello to be bordering on excitement. Fears were entertained, the dispatches said, of a "meteorological cataclysm," and thousands who had friends either on the coast or in transit were besieging the telegraph offices in vain.

The hurried comments of the evening papers on the news were singularly unsatisfactory and non-committal. "The unprecedented storm that is now raging on the Pacific slope," I read, "and which has temporarily cut off communications with the far West, will by its magnitude fill the country with the most serious apprehensions." "The earliest news from California, which shall give us the details of the storm," said another paper, "will be looked for with eagerness, and will be promptly and fully furnished to our readers."

As curious as anybody could be to know what kind of a storm it was that had stopped railroad travel from Idaho to Mexico, and remarking with surprise that the Signal Office utterly refused to recognize a great storm anywhere, I dismissed the subject from my mind with the reflection that there would in all probability be explanatory news in the morning, and resolved to make my usual visit to the Brisbane family.

To my surprise, Kate received me cordially, and with no other allusion to the unpleasantness of the night before than a demure remark that she was afraid she had offended me.

"Let us not refer to it at all," I said, "and thus avoid making idiots of ourselves."

"I am glad you came to-night," she remarked, after a moment's silence, "for I wanted to tell you of the change we are going to make."

A little pang darted through me. It was said so seriously.

"What is it, my dear," I asked, trying to be as affectionate as if the conditions had not changed.

"My father and I have determined to go to Europe."

"To Europe!" I repeated, aghast. "You surely do not mean it?"

"Yes," resolutely. "He wanted to consult you about it, but was afraid you would disagree with his plans."

"And when did he make up his mind to take this sudden move?"

"This morning."

"And you intend to go with him?"

"Yes, and I was going to ask you to go, too."

"When do you propose to go?"

"Immediately."

It was evident to my mind now that this old man was a panic-stricken monomaniac, and had infected his daughter with his fears.

"Kate," I said, as I took her by her hands and pulled her to the sofa beside me, "you are running away from something; it is not from me, is it?"

"I want you to go with us," she answered.

"But you knew when you asked me that I could not go so suddenly. You expected me to refuse."

"No," she said, "I expect you to consent."

"Be careful. In a moment of bravado I may take you at your word, at any cost!"

She caught hold of me. "Do," she said, tremulously, and I felt a little s.h.i.+ver in her hand. "Do, do."

"I would rather go with you than lose you," I said at a hazard, "and if you are determined to go, I believe I will accompany you if your father will consent."

"We are determined," she calmly replied.

"But I must put my affairs in order," I suggested.

"How many hours will it take you?"