A Fool For Love

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Produced by Ketaki Chhabra and Wendy Crockett

A FOOL FOR LOVE

_By_

FRANCIS LYNDE

Author of "The Grafters," "The Master of Appleby," etc.

CONTENTS

I In Which We Take Passage on the Limited
II In Which an Engine is Switched
III In Which an Itinerary is Changed
IV The Crystalline Altitudes
V The Landslide
VI The Rajah Gives an Order
VII The Majesty of the Law
VIII The Greeks Bringing Gifts
IX The Block Signal
X Spiked Switches
XI The Right of Way

I

IN WHICH WE TAKE PASSAGE ON THE LIMITED

It was a December morning,--the Missouri December of mild temperatures
and saturated skies,--and the Chicago and Alton's fast train, dripping
from the rush through the wet night, had steamed briskly to its
terminal track in the Union Station at Kansas City.

Two men, one smoking a short pipe and the other snapping the ash from
a scented cigarette, stood aloof from the hurrying throngs on the
platform, looking on with the measured interest of those who are in
a melee but not of it.

"More delay," said the cigarettist, glancing at his watch. "We are
over an hour late now. Do we get any of it back on the run to Denver?"

The pipe-smoker shook his head.

"Hardly, I should say. The Limited is a pretty heavy train to pick
up lost time. But it won't make any particular difference. The western
connections all wait for the Limited, and we shall reach the seat
of war to-morrow night, according to the Boston itinerary."

Mr. Morton P. Adams flung away the unburned half of his cigarette
and masked a yawn behind his hand.

"It's no end of a bore, Winton, and that is the plain, unlacquered
fact," he protested. "I think the governor owes me something. I
worried through the Tech because he insisted that I should have a
profession; and now I am going in for field work with you in a howling
winter wilderness because he insists on a practical demonstration.
I shall ossify out there in those mountains. It's written in the
book."

"Humph! it's too bad about you," said the other ironically. He was
a fit figure of a man, clean-cut and vigorous, from the steadfast
outlook of the gray eyes and the firm, smooth-shaven jaw to the square
fingertips of the strong hands, and his smile was of good-natured
contempt. "As you say, it is an outrage on filial complaisance. All
the same, with the right-of-way fight in prospect, Quartz Creek Canyon
may not prove to be such a valley of dry bones as--Look out, there!"

The shifting-engine had cut a car from the rear of the lately-arrived
Alton, and was sending it down the outbound track to a coupling with
the Transcontinental Limited. Adams stepped back and let it miss him
by a hand's-breadth, and as the car was passing, Winton read the name
on the paneling.

"The Rosemary: somebody's twenty-ton private outfit. That cooks our
last chance of making up any lost time between this and tomorrow--"

He broke off abruptly. On the square rear observation platform of
the private car were three ladies. One of them was small and
blue-eyed, with wavy little puffs of snowy hair peeping out under
her dainty widow's cap. Another was small and blue-eyed, with wavy
masses of flaxen hair caught up from a face which might have served
as a model for the most exquisite bisque figure that ever came out
of France. But Winton saw only the third.

She was taller than either of her companions--tall and straight and
lithe; a charming embodiment of health and strength and beauty:
clear-skinned, brown-eyed--a very goddess fresh from the bath, in
Winton's instant summing up of her, and her crown of red-gold hair
helped out the simile.

Now, thus far in his thirty-year pilgrimage John Winton, man and
boy, had lived the intense life of a working hermit, so far as the
social gods and goddesses were concerned. Yet he had a pang--of
disappointment or pointless jealousy, or something akin to both--when
Adams lifted his hat to this particular goddess, was rewarded by a
little cry of recognition, and stepped up to the platform to be
presented to the elder and younger Bisques.

So, as we say, Winton turned and walked away as one left out, feeling
one moment as though he had been defrauded of a natural right, and
deriding himself the next, as a sensible man should. After a bit he
was able to laugh at the "sudden attack," as he phrased it, but later,
when he and Adams were settled for the day-long run in the Denver
sleeper, and the Limited was clanking out over the switches, he
brought the talk around with a carefully assumed air of lack-interest
to the party in the private car.

"She is a friend of yours, then?" he said, when Adams had taken the
baited hook open-eyed.

The Technologian modified the assumption.

"Not quite in your sense of the word, I fancy. I met her a number
of times at the houses of mutual friends in Boston. She was studying
at the Conservatory."

"But she isn't a Bostonian," said Winton confidently.

"Miss Virginia?--hardly. She is a Carteret of the Carterets;
Virginia-born-bred-and-named. Stunning girl, isn't she?"

"No," said Winton shortly, resenting the slang for no reason that
he could have set forth in words.

Adams lighted another of the scented villainies, and his clean-shaven
face wrinkled itself in a slow smile.

"Which means that she has winged you at sight, I suppose, as she does
most men." Then he added calmly, "It's no go."

"What is 'no go'?"

Adams laughed unfeelingly, and puffed away at his cigarette.

"You remind me of the fable about the head-hiding ostrich. Didn't
I see you staring at her as if you were about to have a fit? But it
is just as I tell you: it's no go. She isn't the marrying kind. If
you knew her, she'd be nice to you till she got a good chance to flay
you alive--"

"Break it off!" growled Winton.

"Presently. As I was saying, she would miss the chance of marrying
the best man in the world for the sake of taking a rise out of him.
Moreover, she comes of old Cavalier stock with an English earldom
at the back of it, and she is inordinately proud of the fact; while
you--er--you've given me to understand that you are a man of the
people, haven't you?"

Winton nodded absently. It was one of his minor fads to ignore his
lineage, which ran decently back to a Colonial governor on his
father's side, and to assert that he did not know his grandfather's
middle name--which was accounted for by the very simple fact that
the elder Winton had no middle name.

"Well, that settles it definitely," was the Bostonian's comment.
"Miss Carteret is of the _sang azur_. The man who marries her will
have to know his grandfather's middle name--and a good bit more
besides."

Winton's laugh was mockingly good-natured.

"You have missed your calling by something more than a hair's-breadth,
Morty. You should have been a novelist. Give you a spike and a
cross-tie and you'd infer a whole railroad. But you pique my
curiosity. Where are these American royalties of yours going in the
Rosemary?"

"To California. The car belongs to Mr. Somerville Darrah, who is
vice-president and manager in fact of the Colorado and Grand River
road: the 'Rajah,' they call him. He is a relative of the Carterets,
and the party is on its way to spend the winter on the Pacific coast."

"And the little lady in the widow's cap: is she Miss Carteret's
mother?"

"Miss Bessie Carteret's mother and Miss Virginia's aunt. She is the
chaperon of the party."

Winton was silent while the Limited was roaring through a village
on the Kansas side of the river. When he spoke again it was not of
the Carterets; it was of the Carterets' kinsman and host.

"I have heard somewhat of the Rajah," he said half-musingly. "In
fact, I know him, by sight. He is what the magazinists are fond of
calling an 'industry colonel,' a born leader who has fought his way
to the front. If the Quartz Creek row is anything more than a stiff
bluff on the part of the C. G. R. it will be quite as well for us
if Mr. Somerville Darrah is safely at the other side of the
continent--and well out of ordinary reach of the wires."

Adams came to attention with a half-hearted attempt to galvanize an
interest in the business affair.

"Tell me more about this mysterious jangle we are heading for," he
rejoined. "Have I enlisted for a soldier when I thought I was only
going into peaceful exile as assistant engineer of construction on
the Utah Short Line?"

"That remains to be seen." Winton took a leaf from his pocket
memorandum and drew a rough outline map. "Here is Denver, and here
is Carbonate," he explained. "At present the Utah is running into
Carbonate this way over the rails of the C. G. R. on a joint track
agreement which either line may terminate by giving six months'
notice of its intention to the other. Got that?"

"To have and to hold," said Adams. "Go on."

"Well, on the first day of September the C. G. R. people gave the
Utah management notice to quit."

"They are bloated monopolists," said Adams sententiously. "Still I
don't see why there should be any scrapping over the line in Quartz
Creek Canyon."

"No? You are not up in monopolistic methods. In six months from
September first the Utah people will be shut out of Carbonate
business, which is all that keeps that part of their line alive.
If they want a share of that traffic after March first, they will
have to have a road of their own to carry it over."

"Precisely," said Adams, stifling a yawn. "They are building one,
aren't they?"

"Trying to," Winton amended. "But, unfortunately, the only practicable
route through the mountains is up Quartz Creek Canyon, and the canyon
is already occupied by a branch line of the Colorado and Grand River."

"Still I don't see why there should be any scrap."

"Don't you? If the Rajah's road can keep the new line out of Carbonate
till the six months have expired, it will have a monopoly of all the
carrying trade of the camp. By consequence it can force every shipper
in the district to make iron-clad contracts, so that when the Utah
line is finally completed it won't be able to secure any freight for
a year, at least."

"Oho! that's the game, is it? I begin to savvy the burro: that's the
proper phrase, isn't it? And what are our chances?"

"We have about one in a hundred, as near as I could make out from
Mr. Callowell's statement of the case. The C. G. R. people are moving
heaven and earth to obstruct us in the canyon. If they can delay the
work a little longer, the weather will do the rest. With the first
heavy snow in the mountains, which usually comes long before this,
the Utah will have to put up its tools and wait till next summer."

Adams lighted another cigarette.

"Pardon me if I seem inquisitive," he said, "but for the life of me
I can't understand what these obstructionists can do. Of course, they
can't use force."

Winton's smile was grim. "Can't they? Wait till you get on the ground.
But the first move was peaceable enough. They got an injunction from
the courts restraining the new line from encroaching on their right
of way."

"Which was a thing that nobody wanted to do," said Adams, between
inhalations.

"Which was a thing the Utah _had_ to do," corrected Winton. "The
canyon is a narrow gorge--a mere slit in parts of it. That is where
they have us."

"Oh, well," returned Adams, "I suppose we took an appeal and asked
to have the injunction set aside?"

"We did, promptly; and that is the present status of the fight. The
appeal decision has not yet been handed down; and in the meantime
we go on building railroad, incurring all the penalties for contempt
of court with every shovelful of earth moved. Do you still think you
will be in danger of ossifying?"

Adams let the question rest while he asked one of his own.

"How do you come to be mixed up in it, Jack? A week ago some one
told me you were going to South America to build a railroad in the
Andes. What switched you?"

Winton shook his head. "Fate, I guess; that and a wire from President
Callowell of the Utah offering me this. Chief of Construction Evarts,
in charge of the work in Quartz Creek Canyon, said what you said a
few minutes ago--that he had not hired out for a soldier. He resigned,
and I'm taking his berth."

Adams rose and buttoned his coat.

"By all of which it seems that we two are in for a good bit more
than the ossifying exile," he remarked. And then: "I am going back
into the Rosemary to pay my respects to Miss Virginia Carteret. Won't
you come along?"

"No," said Winton, more shortly than the invitation warranted; and
the other went his way alone.

II

IN WHICH AN ENGINE IS SWITCHED

"'Scuse me, sah; private cyah, sah."

It was the porter's challenge in the vestibule of the Rosemary. Adams
found a card.

"Take that to Miss Carteret--Miss Virginia Carteret," he directed, and
waited till the man came back with his welcome.

The extension table in the open rear third of the private car was
closed to its smallest dimensions, and the movable furnishings were
disposed about the compartment to make it a comfortable lounging room.

Mrs. Carteret was propped among the cushions of a divan with a book.
Her daughter occupied the undivided half of a tete-a-tete chair with
a blond athlete in a clerical coat and a reversed collar. Miss
Virginia was sitting alone at a window, but she rose and came to greet
the visitor.

"How good of you to take pity on us!" she said, giving him her hand.
Then she put him at one with the others: "Aunt Martha you have met;
also Cousin Bessie. Let me present you to Mr. Calvert: Cousin Billy,
this is Mr. Adams, who is responsible in a way for many of my
Boston-learned gaucheries."

Aunt Martha closed the book on her finger. "My dear Virginia!" she
protested in mild deprecation; and Adams laughed and shook hands with
the Reverend William Calvert and made Virginia's peace all in the same
breath.

"Don't apologize for Miss Virginia, Mrs. Carteret. We were very good
friends in Boston, chiefly, I think, because I never objected when she
wanted to--er--to take a rise out of me." Then to Virginia: "I hope I
don't intrude?"

"Not in the least. Didn't I just say you were good to come? Uncle
Somerville tells us we are passing through the famous Golden
Belt,--whatever that may be,--and recommends an easy-chair and a
window. But I haven't seen anything but stubble-fields--dismally wet
stubble-fields at that. Won't you sit down and help me watch them go
by?"

Adams placed a chair for her and found one for himself.

"'Uncle Somerville'--am I to have the pleasure of meeting Mr.
Somerville Darrah?"

Miss Virginia's laugh was non-committal.

"_Quien sabe_?" she queried, airing her one Westernism before she was
fairly in the longitude of it. "Uncle Somerville is a law unto
himself. He had a lot of telegrams and things at Kansas City, and he
is locked in his den with Mr. Jastrow, dictating answers by the
dozen, I suppose."

"Oh, these industry colonels!" said Adams. "Don't their toilings make
you ache in sheer sympathy sometimes?"

"No, indeed," was the prompt rejoinder; "I envy them. It must be fine
to have large things to do, and to be able to do them."

"Degenerate scion of a noble race!" jested Adams. "What ancient
Carteret of them all would have compromised with the necessities by
becoming a captain of industry?"

"It wasn't their _metier_, or the _metier_ of their times," said Miss
Virginia with conviction. "They were sword-soldiers merely because
that was the only way a strong man could conquer in those days. Now it
is different, and a strong man fights quite as nobly in another
field--and deserves quite as much honor."

"Think so? I don't agree with you--as to the fighting, I mean. I like
to take things easy. A good club, a choice of decent theaters, the
society of a few charming young women like--"

She broke him with a mocking laugh.

"You were born a good many centuries too late, Mr. Adams; you would
have fitted so beautifully, into decadent Rome."

"No--thanks. Twentieth-century America, with the commercial frenzy
taken out of it, is good enough for me. I was telling Winton a little
while ago--"

"Your friend of the Kansas City station platform?" she interrupted.
"Mightn't you introduce us a little less informally?"

"Beg pardon, I'm sure--yours and Jack's: Mr. John Winton, of New York
and the world at large, familiarly known to his intimates--and they
are precious few--as 'Jack W.' As I was about to say--"

But she seemed to find a malicious satisfaction in breaking in upon
him.

"'Mr. John Winton': it's a pretty name as names go, but it isn't as
strong as he is. He is an 'industry colonel,' isn't he? He looks it."

The Bostonian avenged himself at Winton's expense for the unwelcome
interruption.

"So much for your woman's intuition," he laughed. "Speaking of idlers,
there is your man to the dotting of the 'i'; a dilettante raised to
the _nth_ power."

Miss Carteret's short upper lip curled in undisguised scorn.

"I like men who do things," she asserted with pointed emphasis;
whereupon the talk drifted eastward to Boston, and Winton was ignored
until Virginia, having exhausted the reminiscent vein, said, "You are
going on through to Denver?"

"To Denver and beyond," was the reply. "Winton has a notion of
hibernating in the mountains--fancy it; in the dead of winter!--and he
has persuaded me to go along. He sketches a little, you know."

"Oh, so he is an artist?" said Virginia, with interest newly aroused.

"No," said Adams gloomily, "he isn't an artist--isn't much of
anything, I'm sorry to say. Worse than all, he doesn't know his
grandfather's middle name. Told me so himself."

"That is inexcusable--in a dilettante," said Miss Virginia mockingly.
"Don't you think so?"

"It is inexcusable in anyone," said the Technologian, rising to take
his leave. Then, as a parting word: "Does the Rosemary set its own
table? or do you dine in the dining-car?"

"In the dining-car, if we have one. Uncle Somerville lets us dodge the
Rosemary's cook whenever we can," was the answer; and with this bit of
information Adams went his way to the Denver sleeper.

Finding Winton in his section, poring over a blue-print map and making
notes thereon after the manner of a man hard at work, Adams turned
back to the smoking-compartment.

Now for Mr. Morton P. Adams the salt of life was a joke, harmless or
otherwise, as the tree might fall. So, during the long afternoon which
he wore out in solitude, there grew up in him a keen desire to see
what would befall if these two whom he had so grotesquely
misrepresented each to the other should come together in the pathway
of acquaintanceship.

But how to bring them together was a problem which refused to be
solved until chance pointed the way. Since the Limited had lost
another hour during the day there was a rush for the dining-car as
soon as the announcement of its taking-on had gone through the train.
Adams and Winton were of this rush, and so were the members of Mr.
Somerville Darrah's party. In the seating the party was separated, as
room at the crowded tables could be found; and Miss Virginia's fate
gave her the unoccupied seat at one of the duet tables, opposite a
young man with steadfast gray eyes and a firm jaw.

Winton was equal to the emergency, or thought he was. Adams was still
within call and he beckoned him, meaning to propose an exchange of
seats. But the Bostonian misunderstood wilfully.

"Most happy, I'm sure," he said, coming instantly to the rescue. "Miss
Carteret, my friend signals his dilemma. May I present him?"

Virginia smiled and gave the required permission in a word. But for
Winton self-possession fled shrieking.

"Ah--er--I hope you know Mr. Adams well enough to make allowances for
his--for his--" He broke down helplessly and she had to come to his
assistance.

"For his imagination?" she suggested. "I do, indeed; we are quite old
friends."

Here was "well enough," but Winton was a man and could not let it
alone.

"I should be very sorry to have you think for a moment that I
would--er--so far forget myself," he went on fatuously. "What I had
in mind was an exchange of seats with him. I thought it would be
pleasanter for you; that is, I mean, pleasanter for--" He stopped
short, seeing nothing but a more hopeless involvement ahead; also
because he saw signals of distress or of mirth flying in the brown
eyes.

"Oh, please!" she protested in mock humility. "Do leave my vanity just
the tiniest little cranny to creep out of, Mr. Winton. I'll promise to
be good and not bore you too desperately."

At this, as you would imagine, the pit of utter self-abasement yawned
for Winton, and he plunged headlong, holding the bill of fare wrong
side up when the waiter asked for his dinner order, and otherwise
demeaning himself like a man taken at a hopeless disadvantage. She
took pity on him.

"But let's ignore Mr. Adams," she went on sweetly. "I am much more
interested in this," touching the bill of fare. "Will you order for
me, please? I like--"

When she had finished the list of her likings, Winton was able to
smile at his lapse into the primitive, and gave the dinner order for
two with a fair degree of coherence. After that they got on better.
Winton knew Boston, and, next to the weather, Boston was the safest
and most fruitful of the commonplaces. Nevertheless, it was not
immortal; and Winton was just beginning to cast about for some other
safe riding road for the shallop of small talk when Miss Carteret sent
it adrift with malice aforethought.

It was somewhere between the entrees and the fruit, and the point of
departure was Boston art.

"Speaking of art, Mr. Winton, will you tell me how you came to think
of sketching in the mountains of Colorado at this time of year? I
should think the cold would be positively prohibitive of anything like
that."

Winton stared--open-mouthed, it is to be feared.

"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered, with the inflection which takes
its pitch from blank bewilderment.

Miss Virginia was happy. Dilettante he might be, and an unhumbled man
of the world as well; but, to use the Reverend Billy's phrase, she
could make him "sit up."

"I beg yours, I'm sure," she said demurely. "I didn't know it was a
craft secret."

Winton looked across the aisle to the table where the Technologian was
sitting opposite a square-shouldered, ruddy-faced gentleman with fiery
eyes and fierce white mustaches, and shook a figurative fist.

"I'd like to know what Adams has been telling you," he said.
"Sketching in the mountains in midwinter! that would be decidedly
original, to say the least of it. And I think I have never done an
original thing in all my life."

For a single instant the brown eyes looked their pity for him; generic
pity it was, of the kind that mounting souls bestow upon the stagnant.
But the subconscious lover in Winton made it personal to him, and it
was the lover who spoke when he went on.

"That is a damaging admission, is it not? I am sorry to have to make
it--to have to confirm your poor opinion of me."

"Did I say anything like that?" she protested.

"Not in words; but your eyes said it, and I know you have been
thinking it all along. Don't ask me how I know it: I couldn't explain
it if I should try. But you have been pitying me, in a way--you know
you have."

The brown eyes were downcast. Frank and free-hearted after her kind as
she was, Virginia Carteret was finding it a new and singular
experience to have a man tell her baldly at their first meeting that
he had read her inmost thought of him. Yet she would not flinch or go
back.

"There is so much to be done in the world, and so few to do the work,"
she pleaded in extenuation.

"And Adams has told you that I am not one of the few? It is true
enough to hurt."

She looked him fairly in the eyes. "What is lacking, Mr. Winton--the
spur?"

"Possibly," he rejoined. "There is no one near enough to care, or to
say 'Well done!'"

"How can you tell?" she questioned musingly. "It is not always
permitted to us to hear the plaudits or the hisses--happily, I think.
Yet there are always those standing by who are ready to cry '_Io
triumphe_!' and mean it, when one approves himself a good soldier."

The coffee had been served, and Winton sat thoughtfully stirring the
lump of sugar in his cup. Miss Carteret was not having a monopoly of
the new experiences. For instance, it had never before happened to
John Winton to have a woman, young, charming, and altogether lovable,
read him a lesson out of the book of the overcomers.

He smiled inwardly and wondered what she would say if she could know
to what battlefield the drumming wheels of the Limited were speeding
him. Would she be loyal to her mentorship and tell him he must win, at
whatever the cost to Mr. Somerville Darrah and his business
associates? Or would she, womanlike, be her uncle's partizan and write
one John Winton down in her blackest book for daring to oppose the
Rajah?

He assured himself it would make no jot of difference if he knew. He
had a thing to do, and he was purposed to do it strenuously,
inflexibly. Yet in the inmost chamber of his heart, where the
barbarian ego stands unabashed and isolate and recklessly contemptuous
of the moralities minor and major, he saw the birth of an influence
which inevitably must henceforth be desperately reckoned with.

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