Marshall’s answer was judicial. Again Innes got the wide view, the broad sweep. She remembered what Eduardo Estrada had told her of Rickard’s complications. This was what they were talking of. Marshall advocated a hospitality to their ideas, if set; “Where it is possible. ‘Be soople, Davy, in things immaterial,’” he twinkled. “Remember your Stevenson? Government men are a bit stilted, and we rough railroad men can teach them a point or two, I agree with you, but we’re looking far ahead, Rickard. And it’s all the same thing, Laguna, Imperial. If it’s to be the same system, stands to reason they want it done their way, eh? Can’t see it? Wait till you’re old like me.”
His Claudia looked at him with quick anxiety. He was not old. And he looked well. Sometimes, she almost believed he was well. That terrible sword—
Innes had found her chance. She asked to be shown over the car. Mrs. Marshall put aside her wools and led the way through Tony’s domain, who would have had them linger. A large diamond blazing on his finger pointed out ingenious cubby-holes and receptacles. He wanted to tell the young lady of his wonderful luck; how he had been picked up by Mr. Marshall—half dead in San Francisco—and brought down to the Southwest. He had not coughed for a month. He tried to tell her of his brilliant salary, “one hundred and fifty, Mex.,” but his mistress abridged his confidences.
“Tony would talk all night,” she explained as she led the way back through the sitting-room to her sleeping compartment.
Here Innes confided her plan. She wanted to slip out. “She would not interrupt their evening; Mr. Marshall had business to discuss—”
Mrs. Marshall would not hear of it. She felt that Tod’s evening had been long enough; that he should be in bed after his long day of observation on the river. But she said that Mr. Marshall would never forgive her if she let Miss Hardin go home alone. Her opposition was softly implacable.
Innes went back to the sitting-room of the car angrily coerced. Rickard was still closeted, conversationally, with his superior.
She endured a half-hour of crippled conversation. She, herself, was not easily vocal. She felt that Mrs. Marshall liked her in her own silent remote way, but they needed Tod Marshall to bridge over the national gap. Swift fraternization, as between socially equipped women, was not possible with them. She tried many subjects. There were no points of contact, she told herself.
At last, desperately, she rose to go. Of course, he must insist upon going with her. Of course!
“I was going back early, anyway. I’m to be up at dawn to-morrow.”