It was in one of his placid, normal moods that he boarded the train for the west. He took off his brown overcoat with the half-belt at the back, his brown fedora hat, adjusted his eyeglasses, and settled himself in his chair. At the moment he permitted his thoughts to hover about the picture of May Seton, pale, blonde, good-natured and pretty in her plump way. There was nothing in the least carnal in these thoughts, for he was a young man who might have served as a model for those institutions which concern themselves with the morals of young men and preach the doctrine that complete purity of mind is possible by sheer perseverance alone. He was innocent of women. He had worked hard and had no time for them. Indeed the very thought of them in that way gave him a faintly squeamish feeling. He was one of those in whom desire follows in the wake of timid experience, who cannot in the beginning conceive passion otherwise than abstractly. So now he conceived May Seton more as an idea, a sort of stepping stone to comfort and warmth, than as a woman to be desired. That he might be a sensual man had never occurred to him.
As the train moved across the Jersey Flats he fell to considering his prospects as a son-in-law of Harvey Seton and the certainty of an interest in the Junoform Reinforced Corset Company, a thing already hinted at by his suppositions mother-in-law. He thought of the Town. He pictured, quite clearly and placidly, a small and pleasant house surrounded by shrubs and trees, a comfortable front porch. He even pictured Mrs. May Seton Murdock in a rocking chair, far more attractive than she was in the flesh, darning his socks. In fact, he saw his future bounded on four sides by Junoform Reinforced Corsets, by May Seton, by the Town and by hard work. It was this placid and uneventful path that his feet were to follow.
The car in which Clarence sat, like all cars bound from the East across the mountains into the fertile and prosperous Midlands, was crowded. He was not a man gifted with great curiosity and rarely indulged himself in speculation concerning his fellow travelers. Indeed, from his manner one soon understood that he observed very little about him. And now as the wheels clicked along the smooth track he settled himself to reading. He had brought with him against the monotonous agony of the trip a book by Richard Harding Davis and a copy of the Saturday Evening Post, and these absorbed his attention until the train had passed Philadelphia and turned northward a bit in the direction of Altoona. Presently his interest flagged and he fell to watching the scenery; but before long this too wearied him and he fell asleep. Slumber was a state which he welcomed, for there were long periods when his mind grew exhausted with turning over the same frayed thoughts. There were times when it might have been said that he existed in a state of suspended animation.
So between slumber and a bored wakefulness, the hours passed in a succession of dreary towns and monotonous winter-dead farms, punctuated by signs advertising patent medicines and cheap hotels. As the train swept through Johnstown, he was for a moment diverted by the sight of so much smoke and desolation, by the gigantic slag heaps and the flaming furnaces. The spectacle was not a new one. He must have seen it twenty times, by day when it was sordid, and by night when it became wild and fantastically magnificent. Yet it interested him as it always interested him, tugging at some part of his soul which failed to fit the neat pattern of his universal conformity.
“What a great country!” he reflected. “By George! It’s a privilege to be a citizen of a country so energetic and prosperous!”
A curious light came suddenly into his nice brown eyes, and for a time the corset factory and May Seton were forgotten in the face of a new emotion, so much more profound and stirring. Even the rawness, the barren crudity of the picture exalted him. For a moment his ambitions threatened to gain the upper hand—those wild unruly ambitions which sometimes bore him beyond the round of thoughts which wearied him.
“To own mills like these!” he thought. “To be a power in industry. To go to Europe every year. To have a great house and one of these new automobiles.”
And Johnstown disappeared behind the train, lost in a gigantic and all-enveloping cloud of smoke and soot through which the flames of the furnaces flashed dimly.
The monotonous mountains, seamed with black rivers flowing between crags of blue ice, succeeded the smutty town, and Clarence settled back in his chair. But he did not read. He sat staring out of the window, thinking, thinking, thinking. Perhaps he tried to nurse his sense of importance, to persuade himself that he possessed the stuff which went into the accomplishments of great ambitions.
The roaring train sped on and on, and presently he went into the smoking compartment where he fell into conversation with other traveling salesmen. They exchanged stories of a broad nature, until Clarence, by nature a nice young man, found the flavor growing too strong and returned to his seat.