The Governor had not seen this young woman after that night, but he had clung to his intention with the determination of a man who has a single object in life. An intermittent correspondence had been maintained, but after years this intention to wed Miss Lanmar had become rather an ideal something, and in this there was peril. But a few weeks before, he had intimated vaguely, that he was now a person of some local importance, and with no inconsiderable prospects of wealth, and to this Miss Lanmar had intimated quite as vaguely that she was waiting. But in it all there, seemed to be a powerful, albeit somewhat indistinct doubt. Years had passed, and years had a way of working frightful changes in people. The Miss Lanmar of to-day could not be the school-girl whom he had known.
The Executive leaned back in a seat of the stuffy little coach and speculated with grave concern At any rate, this alliance was now quite impossible. Complications had been thrust in; a duty, or what he conceived to be a duty, had sprung up, and this duty it was not his intention to evade.
II
THE Governor walked gravely down the long platform at El Paso, looking up at the windows of the Pullmans, wondering, rather indistinctly, how he should be able to recognize the irridescent princess of his romantic youth. A negro porter touched him on the arm and inquired if he was Governor Randal. The Executive replied that he was, whereupon the negro with much profound obeisance announced that Miss Lanmar was waiting in the drawing-room of the opposite Pullman.
The Governor sprang up the steps of the coach. As he entered, a young woman, wearing a dark travelling dress, came forward to meet him. She was of medium height, with heavy brown hair, fine eyes, arched brows, and quite a faultless nose. But the great charm of the woman was her splendid bearing, and her instinctive culture.
Just how this meeting began Alfred Randal could never afterwards quite recall. He could remember in vivid details the first picture of this superb woman as she arose to greet him, but then, just then, the love of his youth that had seemed to sleep under an anaesthetic for so many years, suddenly woke into glorious life, and gushed into his heart and overran his senses with its marvellous vitality. What transpired thereafter was provokingly indistinct. He remembered being presented to the aunt, Mrs. Beaufort, and her astonishment, and her incredulous query as to whether he lived in this “terrible country” to which he had replied that he could not be said to live, but that it was his part to exist in this rather primitive land. He remembered that the three sat together in the drawing-room of the coach and talked of his return to New York, of his ultimate success, and his assured future. He remembered also that for the time he had forgotten the grave difficulty in the way of such a future and his stern decision made but a few minutes before. He remembered also that through it all he had been very foolish and very confident and idiotically happy, and how at the parting he had kissed Miss Lanmar's hand and blushed like a school-girl, and then jumped down from the moving train at the peril of his life.
The Governor stood upon the platform and watched the great train as it thundered away in the distance. The interview which had just ended, although a thing apparently unreal, had swept him out from under the influence of an illusion that had served to make his life in the great Southwest bearable, even happy. From this time forth it could never be what it had been. The man felt like one who, having been so long a captive in a dungeon that he was half content, and his memories of the world had become vague and unreal, is suddenly and without warning lifted into the sunshine of the great glorious world and held there until his heart is filled to drunkenness with the beauty of it all, and then, ruthlessly and on the instant, is thrust back into the rayless gloom of his dungeon.
Randal stood for a time looking at the rows of dim lights scattered about the station like dismal fireflies. Then he crossed to the freight train upon which he was to return and climbed up into the cab with the driver.