We stepped upon the platform. The private car was on the opposite side of the station and had been switched into a siding of the east and west road. Pickering was certainly getting on. The private car, even more than the yacht, is the symbol of plutocracy, and gaping rustics were evidently impressed by its grandeur. As I lounged across the platform with Stoddard, Pickering came out into the vestibule of his car, followed by two ladies and an elderly gentleman. They all descended and began a promenade of the plank walk.
Pickering saw me an instant later and came up hurriedly, with outstretched hand.
“This is indeed good fortune! We dropped off here last night rather unexpectedly to rest a hot-box and should have been picked up by the midnight express for Chicago; but there was a miscarriage of orders somewhere and we now have to wait for the nine o’clock, and it’s late. If I’d known how much behind it was I should have run out to see you. How are things going?”
“As smooth as a whistle! It really isn’t so bad when you face it. And the fact is I’m actually at work.”
“That’s splendid. The year will go fast enough, never fear. I suppose you pine for a little human society now and then. A man can never strike the right medium in such things. In New York we are all rushed to death. I sometimes feel that I’d like a little rustication myself. I get nervous, and working for corporations is wearing. The old gentleman there is Taylor, president of the Interstate and Western. The ladies are his wife and her sister. I’d like to introduce you.” He ran his eyes over my corduroys and leggings amiably. He had not in years addressed me so pleasantly.
Stoddard had left me to go to the other end of the platform to speak to some of the students. I followed Pickering rather loathly to where the companions of his travels were pacing to and fro in the crisp morning air.
I laugh still whenever I remember that morning at Annandale station. As soon as Pickering had got me well under way in conversation with Taylor, he excused himself hurriedly and went off, as I assumed, to be sure the station agent had received orders for attaching the private car to the Chicago express. Taylor proved to be a supercilious person,—I believe they call him Chilly Billy at the Metropolitan Club,—and our efforts to converse were pathetically unfruitful. He asked me the value of land in my county, and as my ignorance on this subject was vast and illimitable, I could see that he was forming a low opinion of my character and intelligence. The two ladies stood by, making no concealment of their impatience. Their eyes were upon the girls from St. Agatha’s on the other platform, whom they could see beyond me. I had jumped the conversation from Indiana farm-lands to the recent disorders in Bulgaria, which interested me more, when Mrs. Taylor spoke abruptly to her sister.
“That’s she—the one in the gray coat, talking to the clergyman. She came a moment ago in the carriage.”
“The one with the umbrella? I thought you said—”
Mrs. Taylor glanced at her sister warningly, and they both looked at me. Then they sought to detach themselves and moved away. There was some one on the farther side of the platform whom they wished to see, and Taylor, not understanding their manoeuver—he was really anxious, I think, not to be left alone with me— started down the platform after them, I following. Mrs. Taylor and her sister walked to the end of the platform and looked across, a biscuit-toss away, to where Stoddard stood talking to the girl I had already heard described as wearing a gray coat and carrying an umbrella.