“Good-morning, Mr. Hilgarde,” he said, extending his hand; “I found your name on the hotel register. My name is Gaylord. I’m afraid my sister startled you at the station last night, and I’ve come around to explain.”
“Ah! the young lady in the phaeton? I’m sure I didn’t know whether I had anything to do with her alarm or not. If I did, it is I who owe an apology.”
The man coloured a little under the dark brown of his face.
“Oh, it’s nothing you could help, sir, I fully understand that. You see, my sister used to be a pupil of your brother’s, and it seems you favour him; when the switch-engine threw a light on your face, it startled her.”
Everett wheeled about in his chair. “Oh! Katharine Gaylord! Is it possible! Why, I used to know her when I was a boy. What on earth—”
“Is she doing here?” Gaylord grimly filled out the pause. “You’ve got at the heart of the matter. You know my sister had been in bad health for a long time?”
“No. The last I knew of her she was singing in London. My brother and I correspond infrequently, and seldom get beyond family matters. I am deeply sorry to hear this.”
The lines in Charley Gaylord’s brow relaxed a little.
“What I’m trying to say, Mr. Hilgarde, is that she wants to see you. She’s set on it. We live several miles out of town, but my rig’s below, and I can take you out any time you can go.”
“At once, then. I’ll get my hat and be with you in a moment.”
When he came downstairs Everett found a cart at the door, and Charley Gaylord drew a long sigh of relief as he gathered up the reins and settled back into his own element.
“I think I’d better tell you something about my sister before you see her, and I don’t know just where to begin. She travelled in Europe with your brother and his wife, and sang at a lot of his concerts; but I don’t know just how much you know about her.”
“Very little, except that my brother always thought her the most gifted of his pupils. When I knew her she was very young and very beautiful, and quite turned my head for a while.”
Everett saw that Gaylord’s mind was entirely taken up by his grief. “That’s the whole thing,” he went on, flecking his horses with the whip.
“She was a great woman, as you say, and she didn’t come of a great family. She had to fight her own way from the first. She got to Chicago, and then to New York, and then to Europe, and got a taste for it all; and now she’s dying here like a rat in a hole, out of her own world, and she can’t fall back into ours. We’ve grown apart, some way—miles and miles apart—and I’m afraid she’s fearfully unhappy.”
“It’s a tragic story you’re telling me, Gaylord,” said Everett. They were well out into the country now, spinning along over the dusty plains of red grass, with the ragged blue outline of the mountains before them.