Columbia or Democracy or Liberty, every pioneer woman or musket-loading helpmeet. But it had been mostly Gil’s features Maureen had inherited, not Victoria’s. She did not have her mother’s sweeping brow or clear green eyes, and her build—dense and strong like his own, but without his commanding height—suggested power more than fashionable grace.
In New York there had been one or two disillusioning episodes that had never, so far as he or Victoria had been able to tell, risen to the level of love affairs; and when they had first moved to San Antonio six years ago Maureen’s heart had been shattered by a young assistant city manager who had courted her indifferently and moved on. Lately there was an English professor from the University of Texas who wore a cowboy hat and a Palm Beach suit and showed up in San Antonio every now and then from Austin to take her to the pictures, but the visits were irregular and often without notice, and if there was anything serious developing Maureen had taken pains to keep it from her father.
The worry that he and Victoria had shared over Maureen’s happiness had fallen now to him alone, and it was another burden he carried with him on this train journey deep into the bewitching nothingness of West Texas.
Outside the window, though, the emerging twilight was finally teasing out the allure of the landscape. There were low ranges of hills now, slight but seductive in the failing light, and the scrappy vegetation looked almost sumptuous. He watched a jackrabbit sprinting along near the railbed, the light shining through the parchment skin of its gigantic ears.
“Should we have an early dinner?” Maureen asked after a while. Several of the families that were apparently traveling all the way to California were now heading toward the dining car.
“Don’t we arrive at eight?” he said. “Why not just wait and have a steak at the hotel? They’re bound to have a good steak in Abilene.”
There was indeed a good steak, though by the time they had collected their baggage and walked across the street to the Grace Hotel—where Mr. Clayton, the man they had come to meet, had made a reservation in their name—they barely made it to the dining room before it closed. Gil was agreeably hungry but he noticed Maureen’s appetite was indifferent, and the imagination of the kitchen did not extend past the colossal slab of beef on her plate. She applied herself mostly to the green beans, which had come out of a can but were not terribly overcooked.
“Not such a bad hotel for a cowtown,” Gil remarked as he surveyed the elegant marble floors and glanced sympathetically at the attentive white-jacketed waiter who was doing a manly job of not expressing disappointment at the arrival of new customers when the kitchen was about to close.
Maureen agreed that it was surprisingly acceptable. They had both been expecting something squalid and dusty, a town equal to the no-account spaces they had seen outside the train window. But the impression Gil had of Abilene in the brief walk from the train station was of a city of wide streets and stolid office buildings in a brave little downtown cluster.
“I should go back through my Italian sketchbooks,” he said, surrendering his plate to the waiter to make room for a slice of chocolate cake. “I once spent an afternoon in Padua in front of that Donatello equestrian—what’s it called? Something unpronounceable.”
“Gattamelata.”
“Yes, Gattamelata. I don’t see how anybody could do a better horse. Of course, it’s a massive old-world sort of beast, not some cowboy pony. Maybe I should buy a horse to use as a model.”
“First let’s see if Mr. Clayton even wants this to be an equestrian statue,” she said sensibly. “And then let’s see if he has the money to actually pay for it.”
Gil gave her a mock frown. He finished his cake, sipped his coffee, felt some of his vital spirit returning for no perceptible reason. Worrying about