Part 22

"Oh, I can't bear it! I just can't try again!" she cried that night to Jean Glaves.

"You won't have to, dearie," the big woman comforted, and having tucked her comfortably upon her own lounge with a wet cloth upon her aching head, she went straight to the Scotch surgeon's room.

Her choice of confidant may have been due either to intuition or knowledge of what was going on behind the ramparts of the young man's breakfast paper. The event proved it wise, for his giraffe neck lengthened under his angry gulps, his bony hands and nodding head emphasized and attested Jean's scathing deliverence upon men in general. "The scoundrel!" he exclaimed, when she paused for lack of breath. "The scoundrel! I'd flog him mysel' but for the scandal. But see you he'll no' go unpunished. He's a bid in for the hospital supplies, and I'll be having a word with the head doctor." And thus, later, was the smug villain hit to the tune of some hundreds in his tenderest place, the pocket.

Not content with future revenge, the Scotchman's sympathy expressed itself in practical suggestion. "If ye'd think, Mistress Glaves"--he always accorded Jean the quaint title, and it fell gracefully from his stiff lips--"now if ye'd suppose the young leddy would like to try her hand at nursing, there's a vacancy in the hospital."

While he hesitated, Jean literally grabbed opportunity by the collar. "You come along with me."

Introduced a few seconds thereafter to man and subject, Helen exclaimed that she would love the work; nor were her thanks less sincere for being couched in stereotyped form. How _could_ she thank him? Being sincere to the point of pain, after the fashion of his nation, the young man had almost answered that the obligation lay with him in that his studies behind the newspaper would be furthered and facilitated. He replied, instead, that the pay would be small, the work hard.

Not to be discouraged, she was thus launched upon what, in her condition, was the best of possible careers. For the mental suffering which, lacking an outlet, burns inwardly till naught is left of feeling but slag and cinders, becomes the strongest of motor forces when expended in service for others. Throwing herself body and soul into the new work, she forgot the suspicion, scandal that had lately embittered her days, and had such surcease of loneliness that in one month the lines of pain disappeared from around her eyes, her drooping mouth drew again into the old firm tenderness.

Besides content, the month brought her other satisfactions. Owing to lack of accommodation at the hospital, she still slept at the boarding-house, and dropping into Jean Glaves's room for a chat one evening, she found her conversing with a girl of her own age. She would have retired but that Jean called her back. "Don't go! We were talking of you. This is Miss Dorothy Chester, who used to board with me. Miss Chester--Mrs. Morrill."

There was, of course, nothing in the names to convey the significance of the introduction to either. After that period of secret study which is covered by the feminine amenities, each decided that she liked the other. Helen gladly accepted Dorothy's invitation to call, and in this ordinary fashion began a momentous acquaintance that soon developed through natural affinity into one of those rare and softly beautiful friendships which are occasionally seen between women. And as friendship means association in a city that has no theatre and few amusements, it soon happened that any evening might see Dorothy in Helen's room, or Helen on the way to her friend's hotel. Naturally Helen quickly learned that her friend's father and lover were head engineers on Carter's road, and that she had visited them in camp; and as Dorothy was as willing to talk of her novel experience as Helen to listen, imagine the pair in the former's cosey bedroom, one snugged up on a lounge, the other coiled in some mysterious feminine fashion on pillows at her side, fair girl hanging on dark girl's lips as she prattled of Carter, or joining in speculations as to what kind of a woman his wife might be.

She positively jumped when Dorothy declared one evening: "I'm sure he still loves her. Ernest says that he scoured the city for her; only gave up when he felt sure that she had gone East to her friends. When the road is finished, he is going back to look for her."

_He had searched for her_! _Still loved her_! It rhymed with her deft fingers rolling bandages; tuned her feet as she bore medicine-trays from ward to ward; ousted the dry anatomical terms of the daily lecture from their proper place in her mind. The thought illumined her face so that maimed men twisted on their cots to watch her down the ward. Meeting her on the main stairs, one day, Carruthers, the Scotch surgeon, almost mistook her for the Virgin Mother in the stained window above the landing. _He searched for me! is going back East to look for me_! The days spun by to that magical refrain.

Why, in view of all this, did she not confide in Dorothy? Though its roots grip deep down in woman nature, the strange, contradictory, inconsequential, yet wise woman nature, the reason lies close to the surface. Physically akin to the impulse which urges a shy doe to fly from its forest mate, her feeling flowed, mentally, from injured wifehood. For all her natural sweetness and joy over the thought of reunion, she was not ready to purchase happiness with unconditional surrender; to make overtures directly, or through Dorothy, that might be construed as a bid for executive clemency. As he had deserted her, so he must return; and that prideful resolution was strengthened and justified by the suffering which had immeasurably exceeded her fault. Yes, first he must return, then--would she instantly forgive him? Any lover can answer the question; if not, let him consult his sweetheart. "I'd make him suffer!" she will cry, gritting pretty teeth. So Helen. _Very_ unchristian, wicked, but natural.

No, she did not confide in Dorothy, went quietly about her business, hugging her sweet secret to her own soul, until-- But this summary of her thought and feeling would not be complete without mention of a last, perhaps greatest, satisfaction--her joy in reading newspaper accounts of Carter's progress. Editorials, politics, reports, she read all, day by day, glowing over red-hot denunciations of the monopoly while she thought what good men the editors must be, and how intelligent to so clearly discern her husband's merits. She was mightily troubled by the insatiate appetite of the Devil's Muskeg, studying its rapacious dietary as though it were a diabetes patient. She triumphed when Carter successfully treated its ineffable hunger with vegetarian diet of sawdust; shivered when he was refused a crossing of the trunk line; thrilled over the battle when Bender and the woodmen beat back the monopoly's levies while the trackmen laid the "diamond," and grew sick with fear, as before mentioned, when she heard the newsboys crying out Carter's final repulse as she was walking home to her room about eight o'clock one evening.

Though very tired, she immediately turned in her agitation, and, undeterred by the continent of blue-print uniform that spread below her brown ulster, she hurried to Dorothy's hotel, an old caravansary that had survived two rebellions and the bursting of the boom. Once chief of the city's hostelries, the old house still attracted people who preferred its solid comfort to the gilt, lacquer, garish splendors of more modern rivals. The parlor in which she waited while her name was taken up to Dorothy, was panelled with sombre woods; her feet literally sank in a pile carpet, thick, green, and dark as forest moss. Walls were upholstered in hammered leather; chairs, heavy table, massive furnishings, all were of black oak. The portraits of governors, high commissioners, and chief factors of the Hudson Bay Company, soldiers and traders or both, seemed ready to step down from their frames to engage in wise council and issue fiats that would set a hundred tribes in motion. Time stood still in that solid atmosphere. Heavy odors of leather and wood, the pervading feeling of peaceful age combined to soothe her fretted nerves, and she had just relaxed her tired body within the embrace of a mighty chair when passing footsteps and a voice brought her up, tense and rigid.

Returning just then, the bell-boy repeated her question: "Gentlemen who just passed, Miss? Mr. Greer and Mr. Smythe, people that are financing the new line, and Mr. Carter, their head contractor. They are dining here with the general manager of the trunk line. If you'd like to see them," he added, interpreting her interest as curiosity, "just step this way. They've all gone in, and you can peep through the glass doors. It's that dark in the passage no one will see you."

As she tiptoed after him down the dark hallway he whispered further--"Reminds me of them old Romans, the general manager; them fellows that used to invite a man to a poisoned dinner. He's got those chaps shooed up into a corner, and now he's going to kill their financial goose over the cigars and wine. Sure, Miss, everybody knows that Greer's on his last legs. Bit off more than he could chew when he went to railroading; but old Brass Bowels will treat his indigestion. That's him, stout gent with his back this way. Greer and Smythe's either side of him. That's Mr. Carter opposite. T'other gentleman, Mr. Sparks, is general superintendent of the western division."

Slipping by the others her glance glued--the term is eschewed by purists, who ironically inquire if the adhesive used was of the carpenter variety, but it exactly describes her steadfast gaze--her glance glued to Carter's face. From above an arc lamp streamed white light down upon him, darkening the hollows under his eyes, raising his strong features in bold relief. This, be it remembered, was the first she had seen of him since he broke in upon the Ravell dinner-party, black, sooty, smelling evilly of sweat and smoke. And now he sat with a waiter behind his chair, at meat with the greatest man in the north, at a table that was spread with plate, cut-glass, linen, all of a costly elegance that transcended her own experience. The champagne bucket, at his elbow, of solid silver, with gold-crusted bottles thrusting sloping shoulders out of cracked ice, the last accessory of luxurious living, took on wonderful significance in that it accentuated to the last degree their changed positions. For surely the gods had turned the tables by bringing her in print hospital uniform and shabby ulster to witness this crowning of his development.

Be sure she felt the contrast. How could she do otherwise? Yet her feeling lacked the slightest touch of humiliation. Above such snobbishness, she was filled by joy and pride in his achievement, joined with tremulous fear, for the bell-boy's remarks had quickened her apprehension. That distinguished company, costly appointments, perfect service, impressed her as little as it did Carter, which is saying a good deal, for the pomp of civilization counts more with women than men, and he was bearing himself with the easiness of one who has conquered social circumstance. He chose the right fork for his salad, knife for his butter; broke his bread delicately, trifled with green olives as if born to the taste--though this edible presented itself as a new and bitter experience--small things and foolish if made an end in themselves, yet important in that, with improper usage, they become as barbed thorns in the side of self-respect. Significant things in Carter's case because they showed that he had applied to his social relations the same shrewdness, common-sense, keen sight that was making him successful in large undertakings.

Of course she noted his improvement? That he no longer used knife for spoon, squared elbows over his head, sopped bread in gravy? On the contrary, she saw only his face, dark and stern save when a smile brought the old humor back to his mouth. Her hungry eyes traced its every line, marking the minutest changes wrought by thought, care, sorrow, time's graving tools. Hands pressing her breast, she struggled for his voice with thick oak and heavy plate-glass, and so stood, wrapped up in him and their past, till the bell-boy spoke.

"Miss Chester said you was to go right up, Miss."

She jumped, and her tremulous fear took form in words. "You are sure the general manager will--"

"--Do things to 'em?" he finished, as he led her upstairs. "They're dead ones, Miss."

*XXVII*

*THE NATURE OF THE CINCH*

The bell-boy was not alone in his opinion. Through that summer twenty thousand settler farmers had kept suspicious tab on the monopoly, and now that it felt the clutch reclosing on its throat, the entire province had flamed up in wrath and fear. Press, legislature, and pulpit denounced the refusal of a crossing that was without shadow of a claim in equity, and was plainly intended to kill competition by tedious and costly litigation. In town, village, on trail, at meeting, wherever two settlers were gathered together, the general manager's action was damned in no uncertain terms. Indignation flowed like a tidal-wave over the plains. Skimming low with the north wind, an aeronaut would have heard the hum of speech rise from the face of the land, angry and continuous as the buzz of swarming bees. It had pealed out in clarion triumph, that huge _vox humana_, when the "diamond" was laid after desperate fighting; it swelled in furious discordance when, the previous day, Carter's men were forced back by sheer weight of the levies that the general manager had gathered and brought in from the sections along three thousand miles of track.

It was one of those situations which require only a touch of demagoguery to wreak great harm. Insurrection hung thick in the air. Secession and coalescence with the United States were openly advocated by men who later read with astonishment their own words in the papers of that stormy time. Thousands of armed settlers waited only for the word to fall upon the monopoly's levies, but in face of united public opinion, backed by an inflamed press, Carter and his people remained quiescent--supinely quiescent, according to certain editorials.

A morning paper recalled its prediction of months ago: "We warned Mr. Carter not to be deceived by the monopoly's complaisance in bringing his construction outfit and supplies out from the East over its tracks. The concession was merely bait for the trap, analogous to the handing of a rope to a fool wherewith to hang himself. We are loath to quote the old proverb against Mr. Carter, yet were it not for the fact that the monopoly snaps its fingers in the face of this province through him, we should be tempted to show satisfaction at the plight to which his fatuous self-confidence has brought him."

The article closed with a vivid word picture of the general manager chuckling _a la_ Mephistopheles in the privacy of his luxurious office; which, perhaps, approximated the reality more closely than that in the minds of the laity. For a composite of the popular impression would have shown the entire railroad pantheon, general manager, department heads, with their clerks, sub-heads, assistants, and deputy assistants, all very lofty of brow and solemn of face, in session over the crisis.

The reality was much more prosaic. Indifferent to the newsboys, who were crying his crimes on the streets, the general manager sat in the office of the division superintendent that morning, chair tilted back, feet on the table, thumbs comfortably bestowed in the arm-holes of his vest. It has remained for a practical business age to clothe itself in the quintessence of ugliness. Imagine Julius Caesar in a tuxedo, Hamlet wearing a stove-pipe hat! His black coat, check trousers would have pleased a grocer's fancy in Sunday wear, and it were difficult to realize that their commonplace ugliness clothed a power greater than Caesar's--the ability to create and people provinces, to annihilate and build up towns, to move cities like checkers over the map; harder still to listen to his curt speech, issuing from blue tobacco smoke, and believe that an empire larger than ancient Rome paid him tribute, that the blood and sweat of a generation had gone to grease his juggernautal wheels. Yet the speech itself certified to the power.

"We made a mistake, Sparks; but who could foresee this fellow Carter? Here's the N.P. lusting for a chance to cut in over the border. Give them that crossing and old Jim Ball will place their bonds for any amount in exchange for reciprocal running arrangements. So we've got to make a quick killing. Buy 'em out, lock, stock, and barrel, while the fear of God's in their hearts. They must sell--look at this Bradstreet report on old Greer's assets. Just about at the end of his string. So I want you to write and invite them to dinner to-night--Greer, Smythe, and Carter--though the order ought to be reversed; he's the brains of the business. Draw it mild--conference with a view to amicable arrangement of points at issue, and so forth. But when we once get them there--" His nod was brutal in its significance.

Equally wide of popular conception was the scene in the banking office of Greer & Smythe when the invitation was delivered. Carter, who swung an easy leg from his favorite perch on the table, seemed to have thrived on defeat; the most elastic imagination would have failed to invest him with the weight of a people's cares. Indeed, he laughed when the senior partner handed him the general manager's note.

"Hum! 'Will you walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly!' What do I make of it? That's easy. Has us going--or thinks he has--and is aching to deliver the knock-out. A million to a minute he wants to buy us out."

"Well, he never will!" Red and plethoric, the senior partner sprang up. An elderly man, his clear eyes, honest face, framed in white side-whiskers of the Dundreary style, all stamped him as belonging to the old-fashioned school of finance which aimed always to advance the civic interest while turning an honest penny. "No, sir!" he reiterated. "We'll break first; and goodness knows that is not so far away. Yesterday I approached Murray, of the North American Bank, but he answered me in his broad Scotch: 'Hoots, mon! get your crossing first. Get your crossing an' we'll talk.' And so with Butler, Smith, and others who promised support."

"Cold feet, eh?" Carter commented. "They'll warm them presently chasing themselves for a chance to come in."

The old gentleman ran on in his indignation. "Yes, we are about at the end of our financial string, but we would rather dangle there than yield to these pirates. Am I right, sir?"

Smythe, a younger man, lean, laconic, and dark as the other was stout, florid, nodded, and his vigorous answer was untainted by a suspicion of compromise. "Surely, sir! But if Mr. Carter's plan fails--" His shrug supplied the hiatus.

Carter answered the shrug. "It won't fail." He held up the invitation. "But, say! Fancy--to-day, of all days?"

"Of course we won't go," Smythe frowned.

"Of course we* will*," Carter grinned. "Think what it means? Besides blinding them to the trap, we shall be there when it springs, and I wouldn't miss Brass Bowels' face for a thousand, cash. Let me see; the bid is for eight-thirty. Western flyer is due at Portage station nine-fifteen. He'll hardly broach business before the coffee, and with any kind of luck we ought to serve him up a beautiful case of indigestion."

"With luck?" the senior partner echoed.

"With or without. Everything is planned beyond possibility of failure. Mr. Chester goes with Mr. Hart on the construction-train, while Bender keeps things humming at the crossing. By-the-way, he's in the outer office now, with Hart, waiting for last orders, and if you don't mind I'll have them in. I wouldn't take a chance even on your clerks."

In view of just such a contingency, Bender had invested his bulk with store clothes of that indescribable pattern and cut which fulfils lumberman ideals. From his mighty shoulders a quarter-acre of black coat fell half-way down worsted pantaloons that were displaying an unconquerable desire to use the wrinkles of high boots as a step-ladder to his knees. As collars did not come in sizes for his red throat, he had compromised on a kerchief of gorgeous silk, and a soft hat, flat and black, completed a costume that was at once his pride and penance. In the luxurious office, with its rich fittings in mahogany and leather, he loomed larger than ever; was foreign as a bear in a lady's boudoir. Uncomfortably aware of the fact, he took the chair which the senior partner offered with a sigh of relief, and was fairly comfortable till the position discovered its own disadvantages--while his coat announced every movement with miniature _feux de joie_ from bursting seams, his trousers ascended his boots as a fireman goes up a hotel escape. To which sources of discomfort was added the knowledge that his face mapped in fair characters the fluctuations of the recent combat. But he forgot all--scars, raiment, unconventional bulk--as soon as he began to talk.

"All ready," he replied to Carter's question. "Buckle has been round the camp some lately. Only this morning I caught him talking to Michigan Red. It's a cinch that he was spotting for the railroad, but as I knew you'd as lief he'd tip us off as not, I didn't bust his head. Jes' allowed I didn't see him."

"Yes, let him talk," Carter replied, relative to the broken contractor. "But"--he addressed the surveyor--"there's no whispering in your outfit?"

"Couldn't be," the young fellow laughed. "Mr. Chester only told _me_ an hour ago. The men know nothing--will _know_ nothing up to the moment we pull into Prairie."

"Good. Now, you are to leave at dusk, and don't forget to grab the operator before he can rattle a key. But turn him loose as soon as you are through and let him wire in the news. And you, Bender, start in at eight, keep 'em busy as long as you can, then load what's left of you in a flat-car and steam round for Mr. Hart."

"What's left of me?" Bender growled, as he walked with the surveyor down-street a few minutes later. "Hum! Give me the Cougar and an even hundred of old-style Michigan men, and I'd drive the last of Brass Bowels' tarriers into the Red and beat you out laying the diamond. But, Lordy, what's the use o' talking! The old stock petering out an' the new's jes' rotten with education. They'd sooner work than fight, an' loaf than either, for they ain't exactly what you'd call perticler hell on labor. What's left of me? Well, there'll be some fragments, I guess. While I was hanging round I picked up an odd score of Oregon choppers that blew in here las' week. Brass Bowels' agent tried for 'em, but they'd lumbered with me in British Columbia. Come out an' see 'em. They're beauties."