ELEANOR'S BITTERNESS
It was in a state of quiet contentment that Jimmy stood on his bridge,
as the _Shasta_ steamed past the Stanley pines into sight of the
clustering roofs of Vancouver. His first voyage had been an unqualified
success in every respect, and it was clear that the _Shasta_ had done
considerably more than cover her working expenses. This was in several
ways a great relief to him, since it promised to obviate any difficulty
in providing for his father's comfort, and also opened up the prospect
of a career for himself. Jordan had assured him before he sailed that
they would have no great trouble in raising funds to purchase another
boat if the results of the venture warranted it. He had also said that
since one thing led to another, there was no reason why the _Shasta_
Company should not run several steamers by and by, in which case Jimmy
would naturally become commodore-captain or general superintendent of
the fleet.
As it happened, Jordan was the first person Jimmy's eyes rested on when
he rang off his engines as the _Shasta_ slid in to the wharf, and he
climbed on board while they made her fast. It, however, seemed to Jimmy
that his movements were less brisk than usual, and he was also dressed
in black, which was a color he had once or twice expressed himself in
his comrade's hearing as having no use for. He came up the bridge-ladder
quietly, in place of scrambling up it in hot haste, which would have
been much more characteristic, and Jimmy noticed that there was a
difference in his manner when he shook hands with him. The latter's
satisfaction commenced to melt away, and a vague disquietude grew upon
him in place of it.
"Everything straight here?" he asked, veiling his anxiety.
"Oh, yes," said Jordan; "that is, in most respects. We have an outward
freight--Comox mines--for you. You'll take her up the Straits that way
when you go back again. You seem to have her full."
"I had to leave a good many odds and ends behind, and the ranchers
expect to have more produce for us in a month or two. One or two of them
were talking about baling presses and a small thrashing mill. I've an
inquiry for the plant, which you can attend to. Another fellow was
contemplating putting on some Tenas Siwash to see whether there was
anything to be made out of hand-split shingles, and several more were
going to plant every cleared acre with potatoes for Victoria. I'm to
take up two of your mechanical stump-grubbers as soon as you can get
them. If we can keep them pleased, we'll get all their trade."
Jordan nodded, without, however, any sign of the eagerness Jimmy had
expected. "Well," he said, "that's quite satisfactory so far as it goes.
Still, there are troubles that even the prospect of piling up money
can't lift one over."
"Of course!" said Jimmy, who looked at him with sudden sympathy. "Still,
I fancied you told me you had no near relatives. What are you wearing
those clothes for?"
His comrade laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's a thing I shouldn't have
done on my own account. I did it--steady, Jimmy, you have to face it--to
please your sister."
"Ah!" said Jimmy, with a sharp indrawing of his breath, and leaned on
the bridge-rails for a moment or two. His lips quivered, and Jordan saw
him clench his hard brown hands. Busy wharf and climbing city faded from
before his eyes, and he was sensible only of a curious numbing stupor
that for the time being banished grief. Then he felt his comrade's grasp
grow tighter.
"Brace up!" said Jordan. "It's a thing we have, all of us, to stand up
under."
Jimmy straightened himself slowly, while the color paled in his face.
"When did it happen--and how?" he asked.
"Last night. The doctor had been round once or twice since you went
away, and I understood from what Prescott said that he was getting along
satisfactorily--that is, physically."
Jimmy said nothing, but looked at him with hard, questioning eyes.
"Well, it appears he was worrying himself considerably. Told Prescott it
was a pity he couldn't die right away. Nobody had any use for him, and
he didn't want to be a burden. Seems he went over it quite often. The
doctor had cut him off from the whisky."
He stopped, with evident embarrassment and pain in his face; but Jimmy's
eyes never wavered, though a creeping horror came upon him. In spite of
the difficulty he had in thinking, he felt that he had not yet heard
all.
"Go on," he said in a low, harsh voice.
"I don't think I could have told you, only it would have fallen on
Eleanor if I hadn't, and she has as much as she can bear. You'll keep
that in mind, won't you, Jimmy? He got some whisky--we don't know
how--one of the wharf-hands who used to look in bought it for him, most
probably. Prescott had to go out now and then, you see."
He stopped for a moment, and made a little gesture of sympathy before he
went on again. "Somehow he fell over the table, and the kerosene lamp
went over with it too. When one of the neighbors who heard him call went
in nobody could have done anything for him."
The last trace of color ebbed from Jimmy's face, and he stood very
still, with set lips and tightly clenched hands. Then he turned aside
with a groan of horror.
"Lord!" he said hoarsely. "That, at least, might have been spared him."
In another moment he swung around on his comrade almost savagely, with a
bitter laugh. "And you want to marry my sister Eleanor?"
"Yes," said Jordan; "just as soon as it can decently be done. Jimmy, you
daren't blame him."
"Blame him!" and Jimmy's voice was strained. "If I had had his load to
carry and felt it as he did, I should probably have gone under long
ago."
He leaned heavily on the rail for a minute or two, and then, apparently
rousing himself with an effort, turned toward his comrade. "As you say,
I must stand up to it. How is Eleanor bearing it?"
"Quietly--too quietly. I'm 'most afraid of her. She's here--I went over
to Forster's for her. Insists on staying in the house. I'll send
somebody around with your papers, and then go along with you."
Five minutes later they went ashore together, and it was falling dusk
when they reached a little four-roomed frame-house which stood near a
row of others of very much the same kind amidst the tall fir-stumps
which straggled up a rise on the outskirts of the town. It was such a
one as the few wharf and sawmill hands who were married usually lived
in--comfortless, primitive, and rickety. Jimmy remembered how he had
determined when he sailed south with the _Shasta_ full to the hatches
that his father should not stay another month in it.
He was almost startled when his sister led them into the little general
room, for it was evident that there had been a great change in her.
That, at least, was how he regarded it then, but afterward he understood
that it was only something which had been in her nature all the time
making itself apparent. He did not remember whether she kissed him, but
she sat down and looked at him with the light of the lamp upon her,
while Jimmy, who could find nothing at all to say, gazed at her.
Eleanor had already provided herself with somber garments, and they
emphasized the severity of contour of her supple figure. They also
forced up the pallor of her face, which was relieved only by a faint
blotch of color in either cheek, and, in spite of this, in a curious
fashion made her beautiful. Jimmy had hitherto admitted that his sister
was pretty, but, as he recognized, that word was not the right one now.
She was imperious, dominant, a force embodied in a woman's shape, and
her brother was vaguely conscious that he shrank a little from her.
Eleanor did not seem to want his sympathy. The coldness of her face
repelled him, the fastidious neatness of her gold-bronze hair appeared
unnatural, and her pale-blue eyes had a hard glitter like that of a
diamond in them. It was evident that in place of being crushed, she was
filled with an intense suppressed virility. Indeed, there was something
in her appearance and manner that was suggestive of a beautifully
tempered spring, one that would fly back the moment the strain
slackened, and, perhaps, cut deep into the hand that compressed it. It
was the girl who spoke first, and her voice had a certain incisive
quality in its evenness.
"Charley has told you," she said; "I can see that by your face. He
insisted on doing so to save me. Well, I am grateful, Charley--that is,
as grateful as I am capable of being--but I will not keep you."
Jordan looked disconcerted. "Can't you let me stay? There are one or two
ways in which I could be of service."
Eleanor made a little imperious sign, and, though Jimmy once more found
it difficult to realize that this woman, whose coldness suggested a
white-heat of passion, was his sister, he was not altogether astonished
when Jordan slowly rose.
"Then I'm going no farther than the first fir-stump that's low enough
to make a seat," he said. "If I'm wanted, Jimmy has only to come out and
call."
He went out, and Eleanor turned to her brother. "I am afraid Charley is
going to be sorry I promised to marry him," she said. "Still, I think I
am fond of him, or I might have been, if this horrible thing hadn't come
between us. It is horrible, Jimmy--one of the things after which one can
never be quite the same. I have a good deal to say to you--but you must
see him."
Jimmy made a sign of concurrence, and his sister rose. "First of all,
there is something else. It is a hard thing, but it must be done."
She turned to a cupboard, and, taking out a bottle of corn whisky, laid
it before him with a composure that jarred on the man. Her portentous
quietness troubled him far more than a flood of tears or a wild outbreak
would have done. Then she laid her finger on the outside of the bottle,
as though to indicate how much had been taken out of it.
"I think that accounts for everything," she said. "Still, he was driven
to it. I want you to remember that as long as you and the man who is
responsible live. Prescott knows, and Charley--I had to tell him. But
nobody else must ever dream of it."
"Of course you had to tell Charley," said Jimmy hoarsely. "Still, the
inquest?"
A scornful glitter crept into Eleanor's eyes. "That you will leave to
me. I have been drilling Prescott as to what he is to say, and if they
question Charley, who got here before the doctor when Prescott sent for
him, he will stand by me."
Jimmy looked somewhat startled; but when he strove to frame his
thoughts the girl silenced him. "If it were necessary to corrupt
everybody who had ever been acquainted with him, and I could do it--at
any cost--it would be done. Now"--and she quietly took up the lamp--"you
will come with me."
Jimmy shivered a little as he went with her into the adjoining room, and
set his lips tight when with a steady hand she drew the coverlet down.
Then, while his eyes grew a trifle hazy, he drew in a little breath of
relief, for Tom Wheelock lay white and serene at last, with closed eyes
and no sign of pain in his quiet face, from which all the weariness had
vanished. Only a clean linen bandage, which ran from one temple to
behind the other ear, was laid upon it. There was nothing that one could
shrink from, and Jimmy made a gesture of protest when Eleanor laid her
hand on the bandage.
She met his eyes with something that suggested contempt in hers, and
quietly drew back the bandage, and then the soft white sheet from the
shoulder of the rigid figure. Jimmy sickened suddenly, and seized her
arm in a constraining grasp.
"Put it back!" he said. "That is enough--enough, I tell you!"
Then, while the girl obeyed him, he turned from her with a groan, gasped
once or twice, and sat down limply. He could not look around again until
her task was concluded, and he would not look at her. It seemed an
almost interminable time before she spoke.
"Still," she said, "you must look at him again; I should like you to
remember him as he is now. Perhaps you can, Jimmy, but that relief is
not for me."
Jimmy rose, and in another few moments turned his head away. He stood
still, with a whirl of confused emotions that left him half-dazed
rioting within him, while he glanced vacantly round the room. It was
scantily furnished, and generally comfortless and mean. Long smears of
resinous matter exuded from the rough frame boarding of its walls, and
there were shrinkage rents in part of it that let the cool night air in.
In one place he could see where a drip from the shingle roof had spread
into a wide damp patch on the uncovered floor, and it seemed an almost
insufferable thing that his father should have spent his last days in
such surroundings. Then he glanced at Eleanor, standing a rigid, somber
figure with the lamp in her hand, and it seemed that she guessed what he
was thinking.
"It does not matter now--but he was once considered a prosperous man,"
she said. "The contrast was one of the things he never complained of;
but I think he felt it."
Jimmy turned and went out with her, and, sitting down in the adjoining
room, she looked at him with the quietness he was commencing to shrink
from. She seemed to understand that, too.
"You think I am unnatural," she said. "Perhaps you are right--but even
if you are, what does it matter? Still, I believe I was fonder of him
than you ever were. If I hadn't been, could I have done all this for you
and him?"
She stopped for a moment, and the hard gleam flashed back into her
pale-blue eyes. "He was horribly burned, Jimmy, and until the last few
minutes crazed with drink and pain. Still, he was driven to his death
and degradation."
Jimmy only gazed at her with a tightening of his lips, and the girl went
on in the clear, incisive tones that so jarred on him. "I think it was
more than murder. Can you remember him as anything but abstemious, and
only unwise in his easy kindliness, until the man who crushed him held
him in his clutches? Weak! There are people who would tell you that, and
perhaps he was. It was the load he had to bear made him so. Try to
remember him, Jimmy, as he used to be--brave and gentle, devoted to your
mother and mine; the man who, they said, never ran for shelter in the
fiercest breeze of wind. Try--I want you to."
Jimmy turned to her abruptly, moistening his dry lips with his tongue.
"Eleanor, have done; I can't stand any more."
"You must;" and the girl laughed harshly. "I hold that he was murdered.
Is there any real distinction between the man who holds you up with a
pistol and kills you for your money, suddenly and, in one way,
mercifully, and the one who with cold cunning slowly sucks your blood
until he has drained the last drop out of you? Still, that is not all.
If he had only died as most men die. You must remember the upset lamp
and the whisky, Jimmy."
"Stop!" said Jimmy hoarsely, clenching a brown hand while the
perspiration started from him. "I can't stand it! It is horrible,
Eleanor! You are a woman--you have promised to marry my comrade."
The girl rose, and, crossing to where he sat, laid a hand on his
shoulder as she looked down at him. "I feel all that you feel, with a
greater intensity; but I can bear it, and you must bear it too. Charley
will not complain, and I would be his slave or mistress as long as he
would stand by me until I carry out my purpose. He is only my lover, but
you are Tom Wheelock's son. What are you going to do?"
"What can I do?" and Jimmy made a little hopeless gesture. "Perhaps it
would be only justice, but I can't waylay Merril with a pistol. The man
has no human nature in him. I couldn't even provoke him to strike me."
"No," said Eleanor, with a bitter laugh; "that would be foolishly
theatrical, and in one way too easy. It would not satisfy me. You will
wait, ever so long if it's necessary, and command the _Shasta_ while you
take his trade away. Then we will find other means--business means; it
can, I think, be done. He must be slowly drained and ruined, and flung
aside, a broken man, as your father was. Then it would not matter
whether he dies or not."
Jimmy shrank from her a little, and she smiled as she noticed it. "There
is a good deal of our mother's nature in both of us, and you cannot get
away from it. It will make you a man, Jimmy, in spite of all your
amiable qualities."
"Still," said Jimmy vaguely, "one has to be practical. I'm afraid it
isn't easy to ruin a man like Merril just because you would like
to--I've met him, you see. The _Shasta_ Company was not started with
that purpose either, and it was only because Jordan is a friend of mine
that I was put in as skipper."
"Didn't old Leeson say that the _Shasta_ Company would never have been
formed if it hadn't been for me? It is a struggling little company, and
Merril is a big man, and apparently rich; but there are often chances
for the men with nerve enough."
Jimmy rose. "If one ever comes in my way, I shall try to profit by it.
That is all I can say. I'm a little dazed, Eleanor. I think I'll go out
and try to clear my brain again. You won't mind? I hear Prescott."
He met Prescott in the doorway, and walking past the few frame-houses
found Jordan sitting, cigar in hand, upon a big fir-stump. When Jimmy
stopped beside him he made a little sign of comprehension and sympathy.
"I guess I know what Eleanor has told you," he said. "In one way, it's
not astonishing that she should feel what she does, and I can't blame
her, though it's a little rough on me. This is a thing she'll never
quite get over--while the other man lives prosperous, anyway--and, of
course, I'm standing in with her."
"But it's not your affair."
"It's Eleanor's, and that counts with me. Besides, I'm not fond of
Merril either."
Jimmy was touched by the man's devotion, but once more he could find
nothing apposite to say, and Jordan went on:
"Sometimes, as I told you, I'm a little afraid of Eleanor, and perhaps
that's why I like her. It seems to me you never quite understood your
sister. Your mother made the Wheelock fleet, and it's quite likely that
Eleanor's going to make the _Shasta_ Shipping Company. I'm no slouch,
but she has more brains than you and I and old Leeson rolled together.
Now, you want to rouse yourself, and she has Prescott with her. You'll
walk down to the steamer with me."