"I would--at least I think I would have," he corrected, "if you'd been
alone. By-the-way, I saw her in Minneapolis the other day. She was
taking an order from a fat Frenchman in a restaurant where Smythe and I
had turned in for dinner. Luckily her back was turned, so we got out
without her seeing me. But I caught her profile and she looked
dreadfully weak and thin."
"A waitress?" Helen cried. "Oh, the poor thing! Couldn't you have--"
Pausing, she confirmed his wisdom. "No, it was better she did not see
you."
Silence fell between them, he thinking of the temptation in the warm
gloaming, she busy with her own memories. Helen's watch beat like a
pulse in the quiet; a house-fly rivalled the full boom of a bee as it
battered its head against the window-pane, a futile illustration of
Elinor Leslie's folly. Just so had she beaten at the invisible barriers
that held her back from free passion. Now she lay, poor soul, bruised
and beaten like a dying moth, wings singed by a single touch of the
unholy flame.
But sadness could not hold them. Smiling, Helen suddenly relieved
herself of the astonishing remark: "I am so glad you are ruined. Yes, I
am." She nodded firmly, misreading his comical surprise. "Now we can
go back to the farm--just you and I--be ever so happy."
"Why?" He listened with huge enjoyment to her explanation, then said,
with mock concern, "It would be fine, and I'm that sorry to disappoint
you, but--who said I was ruined?"
"Oh, everybody--the papers said this morning that--what is that funny
name? Yes, Mr. Brass Bowels--that he had bought up enough of your
liabilities to snow you under."
"They did, did they? Well--they have another guess coming."
"Aren't you ruined?" she asked.
But though he laughed at her naive distress, he refused to say more,
laughingly assuring her that she would not be long in suspense.
Nor had she long to wait. For as she was giving him his medicine the
following afternoon, he bobbed up under her hand as though set on wire
springs to the detriment of the snowy quilt, which absorbed the dose.
"Listen!"
A whistle, deep-toned, fully two octaves below the shrill hoot of the
monopoly's locomotives, thrilled in the distance. Drawing nearer, its
vibrant bass gave the entire city pause--clerks waited, pens poised for
a stroke; lawyers dropped their briefs; store-keepers, laborers,
mechanics, the very Indians in the camps by the river, stood on gaze;
motion ceased as at the voice of the falked siren; a hush fell in the
streets, a silence complete as that of some enchanted city.
It carried consternation into the offices of the monopoly, that whistle.
Sparks, the division superintendent, dropped his pen and stared at his
chief, who was giving last orders for the demolition of Greer & Smythe
before he went back East. The latter's iron nerve, however, vouchsafed
only a breathing space to surprise, then he continued in the same dry
tones: "Previous instructions are hereby cancelled. That's an American
whistle, Sparks--Jem Ball for a thousand. They've won out; it's all
over but the shouting." And as eager tumult broke loose in the street,
he added, "And there it goes."
The shouting? They poured into the streets--doctors, lawyers, clerks,
laborers; carpenters jumped from new buildings, plumbers left their
braziers burning while they swelled the stream that poured out to see
the first train, an engine with Pullman and palace-car, pull in over the
new line.
Shout? They did--and more. Your canny Canadian is the deil at
celebrating when his backslidings carry him that way, and next morning
many a worthy citizen sweated in thinking back to the cause of his
headache. Ay, good church-members lugged flasks of old Scotch from
blameless-appearing pockets; the carpenter exchanged news and drams with
the millionaire. The N.P. had bought the new road! No, only leased it!
No! no! they were merely to finance the enterprise, market its bonds in
return for reciprocal traffic arrangements! There were other theories,
all spun round a germ of truth, but thence to the source.
As the siren sounded the second time, Carter looked at Bender, who sat
opposite Helen, having dropped in for a chat, and his remark carries
back to the strike. "Now you know why we went to Minneapolis. What does
it all mean?" His face lit up as he turned to Helen. "It means cars,
locomotives, rolling-stock; the use of N.P. equipment till we can instal
our own. That we can rebuild the burned bridges this fall, and shove a
temporary line through to Silver Creek and the camps in the Riding
Mountains. It means that the Red River Valley will send its wheat south
to Duluth this fall. It means--victory for us, competition for the
province."
That was his hour, but Helen shared it--even when Greer and Smythe
ushered in the American railway-king. Twin to the general manager in
massive build and strength of feature, he had come from a softer mould.
His eyes, mouth were gentler, more pleasant. In him the high, sloping
forehead--mark of the dreamer--was qualified by the strong jaw,
wide-spaced eyes of the man of practical affairs. A glance told that
here imagination and constructive power went hand in hand. Fun rippled
and ran over innumerable fine facial lines, and he laughed out loud when
Helen made to withdraw, assuring her that their conversation would not
tax her sex's supposed weakness in the matter of secrets as they were
not to talk business.
"We think too much of this man to bother him with details," he said.
"These gentlemen have attended to everything, and all we require is his
signature to a few papers. Celebrations won't be in order till he's
well enough to run down to St. Paul. Then--well, you'd better not let
him come alone." So, talking and laughing for a pleasant half-hour, he
gave off his superabundant energy until the ward was charged, then went
away leaving the patient stimulated to the verge of open mutiny.
"I'm as well as you." He defied the Head to his face that evening.
"Send up my clothes."
"In two weeks, if you are good!" the Head calmly answered.
"_Two weeks_? I'll be head over heels in work by then, and there is
something I want to do first. I'll be out of here in one." And, albeit
a trifle chalky as to complexion and wobbly of knee, he was. On the
last day--
But first the record of that week; and as Bender's bulk overshadows all
else, behold him, mid-week, hobbling into the ward with Jenny trailing
behind like a kitten in the wake of the family house dog.
"Mrs. Bender, if you please," he corrected Carter, chuckling; and for
once he permitted some one else to do the blushing. Wherein he showed
great taste, as she did it right prettily, exhibiting, moreover, a much
superior article.
Next day, Dorothy, becomingly mortified because the good news had come
to her through her father out of Smythe. "To hear of it in such a
roundabout way!" she declared. "You little traitor! and when I think of
your speculations about his wife! Positively I had resolved never to
forgive you, but--" Kisses, of course.
Thereafter, Brady, Big Hans, Carrots Smith--all more or less singed and
nursing various breakages--ostensibly to see the boss, really to take a
look at his pretty wife, whom, they decided, shamed the specifications.
Then, to everybody's astonishment--indeed, the Head shadowed the man
along the corridor as though he were an anarchist with a bomb in his
pocket--the _General Manager_! brisk, steel-like, yet twinkling.
"Trounced us, didn't you?" he laughed. "Well, one never can tell when
one has made an end. Competition? Perhaps, for a while; but wait till
Jem Ball and I get a bellyful of fighting. However, by that time you'll
be well cured of your desires for the public weal and be ready to listen
to reason. Oh yes, you will! We all take 'em like chicken-pox or
measles, but they are not fatal--unless you get 'em late in life. I
feel so sure of your eventual recovery that I just dropped in to bury
the hatchet. Fifty years won't see the finish of our plans, and
whenever you feel a yearning for fresh enterprises, just look me up."
Therewith the gray cynic hurried away to plan and scheme, upbuild, tear
down, without slack or satiety of enormous constructive appetite; to
live in travail greater than the labor of woman, and give birth
ceaselessly to innumerable works; to inundate the plains with seas of
wheat and carry bread to Europe's teeming millions; to sow towns,
villages, cities broadcast over the north, make farms for countless
thousands; to join Occident and Orient with gleaming rails, clipper
ships, to do evil consciously all his days and work unconscious good,
crushing the individual for the weal of the race, and caring nothing for
either; to live feared and die respected, leaving the world bigger and
better than he found it.
Lastly, the cook, just down from the camp with news of Michigan Red.
Flying in front of the fire, the black stallion had come in with the
rat-tailed mare to be shot as a murderer after the Cree had tracked down
the Thing that had been his master; and so, if there be aught in Cree
mythology, the soul of the fierce brute would fight it out once more
with the fiercer man in the place of the teamsters.
While beguiling the tedium, these tales and conversations failed to
exclude from Carter's ear a distant hammering that attended the building
of his station and freight-sheds. Also he could hear the hoarse
coughing of locomotives going up and down his line. And as the _materia
medica_ contains no tonics like happiness and success, small wonder
that, as aforesaid, he demanded his clothes at the end of the week.
"Once you get hold of a fellow you are never satisfied till you have
gone all through his clock-work," he replied to the Head's objections.
"But though I sympathize with your industry, you'll have to wait for
another go at mine. They are needed in my business."
First--Helen with him, of course--he directed his steps, or rather the
wheels of a hack, to the new station where the ring of saws, hammering,
noise and bustle of work, acted upon him like the draught of the elixir
of life, bringing color to his cheeks, stiffness to his knees, sparkle
to his eyes. Thence they drove for a conference to Greer & Smythe's;
whereafter nothing would suit him but a long drive out to the prairies.
It was a strenuous beginning, but fresh air and sunshine are ever
potent. He gained color and strength under her anxious eyes; seemed
fresher when he dropped her at Jean Glaves's house that evening than in
the morning.
Throughout the happy day they had lived in the present. But though he
had made no plan for the future, she had trusted, and her face lit up
with flashing intuition when he said good-night.
"Mistress Morrill, you are to take the morning train to Lone Tree."