A LITTLE LUNCH AT APHONSE’S
It chanced that Ridgway, through the swinging door of a department
store, caught a glimpse of Miss Balfour as he was striding along the
street. He bethought him that it was the hour of luncheon, and that she
was no end better company than the revamped noon edition of the morning
paper. Wherefore he wheeled into the store and interrupted her
inspection of gloves.
“I know the bulliest little French restaurant tucked away in a side
street just three blocks from here. The happiness disseminated in this
world by that chef’s salads will some day carry him past St. Peter with
no questions asked.”
“You believe in salvation by works?” she parried, while she considered
his invitation.
“So will you after a trial of Alphonse’s salad.”
“Am I to understand that I am being invited to a theological discussion
of a heavenly salad concocted by Father Alphonse?”
“That is about the specifications.”
“Then I accept. For a week my conscience has condemned me for excess of
frivolity. You offer me a chance to expiate without discomfort. That is
my idea of heaven. I have always believed it a place where one pastures
in rich meadows of pleasure, with penalties and consciences all
excluded from its domains.”
“You should start a church,” he laughed. “It would have a great
following—especially if you could operate your heaven this side of the
Styx.”
She found his restaurant all he had claimed, and more. The little
corner of old Paris set her eyes shining. The fittings were Parisian to
the least detail. Even the waiter spoke no English.
“But I don’t see how they make it pay. How did he happen to come here?
Are there enough people that appreciate this kind of thing in Mesa to
support it?”
He smiled at her enthusiasm. “Hardly. The place has a scarce dozen of
regular patrons. Hobart comes here a good deal. So does Eaton. But it
doesn’t pay financially. You see, I know because I happen to own it. I
used to eat at Alphonse’s restaurant in Paris. So I sent for him. It
doesn’t follow that one has to be less a slave to the artificial
comforts of a supercivilized world because one lives at Mesa.”
“I see it doesn’t. You are certainly a wonderful man.”
“Name anything you like. I’ll warrant Alphonse can make good if it is
not outside of his national cuisine,” he boasted.
She did not try his capacity to the limit, but the oysters, the salad,
the chicken soup were delicious, with the ultimate perfection that
comes only out of Gaul.
They made a delightfully gay and intimate hour of it, and were still
lingering over their demi-tasse when Yesler’s name was mentioned.
“Isn’t it splendid that he’s doing so well?” cried the girl with
enthusiasm. “The doctor says that if the bullet had gone a fraction of
an inch lower, he would have died. Most men would have died anyhow,
they say. It was his clean outdoor life and magnificent constitution
that saved him.”
“That’s what pulled him through,” he nodded. “It would have done his
heart good to see how many friends he had. His recovery was a
continuous performance ovation. It would have been a poorer world for a
lot of people if Sam Yesler had crossed the divide.”
“Yes. It would have been a very much poorer one for several I know.”
He glanced shrewdly at her. “I’ve learned to look for a particular
application when you wear that particularly sapient air of mystery.”
Her laugh admitted his hit. “Well, I was thinking of Laska. I begin to
think HER fair prince has come.”
“Meaning Yesler?”
“Yes. She hasn’t found it out herself yet. She only knows she is
tremendously interested.”
“He’s a prince all right, though he isn’t quite a fairy. The woman that
gets him will be lucky.
“The man that gets Laska will be more than lucky,” she protested
loyally.
“I dare say,” he agreed carelessly. “But, then, good women are not so
rare as good men. There are still enough of them left to save the
world. But when it comes to men like Sam—well, it would take a Diogenes
to find another.”
“I don’t see how even Mr. Pelton, angry as he was, dared shoot him.”
“He had been drinking hard for a week. That will explain anything when
you add it to his temperament. I never liked the fellow.”
“I suppose that is why you saved his life when the miners took him and
were going to lynch him?”
“I would not have lifted a hand for him. That’s the bald truth. But I
couldn’t let the boys spoil the moral effect of their victory by so
gross a mistake. It would have been playing right into Harley’s hands.”
“Can a man get over being drunk in five minutes? I never saw anybody
more sober than Mr. Pelton when the mob were crying for vengeance and
you were fighting them back.”
“A great shock will sober a man. Pelton is an errant coward, and he had
pretty good reason to think he had come to the end of the passage. The
boys weren’t playing. They meant business.”
“They would not have listened to another man in the world except you,”
she told him proudly.
“It was really Sam they listened to—when he sent out the message asking
them to let the law have its way.”
“No, I think it was the way you handled the message. You’re a wizard at
a speech, you know.”
“Thanks.”
He glanced up, for Alphonse was waiting at his elbow.
“You’re wanted on the telephone, monsieur.”
“You can’t get away from business even for an hour, can you?” she
rallied. “My heaven wouldn’t suit you at all, unless I smuggled in a
trust for you to fight.”
“I expect it is Eaton,” he explained. “Steve phoned down to the office
that he isn’t feeling well to-day. I asked him to have me called up
here. If he isn’t better, I’m going to drop round and see him.”
But when she caught sight of his face as he returned she knew it was
serious.
“What’s the matter? Is it Mr. Eaton? Is he very ill?” she cried.
His face was set like broken ice refrozen. “Yes, it’s Eaton. They
say—but it can’t be true!”
She had never seen him so moved. “What is it, Waring?”
“The boy has sold me out. He is at the courthouse now, undoing my
work—the Judas!”
The angry blood swept imperiously into her cheeks. “Don’t waste any
more time with me, Waring. Go—go and save yourself from the traitor.
Perhaps it is not too late yet.”
He flung her a grateful look. “You’re true blue, Virginia. Come! I’ll
leave you at the store as we pass.”
The defection of Eaton bit his chief to the quick. The force of the
blow itself was heavy—how heavy he could not tell till he could take
stock of the situation. He could see that he would be thrown out of
court in the matter of the Consolidated Supply Company receivership,
since Eaton’s stock would now be in the hands of the enemy. But what
was of more importance was the fact that Eaton’s interest in the Mesa
Ore-producing Company now belonged to Harley, who could work any amount
of mischief with it as a lever for litigation.
The effect, too, of the man’s desertion upon the morale of the M. O. P.
forces must be considered and counteracted, if possible. He fancied he
could see his subordinates looking shiftyeyed at each other and
wondering who would slip away next.
If it had been anybody but Steve! He would as soon have distrusted his
right hand as Steve Eaton. Why, he had made the man, had picked him out
when he was a mere clerk, and tied him to himself by a hundred favors.
Up on the Snake River he had saved Steve’s life once when he was
drowning. The boy had always been as close to him as a brother. That
Steve should turn traitor was not conceivable. He knew all his intimate
plans, stood second to himself in the company. Oh, it was a numbing
blow! Ridgway’s sense of personal loss and outrage almost obliterated
for the moment his appreciation of the business loss.
The motion to revoke the receivership of the Supply Company was being
argued when Ridgway entered the court-room. Within a few minutes the
news had spread like wild-fire that Eaton was lined up with the
Consolidated, and already the paltry dozen of loafers in the court-room
had swelled into hundreds, all of them eager for any sensation that
might develop.
Ridgway’s broad shoulders flung aside the crowd and opened a way to the
vacant chair waiting for him. One of his lawyers had the floor and was
flaying Eaton with a vitriolic tongue, the while men craned forward all
over the room to get a glimpse of the traitor’s face.
Eaton sat beside Mott, dry-lipped and pallid, his set eyes staring
vacantly into space. Once or twice he flung a furtive glance about him.
His stripped and naked soul was enduring a foretaste of the Judgment
Day. The whip of scorn with which the lawyer lashed him cut into his
shrinking sensibilities, and left him a welter of raw and livid wales.
Good God! why had he not known it would be like this? He was paying for
his treachery and usury, and it was being burnt into him that as the
years passed he must continue to pay in self-contempt and the distrust
of his fellows.
The case had come to a hearing before Judge Hughes, who was not one of
Ridgway’s creatures. That on its merits it would be decided in favor of
the Consolidated was a foregone conclusion. It was after the judge had
rendered the expected decision that the dramatic moment of the day came
to gratify the seasoned court frequenters.
Eaton, trying to slip as quietly as possible from the room, came face
to face with his former chief. For an interminable instant the man he
had betrayed, blocking the way squarely, held the trembling wretch in
the blaze of his scorn. Ridgway’s contemptuous eyes sifted to the
ingrate’s soul until it shriveled. Then he stood disdainfully to one
side so that the man might not touch him as he passed.
Some one in the back of the room broke the tense silence and hissed:
“The damned Judas!” Instantly echoes of “Judas! Judas!” filled the
room, and pursued Eaton to his cab. It would be many years before he
could recall without scalding shame that moment when the finger of
public scorn was pointed at him in execration.