and wherever he stopped the fury and desperation of the effort to
stem the tide increased. When he came plodding along the muddy
roadway to the part committed to Meade he did not find the engineer.
"Where's Roberts?" he yelled above the noise of the storm.
"He and two men have gone, sir."
"Gone?" cried Vandeventer, cut to the heart at what he thought was a
desertion. "Well," he shouted, realizing there was nothing he could
do then and that he had neither breath nor time to waste, "there's
more need for the rest of us to take their places."
He drew a man or two from the other gangs to re-enforce this danger
point and himself directed their work.
Now it takes time for water to rise five feet, even in a cloudburst
or a succession of them. The rain constantly seemed to increase as
the wind drove it on. Vandeventer knew that the dam was doomed, that
the sluice and the half-finished spill-way combined could discharge
only a small part of the flow, but he knew that he would have two
hours at least to work before the water could pass the crest,
undermine, and batter down the palisade and begin to trickle over.
Just as soon as it did roll over the top, unless they could stop it,
the whole thing was gone. For those two hours the supermen labored
unremittingly in the downpour with a persistent and heroic courage
that should have been recorded in song and story, but which was not.
It was remembered after a while by none, save a few. To the many it
was only "all in the day's work"!
The under sluice in the side of the dam which would later serve as
head gate for the canal had been intended to pass the smaller floods
which might occur during the construction and had been open since the
rain began. It carried off a great volume of water, but hopelessly
little in comparison with the flood. Foot by foot in the torrential
downpour the water rose. At half after eight it reached the level of
the spill-way and commenced to rush through in ever increasing
volume, but the flow into the reservoir was far greater than the
spill-way's capacity.
Still the sight of the rushing water encouraged the men. Every one
of them felt that if the palisade held the discharge would be
increased enough to stop the rise, but at present the effect was
small. By nine o'clock it was within a foot of the top. They began
to measure its rise by inches. Although the dam had been carefully
kept level as it was built, the trample of horses and men, the
present digging and palisading and revetting had caused little
depressions. Now the water rose to the level. Here and there it
began to trickle over!
The rain coming down from the mountain tops was as cold as ice, yet
the men were in a fever of excitement. They had got their second
wind. They were too enthused, too desperate, to feel their
weariness. They had not worked before as they did then. It was the
last possible nervous outburst with most of them. They could keep it
up a little longer--till they dropped dead. As the mad thoroughbred
falls in his stride in the track, pushed beyond his power of
endurance, as even the common cart horse can be made to go until he
drops, so these men, white, haggard, nervous, drawn-faced, sweat
mingling with the rain on their sodden bodies, would go till they
broke. They had not quite reached that point yet.
There were some five hundred heavy cement bags which had been filled
with sand and piled up on the roadway at convenient points. As a
forlorn hope, as a last try, Vandeventer called all the diggers and
ditchers, and hewers and drivers, and bade them tackle the sand bags.
The timber wall that rose to four or five feet was now packed to a
height of three with an unequal wall of earth.
The waves were beginning to roll against the rampart, although their
force as yet was broken by the brushwood. Vandeventer jumped up on
the palisade near the center. There were some large logs there where
he could stand and whence he could get as clear a view of the whole
top of the dam as was possible through the driving rain.
"There," shouted the engineer, pointing to a red trickle--it seemed
to him like blood, taking its hideous hue from the red clay of the
banks--where the water had found a low spot and was washing across
the top and trickling through the new wall and down on the other
side. Even as he pointed the trickle became a stream and the stream
bade fair to be a flood. Men ran and dropped sand bags over in front
of the palisade right where the leak had occurred. Other men heaped
up the earth behind the wall, seeking to smother it and stop it. The
water checked there, they were forced to do the same thing at another
place. Desperately they dropped their sand bags, sturdily they plied
their shovels in the mud, scrambling and yelling they ran from leak
to leak. They lifted the heavy bags of sand as if they had been
loaves of bread and jammed them down. They swung pick and shovel
like toys, although the rain made all the earth sticky mud and the
work all the harder. The water was clear over the top of the dam now
and streaming through the revetment of brush and surging against the
palisade. Where it did not let the water through, the line of stakes
was beginning to bend backward.
The men who had expended their sand bags and could get no more in one
final effort ran to the palisade, dug their heels madly in the wet,
slimy earth and put their shoulders against the bending stakes as if
to hold them up by main strength. Thin streams were flowing here and
there, now unheeded. Checked and held in one spot, the water broke
through at another. The spill-way could not control the rise.
"She's gone, she's gone. My God!" gasped Vandeventer under his
breath. He had fought a good fight. He could do no more. There
were no more bags of sand. Save for the men straining at the wall
here and there and everywhere, there was left nothing but to stand
and wait, having done all. As one man saw another the whole hundred
and fifty caught the contagion and threw themselves against the
palisade, wet and chilled from the rain, but yet madly, recklessly,
Americans and foreigners alike. They would hold it by main strength
for another minute, they swore, oblivious to the fact that just as
soon as it went it would go with a rush.
The stockade would be swept away first and they would go with it.
What of that? The men back of it matched their brawny arms against
rain and wind, the powers of man against the powers of God, but not
mockingly. It is perhaps doubtful if they realized what they did.
It was instinct, habit, blind desperation now. If the flimsy wall
failed under the terrific water pressure they would be hurled beneath
it, swept down the slope of the dam, buried in the débris as it was
swept away, caught up if they by any chance survived so far, and
hurled broken and battered down the valley in the terrible flood that
would ensue. What did they know about that, or knowing, what did
they care, as they strained at the wavering timber wall? And still
they held as the rain poured down on them, soaking through their
soggy clothes, the colder on their exhausted bodies for the keen wind
that blew across them.
Well, they had done everything they could. Vandeventer jumped down
and pressed himself against the nearest timber with the men and
waited, silent. He had never sustained such a pressure in all his
life. Like Atlas, he felt as if he were holding up a world. And the
mocking thing about it all was his feeling, nay his realization, that
he was not really holding anything, that if the palisades failed, his
pressure, his resistance and that of all the other men amounted to
nothing. Yet he held on and they, too--demi-gods!
IV
SPILL-WAY
[Illustration: (diagram of reservoir and surrounding terrain)]
XXV
THE ANCIENT ART OF FASCINATION
And much of the last wild hurricane of work took place under the
observation of a woman!
From the top of the big mesa there was a clear view of the new
reservoir, from the dam on one side far back into the hills on the
other. In spite of the tremendous downpour and the fierce gale Helen
Illingworth stood exposed to both attacks, and, indeed, indifferent
to them,--albeit protected by slicker and boots and
sou'wester--fascinated by the titanic struggle between nature and man
of which she was a witness. How she came to be there herself is
another chapter and how the two men who stood by her came to be with
her is now to be related.
The general investigation by Rodney and Miss Illingworth had produced
no results. A careful study by each of the members of the new
alliance of Rodney's accurately reported, graphically set forth notes
upon the subject had only served the more thoroughly to convince each
of them of the correctness of their conclusions. Analyzed and
expanded, iterated and reiterated, scrutinized and emphasized by each
of them separately and then together in many long discussions, they
only made them more and more confident that Meade was blameless. But
the most assiduous effort with the heartiest will in the world and
the promptings of devotion and affection could not make a case out of
these suggestions and their inferences that would hold water. They
could not establish their contention beyond peradventure in the face
of Meade's direct admission and Shurtliff's corroboration. They
could not establish it in the public mind by any evidence at all if
Meade and Shurtliff remained silent.
If either one or the other of the two conspirators could be brought
to tell the truth, Meade could be restored, at least sufficiently so
for the purpose of argument; the argument that Helen Illingworth
sooner or later must make to her father. It was that to which she
gave the most thought, it was for that she planned and longed.
Two people cannot resolve even by mutual consent to dismiss from
their daily thought and conversation any subject whatsoever without
introducing in place of it a certain constraint. It is as futile to
attempt to dismiss anything absolutely from the human mind as is the
oft suggested cure for rheumatism--doing certain things without
thinking of the disease sought to be cured!
Colonel Illingworth had dismissed Meade from his mind because he
hated him. Helen Illingworth refrained from talking about him to her
father because she loved him. So they were never in each other's
presence without thinking of the man. This was a source of great
irritation to the father. On occasion he almost found himself at the
point of shouting at his daughter to talk about him. And that she so
carefully avoided the subject and as the avoidance was so obviously
in accordance with his own wish, the restraint irritated him the
more. The fact that they both sought so carefully to maintain the
old relationship made it the more impossible. For relationships
which are primarily founded on love cannot be maintained by
constraint without the weakening of the great force upon which their
tenure had previously depended. There is nothing like concealment to
impair and weaken a tie unless it be a ban! Prohibitions rarely
prohibit. Still there remained a deep and abiding affection between
father and daughter and they managed somehow to get along outwardly
much as before. Indeed Colonel Illingworth was more kind and
considerate than ever to his daughter, and she repaid him with more
than usual care and devotion. The very fact that she seemed to have
accepted the situation and obeyed the law he had laid down gave him
some compunctions of conscience. On that account perhaps he had been
the more willing to accede to her request to take Shurtliff into his
employ. In no way was Shurtliff responsible for the failure of the
bridge or for any mistake in the calculations of the Meades, and
Shurtliff was an invaluable man, not only for an engineer but for the
president of the Martlet Bridge Company.
He was familiar with the subjects that Colonel Illingworth discussed
and wrote about. He was intelligent and reliable to the last degree,
his reputation for steadiness and discretion unquestioned, and he was
marvelously efficient in his subordinate position. The Colonel,
having first tried him out, had advanced him rapidly after learning
his worth. He was now his private secretary. Shurtliff being an old
bachelor without kith or kin and not originally fond of women, found
himself suddenly in touch with one of the sweetest and kindest, as
well as the youngest and most beautiful of a sex about which he knew
nothing.
His new position naturally brought him into close touch with the
Colonel. The old man transacted a good deal of his business in his
own house. Shurtliff was frequently there. Under other
circumstances Helen Illingworth would have treated him with that fine
and gracious courtesy which she extended to everyone with whom she
came in contact, but she would not have especially interested herself
in him. She would not have made him the object of the delicate
attention and given him the careful consideration which would have
completely turned the head of a younger and more susceptible man.
There had been a prejudice in Shurtliff's mind against women in
general, and Helen Illingworth in particular. He had quickly
realized that she above all persons had the greatest interest in
disproving Meade's statement and his own and in laying the blame for
the failure of the bridge where it belonged, on the shoulders of the
patron, to love whom had been the habit of his life. Therefore, the
old secretary was constantly on his guard lest he be entrapped into
admissions or actions which might be used to discredit the older
Meade and convict the two conspirators.
But Helen Illingworth was far too clever to allow any inkling of such
a design to appear. Not the remotest hint of such a purpose did she
betray. She deliberately set about to win the old man's regard and
respect and perhaps eventually his affection. She had the ordering
of her father's household, of course. That was a matter in which the
Colonel concerned himself not at all so long as things went smoothly,
as they always did. He was a little astonished at her treatment of
Shurtliff, but the old secretary was at heart a gentleman and there
was no reason why, if Helen chose to include him among her friends
and invite him to dinner and otherwise make him welcome in the house,
she should not do so. And in his dry, precise way Shurtliff was
rather likable. He was touched and flattered by her kindness and in
spite of his suspicions, which gradually grew less, by the way, he
exerted himself to show his appreciation and to bear himself
seemingly in his new life.
Colonel Illingworth had no suspicions whatsoever that there had been
any conspiracy to suppress the truth and shift the blame. True his
daughter had protested on that fatal day that she did not believe
Meade and Shurtliff, but that was in the excitement of the moment and
understandable in view of her plighted troth. Helen had never
discussed that with him; even the very name of the engineer being
banned, she was silent. She was wise enough not to try to worry or
bother her father with arguments on that point, to which, of course,
he would not have listened in any event.
Accordingly the conferences with Rodney had never been brought to his
notice. There was no use stirring up trouble and strife. There was
no necessity even to discuss it with her father until she had found
more proof. So he at least had no suspicions as to her treatment of
Shurtliff. He could not see any end to be gained and therefore he
jumped to the conclusion that there was none.
In course of time, as Miss Illingworth never referred to Meade in the
secretary's presence, all his mistrust disappeared. Finally he even
brought up the subject of Meade's whereabouts of his own motion.
Although the girl was fairly wild to talk and ask questions she had
wit and resolution enough to change the subject when it had been
first broached and for many times thereafter.
Helen Illingworth was fighting for the reputation of the man she
loved and for her own happiness, and she was resolved to neglect no
point in the game. She partook in a large measure of her father's
capacity, but she added to his somewhat blunt and military way of
doing things the infinite tact of woman, stimulated by a growing,
overwhelming devotion to her absent lover. She cherished that
feeling for him in any event and would have done so but the whole
situation was so charged with mystery and surcharged with romance
that it made the most powerful and stimulating appeal to her.
She lived to vindicate Meade and she bent every effort toward that
end. She did not overdo it, either. Finally, as he himself
continued to press the subject upon her, she made no secret to
Shurtliff of her devotion to the younger Meade, her sorrow that he
had made such a declaration, and her determination to wait for him.
She was always careful to end every conversation by saying that she
knew her outlook was perfectly hopeless and that she could expect
nothing except sorrow until the younger Meade was rehabilitated. She
so contrived matters, while constantly affirming her feeling for
Meade, as to let Shurtliff infer that she was convinced that he had
been telling the truth in what he had said.
After a time she deftly appealed to him to know if he could not help
her discover the truth which she tactfully maintained even in face of
the evidence that Shurtliff had given. And she did this in such an
adroit way that Shurtliff became convinced that she did not connect
him with any willful deception, and that she believed that he was
deluded himself and occupied the position of an innocent abettor.
And Shurtliff, in his strange, old, self-contained way, finally grew
to like Helen Illingworth exceedingly. Indeed he started in his work
with natural antagonism to Colonel Illingworth, and when he sensed,
as he very soon did, the difference that had arisen between father
and daughter, he espoused the cause of the latter. He was the kind
of a man who had to devote himself to somebody. He began to wonder
if there was any way to secure the girl's happiness without betraying
the elder Meade.
She compassed the secretary, who was, of course, old enough to be her
father, with sweet observances and he found it increasingly hard to
keep true to his falsehood. Now she was capable of fascinating
bigger personalities than Shurtliff, although she cared little for
that power and rarely exercised it. The old man actually got to
thinking of her as a daughter. Sometimes when they had an hour
together he found himself seconding her arguments for the innocence
of the younger Meade, for she had progressed that far by now, with
little details which his knowledge and experience of the two men
could supply. Trifling in themselves as were these contributions, as
Rodney pointed out when she repeated them to him, they nevertheless
added something to the cumulative force of the argument so
laboriously built up by the friend and woman. And they were
decidedly indicative of a growing mental condition on the part of
Shurtliff from which much might be hoped and expected.
But Shurtliff could not bring himself to come out boldly and confess,
and his failure to do that made him more and more miserable. At
first his conscience had been entirely clear. He had viewed his
conduct in the light of a noble sacrifice for the great man. Now he
began to question: Was it right to blast the future of the living for
the sake of the fame of the dead? Probably he would have questioned
that eventually without regard to Helen Illingworth, but when he
began to grow fond of the woman and when he realized, as she
unmistakably disclosed it to him, that her own happiness was engaged
and that he was not only ruining the career of a man but wrecking the
life and crushing the heart of an entirely innocent woman, he had a
constant battle royal with himself to pursue his course and to keep
silent.
Yet such is the character of a temperament like that of Shurtliff,
narrowed and contracted by a single passion in a life and lacking the
breadth which comes from intercourse with men and women, that his
compunctions of conscience only made him the more resolved. The
lonely, heartbroken old man swore that he would never tell. The
young man could go his own gait and work out his own salvation, or be
damned, if he must. The woman's heart might break, pitiful as that
would be, but he would never tell. He was as unhappy in that
determination as any other man fighting against his conscience must
inevitably be.
Sometimes looking at the misery in the old man's face (for on his
countenance his heart wrote his secret), Helen Illingworth
experienced compunctions of conscience of her own, which she told to
Rodney in default of other confessor. That fine young man
appreciated fully the woman's feelings and understood her keen
sensibilities, and his comprehension was a great comfort to her. He
encouraged her to persevere. Since it was only through Shurtliff
that the truth could be established, she must not falter nor reject
any fair and reasonable means to gain his whole confidence and make
him speak. It was, after all, simply a question of whether the game
was worth the candle. How best could they expose or fight a deceit?
And that the deception was for a noble purpose and to serve a
laudable end in the minds of the deceivers did not alter that fact.
"You are doing nothing in the least degree dishonorable, Miss
Illingworth," said Rodney, reassuringly. "Woman's wiles have been
her weapons since the Stone Age."
"But I do feel compunctions of conscience occasionally."
"Personally I think you are abundantly justified," urged Rodney.
"Yes, to establish the truth, to give the man I love his good name
would justify more than this," she replied, "and yet"--she smiled
faintly--"my conscience does hurt me a little. The old man is
beginning to love me."
"That's the reason it hurts you," said Rodney. "When he loves you
enough he will do anything you want, as I would----"
The young man stopped, looked long at her, and then turned away with
a little gesture of--was it appeal or renunciation? He was too loyal
to his friend to speak, but he could not control everything. The
tone of his voice, the look in his eyes, his quick avoidance of her,
told the woman a little story. They had been very closely
associated, these two. Rodney also had not had much advantage of
woman's society, certainly not of a woman like Helen Illingworth.
She had given him her full confidence in the intimacy. He was a man.
He loved like others. She was too fond of him, too great, too true a
woman to pretend.
"Mr. Rodney," said the girl, laying her hand on his arm, "that way
madness lies."
"Miss Illingworth," said Rodney, turning and facing her, his lips
firmly compressed, his eyes shining, "I'm devoted to Bert Meade and
to you"--he lifted her hand from his arm and kissed it--"and I'm
going to do everything for your happiness."
Brave words and he said them bravely.
"I understand," said the woman, "and I honor you for your loyalty to
your friend and your devotion to me. Loyalty is not always the
easiest thing on earth, I know."
"You make it easy for me because you understand."
So the fall and winter were filled with interest to Helen Illingworth
and there was in her days no lack of hope. Every Saturday the
flowers that Meade had arranged for spoke words of love to her and
bade her not forget, although that was admonition she did not need.
That was the only message that she received from her lover. He had
dropped out of sight completely. They caused search to be made for
him, sought tidings of him in every possible way, but in vain. Her
heart almost broke sometimes at the separation. She had confidence
enough in her power over him, and in her woman's wit, to feel that if
she had only another opportunity she might learn the truth, force it
from him, constrain him to tell it, because she loved him!
XXVI
ONCE MORE UNTO THE WORK