"WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY"
Hope is an insistent thing. It may be strangled, lie cold and buried deep
in the heart of a man, yet suddenly, without premonition, he may feel it
rise and stretch small hands, groping towards a ray of light. So in that
reminiscent hour while the train labored up through the Cascades to the
great tunnel, Tisdale told himself this woman--the one woman for whom he
must have been waiting all these years, at whose coming old and cherished
memories had faded to shadows--was very near to loving him. Already she
knew that those mysterious forces she called Fate had impelled them out of
their separate orbits through unusual ways, to meet. Sometime--he would
not press her, he could be patient--but sometime she would surely pay him
that debt.
He dwelt with new interest on his resemblance to Weatherbee, and he told
himself it was her constancy to David that had kept her safe. Then it came
over him that if Weatherbee had married her instead of the Spanish woman,
that must have been an insurmountable barrier between them to-day. As long
as they lived, she must have remained sacred on her pedestal, out of
reach. But how nobly partisan she was; how ready to cross swords for
Weatherbee's wife. That was the incredible test; her capacity for loving
was great.
The porter was turning on the lights. Tisdale moved a little and looked
across the aisle. For that one moment he was glad Weatherbee had made his
mistake. She was so incomparable, so adorable. Any other woman must have
lost attractiveness, shown at least the wear and tear of that mountain
journey, but her weariness appealed to him as her buoyancy had not. She
had taken off her hat to rest her head on the high, cushioned back of the
seat, and the drooping curves of her short upper lip, the blue shadows
under those outward curling black lashes, roused a new emotion, the
paternal, in the depths of his great heart. He wished to smooth her
ruffled hair; it was so soft, so vital; under the electric light it seemed
to flash little answering blue sparks. Then his glance fell to her relaxed
palms, open in her lap, and he felt a quick solicitude over a scratch the
barbed fence must have made on one small, determined thumb.
They had had trouble with the horses in the vale. Nip, who had broken away
during the storm, had been rounded in by the goat-woman and her returning
collie. The travelers found her trying to extricate his halter which had
caught, holding him dangerously close, in the wire fencing. It had taken
caution and long patience to free him, and more to hitch the excited team.
The delay had caused them to miss the westbound evening train; they were
forced to drive back and spend the night at Wenatchee. And the morning
Oriental Limited was crowded with delegates from some mystic order on an
annual pilgrimage. There was no room in the observation car; Tisdale was
able to secure only single seats on opposite sides of the sleeper.
The train rumbled through the great tunnel and came to a brief stop
outside the west portal. It was snowing. Some railroad laborers, repairing
the track, worked in overcoats and sweaters, hat brims drawn down, collars
turned up against the bitter wind. The porter opened the transoms, and a
piercing draught pulled through the smoky, heat-laden car. Miss Armitage
sat erect and inhaled a full breath. She looked across at Tisdale, and the
sparkles broke softly in her eyes. "It's Wellington!" she exclaimed. "In a
moment we shall be racing down to Scenic Hot Springs and on along the
Skykomish--home." Then she stopped the porter. "Bring me a telegraph
blank, please. I want to send a message from the Springs."
The limited, under way again, dropped below the cloud. Great peaks and
shoulders lifted everywhere; they began to make the loop around an
incredibly deep and fissure-like gorge. It was a wonderful feat of
railroad engineering; people on the other side of the car got to their
feet and came over to see. The girl, with the yellow blank in her hand,
drew close to Tisdale's elbow. "Oh, no," she demurred, when he rose to
offer his seat, "I only want standing room just a moment. There's going to
be a delightful view of Scenic."
The passenger beside Hollis picked up his bag. "Take my place," he said.
"I am getting off at the Springs."
Then presently, when she had moved into the vacated seat next the window,
the peaks stood apart, and far, far below the untouched forest at the
summer resort stood out darkly, with the gay eaves and gables of the hotel
etched on it like a toy Swiss chalet on a green plateau.
"Oh," she cried softly, "it never seemed as charming before; but, of
course, it is coming, as we have, straight from the hot desert. There's
the coolest, fragrant wood road down there, Mr. Tisdale, from the hotel to
Surprise Falls. It follows the stream past deep green pools and cascades
breaking among the rocks. Listen. We should hear the river now."
Tisdale smiled. There was nothing to be heard but the echo of the running
trucks and the scream of the whistle repeated from cliff and spur. They
were switchbacking down the fire-scarred front of a mountain. He bent a
little to look beyond her. It was as though they were coasting down a
tilted shelf in an oblique wall, and over the blackened skeletons of firs
he followed the course of the river out through crowding blue buttes.
Returning, his glance traced the track, cross-cutting up from the gorge.
"I know Surprise Falls," he said; "and the old Skykomish from start to
finish. There's a point below the Springs where the current boils through
great flumes of granite into a rocky basin. Long before the hotel was
thought of, I fished that pool."
"I know! I know!" she responded, glowing. "We--Miss Morganstein and her
brother and I--found it this summer. We had to work down-stream across
those fissures to reach it, but it was worth the trouble. There never was
another such pool. It was like a mighty bowl full of dissolving emeralds;
and the trout loved it. We caught twenty, and we built a fire on the rocks
and cooked them. It was delightfully cool and shady. It was one of those
golden days one never forgets; I was sorry when it was gone." She paused,
the high wave of her excitement passed. "I never could live in that
treeless country," she went on. "Water, running as God made it, plenty of
it, is a necessity to me. But please take your seat, Mr. Tisdale." She
settled back in her place and began to date her telegram. "I am just
sending the briefest message to let Mrs. Feversham know where I am."
"The porter is coming back for it now," he answered "And thank you, but I
am going in the smoking-car."
As he approached the vestibule, he caught her reflection in the mirror at
the end of the sleeper. She was looking after him, and she leaned forward
a little with parted lips, as though she had started to call him back, but
her eyes clouded in uncertainty; then suddenly, the sparkle rose. It
suffused her whole face. She had met his glance in the glass. And the
porter was waiting. She settled herself once more and devoted herself to
the telegram.
The lines in Tisdale's face deepened mellowly. He believed that, now they
were so near their journey's end, she wanted to be sure of an opportunity
to thank him some more. "I am coming back," he said inwardly, addressing
the woman in the mirror, "but I must have a smoke to keep my pulse
normal."
But he did not return to the sleeper, for the reason that at Scenic Hot
Springs the Seattle papers were brought aboard. The copy of the _Press_ he
bought contained the account of the accident in Snoqualmie Pass. The
illustrations were unusually clear, and Daniels' cuts were supplemented by
another labelled: "The Morganstein party leaving Vivian Court," which also
designated the group.
(Mrs. Feversham, wife of the special delegate from Alaska, in the tonneau.
Her sister, Miss Morganstein, on her right.
Mrs. Weatherbee seated in front.
Frederic Morganstein driving the car.)
And under the central picture Hollis read: "Mrs. Weatherbee (Miss
Armitage?), as she drove the machine into the embankment."
The paper rattled a little in his hands. His face flamed, then settled
gray and very still. Except that his eyes moved, flashing from the
photographs to the headlines, he might have been a man hewn of granite.
"One more reason why the Snoqualmie highway should be improved," he read.
"Narrow escape of the Morganstein party. Mrs. Weatherbee's presence of
mind." And, half-way down the page, "Mrs. Weatherbee modestly assumes an
incognito when interviewed by a representative of the _Press_."
But Tisdale did not look at the story. He crushed the newspaper into the
corner of his seat and turned his face to the window. His cigar had gone
out. He laid it mechanically on the sill. So, this was the woman who had
wrecked David Weatherbee; who had cast her spell over level-headed Foster;
and already, in the less than three days he had known her, had made a
complete idiot of him. Suppose Foster should hear about that drive through
the mountains that had cost him over seven hundred dollars; suppose Foster
should know about that episode in the basin on Weatherbee's own ground. A
great revulsion came over him.
Presently he began to take up detail after detail of that journey. Now he
saw the real impulse that had led her to board the eastbound train in
Snoqualmie Pass. She had recognized him, conjectured he was on his way to
find that tract of Weatherbee's; and she had determined to go over the
land with him, cajole him into putting the highest estimate possible on
the property. Even now, there in the sleeper, she was congratulating
herself no doubt on the success of her scheme.
At the thought of the ease with which he had allowed himself to be
ensnared, his muscles tightened. It was as though the iron in the man took
shape, shook off the veneer, encased him like a coat of mail. Hitherto, in
those remote Alaska solitudes, this would have meant the calling to
account of some transgressor in his camp. He began to sift for the prime
element in this woman's wonderful personality. It was not physical beauty
alone; neither was it that mysterious magnetism, almost electrical, yet
delicately responsive as a stringed instrument. One of these might have
kept that tremendous hold on Weatherbee near, but on Weatherbee absent
through those long, breaking years, hardly. It was something deeper;
something elusive yet insistent that had made it easier for him to brave
out his defeat alone in the Alaska wilderness than come back to face.
Clearly she was not just the handsome animal he had believed her to be.
Had she not called herself proud? Had he not seen her courage? She had a
spirit to break. A soul!