DEEPENING WATERS
The stolen interview of the early morning was the consolation of the
day. Gertrude confided a resolve to Glover. She had thought it all
out and he must, she said, talk to her father. Nothing would ever ever
come of a situation in which the two never met. The terrible problem
was how to arrange the interview. Her father had already declined to
meet Glover at all. Moreover, Mr. Brock had a fund of silence that
approximated absolute zero, and Gertrude dreaded the result if Glover,
in presenting his case, should stop at any point and succumb to the
chill.
During such intervals as they managed to meet, the lovers could discuss
nothing but the crisis that confronted them. The definite clearing of
the line meant perhaps an early separation and something must be done,
if ever, at once.
In the evening Gertrude made a long appeal to her aunt to intercede for
her, and another to Marie, who, softening somewhat, had spent half an
hour before dinner in discussing the situation calmly with Glover; but
over the proposed interview Marie shook her head. She had great
influence with her father, but candidly owned she should dread facing
him on a matter he had definitely declined to discuss.
They parted at night without light on their difficulties. In the
morning Glover made several ineffectual efforts to see Gertrude early.
He had an idea that they had forgotten the one who could advise and
help them better than any other--his friend and patron, Bucks.
The second vice-president was now closer in a business way to Mr. Brock
than anyone else in the world. They were friends of very early days,
of days when they were laying together the foundations of their
careers. It was Bucks who had shown Mr. Brock the stupendous
possibilities in reorganizing the system, who was responsible for his
enormous investment, and each reposed in the other entire confidence.
Gertrude constantly contended that it was only a question of her
father's really knowing Glover, and that if her lover could be put, as
she knew him, before her father, he must certainly give way. Why not,
then, take Bucks into their confidence?
It seemed like light from heaven to Glover, and he was talking to
Gertrude when there came a rap at the door of the parlor and a
messenger entered with a long despatch from Callahan at Sleepy Cat.
The message was marked delayed in transmission. Glover walked with it
to the window and read:
"Doubleday's outfit wrecked early this morning on Pilot Hill while
bucking. Head engine, the 927, McGraw, partly off track. Tender
crushed the cab. Doubleday instantly killed and McGraw badly hurt.
Morris Blood is reported to have been in the cab also, but cannot be
found. Have sent Doubleday and McGraw to Medicine Bend in my car and
am starting with wrecking crew for the Hill."
"What is it?" murmured Gertrude, watching her lover's face. He studied
the telegram a long time and she came to his side. He raised his eyes
from the paper in his hand and looked out of the window. "What is it?"
she whispered.
"Pilot Hill."
"I do not understand, dearest."
"A wreck."
"Oh, is it serious?"
His eyes fell again on the death message. "Morris Blood was in it and
they can't find him."
"Oh, oh."
"A bad place; a bad, bad place." He spoke, absently, then his eyes
turned upon her with inexpressible tenderness.
"But why can't they find him, dearest?"
"The track is blasted out of the mountain side for half a mile. Bucks
said it would be a graveyard, but I couldn't get to the mines in any
other way. Gertrude, I must go to the Wickiup at once to get further
news. This message has been delayed, the wires are not right yet."
"Will you come back soon?"
"Just the minute I can get definite news about Morris. In half an
hour, probably."
She tried to comfort him when he left her. She knew of the deep
attachment between the two men, and she encouraged her lover to hope
for the best. Not until he had gone did she fully realize how deeply
he was moved. At the window she watched him walk hurriedly down the
street, and as he disappeared, reflected that she had never seen such
an expression on his face as when he read the telegram.
The half hour went while she reflected. Going downstairs she found the
news of the wreck had spread about the hotel, and widely exaggerated
accounts of the disaster were being discussed. Mrs. Whitney and Marie
were out sleighriding, and by the time the half hour had passed without
word from Glover, Gertrude gave way to her restlessness. She had a
telegram to send to New York--an order for bonbons--and she determined
to walk down to the Wickiup to send it; she might, she thought, see
Glover and hear his news sooner.
When she approached the headquarters building unusual numbers of
railroad men were grouped on the platform, talking. Messengers hurried
to and from the roundhouse. A blown engine attached to a day coach was
standing near and men were passing in and out of the car. Gertrude
made her way to the stairs unobserved, walked leisurely up to the
telegraph office and sent her message. The long corridors of the
building, gloomy even on bright days, were quite dark as she left the
operators' room and walked slowly toward the quarters of the
construction department.
The door of the large anteroom was open and the room empty. Gertrude
entered hesitatingly and looked toward Glover's office. His door also
was ajar, but no one was within. The sound of voices came from a
connecting room and she at once distinguished Glover's tones. It was
justification: with her coin purse she tapped lightly on the door
casing, and getting no response stepped inside the office and slipped
into a chair beside his desk to await him. The voices came from a room
leading to Callahan's apartments.
Glover was asking questions, and a man whose voice she could now hear
breaking with sobs, was answering. "Are you sure your signals were
right?" she heard Glover ask slowly and earnestly; and again,
patiently, "how could you be doubled up without the flanger's leaving
the track?" Then the man would repeat his story.
"You must have had too much behind you," Glover said once.
"Too much?" echoed the man, frantically. "Seven engines behind us all
day yesterday. Paddy told him the minute he got in the cab she
wouldn't never stand it. He told him it as plain as a man could tell a
man. Then because we went through a thousand feet in the gap like
cheese he ordered us up the hill. When we struck the big drift it was
slicing rock, Mr. Glover. Paddy told him she wouldn't never stand it.
The very first push we let go in a hundred feet with the engine
churning her damned drivers off. We went into it twice that way. I
could see it was shoving the tender up in the air every time and told
Doubleday--oh, if you'd been there! The next time we sent the plough
through the first crust and drove a wind-pocket maybe forty or fifty
yards and hit the ice with the seven engines jamming into us. My God!
she doubled up like a jack-knife--Pat, Pat, Pat."
"Can you recollect where Blood was standing when you buckled?"
"In the right gangway." There was a pause. "He must have dropped,"
she heard Glover say.
"Then he'll never drop again, Mr. Glover, for if he slipped off the
ties he'd drop a thousand feet."
"The heaviest snow is right at the top of the hill?"
"Yes, sir."
"If we can cross the hill we can find him anyway."
"Don't try to get across that hill till you put in five hundred
shovellers, Mr. Glover."
"That would take a week. If he's alive we must get him within
twenty-four hours. He may freeze to death to-night."
"Don't try to cross that hill with a plough, Mr. Glover. Mind my
words. It's no use. I've bucked with you many a time--you know that."
"Yes."
"You're going to your death when you try that."
"There's the doctor now, Foley," Glover answered. "Let him look you
over carefully. Come this way."
The voices receded. Listening to the talk, little of which she
understood, a growing fear had come over Gertrude. Her eyes had
pierced the gray light about her, and as she heard Glover walk away she
rose hurriedly and stepped to the doorway to detain him. Glover had
disappeared, but before her, stretched on the couch back of the table,
lay McGraw. She knew him instantly, and so strangely did the gloom
shroud his features that his steady eyes seemed looking straight at
her. She divined that he had been brought back hurt. A chill passed
over her, a horror. She hesitated a moment, and, fascinated, stepped
closer; then she knew she was staring at the dead.
Terror-stricken and with sinking strength she made her way to the hotel
and slipped up to the parlor. Throwing off her wraps she went to the
window; Glover was coming up the street. There was only a moment in
which to collect herself. She hastened to her bedroom, wet her
forehead with cologne, and at her mirror her fingers ran tremblingly
over the coils of her hair. She caught up a fresh handkerchief for her
girdle, looked for an instant appealingly into her own eyes and closed
them to think. Glover rapped.
She met him with a smile that she knew would stagger his fond eyes.
She drugged his ear with a low-voiced greeting. "You are late,
dearest."
He looked at her and caught her hands. As his head bent she let her
lips lie in his kiss, and let his arm find her waist as he kissed her
deeply again. They walked together toward the fireplace, and when she
saw the sadness of his face fear in her heart gave way to pity. "What
is it?" she whispered. "Tell me."
"The car has come with Doubleday and McGraw, Gertrude. The wreck was
terribly fatal. Morris Blood must have jumped from the cab. The track
I have told you is blasted there out of the cheek of the mountain, and
it's impossible to tell what his fate may be: but if he is alive I must
find him. There is a good hope, I believe, for Morris; he is a man to
squeeze through on a narrow chance. And Gertrude--I couldn't tell you
if I didn't think you had a right to know everything I know. It breaks
my heart to speak of it--McGraw is dead."
"I am so glad you told me the truth," she trembled, "for I knew it----"
"Knew it?" She confessed, hastily, how her anxiety had led her to his
office, and of the terrible shock she had brought on herself. "But now
I know you would not deceive me," she added; "that is why I love you,
because you are always honest and true. And do you love me, as you
have told me, more than all the world?"
"More than all the world, Gertrude. Why do you look so? You are
trembling."
"Have you come to say good-by?"
"Only for a day or two, darling: till I can find Morris, then I come
straight back to you."
"You, too, may be killed?"
"No, no."
"But I heard the man telling you you would go to your death if you
attempted to cross that hill with a plough. Be honest with me; you are
risking your life."
"Only as I have risked it almost every day since I came into the
mountains."
"But now--now--doesn't it mean something else? Think what it means to
me--your life. Think what will become of me if you should be killed in
trying to open that hill--if you should fall over a precipice as Morris
Blood has fallen and lies now probably dead. Don't go. Don't go, this
time. You have promised me you would leave the mountains, haven't you?
Don't risk all, dearest, all I have on earth, in an attempt that may
utterly fail and add one more precious life to the lives now
sacrificed. You do heed me, darling, don't you?"
She had disengaged herself to plead; to look directly up into his
perplexed eyes. He leaned an arm on the mantel, staggered. His eyes
followed hers in every word she spoke, and when she ceased he stared
blankly at the fire.
"Heed you?" he answered, haltingly. "Heed you? You are all in the
world that I have to heed. My only wish is your happiness; to die for
it, Gertrude, wouldn't be much----"
"All, all I ask is that you will live for it."
"Worthless as I am, I have asked you to put that happiness in my
keeping--do you think your lightest word could pass me unheeded? But
to this, my dearest Gertrude, every instinct of manhood binds me--to go
to my friend in danger."
"If you go you will take every desperate chance to accomplish your end.
Ah, I know you better than you know yourself. Ab, Ab, my darling, my
lover, listen to me. Don't; don't go."
When he spoke she would not have known his voice. "Can I let him die
there like a dog on the mountain side? Can't you see what I haven't
words to explain as you could explain--the position it puts me in?
Don't sob. Don't be afraid; look at me. I'll come back to you,
darling."
She turned her tearless eyes to the mountains. "Back! Yes. I see the
end. My lover will come back--come back dead. And I shall try to kiss
his brave lips back to life and they will speak no more. And I shall
stand when they take him from me, lonely and alone. My father that I
have estranged--my foster-mother that I have withstood--my sister that
I have repelled--will their tears flow for me then? And for this I
broke from my traditions and cast away associations, gave up all my
little life, stood alone against my family, poured out my heart to
these deserts, these mountains, and now--they rob me of my all--and
this is love!"
He stood like a broken man. "God help me, have I laid on your dear
head the curse of my own life? Must you, too, suffer because our
perils force us lightly to pawn our lives one for another? One night
in that yard"--he pointed to the window--"I stood between the rails
with a switch engine running me down. I knew nothing of it. There was
no time to speak, no time to think--it was on me. Had Blood left me
there one second I never should have looked into your dear face. Up on
the hill with Hailey and Brodie, under the gravel and shale, I should
never have cost your heart an ache like this. Better the engine had
struck me then and spared you now----"
"No, I say, no!" she exclaimed, wildly. "Better this moment together
than a lifetime apart!"
"--For me he threw himself in front of the drivers. This moment is
mine and yours because he gave his right hand for it--shall I desert
him now he needs me? And so a hundred times and in a hundred ways we
gamble with death and laugh if we cheat it: and our poor reward is only
sometimes to win where far better men have failed. So in this railroad
life two men stand, as he and I have stood, luck or ill-luck, storm or
fair weather, together. And death speaks for one; and whichever he
calls it is ever the other must answer. And this--is duty."
"Then do your duty."
Distinctly, and terrifying in their unexpectedness, came the words from
the farther end of the parlor. They turned, stunned. Gertrude's
father was crossing the room. He raised his hand to dispel Glover's
sudden angry look. "I was lying on the couch; your voices roused me
and I could not escape. You have put clearly the case you stand in,"
he spoke to Glover, "and I have intervened only to spare both of you
useless agony of argument. The question that concerns you two and me
is not at this moment up for decision; the other question is, and it is
for you, my daughter, now, to play the woman. I have tried as I could
to shield you from rough weather. You have left port without
consulting me, and the storms of womanhood are on you. Sir, when do
you start?"
"My engine is waiting."
"Then ask your people to attach my car. You can make equally good
time, and since for better or worse we have cut into this game we will
see it out together."
Gertrude threw her arms around her father's neck with a happy sob as
Glover left. "Oh daddy, daddy. If you only knew him!"