At the edge of Marlin Town stood the bungalow of the coal company's
superintendent, and in its living-room, on either side of a
document-littered table, sat two men. One of them, silvered of temple
and somewhat portly of stature, leaned back with the tranquillity of
complete relaxation after his day's work. His face wore the urbanity of
well-being and prosperity, but the man across from him leaned forward
with an attitude of nervous tension.
To Larry Masters there was something nettling in the very repose with
which his visitor from Louisville crossed his stout and well-tailored
legs. This feeling manifested itself in the jerky quickness of hand with
which the mine superintendent poured whiskey into his glass and hissed
soda after it from the syphon.
"Won't you fill up, Tom," he invited shortly. "The entertainment I can
offer you is limited enough--but at least we have the peg at our
disposal."
"Thank you--no more." Colonel Wallifarro spoke with a pleasingly
modulated voice, trained into effectiveness by years of jury elocution.
"I've had my evening's allowance, except for a night-cap."
Masters rose abruptly from his chair. He tossed down half the contents
of his glass and paced the floor with a restless stride, gnawing at his
close-cropped and sandy moustache. His tall, well-knit figure moved with
a certain athletic vitality, and his florid face was tanned like a
pig-skin saddle-skirt. But his brow was corrugated in a frown of
discontent, and his pale blue eyes were almost truculent.
"By Gad, Tom," he flared out with choleric impetuosity, "you can put
more righteous rebuke into a polite refusal of liquor than most men
could crowd into a whole damned temperance lecture. I dare say, however,
you're quite right. Life spells something for you. It's worth
conserving. You've got assured position, an adoring family, money,
success, hosts of friends. You'd be a blithering fool, I grant you, to
waste yourself in indulgence, but I'm not so ideally situated. I 'take
the cash and let the credit go.'"
"Yet you have, ahead of you, some ten or twelve years more of life than
I can reasonably expect," was the quiet response. "You still have
youth--or youth's fulfilment--early middle-age."
"And a jolly lot that means to me," retorted Masters, with acerbity. "I
live here among illiterates, working for a corporation on a salary pared
to the bone. At the time of life when one ought to be at the top of
one's abilities, I'm the most pathetic human thing under God's arching
sky--a man who started out with big promise--and fell by the wayside.
Heaven help the man who fires and falls back--and if he can retrieve a
bit of temporary solace from that poor substitute"--he jerked a
forefinger toward the bottle--"then I say for Heaven's sake let him
poison himself comfortably and welcome."
Colonel Wallifarro studied the darkened scowl of his companion for a
moment before he replied, and when he spoke his own manner retained its
imperturbability.
"I didn't offer gratuitous criticism, Larry," he suggested. "I merely
declined another toddy."
"You know my case, Tom"--the younger of the two caught him up quickly;
"you know that no younger son ever came out from England with fairer
expectations of succeeding on his own. I've been neither the fool nor
the shirk--and yet--" A shrug of disgust finished the sentence.
Colonel Wallifarro studied his cigar ash without rejoinder, and when
Larry Masters failed to draw a return fire of argument, he sat for a
minute or two glumly silent. Then, as his thoughts coursed back into
other years, a slow light kindled in his eyes, as if for a dead dream.
"You were always sceptical about Middlesboro, even when others were full
of faith--but why?" he demanded. "To you, with your Bluegrass ideas of
fat acres, these hills must always be the ragged fringes of things, a
meagre land without a future. It was only that you lacked imagination."
The speaker swept torrentially on with as much of argumentative warmth
as though he had not just confessed himself ruined by reason of his own
former confidence.
"Where the Gap came through lay the natural gateway of the hills,
hewn out in readiness by the hand of the Almighty. There was
water-power--ore. There was coal, for smelter and market, timber
awaiting the axe and the saw-mill--the whole tremendous treasure house
of a natural Eldorado."
"Perhaps," observed the Colonel, "and yet, when all is said and done, it
was only a boom--and it collapsed. Whatever the causes, the results are
definite."
"Yes, it collapsed, and we went with it." Masters paused to take up and
empty the glass which had started the discussion, then with a heightened
excitement he swept on afresh:
"Yet how near we came! Gad, man, your own eyes saw our conception grow!
You saw lots along what had been creek-bed trails sell at a
footage-price that rivalled New York's best avenues, and you yourself
recognized in me, for all your scepticism, a man with a golden future.
Then--after all that--you saw me jolly well ruined--and yet you prate of
what life may hold for me in the vigour of my middle-age."
"All that happened ten years back, however," the elder man equably
reminded his companion. "It was the old story of a boom and a
collapse--and one misfortune--even one disaster--need not break a man's
spirit. You might have come back."
The eyes of the portly gentleman rested in a momentary glance on the
bottle and glass, but that may have been chance. At least he did not
mention them.
"You think I might have come back, do you?" The voice of the Englishman
had hardened. "I don't want to be nasty or say disagreeable things.
You've been a staunch friend to me--even when Anne found herself growing
bitter against me. Well, I don't blame her. Her people had been leaders
always. She had the divine right to an assured place in society, and I
had failed. I suppose it was natural enough for her to feel that she'd
been done in--but it happened to be the finish of me. I'd sweated blood
to make Middlesboro--and I didn't have the grit left to commence over."
For the first time Colonel Wallifarro's attitude stiffened, bringing up
his silver-crowned head defensively.
"Anne didn't leave you for financial reasons, Larry," he asserted
steadily. "She's my kinswoman, and you are my friend, but no purpose is
to be served by my listening to _ex parte_ grievances from either of
you."
Masters shrugged his shoulders. "I dare say you're quite right," he
admitted. "But be that as it may, she did leave me--left me flat. If she
didn't divorce me, it wasn't out of consideration for my feelings. It
would almost have been better if she had. All I ever succeeded in doing
for her was to make her the poor member of a rich family--and that's not
enviable by half. And yet if I'd been a sheer rotter, I could scarcely
have fared worse."
"If it wasn't consideration for you, at least it was for some one who
should be important to you. As it is, your little girl isn't growing up
under the shadow of a sensational divorce record."
The pale blue eyes of the Englishman softened abruptly, and the lips
under the short-clipped moustache changed from their stiffness to the
curvature of something like a smile. Into his expression came a lurking,
half-shy ghost of winsomeness. "Yes, yes," he muttered, "the kiddie.
God bless her little heart!"
After a moment, though, he drew back his shoulders with a jerk and spoke
again in a harsher timbre.
"Anne has been fair enough with me about the child, though I'm bound to
say I've been jolly well made to understand that it was only a
chivalrous and undeserved sort of generosity. Well, the kiddie's almost
twelve now, and before long she'll be a belle, too--poor, but related to
all the first families."
Masters paused, and when he went on again it was still with the air of a
repressed chafing of spirit.
"I dare say her mother will see to it that she doesn't repeat the
mistake of the previous generation--marrying a man with only a splendid
expectancy. Her heart will be schooled to demand the assured thing. That
pointing with pride--a gesture which you Kentuckians so enjoy--well,
with my little girl, it will all be done toward the distaff branch.
There won't be much said about the wastrel father."
"Perhaps," suggested the other, "you are a little less than just."
"I dare say. She'll be a heart-breaker before long now--and listen,
man"--Masters came a step nearer--"don't make any mistake about me
either. When she's here, the bottle goes under lock and key. I play the
game where she's concerned."
Colonel Wallifarro nodded slowly. "I know that, Larry," he hastily
answered. "I know that. If the breach hadn't widened too far, I'd go as
far as a man could to bring your family together again under one
roof-tree."
"That's no use, of course," admitted Masters with a dead intonation.
"Only remember that down here where I'm chained to my little job, life
ain't so damned gay and sunny at best--and don't begrudge me my
liquor."