LANSDALE stood watching the two red eyes on the rear platform of the
sleeping-car until the curve on the farther side of the viaduct blotted
them out; after which he fell in with the tide of humanity ebbing
cityward through the great arch of the station, and set out to do
Bartrow's errand at the house in Colfax Avenue.
On the way he found time to admire Bartrow's manliness. The little
deed of self-effacement promised a much keener sense of the eternal
fitness of things than he had expected to come upon, in the young
miner, or in any son of the untempered wilderness. Not that the
wilderness was more mercenary than the less strenuous world of an
older civilization--rather the contrary; but if it gave generously it
was also prone to take freely. Lansdale wrought out the antithesis
as a small concession to his own point of view, and was glad to set
Bartrow's self-abnegation over against it. Assuredly he would do what
a friendly man might toward making good the excuses of the magnanimous
one.
It was Miss Van Vetter who met him at the door, and he thought he
surprised a shadow of disappointment in her eyes when she welcomed him.
But it was Constance who said, "Come in, Mr. Lansdale. Where is Dick?"
She was holding the portière aside for him, and he made sure of his
ingress before replying. Being of two minds whether to deny all
previous knowledge of such a person as Richard Bartrow, or to commit
himself recklessly to the hazards of equivocal explanations, he steered
a middle course.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" he demanded, dropping into the easy-chair
which had come to be called his by right of frequent occupancy.
"Oh, I hope you haven't murdered him!" said Connie, with a show of
trepidation. "That's a terribly suggestive quotation."
"So it is. But are not my hands clean?" He held them up for inspection.
"How are you both this evening?"
Connie's eyes danced. "Mr. Lansdale, do you happen to know anything
about the habits of the ostrich?"
Lansdale acknowledged defeat, extending his hands in mock desperation.
"Put the thumbikins on if you must," he said, "but don't screw them
down too hard. I couldn't tell anything but the truth if I should try."
"What have you done with Dick?"
"I have murdered him, as you suggested, and put his remains in a trunk
and shipped them East."
Miss Van Vetter looked horrified, but whether at his flippancy or at
the hideous possibility, Lansdale could not determine.
"But, really," Connie persisted, with a look in her eyes which would
have exorcised any demon of brazenness; "you dined with him, you know."
"So I did; but he had to go back to his mine on the night train. I saw
him off, and he made me promise to come here and--and"--
"Square it?" Connie suggested.
"That is precisely the word,--his word. And you will both bear me
witness that I have done it, won't you?"
Miss Van Vetter was cutting the leaves of a magazine, and she looked up
to say: "That is one of the explanations which doesn't explain, isn't
it?"
Lansdale collapsed in the depths of the chair. "'I'm a poor unfort'net
as don't know nothink,'" he quoted. "Tell me what you'd like to have me
say and I'll say it."
"Why did Mr. Bartrow have to go back so unexpectedly?" asked Myra. "He
told Uncle Stephen he would be in Denver two or three days."
Lansdale was not under bonds to keep the truthful peace at the behest
of any eyes save those of Constance Elliott; wherefore he drew upon his
imagination promptly, and, as it chanced, rather unfortunately.
"He had a telegram from his foreman about a--a strike, I think he
called it."
"A strike in the Little Myriad!" This from both of the young women
in chorus. Then Connie thankfully: "Oh, I'm so glad!" and Myra
vindictively: "I hope he'll never give in to them!"
Lansdale collapsed again. "What have I done!" he exclaimed.
Constance set her cousin right, or tried to.
"It isn't a strike of the men; it's pay-ore--isn't it, Mr. Lansdale?"
"Now how should I know?" protested the amateur apologist. "A strike is
a strike, isn't it? But I don't believe it was the good kind. He wasn't
at all enthusiastic about it."
"That will do," said Connie. "Poor Dick!" And Miss Van Vetter, who was
not of the stony-hearted, rose and went to the piano that she might not
advertise her emotion.
Lansdale picked himself up out of the ruins of his attempt to do
Bartrow a good turn, and hoped the worst was over. It was for the
time; but later in the evening, when Myra had gone to the library for
a book they had been talking about, Connie returned to the unfinished
inquisition.
"You know more than you have told us about Dick's trouble," she said
gravely. "Is it very serious?"
"Yes, rather." Lansdale made a sudden resolve to cleave to the facts in
the case, telling as few of them as he might.
"It wasn't a strike at all, was it?"
"No; that was a little figure of speech. It is rather the lack of a
strike--of the kind you meant."
"Poor boy! I don't wonder that it made him want to run away. He has
worked so hard and so long, and his faith in the Little Myriad has been
unbounded. What will he do?"
"I don't know that. In fact, I think he is not quite at the brink of
things yet. But he is afraid it is coming to that."
"How did he talk? Is he very much discouraged? But of course he isn't;
nothing discourages him."
Lansdale was looking into the compelling eyes and he forgot his
rôle,--forgot that he had been giving Constance to understand that the
prospective failure of the mine was the only cloud in Bartrow's sky.
"I'm sorry I can't confirm that." He spoke hurriedly, hearing the
rustle of Miss Van Vetter's skirts in the hall. "He decided rather
suddenly,--to go back, you know. He intended coming here with me this
evening. I don't think he had ever considered all the possibilities and
consequences; and we were talking it over. Then he decided not to come.
He is the soul of honor."
Constance nodded intelligence, and made the proper diversion when her
cousin came in with the book. But Miss Van Vetter had overheard the
final sentence, and she put it away for future reference.
Lansdale said good-night a little later, and they both went to the door
with him. When he was gone Myra drew Connie into the library and made
her sit down where the light from the shaded chandelier fell full upon
her.
"Connie, dear," she began, fixing her cousin with an inquisitorial eye,
"who is 'the soul of honor'?"
"It isn't nice to overhear things," said Connie pertly.
"I might retort that it isn't nice to have confidences with a gentleman
the moment your cousin's back is turned, but I sha'n't. Will you tell
me what I want to know?"
"We were talking about Dick."
Myra's hands were clasped over her knee, and one daintily shod foot was
tapping a tattoo on the rug. "Was it anything that I ought not to know?"
Connie's pertness vanished, and the steadfast gray eyes brightened
with quick upwellings of sympathy. "No, dear; it will doubtless be in
everybody's mouth before many days. You remember what I told you once
about Dick's prospects?--that day we were on top of El Reposo?"
"Yes."
"Well, I think the Little Myriad isn't going to keep its promise; Dick
thinks so."
Myra sat quietly under it for a little while, and then got up to go to
the window. When she spoke she did not turn her head.
"He will be ruined, you said. What will you do, Connie?"
"I? What can I do? Poppa would lend him more money, but he wouldn't
take it,--not from us."
Silence while the bronze-figured clock on the mantel measured a full
minute. Then:--
"There is one way you can make him take it."
"How?"
Myra gave a quick glance over her shoulder, as if to make sure that her
cousin was still sitting under the chandelier.
"He believes--and so does your father--that it is only a question of
time and more money. He couldn't refuse to take his wife's money."
Miss Van Vetter heard a little gasp, which, to her strained sense,
seemed to be more than half a sob, and the arc-light swinging from its
wire across the avenue was blurred for her. Then Connie's voice, soft
and low-pitched in the silence of the book-lined room, came to her as
from a great distance.
"You are quite mistaken, Myra, dear; mistaken and--and very blind. Dick
is my good brother,--the only one I ever had; not my father's son, but
yet my brother. There has been no thought of anything else between us.
Besides"--
Myra heard light footfalls and the rustle of drapery, and stole
another quick glance over her shoulder. The big pivot-chair under the
chandelier was empty. The door into the hall was ajar, and Connie's
face, piquant with suppressed rapture, was framed in the aperture.
"Besides, you good, dense, impracticable cuzzy, dear,--are you
listening?--Dick is head over ears in love with--you."
The door slammed softly on the final word, and there was a quick patter
of flying feet on the stairs. Myra kept her place at the window; but
when the arc-light had parted with its blurring aureole she drew the
big pivot-chair to the desk and sat down to write.
What she had in mind seemed not to say itself readily, and there was
quite a pyramid of waste paper in the basket before she had finished
her two letters. She left them on the hall table when she went up
to her room, and Connie found them in the morning on her way to the
breakfast-room to pour her father's coffee.
"I wish I might read them," she said, with the mischievous light
dancing in her eyes. "It's deliciously suspicious; a letter to Dick,
and one to her man of business, all in a breath, and right on the
heels of my little bomb-shell. If she ever tries to discipline me
again,--well, she'd better not, that's all."