IT was early in June when the pneumatic drill in the Little Myriad
was smashed by a premature blast, and the master of the mine was
constrained to make a flying trip to Denver to replace it. As a matter
of course, if not, indeed, of necessity, Myra went with him. They
traveled by the night train, breakfasted on canned viands out of the
Pullman buffet, and so took Constance by surprise.
Myra had projects in view, some Utopian and others more Utopian, with
her relatives for nuclei; and when Richard the untactful had been sent
about his machinery business, she settled down for a persuasive day
with Constance. Now Constance had been taken unawares, but she was of
those who fight best at a disadvantage, and the end of the day found
the Utopian projects still in air, being held in suspension by an
obstinate young person who steadily refused to make of herself a vessel
meet for condolence and cousinly beneficence.
"It's no use, cuzzy dear; you shall have an option on the help stock
when there is any for sale, but at present there are no quotations."
Thus Connie, at the very end of the persuasive day. Upon which the
young wife, with patience outwearing or outworn, retorts smartly:--
"I suppose you think it's heroic--your living like this; but it isn't.
It is just plain poverty pride, which is all well enough to keep the
crowd out, but which is simply wicked when it makes you shut the door
in our faces. Think of it--you living here in three rooms at the top
of a block when the Myriad has begun to pay dividends! I didn't mean
to tell you just yet, but Dick is going to buy back the Colfax Avenue
house, and it shall stand empty till doomsday if you won't go and live
in it."
In times not long past Connie would have returned railing for
railing--with interest added; but the reproachful day had been no
less trying to her than to Myra, and the poverty fight--and some
others--were sore upon her. Hence her disclaimer was of courageous
meekness, with a smile of loving appreciation to pave the way.
"I hope Dick will do no such preposterous thing--unless you want it for
yourselves. You know it would be quite out of the question for us to
take it. Or to do anything but make the best of what has happened," she
added.
Myra was standing at a window, looking down into the street where the
early dusk was beginning to prick out the point-like coruscations of
the arc-lights. There was that in Connie's eyes which beckoned tears to
eyes sympathetic; and she found it easier to go on with her back turned
upon the room and its other occupant.
"To make the best of it, yes; but you are not making the best of it.
Or, if you are, the best is miserably bad. You are looking thin and
wretched, as if--as if you didn't get enough to eat."
There was a touch of the old-time resilience in Connie's laugh. "How
can you tell when you're not looking at me? Indeed, it hasn't come to
that yet. We have enough, and a little to spare for those who have
less."
Myra had been searching earnestly all day for some little rift into
which the wedge of helpfulness might be driven, and here was an
opening--of the vicarious sort.
"Won't you let me be your purseholder for those who have less, Connie?
That is the very least you can do."
Constance willed it thankfully. After the trying day of refusals it was
grateful to find something that could be conceded.
"I believe I told you once that I wouldn't be your proxy in that way,
didn't I? But I will, now. You are so much better than your theories,
Myra."
Myra left the window at that, wrote a generous check before the
concession should have time to shrink in the cooling, and then went
over to sit on the denim-covered lounge with her arm around her
cousin's waist.
"Now that you have begun to be reasonable, won't you go a step farther,
Connie, dear? I know there are troubles,--lots of them besides the
pinching. Can't you lean on me just a little bit? I do so want to help
you."
Connie did it literally, with her face on Myra's shoulder and a
sob at the catching of her breath. Myra let her take her own time,
as a judicious comforter will, and when the words came they wrought
themselves into a confession.
"Oh, Myra, I thought I was so strong, and I'm not!" she wept. "The
bullet in a gun hasn't less to say about where it shall be sent. I said
it wasn't the pinch, but it is--or part of it is. Poppa has set his
heart upon trying the mountains again, old as he is, and he can't go
because--because there isn't money enough to outfit him with what he
could carry on his back!"
"And you would have let me go without telling me!" said Myra
reproachfully. "He shall have a whole pack train of 'grub stake,'--is
that what I should say?--and you shall come and stay with us while he
is away. Consider that a trouble past, and tell me some more. You don't
know how delicious it is to be permitted to pose as a small god in a
car."
"Yes, I do," Connie responded, out of a heartful of similar ecstasies.
"But it isn't a trouble past: he won't let you do it. Everybody has
been offering to lend him money, and he won't take it."
"He will have to take it from me," said Myra, with prompt decision.
"I'll make him. And when he goes, you will come to us, won't you?"
Constance looked up with a smile shining through the tears. "You're
good, Myra, just like Dick! But I can't, you know. I must stay here."
"Why must you?" To the querist there seemed to be sufficiently good
reasons, from the point of view of the proprieties, for setting
Connie's decision aside mandatorily, but Myra had grown warier if not
wiser in her year of cousin-kenning.
"There are reasons,--duties which I must not shirk."
"Are they namable?"
"Yes; Margaret is the name of one of them."
Myra's disapproval found vent in gentle foot-tappings. To the
moderately compassionate on-looker it would seem that Constance had
long since filled that measure of responsibility,--filled and heaped it
to overflowing. But again the experienced one was discreet.
"As Dick would put it, you have 'angeled' Margaret for a year and more.
Isn't she yet able to stand alone?"
Connie's answer was prompt and decisive. "Quite as well able as the
best of us would be under similar conditions."
"I wouldn't make it conditional; but we've never been able to keep step
in that journey. Why is Margaret's case exceptional?"
"Did I say it was? It isn't. She is just one of any number of poor
girls who are trying to live honestly, with the barriers of innocence
all down and an overwhelming temptation always beckoning."
Myra shook her head. "That is making temptation a constraint, when it
can never be more than a lure. I must confess I can't get far enough
away from the conventional point of view to understand how a young
woman like Margaret, who has been lifted and carried and set fairly
upon her feet, could be tempted to go back to the utter misery and
degradation of the other life."
Constance spoke first to the sophism, and then to the particular
instance.
"It is not true that temptation is always a lure. It is oftener a
constraint. And you say you can't understand. It is terribly simple.
They sin first for a thing which they mistake for love; but after that
it is for bread and meat, and surcease from toil which has become a
mere frenzied struggle to keep body and soul together. You don't know
what it is to be poor, Myra,--with the barriers down. Have you any idea
how much Margaret earned last week, working steadily the six days and
deep into the nights?"
"Oh, not very much, I suppose. But her necessities are not large."
"Are they not? They are as large as yours or mine. She must eat and
drink and have a bed to sleep on and clothes to cover her. And to
provide these she was paid three dollars and eighty-five cents for
her week's work; and two dollars of that had to go for rent. Is the
temptation a lure or a constraint in her case?"
Myra was silenced, if not convinced, and she went back to the fact
existent with sympathy no more than seemingly aloof.
"You hinted at Margaret's peculiar besetment in one of your letters. Is
that what you have to stay and fight?"
Constance nodded assent.
"I have been hoping you were mistaken. Dick is still loyally
incredulous. Isn't there a chance that you or Tommie, or both of you,
have taken too much for granted?"
Connie's "No" was almost inaudible, and there was chastened sorrow in
her voice when she went on to tell how Tommie had seen Jeffard and
Margaret together, not once, but many times; how the man was always
persuading, and the woman, reluctant at first, was visibly yielding;
how within a week Tommie had seen Jeffard give her money.
"And she took it?" Myra queried.
"She didn't want to take it. Tommie says she almost fought with him to
make him take it back. But he wouldn't."
Myra's sympathy circled down, but it alighted upon Connie. "You poor
dear! after all your loving-kindnesses and helpings! It's miserable;
but you can't do anything if you stay."
"Yes, I can. I couldn't stay alone, of course, and she will give up her
room and come here to live with me. That will give me a better hold on
her than I have now."
"But if you had a hundred eyes you couldn't safeguard her against her
will!"
"No; but it isn't her will,--it's his. And he will not come here."
Myra's brows went together in a little frown of righteous indignation.
"I should hope not,--the wretch! You were right, after all, Connie, and
I'll retract all the charitable things Dick wanted me to say. He is
too despicable"--
It was Connie's hand on the accusing lips that cut short the indignant
arraignment.
"Please don't!" she pleaded. "He is all that you can say or think, but
my ears are weary with my own repetitions of it."
Myra took the hand from her lips and held it fast while she tried to
search her cousin's face. But the gathering dusk had mounted from the
level of the street to that of the upper room, and it baffled the
eye-questioning.
"Connie Elliott! I more than half believe"--She stopped abruptly, as if
there had been some dumb protest of the imprisoned hand, and then went
on with a swift change from accusation to gentle reproach. "I believe
you have only just begun to tell me your troubles,--and I've been with
you all day! What are some more of them?"
"I have told you the worst of them,--or at least that part of them
which makes it impossible for me to go away. But there is another
reason why I ought to stay."
"Is that one namable, too?"
"Yes; but perhaps you won't understand. And you will be sure to tell
me it isn't proper. I think one of Mr. Lansdale's few pleasures is his
coming here."
"Few remaining pleasures, you would say, if you were not too
tender-hearted. Is it wise, Connie?"
"Why not?--if it is a comfort to him?"
Myra hesitated, not because she had nothing to say, but because she
knew not how to say the thing demanded.
"You haven't given me leave to be quite frank with you, Connie. But it
seems to me that your kindness in this case is--is mistaken kindness."
Constance's rejoinder was merely an underthought slipping the leash.
"It is not to be expected that any one would understand," she said.
"But I do understand," Myra asserted, this time with better
confidence. "I'm not supposed to have the slightest inkling of your
feelings,--you've never lisped a word to me,--but Mr. Lansdale's
motives are plain enough to be read in the dark. If he were a well man
he would have asked you to marry him long ago."
"Do you think so?" said Constance half absently. "I'm not so sure about
that. He is far away from home and wretchedly ill; and he has many
acquaintances and few real friends."
"But he loves you," Myra persisted.
"He has never said anything like that to me."
"It is quite possible that he never will, in view of the insurmountable
obstacle."
"His ill-health, you mean? Myra, dear, you surely know love better than
that--now. Love is the one thing which will both sow and reap even in
the day when the heavens are of brass and the earth is a barren desert."
The under-roar of traffic in the street made the silence in the upper
room more effective by contrast; like the sense of isolation which
is often sharpest in a jostling throng. Myra rose and went to the
window again, coming back presently to stand over Constance and say,
"I suppose it is ordained that you should be a martyr to somebody or
something, Connie, dear; and when the time comes I'm not going to say
you nay, because I think you will be happier that way. If Mr. Lansdale
should be tempted to say that which I am sure he has determined not to
say, is your answer ready?"
Connie's hands were clasped over one knee, and the poise was of
introspective beatitude. But the answer to Myra's query was not
irrelevant.
"He is the truest of gentlemen; what would your answer be, Myra?"
It was the young wife in Myra Bartrow, that precious bit of clay as
yet plastic under the hand of the master-potter, that prompted the
steadfast reply.
"If I loved him as I ought, I should pray God to make me unselfish
enough to say yes, Connie."
"So should I," said Constance simply; and Myra made the lighting of
the lamp an excuse for the diversion which the three soft-spoken words
demanded. And when she went back to the matter of fact, she touched
lightly upon what she conceived to be a wound yet far from healing.
"You have silenced me, Connie, but I can at least provide for the
contingency. If the event shapes itself so that you are free to come to
us, don't let Margaret stand in the way. Bring her with you, and we'll
find room and work for her."
Connie's eyes were shining, but there was a loving smile struggling
with the tears. "I said you were good, like Dick, Myra, dear, and I
can't put it any stronger. If I don't take you at your word, it will
not be for anything you have left unsaid. Isn't that Dick coming?"
It was. There was a double step in the corridor, and Bartrow came in
with Stephen Elliott. Since the battle persuasive with the daughter had
kept her single-eyed, Myra had had but brief glimpses of the father
during the day; but now she remarked that his step was a little less
firmly planted than it had been in that holiday time when he had played
the unwonted part of escort in ordinary to two young women who had
dragged him whither they would,--and whither he would not. Moreover,
there was the look of the burden-bearer in his eyes, though their
fire was undimmed; and an air of belated sprightliness in his manner
which went near to Myra's heart, because she knew it came of conscious
effort. These jottings and others, the added stoop of the shoulders,
and the lagging half-step to the rear in entering, as of one who may no
longer keep pace with younger men, Myra made while Dick was timing the
dash for their train.
"Thirty-five minutes more, and we'll quit you,--say, Uncle Steve, that
clock of yours is slow,--that's half an hour for supper, and five
minutes for the yum-yums at the car-step. Gear yourselves, you two, and
we'll all go and make a raid on the supper-room at the station."
"Indeed, we sha'n't," said Connie, in hospitable protest. "You are
going to eat bread and butter and drink strong tea on the top floor
of the Thorson Block. I've had the water cooking for an hour, and you
sha'n't make me waste gasoline in any such way."
Dick would have argued the point with her; was, in fact, beginning the
counter-protest, when Myra stopped him.'
"Of course we'll stay," she assented. "You go with Connie and help make
the tea, Dick. I haven't begun to have a visit with Uncle Stephen yet."
Bartrow gave up the fight and was led captive of the small one to the
room across the corridor which served as a kitchen. Left alone with
his sister's daughter, Stephen Elliott had a sudden return of the
haltingnesses which the Philadelphia niece, newly arrived, used to
inspire; but Myra asked only for an acquiescent listener.
"Uncle Stephen," she began, pinning him in the lounge-corner from which
there was no possibility of escape, "I've been wanting to get at you
all day, and I was afraid you weren't going to give me a chance. You
have 'grub-staked' a lot of people, first and last, haven't you?"
The old man eyed her suspiciously for a moment, and then evidently
banished the suspicion as a thing unworthy.
"Why, yes; I have staked a good few of them, first and last, as you
say."
"I knew it, and I wanted to ask a question. How much money did you
usually give them?"
The suspicion was well lulled by this; and finding himself upon
familiar ground, the pioneer went into details.
"That depended a good deal upon the other fellow. Some of them--most of
'em, I was going to say--couldn't be trusted with money at all, and I'd
go buy them an outfit and stay with them till they got out o' range of
the saloons and green tables."
"But when you found one whom you could trust, how much money did
you give him? I'm not idly curious; I know a man who wants to go
prospecting, and I have promised to 'stake' him."
The suspicion raised its head again, and was promptly clubbed into
submission. Some one of the Myriad men wanted to try his luck, and he
had "braced" the wife rather than the husband. So thought the pioneer,
and made answer accordingly.
"I wouldn't monkey with it, if I were you, Myra; leastwise, not without
letting Dick into it. He's right on the ground, and he'll tell you how
much you'd ought to put up; or--what's more likely--if you oughtn't to
tell the fellow to stick to his day-pay in the mine."
"Dick knows," said Myra, anticipating the exact truth by some brief
hour or so, "and he's quite willing. But you know Dick; if I should
leave it with him he would give the man all he had and go and borrow
for himself. I want a good sober conservative opinion,--not too
conservative, you know, but just about what you would need if you were
going out yourself."
Elliott became dubitantly reflective, being divided between a desire to
spare Myra's purse and a disposition born of fellow-feelings to make it
as easy as might be for the unknown beneficiary.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, at length. "If the fellow is going by
himself, he won't need much; but if he takes a partner it'll just about
double the stake. Is he going to play it alone?"
Myra could see through the open door into the adjoining room, and she
saw Connie bringing in the tea. Time was growing precious, if the
conclusion were not to be tripped up by an interruption.
"I suppose he'll take a partner; they always do, don't they? Anyway, I
want to make it enough so that he can if he chooses. Please tell me how
much."
"Well, if he knows how to cut the corners and how to outfit so as
to make the most of what he has, he'd ought to be able to do it on
a couple of hundred or so. But I don't know if that ain't pretty
liberal," he added, as if upon second thought.
Myra went quickly to the table under the lamp, and wrote upon a slip of
paper. Elliott thought she was making a note of her information; and
when she put the check into his hands he took it mechanically. But her
hurried explanation drove the firing-pin of intelligence.
"It's for you--you are the man, Uncle Stephen; and if it isn't enough,
it's your own fault." She said it with one eye on the two in the next
room, and with nerves taut-braced for the shock of refusal. The shock
came promptly.
"Oh--say--here! Myra, girl; I can't take this from you!" He was on his
feet, trying to give back the check; and as she eluded him he followed
her about the room, protesting as he went. "It's just like you to offer
it, but I can't, don't you see? I'll rope somebody else in; somebody
that knows the chances. Here, take it back,--I'm getting pretty old,
and just as like as not I won't find anything worth assaying. Come,
now; you be a good girl, and"--
He had driven her into a corner, and it was time for the _coup de
main_. So she put her arms about his neck and her face on his shoulder,
and if the attack pathetic were no more than a clever bit of feigning,
Stephen Elliott was none the wiser.
"I--I'd like to know what I have done!" she quavered. "You'd take it
from a stranger--you said you would--and you've made me just the same
as your own daughter, and now you wo--won't let me do the first little
thing I've ever had a chance to do!"
There were more strong solvents of a similar nature in reserve, but
they were not needed. The good old man was helplessly soluble in any
woman's tears, real or invented; and his fine resolution melted and the
bones of it became as water.
"There, there, little girl, don't you take on like that. I'll keep it.
See? I've chucked it right down into the bottom of my pocket"--he was
stroking her hair and otherwise gentling her as if she were a hurt
child. "Don't you fret a little bit. I'll spend it--every last cent of
it--just the way you want me to. You mustn't cry another tear; Dick'll
think I've been abusing you, and he'll fire the old uncle out of one of
these high windows. Haven't you got any handkerchief?"
Connie and Dick were at the door, announcing the bread and butter and
tea, and Myra's handkerchief became a convenient mask for the moment.
A less simple-hearted man than the old pioneer might have suspected
the sincerity of such tears as may be wiped away at a word, leaving
no trace behind them; but Elliott was too child-like to know aught of
the fine art of dissimulation, and he took Myra's sudden return to
cheerfulness as a tribute to his own astuteness in yielding a point at
the critical moment.
At the tea-table they were all more or less hilarious, each having
somewhat to conceal from the others; and even Bartrow was made to feel
the thinness of the ice upon which the trivialities were skating. Much
to Connie's surprise, the tactless one developed unsuspected resources
of adroitness in keeping the table-talk at concert-pitch of levity;
and she forgave him when he was brutal enough to make a jest of the
simple meal, giving the bread and butter a new name with each asking,
and accusing her of being in league with the commissary department
of the sleeping-car company. It spoke volumes for Dick's growth in
perspicacity that he was able to discern the keen edge of the crisis
without having actually seen the stone upon which it had been whetted;
and in the midst of her own fencings with the tensities, Constance
found time to wonder how Myra had wrought even the beginning of such a
miracle in the downright one.
In such resolute ignorings of the moving realities the supper interval
was safely outworn; but when, at the end of it, Dick dragged out his
watch and called "time," Constance found her tea too hot, and the
drinking of it brought tears to her eyes. Whereupon the brutal one made
an exaggerated pretense of sympathy, offering her a handkerchief; and
the laugh saved them all until the good-bys were said, and the guests,
with Elliott to speed their parting, had gone to the station.
Constance stood in the empty corridor until the farther stair ceased
to echo their footsteps. The day-long strain was off at last, and she
meant to go quickly and clear off the table and wash the supper dishes,
to the end that the reaction might not overwhelm her. But on the way
she stopped at the little square table in the larger room and took a
letter from its hiding place at the back of a framed photograph. It
was a double inclosure in an outside envelope which bore the business
card of a well known legal firm; and the wrapping of the inner envelope
was a note on the firm's letter-head, stating in terse phrase that the
inclosed letter had been found under the door of an unoccupied house
in Colfax Avenue by the writer in the early summer of the previous
year; that it had been mislaid; and that it was now forwarded with many
regrets for its unintentional suppression.
Constance read the note mechanically, as she had read it the day before
when the postman had brought it. It explained nothing more than the
mere fact of delay, but she understood. The writer of the lost letter,
or his messenger, had thrust it under the door of the wrong house.
She laid the note aside and tilted the envelope to let a coin fall into
her palm. It was a double-eagle piece, little worn, but the memories
which clustered about its giving and taking seemed to dull the lustre
of the yellow metal. It was the price of sorrowful humiliation, no whit
less to the man who had taken than to the woman who had given it. She
put it that way in an inflexible determination to be just. Truly, his
acceptance of it was a thing to be remembered with cheek-burnings of
shame; but she would not hold herself blameless. In the light of that
which his letter disclosed, her charitable impulse became a sword to
slay the last remnant of manly pride and self-respect--if any remnant
there were.
She opened the letter and re-read it to the end, going back from the
scarcely legible signature to a paragraph in the midst of it that bade
fair to grave itself ineffaceably upon her heart.
"You may remember that I said I couldn't tell you the truth, because
it concerns a woman. When I add that the woman is yourself, you will
understand. I love you; I think I have been loving you ever since that
evening which you said we were to forget--the evening at the theatre.
Strangely enough, my love for you isn't strong in the strength which
saves. I went from you that night when you had bidden me God-speed
at Mrs. Calmaine's, and within the hour I was once more a penniless
vagabond.
"When you were trying to help me this afternoon, I was trying to keep
from saying that which I could never have a right to say. You pressed
me very hard in your sweet innocence"....
She sat down and the letter slipped from her fingers. The hurt was a
year in the past, but time had not yet dulled the pain of it. Not to
any human soul, nor yet to her own heart, had she admitted the one
living fact which stood unshaken; which would stand, like some polished
corner-stone of a ruined temple, when all else should have crumbled
into dust. For which cause she sat with clasped hands and eyes that saw
not; eyes that were still deep wells and clear, but brimming with the
bitter waters of a fountain which flows only for those whose loss is
irreparable. And while she wept, the sorrowful under-thought slipped
into speech.
"He calls it love, but it couldn't have been that. He says it wasn't
strong in the strength that saves; and love is always mighty to succor
the weak-hearted. I would have believed in him--I did believe in him,
only I didn't know how to help. But no one could help when he didn't
believe in himself; and now he is just drifting, with the cruel
sword of opportunity loose in its scabbard, and all the unspeakable
things dragging him whithersoever they will.... And he meant to end
it all when he wrote this letter; I know he did. That would have been
terrible; but it would have been braver than to go on to robbery, and
unfaith, and--and now to this last pitiless iniquity. Oh, I can't let
it go on to that!--not if I have to go and plead with him for the
sake of that which he once thought was--love." She went down upon her
knees with her face hidden in the chair-cushion, and the unconscious
monologue became a passionate beseeching: "O God, help me to be strong
and steadfast, that I may not fail when I come to stand between these
two; for Thou knowest the secrets of the heart and all its weakness;
and Thou knowest"--