Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

black braids about her head, reefed her skirts, and, taking hold of the rope she had made fast, descended fearlessly into the cave. Pacheco's friend had come.

Alan crawled into the engineers' camp next morning as the boys were turning out of their tents for breakfast. They did not recognize in him the laughing, bright-haired stripling who had sat by their fire scarcely three weeks before. When they questioned him he fell to weeping like a baby, and said he had been in hell. And they remarked to one another that he looked it, every inch of him. And when he told them who he was, and where he had been, and how, while the bright days had passed unnoticed above ground, some of the broadshouldered fellows were not ashamed to wipe their own eyes, complaining audibly of the camp-fire smoke. He slept all that day and night and far into the next day, and was roused with difficulty when they forced him to take such nourishment as they judged he required. But they might have let him sleep; nature and youth were taking care of him.

XI.

PHILIP's return trip from the mountains was hastened by a letter from his father requesting his presence in town on a certain day of the month. He left his men to bring in the camp outfit, pressing on alone ahead of the wagons on horseback, and reaching town well within the stipulated time, tired as a hunter, but gay with the thought of the long mountain miles he had made at the word of command. He lingered over his toilet next morning, with a keen zest for the comforts of civilization after three weeks of gritty camp-life in boots, and corduroys, and crumpled flannels. It was luxury to put on a silk shirt and to brush his hair before a triple mirror. He trimmed the ends of his mustache, taking all the time which that delicate operation deserves; he examined critically the new barber's cut to which he had submitted himself the evening before at the Transcontinental. He perfected his outer man deliberately in every detail, and descended to breakfast in a brilliant humor of expectation for whatever new turn of the wheel had brought him back again to the affairs of men. Even the little new town, whose social note had struck him as so crude and stridulous, contrasted with the life of the hills, had gained quite a gay, civic, important air. He had amused himself with thinking of it the evening before, as he walked home by the white light of the electric lamps.

Philip had passed the ordeal, spiritual as well as physical, and was acclimated to the western movement. His father saw it in his glance, in

his bearing, as he walked into the room, and rejoiced that he could call the clean, highheaded young fellow his son. He would have liked to cuff him about a little and to clap him on the back, to take some of the starch out of him; yet the starch was well, so that there was "sand" underneath. Breakfast at Mr. Norrisson's was not a perfunctory matter of a roll and a cup of coffee, but a regular sitting in three courses, with conversation and good appetites. To the manner of this also Philip was acclimated; he needed no urging when the third course came upon the table, even when it included that ultra-Americanism, pancakes hot from the griddle. Mr. Norrisson's Mexican cook was a genius, at sixty dollars a month, and could turn his small dark hand to the cooking of any clime. (It must have been observed too often to be worth mentioning that men, when they keep house, will always have a cook, whether the closets be cleaned or not.) It was Enrique's pet grievance that Wong was allowed to make the coffee at breakfast. He listened at the window of the butler's pantry to hear his own praises when his creations were handed in, but when he heard praise of Wong's coffee instead, he swore strange oaths among his pots and pans, making the kitchen hideous with their clatter. Hearing echoes of the din, Wong would smile mysteriously, and pass Enrique's triumphs with sweet condescension. It was Enrique's revenge at breakfast to hasten out to the garden and to pick a bouquet for the table, well knowing that he alone of all in the house had the touch for flowers, and that Wong's efforts were simply insufferable. It was he who filled the lesser punch-bowl with roses or crisp nasturtiums dewy with their morning sprinkling; it was Wong who swore in the depths of his white, starched gabardine when he spied the insolent drops on his spotless cloth. He would have given a month's wages for courage to fling bowl and contents at the head of his fellow-craftsman. But out of these jealousies professional and racial came exceeding peace and perfection of service to Mr. Norrisson. It was his policy that the heathen should rage; that out of their dissensions he might make profit to himself.

"Has Alan Dunsmuir turned up yet?" Philip inquired.

His father was finishing his plate of California peaches. He paused and mopped himself before answering; he was a critical but not a dainty feeder. Moreover, he did not know at first to what the question referred; then he remembered.

"Why, of course, that must have been what Dunsmuir meant. He excused himself from the dinner we gave Westerhall; some family

matter; he did n't put it very plainly, but I saw there was trouble, so I did n't ask any questions. But I remember now. Young Dunsmuir was reported missing about a fortnight ago. What has he been up to?"

"I don't know at all," said Philip. "They sent a man after me to inquire if he had been with my party. I did not get a very clear idea what the trouble is, or what they are afraid of."

"Depend on it, if Dunsmuir has had trouble with his boy he's the one to blame. He'd be sure to buckle the curb too tight. You will have to remember his arbitrary temper when you come to work with him. However, you are cool enough, and you have a manner that will flatter the old sachem. But you must look out and not carry etiquette too far. We'll get through with Wongy Pongy before we begin on business."

When the last dishes were on the table, Wong was ordered to tell Simpson that the horses would not be wanted that morning. "Now," said Mr. Norrisson, "shall we smoke here or outside ?"

"I am very comfortable," said Philip, helping himself to one of his father's cigars.

"Well, I must tell you the circus has begun. In fact it's pretty nearly over. We have had our season of wrath and bitterness. Dunsmuir is not so topping as he used to be; whether it's this break his boy has made, or what, he 's not the man he was. Crotchets play the mischief with a man's powers. Westerhall arrived, as you know, last week," Mr. Norrisson went on. "We got together after a few preliminaries, and we offered Dunsmuir a slice of the stock. But we made it pretty plain that we proposed to dispense with his services as engineer. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'this is a very fair offer you make me for my resignation. But I intend to build my own canal. I have staked my professional word on the verity and importance of this work, and I shall see it done, and honestly done,'-mark the point he always makes of his honesty as against our supposed want of it, if it be the last work of my life. This may not strike you as business,' said he, but it is where the business hits me.'

"At our next meeting I showed him that he had nothing to sell. He had shown his hand to Westerhall, and all he had was the opinion of Marshall & Read, his lawyers; and on that very opinion we based our claim. Now there were two clauses to it: Dunsmuir read his title by the first clause, and we took the second and read it just the other way; and yet it was a sound, well-considered judgment by two of the ablest men we have out here. It came about to this: Dunsmuir's claim was good to build on; it was good for nothing if it lay idle, and we

went ahead and built the canal. Water belongs to the man who uses it. We claimed his location, and shall hold it, on the ground that we are ready to build our canal now, while he is only pottering at a rate that will not see his finished in half a hundred years. He took occasion to remind me, right there, that our company's policy had been one of obstruction' unscrupulous and persistent,' else his ditch might have gone through years ago. And I endeavored to show him that it was his policy of antagonism which had antagonized us; that he might have gone in with us had he chosen, and saved all this friction between us. Here he shut up and would say no more. He had got very pale, and his hands shook as he gathered up his papers. He looked as if he had n't slept for a week. I wish, confound it, I had known, or remembered, about this trouble with his boy. Handsome little rascal! I used to see him around town cutting up all manner of cowboy capers on that spotted pony of his. What did you say he 's been up to?"

Philip explained again what he knew of the circumstances.

"Well, I wish I had known. Dunsmuir 's badly strapped, I hear. I might have offered him some help in the way of his search. Or we might have waited a little-well, we could n't wait. Westerhall understood there would be trouble, but when we came to talk it over I could see he did n't want to leave Dunsmuir out in the cold; though, as I said to him, a man who won't accept any terms but his own, or any facts but his own as to his real position, is a difficult man to deal with.

6

"But we must give him something,' said Westerhall. He is too poor to get out of the country, you say, and he is too strong a man to be left in black dudgeon here, to head every movement against us in the future. He must be included in some way.'

"How are we going to include him?' said I. 'We tried him fifteen years ago, but he would n't be included on any reasonable basis. He stood off and called us swindlers. Now we are jumpers. It does n't make a happy family,' said I.

"Give him the work,' said Westerhall; and he showed me there was a feeling for him in London, where his Indian record is on the blue books, and it counts with them, of course, that he is an M. I. C. E. And then Westerhall and I had it for the rest of the day.

"But, as you may have observed, I am a man of compromises. This is the way I put it to myself: Suppose we make Dunsmuir our chief engineer, not at his demand, but as a point we yield out of generosity to a broken man. He knows I don't want him on the work, that I have refused to have him. Now if he takes that

offer from our company, the man is ours. am the manager of the company."

I

"How can you subsidize a man by giving him his own? Will the legal aspect of Dunsmuir's claim affect its justice in his own eyes?" asked Philip.

"It does not now; but his light will grow. Property that has no existence in law can't be peddled about under the name of a water-right. I think he has had his misgivings that his claim was wearing pretty thin. Observe, he never consulted his lawyer till the other day, when he knew he had to; he did n't want to be too sure. It's the nature of dreams to look queer by daylight. Dunsmuir's fifteen years' fight will look very strange to him six months from now. However, it makes no difference to me; let him take our offer, or walk off with his pride and an empty pocket."

"What is it you propose to offer him, now?" "Make him chief engineer and give him a little stock."

"And how will you put the offer of stock to a man who has no rights in the scheme?" "We shall put it this way: Parties might have got hold of that location who would have given us more trouble than you have; who would have forced us to build before we were ready. This is to pay you for keeping up the right for us."

"That is very clever," said Philip, who thought it infernally clever; "but Dunsmuir will take it as a taunt. You can never compromise him through offering him a share in his own scheme. You might as well try to suborn an author, offering him a royalty on his book."

"Yes, yes; I know the pride he has in his design, his responsibility, and all that. But his plans went out of his hands in our first deal. He will find, after a while, that he is being taken care of on this scheme, and that I am taking care of him."

Philip rose from the table and walked to the open window, where the purest of morning breezes drifted in from the fields of blossoming alfalfa.

"Why does your company want to own its engineer?" he asked.

"I am the company here," said Mr. Norrisson, disdaining the shelter of the collective noun; and for the first time in his various expositions of the dispute between himself and Dunsmuir he showed the bad blood he had always attributed to Dunsmuir alone.

"I submit that it will never occur to Dunsmuir that he is being 'taken care of,'" said Philip; and he triumphed in the thought. His sympathies were with the man of his own profession. "The work is his by every right of discovery, of design, of fitness, and of sacrifice.

Why should he not take it? Who is the man that can say, 'I gave it him in pity for his delusions'?"

"He will take it, that's what I say," scoffed Norrisson. "He will take the stock, too. He knows the worth of money, and he knows the need of it. What shall follow remains to be seen. I am satisfied, remember, though I seem to have backed down on a vital point. Dunsmuir is chief engineer; well and good. And my son will be his first assistant. How does that strike you?”

It struck Philip in so many different ways at once that he could not choose instantly the best answer-the truest-to his scruples, his doubts, and his deep, excited joy.

"May I ask, sir, if this is part of the 'deal'?" was what he said.

Mr. Norrisson answered indirectly. "It is understood that you are to have the position."

"Whether Dunsmuir wants me or not? I should find it unpleasant to be foisted on my chief."

"You are not supposed to know it. I need not have told you; but it 's impossible to foresee what you will shy at next. We have another meeting fixed for this afternoon," Mr. Norrisson added, rising, and touching the bell. "We shall put in our final proposition as I have stated it. I want you there. I want Dunsmuir to see you before he 's had time to take a prejudice."

"I must ask you to excuse me," said Philip, decidedly.

"Why excuse you? It was for this I sent for you."

Philip, who coveted Dunsmuir's favor for reasons too delicate, too personal, and as yet too vague, to be spoken, had no resource but to bear his father's contempt for what must appear merely another instance of coxcombry belonging to the schools.

"What the devil is it now? You are as mysterious as a woman!"

But nothing would induce Philip to go near those embittered men in council, committed to the side which he was not on. He entreated that his name be withheld for the present. Let Dunsmuir's affairs be settled first.

"It won't take half an hour to settle that," said the man of business. "I want to know if you will take that place; for your name will come up whether you are there or not. You will do as you please about that; the other matter I want settled."

"I will take it gladly, provided Dunsmuir be left free to discharge me as he would any other man's son, if my work should not suit."

"Very well," Mr. Norrisson assented, with the smile of a patient man who is nearing the limit of his pet virtue. "We will put it that

way then. You don't want to be ‘taken care of,' either; is that it?"

Philip did not explain. His father was, on the whole, more amused than displeased by his coyness. It was, as he understood it, partly youth's high conceit of itself, and partly the skittishness of a proud young novice in business, unacquainted with the practical nature of a deal. However, as they left the house together he felt called on to straighten the young man's views on one point.

[ocr errors]

"Foisted' is a good word," said Mr. Norrisson, "but it does n't apply to a straight demand that my son, a graduate of the Polytechnic, and the very man for the place, should have it. You understand?"

"I do," smiled Philip; "and I take back the word. And, frankly, I know that I can do the work; but I want the relation to be a pleasant one, and I don't want it to begin to-day in the midst of a discussion which may, or may not, take a happy turn. Give me time, and a fair show of pleasing my chief, and I think we can hit it off."

"There is sense in that; and it's your concern, the social part, not mine. The cañon will be your headquarters, and you don't want to live there in a bees' bike. They 're a set of outlandish, prejudiced exiles, anyhow. It's all right; I sha'n't hurry you."

While Philip was dressing for dinner that evening there came a summons from the telephone. He hurried into his clothes, and went to the tube. The call was from the company's office: one of the young men wishing to know if Dunsmuir were in town, or if any of his ple were in. Philip could not say, and asked who wanted Dunsmuir.

Answer came: "His son."

"Where is his son ?"

"You are in this scheme, gentlemen, for your money's worth; I am in it, now, for the sole sake of my work. Is it likely you will tamper with that? Your guarantees I have nothing to do with. I will be bound by no time-limit of your making in my deal with powers that are beyond your cognizance."

"I don't quite tumble to your talk of revenge," said Norrisson, apparently in reference to some previous threat of Dunsmuir's. "How, if it's a fair question, would you propose to take it? In the courts, for instance? Because I can tell you—”

"In the people's court of the electionsI could meet you there. Bear in mind, all that your farmers want to make head against you is a leader—a man who knows something and who has nothing to lose. I have heard a word of buying their representatives; maybe those gentlemen, whose politics are in their pockets, may think to buy me?"

Philip knocked twice before his father shouted "Come in!" The men were all on their feet; Dunsmuir pacing the floor, his gaunt cheekbones reddened, his blue eyes blazing, his graygolden hair tumbled on his head as by a wind of strife. He wheeled upon Philip, who, as no one spoke to introduce him, was forced to come bluntly out with his errand:

"I have the pleasure to tell you, sir, that your son is in town. He is at the office, asking for you."

"My son? What office? Who is this youngster?" he demanded of the company generally, without taking his eyes from Philip's face. 66 peo

'My son. Your engineer, Dunsmuir, the boy I was telling you about."

Dunsmuir took no notice of Philip in either of the given characters.

"Is it a waif word you bring?" he asked,

"Here. Came in to-night-engineers' team with a tremor in his deep-strung tones; “or

[blocks in formation]

"Ask him to come up here."

do you come from my son, himself?"

"I bring you the message as it came by telephone from the company's office. He was there fifteen minutes ago, asking for his father.

After an interval the reply was: "Can't do They said he was ill, and I took it on me to it. He's all broke up."

"Get a carriage and bring him, some of you. I'll find his father."

Philip rushed over to the stable where Dunsmuir kept his team; the horses were being put to. The stableman said Dunsmuir's orders were that his rig should be at the Transcon. by six o'clock. It was then ten minutes to six.

Philip jumped in beside the man, and they drove to the hotel. He was shown at once to Mr. Westerhall's rooms. The door of the parlor, at the far end of a long corridor, stood ajar, and a voice which he took to be Dunsmuir's was thundering. He could not avoid hearing the words:

have him brought to our house. He will be there before we can get there. Your team is below."

"Man, are you sure here is no mistake? I cannot bear to be jostled by such news if it be not the truth." He spoke harshly, lapsing into his Scotch accent, and Philip answered as to

a woman:

"Shall we not go and see?"

Dunsmuir began to look about the room for his hat and coat. He was holding hard against the heart-shaking message, but there was a mist before his eyes. Philip helped him to his things, and almost put them on him. He found a pleasure in waiting upon him, and the omen was

a good one, though he did not think of it at the time. In silence the other men drew near, and shook Dunsmuir by the hand.

"I haven't been able to tell you how I have felt for you, Dunsmuir, in this business of your son," said Norrisson the father; and said Westerhall, who had a little fair-haired lad of his own across the water:

"Our toast to-night shall be, 'Our boys; God bless them!""

In the wagon, driving through the streets, Dunsmuir spoke, charging himself that he must get him a man to carry a message to his womenfolk waiting in the cañon. "If this news be true, they cannot hear it too soon," he said.

"I will be your man," said Philip.

then, my bonny chiel! I have been fighting against you, I confess it; I wanted no manager's son on the work. And here you come with your coals of fire! I shall be in bonds if the mercies hold; there's nothing slackens a man's war-grip like the thought, My God has remembered me."

Philip might have asked himself, had scruples been in order, Would Dunsmuir have made him his messenger to the cañon that night had he known how keen he was for the errand? A joy that was not all enthusiasm for the work was rising in his heart: already he saw himself on the darkling road; he was entering the cañon by starlight; he saw the lights in the waiting house, and a girl with startled, soft gray eyes

"Will you so? Let it be your first order, was thanking him as his news deserved.

[blocks in formation]

ERE at life's silent, shadowy gate,
O

Faint in the darkness, blind and dumb,
O Soul, my promised comrade, come!

The morn breaks gladly in the east ;
Hush! hark! the signs of solemn feast:
The softened footstep on the stair;
The happy smile, the chant, the prayer;
The dainty robes, the christening-bowl-
"T is well with Body and with Soul.
Why lingerest thou at dawn of life?
Seest not a world with pleasure rife?
Hear'st not the song and whir of bird?
The joyous leaves to music stirred ?
Thou too shalt sing and float in light;
My Soul, thou shalt be happy-quite.
But yet so young, and such unrest ?
Thou must be glad, my glorious guest.
Here is the revel, here is mirth,
Here gayest melodies of earth;
Measures of joy in fullness spent ;
My Soul, thou canst but be content.

Is this a tear upon my hand?
A tear? I do not understand.
Ripples of laughter, and a moan?
Why sit we thus, apart, alone?
Lift up thine eyes, O Soul, and sing!
He comes, our lover, and our king!
Feel how each pulse in rapture thrills!
Look, at our feet the red wine spills!
And he he comes with step divine,
A spirit meet, O Soul, for thine.

Body and Soul's supremest bliss-
What, dost thou ask for more than this?

Stay, here are houses, lands, and gold;
Here, honor's hand; here, gains untold;
Drink thou the full cup to the lees;
Drink, Soul, and make thy bed in ease.
Thou art my prisoner; thou, my slave;
And thou shalt sip wherein I lave.

Nay? nay? Then there are broader fields,
Whose luring path a treasure yields;
Thou shalt the universe explore,

Its heights of knowledge, depths of lore;
Shalt journey far o'er land and sea;
And I, my Soul, wilt follow thee;
Wilt follow-follow-but I lag;
My heart grows faint, my footsteps flag.
And there are higher, holier things?
Is this a taunt thy spirit flings?
What is it, Soul, that thou wouldst say?
Thou erst had time to fast and pray.
Give me one word, one loving sign,
For this spent life of yours and mine!

I held thee fast by sordid ties?

I trailed thy garments, veiled thine eyes?
Go on, I come: but once did wait,
O Soul, for thee, at morning's gate.
Canst thou not pause to give me breath?
Perchance this shadow, Soul, is death.
I stumble, fall; it is the grave;
I am the prisoner; I the slave;
And thou, strange guest, for ay art free;
Forgive me, Soul; I could but be
The earth that soiled, the fleshly clod,
The weight that bound thee to the sod.

Dust unto dust! I hear the knell ;
And yet, O Soul, I loved thee well!

Emma Huntington Nason.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »