The Helpers

CHAPTER XXXV

The news of Lansdale's death came with the shock of the unexpected to the dwellers in the metamorphosed cabin on the upslope of Topeka Mountain, albeit no one of the three of them had ventured to hope for anything more than a reprieve as the outcome of the jaunt afield. But the manner of his death at the time when the reprieve seemed well assured was responsible for the shock and its sorrowful aftermath; and if Constance grieved more than Bartrow or her cousin, it was only for the reason that the heart of compassion knows best the bitterness of infruition.

"It's a miserably comfortless saying to offer you, Connie, dear, but we must try to believe it is for the best," said Myra, finding Constance re-reading Jeffard's telegram by the light of her bedroom lamp.

Constance put her arms about her cousin's neck, and the heart of compassion overflowed. "'For unto every one that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath,'" she sobbed. "Of all the things he had set his heart upon life was the least, – was only the means to an end: and even that was taken from him."

"No, not taken, Connie; he gave it, and gave it freely. He did for another what his friend was trying to do for him."

At the reference to Jeffard, Constance went to stand before the crackling fire of fir-splinters on the hearth. After a time she said: "Do you suppose Mr. Jeffard will come here to tell us about it?"

Myra's answer was a query.

"Does he know you are here?"

"No, I think not."

"Then he will be more likely to go to Denver."

Connie's gaze was in the fire, and she swerved aside from the straight path of inference.

"He will write to Dick," she said. "I should like to read the letter when it comes, if I may."

Myra promised, and so it rested; but when Jeffard's letter came, and Bartrow had shared its astounding news with his wife, Myra was for rescinding her promise.

"I don't know why she shouldn't read it," said Dick. "She has always been more or less interested in him, and it will do her a whole lot of good to know that we were all off wrong. Jeffard's little slap at me hits her, too, but she won't mind that."

"No," said Myra; "I was thinking of something else, – something quite different."

"Is it sayable?"

They were sitting on the steps of the extended porch. The night-shift was at work in the Myriad below, and the rattle and clank of a dump-car coming out postponed her answer. When the clangor subsided she glanced over her shoulder.

"She can't hear," said Bartrow. "She's in the sitting-room reading to Uncle Steve."

"I'm not sure that it is sayable, Dick. But for the last two days I've been wondering if we weren't mistaken about something else, too, – about Connie's feeling for Mr. Lansdale. She is sorry, but not quite in the way I expected she would be."

"What has that got to do with Jeffard's letter?" demanded the downright one. His transplantings of perspicacity were not yet sufficiently acclimated to bloom out of season.

"Nothing, perhaps." She gave it up as unspeakable, and went to the details of the business affair. "Shall you tell Garvin at once?"

"Sure."

"How fortunate it is that he and Uncle Stephen came in to-day."

"Yes. They were staked for another month, and I didn't look for them until they were driven in for more grub. But Garvin says the old man is about played out. He's too old. He can't stand the pick and shovel in this altitude at his age. We'll have to talk him out of it and run him back to Denver some way or other."

"Can't you make this trusteeship an excuse? If Garvin needed a guardian at first, he will doubtless need one now."

Bartrow nodded thoughtfully. Another car was coming out, and he waited until the crash of the falling ore had come and gone.

"Jeffard knew what he was about all the time; knew it when he wrote this letter just as well as he did when he shouldered the curse of it to keep a possible lynching party from hanging Garvin. That's why he put it in trust. He knew Garvin had gone daft and thrown it away once, and he was afraid he might do it again."

"Will he?" asked the wife.

"I guess not. I believe he has learned his lesson. More than that, Jim's as soft as mush on the side next the old man. If I can make out to tie Uncle Steve's welfare up in the deal, Garvin will come to the front like a man."

"Where is Garvin now?"

"He is down at the bunk-house."

Myra rose. "I suppose you want to get it over with. Let me have the letter, if you won't need it."

"What are you going to do?"

"Carry Connie off to her room and keep her busy with this while you and Uncle Stephen fight it out with the new millionaire," she said. "I don't envy you your part of it."

Bartrow laughed, and the transplantings put forth a late shoot.

"Come to think of it, I don't know as I envy you yours," he retorted. "She's all broke up about Uncle Steve's health and Lansdale's death now, and she'll have a fit when she finds out how she has been piling it on to Jeffard when he didn't deserve it."

It was an hour later, and the day-men smoking on the porch of the boarding-house had gone to bed, when the husband and wife met again midway of the path leading up from the shaft-house of the Myriad to the metamorphosed cabin. Bartrow had walked down to the boarding-house with Garvin, and Myra's impatience had sent her down the path to meet him. Dick gave her his arm up the steep ascent, and drew her to a seat on the lowest of the porch steps.

"Where is Connie?" he inquired, anticipating an avalanche of questions, out of which he would have to dig his way without fear of interruption.

"She is with her father. Begin at the beginning, and tell me all about it. What did Garvin say? Is he going to be sensible?"

"There isn't so much to tell as there might be," Dick said, smothering a mighty prompting to tell the major fact first. "Garvin took it very sensibly, though a body could see that the lamplight was a good bit too strong for his eyes. He had to try three or four times before he could speak, and then all he could say was 'Thirds, Steve, thirds.'"

"'Thirds?' What did he mean by that?"

Bartrow hesitated for a moment, as a gunner who would make sure of the priming before he jerks the lanyard.

"Did it ever occur to you that any one else besides Garvin and Jeffard might be interested in the Midas?"

"Why, no!"

"It didn't to me. I don't know why, but I never thought of it, though I knew well enough that Jim never in all his life went prospecting on a grub-stake of his own providing. He didn't that summer three years ago when he drove the tunnel on the Midas."

Myra's lips were dry, and she had to moisten them to say, "Who was it, Dick?"

"Who should it be but our good old Uncle Steve? Of course, he'd forgotten all about it, and there he stood, wringing Garvin's hand and trying to congratulate him; and Jim hanging on to the back of his chair and saying, 'Thirds, Steve, I say thirds.' Garvin made him understand at last, and then the old man melted down into his chair and put his face in his hands. When he took it out again it was to look up and say, 'You're right, Jim; of course it's thirds,' and then he asked me where Jeffard was."

Myra's voice was unsteady, but she made shift to say what there was to be said; and Bartrow went on.

"After a bit we got down to business and straightened things out. A third interest in the Midas is to be set apart for Jeffard, to be rammed down his throat when we find him, whether he will or no. Uncle Steve will go back to Denver and set up housekeeping again; and Garvin, – but that's the funny part of the whole shooting-match. Garvin refuses to touch a dollar of the money as owner; insists on leaving it in trust, just as it is now; and made me sit down there and then and write his will."

An outcoming car of ore drowned Myra's exclamation of surprise.

"Fact," said Bartrow. "He reserves an income to be paid to him at Uncle Steve's discretion and mine, and at his death his third goes, – to whom, do you suppose?"

"Indeed, I can't imagine, – unless it is to Connie."

"Not much! It's to be held in trust for Margaret Gannon's children."

"For Margaret, – why, she hasn't any children! And besides, he doesn't know her!"

"Don't you fool yourself. He knows she hasn't any children, but he's living in hopes. I told you there was something between them from the way Garvin turned in and nursed the old blacksmith before Margaret came. You wouldn't believe it, because they both played the total-stranger act; but that was one time when I got ahead of you, wasn't it?"

"Yes; go on."

"Well, I made out the will, 'I, James Garvin, being of sound mind,' and so on; and Uncle Steve and I witnessed it. But on the way down to the bunk-shanty just now I pinned Garvin up against the wall and made him tell me why. He knew Margaret when she was in the Bijou, and asked her to marry him. She was honest enough even then to refuse him. It made me want to weep when I remembered how she had been mixed up with Jeffard."

Myra was silent for a full minute, and when she spoke it was out of the depths of a contrite heart.

"I made you believe that, Dick, against your will; and you were right, after all. Mr. Jeffard was only trying to help Connie's poor people through Margaret, though why he should do that when he was withholding a fortune from Uncle Stephen is still a mystery."

"That is as simple as twice two," said the husband. "Didn't I tell you? Garvin had no occasion to tell him who his grub-staker was in the first place, and no chance to do it afterward. Jeffard didn't know, – doesn't know yet."

Myra went silent again, this time for more than a minute.

"I have learned something, too, Dick; but I am not sure that I ought to tell it," she said, after the interval.

"I can wait," said Bartrow cheerfully. "I've had a full meal of double-back-action surprises as it is."

"This isn't a surprise; or it wouldn't be if we hadn't been taking too much for granted. I tolled Connie off to her room with the letter, as I said I would; and she – she had a fit, as you prophesied."

"Of course," says Dick. "It hurts her more than anything to make a miscue on the charitable side."

"Yes, but" —

"But what?"

"I'll tell you sometime, Dick, but not now. It is too pitiful."

"I can wait," said Bartrow again; and his lack of curiosity drove her into the thick of it.

"If you knew you'd want to do something, – as I do, only I don't know how. Isn't it pretty clear that Mr. Jeffard cares a great deal for Connie?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. What makes you think so?" says the obvious one.

"A good many little things; some word or two that Margaret has let slip, for one of them. How otherwise would you explain his eagerness to help Connie?"

"On general principles, I guess. She's plenty good enough to warrant it."

"Yes, but it wasn't 'general principles' in Mr. Jeffard's case. He is in love with Connie, and" —

"And she doesn't care for him. Is that it?"

"No, it isn't it; she does care for him. I fairly shocked it out of her with the letter, and that is why I oughtn't to tell it, even to you. It is too pitiful!"

Bartrow shook his head in cheerful density. "Your philosophy's too deep for me. If they are both of one mind, as you say, I don't see where the pity comes in. Jeffard isn't half good enough for her, of course; he made a bally idiot of himself a year ago. But if she can forget that, I'm sure we ought to."

"I wasn't thinking of that. But don't you see how impossible this Midas tangle makes it? He won't take his third, you may be very sure of that; and when he finds out that Connie has a daughter's share in one of the other thirds, it will seal his lips for all time. People would say that he gave up his share only to marry hers."

Bartrow got upon his feet and helped her to rise. "You'll take cold sitting out here in the ten-thousand-foot night," he said; and on the top step of the porch-flight she had his refutation of her latest assertion.

"You say people would talk. Doesn't it strike you that Jeffard is the one man in a thousand who will mount and ride regardless? – who will smile and snap his fingers at public opinion? That's just what he's been doing all along, and he'll do it again if he feels like it. Let's go in and congratulate the good old uncle while we wait."

CHAPTER XXXVI

The day train from the south ran into the early winter twilight at Acequia, and into the night at Littleton; and the arc stars of the city, resplendent with frosty aureoles, were brightly scintillant when Jeffard gave his hand-bag to the porter and passed out through the gate at the Union Depot. By telegraphic prearrangement, he was to meet Denby in Denver to make his report upon the Chihuahuan silver mine; but when he made inquiry at the hotel he was not sorry to find that the promoter had not yet arrived. It is a far cry from Santa Rosalia to Denver; as far as from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth; and he was grateful for a little breathing space in which to synchronize himself.

But after dinner, and a cigar burned frugally in the great rotunda, where the faces of all the comers and goers were unfamiliar, the homesickness of the returned exile came upon him, and he went out to grapple with it in the open air. Faring absently from street to street, with his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets and memory plowing its furrow deep in a field which had lain fallow through many toil-filled weeks, he presently found himself drifting by squares and street-crossings toward Capitol Hill, and out and beyond to a broad avenue and past a house with a veranda in front and a deep-bayed window at the side. There were lights in the house, and an air of owner's occupancy about the place; and on the veranda a big man was tramping solidly up and down, with the red spark at the end of his cigar appearing and disappearing as he passed and repassed the windows.

Jeffard saw the man and saw him not. The memory-plow had gone deeper, and the winter night changed places with a June morning, with the sun shining aslant on the wide veranda, and a young woman in a belted house-gown with loose sleeves tiptoeing on the arm of a clumsy chair while she caught up the new growth of a climbing rose. Just here the plow began to tear up rootlets well-buried but still sensitive; and Jeffard turned about abruptly and set his face cityward.

But once again in the region of tall buildings and peopled sidewalks, the thought of the crowded lobby and the loneliness of it assailed him afresh, and he changed his course again, being careful to go at right angles to the broad avenue with its house of recollection. A little way beyond the peopled walks the church bells began to ring out clear and melodious on the frosty air, and he remembered what the uncalendared journey had made him forget; that it was Sunday. Pacing thoughtfully, with the transit-hum of the city behind him and the quiet house-streets ahead, and the plow still shearing the sod of the fallow field, he wondered if Constance Elliott would be among the churchgoers. It was an upflash of the old cynicism which prompted the retort that it was improbable; that the Christianity for which she stood was not found in the churches. But the Puritan blood in him rose up in protest at that, and in the rebound the open doors of a church on the opposite side of the way beckoned him.

He crossed the street and entered. The organist was playing the voluntary, and a smart young man with a tuberose in his buttonhole held up the finger of invitation.

"Not too far forward," Jeffard whispered; but the young man seemed not to have heard, since he led the way up the broad centre aisle to a pew far beyond the strangers' precinct.

The pew was unoccupied, and Jeffard went deep into it, meaning to be well out of the way of later comers. But when the finale of the voluntary merged by harmonious transpositions into the key of the opening hymn, the other sittings in the pew were still untaken, and Jeffard congratulated himself. There be times when partial isolation, even in a sparsely filled church, is grateful; and the furrows in the fallow field were still smoking from their recent upturning.

Jeffard stood in the hymn-singing, and bowed his head at the prayer, not so much in reverence as in deference to time, place, and encompassments. Since the shearing of the plowshare filled his ears, the words of the beseeching were lost to him, but he was sufficiently alive to his surroundings to know that the pew filled quietly at the beginning of the prayer; and sufficiently reserved afterward to deny himself so much as a glance aside at his nearest neighbor.

How long he would have sat staring abstractedly at the pictured window beyond the choir must remain a matter for conjecture. The minister had given out the psalm, and Jeffard stood up with the others. Whereupon he saw of necessity that his neighbor was a woman, so small that the trimmings on her modest walking hat came barely to his shoulder; saw this, and a moment later was looking down into a pair of steadfast gray eyes, deep-welled and eloquent, as she handed him an open book with the leaf turned down.

He took the book mechanically, with mute thanks, but afterward he saw and heard nothing for which the evensong in St. Cyril's-in-the-Desert could justly be held responsible, being lifted to a seventh heaven of ecstasy far more real than that depicted in the glowing periods of the preacher. He made the most of it, knowing that it would presently vanish, and that he should have to come to earth again. And not by whispered word or sign of recognition would he mar the beatitude of it. Only once, when he put aside the book she had given him and looked on with her, did he suffer himself to do more than to enjoy silently and to the full the sweet pleasure of her nearness.