The Vision of Elijah Berl
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As consciousness began to return to Elijah, his sense of injury took another form. He had been for several days in the Mexican's hut and no one had called for him or inquired. After all he had done for others, they had left him, turned from him in heartless ingratitude, in this his hour of need. He raged against Helen especially, but his rage changed first to an intense longing, then to a determination to see her again.
Toward the evening of the fifth day, he prevailed upon the Mexican to drive him to Ysleta. At the Rio Vista, having gone to his room, he called a servant and sent him with a message to Helen. She was not to be found. At the office he learned that Helen had gone out to the works and would be absent for several days. He would have followed, but he dared not. Her last words, the last look that he remembered so clearly, these told him only too plainly that she would not be forced, that – he dared think no further. He must work on her sympathy through an appeal. He returned to his room at the hotel and found what he had overlooked before, a package of papers on his table. They had been sent over from the office. A slip of paper in Helen's writing, "Elijah Berl, Rio Vista." He tore the string from the bundle in feverish haste. His fingers trembled as he shuffled the letters one by one. Not one was in Helen's hand. Again and again he went over them, then he gave up in despair.
With infinite patience, the Almighty has taught us by precept and example, that our destinies are in our own hands; that the punishment for failure that comes to us, is self-inflicted, and not from him, when in blind despair, we thrust aside a redemption that is waiting to make us whole. The smitten rock that quenched the thirst of Israel, the parted sea that gave them a way to safety, the column of smoke that reached into the day, the pillar of fire that made the darkness light, these may be fables; but they speak with a voice that cannot be stilled, telling us that in ages past, as in the present, an eye that sleeps not, watches over us; that hope is for us if we will.
Among the discarded letters, was one from Winston. It told of the plucked fangs of Mellin, of Uncle Sid's restoration of the stolen money, of the meeting with Seymour. It ended, "Come back, old man, we want you."
Late as was the hour when Elijah at last turned from his unopened letters, he rang for a servant and ordered a carriage to take him to his ranch. He could not go to the dam; the thought of idly waiting at the hotel was unendurable. He wanted to see some one, he must see some one. He had deliberately put Amy from him; but she did not know this. The black heartlessness of his proposed action did not once occur to him. Before leaving the hotel he wrote an appeal to Helen. He told her where he was going and that he would wait her answer.
At the ranch, he found Amy as of old. Eager, questioning hope leaped to her eyes as they rested on his face; then the hope died out to the dumb, patient waiting; the dumb, patient suffering of an animal that endures without question, without resentment. Through the long days that followed, she did her best to draw him from himself, from the fires that were consuming him. It was in vain. In vain, when she found him seated with his eyes fastened on the dusty trail from Ysleta, she slipped her hand in his and nestled close to him, inviting confidences that were never given, tendering sympathy that was not accepted, assuring him of unswerving confidence that nothing and no one could destroy.
He let no opportunity pass to send other appeals to Helen, but these too were unanswered. One day a messenger came. Elijah did not wait, but rushed to meet him. The message was not from Helen. Instead, a telegram. Mechanically he signed the receipt which the messenger held out; then he opened the envelope. The message was in cipher, but he knew each symbol. The messenger looked at him inquiringly. Elijah shook his head, "No answer," and the messenger rode away.
It did not matter to Elijah that the message was over a week old; the message itself was sufficient. "Have failed to raise the money. I start for California tomorrow."
Elijah felt that his return to Ysleta was hopelessly barred. Mrs. MacGregor was there now, Seymour was there, Helen was there. Like sneaking jackals, they were ready to fall upon him, wounded to the death. They would not leave him in peace. They would not leave him in peace even with what was his own. Nothing was left him but vengeance; how could he compass it?
Like the white flash of a thunderbolt, the transaction with Mellin came to him. Its sinister condition – "within three months after the water shall have been turned into the main canal of the Las Graces" – danced before his eyes. The words were clear and minatory, but there was a hidden meaning that he could not catch, that was pointing the way of deliverance. He strained forward as if to listen more clearly. The swollen veins on his forehead throbbed and beat; then he sprang to his feet —
"As God lives, that water shall not be turned on!"
The sun had set and darkness was falling, but day and night were alike to Elijah now. He was at the gates of the canal at the mouth of the cañon. The roar of the Sangre de Cristo was gone, only a trickle of water slipped by blackened boulders and gurgled as it fell into tiny pools, then wimpled and slid out toward the desert. Up through the trail that led to the dam, darkened by dense evergreens to a deeper shadow, he rode wildly. In the shadow of a great rock, he looked down upon the still rising water, black with depth. He saw the great tubes let in at the base, the wheels by which the gates were controlled, the wide, rock-paved waste weir that, leading from the reservoir, gave into the cañon below. He noted the broken earth, the clinging trees that hung over the weir. His eyes, calculating, merciless, rested on the trees. A gleam of triumph came to them. If the wheels were broken, the gates could not be opened, and the water was even now trickling over the weir. In a day or two, the whole volume of the Sangre de Cristo would pour through it. Just a little powder behind the retaining wall, and the whole bank would fall and choke the weir. Just a few hours and, the weir choked, the gates unopened, the whole volume of the river would creep over the coping of the dam, pick out grain by grain the unprotected earth, till the dam weakened, the mighty mass of stored water would rush in devastating waves down through the cañon, and the canal would be as if it had never been. The dream of a life, the labor of years, these lay in the hollow of his hand.
Why should he pity others who were pitiless to him? What mattered it, if, like Samson of old, he should drag down the very pillars of the structure he had raised? What mattered it, if he too should perish in the ruins?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The party that had gathered to see the last stone of the great Sangre de Cristo dam swung into position was far larger than Winston had expected. Elijah was not among them. Winston had spared no effort to find Elijah and to deliver to him another message to the effect that he was once more a free man. Messengers had been sent to his ranch; but he had left home and Amy had not seen him for several days; she supposed him to be in Ysleta. Parties had scoured the mountain in the vicinity of the dam, but in vain. It was clear that Elijah was purposely in hiding and that the exercises at the dam must be carried on without him.
Ysleta was largely represented. Winston was at first surprised, then deeply grateful for the genuine interest which even the wildest boomers displayed in his work. As, one by one, in pairs or in groups, they took him cordially by the hand, congratulated him on the successful completion of a great piece of work, compared the lasting utility of his work with their own ephemeral and selfish efforts, a wave of self-reproach swept over him. These were the people whom, in season and out, he had condemned as greedy, selfish, unprincipled sharks. For the first time in his life, he began to realize the fact that, even in the worst of humanity, there is a soul of goodness, a soul that is only obscured, never extinguished. In deep contrition, he reviewed his attitude of mind toward Elijah. He saw him in a new light, the light of kindliness that was radiating from those whose hearts he had condemned as black with unscrupulous greed. He pictured Elijah, shunning his fellow men like a hunted animal, the warmth of his good intentions changed to the biting flame of bitter resentment against those who were to profit by his success, and who had turned from him at sight of the first shadow that had fallen upon him. He reproached himself for not having gone directly to Elijah on the first suspicion of defalcation, for not having pointed out to him his error, for not having pleaded with him to face the consequences of his wrong doing, to endeavor to set himself right. He contrasted his self-righteous conduct with that of Helen Lonsdale, her readiness to stand by Elijah, to assume her own share of blame for Elijah's mistaken actions. He had assumed that, because certain of Elijah's actions had been criminal, Elijah was a criminal by instinct, and he, a friend, an intimate business associate, had treated him as one, but made no effort at reclamation.
Winston's was not an emotional nature, but the circumstances in which he was placed, played upon his calmly balanced mind, until he saw his own self-righteous errors and condemned himself as sharply as he had condemned Elijah. He was recalled to himself by the proffered hand of one of the most successful and as he deemed him, one of the most heartless of Ysleta's boomers.
"Say, Ralph, old man, I want to do myself the honor of shaking hands with the real thing. This work," he swept his hand with a comprehensive gesture which included the dam, the canal, and the waiting hillsides, "makes us feel like thirty cents Mexican. It don't come with the real plunk from us, you know, but it's real just the same. Ysleta wasn't worth whooping for, but we whooped. We whooped for cash. Some of us got it; but what we got, others lost, and we knew it. But you fellows have helped us to make good. With this thing in working order," he again pointed to the dam, "Ysleta will make good in time."
"I know it," Winston's voice was regretful, "but the beginning, end and middle of this whole business, is a hunted man who dares not show his face, even to those whom he had every reason to believe were his friends."
The man looked sharply at Winston.
"You mean 'Lige Berl?"
"Yes, the best man of us all."
"You're right there. And say, Ralph, you just listen. We all know about this Pacific business. It was a mistake on 'Lige's part, that's all. He'll make good, if he gets a chance, and by God, we're going to stand by and see that he gets it."
Winston's grasp tightened on the hand he held.
"It's all straightened out now, if we only knew where he was."
The work at the dam called for Winston's attention. As he passed through a bowing, smiling group, he came face to face with Helen. She was laughing and chatting with some Ysleta acquaintances. She darted an eager, inquiring look at Winston as he came towards her. In obedience to an unvoiced bidding, she joined Winston as he passed by. Beyond the hearing of the group, her look changed to one of anxiety.
"Have you seen anything of Elijah?" she asked.
"Not a thing. Helen, I'm worried about Elijah. He has been home, but has gone again and I can't find him in the mountains. I have sent men everywhere."
There were tears in Helen's eyes. They did not fall; they only softened and intensified their depths.
"I hoped to see him here. If we could only get word to him about Seymour." After a moment's hesitation, she added: "I have had several strange letters from him, but no clue as to where they were sent from."
Winston's glance wandered to the group of Ysleta men.
"It just crushes me, Helen, to think that these men are actually truer to Elijah than I have been."
"No, don't blame yourself too much. I know more now than I did when you and Uncle Sid held me up that day in the office, and – Oh, I cannot talk about it, Ralph! It is all unspeakably awful."
Helen turned abruptly away and joined Uncle Sid at the foot of the great derrick which was to swing the last stone into place.
Winston glanced quickly at her, but she was talking eagerly with Uncle Sid, her somber mood apparently quite gone. He turned inquiringly to the foreman, who nodded his head in reply.
"Come, Helen; they are ready for us." He took Helen by the arm to steady her, and together they started out over the foot-way on the crest of the dam, Helen a little in advance of Winston.
"Don't look down," he continued, "it may make you dizzy."
"Dizzy!" she repeated derisively, "why I could walk a slack rope. It's great! I don't wonder that you are an engineer."
"This is easy, doing things, when some one tells you what to do and what for."
"Thanks! You are original and independent. So am I." With reckless daring she freed her arm from Winston's detaining hand, and before he could prevent, she was skipping over the dizzy walk far ahead.
"Stop, Helen, stop! It's dangerous!" His voice was commanding.
"I know it is. That's where the fun comes in." Over her shoulder she flung him a mocking glance from reckless eyes.
Winston dared make no quick move that would increase her danger. He could not understand the spirit of bravado that had come over her. A sigh of intense relief escaped him as she grasped one of the staying ropes and swung inside the enclosure, which, hanging far out over the abyss, railed in the space where the last stone was to be laid.
"It's no credit to you," he said sternly, "that your childish prank hasn't ended in tragedy."
Helen was conscious of a creeping thrill as she looked into Winston's eyes. They were like poles of a dynamo, with thousands of volts of energy waiting to leap out, if the safety line was crossed. She felt as if she were dangerously near the line.
"Be thankful for your mercies," she said lightly. "No tragedy has happened."
Winston wanted to say more, but an expectant crowd was waiting.
"Well, go ahead," he said. "You're in command now."
"I don't know where to begin, but I'm not old enough yet not to take a dare."
Out on one of the abutments, a great derrick rose; near its foot an engineer stood with his hand on the throttle of an engine. Helen waved her hand, looking defiantly at Winston.
There came the short, sharp bark of the engine, the groaning of rope and timber as the locking stone swung in the air, turned, poised high above them; them slowly began to sink to its position. Under Winston's directions, her small, firm hands guided the great block, as it settled, then came to a rest. The fall ropes slackened, and Helen unclasped the tackle. Amidst the cheers of the watchers on the abutments, the boom of the derrick swung free. The last stone had been laid in the Sangre de Cristo dam.
Helen turned to Winston. Her great, black eyes were solemn.
"It is finished now, isn't it Ralph?"
"It is."
Helen sighed deeply. It suggested relief from a long, anxious strain.
"Thunder and Mars, Helen! Isn't there anything more in life for you? I can imagine Alexander heaving that sigh when he realized that he'd done the whole world."
"That's where Alexander and I separate. I'm relieved, not regretful."
Winston spoke with feeling.
"It must be a relief, Helen. No one has done more for this work than you."
Helen's reply was unguarded.
"I wasn't thinking of myself."
Winston looked up in unfeigned surprise.
"You weren't?"
"Let's not talk of this now. It's finished."
"Tell me what you meant."
Helen looked at Winston. There was a suggestion of yielding in her eyes. Her lips trembled on the verge of speech; then they set, voiceless. Why should she tell Winston of her fears of Elijah? That, driven to desperation, as she knew he was, she feared that in some way he would thwart the work that was now completed.
"Sometime, perhaps; not now." She was not quite herself. "This will stay here forever?" She evidently wished to be reassured.
"Unless something happens."
"But what can happen?" She questioned anxiously.
"A very simple thing might destroy the whole thing in an hour."
Helen's face grew white.
Winston noted the look, but failed to assign the correct reason for it. Helen had given more to the work than he had thought.
"There's no danger, really." Winston spoke with conviction. "It's just this. We've built a rip-rap dam with a stone facing. No amount of water behind it can ever move it. Yet if by chance the water should flow over the crest, it would go in an hour."
"What's to prevent it?" Helen's voice was sharp.
"The waste weir." Winston pointed to the stone paved canal on the far side of the dam. "We know the rainfall here. That spillway will handle twice the amount."
"But if it should become choked?"
"We have the flood gates." Winston pointed to the two great shafts that reached up from the base of the dam, crowned with grooved wheels.
"But suppose they should get wedged so they could not be opened?"
"Then I would advise you to get out of the way! What's the matter, Helen?" Winston grew suddenly conscious that there was more in Helen's persistent questions than appeared on the surface.
Helen did not reply.
"Couldn't all this have been provided against?"
"Yes; but it would have cost more money than we had to put in. It's safe enough, if we watch out."
Helen laid her hand on Winston's arm. Her eyes were deep and anxious.
"Watch out day and night, Ralph. There is danger, grave danger."
Winston was thoroughly aroused.
"You know something that you are concealing from me. Tell me!"
"I have told you enough to put you on your guard. I can't tell you any more. I don't know any more."
Helen turned resolutely toward the foot-way. Winston walked silently beside her. He wanted to know more, but he felt the uselessness of words. As soon as he could free himself from the friends who thronged around him and Helen, he sought out Uncle Sid and told him of Helen's warning.
"What do you make out of it?" he asked.
"No more than you do, I guess."
"You think Elijah is at the bottom of it all, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. I'm sure of it."
"Why didn't she tell me then?" Winston burst out.
"Well, women are queer creatures." Uncle Sid spoke meditatively. "They see more sides to a man than we do, an' when he's down, they stay by him closer. I sometimes think that Helen knows more about 'Lige than we do; anyway, she's mighty suspicious of him, but she's goin' to give him every chance to get up, an' at the same time she's lookin' out that no one gets hurt when he's flappin' his heels around, tryin' to make his feet. What are you doin' to shut off any deviltry?"
"I've put on extra watchmen, day and night, and I've got men out hunting Elijah."
"I guess that's all that you can do."
Winston meditated long over Helen's warning and Uncle Sid's explanation of her conduct. The idea of Elijah's trying to injure the dam finally seemed too monstrous to be entertained. It occurred to him to remain at the dam and not trust to watchmen; but this was impossible. He had other pressing duties demanding him. Nothing could happen this night; the next would be spent at the mouth of the cañon. The day following he would send some of his young assistants in place of the Mexicans.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The sun had long since sunk beneath the sheen of the ocean and one by one the distant stars pricked sharp and clear through the azure veil that made the world a unit in the depths of space. From their spanless heights, moonlight and starlight plunged like hissing shafts of water and, like shafts of water falling on the softly resisting air, broke in diffused mantles that half concealed and half revealed the softened contours of the slumbering world. The gently falling radiance disclosed no detail of the swelling plains below, yet each tumid roll, crowned with its aureole of lustrous light voiced with tongueless words an everlasting peace.
Winston was busy until far into the night. There was a strange sense of oppression as he passed from point to point of the now completed dam. The machinery that had for so long a time been pulsing with life, was now stilled. There were no banked fires under the boilers, to speak of rest for the labor of the morrow, for the labor was completed. In the laborer's camp, the men were packing their few belongings for an early start in the morning. Some were busy touching up the machines for their long rest. These were not to be dismantled at once, but were to wait a more convenient time. The lanterns of the men twinkled through clumps of mountain pine where the shadows lay thick and deep; then faded to a dim point in the white moonlight. The occasional clink of a hammer, and the voices of the men drifted across the water, softened by distance. It was funereal, after all! And he had looked forward to these very sounds with an impatient thrill. Now it was all completed. The last stone of the dam had been laid, from the dam to the terminal canal every gate had been put in, every trestle had been built, every tunnel had been driven. Tomorrow, with the men, he would go over every foot of the canal for a final inspection. If this was satisfactory, and he knew it would be, in two days the gates would be opened and the water turned into the canal.
Winston was standing on the apron of the dam looking out over the great reservoir that in the moonlight lay like a plate of burnished steel between the pine-clad granite hills that dipped steeply into the water. The dam was already filled to the brim, and the full volume of the Sangre de Cristo was sweeping through the weir and plunging into the cañon below. The sights and sounds only deepened Winston's oppression. His work was done; the work he loved so well. The future held nothing so bright as the past had held. Only, in the future, was there to be the dull routine of office work, the laying off of orange groves, the running out of ditches that would lead the water to them; simple work this that any tyro who could set a level and read an angle, could perform. No intricate problems that absorbed every energy of an active mind, that blotted out consciousness of time and self in delicious oblivion of existence; no obstacles of nature that lifted a forbidding hand "thus far and no farther;" no thrill of determined battle that rushed against these obstacles and bore them down. His field had been sown; the harvest was waiting for him to thrust in and reap, what? Money; that was all. Money that would only intensify his consciousness of an existence that like rank vegetation throve aimlessly only to rot and thrive again. What would love, even Helen's love, mean to him? Would that, assured, satisfy him, or would it, possessed, be to him like his work that was done? What had drawn them together but an intense, absorbing, common interest?
This mood was strange to Winston. He could, and did, reason himself out of it; but its influence remained. In his cabin, which was his office as well, he wrapped his blankets around him and lay down to sleep.
Helen's night was sleepless. She had retired early, not to sleep, as she knew, but that in solitude she might try to think out more clearly her course of action. Her admiration for Winston had increased a thousand-fold, if that were possible; and he had offered her his love to crown it all, and she had seemed to weigh it in her hands, as a Jew might bite a piece of gold to try its worth. She had done this when every fiber of her heart cried out against it, demanding that she should render to Ralph his own. Why had she turned even seemingly against Ralph, against herself?
Only that she might do penance for her sin. Was not that it after all? But she was innocent of any intentional wrong. Was it not selfishness, this penance which she was imposing upon herself? Was she not compelling Ralph to bear a part of her punishment, demanding that he wait in doubt till she could declare herself purified? Was it not pride and selfish pride which demanded that through Elijah's redemption she should be declared free?
Then a thought came to her which quickened every nerve to painful throbs. Was it not worse than selfishness, was it not a crime? Was not this shielding of Elijah a crime against others, innocent? What if she should fail? Her heart was beating with great, painful throbs. She thought of what Ralph had told her as he had showed her the weak points of the dam. "If the waste weir should be choked, in a few hours the dam would be gone." He had pointed out to her just how simple a thing it was to wedge the gates and to choke the weir. And she had listened, and to protect herself, – that was the pitiful part of it, – to protect herself, she had warned him to be on his guard. She began dressing herself with trembling fingers. She would go to him and tell him all. Let him think what he might, she would tell him all, unsparing of herself. She parted the flaps of the tent and stepped out into the night. Outside, she paused for a moment. The soft gray of the moonlight, lying white on the silent tents, the sighing of the pines, the distant, bell-like notes of calling wood-birds, spoke to her of peace that stilled her acute fears. Then she became conscious of another sound; a throbbing, muffled roar that made the night air tremulous.