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Title: Web of steel
Author: Cyrus Townsend Brady
Jr. Cyrus Townsend Brady
Illustrator: Margaret West Kinney
Troy Kinney
Release date: May 25, 2026 [eBook #78753]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1916
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78753
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEB OF STEEL ***
[Frontispiece: "THAT IS WHERE IT HAPPENED" (See p. 85)]
WEB OF STEEL
By
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY
Author of "The Chalice of Courage," "The Island of Surprise," etc.,
and
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, JR.
Civil Engineer
ILLUSTRATED BY THE KINNEYS
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1916, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY,
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 N. Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
To
MYRA
Daughter--Wife
PREFACE
"Web of Steel," as those who read will see, is a book for men, about
men, and written by men.* The authorship is placed in the plural
advisedly. The book is a real collaboration. In the minds of the
writers there is a further pleasant association in the fact that it
is a book about a father and son by a father and son, although no one
must identify the writers with the characters in the story because of
that relationship.
* Yet with true masculine inconsistency it is dedicated to a woman!
It is said that the success of a book, like the success of almost
everything else that man at least undertakes, depends upon women;
that women buy, read, discuss, and promote a novel, and if the book
has no appeal to women it is forever doomed. The authors have at
least proved themselves men of courage, the publishers likewise, for
it cannot be too insistently set forth that this is primarily a book
for men. The authors hope that even with that expressed limitation
it may nevertheless appeal to women in some measure, especially those
who would fain enjoy--the authors are careful not to say
usurp!--masculine place and function. Let no one imagine, either,
the authors hasten to assure those who may honor them by reading this
preface, that there are no women in the book. On the contrary the
fortunes of at least one of the men and the fate of the other are
woven around the eternal feminine whom the authors have striven to
make as feminine and charming, as appealing and delightful, as their
large experience with the other sex permits and warrants!
For the rest, whatever may be said of the fiction the authors rest
confident in the engineering. Again let there be no misapprehension,
this is a novel not a treatise; who runs may read, if he does not run
too fast, and no scientific course is necessary for the comprehension
of the story. The authors disavow any intention of picturing any
engineers alive or dead, or any particular bridge or dam, in any
particular locality. The whole thing is a work of the imagination
except the calculations of the engineer, which are exact when not
empiric!
The book is the result of genuine co-operation and accommodation.
Father and son contended together in affection, albeit sometimes
rather sharply, as to what should go in and what should come out.
They are happy to have arrived at a substantial agreement which,
while it satisfied neither author completely, yet produced a
harmonious and consecutive story, with neither too much nor too
little of the personality of either inserted or withdrawn to mar its
symmetry. Now let all mankind read!
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, _Father_;
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, _Son_.
THE HEMLOCKS, PARK HILL,
_Yonkers, N. Y._
CONTENTS
I
_BRIDGE_
I. Love of Woman
II. The Other Passions of the Engineer
III. The Witness for the Defense
IV. The Portage Through the Dust
V. Fall and Revelation
VI. They Cross the Bridge Together
VII. The Colonel Makes Conditions
VIII. The Lovers Make Pictures on Paper and Heart
II
_C_-10-_R_
IX. The Deflection in the Member
X. The Son of His Father Indeed
XI. The Death Message on the Wire
XII. The Failure
XIII. The Woman's Choice
XIV. For the Honor of the Son
XV. For the Honor of the Father
XVI. The Unaccepted Renunciation
XVII. That Which Lay Between
III
_DAM_
XVIII. Picket Wire and Kicking Horse
XIX. The New Rodman
XX. The Valley of Decision
XXI. Marshaling the Evidence
XXII. Working Up
XXIII. The Former and the Latter Rain
XXIV. The Battle
IV
_SPILL-WAY_
XXV. The Ancient Art of Fascination
XXVI. Once More Unto the Work
XXVII. Brute Force or Finesse
XXVIII. The Battle from Above
XXIX. The Victors
XXX. The Testimony of the Dead
XXXI. At Last to the Stars
I
BRIDGE
[Illustration: (Sketch of parts of a cantilever bridge)]
I
LOVE OF WOMAN
If meetings only lived up to their anticipations, life would be a
succession of startling climaxes. It had been some months since
Meade had seen Helen Illingworth. He had dreamed of meeting her
every day and had pictured the meeting differently and more
rapturously after every letter. When Abbott had received a telegram
from Colonel Illingworth stating that he and his party, including his
daughter, would arrive the next day, all the anticipations of months
had been concentrated and Meade had imagined a romantic meeting in
which the longings and desires of the period of separation would all
be summed up in one dramatic moment. As a matter of fact the whole
thing was casual and ordinary to the last degree. It always is.
In the first place, Dr. Severence, a retired physician, who was
vice-president and financial man, and Curtiss, the chief engineer of
the Bridge company, were hard upon Miss Illingworth's heels as she
stepped down from the car to the station platform. He saw her, as it
were, surrounded by prosaic men. None of these men was a possible
rival. Each was old enough to be her father so he could not really
be jealous of them except in so far as he was even jealous of the
wind that kissed her cheek--at least that is the way he put it to
himself. There was a vein of poetry in this engineer, as there is in
every man who achieves in whatever profession, on whatever field of
work he may adventure. Gradgrind does nothing great, he mounts to no
heights, he wins nothing really worth the winning by his worship of
the facts of life.
Meade had no time to indulge his disappointment. He was busy in the
exchange of greetings. The woman he loved got the same welcome and
the same handshake as her father and the other two men. The
common-place conversation is scarcely worth recording. It was not
until big Abbott, who had been belated by some sudden demand of work,
came sweeping down the platform to engage the attention of the men
that the anxious Meade had a moment with the girl herself.
Now Helen Illingworth had also been seeing visions, dreaming dreams
and forecasting possibilities, so that she had been as disappointed
as he. The only real satisfaction that either of them could take in
the situation lay in the fact that the other was there. It was
midsummer and the girl was dressed in some light filmy fabric which
well became her radiant beauty. Meade could look at a bit of
structural steel work and tell you all about it. All that he could
have told you about the dress she wore, was that it was exquisitely
appropriate, and presented an appearance of amazing simplicity for
anyone who had the command of unlimited means for the adornment of
her person. He could have figured out the cost of the most
stupendous structure, but it never occurred to him that with a great
price to a great artist Helen Illingworth had obtained that look of
delightful simplicity. The gown he thought so modest and
inexpensive, really represented the highest reach of the sartorial
art as it is practiced by, and upon, fair womankind. He could not
know that Miss Illingworth had spent æons of time and riches in
proportion, with the assistance of the best dressmaker in New York,
over this very gown, and what was more to the point, for this very
purpose.
Her maid had lifted her eyebrows behind her mistress' back when she
had been bidden to get out this dress for a visit to the wild and
primitive section of the country in which the great International
Bridge was being erected. The woman knew, from what she had heard,
that there was nobody there except engineers, contractors,
supervisors, and workmen, and why all this superb and costly finery
should be wasted on the desert air she could not see. Even her
father, who was ordinarily indifferent to what his daughter wore,
noticed it and commented on it when she appeared.
"I've had the dress now for over a month," responded Helen in answer
to his observation, "and I want to wear it once at least before it
goes out of fashion."
It was not wasted on Meade, she decided, as she caught his rapturous
glance; that is, the details were, but the effect produced was
entirely satisfactory and quite what she had expected. She had never
looked lovelier. She was not a fragile, ethereal woman; quite the
reverse. That was one of ten thousand things Meade liked about her.
She was modern and up-to-date in every good sense of the word. She
could do all those athletic and practical things that modern young
women can do and she could do them well. Was it riding, or swimming,
or golfing, or driving a speed-boat or motor-car, she took them as an
ordinary girl takes bridge or the latest fantastic dance.
Meade was intensely practical and efficient. He could do all of
those things himself and many more and he liked to do them, and that
is one reason why he had been attracted to her; yet not for that
alone did he love her. On that soft summer afternoon she looked as
subtly delicate as every man would at one time or another have the
woman he loves appear, and as far removed from things strenuous as if
in another world! Distance and absence had but intensified the man's
passion. He awoke to a sudden and overwhelming realization that he
had been a fool in that he had utterly failed even in his most ardent
thought to appreciate the true beauty and rare quality of this
wondrous woman.
A wise philosopher has pointed out that humanity may be looked at
from three points of view. There is the real John, there is the John
that John thinks John is, and there is the John the world thinks John
is. Meade felt that he represented all three when he looked at Helen
Illingworth. Amid the emotions which the sight of her inspired in
him, as he answered mechanically the natural and ordinary questions
put to him by the men of the party before Abbott came on the scene
and relieved him of that necessity, came a swift feeling of despair.
He was wearing the rough clothes, flannel shirt, khaki trousers,
heavy shoes and leggings, which were his habitual use at work.
Contrasted with her filmy and delicately colored fabric his well-worn
olive-drab habiliments stood forth hideously. That is, he thought
so, and the contrast somehow seemed typical of the difference between
them as he considered her.
What was he to aspire to such loveliness? In what way did rough,
rude, he measure up to such a graceful and dainty divinity? He was
as humble as true lovers, of the male persuasion, usually are. She
on the contrary was as arrogant as the opposite sex frequently is.
The statement is made from the pre-matrimonial period! Yet, had he
but known it, she was as pleased as he with the appearance of the
beloved.
There was the careless insouciance of conscious power in the bearing
of the engineer which differentiated him from most of the men with
whom she had been thrown in contact during her life--the exceedingly
well-trained, the exceedingly well-groomed young manhood of the
present day. She recalled that even when her friends went for a hard
day in the woods from the big house on the mountain above Martlet
they always seemed to be clothed in outing togs immaculately new.
Obviously the hand of little use with its daintier touch, was not
that appertaining to Meade. He was made for mastery and for manful
work, even as she for, in that dress, softness and sweet attractive
grace. He looked strength and the fact that he was power in
submission, and strength in subordination, and so obviously hers to
command, gave her a delicate thrill; the same sort of thrill the
great engine-driver feels when he lays his hand on the throttle. It
is not only Budge and Toddy who love to see the wheels go 'round.
And everybody wants to set them in motion. She looked covertly upon
him as a lion-draped Omphale might have looked at Hercules, even
though Meade bore no distaff in his hand.
The International Bridge was the biggest thing of the kind the
Martlet Company or any other American structural plant had ever
undertaken. It had been a constant topic of conversation wherever
her father was. She had heard all about it and although, strictly
speaking, the bridge was the work of Meade, Senior, yet she always
identified it with Meade, Junior. There was a feeling in her mind
that it was her bridge and that, through him, she commanded it. She
was a supremely assured and entirely confident young lady, yet as the
sheer and filmy mousseline-de-soie with its garniture of lace even
more delicate was driven by the wind against the rough nondescript
garment of the man by her side she experienced a passing sense of
uneasiness, such as one might conceive the butterfly would feel in
the presence of a steam hammer. Yet Helen Illingworth was not a
butterfly and no more was Bertram Meade a steam hammer, at least not
to her.
They were just two young people desperately in love, neither quite
sure of the other, at least no assurance had been given or asked, and
although the man was thirty and the woman twenty-four they loved just
as if their passions had been born in the first unthinking hours of
youth and maidenhood.
Experience and observation have established the fact that the whorls
on the thumbs of human hands differ in tracery as one star differeth
from another star in glory, and that so far as humanity can draw a
general inference without having observed all the instances, no thumb
is like any other thumb that has ever complemented fingers since Adam
first inspected his pickers and stealers. The Power that can stamp
this infinite variety in the human skin has seen to it that there are
no duplications in human temperaments. Infinite is the variety of
woman while women collectively are as various as that infinity raised
to the _n_th power. The love story of every man and woman differs in
some particular from that of every other man and woman. Again a
sweeping deduction from perhaps inadequate observation. Yet men who
have loved many have observed the variation in specific and
particular instances and such single-hearted experiences as have been
set down for the ruthless scrutiny of the ethic philosopher have
borne out this contention.
But if it be true, as it is generally admitted, that love-making is
individual and different, in one particular various woman changeth
not. At sweet-and-forty given the conditions and the man she will
love just as she might have--or did--at sweet-and-twenty. It well
may be, God knows, that she will love the same way at
sweet-and-sixty. Which is to say that although both the young people
in this veracious romance had passed the period of--shall we say the
Sweet Evelina age?--they were both affected just exactly the way they
would have been affected if she had been eighteen and he twenty-one.
They were as awkward and constrained when left to themselves as if
one had not been all over the world on man's jobs for a decade and
the other had not queened it among the nicest girls of the land for
half as many years. And with thoughts burning, passionate, and words
embarrassingly torrential at hand to give them utterance they only
spoke commonplaces!
"How is the bridge getting along?" asked the girl, repeating her
father's words of a few minutes before, as these two fell behind the
others marching down the long platform, while the maid standing by
the private car with the porter looked curiously after the moving
group and wondered if that grey-green, long-legged, young man was the
reason for the New York gown!
"It's doing splendidly," was the answer, and even with his heart full
of the girl by his side whom he longed to clasp in his arms but did
not even dare touch the hem of her garment, some little enthusiasm
came into his voice. "It is the greatest bridge that was ever
erected," he said.
"How you love it," said the girl.
Did Meade love the bridge? Ah, there could be no doubt as to that.
He had studied its growth hour by hour. As the great steel web rose
grandly from the pier under the hands of the busy workmen and the
arms of the great traveler, his heart expanded with it. He took
pride in it that increased as panel succeeded panel. He had followed
it with even more heart-consuming interest and anxiety when they
began to push the suspended span across the river on the outer end of
the completed cantilever, toward its fellow rising on the other side.
Its obsession of his soul was so strong and so complete, that he
could scarcely tear himself away from it to do necessary work at his
desk.
He lingered about it when the rest of the work-a-day world which was
concerned with it had withdrawn to rest. Frequently late in the
night he had arisen and had left the sheet-iron shack he occupied
near the work (for the topography of the land and the course of the
river had determined the location of the bridge far from any town),
and had stood staring, fascinated, by its dim mysterious outline,
high upraised against the stars, until its details were lost in the
blackness overhead. Or were it moonlight, he had gazed bewitched by
the great web of steel, all its mighty tracery delicately silvered,
faintly outlined, lace-like, lofty, lifted high into the heavens.
He fell into a little reverie for a brief moment from which she
recalled him.
"Well?" she asked.
Was there a little wistful, jealous note in her voice? He looked at
her quickly as one essays a swift glance at the sun and then averted
his eyes, and from the same cause. She blinded him. He really felt
that he could not look at her continuously without declaring his
passion before the whole world. There was much of the feudal
champion in him. The civil engineer is the last survivor of the type
in this modern and prosaic work-a-day world anyway. Nothing would
have pleased him better than to have seized her before everybody,
then and there, crushing that filmy gown against his rougher
clothing, and to have borne her triumphantly away. Knight errant or
cave man? There are points of similarity between them of which the
world is perhaps not aware. He was ready to fill both roles, and
counted himself unlucky in that there were no dragons present,
although on occasion Colonel Illingworth might have essayed that part
with some success.
"Yes, naturally," he found himself saying in a conventional tone of
voice, "it means a great deal to me. My father----"
"Oh, your father," she began indifferently, although she knew and
liked the great engineer.
"It is his crowning work and----"
"Your beginning."
"It is not in me, or in any engineer, to begin where my father left
off," he said, "but in some way it is a beginning for me. What
little I have done heretofore----"
"Little?"
"Yes. It isn't really very much. It seems more than it is. Anybody
could have done it."
"Absurd."
"It doesn't amount to very much to me at least," he went on, smiling
at her interruption, but pleased at it. "But this will count a great
deal, because through father's kindness I had some hand----
"I believe you did it all," interrupted the girl.
He broke into sudden laughter and his merriment had that boyish ring
she liked. He seemed to think that was a sufficient answer to that
statement, for he went on quickly.
"How long shall you stay?"
And in spite of himself he could not keep his anxiety out of his
voice.
"I think father's going on to the city some time tomorrow--probably
in the morning."
Meade's face fell.
"So soon as that?"
"I will try to persuade him to stay longer. I've seen lots of
bridges built but never one like the International, and I should
enjoy standing by and watching you work."
"I don't do the work. Abbott does that, and the men, of course."
"Your work is the work that makes possible and profitable the labor
of the others," she persevered. "You plan, you lead, the rest only
follow. By the way, father told me to ask you and Mr. Abbott to dine
with us tonight in the car."
Meade's mood changed into positive gloom.
"I can't," he said dejectedly.
"Have you some other engagement? Are you dining with some other
people more to your fancy?"
"You know there is no one here but Abbott, the foremen, and the
workmen."
"Why not, then?"
"I haven't any clothes, neither has Abbott. We left our dress suits
behind us when we came into the wilderness to work."
"Oh," she laughed. "What difference does that make? Come just as
you are. It will be a relief. I like you that way. I get so tired
of black and white," she went on quickly to prevent him from taking
advantage of her incautious admission.
Happiness came back to his soul at that. He had a half-formed notion
of perpetually preserving these garments that she liked and hanging
them up in his ancestral hall, as men did suits of armor which they
had proved in strife, to which their descendants could point with
pride. Just an old suit of olive drab which she liked the love of
woman can dignify anything in the mind of the man she loves.
The half-formed project died, however: for one thing he had no
ancestral halls.
"Really," he found himself saying, "it's awfully good of you, but I
don't think I should with no garments suited to the occasion. I tell
you what I'll do. I'll motor over to the town"--it lay some
twenty-five or thirty miles away--"and get myself a proper outfit."
"It will take so long and I shall be here only until tomorrow," she
said softly.
"Hang the clothes," said the man, radiant once more in that
admission, "since you will allow it I will come with what I can rake
up. But you'll have to tell me which fork to use and give me expert
advice in those customs of polite society which I have almost
forgotten out here in the wilderness."
"I'll do my best," returned the other. "And after dinner and you
have had your smoke with the men, we will go down and look at the
bridge by moonlight."
"And what will you do meanwhile if I should smoke with the men?"
"I will wait," said the woman with mock humility. "Women always wait
while men smoke unless they smoke themselves, don't they?"
"And you have not learned that?"
"Not yet. It makes me feel dreadfully old-fashioned sometimes, but I
have never even tried a cigarette. I don't wish to."
"I love----" he began, and then stopped amazed at his own hardihood,
fearful of the possible consequences of his almost betrayal.
"You what?" she asked daringly, with another swift glance as swiftly
withdrawn.
"I--I like women who do not smoke," he answered lamely, which was not
at all what he intended to say, but which was nevertheless an
approval of her course. "But if you think that with the possibility
of but a few hours in your society I am going to sit around and smoke
with your father or Abbott or Severence or anybody on earth you are
sadly mistaken. I can smoke with men any time I wish, but I can only
talk to you once in a lifetime."
"It isn't six months since you were at our house."
"Six months! It's a thousand years," he went on, "and I'm going to
take you out on the bridge after dinner. It's great at any time.
It's the most magnificent sight on earth even now, but in the
moonlight--there it is now," he pointed as the little group walked
past the station which had hid the view and the great structure
suddenly was revealed to them.
Unconsciously the engineer used the neuter pronoun for the great
structure which for all its sexlessness had still a being and a life.
It is the habit of man to imbue with personality the thing inanimate
that he loves. Furthermore as love naturally is associated in the
masculine mind with the opposite sex, he generally describes that
genderless thing without life which is nearest his heart as "she."
Witness the sailor and the ship, the railroader and the train, the
chauffeur and the car. The bridge engineer is the exception to the
rule. The great structures which he flings from pier to pier, which
he stretches from bank to bank, which lift themselves above rivers
and mountain gorges and arms of the sea, are always neuter. "It" is
the proper pronoun.
The four men ahead had stopped and stood silent. There was something
awe-inspiring and tremendous about the great, black, out-reaching,
far-extending arms of steel. The first sight of it always gave the
beholder a little shock. It was so huge, so massive, so grandly
majestic, and withal so airy seen against the impressive background
of deep gorge and palisaded wall and far-off mountains. So
ether-borne was it in its perfect proportion that even dull and
stupid people--and none of these were that--felt its overpowering
presence. Meade and the girl stopped, too. After one glance at the
bridge she looked at him. And that was typical. For the first time
he was not at the moment aware of, or immediately responsive to, her
glance. And that too was typical. She noted this with a pang of
jealousy.
"You love the bridge," she said softly.
He straightened up and threw his head back and looked at her.
"I thought so," he said simply,--"until today, but now"--he stopped
again.
"But now?" she asked.
"I have just learned what love really is and the lesson has not been
taught me by the bridge," he answered directly.
II
THE OTHER PASSIONS OF THE ENGINEER.
Yet Bertram Meade, the younger, did truly love the bridge which he
had seen grow from the placing of the first shoe--the great steel
base on top of the pier which carries the whole structure--to the
completion of the soaring cantilever reaching out to meet its
companion on the other side. Meade, Junior, although he had turned
his thirtieth year, was indeed young for the position of Resident
Engineer, in the interests of his father the designer, of such a
bridge as the great International, which was to be the tie that
bound, with web of steel, two great countries which lay breast to
breast; already in touch save for the mighty river that flowed
between them.
By no means would Meade, the younger, have been charged with the
great responsibilities of the Bridge had it not been for two things,
neither of which would have warranted his employment in that position
by the Martlet Bridge Company, but which taken together induced them
to give him a trial. The first was his exhaustive preparation and
wide experience. No one had ever started in a life profession with
better equipment than Bertram Meade. To a thorough technical
training at Harvard in the Lawrence Scientific School, had been added
a substantial record of achievement. A fine bridge which he had
erected in faraway Burma, triumphantly achieving the design despite
all sorts of difficulties, had attracted the attention of old Colonel
Illingworth, the President of the Martlet Bridge Company.
He had kept the young man under his eye for a long time. When he
commissioned his father, Bertram Meade, Senior, to prepare the plans
for the great International, the most sought for and famous of
bridges, he had noted with satisfaction that the older man, who stood
first among the bridge engineers on the continent, had associated
with himself his son. Meade, Junior, had recently returned from
South America, where he had again shown his mettle. The two worked
together in the preparation of the designs for what was to be the
crown and triumph of the older man's life, the most stupendous of all
the cantilever bridges in the world.
Indeed there was almost as much sentiment as science entering into
the designing in the great engineer's soul. After the completion of
the International he intended to retire from the active exercise of
his profession. If he could withdraw with the consciousness that he
had linked together two great peoples and that through the arteries
of trade which ran across his bridge their hearts would beat in
greater harmony, he would consider that the end had crowned all his
work.
He had a high idea of his only son's ability. He was willing to
proclaim it, to maintain it, and defend it against all comers except
himself. When the two wills clashed he recognized but one way, his
own. The relations between the two were lovely but not ideal. There
was leadership not partnership, direction rather than co-operation.
The knowledge and experience of the boy--for so he loved to call
him--were of course nothing compared to those of his father. When,
in discussing moot points, the younger man had been unconvinced by
the calculations of the elder, he had been laughed to scorn in a
good-natured way. His carefully-set-forth objections, even in
serious matters, had been overborne generally, and by triumphant
calculations of his own the father had re-enforced himself in his
conclusions; and the more strongly because of the opposition.
Young Meade's position was rather anomalous anyway. He had no direct
supervision of the construction. He was there as resident engineer
representing his father. He had welcomed the position because it
gave him an opportunity to see from the very beginning the erection
of what was to be the greatest cantilever bridge the feet of the
world had ever trod upon, the wheels of the world had ever rolled
across.
He had followed with the utmost care, constantly reporting the
progress to his father, every step taken under the superintendence of
Abbott, a man of great practical ability as an erector, but of much
less capacity as a scientific designer or office engineer. Meade had
watched its daily growth with the closest attention. Like every
other man in similar case, the work had got into his blood. It had
become a part of his life. He watched it when he was in its
presence, he listened for it when in the office and out of sight.
The rat-tat-tat of the pneumatic riveters was music to him. Even the
greater harmonies of the wind which blew ceaselessly through the deep
gorge where the river ran two hundred feet below, diapasoned through
his very brain.
In any mood or under any sky he liked it, even when the rains fell
upon it and the winds screamed about it standing indifferent to both
assaults. But perhaps it appealed to him most at twilight when the
hardness and harshness of all the rigid lines of metal, still to be
seen plainly in their completeness, were softened in the veiling
obscurity of the half light, glowing palely red on the western hills.
Then the bridge, poised upon its great pier with its gigantic arm
extended over the water dark from the withdrawn sun flowing swiftly
beneath, was most beautiful to him.
Yes, Bertram Meade loved the bridge; yet more he loved Helen
Illingworth. Should the comparative be used? Right-minded men love
many things. Even though they love honor and fame and opportunity
and labor and persistence and achievement, they also love their kind;
the aged parent, the loyal friend, the happy child. And some love
sorrow and some love laughter, but all love woman.
Sometimes there is strife between these various passions. Happy the
man who can enfold all the others within his heart without forfeiting
or lessening his love for woman. Bertram Meade was that sort of man.
He never troubled himself to decide among conflicting claims. They
did not conflict. He loved the bridge as he loved his father; and as
he loved Helen Illingworth primarily, there was no incompatibility of
appeals in this trio of affection.
Sometimes, in fantastic moods, the younger Meade wondered if the
bridge in some strange way could feel what it was to him, if it could
know that it was more to him than to any man on earth. To Abbott it
was a big job, to his father it was the crowning achievement of a
lifetime of designing. To Meade, Junior, it was life itself.
Because he had somehow decided that as the completion of the
International meant much to his father, so also should it mean much
to him. For on the day on which it stood finished and triumphant he
would venture to ask Helen Illingworth that question which had
trembled on his lips a hundred times since he had known her. Until
that day he would keep silent.
After the woman, the young man almost idolized his father.
Motherless from birth, the older man was all the family the younger
had. His father's greatness had impressed itself upon him even
before he was old enough to know what greatness was, or in what
particular his father could lay claim to it. Nor was the older man
so engrossed in his profession, as is often the case with greatness,
as to neglect the smaller things in life. The young wife of the
elder Meade, new-made a mother, died in childbirth and that made a
great difference to the boy. Remorseful and repentant Meade was
careful to make the boy his companion, by way of reparation at first
and later because it was joy and its own reward to him. The two were
thrown together the more by the untoward disappearance of the woman.
The childish admiration of the lad developed into an adoration of his
father. When he grew up to be an engineer himself, on more than one
occasion he was brought in contact with his father's work and he was
able to appreciate its characteristic fineness, its superb solidity,
the scientific mastery of the technique of the profession which it
indicated. Perhaps his devotion to his father and to his profession,
in which his aim had been to be worthy of the older man's great
reputation, to live up to it, had so obsessed his mind that hitherto
the attraction of womankind had not been very great.
Bertram Meade had enjoyed minor affairs of the heart, as have most
young men, but they were ephemeral and evanescent until he met Helen
Illingworth. He had taken her in to dinner in her father's house on
his first visit to Martlet as the emissary of his own father about
the plans of the bridge. It was summer and the Illingworths chose to
pass a portion of it in the great big house on the mountain, the top
of one of the peaks of the Allegheny range, where Colonel Illingworth
could get down to the bridge works in the valley without difficulty
if there was need.
Young Meade's life had been a roving one. He had met women all over
the world, but he had never spent much of his time in social America
and this was the first splendid American girl, gloriously
representative of her class, with whom he had come into any intimate
contact. He fell in love with her out of hand and although he
scarcely dared to dream it--his experience had not made him very bold
where such women as she were concerned--he did not fall alone.
There was back of Meade a solid record of substantial achievement in
far countries and among strange peoples, where he had been confronted
by unknown demands and beset by mysterious dangers. Straight and
bronzed and tall and confident enough, except when he looked at her,
with the assurance that comes from achievement, and with strength
mental as well as physical written all over him, Meade was the modern
representative of the ancient guild of soldiers of fortune. He
looked at life as the knight-errant of other days who faced the world
lordly a-horseback and laid it under tribute of his sword and spear,
and to whom the service of woman was the highest duty, the greatest
privilege, the supremest pleasure.
Meade was the means of communication between his father and her
father. He was often at Martlet that summer. He met her in the city
in the winter. He followed her for a brief visit to the South. The
next summer found everything settled but a proposal on his part, and
an acceptance upon hers. Proposals bear the same relation to love
affairs that prefaces do to books. They seem to come first, but in
reality they are the last things said or written. And for the time
to speak or write he waited for the bridge, she for him.
Indeed Helen Illingworth had been very much vexed at her somewhat
restrained lover. She resented it that a man who had been a
construction engineer at home and abroad, could possibly be timid
even before a woman. When he had not spoken the fateful words at
their last meeting she could scarcely veil her disappointment from
him. She made no effort to conceal it from herself. And when the
engineer came to think of what had happened he cursed himself for a
fool, because he had not put everything to the touch. Yet he felt
the proper hesitation in which a man should always approach a woman,
especially if he craves success. He was not sure of her. It might
be that she would say no. The fall of the bridge could hardly have
dismayed him more than that possibility. And it was after all better
to wait until he had done his work and could point to his not
inconsiderable share in it before he did speak. In his ignorance of
the feminine heart he half fancied such an achievement might plead
for him! He knew not that he needed it not.
So with father, bridge, and woman in his heart--the last as usual
being first--Bertram Meade was very much a lover as he stood on the
temporary siding and watched the engine drawing the special train, to
the end of which was attached her father's private car, rolling down
the track toward the bridge for a summertime excursion under the
guise of an inspection tour.
If anybody could have weighed in a balance his respective passions,
as he stood there by her side confronting the bridge, he would have
discovered that for once at least father and bridge together were
flying high into the air, uplifted by the power of a greater, a more
natural and a final passion.
After all in the long run it is a woman, even though scarcely more
than a stranger, who will win over the greatest bridge or the finest
parent the world may know--especially in the case of a young man!
III
THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE
One of the pleasantest evidences of the possession of riches is in
the luxury of a private car. Although Colonel Illingworth was
personally a man of simple tastes as became an old campaigner, there
was no appointment that wit could devise or that money could buy
which was lacking to make his private car either more comfortable or
more luxurious. Colonel Illingworth did not take large parties with
him on the "Martlet," for so he had named the car. Indeed the two
men and his daughter, with the cook or steward and the porter and the
lady's maid, about exhausted the capacities of the car, so that there
was an unusually large observation room at the end.
Anything that partook of luxury and refinement would have been of
deep interest to Meade and Abbott, who had been removed from both for
a long time on the work. But in its napery, glass, china, and
silver, that dining table needed not to apologize to any other
anywhere. The Colonel was most punctilious in dressing his part and
although he willingly condoned the fact that neither Meade nor Abbott
had brought evening clothes to the camp, he and his guests were
arrayed to fit the table.
As for his daughter, she had put on her very best. The rude hand of
mere man could not hold pencil sufficiently delicate to describe her
radiant apparel. Meade, who sat nearest her, could not do it, albeit
he never took his eyes off her if he could help it. Neither could
the other men who looked at her so admiringly, even though one of
these was her father and the other two were well and, considering the
years and sizes of their several consorts, fatly married!
Again the French maid had lifted her brows surreptitiously when this
gown had been ordered extracted from its wrappings and protecting
tissues. She did not lift them quite so high however, because now
with the sharpness of her sex and trade, she knew why Mademoiselle's
best had been taken on the train and donned on this occasion. It was
for the engineer who sat by her side at the table in the observation
room.
If anything had been needed to reduce this said engineer to a
condition of helpless impotency and despair it was this new gown.
Some women's clothes wear the women, and others women wear! This is
an orphic way of saying that some women clothes make, while others
make the clothes. Oh, not by hand, not by any deft stitchery, but by
personality. It was always difficult for mere man to describe one of
Helen Illingworth's gowns, only an observing, and unprejudiced, woman
could do that.
Of course every wise man knows, in spite of vehement assertion to the
contrary, that as a rule women dress for other women, not for men.
That claim that they dress for men is usually urged to placate the
bill-payer and absolve the feminine conscience, but it is not true,
that is generally speaking. In this instance, it was. There was no
woman to be dazzled by Helen Illingworth's apparel in that car unless
it was Celeste, the maid. No man is a hero to his valet, eke no
woman a heroine to her maid. She did not usually care greatly about
any impressions she made on Celeste, although the vivacious,
enthusiastic expressions of approval she aroused in her factotum that
night were balm to her soul. She wanted somebody to tell her how
well she looked; not from vanity but as a forecast of the impression
she would probably make on her engineer.
It had taken him little time to make his toilet. He rejoiced in a
business suit, new and from the best tailor. He was a fastidious man
in such matters, and it fitted him and became him amazingly. Abbott
was dressed likewise. They were both scrubbed to within an inch of
their lives, but climbing about the bridge their hands were
scratched, roughened, stained, and torn. Aside from that, Meade was
certainly most presentable, and old Abbott, in spite of his
indifference to such matters, looked the able and powerful man he was.
The conversation at dinner was at first light and frivolous.
"I'm lost," began Abbott, "overpowered with all this silver and glass
and china."
"Yes," laughed Meade, "we should have brought along our granite ware
and tin cups, then we would be free from the dreadful fear that we
are going to drop something or break something."
"You can break anything you like," said the Colonel with heavy
pleasantry. "Make hash out of the china and cut glass," he went on
with a delightful mixture of metaphors, "so long as the bridge
stands."
"And that is going to be forever, isn't it, Mr. Meade?" asked the
girl quickly.
"I don't think anything built by man will survive quite that long,"
he answered as much to her father and the others as to her, "but this
gives every promise of lasting its time."
"You know," observed Curtiss, "there was some question in my mind
about these big compression members. When I first studied your
father's drawings I wondered if he had made the lacing strong enough
to hold the webs."
"That matter was very thoroughly gone into," said Meade quickly. "It
was the very point which I myself had questioned, but father is
absolutely confident that we provided latticing enough to take up all
the stresses. I looked into that matter myself," he went on with
much emphasis.
"I guess it's all right," said Curtiss lightly. "I examined the webs
and lacings carefully this afternoon. They seem to be as right as
possible."
"Those trusses," said Abbott emphatically, "will stand forever. You
need not worry about that."
"Are you going to finish this job on time?" asked Severence, the
vice-president. "You know the financial end of it is mine, and much
depends upon the date of completion."
"That depends upon you people at the shop, Doctor. If you get the
stuff here to me I'll get it in place in short order," answered
Abbott.
"There's an immense amount of work still to be done on the bridge,
though," said Curtiss, "and you can't let up a minute if we are to
complete it within the limits assigned."
"I don't expect to let up a minute. If necessary I'll get more men
and work them in two shifts, or even three. Don't worry about that,
gentlemen."
"We aren't worrying about anything with you and Meade on the job,
Abbott," said the Colonel genially.
"Yes, you are, father," said the girl, "begging your pardon, you live
bridge, and think bridge, and sleep bridge, and eat bridge, and drink
bridge."
"Mercy," laughed the Colonel. "I must have a digestion that is a
cross between that of an elephant and an ostrich. I'm glad I don't
play it, too."
"You know what I mean," said his daughter. "Ever since the
International has been started you have scarcely been able to give a
thought even to me. I'm tired of it. I hope the old thing will soon
be finished so that we can all go back to normal life again."
"I hope so, too," assented the Colonel, "and I guess you are right.
The fact is the bridge is an obsession with us all. It is the
biggest job the Martlet has ever handled. Indeed it is the biggest
thing in the world. It's the longest cantilever, the greatest span,
the heaviest trusses, the----"
"I've heard all about it," interrupted the girl, waving him into
silence, "ever since you began it. Sometimes I think it's beginning
to obsess me, too."
"You don't look like it," whispered Meade, under cover of the general
laugh that greeted her remark.
"What do I look like?" she whispered back quickly in return.
But Meade had no opportunity to tell her save in so far as his eyes
spoke for him because as the laughter died away the Colonel took up
the conversation. That silent language which the young engineer
spoke with his eyes, however, must have been quite intelligible and
easy for her to understand. Her color was already high, but in the
excitement of his glance in an indefinable anticipation of something,
she could not exactly tell what, it deepened a little under that
direct almost fierce glance.
"It is not exactly a subject for dinner conversation," said the
Colonel with sudden gravity, which proved how keenly his daughter had
realized his overpowering interest in the great undertaking, "but all
of us here, even you, my dear, must realize how much that bridge
means to us. I won't go so far as to say that its failure would ruin
us, but it would be a blow both to our finances and our fame that it
would be hard for us to survive."
"Have you ever known anything that my father designed to fail?" asked
Meade somewhat hotly.
"No, and that is why we took his plan in spite of----"
"In spite of what, sir?"
"In spite of Curtiss here and some others."
"Mr. Curtiss," said Meade, turning to the chief engineer, "if it will
add anything to your peace of mind I will assume my full share of
responsibility for the matter. You know the books by
Schmidt-Chemnitz the great German bridge engineer?"
Curtiss nodded.
"At first, I, that is we, thought that there might possibly be
weakness in those compression members, but I checked them with the
methods he advocates and then submitted the figures to my father and
then he went through the whole calculation and applied coefficients
he felt to be safe."
"I'm willing to take your father's judgment in the matter rather than
Schmidt-Chemnitz', or anybody's," said Curtiss, "so successful has
been his career."
"Now that I have seen the members in place I have no doubt that they
will stand," said the Colonel.
"Sure they will," added Abbott with supreme and contagious
confidence, an assurance which helped even Meade to believe.
"Of course we all know," said Dr. Severence, who had been long enough
in touch with engineering to learn much about it, "that there is
always more or less of experimenting in the design of a new thing
like this."
"Yes," said the Colonel, "but we don't want our experiments to fail
in this instance."
"They won't," said the young man boldly.
He had long since persuaded himself that he had been all wrong and
his father all right, so that he entered upon his defense and the
defense of the bridge with enthusiasm. He was ready to break a lance
with anybody on its behalf.
"Well," began the Colonel, "we have every confidence in your father
and in you. I don't mind telling you, Meade, it need not go any
further, that when this bridge is completed we shall be prepared to
make you personally a very advantageous offer for future relations
with the Martlet Company if you care to accept it. On the strength
of your probable acceptance we are already planning to venture into
certain foreign fields which we have hitherto not felt it to our
interest to enter."
"That is most kind of you, Colonel Illingworth," said the young man
gratefully, "and it appeals to me very strongly. I have been
associated with father latterly. He wants to retire with the
completion of this bridge and before I open any office of my own I
should like the advantage of further experience. Such a connection
as you propose seems to me to be ideal, from my point of view. No
man could have any better backing than the Martlet Bridge Company."
"Well, we shall look to you to be worthy of it," said the Colonel
kindly.
His glance vaguely comprehended his daughter as he spoke. Colonel
Illingworth was a very rich man. The Martlet Bridge Company was
nearest his heart, but he had many other interests. His only
daughter would eventually be the mistress of a great fortune. She
could have married anybody--anywhere. Indeed Europeans of high
station and ancient lineage had already indicated quite plainly their
willingness to ally themselves with beauty and--is it doing them an
injustice to say booty, as well?
But Miss Illingworth would have none of them. She was an American to
the very core and so proud of it that no old-world title or position
could buy her. None of these distinguished gentlemen of foreign
birth who had come a-wooing had made any lasting impression upon her.
She was now convinced, and for all her life she was sure, that she
wanted more than anything else just one American man in the
engineering profession! She could have him for the taking, she knew.
And she wished he knew it, and would act upon the knowledge without
further delay.
Meade was not poor. Of course, his means were limited compared to
Colonel Illingworth's great fortune, but what he had earned, saved,
and invested was sufficient--yes, even for two. And he would inherit
much more. Old Meade had not been the greatest engineer of his
generation for nothing. Independent and self-respecting, young Meade
could not be considered a fortune-hunter by anybody. He was the kind
of man to whom a decent father likes to intrust his daughter. Old
Colonel Illingworth found himself gazing wonderingly at the two in a
way that again deepened the flush of color in his daughter's cheek as
she caught his look. She was relieved that Meade had not happened to
observe it.
Had he been blessed with a son by his long dead wife he would have
been proud if he had been the type of man that Meade was, thought the
Colonel, as he mused on all these possibilities. Perhaps Meade and
Helen might--who could tell? He sat silent, so far as he could as
host, during the latter part of the dinner, in his turn seeing
visions and dreaming dreams. There was a contagion of that sort of
thing around that bridge, it would seem.
After dinner the men went out on the observation platform with their
cigars and coffee. For those that liked it there was something in
tall glasses in which ice tinkled when the glasses were agitated, but
Meade declined all three.
"With your permission, sir," he said, "I am going to take Miss
Illingworth out on the bridge. The moon is rising and----"
"I have heard so much about it," said the girl, standing by the door.
"I want to see it when the workmen are all off and it is all quiet,
in the moonlight."
"Very well," said the Colonel. "You will be careful of her, Meade?"
"I'll be more careful of her than we are of the bridge, sir," was the
prompt answer.
"And you had better change your dress, Helen, before you go," said
the Colonel, turning to Abbott and engaging him in conversation on
technical matters.
"I'll wait for you at the front door of the car," said the engineer,
his heart beating like a pneumatic riveter and sounding almost as
loud in his ears.
As she turned to her stateroom he decided not to break the delicious
anticipation of the coming adventure by talking about it to anyone or
by seeing anyone but her. He just wanted to wait for her alone in
the dark until she came, so he followed her down the corridor to the
other end.
"I won't be long," she whispered as she left him.
He took that with a grain of salt. A second that she were away when
she might have been with him, would be a long time to him, he knew.
IV
THE PORTAGE THROUGH THE DUST
Now Helen Illingworth did not want to waste time any more than
Bertram Meade did. It was, of course, the height of foolishness for
her to explore a half-completed bridge, or an entirely finished one
for that matter, in an elaborate and expensive dinner gown. But
whatever her age or his they were at that period of life and love in
which, if ever, humanity had a clear title to be foolish--and there
you are!
Economy had not necessarily been inculcated in this young woman's
mind and although she prized the dress it had served its purpose,
since the man so obviously highly approved of it and her. If she
spoiled it she spoiled it and that was all there was about it. She
dismissed that possibility promptly. There was nothing else she
could wear which was so exquisitely becoming, anyway, and especially
in the moonlight. So, instead of taking her father's advice all she
did was to cover her beautiful shoulders with a light wrap, gather
the train of her gown in her hand and hasten to the car door in the
shortest possible time. She did not even stop to change the light
slippers and filmy stockings she wore, satin and silk of the same
delicate tint and fabric to match her gown. It was a warm summer
night and she needed no covering except nature's golden crowning on
her head.
Every moment they were apart, since the sum-total in which they could
be together was so small, was a moment lost. What were all the
dresses and slippers on earth to the pressure of his hand, a glance
from his eyes? She was very much in love with him and he with her
then, and thereafter.
"Now," she said, coming out of the door of the car and descending the
steps toward him, eagerly expectant, "I want a prize for my
swiftness."
"A prize!" returned the man, "why, you've been gone years and years
and years. You have had time to dress yourself a thousand times, and
you haven't even changed your gown. What have you been doing? How
have you idled away precious time you might have bestowed upon me?"
he concluded reprovingly in mock severity.
"I think that it's less than sixty seconds since you said you would
wait for me here," she laughed in joyous satisfaction.
"Of course, time seems shorter to you than it would to me," was his
cool reply. "It naturally would. You don't have to wait for any
man, things come always to you."
"If you can refer to me as a thing, Mr. Meade," she replied, "in this
instance I have come to you."
"I thank heaven you have done so, but unfortunately I shall have to
dismiss you."
"Dismiss me, why?"
"You can't go out on a bridge in that gown and those slippers,
tramping over dirty tracks, piles of steel, rough wooden planks,
paint and----"
"Can't I?" she said, "you just see."
"Really haven't you got anything for rough work that you could put
on?"
"I have a walking suit."
"That would do."
"But it would take me half an hour to get out of this and into it
and----"
"I hate to see you spoil your dress," he said uncertainly as she
stopped.
Really what gown on earth was worth half an hour of her society? At
least that is the way he felt about it, and evidently she felt the
same way.
"It is settled, then," she said, slipping her arm through his as they
walked down the long wooden platform near the siding. "You know,"
she continued, feeling herself obliged to speak since he was so
portentously silent--ordinarily he was a fluent and ready man but
something had got hold of him now and he was as shy and speechless as
a boy--"You know," she went on, "I have heard so much about that
bridge and how wonderful it is by moonlight that I rather felt that I
ought to dress the part when I came to inspect it under such
auspices."
"What about me?" he asked.
"You are dressed in the part, too," she continued, "yours is the
strength and the power and masculinity of the bridge----"
"While you are its grace and beauty," he concluded as she hesitated.
"I didn't like to say it myself and I won't admit it is true, but----"
"You don't have to admit it," he said quickly. "In this half light
you look as mystic and ethereal as----"
"And how do I look in the whole light, pray?"
"A trifle more substantial but not less beautiful and winning," was
the prompt answer.
Really for a timid man, with women, he was doing very well he
thought, and so did she.
"Do you prefer the ethereal woman, the dependent woman of the
mid-Victorian period to her self-sufficient descendant of the present
day?"
"I like a woman to be all things not to all men, but to me, at
different times"--he ran the whole gamut of feminine possibilities in
his desires, it seemed!--"There are times when the clinging
mid-Victorian 'female' is the sweetest thing on earth to a man and
there are times when the woman who can march shoulder to shoulder
with you is the one woman you desire. Tears, laughter, submission,
mastery--a man wants a woman in all her possible moods," he concluded
oracularly.
"You want a great many things, it seems to me," she retorted
mockingly.
"Yes, but only one woman."
"Well, you want her to be a great many things, then."
"I just want her to be herself."
Now Meade was perilously near that point when he would describe his
love if he ventured to discuss it further in the words trite but
true, "I love you because you're you!" That is what he meant anyway,
and incidentally although our sense of humor even in our tenderest
moments may spare us from the banality of the exact words, it is what
all think and most say in one way or another under such circumstances.
"I hope some day you will meet this imaginary creature of infinite
variety," said the woman softly.
"I hope so," was the somewhat surprising answer, at which she was not
a little chagrined.
"You know you men have so many advantages over poor womankind, you
are free to go everywhere and pick and choose," she went on,
carefully concealing her discomfiture.
"To tell the truth, I have met the woman," the man admitted.
"Where, in Burma?"
"In America."
"America is a great country and there are a hundred million people in
it, possibly half of them my sex.
"Your statistics are sadly in error."
"They are the latest, I believe."
"The latest in this instance are wrong. The population of America,
as I see it, is only one."
This was direct and unequivocal. He was gaining courage, fast
mastering his timidity. She was by way of being swept off her feet,
so that woman-like she temporized. She changed the subject although
it was the subject nearest her heart and the one she most wished to
discuss; to wit, herself, in relation to him.
They had now reached the end of the platform in their slow progress,
and as they turned about the temporary station and storehouse before
them rose the bridge. The moon larger and more magnificent than she
had ever been before to either of them--for when, since God set the
night lights in the firmament, had there ever been an evening like
that?--was rising over the high hills that sprang up from the steep
cliff-like bank of the other side of the vast river. They saw her
round red full face through an interlacing tracery of steel. The
lower part of the bridge was still in deep shadow. Indeed the moon
had just cleared the hills of the opposite bank of the great gorge
cut by the broad river flowing swiftly in its darkness far below.
The base of the truss was yet almost invisible and the effect of the
peak of the pyramid of steel brilliantly gilded by the high light and
rising out of dark nothing was as wonderful as the picture of a
mountain top glowing in the setting sun while all the valley is sunk
in the ever deepening shadows. At the further end of the suspended
arm extending far over the water the top of the traveler glistened in
exactly the same way. The cantilever on the opposite shore,
incomplete and sunk under a high rise of land, was still in shadow
and not yet discernible.
Instinctively the two people stopped and gazed out and up and across.
Unwittingly the woman drew a little near the man. He became more
conscious than before of the light touch of her hand upon his arm.
It was very still where they stood. The shacks of the workmen had
been erected below the bridge about a quarter of a mile to the right
along the banks of the little affluent of the main stream. They
could hear faint but indistinguishable noises that yet indicated
humanity coming from that direction. The fires in the machine house
and in the engines were banked. Lazy curls of smoke rose to be blown
away in the limitless areas of the upper air. In the darkness all
the unsightly evidences of construction work were hidden.
"Oh," said the woman, drawing a long breath, "I don't wonder that you
love it. Isn't it beautiful, flung up in the air that way? One
would think it wasn't steel but silver and gold and----"
"Time was," said the man, "when I loved a thing like that above
everything except my father, but now----"
In spite of herself the woman looked at him.
"But now?" she whispered as he hesitated, and then she turned her
head half fearful of his answer.
"I am almost afraid to say it," he said, lowering his voice to match
her own.
"A soldier of steel," she said, "and afraid!"
"Well then, all that was the second now takes the third place."
"And before your father comes?"
But she did not give him time to answer. Atalanta cast the golden
apples before Hippomenes, but she delayed her pace while he picked
them up. This girl would and would not. She threw her golden
personality in his face, and when he reached for it she glided ahead
again.
"Come," she said, "let us go out on the bridge."
"It looks beautiful," said the man, "like most things in the
moonlight, but----"
"Even women?"
He nodded his head.
"But appearances are deceptive," he went on. "It's a rough place for
you. Those little slippers you wear----"
He looked down and as if in obedience to his glance she outthrust her
foot from her gown. It was not the smallest foot that ever upbore a
woman. Quite the contrary. Which is not saying it was too large,
not at all. It was just right for her height and figure, and its
shape and shoe left nothing to be desired.
"Never mind the slippers," she said, "they are stronger than they
look. They'll serve."
"But the distance between here and the bridge is inches deep in dust."
"Dust!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I don't mind rough walking, but
dust----
"I never thought of that," admitted the man. "The fact is I have
thought of nothing but you since I saw you, but now we'll have to go
back or----"
"I shall not go back," she answered firmly.
"Well then, there is no help for it, pardon me."
He stepped down off the platform and before she knew what he would be
at he lifted her straight up in his arms. He did not carry her like
a baby, he held her erect, crushed against his breast and before she
had time to utter a protest, or even to say a word, he started
through the dusty roadway toward the bridge-head.
It was a strange position. There was nothing that she could do. He
clasped her with a grip of iron, too tightly for her comfort, indeed,
but the pressure he put upon her was due entirely to his own
nervousness. She could not kick. She could not even move. Really
she did not wish to. It was respectful enough even if a little
absurd. What he was doing was so obviously the proper thing to spare
her dainty slippers and silk stockings and other finery. And, if it
were not, she could not help liking it. She knew she ought to
protest, but the words did not come. While she was trying to think
them up they had crossed the little desert that intervened between
the portal of the bridge and the end of the platform. Then he set
her down gently. She felt her feet strike solid plank and she was
distinctly sorry that the journey was ended, the crossing had been
made.
Another woman might have reproved him then, just as another woman
might have screamed or tried to kick or beaten him over the head _en
route_. Her arms had been free, but she had attempted none of these
things. Perhaps love, perhaps a sense of humor, or both had saved
her. He was glad to recognize the difference between her and the
ordinary member of the sex. It flattered his discrimination that she
had accepted so coolly and quietly, outwardly at least, his services
as a matter of course.
"Thank you," she said simply, "that was very nice of you. You are
wonderfully strong."
Now a man's bodily strength is something for which in a large measure
he has no responsibility, for which he can claim no merit, but there
is no subtler form of flattery that a woman may offer a man than to
praise him for physical prowess. He feels much more satisfaction in
being told that he has a strong arm than in having it pointed out
that he carries a great brain, and Meade was pleased beyond measure.
"It's nothing," he said, which was scarcely true, because it was the
greatest thing that had ever happened to him so far. "Those shoes of
yours will be ruined on this planking, but at least there is little
dust. If my feet were not so enormous I----"
Helen Illingworth laughed outright at the idea.
"My own shoes will have to do me and if they are ruined I can get
another pair or a dozen."
"Bad lookout for your husband, if he happens to be a poor man."
"Oh, I wouldn't spend my husband's money as I do my father's,"
laughed the young woman with that indifference to father's money
which is characteristic of the relationship, the age, and the sex.
"Could you be happy with a man who couldn't give you dresses like
this and slippers and----"
"If I loved him I could be happy with him in rags," was the reckless
answer.
They were now walking down the track on the floor of the
approach-span of the bridge. There were two railroad tracks running
out across the bridge to the end over the river, and the space
between the rails was covered with rough planking. The man on guard
at the entrance recognized the engineer and, with a word of greeting,
the two adventurers passed him and marched down the track. They had
now reached the anchor arm of the cantilever proper. On either side
of them rose the ribs of the huge diamond-shaped truss, one point
resting on the vast shoe on the pier and the other point, both the
center and focus of the radiating arms of steel, far above their
heads.
The moon, by this time, had passed the floor level and the cross
bracing cast a network of shadows over them, upon track and floor
beams and stringers. The silence of the half-light, the mystery of
it all oppressed them a little. It was with beating hearts that they
pressed on.
V
FALL AND REVELATION
"It's rather confused in here," said the man, "but we will soon get
out toward the end and then the view is magnificent. You can see up
and down the river for miles and the night boat will be along in a
few minutes."
"Isn't that it?" asked the woman, pointing up the river to where a
cluster of lights rounded a huge bend not far away, and swung out in
midstream.
"Yes," said the man, "if we listen I think we can hear her."
They both stopped, and sure enough faintly across the water came the
noise of the clanking paddles of the big river steamer. With that
sound also mingled the song of the night wind, for a wonder
comparatively gentle, making strange, weird harmonies as it sifted
through the taut and rigid bars of steel. She listened enchanted
with the sound.
The big floor beams extended from one side to the other of the
bridge, between the trusses at intervals of fifty feet. At right
angles to them and six feet apart the stringers ran lengthways
parallel to the trusses. Here and there pieces of timber false work
had been thrown across the stringers for the convenience of the
workmen, but as these two slowly moved toward mid-stream at last
these pieces became fewer and finally there was nothing to be seen
but the heavy floor beams and the lighter stringers.
After they passed the top of the pier and got beyond the small space
of river bank on which the pier was set, there was nothing between
them and the water, now moonlit and quivering, except these cross
girders of steel on either hand beyond the planking in the tracks.
"Have you a clear head?" asked the man. "I mean does it affect you
to be on high elevations? Do you get dizzy?"
"I never have," was the answer, "but----"
"I think I'll hold you," was the reply.
He grasped her firmly by the arm. The loose wrap she was wearing
over her shoulders did not cover her arms and it was a bare arm that
he took in his hand.
"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, "but----"
"It doesn't matter. I understand. You would better hold me, I might
slip."
She was in fact as clear-headed as any woman on earth. She had stood
alone and unsupported on the brink of precipices a thousand feet
high, yet her heart had not beaten then as it was beating now and she
had never felt the need of support before. There was something
electric and compelling in the pressure of his strong hand upon the
firm flesh of her round arm. She shrank closer to him, again
unthinkingly, by a natural impulse.
The moon was now well clear of the brow of the highest hill. Its
yellow was turning to silver and in its cold and beautiful
illumination the whole river flowed bright beneath them. Every inch
of the bridge was now clearly revealed in the white passionless light.
Their progress was now checked by a flat car, fortunately partially
unloaded, which had been left on the track before them when the men
knocked off work. They would complete its unloading in the morning.
If Meade had been alone he would have crossed on one of the floor
beams to the other track, but that was not to be thought of in the
case of Helen Illingworth.
"Too bad," he said in deep disappointment, "I suppose we shall have
to go back. I'll rout out one of the engine-drivers and get him to
pull this car out of the way----"
"Can't you climb that car?"
"Certainly I can."
"Well, so can I if you help me."
"I'll help you this way," said Meade, having acquired a certain
facility from his previous performance, as he lifted her up to the
low platform of the truck, lower by the way than the level of an
ordinary railroad car. Placing his hand upon it he vaulted to her
side. They walked across it quickly, choosing the side that had been
unloaded of its burden of iron for their path.
"Wait," said Meade as they reached its end.
He sprang down to the track and as she leaned forward he lifted her
down also. Fifty feet away the bridge ended in the air. They were
now almost directly beneath the traveler near the end of the
suspended span. Its huge legs sprawled out like those of a gigantic
animal on the extreme edges of the bridge on either side above their
heads. The wooden platform on the track ran out half the distance to
the bridge end. Slowly the two walked along it until but a few feet
was left between them and the naked floor beams and the stringers
carrying the ties to which the rails were bolted and the planks laid.
By the side of the track on the top of the stringers had been placed
a pile of material surmounted by a large flat plate of steel which
lay level upon it. It was triangular in shape, the blunt point
turned inward. The base which was about six feet wide paralleled the
course of the river. The plate on the top of the pile was raised
about three feet above the level of the track. They stopped abreast
of it.
"Can't we go any further?" asked the girl in low tones, still close
to the young man, who still tightly clasped her arm.
It was a night and time in which to speak softly. Yet a whisper
would not serve. Indeed there was always wind in the gorge and out
there on the end of the bridge. It might be never so still on the
shore but there was always a current of air where they were and it
seemed to be coming stronger. The sound of it overhead was louder,
and less pleasing. There was a threat in its notes as it swept
through the steel. Her dress was whipped about her by its force.
The drapery which she wore about her shoulders blew against him. She
drew it around her with her free hand and looked at him for her
answer.
"I'm afraid it wouldn't be safe to go any further," he said.
"But I must, I want to see the steamer."
"It will pass directly under the bridge."
"But this wooden platform will hide it, this and the pile of steel
here."
"They have no business to pass under the bridge," said Meade.
"They've been warned hundreds of times and orders have been issued."
"Why?"
"There is always danger that something might fall."
"At night with no one working?"
"Yes, even at night. We are never quite sure that everything has
been made secure until we examine it. A bolt or a nut or a bar of
steel or a tool, to say nothing of a beam, falling from such a height
would kill anyone and the beam might sink the steamer, but they still
come as near as they like. The passengers seem to wish it and the
captains humor them. Besides the best water and the least current to
fight against seem to be just under the bridge end yonder."
"Can't we go just a few steps nearer?"
"I would not have anything happen to you for the bridge itself and
all the rest of the world."
"You couldn't say more than that, could you?"
"I could say much more than that if I----"
But she interrupted him again.
"Why can't I stand up there?"
"On that gusset plate?"
"Is that what you call it?"
"Yes, it bears the same relation to structural steel that a gusset
does to a woman's dress. I don't suppose you know how to make a
dress?"
"Do I not? You don't know that I have done some settlement work, do
you?"
"No, but I am not surprised to find that you have done anything good
and useful and beautiful."
"Well, it's hardly that last, but as it happens I could make a dress
if----"
"If what?"
"If I were a poor man's wife and had to."
She laughed a little nervously.
"A dress like the one you are wearing?" he asked.
"Hardly that," she laughed again. "It took an artist to do that, and
I would not want one like it in that case. I am only at best a plain
sewer."
"Plain!" persisted he fatuously.
"Exactly. But can't I stand on that?"
"Wait," he answered.
He climbed to the center of it, lifted himself up and down on his
feet to test it and found it solid apparently.
"I think so," he said at last, "but I shall have to put you up."
"Am I never to be allowed to climb anything myself?" she asked as he
lifted her up and set her down on her feet in the middle of the plate
of steel as gently as before.
"Not when I am by to help you," was his reply.
"Perhaps you do not know that I am one of the few women who have done
some real mountain climbing?"
"I don't know anything at all about you except that I----"
"Oh, there comes the steamer," she cried. "I can see it beautifully
from here."
"Be careful," was his answer, "you must not move. Stand perfectly
steady. I am not so sure of that plate. Indeed, if you will permit
me----"
He reached over from where he stood on the track below her and by her
side and gathered the material of her dress into what could only be
described as a bunch, which he held in an iron grasp.
"I do not think that is necessary," she said. "This plate seems as
solid as the rest of the bridge and--oh, there's the steamer! She's
right under us."
The big river craft was filled with light and laughter. The wind
fortunately blew the smoke away from the bridge so that they had a
clear and perfect view of her. There was a band playing aboard her.
They heard the music above the beat of the whirling paddles, the song
of the rising wind. The passengers were congregated about the rails
on the upper decks staring upward. The bridge was as fascinating to
them as it was to the people ashore evidently.
"How interesting," said the delighted girl. "Why don't you come up
here yourself, you can see so much better?"
The man dropped her gown, lifted his right foot to the pile on the
stringers to follow her suggestion. Thoughtlessly she stepped toward
the outer end to give him room, quite forgetful of his caution. The
gusset plate was not so securely bedded on that uneven pile as either
of them had fancied. Before he could complete his step or warn her
of the danger, it now bent forward. It tilted distinctly. In spite
of herself, Helen Illingworth was carried still farther forward as in
her excitement she sought to regain her balance and that disturbed
the unstable equilibrium of the piece of steel still more. It began
to slip downward, grating on the pile of beams as it moved; another
second and it would be off and on its way irrevocably.
Meade threw himself at the girl. He lunged out and caught her just
as she was slipping downward with the plate now almost perpendicular.
To catch her he had to step to the very edge of the planking beyond
which the rails ran naked on the ties.
With a tremendous effort he caught her by the waist and swung her up
and in and backward. Fortunately the hypothenuse of the plate ran
away from the pier or it might have swept her down in spite of all he
could do. As it was he caught her furiously to his breast and stood
fast on the brink quivering, heaving himself desperately backward as
he sought to maintain his balance and take the backward step that
meant safety.
Neither of them had said a word. A wild shout rose from the steamer
as the huge plate dropped, like the blade of a mighty guillotine,
straight down through the air. The floor plane of the bridge was two
hundred feet above the water. The heavy piece of steel, weighing
hundreds of pounds, was traveling with the velocity of a lightning
flash when it neared the water. If it had struck the boat it would
have cut it through like a knife. Fortunately it cleared the gangway
by inches. In a second or more it had disappeared. Screams, shouts,
arose from the boat which promptly sheered off into midstream.
Helen Illingworth's back had been toward Meade as he seized her. She
had seen as he had everything that happened. Recovering himself at
last he stepped back slowly, almost dragging her, until they were a
safe distance from the edge.
"My God," he said hoarsely. "What a narrow escape."
"For the boat?"
"What do I care for the boat?"
"For me?"
"I thought you were gone."
"And so I should have been if you had not been there."
"If you had gone down I should have followed you, I swear."
His face was ghastly white in the moonlight. Sweat covered his
forehead. He was shaking like a wind-blown leaf both on account of
the strain of his sudden and terrific effort, and because of the
reaction from the horror that had overwhelmed him as he saw her
sliding.
"The whole world went black when I saw you go," he said slowly.
"Do you care that much?" asked the girl, trembling herself.
There was no necessity for maidenly reticence now.
"Care?" said the man, "care?"
"I'm all right now."
"You are more fortunate than I. I stood to lose you, you stood to
lose only life. Don't you see? Can't you understand? My God!"
Suddenly he swept her to his breast as this time she faced him. She
was very near him and she did not make the slightest resistance. It
was the fourth time he had taken her in his arms that night, but this
time there was all the difference in the world.
She had waited for this hour and she was glad. They had faced death
too nearly for any hesitation now. She knew from what he had said to
her that he loved her, and although he had not referred to it in any
way she also knew that he had so superbly and magnificently saved her
at the imminent risk of his own life. There had been swift yet
eternal moments when it seemed that both of them, trembling on the
brink, would follow the downward rush of the gusset plate. Now as he
strained her to him, she lifted her face to him, glad that she was
tall enough for him to kiss her with so slight a bend of the head.
There, under the great trusses of steel, amid the huge, gaunt,
massive evidences of the power, of the might, of the mastery of man,
two hearts spoke to each other in the silence, and told the story
that was old before the first smelter had ever turned the first ore
into the first bit of iron, before Tubal Cain ever smote the anvil;
the story of love that began with creation, that will outlast all the
iron in all the hills of the earth--that is as eternal as it is
divine!
VI
THEY CROSS THE BRIDGE TOGETHER
Ordinarily Meade's head was as clear as the air of a mountain top,
his nerves as steady as the steel of the great bridge, but that night
after the shock he had sustained he was almost afraid to attempt to
return to the shore along the planks laid between the rails. No
experience that he had ever gone through had so completely unnerved
him. It was then the woman who played the man's part. As he said,
all she had faced was loss of life; that was a simple thing in his
mind compared to the loss of her; extravagant, foolish, if you will,
but true.
He blamed himself, too, for having allowed her to climb up on that
gusset plate. To be sure he had tested it, but, as the event proved,
he had not tested it as thoroughly as he should. Indeed, the fact
that the most precious thing on earth to him, the being he loved
above all else together, had been nearly killed through his lack of
care, his failure absolutely to make sure, smote him terribly. He
strove, at first vainly, to control himself, but presently by the
exercise of as iron a constraint as was ever imposed on nerves by the
will of man, he succeeded in attaining some degree of composure.
After that wild embrace, that first rapturous meeting of lips, he had
released her slightly, though he still held her closely and she had
been quite content to be so arm-encircled and await his further
pleasure.
"I'm quite calm, now," he began, "that is, I have mastered that awful
horror and the nervous shock that came upon me when I saw you sliding
away, and I am as composed as any man could be who is holding you in
his arms."
"It's all over now, there is nothing to reproach yourself with. I am
safe, thanks to you. I should not have ventured, anyway."
"Yes, but if it had not been for me you would never have been in
danger. It was my fault. I should have made sure. I shall never
forgive myself."
"But I forgive you gladly because I shall never forget that if I had
not been in danger I might not now be here in your arms."
"Oh," exclaimed the man, "how sweetly you put it--nevertheless----"
"And if I were not here," she went on swiftly, too happy in her love
to be mindful of anything else, "I certainly would not be
doing--this."
And of her own motion she kissed him in the moonlight.
"And if you were not doing this," said he, making the proper return,
"I might not have had the courage to tell you."
"You haven't told me anything--in words," she answered, fain to hear
from his lips what she well knew from the beating of his heart.
"It's not too late then to tell you that I love you, that I am yours.
To give myself to you seems to be the highest possibility in life, if
you will only take me."
"And do you love me more than the bridge?"
"More than all the bridges in the world, past, present and to come;
more than anything or anybody. I tell you I never knew what love was
or what life was until I saw you sliding to your death."
Sometimes only death opens the eyes to the meaning of life.
"I'm glad I fell just as far as I did."
"One foot more and you would have been in the river."
"As it was I stopped just at the level of your heart."
"Yes, thank God."
"And your own quickness and noble strength."
"I thought I was too late when we trembled on yonder verge."
"Do you know you actually hurt me when you swept me so roughly to
you, not but that there are some pains that surpass all joys."
"There was no time for gentle measures."
"I know, and I knew I was safe when you caught me. Somehow I
expected you would do it. I knew that you would not let me fall."
"If I had not succeeded I should have followed you."
"I felt that, too," she answered dreamily.
"We must go back, dearest," he said at last, "I am so fearful for you
even now that I am almost unwilling to try it. Every time I glance
down through these interspaces between the stringers my blood runs
cold."
"You supported me before; I will support you now," laughed the woman.
"No," said the man, "we will go together."
They turned toward the shore. He took her hand and slipped his other
arm about her just as simply and naturally as if they had been any
humble lover and his lass in the countryside.
"No place on earth will ever be what this bridge is to me," said the
woman. "I knew you loved me, of course, at least I hoped so; at any
rate I knew that I loved you----"
"I never dared dream that you could."
"But here the words were first spoken, here you first took me to your
heart, here you kissed me first." She stopped and he with her, she
flung her free hand up in the air. The moonlight fell softly upon
her sweetly rounded arm. "Oh, beautiful bridge, oh, exquisite
creation of stone and steel, you have gives my lover to me. The wind
will never blow through you, the moon will never shine upon you
without recalling that," she cried rapturously. She waited a moment
while his heart whispered amen. "Let us go," she said reluctantly
enough, loath to leave the place where death had stretched out his
hand and love held him back.
"One more kiss," he pleaded, "and then----"
By and by they got to the end of the bridge.
"I shall carry you across the dust once again," he said as they
passed out of sight of the watchman, who had seen the falling plate
and heard it splash into the river; but being a discreet man and
realizing that the engineer and the woman were safe he had made no
outcry. Meade thereafter properly rewarded him for his discretion.
This time he held her differently. This time she slipped her arm
about his neck and laid her head upon his breast and he carried her
as he might have carried a child. When he set her down on the
station platform, now quite deserted, they both discovered first that
she had lost the light wrap that had shrouded her bare shoulders and
next that in the violence with which he had seized her as she fell,
the skirt of her dress, which had caught on a piece of steel, had
been rent and torn. It did not affect her appearance, in fact in
that moonlight, she looked positively heavenly to him at least.
Far down the platform they could see the lights of the car.
"Listen," she said as they walked slowly along. "You must not tell
father anything about this little accident."
"I obey, but why not?"
"It would only worry him, and it was my fault."
"No, mine."
"I will not hear you say it."
"But I must speak to your father about----"
"And the sooner the better; he is in good humor with you and the
bridge now. I have heard him speak well of you. He is intensely
American and he has never been anxious to have me marry any foreign
title, or even the fortune hunters of our own country who have wooed
me. I believe he will be glad to give me to you."
"And if not?"
"I should hate to grieve my father, but----"
She turned and looked at him in the moonlight, her glorious golden
head, her neck, her shoulders, her arms bare and beautiful in the
celestial illumination which gave to the warm flesh a touch of
coldness, and mingled purity with the passion she inspired and
exhibited which made it almost holy in both their hearts.
He seized her hand and lifted it to his lips as a devotee, and she
understood the reason for the little touch of old-world formality and
reserve, when nought but his will prevented him from taking her to
his heart and making her lips, her eyes, her face, his own.
"Now may God deal with me as I deal with you," he said fervently, "if
I ever fail at least to try with all my heart and soul and strength
to measure up to your sweetness and light."
"My prayer for myself, too," she whispered. "You need it not."
"You must wait here," she said, deeply touched, as they had now
reached the steps of the car, "until I have changed my dress; father
would notice, anybody would, that tear. When I have finished I will
come back to you and then we will seek him and tell him."
Accordingly Meade stood obediently waiting outside the car in the
shadow it cast. There was no one about. The servants had gone to
bed. The porter of the car was nodding in his quarters waiting for
the time to turn out the lights. The engineer had the long platform
all to himself. After a time he chose to walk quietly up and down,
thinking. The future looked very fair to him. To be sure he had
nearly lost the woman he loved in the river, and it had been his
fault. He overlooked the fact that she had disregarded his caution
and stepped forward. But after all she had not fallen. He had
caught her on the very brink. He could remember, he never would
forget, those seconds, like hours, when he stood trembling, even
swaying, upon the very edge of the bridge, with practically nothing
but his precarious foothold between the two of them and the awful
plunge into the river two hundred feet below. He could not think how
he managed to retain his balance and draw her back with him, away
from that perilous standing place; but he had done so and the result
had been the confession which he had dared to make and to which she
had vouchsafed that blessed return.
If only her father could see in him any fitness to be trusted with so
priceless a treasure all would be well. Meade had never made a
failure in his life, except in small ways which had only been of
sufficient importance to teach him to cope with greater difficulties.
His career had been practically one unbroken success. He had
acquired a remarkably fine reputation for so young a man in his
profession and he had gained it, not only because of his father's
great eminence, but in spite of it; for the paternal renown had been
something of a handicap in that he had at least been compelled to
live up to it.
There are few tasks so hard as living up to a reputation, unless it
is living one down. He was about to fall heir to such of his
father's business and prestige as the one could transfer and the
other take up. The great bridge was rising grandly and even he would
share in the fame that it would bring to its designer. His
forebodings had been unwarranted, his father's reasoning abundantly
justified. He was glad. The woman he loved returned his affection.
When she might have had anyone in the world she took--him! If only
her father----
VII
THE COLONEL MAKES CONDITIONS
"Bert," a sweet voice came to him out of the darkness, and the first
familiar sound of his name from her lips confirmed all that had
passed which, as he had waited, he almost had felt he had dreamed.
He turned to discover her standing in the door of the car dressed as
she should have been for such an excursion had she at first followed
her father's wise suggestion. His heart thrilled to the use of the
familiar name. With a sort of boyish shyness he made answer in kind.
"Helen," he said, "shall I come up there?"
"I'm coming down to you."
Now whether she was afflicted with sudden weakness or he with sudden
fear, it was quite apparent, had anyone been by to see, that no
longer could she descend from car step to platform without much
careful assistance; also she had to pay toll before he let her pass.
There was no unwillingness in either case. Hand-in-hand they walked
to the rear of the car, where the observation platform was still
brightly lighted.
Abbott had gone and the other three men were on their feet. They
were about to separate for the night, although it was still rather
early.
"Father," said his daughter out of the darkness.
"Oh, you're there," answered the Colonel. "I wondered when you were
coming back. I was just thinking of going to fetch you. Is Mr.
Meade----?"
"I'm here, sir."
"Good-night, gentlemen," said the Colonel as the others turned away,
leaving him alone on the platform.
He came to the edge and leaned over the brass railing.
"Are you two going to make a night of it?" he asked jocosely.
"Colonel Illingworth," began Meade.
"Father," said his daughter at the same time, "we have something to
say to you."
"Umph," said the Colonel, staring down at them narrowly as they
stepped into the full light from the dome of the platform.
"Something to say to me, eh?"
"Yes."
The old man's face fell a little as every father's face falls when
his daughter and the man obviously in love with her make that
statement.
"Well, say it and be done with it," he continued, clamping his teeth
on his cigar a trifle nervously.
"We can't say it with you there and we here. Come down, and----"
Colonel Illingworth opened the gate, lifted the platform, and
descended the steps.
"Here I am," he said as he stopped by the two.
His daughter took him by the arm and they walked down the platform so
as to be out of any possible hearing from the car.
"Now," she said to Meade, who followed her.
His heart was beating almost as rapidly as it had on the bridge and
for exactly the same reason--fear of losing her. He tried to speak.
"Well, young man?" said Illingworth, flicking the ashes from his
cigar and wishing to get it over, "you said you had something to say
to me."
"Yes, sir, I have."
"Why don't you say it, then?"
"It's a very hard thing to say, sir." He looked helplessly at the
girl, but she was speechless. It was his task. If she were not
worth asking for she was not worth having, she might have said.
"Well, sir," he began desperately, "I love your daughter, Helen. I
want to marry her."
"Umph," said the Colonel again, "I supposed as much. How long have
you and Helen known each other?"
"Over a year, sir, but I loved her from the very moment I saw her. I
did not dare hope, I didn't dream, I never imagined, and strange as
it may seem, sir, she--seems to love me."
"Seems?" exclaimed the girl softly.
"Wait, Helen," said her father, "this is a matter for me and Mr.
Meade."
"And am I to have nothing to say?"
"It strikes me that you have probably had your say already."
"Yes, on the bridge," burst forth the engineer.
"Ah, on the bridge! I see. Are you sure she loves you enough to be
your wife?"
"I--you see--er--a----"
"Of course I do," said Helen, realizing that it was now high time for
her to come to the rescue of her lover, "and so would any other
woman."
"You know, of course, that while I am not rich, I am not poor and I
can support my wife in every comfort, sir," urged the man, greatly
relieved by the woman's prompt avowal.
"She'll need a few luxuries besides, I'm thinking."
"Yes, of course, sir, I'll see that she gets them. This bridge is
going to make us all famous and I shall have my father's influence
and----"
"When the bridge is finished," said the Colonel decisively, "come to
me and you shall have my daughter."
"Oh, father, the bridge won't be finished for----" began the girl.
"I accept your terms gladly," said the man, realizing that in any
event they would have to wait for the bridge. "It's in the contract
that we are to deliver it complete before the first of November."
"And that's not far off," Colonel Illingworth reminded his daughter.
"If it is left to me, sir, and I can stir up Abbott, we will be ahead
of the contract date," said Meade.
"You understand, of course, that there is to be no public
announcement of the engagement until the bridge is finished," the
older man said emphatically.
"I understand, sir," answered the engineer, too happy at her father's
consent to make any difficulties over any reasonable conditions he
might impose. "Yes, Helen, it's all right, your father is right.
This job's got to be done before I----"
"Don't say before you tackle another," protested the girl, half
disappointed, and yet seeing the reasonableness of both men, while
the Colonel laughed grimly.
"That's about the size of it," said the old man, "no matter how you
put it. One thing at a time. Meade has this bridge on his soul, and
he ought to have it, and although he may have you on his heart he
must forget that until the bridge is completed and then--well, Meade,
you'll be coming into our employ and I don't know anybody on earth I
would rather have for my son-in-law than a clean, honest, able
American with a record like yours. A man who can look me in the eye
and grasp me by the hand, like this."
He put out his hand as he spoke. Meade's own palm met it and the two
men shook hands unemotionally but firmly after the manner of the
self-restrained practical American, who is always fearful of a scene
and does not wear his heart upon his sleeve. The Colonel threw away
his cigar, slipped his arm around his daughter's waist, kissed her
softly on the forehead.
"I hate to lose you, Helen. I hate to give you up to anyone. We
have been very happy together since your mother died, leaving you a
little girl to me; but it had to come, I suppose, and perhaps I shall
be glad in the end. Good-night, Meade. You will be coming in
presently, Helen?"
He turned and walked away as they answered him. They watched him go
slowly with bended head. They watched him climb, rather heavily, up
the steps of the car--that he was an old man seemed rather suddenly
borne in upon them. He stood for a moment in the light smiling,
remembering, and then turned and marched within the car. He switched
the light out as he passed down the corridor.
"Wasn't he splendid?" said Helen, when she had time to breathe and
freedom to speak.
"One of the finest old men on earth," continued Meade. "He and
father would make a great team and----"
"You and I another," she said quickly.
"If I could only live up to you there wouldn't be a pair since Adam
and Eve like us."
"But it's so long to wait for the bridge. I hate to have my fate
bound up in iron and steel."
"It will be ages," said the man, "and yet your father is right. My
father and I have undertaken to put this bridge across and we have to
do it. Our honor is pledged. I'll think more of that bridge now
since its completion means you. And every blow of riveter or hammer,
every grinding of steel on steel, every creak of winches, will say to
me, '_Hurry up, old man, hurry up; your girl is waiting for you when
the great spans are completed and the river is crossed._' What an
inspiration that will be for me."
"I was interested in the bridge, before," said the woman, "but think
how I shall watch it now. You must write me every day and tell me
every inch that you have gained."
"Trust me, I'll measure it in millimeters."
"And now, sweet love, good-night," she whispered.
"I shall see you in the morning?"
"If father attempts to run this train away without letting me see you
again he will have to leave me behind," she laughed as she looked
back at him through the door.
Meade did not want to leave the car. He would fain stand on the
platform near it all night long. It was completely dark except for
her stateroom, where trickles of light came from around the
close-drawn curtains. He did wait until that room was dark also
before he went to his shack, which was built on the high land so that
it faced the bridge. He could see it from the window. He lay there
watching it, that bridge in which was bound up his love, his life,
his fortune.
VIII
THE LOVERS MAKE PICTURES ON PAPER AND HEART
The next morning bright and early--adjectives that refer not only to
the morning, but to the man and, as we shall see, to the woman--Meade
hurried down the platform he had traversed late and slowly because he
was leaving her the night before. The men were not yet called to
work, they had not had their breakfasts even. The sun had just
risen. He did not expect to see anyone at that hour at the private
car toward which he stepped softly, he just wanted to be there so he
could be near the woman whom, in spite of the fact that they were
separated by the steel and glass walls of the car, he still could
feel in his arms.
We all know the proverb about the early bird and the worm. It seems
almost ungallant even to think it in this instance, but Bertram Meade
certainly caught Helen Illingworth because he was on hand at the
break of day. She too had been moved to early rising, for as he
stopped abreast of the car she came from the door and stood surprised
and, like Aurora, rosy with the dawn, especially in cheeks, if an
adjective so common as rosy may be applied to the flush of color that
flamed beneath her sensitive skin as she saw him and came down to him.
He had not expected to see her and she had not expected to see him,
and it was necessary for both of them to make elaborate explanations
each to the other of this indubitable fact. Explanations are said to
be dangerous; not, however, is that true when they are sandwiched
between kisses. If you rise early enough, that is before anybody
else, you may kiss unobserved by the world; and if you do it softly,
even while you stand under the open window of a car behind the
curtain of which a father nods, you may do it with impunity.
When a brief period of sanity ensued--"I came out to see the bridge,"
said the girl.
"I had a sweeter object in view than any structures of stone and
steel."
"Knowing man as I do, I infer----" began the woman archly.
"Your deductive powers, like yourself, are beyond praise," he
interrupted.
"Some lady in the field?" she concluded.
"In the car."
"But you couldn't see me," she began, with dismay well assumed.
"In my mind's eye I can see nothing else, not even the bridge. When
I look at that bridge the sound of your voice speaks to me in every
whisper of the wind through the steel. I can hear the swish of the
silk of your dress, the grind of the slipping gusset as I did last
night. I can recall the beating of your heart as I caught you and we
stood rocking on the very edge. It would not have been such a bad
death after all," he continued, "for we would have gone down together
and the last beat of each heart would have been against the last beat
of the other."
The woman looked at him. The gay badinage with which they had begun
suddenly seemed inappropriate.
"It's better to live together," she said softly, "even than to die
together."
"Yes, of course. But I am not sure of----"
"Me?"
"Of myself. I don't see how such happiness can come to me. I've
done nothing to deserve it."
"You're making the bridge."
"A man might make a million bridges and not be worthy of one woman
like you."
"I told you last night that to hear you say that, even though it is
not true and I know it isn't----" she went on, stopping his protest
with her hand lightly touching his lips.
"I didn't make it half strong enough," he interposed, kissing her
fingers.
"It was worth all the risk and I don't know why you have any fears.
I belong to you now. If it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have been
here at all. My life is yours by right of conquest."
"Only for that?" cried the man.
"And by my heart's gift as well," she added softly.
"Oh," said Meade, "I can't understand it. It's beyond me."
He looked at her, fresh, white, sweet, cool, lovely, and then at
himself, rough, rugged, stark, strong. Now Helen Illingworth was not
fragile or delicate, but one of the charms of woman is that if she
wills she can easily look that which she is not, on occasion. He
knew that she was a strong, vigorous young woman, yet it pleased him
to think of her then as a flower, spirituelle, daintily dependent.
She looked the part and she acted it too, because she divined his
wish.
She laid her hand on his arm. The light pressure which thrilled him
telegraphed dependence, abandonment, trust, through the fibers of his
being to his very soul. He looked down at her hand. It was not the
smallest thing on earth. It was the firm hand of the splendid woman.
It fell upon his arm lightly, not with the delicate touch of the hand
of little use, but with a pressure of beautiful proportion and
womanly tenderness.
Yet it seemed to him smaller than he imagined a woman's hand could be
and the hand with which he clasped hers appeared huge and rough
indeed. And it seemed so to her, too, his hand that is, yet the
qualities that he deprecated in his own hands were those that she
admired. She, too, was conscious of the difference between her
fleecy lightness and his severe strength.
They walked up and down the platform between the bridge and the car,
her hand still on his arm. By no mental process whatsoever could one
conclude that she really needed support or that he actually gave it,
yet both agreed on those points. Love, like Gratiano, speaketh an
infinite deal of nothing, but unlike the Venetian the conversers
treasure the lightest word. They were both to live on the
remembrance of the glorious trivialities, from the world's point of
view, of last night and that morning. Yes, they were destined to
live on those, far, far longer than they dreamed.
So pacing up and down they came at last to stop beside the car.
There were signs of life about it. They passed by it to the
observation platform. Meade climbed up, opened the gate, let down
the step, and helped his lady-love up. She invited him to breakfast,
preparations for which were already under way. He had not thought
about it and neither had she, although they were both possessed of
healthy appetites, but it was an excuse for a further exchange of the
limitless variety of trifles which make up the secret and beloved
part of our most cherished recollections.
They sat together in the camp chairs talking and gazing their full.
No ideas were ever so wonderful to her as his; nor to him, as hers.
They had begun to plan their future on the completion of the bridge.
They would go abroad when they were married. He had been everywhere
and seen everything, and so had she, but now they would see them
together. It would be quite different. Life would begin with the
completion of the bridge.
A pencil and a piece of paper lay on the little table which had been
left on the platform the night before. So still had been the summer
night that the paper had not been disturbed by breeze or human hand.
When Helen Illingworth rose to press the electric button to summon an
attendant Meade picked up the scrap and--by what chance who knew,
since he had not taken his eyes from her throughout the long morning,
not even when she told him to look at the bridge--he glanced down at
the paper. She turned to find him looking at it with wrinkled brow.
"What is this?" he asked.
"What is what?" she returned with a little jealousy, for it was the
first moment of attention he had given to anything but to her.
He held it up to her. She saw a curious little sketch on the paper
made with some care so as to show four huge webs of steel connected
at the top and bottom by lacings of steel angles.
"It looks like part of the bridge," she announced with a glance
downward.
"It is a part of the bridge," he said promptly. "It is one of the
big compression members of the lower chord of the truss."
There Was a little trouble in his face of which she was dimly
conscious, yet it was not sufficient to call for comment.
"Mr. Abbott and Mr. Curtiss were talking about it yesterday evening.
Mr. Curtiss said something about its design that I happened to
overhear. One of them must have drawn it. Mr. Abbott probably. I
came out on the platform just before you came to dinner. Mr. Abbott
was telling Mr. Curtiss it was all right. He seemed to have some
doubt. It is all right, isn't it?"
"Of course, of course," said Meade. "You know it's the member we
were discussing last night."
He picked up the pencil, as is the habit of engineers, and began to
sketch just as Abbott had done the night before. As he talked she
bent over him.
"Why," she said, "you're making a little picture of the bridge,
aren't you?"
He dropped the pencil.
"It's a habit we all have."
She picked up the paper and looked at it carefully.
"Finish it," she said, handing it back to him.
"I'll make you a fine drawing of it when I have more time."
"No, just that. It came by chance just as we came to know that we
loved each other."
"Didn't you know it before?" he went on, taking the pencil and laying
the paper on the table while he worked rapidly.
"I hoped. Didn't you?"
"I never dreamed that such a thing could be possible."
"And I had to fall off a bridge to make you speak, did I, incredibly
stupid man?"
"You did, adorably wise woman," he laughed in glad affirmation.
"It is finished," he said as he handed the rough sketch back to her.
She bent over him, looking at it carefully. With a few bold outlines
and expert strokes he had drawn a different sketch above the strut
Curtiss and Abbott had debated over, the outreaching cantilever with
the suspended span, traveler and everything just as it stood.
"There," he said, pointing with his pencil to the outer end of the
floor, "that is where it happened."
She pressed it to her heart.
"I don't have to do this, it is printed there without this, but I
will just keep the sketch to look at it and think of it when we are
parted."
"Good-morning," said the Colonel, coming out of the door of the car.
II
C-10-R
[Illustration: (sketch of part of a bridge truss)]
IX
THE DEFLECTION IN THE MEMBER
Three days after the departure of the Illingworth party the young
engineer fell ill, very much to his disgust. His indisposition was
not serious, but it took the painful, unpleasant, and debilitating
form of follicular tonsilitis, which is about the meanest small thing
that can lay a strong man low.
The bridge could undoubtedly get along without him, but nevertheless
he fretted over the enforced withdrawal from his constant supervision
of the work. Indeed in the end he had to pay for that very fretting,
for he got up too soon and went out too quickly, and was promptly
forced back to bed again as a consequence of his impatience.
Now, after a week's confinement in his cabin, he felt strong enough
to venture out again and to attack his problems. They were personal
problems now, much more intimate than before, for he was building not
only the bridge but weaving in its web of steel his own future
happiness.
Of course he had been able to get out on the rough porch of the
galvanized iron shack which was his own and which, as has been noted,
had been so placed that he had the bridge in full view and all the
operations on it, and the day before he had even walked unsteadily
down to the river bank, where he had been equally surprised and
delighted at the progress that had been made. Abbott was a driver
after his own heart. Really things seemed to have gone on just as
well without him as if he had been present and, as he phrased it, on
the job. He had not been lonely in his illness, for all of the chief
men connected with the construction had done their best to beguile
the tedium of his hours by visiting him whenever they could spare the
time.
Abbott had been especially kind in his somewhat rough-and-ready way.
The big construction superintendent was fond of Meade, although he
held him in a little--contempt is a harsh word, disdain does not
exactly express it, perhaps to say that he undervalued him would be
best. Anyway, he regarded him more as a theoretical than a practical
man and the inevitable antagonism between the theorist and the
practical man, when they are not combined in one personality, was
latent in Abbott's heart.
The building of a bridge in Burma was not the work of a practical man
according to Abbott's idea. That was almost as ideal and visionary
to the hard-headed veteran constructor as building one in the moon.
Yet Abbott had a sneaking respect for the younger man, and more than
a sneaking liking for him. Nightly, he brought to him details of the
progress of the work. That evening, just before leaving, he remarked
in the most casual manner in the world, as if it were a matter of
little or no importance, that C-10-R was a trifle out of line.
Now C-10-R was the biggest member of the great right-hand truss on
the north side of the river. It consisted of four parallel composite
webs, each formed of several plates of steel riveted together. These
webs were connected across their upper and lower edges by diagonal
latticing made of steel angle bars. C-10-R and its parallel
companion member, C-10-L, in the left-hand truss, carried the entire
weight of the cantilever span to the shoe resting on the pier. These
members were sixty feet long and five feet wide. The webs were over
four feet deep and in size and responsibility the great struts were
the most important of the whole structure.
To say that C-10-R was out of line meant that it had buckled, or
bent, or was springing, and had departed from that rigid
rectangularity and parallelism which was absolutely necessary to
maintain the stability and immobility of the truss and the strength
of the bridge. To the theorist nothing on earth could be more
terribly portentous than such a statement, if it were true. To the
practical man, who, to do him justice, had never dealt with such vast
structures--and he was not singular in that because the bridge was
unique on account of its size--the deflection noted meant little or
nothing.
"Good God!" exclaimed Meade, aflame on the instant with anxious
apprehension. The night was warm and he was dressed in his pajamas
and had been lying on the bed. As if he had been shocked into action
he sat up, forgetful of his weakness. "Deflection!" he fairly
shouted at Abbott, who regarded him with half-amused astonishment,
"in the principal compression member, a camber in C-10-R?" he
continued, using an old technical term for such a deviation from the
straight. "Why didn't you tell me?"
By this time Meade had got his feet into his slippers and was
standing erect.
"It isn't enough to make any difference," answered Abbott quickly,
perhaps a little disdainfully.
"It makes all the difference on earth," cried Meade. "It means the
ruin of the bridge."
He reached for his jacket, hanging at the foot of the bed, and
dragged it on him.
"Don't worry about it, youngster," said Abbott rather contemptuously,
although he meant to be soothing. "I'm going to jack it into line
and--here," he cried as Meade bolted out of the door, "you'd better
not excite yourself that way. Come back to bed, man, and----"
But Meade was out of the house. It was summer and the sun had set,
but the long twilight of the high latitude still lingered. There
would be a moon in an hour or two, but none of its light would show
for a long time; meanwhile a few of the brighter stars had appeared
here and there in the graying light of the evening. Before him rose
the gigantic structure of the bridge. For all its airiness it looked
as substantial as the Rock of Gibraltar, and it looked even more
substantial if possible, as the man, seizing a lantern and forgetting
his weakness and everything, ran down beneath the overarching steel
to the pierhead, climbed up to the shoe, and crawled out on the lower
chord as rapidly as he could.
The genius of the father had been inherited in full measure by the
son. Bertram Meade needed but one glance to see the deflection from
the right line in the important member. For all his years of
inexperience he was a better trained engineer than rough-and-ready
Abbott. What appeared to the latter as a slight deflection, Meade
saw in its true relation. There was a variation in the center of the
member of an inch and a half at least, although unnoticeable to an
untrained eye. It had all come in the last week. They had extended
the suspended span far out beyond the edge of the cantilever and,
with the heavy traveler at the end, the downward pressure on the
great lower chord members had greatly increased.
It was a terribly heavy bridge at best. It had to be to sustain so
long a span, the longest in the world. And the load, continuous and
increasing, had brought about this, to the layman trifling, to the
engineer mighty, bend. If it bent that way under that much of a
load, what would it do when the whole great span was completed and it
had to carry its transitory loads of traffic beside?
Not infrequently man is sensible of the weakness of a plan although
he cannot demonstrate it. _Per contra_ man rests confident in a
conclusion at which he has arrived, although he cannot set forth the
steps to justify it. When two such different views meet it is
natural that age, experience, reputation, and authority shall carry
the day. Although Bertram Meade, Junior, had never been persuaded in
all particulars of the soundness of his father's design, and could
not be persuaded, that vast experience, that great reputation, that
undoubted ability with its long record of brilliant achievement had
at last silenced him. He had accepted through loyalty that which he
could not accept in argument. Once accepted, he acted accordingly,
heartily seconding and carrying out the wishes of the older and, as
the world would say, the abler man.
Now there is something empiric about every great engineering
enterprise, but more especially if it presents a new problem. If
there were not it would not be great. The work of the engineer in
that event would be purely mechanical and devoid of that imaginative
touch which always is a part of true greatness. Inevitably new
stresses are to be provided for and no man can tell, until by the
test of actual experience, whether or not he has absolutely succeeded
in taking up that stress. There is no absolute certitude in empiric
formulæ, because the whole range of conditions on which they are
based is not known or cannot be duplicated by him who applies them.
Finally Meade concluded that, as usual, he had been wrong and the old
man right, and he was glad indeed to be able to come to that
decision. He was led the more easily and inevitably thereto because
of a certain quality that all engineers possess, a habit of mind in
which they all share. When the thing itself is before them
concretely, especially if it looks to be of sufficient bigness, the
invariable tendency of the engineer is to trust it despite previous
calculations. It is there, it stands, it is; though it moves not it
has a being; and the great monster strut, sixty feet long, seemed to
him big enough and rigid enough, if placed on the fulcrum of
Archimedes, to hold up and even to move the world.
The thing that smote the engineer hardest, as Abbott spoke, was that
this weakness was exactly what he had foreseen and pointed out. It
was the possibility of the inability of this great member to carry
the stress that young Meade had deduced by using the formula of
Schmidt-Chemnitz. It was this point, and this point particularly,
that he had dwelt upon with his father and which they had argued to a
finish. So strongly had he been impressed with the possible
structural weakness of this member that he had put himself on record
in writing to his father. The letter he had written had been
destroyed, so he had been informed, but he remembered it perfectly.
The old man had overborne him and now the little curve, one and a
half to one and three-quarter inches in sixty feet, established the
accuracy of his unheeded contention.
Although he could find no fault with his calculations he had decided
he must have failed in some way, since he could not convince his
father; and, in the face of the great experience and ability and the
serene confidence of the old engineer, he had finally yielded the
point. Had it been anyone else he would never have dropped it. He
would have fought it out to the very end. Vainly now he wished he
had not let the old habit of affection and the little touch of awe
with which he regarded his father persuade him against his reason.
Affection and business never did mingle. Sentiment and science?
Yes, they have a relation, but not when it comes to engineering
calculations. Now just because he had given in to his father the old
man would be ruined. The younger Meade's experience was not great
enough to devise ways and means of strengthening the bridge entirely
satisfactorily if the deflection continued. Perhaps no one could do
that. A large part of it might even have to be taken down. The
question would have to be referred to his father at the earliest
possible moment, he reflected, as he noted the deflection. And he
felt a generous pang of sorrow at the humiliation the older man would
certainly feel when his error was proved to him.
Meade realized in a flash that he had been living as it were in a
fool's paradise, lulled by his feeling that his father must be right.
Other things than professional honor and reputation and material
success were involved. When the bridge was completed he was to have
for his wife the woman he loved, so the old Colonel had said. When
the bridge was completed his father was to retire with this last work
as his crown. When the bridge was completed his own career was to
begin. Now! Good God! The pang that shot into his heart was almost
as great as that which touched him when Helen Illingworth fell with
the slipping gusset plate and he only caught her at the last moment.
He stopped, feeling suddenly ill, as a very nervous, high-strung man
may feel under the sudden and unexpected physical demand of a great
shock. The reaction between mental and physical conditions was
immediate and overpowering. He was weak still from the tonsilitis.
He leaned against the diagonal at the end of C-10-R, clinging to it
tightly to keep from falling, and again that strange fit of trembling
he had suffered from on the bridge with Helen Illingworth, for which
he cursed himself as a coward, struck him. Abbott, who had followed
more slowly, stopped by him, somewhat surprised, somewhat amused,
more indignant than both.
"Abbott," said Meade fiercely as the erecting engineer joined him on
the pierhead, "if you put another pound of load on that cantilever I
will not be answerable for the consequences."
"What do you mean?"
"That deflection is nearly two inches deep now and every ounce or
pound of added weight you put upon it will make it greater. Its
limit will be reached mighty soon. If it collapses--" he threw up
his hands--"the whole thing will go."
"Yes, if it collapses, that's true," said Abbott, "but it won't."
"You're mad," said Meade, taking unfortunately the wrong course with
the older man.
"Why, boy," said Abbott, "that bridge will stand as long as creation.
Look at it. That buckle doesn't amount to anything. It is only in
one truss anyway. The corresponding member in the other truss is
perfectly straight."
"Abbott, for God's sake, hear me," pleaded Meade in desperation.
"Draw back the traveler and put no more men on the bridge. Stop work
until we can get word to----"
"If I thought there was the least danger," said the other man, "I
would do what you say, of course, but we are way behind now--weeks
behind in spite of my driving. They don't seem to be able to get the
stuff to me. There's a big penalty for non-completion of the
contract within the limits. I get wires every day urging me on."
"I don't care what you get."
"You heard what the Colonel said last week."
"Yes, I heard, but it makes no difference, the work must stop."
"It can't--and it shan't," cried the other with sudden fierceness.
"Abbott!"
"Don't talk to me, boy. Damn the camber! I know my business. This
isn't the first deflection I ever saw, is it?"
"No, of course not."
"Well, I tell you I can jack it back. That member's big enough and
strong enough to hold up the world."
"What are you going to jack against?" Meade asked, and for the first
time a little of Abbott's contempt appeared in the younger man's
voice.
Abbott reflected that there was nothing firm enough to serve as a
support for jacks and said rather grudgingly, for it seemed like a
concession to the younger and junior engineer:
"Well, I can hook on to the opposite truss and pull it back with turn
buckles."
"That will damage the other truss too much, Abbott," Meade retorted
promptly. "It isn't possible."
"Then I'll think up some other scheme," returned Abbott
indifferently, as if humoring the other. "We can't wait, we've got
to hurry it along."
The two men made no special attempt to conceal their feelings.
Abbott's indifference had been at first good-humored, but it was fast
taking on another character and Meade's insistence and his evident
bad opinion of the other man's obstinacy did not tend to make the
discussion more amicable, or to convince either that the other was
right or even that his opinions should be respected.
"Abbott, I'm just as much interested in finishing the job in a hurry
as you are," explained Meade in a last effort to move him, and too
late appealing to him more gently. "I--you see--Miss Illingworth,
her father said----"
"Oh, you get the girl when the bridge is up?" asked Abbott shrewdly.
"Yes."
"Well, rest easy, son, that will only make me work the harder. I
like you in spite of your fool ideas. I'm going to make a record for
myself on this bridge. It's the biggest thing in the world. There's
going to be no penalty against us on account of me. I won't stop
work a minute," he explained patronizingly.
"There will be a bigger penalty if you don't do what I say, and paid
in another way, in blood. And it will be your fault."
Now both men were angry and in their passion they confronted each
other more resolute and fierce than ever.
"Look here," said Abbott, his fiery temper suddenly breaking from his
control, "who are you anyway? You're only a kid engineer. Your
father approved of the plan of this bridge. I guess we can afford to
bank on his reputation rather than yours."
"Well, he doesn't know of this."
"Nobody is on the bridge now, and nobody is going to be on there
until tomorrow morning. Wire him if you like. He'll wire
Illingworth down at Martlet and we'll get word what to do."
"You won't put any men at work on the bridge until----"
"Not until tomorrow morning," said Abbott decisively, "if I don't
hear from somebody at Martlet tomorrow morning the work goes on."
"But if my father wires you----"
"I take orders from the Martlet Company and no one else," was the
short answer with which Abbott turned away in finality, so that the
other realized the interview was over.
Meade wasted no more pleas on Abbott. As ill luck would have it
something had happened to the telephone and telegraph wires between
the city and the camp. After vainly trying to get a connection when
he climbed back to the office Meade dressed himself, got a handcar,
and was hurried to the nearest town on the railroad's main line.
From there he sent a telegram and tried to get connection with New
York by telephone, but failed. Moved by a natural impulse, in
default of other means of communication, he jumped on the midnight
train for New York. He would go himself in person and attend to the
grave affair. Nothing whatever could be so important.
There had been some friction between Abbott and Meade before on
occasions, not serious, but several times Meade had ventured to
suggest something which to Abbott seemed useless and unnecessary, and
the fact that subsequent events had more often than not proved
Meade's suggestions to be worth while, had not put Abbott in
altogether the best mood toward his young colleague. Abbott never
forgot that Meade had really no official connection with the building
of the bridge, and that he was only there as a special representative
of his father, and although he could not help liking the younger man,
Abbott would have been better pleased if he had been left alone.
He was too honorable and too competent a man to diverge in any way
from the specifications and plans, but in all those matters which are
sometimes of great moment and which are of necessity left to the
discretion of the erector, he liked to be free to follow his own
devices. Consequently he was not predisposed to view any suggestions
from Meade with any great degree of cordiality, or to receive what
had amounted to a positive command with any especial warmth. As he
reflected on the heated debate in his room before he went to sleep he
almost blamed himself for what he considered a censurable weakness in
having suggested that Colonel Illingworth be bothered by wire with
such a trifling proposition. And so obsessed was he by his
conviction of the strength of the bridge and his ability to bring
back the wavering member to its proper relationship to the other
parts of the structure or, if he could not, of the comparative
unimportance of the deflection, that after Meade's departure he
almost found himself wishing that something would prevent
communication between New York and Martlet until he had had a chance
to show that he was right.
Meade had not gone about it in the right way to move a man of
Abbott's temperament. He realized that as he lay awake on the
sleeper speeding to New York. Abbott was a man who could not be
driven. He was a tremendous driver himself and naturally he could
not take his own medicine. If Meade had received the announcement
more quietly and if he had by some subtle suggestion put the idea of
danger into Abbott's mind all would have been well, for when he was
not blinded by prejudice, or his authority or his ability questioned,
Abbott was a sensible man thoroughly to be depended upon. But the
news had come to Meade with such suddenness, Abbott had only casually
mentioned it at the close of a lengthy conversation regarding the
progress of the work as if it were a matter of no especial moment,
that the sudden shock had thrown Meade off his balance.
Thereafter he could see nothing but danger and the necessity for
action. How he should handle his superior, or rather the bridge's
superior, was the last thing in his mind. Aside from his natural
pride in his father and in the bridge and his fear that lives would
be lost if it failed, unless he could get the men withdrawn, there
was the complication of his engagement to Helen Illingworth.
Meade could not close his eyes, he could not sleep a moment on the
train. His mind was in a turmoil. Prayers that he would get to his
father and the bridge people in time to stop work and prevent loss of
life, schemes for taking up the deflection, strengthening the member,
and completing the bridge, and fears that he would lose the woman,
stayed with him through the night.
He was too filled with anxiety and alarm to be anxious as to whether
he was having a relapse or not, but it was a white-faced, bloodshot
man in rough field garb--not intending or expecting to come to New
York, he had not taken time to dress properly, he had dragged on the
clothes at hand in his agitation--who half reeled through the gates
of the Grand Central Station that morning while curious people looked
at him with interest and amazement.
To add to his misfortune the train had been delayed by a disastrous
freight wreck on the line, and was two hours late. Everything was
against him. Even the taxicab burst a tire and delayed him further
in his progress downtown. It was ten o'clock before he reached his
father's office in the Uplift Building, when he should have arrived
much earlier. It was with frantic haste that he ran to the elevator
and then to the office.
X
THE SON OF HIS FATHER INDEED
Meade, Senior, was an old man. Although unlike Moses his eye was dim
and his natural force abated, the evidences of power were still
apparent, especially to the observant. There rose the broad brow of
the thinker. His power of intense concentration was expressed
outwardly by a directness of gaze from the old eyes which, though
faded, could flash on occasion. Other facial characteristics of that
snow-crowned, leonine head, which bespoke that imaginative power
without which a great engineer could not be in spite of all his
scientific exactitudes, had not been cut out of his countenance by
the pruning knife of time.
He was a great engineer and looked it, sitting alone in his office
with the telegram crushed in his trembling hand, despite the fact
that his gray face was the very picture of unwonted weakness, of
impotency, and abiding horror. The message had struck him a terrific
blow. He had reeled under it and had sunk down in the chair in a
state of nervous collapse.
Time was when he would have rallied from the shock, when the stroke
of fortune would have found him ready to deal blow for blow. But he
was now too old for that. He saw himself for the little remainder of
his life bereft of all title and dignity, shamed, dishonored, with
the blood of men and the tears of women and little children upon him.
The telegram fairly burned the clammy palm of his hand. He would
fain have dropped it yet he could not. Slowly he opened it once
more. Ordinarily, powerful glasses stimulated his vision. He needed
nothing to read it again. It is doubtful whether his eyes saw it or
not and there was not need, for the message was burned into his brain.
To a layman the message was harmless enough, indeed, inexplicable,
but to the great engineer it spelled failure in the great project
with which he had fondly hoped to crown his long, distinguished, and
honorable career. It meant financial ruin to great men who had
trusted to his skill; death and destruction to smaller men who had
confided in his assurance; deprivation, sorrow, hardship, starvation,
to dependent women and children.
He read again the mysterious words.
"_One and three-quarter inch camber in C_-10-_R_."
There could be no mistake. The name that was signed to it was the
name of his son, the young engineer, the child of his father's old
age, whom he himself had trained to follow in his footsteps, to don
the royal mantle of supremacy when he had laid it aside. Other
things connected themselves with the hideous fact conveyed by the
telegram. The boy, as the old man thought of him, had ventured to
dispute his father's figures, to question his father's design, but
the elder man had overborne him with his vast experience, his great
authority, his extensive learning, his high reputation. Age had
laughed youth to scorn.
And now the boy was right. Strange to say some little thrill of
pride came to the old engineer at that moment. The boy in this was
greater than he. But it was lost in the imminence and magnitude of
the catastrophe. He tried to find out from the telegram when it had
been sent. That day was a holiday--the birthday of one of the
Worthies of the Republic--in some of the United States, New York and
Pennsylvania among them, and only by chance had he come down to the
office that morning. The wire was dated the night before. Perhaps
even--no, the morning papers would have said if the inevitable
accident had occurred. And he recalled that the state from which the
bridge ran did not observe that day as a holiday. They would be
working on the International as usual unless----
One and three-quarter inches of deflection! Good God! No bridge
that was ever made could stand with a bend like that in the principal
member of its compression chord, much less so vast a structure as
that which was to span the greatest of rivers and to bring nation
into touch with nation. He ought to do something, but what was there
to do? Presently, doubtless, his mind would clear. But on the
instant all he could think of was the impending ruin.
The Uplift Building, in which he had his offices, was mainly deserted
on account of the holiday. The banks were closed and the offices and
most of the shops and stores. It was very still in the hall and,
therefore, he heard distinctly the door of the single elevator in
service open with an unusual crash, then the sound of rapid footsteps
along the corridor as of someone running. They stopped before the
outer door of the suite which bore his name. Instantly he suspected
a messenger of disaster. The door was opened, the office was
crossed, a hand was on the inner door.
The old engineer strove vainly to rise to meet the bearer of evil
tidings, but failed. His trembling limbs would not support him. He
sank back almost as one dead waiting the shock, the blow. It was not
so much of himself as of the consequences to others he thought,
although the one failure would dissolve the fame he had gained by all
the successes of the past.
When the door was opened, instinctively he put his arm across his
eyes as if to shield himself from the attack.
"Father," exclaimed the newcomer.
"Thank God," said the old man, dropping his arm, "you are here."
"You got my telegram?"
The other silently exhibited the crumpled paper in his hand.
"What have you done?"
"Why, I--nothing."
"Good God! Nothing! Why, you must have received it early this
morning. I--
"It's a holiday, don't you know? I only got it a few moments ago.
The bridge?"
"Still stands."
"But for how long?"
"I can't say. The Martlet's resident engineer is mad. I begged,
threatened, implored. I tried to get him to stop work, to take the
men off the bridge, to withdraw the traveler, but he won't do it.
Said you designed it, you knew. I was only a cub."
"But the camber?"
"He said, 'Damn the camber, I'll jack it into line again.' Like
every other engineer who sees a big thing before him it looks to him
as if it would last forever. I tried to get you on the telephone
here and at the house last night and failed. I wired you. Then I
jumped on the midnight express and----"
"What is to be done?" asked the old man.
Meade, Senior, was thankful that the younger man had not said, "I
told you so," as well he might. But really his father's condition
was so pitiful that the son had not the heart.
"Telegraph the Martlet Bridge Company at once," he answered.
"What shall we say?" asked the old man, uncertainly.
The young man shot a quick look at him, that question evidenced the
violence of the shock. His father was old, broken, helpless,
dependent, at last....
"Give me the blank," he answered, "I'll wire in your name."
He repeated the telegram that he had sent to his father and added
these words as he signed the old man's name to it:
"_Put no more load on the bridge. Withdraw men and traveler._"
He read the message to his father. The old man nodded helplessly.
The young man seized the telephone, called up the Western Union and
soon the message was on the wire to the great bridge works in the
Pennsylvania hills.
"Now, father," said the young man encouragingly, "don't give up. The
Martlet people will pay attention to that message. Even if the
bridge goes down, there will be no lives lost."
"How many men are working on it?"
"About two hundred. Abbott told me he wouldn't take a single man
off. I wanted to tell them myself, but I couldn't do that. He is in
charge. I am only representing you. He would not even agree to take
direction from you."
"Of course not."
"We will get hold of the bridge people. Colonel Illingworth will
telegraph Abbott to back up the traveler, withdraw the men, and get
all possible load off the member. Pull yourself together. Let's
figure out some way to strengthen it until we can replace it, or
devise----"
"You are right, boy, you are right," said the old man, rising in his
chair and turning toward his desk. "Let us get to work."
"Good," said the young man. "We ought to hear from Colonel
Illingworth in half an hour and we'll pull the thing through yet."
XI
THE DEATH MESSAGE ON THE WIRE
"I can't understand why we don't hear," said the young engineer,
walking up and down the room in his agitation. "Two telegrams and
now we can't get a telephone connection, or at least any answer after
our repeated calls."
"It's a holiday there as well as here," said the older man. "There
is no one in the office at Martlet."
"I'll try the telephone again. Someone may come in at any time."
He sat down at the desk, and after five minutes of feverish and
excited waiting he finally did get the office of the Martlet Bridge
Company. By a happy fortune it appeared that someone happened to
come into the office just at that moment.
"This is Meade," began the young man, "the consulting engineer of the
International Bridge. Understand? Yes. Well, at ten-thirty this
morning I sent a telegram to Colonel Illingworth and an hour later I
sent another. I've had no reply. I've been trying hard to get the
office on the telephone ever since. What's that?" Young Meade
turned to his father. "He says there's been no one in the office on
account of the holiday. Both telegrams are on the desk. He just
chanced to come in or I couldn't have got the message through."
"It's too late, too late," said the father, wringing his hands.
"Wait," said the son. He turned to the telephone again. "Give me
your name--Johnson--you're one of the clerks there? Well, telephone
Colonel Illingworth at his home and tell him to call me at this
office at once. I'll hold this connection with you until I hear
you've got him. It's most important. We're on the right track now,
father," continued the young man reassuringly. "The bridge must be
all right yet. We would have heard at once if it weren't. Keep up
your courage. We're going to pull through, somehow."
In such talk a few anxious minutes passed.
"Yes," suddenly broke out the younger Meade, who had kept the
receiver to his ear. "What! You can't find him? He isn't at home?
He has gone away? Is the vice-president there--the
superintendent--anybody? The men are having a jollification in the
mountains, you say, and everybody has gone? How far away are they?
Twenty miles! On the railroad? They went in wagons? There's no
telephone? Now, listen, Johnson, this is what you must do. Get a
car, the strongest and fastest you can rent and the boldest
chauffeur, and a couple of men on horses too, and send up to that
place wherever they are, and tell Colonel Illingworth that he must
telephone me and come to his office at once. There are telegrams
there that mean life and death and the safety of the bridge. You
understand? Good. He says he'll do it, father. We've done all we
can," he added. He hung up the receiver, sprang to his feet, looked
at his watch. "It's so important that I'll go down there myself. I
can catch the two-o'clock train, and that will get me there in two
hours. You stay quietly here in the office and wait until I get in
touch with those people. I mean, I want to know where I can reach
you instantly."
"I'll stay right here, my boy. Go, and God bless you."
As usual when in a great hurry there were unexpected delays and the
clock on the tower above the big structural shop was striking five
when a rickety station wagon, drawn by an exhausted horse, which had
been driven unsparingly, drew up before the office door. Flinging
the money at the driver, Meade sprang down from his seat and dashed
up the steps. He threw open the door and confronted Johnson.
"Did you get him?" he cried.
"He isn't here yet. I sent an automobile and two men on horseback
and----"
The next minute the faint note of an automobile horn sounded far down
the valley.
"I hope to God that is he," cried the young engineer, running to the
window.
"That's the car I sent," said Johnson, peering over his shoulder.
"And there are people in it. It's coming this way."
"Johnson," said Meade, "you have acted well in this crisis and I will
see that the Bridge Company remembers it."
"Would you mind telling me what the matter is, Mr. Meade?"
"Matter! The International----"
"Bert," exclaimed a joyous voice, as Helen Illingworth, smiling in
delighted surprise, stepped through the open door and stood expectant
with outstretched hands.
Young Johnson was as discreet as he was prompt and ready. He walked
to the window out of which he stared, with his back ostentatiously
turned toward them. Most considerately he even whistled a little
tune and drummed noisily upon the panes. After a quick glance at the
other man, Meade swept the girl to his heart and held her there a
moment. He did not kiss her before he released her. The woman's
passionate look at him was caress enough and his own adoring glance
fairly enveloped her with emotion. She looked at Johnson and her
brow wrinkled in slight annoyance, but, though he felt unwelcome,
that young man could not go and he had sense enough to know that he
would be needed and that no more time could be wasted by the lovers.
He coughed and turned as the two separated. It was the woman who
recovered her poise quicker. To be sure she did not have the burden
upon her shoulders that Meade had to support.
"What were you saying about our bridge when I came into the room?"
she began, and Meade fully understood the slight but unmistakable
emphasis in the pronoun--our bridge, indeed--"I was lying down this
afternoon, but when I awakened my maid told me about your urgent
calls for father," she ran on, realizing that some trouble portended
and seeking to help her lover by giving him time. "I knew something
must be wrong, so I came here. I didn't expect to see you. Oh, what
is it?" she broke off, suddenly realizing from the mental strain in
her lover's face, which the sudden sight of her had caused him to
conceal for a moment, that something terribly serious had happened,
and she turned a little pale herself as she asked the question, not
dreaming what the answer would be.
"Helen," said the young man, stepping toward her and taking her hands
again, "we're in awful trouble."
"If it is any trouble I can share, Bert," said the girl, flashing at
him a look which set his pulses bounding--at least she was to be
depended on--"you know you can count on me."
"I know I can," he exclaimed gratefully.
"Now tell me."
"The International Bridge is about to fail."
The color came to her face again. Was that all? came into her mind.
That was serious enough, of course, but it would not matter in the
long run. Through its structural weakness the bridge might fail;
through Abbott's obstinacy and pig-headedness those men might die on
it, his father's reputation might go and his own, but as he looked
into the eyes of the woman he knew that all these things would make
no difference to her. Heart once given, love once proffered, they
were his to the end. Her father! Well, Colonel Illingworth was not
the deciding voice, so she had said before. That thought flashed
into Meade's mind. Yet the glad consciousness was accompanied by a
firm resolution to abide by the conditions as set forth by Colonel
Illingworth. Bridge and woman, they went together for him. Indeed
he intended to save his father, even if his own life and happiness,
interwoven with the bridge, were the price of his endeavor. No one
should ever know. It would be his fault. It was. He should have
insisted on his contentions.
He would never involve in his own ruin this glorious woman, whatever
her trust, her affection, her willingness. That bright youthful life
at least should not go down with the bridge. The awful Web of Steel
should not catch her in its meshes. He would tear the rigid bars
apart with his own bleeding hands before that should happen.
Yet he would not have been the man she loved, the man who loved her,
if he had not thrilled to her splendid ardent devotion, her
whole-hearted trust in him. He did not quite realize that, as it
takes two to make a quarrel, no man, however determined upon a
course, can absolutely settle a woman's relationship to him without
her consent, especially when he loves her and has told her so and
received her love in return.
How much of all this Helen Illingworth realized, what her thoughts
were, what resolutions she came to, what determinations were her own,
her lover could not tell. She recognized the awful gravity, the
terrible seriousness, of the situation of course. The bridge meant
much to her even if in quite a different way. It was there he had
saved her from the awful fall. It was there that he had told her
that he loved her. If she had been given the choice she would have
embraced the risk for the avowal if it could not have been brought
about otherwise. The bridge might fall, but it was as eternal as her
affection in her memory. Their engagement, or their marriage, had
been made dependent upon the successful completion of the bridge.
What of that? The proviso meant nothing to her when she looked at
the white-faced agonized man to whom she had given herself.
Who dared condition love? What parental injunction could bind the
free movement of human hearts? Age? What did age know about it?
Here were youth, sorrow, love, life. While they had being they
belonged to each other. Not the trusses and stringers of the great
bridge were stronger than the intangible ties that bound heart to
heart, and the steel was not half so real. Bridges might come and
bridges might go, reputations fail and disappear, property be lost in
ruin and disaster--it would make no difference. She was his and he
was hers. The senses of possession and possessed alike would and
should have the mastery.
"It is terrible, of course," she said quietly.
"Appalling."
"But you can do nothing?"
"If I could do you think I'd let the bridge, and you, go without----"
"I'm not going with the bridge," was her quick and decisive
interruption.
They had both forgotten the presence of young Johnson, who was not
only decidedly uncomfortable, but desperately anxious. He was about
to speak when, into this already broken scene, came another
interruption.
There was a rush of wheels on the driveway outside, the roar of a
motor. Before Meade could answer the statement, into the room burst
Colonel Illingworth. He was covered with dust, his face was white,
his eyes filled with anxiety. The character of the summons had
disquieted him beyond measure. Back of him came Severence, the
vice-president, and Curtiss, the chief engineer.
"Meade, what of the bridge?" he burst out, with a quick nod to his
daughter, knowing that nothing else could have brought the engineer
there, especially in the light of the messages received.
Colonel Illingworth had not stopped to hunt for a wayside telephone.
The automobile driven madly, recklessly through the hills and over
the rough roads, had brought him directly to the office in the
shortest possible time.
"There is a deflection one inch and three-quarters deep in one of the
compression members, C-10-R," was the prompt and terrible answer.
Colonel Illingworth had not been president of the Martlet Bridge
Company for so long without learning something of practical
construction. He was easily enough of an engineer to realize
instantly what that statement meant.
"When did you discover it?" he snapped out.
"Last night."
"Is the bridge gone?"
"Not yet."
"Why didn't you let us know?"
"I telegraphed father and, not hearing from him, I came down on the
midnight train. It is a holiday in New York as well as here. I just
happened to meet father in the office. He sent a telegram to you and
not hearing from you, duplicated it an hour later. I tried half a
dozen times to get you on the telephone and finally, by a happy
chance, got hold of young Johnson."
"Where are your father's telegrams?"
"Here."
Colonel Illingworth tore the first open with trembling fingers?
"Why didn't you tell Abbott?" asked the chief engineer.
"You know Abbott. He said the bridge would stand until the world
caved in. Said he could jack the member into line. He wouldn't do a
thing except on direct orders from here."
"Your father wires, 'put no more weight on the bridge.' What shall
we do?" interposed Colonel Illingworth.
"Telegraph Abbott at once."
"If the bridge goes it means ruin to the company," said the agitated
vice-president, who was the financial member of the firm and who
could easily be pardoned for a natural exaggeration under the
terrible circumstances.
"Yes, but if it goes with the men on, it means--Johnson, are you a
telegraph operator?"
"Yes, sir."
"Take the key," said the Colonel, who, having been a soldier, thought
first of the men.
Johnson sat down at the table where the direct wire ran from the
Bridge Company to the Western Union office. He reached his hand out
and laid his fingers on the key. Before he could give the faintest
pressure to the instrument, it suddenly clicked of its own motion.
Everybody in the room stood silent.
"They are calling us, sir," said Johnson.
Colonel Illingworth nodded.
"It is a message from Wilchings, the chief of construction foremen
of," Johnson paused a moment, listening to the rapid click--"The
International----" he said in an awestruck whisper.
It had come!
"Read it, man! Read it, for God's sake!" cried the chief engineer.
"_The bridge is in the river,_" faltered Johnson slowly, word by
word, translating the fearful message on the wire. "_Abbott and one
hundred and fifty men with it._"
XII
THE FAILURE
In spite of himself and his confidence in the bridge, and every look
at the huge trusses rising from the massive piers and extending their
long arms out to meet their sister trusses beginning to rise on the
other side, re-enforced that confidence, Abbott felt a little uneasy
the next morning. At bottom he had more respect for Meade's
technical knowledge than he had displayed or even admitted to
himself. The younger engineer's terrified alarm, his urgent
pleading, his utter forgetfulness of the amenities that usually
prevailed between them, his frantic but futile efforts to telephone,
of which the operator told Abbott in the morning, his hurried
departure to New York, were, to say the least, somewhat disquieting,
much more so than he was fain to admit to himself.
Although it involved a hard and somewhat dangerous climb downward and
took upwards of a half-hour of his valuable time, the first thing the
erecting engineer did in the morning was to go down to the pier head
and make a thorough and careful examination of the buckled member.
C-10-R was the first great member of the right-hand truss, as you
crossed the bridge, that sprang from the steel shoe and reached out
over the water. It was, of course, a part of the great lower chord
of the huge diamond-shaped truss, which, with its parallel sixty feet
away on the other side of the bridge and its two opposites across the
river, supported the whole structure. If anything were wrong,
seriously, irreparably wrong, with the member and it gave way, the
whole truss would go. The other truss would inevitably follow suit,
and the cantilever would immediately collapse. Abbott realized that,
of course, as he climbed carefully down to the pier head and stood on
the shoe.
Now the member was composed of four steel webs, each one made up of
several plates of steel riveted together to form one huge plate.
These four parallel webs were bound into one member and held rigid by
steel lacings, which criss-crossed above and below the edges of the
four webs. These steel lacings were angle bars riveted to the
several webs and were also riveted through plates where they crossed,
and finally were fastened to the edges of the webs. It was this
massive and imposing piece of structural steel work which had got a
little out of line, and which Abbott, perturbed in spite of himself,
had come down to inspect, to see if there were any real ground for
Meade's excitement and alarm.
It is wonderful how well-trained our physical senses may become. The
final perfections of curvature in a great lens are the results of
refinements of the sense of touch in the manufacturer's hands. So
much had long experience taught Abbott that, as he stood by the
member and surveyed it throughout its length, he could easily see
that it had buckled, although the deviation was so slight, about two
inches at its maximum in sixty feet. He brought with him a line and,
with infinite care and pains, he drew it taut across the slight
concavity like a bow-string. He had estimated the camber, or the
distance between the center of the bow and the string, at one and a
half inches. As he made more careful measurements, he discovered
that it was slightly over one and three-quarter inches. Did this
denote an increase? Abbott thought not. The difference simply lay
between an estimate, however careful, and the actual measurements.
An inch and three-quarters in seven hundred and twenty was scarcely
noticeable, not noticeable at all to the untrained eye, unless
actually squinting along the line, and it did not seem very much to
Abbott, standing on the pier head and looking up through the network
of struts and bracing and girders. As he stood there feeling himself
an insignificant figure amid this great interwoven mass of steel,
again the sense of its strength and stability came to him
overpoweringly, so much so that he laughed aloud in a rather grim
fashion at the unwonted nervousness which had been induced in his
mind by Meade's words and actions.
He would have been content to have left the pier head and have
climbed back to the floor of the bridge, but he was a conscientious
man, so he pursued his investigations further. He climbed up on top
of the member, which was easy enough by means of the criss-crossed
lacing, and carefully inspected that lacing. He did not, of course,
look at every one of the bars of steel that bound together the giant
webs that made up the member, but he gave a very careful and minute
scrutiny to the lacings at the center of the concavity, or sidewise
spring from the right line.
He noticed, by getting down on his face and surveying the lacing bars
closely, a number of fine hair-line cracks in the paint, surface
traceries apparently, running here and there from the rivet holes.
The rivets themselves had rather a strained look. Some of the outer
rivets seemed slightly loose, where before they must have been tight,
for the members, like all other parts of the bridge, had been
carefully inspected at the shop and any looseness of the rivets would
certainly have been noticed there. But, at the time these
discoveries were made, Abbott's obsession as to the strength of the
bridge had grown stronger. Lining it out, crawling over it, feeling
its rigidity, he decided that these evident strains were to be
expected. Of course the lacings that held the webs together would
have to take up a terrific stress. They had been designed for that
purpose.
The best engineer had made the design and now the best erector found
no radical fault with it. The other members of the truss were still
in line. Abbott clambered over to the next one and examined some of
the lacings there. He found a few of those hair-line paint cracks;
not quite so many, but still some. He had brought with him a small
hammer and he struck the lacing here and there, straining his ear to
see if he could discover any difference in resonance between those at
this point, at which the greater stress was being brought, because of
the curvature, and others in other places. There was a difference,
but it would have taken a finer ear than Abbott's, somewhat deafened
by the constant noise of the pneumatic riveters, to realize the
danger in the slight increase in sharpness of the resonance of the
lacings that were most strained. Largely because he did not find
anything very glaring, and because he wanted to believe what he
believed, the chief of construction left the pier head and clambered
up to the floor with more satisfaction in his heart than his somewhat
surprising anticipation, which had so unwillingly grown under the
stimulus of Meade's persistence, had led him to expect.
The whistle was just blowing for the commencement of work when he got
back to the bridge floor. He could not but reflect, as the men came
swarming along the tracks to begin their day's work, that the
responsibility for their lives lay with him. Well, Abbott was a big
man in his way, he had assumed responsibilities before and was
perfectly willing to do so again, both for men and bridge. The
workmen at least had no suspicions or premonitions of disaster.
Wilchings, the chief erecting foreman, knew about the camber. It had
not bothered him. As he approached the two exchanged greetings.
"You're out early, Mr. Abbott," said Wilchings.
"Yes, I've been down to examine C-10-R."
Wilchings laughed.
"That little spring is nothing." He looked over the track and
through the maze of bracing at the member. "If we had a pier
somewhere we could hold up the earth with that strut. You didn't
find out anything, did you?"
"Not a thing except some hair-line cracks in the paint around the
rivets."
"You'll often find those where there's a heavy load to take up. This
bridge will stand long after you and I and every man on it has quit
work for good."
Now Wilchings was a man of experience and ability, and if Abbott had
needed any confirmation of his opinion this careless expression would
have served. He did send him across the river to examine the
half-completed cantilever on the other bank, upon which work had been
suspended, awaiting shipments of steel. Wilchings later reported
that it was all right, which was what he expected, of course, and
this also added to Abbott's confidence.
The day was an unusually hard one. A great quantity of structural
steel that had been delayed and which had threatened to hold up the
work, arrived that day and the chief of construction was busier than
he had ever been. He was driving the men with furious energy. Even
under the best conditions it would be well-nigh impossible to
complete the bridge on time. Abbott had pride in carrying out the
contract and the financial question was a considerable one. Had it
not been for that, perhaps, he would have paid more attention to
Meade's appeal. So he hurried on the work at top speed.
But a man may be persuaded and yet not satisfied. All day long
Abbott, confident, yet unforgetting, had in mind that questionable
member. His work kept him on shore a large part of the time and the
further away he got from it and from the powerful persuasiveness of
the actually existent standing bridge, the stronger grew his unease.
He sought to laugh himself out of it, to strengthen his convictions
that it was nothing by self-ridicule. He worked himself up into a
state of positive resentment and anger against Meade. He cursed him
for a fool and himself likewise, still he could not get away from the
thought. It was in his mind. Suppose--it was impossible to suppose!
Late in the afternoon, without saying anything to Wilchings, who had
resumed his regular work, or to anybody in fact, Abbott went down to
look at the member again. He climbed down a hundred feet or more to
make another examination at the expense of much valuable time, for he
had not passed so busy a day as that one since the bridge began.
Abbott's judgment and reasoning told him that it was time thrown
away. Nevertheless, despite his convictions, he went. He made
another careful examination, and, in fact, duplicated his procedure
of the morning. Everything was exactly as it had been. Those
hair-line cracks had troubled him a little despite Wilching's remark.
He studied them a second time. They were just as they had been, so
far as he could tell, no larger, no more numerous. The lacings rang
exactly the same under his hammer.
Abbott was cool enough ordinarily, but he was now so angry with
himself for having given away to foolish fears, that, in a fit of
temper, he threw the hammer into the water--and it was indicative of
how the situation had got on his nerves--as he declared to himself
that he would not go down there again. By this time old Meade and
the bridge people and Curtiss, the chief engineer, must know all
about it. He had actually visited the telegraph office a dozen
times--unnecessarily, of course, since any wire would have been
delivered at once to him. The fact that he had not heard from them
gave him renewed confidence. They evidently regarded it of little
moment. They were probably laughing at Meade, Junior, as they would
laugh at him if they ever learned of his nervousness. He realized,
of course, that he could never jack the springing member back into
line. As Meade had said, there was nothing to jack against. Also it
would be practically impossible to haul it back by turn-buckles
attached to the parallel truss. Indeed he had only said these things
carelessly. It would have to stay the way it was until he got
definite instructions from Martlet what to do.
He climbed back to the floor of the bridge and spent the next
half-hour inspecting the progress of the work. The suspended span
had already been pushed out far beyond the end of the cantilever.
The work on the other side of the river had been stopped. As soon as
they got the suspended span halfway over they would transfer the
workmen and finish the opposite cantilever. Abbott calculated that
perhaps in another week they could get it out if he drove the men.
He looked at his watch, grudgingly observing that it was almost five
o'clock. The men were nothing to Abbott. The bridge was everything.
That is not to say he was heartless, but the bridge and its erection
were supreme in his mind. As he stood surveying the mighty structure
he felt as Napoleon might have felt when he looked beyond the men and
horses who would perish in the next battle he was planning, to the
mighty end he had in view.
The material was arriving and everything was going on with such a
swing and vigor that he would fain have kept them at work an hour or
two longer. The men themselves did not feel that way. Some of the
employees of the higher grades had got the obsession of the bridge,
but to most of them it was the thing they worked at, by which they
got their daily bread--nothing more.
Those who worked by the day were already laying aside their tools,
and preparing for their departure. They always would get ready so
that at the signal all that was left to do was to stop. The
riveters, who were paid by the piece, kept at it always to the very
last minute. As Abbott watched and waited he was unusually conscious
in some strange way of the wild clamor of the work. He had been
standing near the outer end of the cantilever and, as if to get rid
of it, he turned and walked toward the bank. The pneumatic riveters
were rat-tat-tatting on the rivet heads with a perfectly damnable
iteration of insistent sound. The steam winch on the traveler was
blowing off steam almost like a locomotive, preparatory to the rest
of the night. A confused babel of voices, the clatter of hammers,
the slithering, ringing sounds of swinging steel grating against
steel as the huge cranes lifted the girders and braces and dropped
them in their places, the deeper crash of beams being unloaded from
the trucks and dropped heavily on the stringers and floor beams, the
clanking of trucks, the grinding of wheels, the deep breathing of the
locomotives, mingled in a hard, harsh, unharmonious diapason of
horrid sound. Abbott's usual iron nerves had been severely strained
that day. Ordinarily he was as indifferent to those noises as if he
had been a deaf man. Now they irritated him. In his irritation he
turned instinctively to the cause of it.
He was right above the pier head now. He looked down at it through
the struts and floor beams and braces, fastening his gaze on the
questioned member. There it stood satisfactorily, of course. Yet,
something impelled him to walk out on the nearest floor beam to the
extreme edge of the truss and look down at it once more, leaning far
out to see it better. He could get a better view of it with nothing
between it and him. It still stood bravely. It was all right, of
course. He wished that he had never said a word about it to anyone.
He did not see why he could not regard it with the indifference that
it merited. As he stared down at it over the edge of the truss the
whistle for quitting blew.
Every sound of work ceased after the briefest of intervals, except
here and there a few riveters driving home a final rivet kept at it
for a few seconds, but only for a few seconds. Then, for a moment a
silence like death itself intervened. It even seemed as if the ever
blowing wind had been momentarily stilled. That shrill whistle and
the consequent cessation of the work always affected everybody the
same way. There was inevitably and invariably a pause. The contrast
between the noise and its sudden stoppage was so great that the men
instinctively waited a few seconds and drew a breath before they
began to light their pipes, close their tool boxes, pick up their
coats and dinner pails, and resume their conversation as they
strolled along the roadway to the shore.
It seemed to Abbott, who had often noted the psychological effect of
the stoppage of work on the men, that it had never been so silent on
the bridge before. There was almost always a breeze, sometimes a
gale, blowing down or up the gorge through which the river flowed,
but that afternoon not a breath was stirring. The void was as empty
and as still as the hearts or minds of the workmen. Abbott found
himself waiting in strained and unwonted suspense for the next second
or two, when the silence would be broken almost as if by concerted
effort by the men.
While he waited, his eyes were not idle. They were fixed on the
member. The long warm rays of the afternoon sun illuminated it so
clearly that he could see every detail of it. In that second
immediately below him, far down toward the pier head he saw a sudden
flash as of breaking steel. Low, but clear enough in the intense
silence, he heard a popping sound like the snap of a great finger.
Then the bright gleam of freshly broken metal caught his excited
glance.
Abbott instantly realized what was happening. The lacing was giving
way. Meade was right. The member would go and with it---- He had a
second or two to call his own. The habit, the character of the man
put them to the best use possible. The first pop or two was
succeeded by a little rattle as it might be a rain of revolver shots
heard from a distance, as the lacings gave way in quick succession.
It was a sort of accompaniment to what Abbott shouted. He was a man
with a powerful voice and he raised it to its limit and expanded it
to its full compass.
The idle workmen, just beginning to laugh and jest, heard a great cry:
"_Off the bridge, for God's sake!_"
Two or three, among them Wilchings, who happened to be within a few
feet of the landward end, without understanding why, but impelled by
the agony, the appeal, the horror in the great shout of the master
builder, leaped for the shore. On the bridge itself some stepped
forward, some stood still staring, others peered downward. It takes
minutes to tell it and to read it, but probably not three seconds
passed between the first snap of the first lacing bar and the utter
collapse of the member. The great sixty-foot webs of steel wavered
like ribbons in the wind. The bridge shook as if in an earthquake.
There was a heavy, shuddering, swaying movement and then the
six-hundred foot cantilever arm plunged downward, as a great ship
falls into the trough of a mighty sea. Sharp-keyed sounds cracked
out overhead as the truss parted at the apex, the outward half
inclining to the water, the inward half sinking straight down.
Shouts, oaths, screams rose, heard faintly above the mighty bell-like
requiem of great girders, struts, and ties smiting other members and
ringing in the ears of the helpless men like doom. Then, with a
fearful crash, with a mighty shiver, the landward half collapsed on
the low shore, like a house of cards upon which has been laid the
weight of a massive hand. The river section, carrying the greater
load at the top and torn from its base, plunged, like an avalanche of
steel, two hundred feet down into the river, throwing far ahead of
it, as from a giant catapult, the traveler on the outward end of the
suspended span and a locomotive on the floor beneath.
Wilchings, and the few men safe on the shore, stood trembling,
looking at the bare pier head, at the awful tangled mass of wreckage
on the shore between the pier and the bank; floor beam and stringer,
girder and strut, bent, twisted, broken in ragged and horrible ruin,
while the water, deeper than the chasm it had cut, rolled its waves
smoothly over the agitations of the great plunge beyond the pier.
They stared sick and faint at the tangled, interwoven mass of steel,
ribboning in every direction--for in the main the rivets held so it
was not any defect of joints, but structural weakness in the body of
the members that had brought it down--and inclosing as in a net many
bodies that a few seconds before had been living men.
They had seen body after body hurled through the air from the outward
end and, as they gazed fearfully in horror here and there dark
figures floated to the surface of the water. They caught glimpses of
white, dead faces as the mighty current rolled them under and swept
them on. And no sound came from the hundred and fifty who had gone
down with the bridge. The two-hundred foot fall would have killed
them without the smashing and battering and crashing of the great
girders that had fallen upon them or driven them from the floor and
hurled them, crushed and broken, into the river.
They stared across the crumpled ruin between them and the pier and
out beyond the now frightfully bare stretch of water to the
uncompleted truss still rising grandly on the other side and the very
contrast between its mass and strength and splendor emphasized the
frightful, awe-inspiring nakedness of the battered pier before them.
Yes, Meade had been right. Abbott had one swift flash of
acknowledgment, one swift moment packed with such regrets as might
fill a lifetime--an eternity in a Hell of Remorse--before he, like
the rest, had gone down with the bridge!
XIII
THE WOMAN'S CHOICE
The message was received in ghastly silence. The blood ran cold in
the veins as the people in the room took in the awful disaster. No
one spoke for a moment, none moved. They had all been shocked into
insensibility. Colonel Illingworth's face had lost its pallor. It
was fiery red as if gorged with blood. Bertram Meade was whiter than
any other man in the room. He was thinking of his father. What an
end to such a career! One failure to outweigh a thousand successes.
The girl moved first. Her father and the young engineer were the two
men in whom she was most interested, the two who were most deeply
touched. They were both in agony, both in need of her. To which
would she go? Unhesitatingly she stepped to the side of the younger.
For this cause shall a woman leave her father and her mother! And
never believe but that the father saw and understood even in the
midst of his suffering. Youth thinks not, but fathers always know.
Helen Illingworth laid her hand on Meade's arm. She pressed close to
his side. Together they confronted the older man. She had chosen.
"We are ruined," gasped the Colonel, tugging at his collar. "It's
not so much the financial loss, although we put millions into that
bridge, which now is only good for the scrap heap. We could stand
that--but our reputation! We'll never get another contract. I might
as well close the works. And it is your father's fault. It's up to
him. He was the greatest bridge engineer on this continent. He
revised our design. He changed it in accordance with his knowledge
and experience and he gave us column formulas of his own. The blood
of those men is upon his head. Well, sir, I'll let the whole world
know how grossly incompetent he is, how----"
"Sir," said young Meade, standing very erect and whiter than ever,
since the hour had come to take the blame, "the fault is mine. I
made the calculations. I checked and rechecked them. Nobody could
know with absolute certainty the ability of the lower chord members
to resist compression. But whatever the fault, it is mine. My
father had absolutely nothing to do with it. He is----"
"He's got to bear the responsibility," cried the Colonel
passionately. "It has his name----"
"No, I tell you," thundered the younger man. "For I'll proclaim my
own responsibility. You knew that I had much to do with it. You
said at the time that you were playing in great luck because you got
not only the experience of my father, but the knowledge and the
latest methods of his son, for one figure. Now the fault is all mine
and I'll publish the fact from one end of the world to the other."
"It's a load I wouldn't want to have on my conscience," said Colonel
Illingworth.
"The ruin of a great establishment like the Martlet," added Dr.
Severence.
"The dishonor to American engineering," said Curtiss.
"And the awful loss of life," continued the Colonel.
"I assume them all," protested the young man, forcing his lips to
speak, although the cumulative burdens set forth so clearly and so
mercilessly bade fair to crush him.
"It was only a mistake," protested Helen Illingworth, drawing closer
to her lover's side, and with difficulty resisting a temptation to
clasp him in her arms.
"A mistake!" exclaimed her father bitterly.
"You said yourself," urged the woman, turning to the chief engineer,
"that you didn't know whether the designs would work out, that nobody
could know, but you were convinced that they would."
"I did," admitted Curtiss.
"Under the circumstances, then," said the girl, "I stand by----"
"Wait," interrupted the father. "Meade, there is one consequence you
have got to bear that you haven't thought of."
"What is that?"
"Helen."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you think I'd let my daughter marry a man who had ruined me, an
incompetent engineer by his own confession, a----"
"It is just," said Meade. "I have nothing further to do here,
gentlemen. I must go to my father."
"Just or not," cried Helen Illingworth, "I can't allow you to dispose
of me in that way, father. If he is as blamable as he says he is,
and as you say he is, now is the time above all others for the woman
who loves him to stand by him."
"Miss Illingworth, you don't know what you are saying," said Meade,
forcing himself into a cold formality he did not feel. "I am
disgraced, shamed. There is nothing in life for me. My chosen
profession--my reputation--everything is gone."
"The more need you have for me, then."
"It is noble of you. I shall love you forever, but----"
He turned resolutely away and walked doggedly out of the room. Helen
Illingworth made a step to follow him.
"Helen," interposed her father, catching her almost roughly by the
arm in his anger and resentment, "if you go out of this door after
that man, I'll never speak to you again."
"Father, I love you. I'm sorry for you. I would do anything for you
but this. You have your friends. That man, yonder, has nothing,
nothing but me. I must go to him."
She turned and went out of the room without a backward look or
another word, no one detaining her. Now it happened that by hurrying
down the hill in the station wagon, which he had bidden wait for him,
Bertram Meade had just caught a local train, which made connections
with the Reading Express some twenty miles away, and Helen
Illingworth in her dog-cart reached the station platform just in time
to see it depart. She thought quickly and remembered that ten miles
across the country another railroad ran and if she drove hard she
could possibly catch a train which would land her in Jersey City a
few minutes before the train her lover caught.
She ran to the telephone and called for her own car in a hurry. She
jumped into it a few minutes later and told the chauffeur that she
wanted to catch the next express on the Pennsylvania Road. The news
of the fall of the bridge was already abroad in the town. The man
had heard how Meade had taken the blame, and had caught the local by
furious driving. He had heard how Miss Illingworth had followed. It
had become known, through her maid, that Meade and the president's
daughter were engaged. The chauffeur scented a romance at once. And
he drove the car as he had never driven before.
The girl caught the express and reached Manhattan Junction on time.
In this case there was no delay. She had decided _en route_ that it
would be impossible for her to get from the Pennsylvania station to
the Reading station in Jersey City in time to intercept her lover in
the short margin of time at her disposal and she had determined upon
a course of action. She would ride to the Hudson Terminal in the
city and then go first to the office of Bertram Meade, Senior. If he
were not there she would go to his residence. She had visited both
places before, and she was certain that she would find both Meades at
one place or the other.
The newsboys on the street were already crying the loss of the
bridge. She saw the story displayed in lurid red headlines as she
sprang into the taxi and bade the chauffeur hurry her to the Uplift
Building further downtown. The bill she handed him in advance made
him recklessly break the speed-limit, too.
XIV
FOR THE HONOR OF THE SON
Bertram Meade, Senior, had not left the office during the whole long
afternoon. The stunning force of his son's utterly unexpected
announcement had wrecked the father as surely as the defective member
would wreck the bridge. The boy might delude himself with the
youthful hope that something could be done to save it, but the old
man knew that the bridge was doomed and he realized that his own ruin
in professional fame would follow its downfall.
He sat alone in his office quietly waiting for the end, not as one
awaiting a death sentence, but rather as one who had been tried,
convicted, and sentenced might await the moment of execution. As to
the drowning, in the brief interval preceding the final asphyxia,
life unrolls in rapid review, so pictures of the past took form and
shape in his mind. He recalled many failures. No success is
uninterrupted and unbroken. The little stones of progress are
planted on the recurrent hills of mistake. It is through constant
blundering that we arrive. "Roses, roses all the way" generally ends
in the gibbet. He had learned to achieve by failing as everybody
else learns. But failures and mistakes, which were pardonable in the
beginning of his career, could not be condoned now; those should have
taught him. He realized too late that his later achievement had
begot in him a kind of conviction of omniscience, a belief in his own
infallibility, bad for a man. His pride had gone before, hard upon
approached the fall. He had been so sure of himself that even when
the possibility that he might be mistaken had been pointed out and
even argued, he had laughed it to scorn. His son's arguments he had
held lightly on account of his youth and comparative inexperience--to
his sorrow he realized it, too late.
Again came that strange feeling of pride, the only thing which could
in any way alleviate his misery or lighten his despair. It was his
own son who had pointed out the possible defect. Youth more often
than not disregards the counsel of age. In this case age had made
light of the warnings of youth. It was a strange reversal he
thought, grimly recognizing a touch of sardonic and terrible humor in
the situation.
Of course in that swift survey of his career which he was making, he
counted success after success, cumulating in magnitude and greatness.
Not easily, not lightly, had he risen to the chief place in his
profession. Verily his path to the stars had been through
difficulties, as well as failure, and yet he recognized bitterly that
no one would ever think of his success again in the face of this one
awful failure. Certain words that he had read in his Bible came to
him and seemed strangely applicable, though here was no question of
moral guilt.
"_When the righteous turneth away from his righteousness and
committeth iniquity--shall he live? All his righteousness that he
hath done shall not be mentioned; in his trespass that he hath
trespassed and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die._"
He had always rather felt some injustice in the proposition despite
its divine sanction. He had questioned it. He did not question it
now. He knew that when men looked at the finest structure due to his
cunning devising and scientific planning they would say:
"Yes, that's one of Meade's designs. I wonder how long it will
stand. You know he was responsible for the International."
In his case the end would not crown the work. It would destroy it.
He would be remembered as one confounded like the builders of Babel,
the tower by which men overpassed the limit divine.
"Whom the gods destroy they first make mad." Well, he had been mad
enough. If he had only listened to the boy. And now there was
nothing he could do but wait. Yes, as the long hours passed and the
sun declined, and the evening approached, there suddenly flashed upon
him that there was still something he could do. He had experienced
some strange physical sensations during that afternoon, unease in his
breast, some sharp pains about his heart. What did it mean? Was it
mental or physical? He forgot them for the moment in the idea that
had come to him.
When the bridge fell he would avow the whole responsibility, take all
the blame. Fortunately for his plans his son had reduced to writing
his views on the compression members, which had almost taken the form
of protest, and this letter had been handed to his father. His first
mind had been to tear it up after he had read it and had overborne
the objections contained therein, but on second thought he had
carefully filed it away with the original drawings. It was, of
course, in the younger Meade's own handwriting.
He went to his private safe, unlocked it,--and that he was a long
time over the combination might have been indicative of his state,
but he thought of the delay with nothing but vexation--and brought
out the plans. He had intended upon the completion of the bridge to
give the letter back to the young man. He had keenly enjoyed by
anticipation his prospective little triumph when time had proved the
father right, the son wrong. He opened the drawings and found the
letter attached to the sheet of drawings. He put back the other
drawings and closed the safe without locking it. Then he went back
to the desk and considered the document. There were the calculations
of the younger Meade. He was too old and tired to verify them all
and there was no need. The bridge itself was doing that.
But he read the letter over, and in the illumination of the event he
wondered dumbly how he could have failed to see the clearness, the
cogency of the arguments, the finality of the conclusions, even
without the careful computations he could not now follow. He had
been blind, mad. He laid the paper down on his desk and put his hand
to his heart. Yes, that pang must be mental.
We look before and after. Some super-men, perhaps, see more at the
first glance than at the second, but most men, even the great,
comprehend more largely in the afterlook. These papers, when they
were published, with his own comment or admission, would rehabilitate
the younger Meade. They would do more to confirm his own damnation
because it would appear from them that he had been unable even to see
the truth when it was presented to him. Well, he would be condemned
so completely anyway that any addition, or subtraction for that
matter, would scarcely alter the state of affairs.
Of course he would submit those papers to the public at once. Was
there anything else he could do? Yes. He sat down at the desk and
drew a sheet of paper before him and began to write. Slowly,
tremblingly, he persevered, carefully weighing his words before he
traced them on the paper. He had not written very long before the
door of the outer office opened and he heard the sound of soft
footsteps entering the room. He recognized the newcomer. It was old
Shurtliff, a man who had been his private secretary and confidential
clerk for many years. He stopped writing and called to him.
To a wonderful capacity for divining his employer's mind and
completing his often brief and unfinished sentences by an intuition
which was almost uncanny, Shurtliff added a quietness of manner that
would have been annoying to some men, but which was most admirably
complementary to the brisk, brusque, hurried, energetic habit of his
employer and friend, who was all action, who could never draw a plan
even or make a design without leaving it at frequent intervals to
walk up and down the room or to throw up his arms, to get motion and
action into life.
Shurtliff was an old bachelor, gray, thin, tall, reticent. He had
but one passion--Meade, Senior; but one glory--the reputation of the
great engineer. Yes, and as there is no great passion without
jealousy, Shurtliff was filled with womanly jealousy of Bertram Meade
because his father loved him and was proud of him. Shurtliff knew
all about the private affairs of the two engineers, father and son.
He knew all about the protest of the younger Meade. The father had
told him just what he intended to do with it.
Shurtliff's life was bound up in the office. Even holidays and
Sundays found him there for a part of the time at least. He might
not have anything at all to do, indeed his work had been growing
lighter as the older Meade had gradually withdrawn himself from
active practice, but the old secretary was only happy there. He
could breathe more freely and think more pleasantly and live more
contentedly in the office than anywhere else. He had few friends.
None at all who weighed in the balance with the older Meade.
Shurtliff might have been a great man if left to himself or forced to
act for himself. But pursuing a great passion so long as he had he
had merged himself in the more aggressive personality of his employer
and friend. He had received a good engineering education, but had
got into trouble over a failure, a rather bad mistake in his early
career, too big to be rectified, to be forgiven, or condoned. The
older Meade had taken him up, had been kind to him, had offered to
try to put him on his feet again, but Shurtliff had grown to love the
temporary work in which he had been engaged and he had no wish for
anything else.
His big failure had increased his natural timidity, so he stayed on.
He had become a part of the old man's life. As years went by the
secretary came to realize that he could never be anything else. The
ambitions of youth were abandoned. He no longer dreamed dreams or
saw visions. Well, why not? He was absolutely alone in the world.
Meade had dealt generously with his humble coadjutor; Shurtliff
reasoned, perhaps, that he had as much from life as was coming to
him; his church, his modest club, the charities and benefactions he
loved to indulge in, assurance for his old age, and Meade himself.
What could such a man as he ask more?
It has been said that he was jealous of the younger Meade; not
meanly, not unpleasantly jealous, more resentful perhaps at the
relative amount of affection the god of his idolatry bestowed upon
him. He knew that he had to take second place and that he ought to
take second place, and that if he failed to do so it would have been
a reflection upon the character of the man whose personality and fame
were dearer to him than anything else. Yet he did not enjoy that
position.
Young Meade had never been able to get very far into the personality
of Shurtliff, but he liked him and respected him. He realized the
man's devotion to his father and he understood and admired him.
Aside from that jealousy the old man could not but like the young
one. He was too like his father for Shurtliff to dislike him. The
secretary wished him well, he wanted to see him a great engineer. Of
course he could never be the engineer that his father was. That
would not be in the power of man. But still, even if he never
attained that height, he could yet rise very high. Shurtliff would
not admit that there was anything on earth to equal Meade, Senior.
In his dry, quiet way he had laughed with the older man over the
presumption in the younger man's protest and argument. Oh, not in
the presence of the younger man of course, but he had thoroughly
enjoyed it. He was waiting for the time to come for the return of
the protest. Meade, Senior, who had accepted all this devotion
without hesitation and perhaps without fully understanding it, had
told him that as he had heard the protest and argument he should be
present when it was returned. Shurtliff's own engineering skill was
not sufficient, since it had only been kept up by association as a
secretary to the elder man, not in active practice, to enable him to
pass judgment on the point himself.
The secretary was greatly surprised that afternoon as he stopped
beside his own desk in his little private office, partitioned from
the outer room, to hear his name called from the inner office. He
recognized his employer's voice, of course, yet there was a strange
note in it which somehow gave him a sense of uneasiness. He went
into the room at once and stopped aghast.
"Good God, Mr. Meade!" he exclaimed.
Ordinarily he was the quietest and most undemonstrative of men.
There was something soft and subtle about his movements. An
exclamation of that kind had hardly escaped him in the thirty years
of their association. He checked himself instantly, but Meade,
Senior, understood that something of his own mental turmoil, the
agony inward and spiritual, must have appeared in the outward and
visible. He did not doubt his face told the story. The completeness
of the revelation and the terrible nature of the story he could not
guess. The day before Shurtliff had left Meade a hale, hearty,
vigorous, somewhat ruddy man. Now he found his employer old, white,
trembling, stricken. Meade looked at Shurtliff with a lack-luster
eye and with a face that was dead while it was yet alive.
"Mr. Meade," began the secretary a second time, "what is the matter?"
"The International Bridge," answered the other, and the secretary
noticed the strangeness of his voice more and more.
"Yes, sir, what about it?"
"It's about to collapse. Perhaps it has failed already."
"Collapse? Impossible!"
Meade passed his hand over his brow and then brought it down heavily
on the desk.
"As we sit here, maybe, it is falling," he added somberly in a sort
of dull, impersonal way.
Into the mind of the secretary came a foolish old line: "London
bridge is falling down, falling down!" He must be mad or Meade must
be mad.
"I can't believe it, sir. Why?"
"There's a deflection in one of the lower chord members of one and
three-quarters inches. It's bound to collapse. The boy was right,
Shurtliff," explained Meade.
"That can't be, sir," cried out the secretary with startling energy.
He would not allow even the idol itself to say that its feet were of
clay.
"It can and is. He was right and I was wrong. I am ruined."
"Don't say that, sir. You have never failed in anything. There must
be some means."
"Shurtliff, you ought to know there is no power on earth could save
that member. It's only a question of time when it will fail."
"But young Mr. Meade?"
"He telegraphed me last night--this morning. I didn't get the wire.
He couldn't make telephone connections, so he came down on the night
train. Abbott refuses to take the men off the bridge unless he gets
orders from Martlet. We tried to get in touch with them. At last he
went down himself. I am expecting a wire every minute. If the
bridge will only stand until quitting time the men will all be off,
and there won't be any lives lost, but if not----"
The secretary leaned back against the door-jamb, put his hand over
his face, and shook like a leaf. The old man eyed him.
"Don't take it so hard," he said. "It's not your fault, you know."
"Mr. Meade," burst out the other man, "you don't know what it means
to me. A failure myself, I have gloried in you. I--you have been
everything to me, sir. I can't stand it."
"I know," said Meade kindly. He rose and walked over to the man,
laid his hand on his shoulder, took his other hand in his own. "It
hurts more, perhaps, to lose your confidence in me than it would to
lose the confidence of the world."
"I haven't lost any confidence, sir. We all make mistakes. I made
one, you know, and you took me up."
"It's too late for anybody to take me up. Men can't make mistakes at
my age. No more of that. We have still one thing to do."
"And what is that, sir?"
"Set the boy right before the world."
"And ruin yourself?"
"Of course, the truth is what ruins me."
"But if I were your son, sir," said the secretary, "rather than see
you ruined I would take the blame on myself. He can live it down."
"But he is not to blame. On the contrary he was right, and I was
wrong. Here, Shurtliff, is his own letter. You know it, you saw him
give it to me. You heard the conversation and I have written out a
little account explaining it, stating that I made light of his
protests, acknowledging that he was right and I was wrong, taking the
whole blame upon myself. He will be back here tonight I am sure. I
intended to give it to him."
"Oh, don't do that, Mr. Meade."
"You have no son of your own. You don't know what you ask."
"Let the boy bear it," urged Shurtliff desperately. "By my long
service to you, I beg----"
The telephone bell rang.
"The Bridge!" clamored the insistent bell.
The two old men stared at the instrument. It was the weaker who
acted, in obedience to a sign from the engineer. Staggering almost
like a drunken man, Shurtliff left his place by the door and passing
his companion, whose turn it was to shrink back against the wall, he
reached his thin hand out and lifted up the telephone, its bell
vibrating it seemed with angry, venomous persistence through the
quiet room.
"It's a telegram," he whispered. "Yes, this is Mr. Meade's private
secretary. Go on," he answered into the mouthpiece of the telephone.
There was another moment of ghastly silence while he took the
message. It was typical of Shurtliff's character that in spite of
the horrible agitation that filled him, he put the instrument down
carefully on the desk, methodically hanging up the receiver before he
turned to face the other man. He spoke deprecatingly. No woman
could exceed the tenderness he managed to infuse into his ordinarily
dry, emotionless voice.
"The bridge is in the river, sir."
"Of course, any more?"
"Abbott--and one hundred and fifty men with it."
"Oh, my God!" said the old man.
He staggered forward. Shurtliff caught him and helped him down into
the big chair before the desk. The news had been discounted in his
mind, still some kind of hope had lingered there. Now it was over.
"We must wire Martlet," he gasped out.
"The telegraph office said the message was addressed to you and
Martlet, so they have got the news, sir."
"It won't be too late for the last editions of the evening papers,
either," said the old man. "Shurtliff, I was going to give these
documents to the boy when he got back, but I want them to appear
simultaneously with the news of the failure of the bridge. Wait."
He seized the pen and signed his name to the brief letter of
exculpation.
The writing in the body of the document was weak and feeble, the
signature was strong and bold. He gathered the papers up loosely.
"Here," he said, "I want you to take them to a newspaper--the
_Gazette_--that will be certain to issue an extra if it is too late
for the last edition. I want this letter of his with mine to go side
by side with the news. There must not be a moment of uncertainty
about it."
"Mr. Meade, for God's sake----"
"Don't stop to argue with me now. Take a taxi and get there as
quickly as you can. You are carrying my honor, and my son's
reputation. Go."
The old man spoke sharply--imperiously--in such a tone as he rarely
used to the other. White as death himself, and greatly shaken,
Shurtliff took the papers, folded them up methodically, and hunted
for an envelope.
"Don't stay for anything, Shurtliff," repeated Meade, "but go
quickly. Stay at the _Gazette_ office until the extra comes out.
Bring me one. I'll wait here for you."
Shurtliff did not dare to say anything further. Although thousands
of protests rushed to his lips he did not give them utterance. As if
it had been an ordinary commission he was charged to execute, he
turned and walked out of the room. He paused as he reached the door
and looked back. The old engineer sat before his desk, the pen still
in his right hand, his left hand clenched and extended across the
desk. He sat erect. Something of the dignity and the pride and
strength and firmness of the days before had come back to him. He
smiled faintly. His old friend closed the door behind him and
departed.
XV
FOR THE HONOR OF THE FATHER
Two and one-half hours later a group of anxious reporters, clustered
at the door of the Uplift Building, were galvanized into life by the
arrival of a taxicab. The chauffeur had driven like one possessed.
Out of it leaped Bertram Meade. He was recognized instantly.
"At last," said the foremost of them, as he recognized the newcomer.
"We'll get something definite now."
"You know about the bridge, Mr. Meade," asked another, striving to
force his way through the crowd, which broke into a sudden clamor of
questioning.
Meade nodded. He recognized the first speaker, their hands met.
This was a man of his own age named Rodney, who had been Meade's
classmate at Cambridge, his devoted friend thereafter. Instead of
active practice he had chosen to become a writer on scientific
subjects and was there as a representative of _The Engineering News_.
There were sympathy and affection in his voice, and look, and in the
grasp of his hand.
"Have you seen my father, Rodney?" Meade asked, quickly moving to the
elevator, followed by all the men.
"At the house they said he was not there, and here at the office we
get no answer."
As Meade turned he saw his father's secretary coming slowly through
the entrance.
"There's his secretary," he said. "Shurtliff," he called out.
"Yes, Mr. Meade," said the old man, who was a pitiable spectacle.
For an instant young Meade realized what this would be to Shurtliff.
"My father?"
"I left him in the office two hours ago."
"Had he heard the news?
"It had just come, sir, and----"
"Where have you been?"
"He told me to--to--go away and--and leave him alone. I have been
wandering about the streets. My God, Mr. Meade, what is going to
become of us?"
Outside in the street the newsboys were shrieking:
"Extry! Extry! All about the collapse of the International Bridge.
Two hundred engineers and workmen lost."
Shurtliff had one of the papers in his hand. Meade tore it from him.
"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?" stared at him in big red headlines.
"Gentlemen," said Meade, "I can answer that question"--he held up the
paper so that all might see--"the fault--the blame--is mine."
"We'll have to see your father, Bert," said Rodney.
"He can add nothing at all to what I have said, old man."
"He will have to confirm it," said another. "It's too grave a matter
to rest on your word alone."
"You can't see my father."
"He is in this building, we know, and he'll never leave it without
running the gauntlet of us all," cried another amid a chorus of
approval.
Meade realized there was no escape. They all piled into the elevator
with him and Shurtliff. They followed him up the corridor. He
stopped before the door of the office.
"I forbid you to come in," he said. "This is my father's private
office----"
"Have no fear, Bert," said Rodney firmly. "We don't intend to break
in. We understand how you feel. We won't cross that threshold
unless and until you invite us. But I point out to you that this is
a matter of the greatest public concern, that hundreds of lives have
been lost, that the whole world is interested, that somebody is to
blame. You say that you are, but your father was the chief engineer.
His is the responsibility unless it can be shown otherwise."
"If you will give me ten minutes, Rod, I will admit you and all the
rest. You can then see my father and you may question him fully."
"Very good, that's perfectly fair," said Rodney. "And I am sure I
speak for the others. We will wait here until you say the word and
then all we shall want will be a statement from your father."
"Thank you, old man. Come, Shurtliff," said Meade, turning his key
in the lock. The two men entered and carefully closed the door
behind them.
The door was scarcely shut when Helen Illingworth left the elevator
and came rapidly up the corridor. She had called at the office
before and had no need to ask the way. The reporters gathered around
the door moved to give her passage while they stared at her with deep
if respectful curiosity. Many of these men were the iron and steel
business reporters. They did not know her, of course, but her
beauty, her distinction, and her interest, and even her distress,
were evident. The reporters who dealt in social matters would have
recognized her at once. Indeed her face was vaguely familiar to some
of them because she was a reigning beauty and a belle, and her
picture had appeared in different papers many times.
"Pardon me, gentlemen," she began, "but I am very anxious to see the
younger Bertram Meade."
"He has just gone into the office," answered Rodney respectfully.
The girl raised her hand to knock.
"A moment, please; perhaps you had better understand the situation.
The International Bridge----"
"I know all about it."
"I represent _The Engineering News_ and these other gentlemen various
New York papers. Now Meade, Junior, has just assumed the full
responsibility for the faulty construction and we are waiting to get
confirmation of that from his father. It is a serious matter and----"
The girl came to a sudden determination. She could not declare
herself too soon or too publicly.
"My name is Illingworth," she said, and as the hats of the surprised
reporters came off, she continued, "I am the daughter of the
president of the Martlet Bridge Company, which was erecting the
International."
"Yes, Miss Illingworth," answered Rodney, "and did you come here to
represent him?"
"I am Mr. Bertram Meade, Junior's, promised wife, and I am here
because it is the place where I ought to be. When the man I love is
in trouble I must be with him."
Now she raised her hand again, but Rodney was too quick for her. He
knocked lightly on the door and then struck it heavily several times.
The sound rang hollowly through the corridor as it always does when
the door of an empty room is beaten upon. There was no answer for a
moment.
"Oh, I must get in," said the woman.
Rodney knocked again and this time the door was opened. Shurtliff
stood in the way. He had been white and shaken before, but there are
no adjectives to describe his condition now. So anguished and
shocked was his appearance that everybody stared. Shurtliff
moistened his lips and tried to speak. He could not utter a word,
but he did manage to point toward the private office.
"Perhaps I would better go first," said Rodney, as the secretary
stepped back to give them passage.
Helen Illingworth followed and then the rest. Young Meade was in the
private office into which they all came. He was standing erect by
his father's chair. He was pale and strained also, but in his eyes
burned the fire of deep determination. The great bulk of the old
engineer was slouched down in that chair. His body was bent down
over his desk. His head lay on the desk face downward. One great
arm, his left, extended shot straight across the desk. His fist was
clenched, his right arm hung limp by his side. He was still.
There was something unmistakably terrible in his motionless aspect.
They had no need to ask what had happened. A sharp exclamation from
the woman, not a scream but a sort of catch of the breath as if to
repress an outbreak, was the only sound that broke the silence, as
she alone went toward the standing engineer. The men stood there
bareheaded while Helen Illingworth passed around Rodney and stepped
to her lover's side.
"You can't question my father now, gentlemen," said Meade, who from
Meade Junior had suddenly become Meade Only, "he is dead."
In the outer office they heard Shurtliff brokenly calling the doctor
on the telephone and asking him to notify the police.
"Did he----" began one hesitatingly.
"He was too big a man to do himself any hurt, I know," answered Meade
proudly, as he divined the question. "The autopsy will tell. But I
am sure that the failure of the bridge has broken his heart."
"And we can't fix the responsibility now," said Rodney, who for his
friend's sake was glad of this consequence of the old man's death.
"Yes, you can," said the young man.
He leaned forward and laid his right hand on his dead father's
shoulder. Helen Illingworth had possessed herself of his left hand.
She lifted it and held it to her heart. The engineer seemed
unconscious of the action and still it was the greatest thing he had
ever experienced. Meade spoke slowly and with the most weighty
deliberation in an obvious endeavor to give his statement such clear
definiteness that no one could mistake it.
"Here in the presence of my dead father," he began, "whose life I
have ended and whose career I have ruined, but whose fame shall be
unimpaired, I solemnly declare that I alone am responsible for the
design of the member that failed. My father was getting along in
years. He left a great part of the work to me. He pointed out what
he thought was a structural weakness in the trusses, but I overbore
his objections. I alone am to blame. The Martlet Bridge Company
employed us both. They said they wanted the benefit of my father's
long experience and my later training and research."
"Do you realize, Meade," said Rodney, as the pencils of the reporters
flew across their pads, "that in assuming this responsibility which,
your father being dead, cannot be----"
"I know it means the end of my career," said Meade, forcing himself
to speak those words. "My father's reputation is dearer to me than
anything on earth."
"Even than I?" whispered the woman.
"Oh, my God!" burst out the man, and then he checked himself and
continued with the same monotonous deliberation as before, and with
even more emphasis, "I can allow no other interest in life, however
great, to prevent me from doing my full duty to my father."
Indeed, as he had been fully resolved to protect his old father's
fame had the father survived the shock, the fact that the old man was
dead and helpless to defend himself only strengthened his son's
determination. The appeal of the dead man was even more powerful
than if he had lived. Meade could not glance down at that crushed,
broken, impotent figure and fail to respond. It was not so much
love--never had he loved Helen Illingworth so much as then--as it was
honor. The obligation must be met though his heart broke like his
father's; even if it killed him, too.
And the woman! How if it killed her? He could not think of that.
He could think of nothing but of that inert body and its demand. He
had to lie, even to swear falsely, before God and man if necessary,
for him. There was no other possible answer to what Meade, wrongly
if you will, but nevertheless unmistakably, conceived to be his
father's appeal. He completely misjudged his dead father, to be
sure. But that thought did not enter his head. He spoke as he did
because he must.
"Have you no witnesses, no evidence to substantiate your
extraordinary statement?" asked Rodney.
"I can substantiate it," said Shurtliff, coming into the room, having
finished his telephoning. "The doctor and the police will be here
immediately, but before they come----" and he drew himself up and
faced the reporters boldly. "Gentlemen, I can testify that
everything that Mr. Bertram Meade has said is true. I happened to be
here when my dead friend and employer got the telegram announcing the
failure of the bridge and, although he knew it was his son's fault,
he bravely offered to assume the responsibility and he told me to go
to the newspapers and tell them that it was his fault and that his
son had protested in vain against his design."
"Why didn't you do it?" asked one of the reporters.
"I couldn't, sir," faltered the old man. "It wasn't true. The son
there was to blame."
He sank down in his seat and covered his face with his hands and
broke into dry, horrible sobs. It was not easy for him either, this
shifting of responsibility.
"You see," said young Meade, "I guess that settles the matter. Now
you have nothing more to do here."
"Nothing," said Rodney at last, "not in this office at least. We
must wait for the doctor, but we can do that outside."
"Rod, will you kindly take charge outside--my father's secretary, you
see, is not able to do so--and let no one come in here except the
doctor until the police arrive. You have your story?"
"Yes," said Rodney with a great pity for his friend, in whose
innocence he somehow continued to believe in spite of what he had
said. "We've had a full account of the accident telegraphed from the
works and now this completes it."
One by one the men filed out, leaving the dead engineer with his son,
the secretary, and the woman in the room.
The iron strain which Meade had put upon himself gave way and not the
least part of his breakdown was the consciousness of the lie he had
told so bravely and so gallantly to shield his father. And now at
last came the realization that he had not only thrown away his own
reputation and career, but that he had cast the woman he loved into
the discard also. He drew his hand away from her, turned, rested his
head on his arm on the top of the low bookcase as if to shut out from
his sight what he stood to lose.
"Bert," said the woman, coming closer to him and laying her hand on
his shoulder, while he made no effort to turn his head around, "why
or how I feel it I cannot tell, but I know in my heart that you are
doing this for your father's sake, that what you said was not true.
Things you have said to me----"
"Did I ever say anything to you," began Meade in fierce alarm, while
Shurtliff started to speak but checked himself, "to lead you to think
that I suspected any weakness in the bridge?"
The woman was watching him keenly and listening to him with every
sense on the alert. Nothing was escaping her and she detected in his
voice a note of sharp alarm and anxiety as if he might have said
something which could be used to discredit his assertion now.
"Perhaps not in words but in little things, suggestions," she
answered quietly. "I can't put my hand on any of them, I can hardly
recall anything, but the impression is there."
Meade smiled miserably at her and again her searching eyes detected
relief in his.
"It is your affection that makes you say that," he said, "and as you
admit there is really nothing. What I said just now is true."
It was much harder to speak the lie to this clear-eyed woman, who
loved him, than to the reporters. He could scarcely complete the
sentence, and in the end sought to look away.
"Bertram Meade," said the woman, putting both her hands upon his
shoulder, "look me in the face and before God and man, and in the
presence of your dead father and remembering I am the woman you love,
to whom you have plighted yourself, and tell me that you have spoken
the truth and that the blame is yours."
Meade tried his best to return her glance, but those blue eyes
plunged through him like steel blades. He did not dream in their
softness could be developed such fire. He was speechless. After a
moment he looked away. He shut his lips firmly. He could not
sustain her glance, but nothing could make him retract or unsay his
words.
"I have said it," he managed to get out hoarsely.
"It's brave of you. It's splendid of you," she said. "I won't
betray you. I don't have to."
"What do you mean?" asked the man.
But the woman had now turned to Shurtliff. In his turn she also
seized him in her emotion and she shook him almost eagerly.
"You, you know that it is not true. Speak!"
But she had not the power over the older man that she had over the
younger. The secretary forced himself to look at her. He cared
nothing for Miss Illingworth, but he had a passion for the older
Meade that matched hers for the younger.
"He has told the truth," he cried almost like a baited animal. "No
one is going to ruin the reputation of the man I have served and to
whom I have given my life without protest from me. It's his fault,
his, his, his!" he cried, his voice rising with every repetition of
the pronoun as he pointed at Meade.
Helen Illingworth turned to her lover again. She was quieter now.
"I know that neither of you is telling the truth," she said. "Lying
for a great cause, lying in splendid self-sacrifice. You are ruining
yourself for your father's name and he is abetting. Why? It can't
make any difference to him now. It would not make any difference to
him even if you were responsible for the collapse of the bridge. We
all make mistakes. My father has made many, and Mr. Curtiss. But it
makes a great difference to me. Have you thought of that? I'm going
to marry you anyway. All that foolish talk about our marriage
depending on the bridge is nothing. I told my father so. He said
he'd repudiate me if I came here. But he'll not do that. He'll be
terribly angry, but he'll forgive me. Only tell me the truth, Bert.
By our love I ask you. If you want me to keep your secret I'll do
it. Indeed I'll have to keep it, for I have no evidence yet to prove
it false, but if you won't tell me I'll get that evidence, I will
find out the truth, and then I shall publish it to the whole world
and then----"
"And you would marry me then?" asked Meade, swept away by this
profound pleading.
"I will marry you now, instantly, at any time," answered the girl.
"Indeed you need me. Guilty or innocent, I am yours and you are
mine."
"You don't understand," said Meade. "I am ruined beyond hope. I
can't drag you down."
"No," said the girl, "but you can lift me up as high as your heart,
and no man can place me in a nobler position."
"Listen," protested the engineer, "nothing will ever relieve me of
the blame, of the shame, of the disgrace of this. My life as it has
been planned is now wrecked beyond repair. I don't know whether this
awful cloud can ever be lifted, whether I can ever be anything again
among men. But I am a man. I have youth still, and strength and
inspiration. When I can hold up my head among men and when I have
won back their respect, it may even be a meed of their admiration, I
shall humbly sue for that you now so splendidly offer, but until that
time I am nothing to you and you are free."
There was a finality in his tone which the woman recognized. She
could as well break it down as batter a stone wall with her naked
fist. She looked at him a long time.
"Very well," she said at last, "unless I shall be your wife I shall
be the wife of no man. I shall wait confident in the hope that there
is a just God, and that He will point out some way."
"And if not?"
"I shall die, when it pleases God, still loving you."
"And being loved," he cried, sweeping her to his heart, "until the
end."
XVI
THE UNACCEPTED RENUNCIATION
The doctor and the officers of the law now entered the outer office.
Reluctantly the woman drew herself away from the man's arms, which
were as reluctant to release her. In spite of the brave words that
had been spoken by the woman the man could only see a long parting
and an uncertain future. He realized it the more when old Colonel
Illingworth entered the room in the wake of the others. After he had
recovered himself he had hurried to the station in time to catch the
next train and had come to New York, realizing at once where his
daughter must have gone; besides his presence was needed in New York
in view of the catastrophe.
He had brushed by the reporters, refusing to listen to them. Not
anticipating what he saw as he entered the private office, the color
faded from his face as he became aware of the big, prostrate, inert
figure bending over the desk. It came again into his cheeks when he
saw his daughter.
"My father is dead," said Meade as the doctor and the officers of the
law examined the body of the old man. The son had eyes for no one
but the old Colonel. "The failure of the bridge has broken his
heart; my failure, I'd better say."
"I understand," said Illingworth. "He is fortunate. I would rather
have died than have seen any son of mine forced to confess criminal
incompetency like yours."
"Father!" protested Helen Illingworth.
"Helen," said the Colonel sternly, "you have no business to be here.
You heard what I said when you left me. But you are my daughter, my
only daughter. I was harsh, perhaps, and hasty. I came to fetch
you. Are you coming with me or do you go with this man--this
incompetent--upon whose head is the blood of the men who went down
with the bridge, to say nothing of the terrible material loss?"
"Father," said the girl with a resolution and firmness singularly
like his own. "I can't hear you speak this way, and I will not."
"Do you go with him or do you not?" thundered the Colonel.
It was Meade who answered for her.
"She goes with you. I love her and she loves me, but I won't drag
her down in my ruin."
"It is he who renounces and not I," said the woman. "I am ready to
marry him now if he wishes."
"I do not wish," said the man.
And no one could ever know how hard was the utterance of those simple
words.
"I am glad to see honor and decency are in you still," said the
Colonel, "even if you are incompetent."
"If you say another word to him I will never go with you as long as I
live," flashed out Helen Illingworth.
"I deserve all that he can say. Your duty is with him. Good-by,"
said Meade.
"And I shall see you again?"
"Of course. Now you must go with your father."
Helen Illingworth turned to the Colonel.
"I shall go with you because he bids me, not because----"
"Whatever the reason," said the old soldier, "you go." He paused a
moment, looking from the dead man to the living one. "Meade," he
exclaimed at last, "I am sorry for your father, I am sorry for you.
Good-by, and I never want to see you or hear of you again. Come,
Helen."
The woman stretched out her hand toward her lover as her father took
her by the arm. Meade looked at her a moment and then turned away
deliberately as if to mark the final severance.
With bent head and beating heart, she followed her father out of the
room. There he had to fight off the reporters. He denied that his
daughter was going to marry young Meade. She strove to speak and he
strove to force her to be quiet. In the end she had her way.
"At Mr. Meade's own request," she said finally, "our engagement has
been broken off. Personally I consider myself as much bound as ever.
I can say nothing more except to add that my feelings toward Mr.
Meade are unchanged. If possible they are enhanced, but in deference
to his wishes and to my father's----"
"Have you said enough?" roared the Colonel, losing all control of
himself at last. "No, I will not be questioned or interrupted
another minute. Come."
He almost dragged the girl from the room.
Within the private office the physician said that everything pointed
to a heart lesion, but only an autopsy would absolutely determine it.
Meanwhile the law would have to take charge of the body temporarily.
It was late at night before Bertram Meade and old Shurtliff were left
alone. Carefully seeing that no one was present in the suite of
offices Meade turned to Shurtliff.
"You know the combination of the private safe?"
"Yes, sir."
"Open it."
The old man went to the door of the safe and discovered that it was
not locked.
"It's open," he said.
"Get me that memorandum I wrote to my father. You know where he kept
it."
"Yes, sir, separate from the other papers concerning the
International, in the third compartment." He turned the big safe
door slowly. The third compartment was empty. "It's gone," he said.
Meade looked at him sharply.
"The plans are there?"
"Yes, sir, in the other compartment just above it."
"Look them over."
"It's not here, sir," answered Shurtliff, making a bluff at going
rapidly through the papers.
Meade went to the safe, a small one, and examined it carefully and
fruitlessly. His letter was not there with the other papers, where
it should have been if it were in existence. It was not anywhere.
"Father told me he was going to destroy it, but from indications he
let drop I rather thought that he had changed his mind and was
keeping it to have some fun with me when the bridge was completed,"
he said at last.
"Yes, sir, that was his intention. In fact, I know he did not
destroy it at first. He told me to file it with the plans."
"And did you?"
"I did."
"Where is it, then?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Shurtliff, you knew my father better than anyone on earth, didn't
you?"
"Yes, sir, and loved him."
"Do you think he is the kind of man who would relieve himself at my
expense, or at anybody's?" Meade almost shouted the words at the
secretary.
"No, of course not."
"Where is it, then?"
"I don't know, sir. On second thoughts he must have destroyed it
later. I haven't looked in this compartment for weeks."
"Well, it couldn't be anywhere but here unless it is in his desk at
home. I'll look there and you search the office here. When it is
found it must be destroyed. You understand?"
"I understand; trust me, Mr. Meade."
"I'll never forget the lie you told to back me up, Shurtliff. I can
see you loved him as much as I."
"No one will ever know the truth from me, sir. You have saved your
father's name and fame."
"I couldn't save his life, though."
"No, but what you saved was dearer to him than life itself."
"I think we had better search the office now. I wouldn't have that
paper come to life for the world," said Meade.
Shurtliff was the most orderly of men. The care of the old
engineer's papers and other arrangements had devolved upon him. The
search was soon completed. The letter could not be found, and it
never occurred to Meade to search Shurtliff!
"I guess he must have destroyed it," said the young man, "but to be
sure I will examine his private papers at home. Good-night. You
will be going yourself?"
"In a few minutes, sir."
"Come to me in the morning after the autopsy and we will arrange for
the funeral," said the younger man as he left the office.
Shurtliff waited until his footsteps died away in the hall. He
waited until he heard the clang of the elevator gate. Even then he
was not sure. He got up and in his cat-like way opened the door of
the office and peered down the hall. It was empty. He stood in the
door waiting, while the night elevator made several trips up and down
without pausing at that floor. He sat down at the dead man's desk.
From his pocket he drew forth a packet of papers.
There were three of them. The letter the young man had written to
his father, with the plan and the last note the old man had written
to the papers. Shurtliff had not delivered them. He could not make
up his mind to do it. He had correctly forecasted what Bertram would
attempt to do. He had not gone near the _Gazette_ office. He had
withheld these papers from the press. He had said nothing about them
to anyone, in the hope that he and the young man could persuade the
father to silence before the irreparable admission became known. And
finally a Power greater than he and the son together could exercise
had sealed the old man's lips forever.
In his hands the devotee held the fame and the honor of the dead man
he had so loved. What that dead man would have had him do he knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt. He had not done it. He could not do it
now. He had disobeyed. He had lied. He had a keen conscience, too,
but the devotional habit of a lifetime was not to be altered for any
other man. Meade could live it down. Shurtliff had lived down his
failure. There would be some way. The young man was alive, he could
fight. The old man was dead. The secretary would better destroy the
papers.
He struck a match, held it to the two letters and the plan and then,
as the paper broke into a tiny flame, he threw the match aside and
crumpled it out in his hands. The well-remembered face of the dead
man, the recollection of his commands, forbade him. He did not have
to give up those papers but he could not destroy them. He put them
back into the pocket of his coat and bent his head over the desk, his
left arm extended across it and clenched just in the last position of
the man he loved. He wished that he could die, too, and follow
after, faithful servant and friend that he was--or was he traitor and
recreant after all?
XVII
THAT WHICH LAY BETWEEN
There were no legal proceedings, of course, that could be brought
against the dead engineer or his son, although there were many
inquests at the bridge. The cause of the failure was clear. Man
cannot be punished in law for honest errors in judgment. It was
recognized by everyone, whose opinion was worth considering, that the
disaster had resulted from a mistake which any engineer could have
made. As a matter of fact there was no experience to guide the
designers. There never had been such a bridge before. Certain
elements of empiricism had to enter into their calculations. They
had made the plan after their best judgment and it had failed. They
could be blamed, censured, even vilified as they were in the press,
but that was the extent of their punishment; of Bertram Meade's
punishment, rather, because Rodney and the other reporters had made
much of his assumption of the blame. There might have been a doubt
of it, engineers at least might have suspected the truth, but the
evidence of Shurtliff put it beyond reasonable doubt. The older
Meade escaped lightly. Men could only point out his mistake in
committing such responsibilities to so young a man. And his dramatic
death in large measure disarmed criticism.
The bitter weight of censure fell entirely upon Bertram Meade. His
ruin as an engineer was immediate and absolute. He was the
scapegoat. No one had any good to say of him except Rodney, who
fought valiantly for his friend and classmate, at least striving to
mitigate the censure by pointing out the quick and ready
acknowledgment of the error which might have been ascribed to the
dead man without fear of contradiction.
An effort was made by competitors and stock speculators to ruin the
Martlet Bridge Company. By throwing into the gap their private
fortunes to the last dollar and by herculean work on the part of
their friends, the directors saved the Martlet Company, although its
losses were tremendous and almost insupportable, not only in money,
but in prestige and reputation. Colonel Illingworth came out of the
struggle older and grayer than ever. He went through the fires in
his effort to save the concern which had been the foundation of his
fortune and in which he felt a greater interest than in anything else
in life save his daughter. He had led his company, his battalion,
and finally his regiment, on many a hard-fought field in the War, but
no battle had ever been fiercer or called upon him for greater
efforts than this. The terrific combat had left him almost broken
for a time, and his daughter saw that it was not possible even to
mention Bertram Meade to him, then.
She had a great sympathy, as well as a tender affection, for her
father. Albeit of a different kind, it was almost as great and
abiding as her sympathy and affection for her lover. She had seen
Meade only once since that day he had taken her to his heart by the
body of his dead father and then put her away.
The funeral of the great engineer had been strictly private. Only
his confrères, men who stood high in scientific circles, certain
people for whom he had made great and successful designs, a few
others whose ties were personal, had been invited to the house for
the services. The interment was in the little Connecticut town of
Milford, in which the older Meade had been born, and from which he
had gone forth as a boy to conquer the world.
Shurtliff, the clergyman, and a few of his father's oldest friends,
accompanied the young engineer to the car that was to take them to
that village. They rode with him to the quaint old cemetery and
stood by while those last words that are said over the greatest and
the weakest, over youth and age, over beauty and ugliness, over
virtue and shame, over triumph and defeat alike, were uttered, and
then at his wish they all went away. They felt deeply for the ruined
young engineer, who bade them good-by and stood by the side of the
grave with Shurtliff, while the men filled it in. The special car
would take the others back to New York. Meade would come later at
his own time.
"Shurtliff," said the engineer, after the mound had been heaped up
and covered with sods and strewn with flowers and the workmen had
gone, "I have left everything I possess in your charge. You have a
power of attorney to receive and pay out all moneys; to deposit,
invest, and carry on my father's estate. The office is to be closed
and the house is to be sold. My will, in which I leave everything to
Miss Illingworth, is in your hands. You are empowered to draw from
the revenue of the estate your present salary so long as you live.
If anything happens to me you will have the will probated and be
governed accordingly."
"Mr. Meade," said the old man, and he somehow found himself
transferring the affection which he had thought had been buried
beneath the sod on that long mound before him, to the younger man.
He had loved and served a Meade all his life and he began to see that
he could not stop now, nor could he lavish what he had to give merely
on a remembrance, "Mr. Meade," he said, "you are not going to do
yourself any hurt?"
"If you knew me as well as you knew my father you would not ask the
question."
"I beg your pardon, sir, but we seem to be rather alone, you and I,
in the world."
"Yes," said Meade.
"Well, forgive your father's old if humble friend, if he asks where
you are going and what you intend to do?"
"I don't know where I shall go, or what I shall undertake
eventually," said the man. "I'm going to leave everything behind now
and try to get a little rest at first. Then, I shall try to make
another place for myself in the world, if I can, and I'm going to do
it without any of the advantages or disadvantages of the period of my
life which ends today."
"And you will keep me advised of your whereabouts?"
"I shall see that you get news of my death if I die, Shurtliff, and
if I do anything or become anything----"
"The world will advise me of that, you mean?"
"Perhaps--I don't know. One last injunction: you are not to tell
anyone the truth."
"God forbid," said Shurtliff, "we have lied to preserve the honor and
fame of him we loved who lies here."
"Don't render our perjuries of non-effect."
"I will not, sir. I haven't found that paper. I guess it was
destroyed."
"I presume so. And now, good-by."
"Aren't you coming with me?"
"I want to stay here a little while by myself."
Shurtliff looked at the young man standing so strong and splendid by
the grave of his father. He put out his hand. He never condemned
himself so much before. He began to wonder if he had pursued the
right course. He began to question whether he who lay beneath the
sod would approve of his suppression of the truth; of the lie he had
told to save the father's fame and honor and to back up the assertion
of the son. No, on the whole, Shurtliff did not question that. He
knew that if it were possible the older man would rise from his grave
to assume the responsibility, to proclaim the younger man innocent.
Well, Shurtliff would save his beloved chief in spite of himself.
He released the young man's hand, turned, and walked away. When he
reached the road, down which he must go, he stopped and faced about
again. Meade was standing where he had been. The old man took off
his hat in reverent farewell.
Meade was not left alone. Beyond the hillside where his father had
been buried rose a clump of trees. Bushes grew at their feet. A
woman--should man be buried without woman's tears?--had stood
concealed there waiting. Helen Illingworth had wept over the
dreariness, the mournfulness of it all. She had hoped that Meade
might stay after the others went and now that he was alone she came
to him. She laid her hand upon his arm. He turned and looked at her.
"I knew that you would be here," he said.
"Did you see me?"
"I felt your presence."
"And would that you might feel it always by your side."
The man looked down at the grave.
"That," he said with a wave of his hand, "lies between us, that and
the ruined bridge."
"Listen," said the woman. "You are wrecking your life for your
father's fame. A man has a right perhaps to do with his own life
what he will, but, when he loves a woman and when he has told her so
and she has given him her heart, did it ever occur to you that when
he wrecks his life he wrecks hers, and has he a right to wreck her
life for anyone else?"
"What would you have me do?" asked Meade. "Unsay those words I said?
Put the blame on the dead, destroy in a breath that great record of
achievement, that vast reputation, the honor of a great name?"
"Ah, but on this side is a woman's heart."
"Oh, my God," said Meade, "this is more than I can bear."
"I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do and
you are not in any mood to discuss these things," she said in quick
compassion. "Some day you will come back to me."
"If I can ever hold my head up among men, look them straight in the
eye because I have enforced their respect, I shall come."
"I shall wait."
"The task before me daunts me. It is beyond human achievement."
"Even for love like mine?"
He stretched out his hands toward her over the grave.
"I don't know," he cried. "I dare not hope."
"With love like ours," she answered, "all things are possible."
"I can't bind you. You must be free."
"I shall be free, free to love you, free to work in my own way. No
loyalty"--she pointed down--"to him binds me. My loyalty is all to
you."
"But you must consider my wishes."
"No," said the woman boldly. "Have you considered mine?"
"It is just," he said slowly, turning his head. "You are breaking my
heart, but I shall live and fight on for love and you."
"God bless you."
"You are going away?" she asked at last.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"You will write to me?"
He shook his head.
"I must break with everything. I must give you your chance of
freedom."
"Very well," said the woman. "Now hear me. You can't go so far on
this earth or hide yourself away so cunningly but that I can find you
and maybe follow you. And I will. Now, I must go. I left my car
down the road yonder. Will you go with me?"
The man shook his head and knelt down before her suddenly and caught
her skirt in his grasp. His arms swept around her knees. She
yielded one hand to the pressure of his lips and laid the other upon
his head.
"Go now," he whispered, "for God's sake. If I look at you I must
follow."
She was great enough to heed his request, to understand his mood, and
as the old secretary had done she walked across the grass and down
the road. Her last long glimpse of him was of a bent figure bowed
over a new-made grave on a wind-swept hill.
III
DAM
[Illustration: (sketch of dam area)]
XVIII
PICKET WIRE AND KICKING HORSE
There are no more beautiful valleys anywhere than those cut by the
waters of primeval floods through the foothills of the great
snow-covered Rocky Mountains. The erosions and washings of untold
centuries have flung out in front of the granite ramparts a
succession of lower elevations like the bastions of a fortress. At
first scarcely to be distinguished from the main range in height and
ruggedness these ravelins and escarpments gradually decrease in
altitude and size until they turn into a series of more or less
disconnected, softly rounded hills, like outflung earthworks, finally
merging themselves by gradual slopes into the distant plains
overlooked by the great peaks of the mountains.
The monotony of these pine-clad, wind-swept slopes is broken even in
the low hills by out-thrustings of stone, sometimes the hard igneous
rock, the granite of the mountains, more frequently the softer red
sandstone of a period later, yet ineffably old. These cliffs,
buttes, hills, and mesas have been weathered into strange and
fantastic shapes which diversify the landscape and add charm to the
country.
The narrow cañons in which the snow-fed streams take their rise
gradually widen as the water follows its tortuous course down the
mountains through the subsiding ranges and out among the foothills to
the sandy, arid, windy plains beyond. At the entrance of one of the
loveliest of these broad and verdant valleys, a short distance above
its confluence with a narrower, more rugged ravine through the hills,
lay the thriving little town of Coronado.
Some twenty miles back from the town at a place where the valley was
narrowed to a quarter of a mile, and separating it from the
paralleling ravine, rose a huge sandstone rock called Spanish Mesa.
Its top, some hundreds of feet higher than the tree-clad base of the
hills, was mainly level. From its high elevation the country could
be seen for many miles, mountains on one hand, plains on the other.
It stood like an island in a sea of verdure. Little spurs and ridges
ran from it. Toward the range it descended and contracted into a
narrow saddle, vulgarly known as a "Hog-back," where the granite of
the mountains was hidden under a deep covering of grass-grown earth,
which formed the only division between the valley and the gorge or
ravine, before the land, widening, rose into the next hill.
And people came from miles away to see that interesting and curious
mesa, much more striking in its appearance than Baldwin's Knob, the
last foothill below it. Transcontinental travelers even broke
journey to visit it. The town prospered accordingly, especially as
it was admirably situated as a place of departure for hunters,
explorers, prospectors, and adventurers, who sought what they craved
in the wild hills. There were one or two good hotels for tourists,
unusually extensive general stores of the better class, where hunting
and prospecting parties could be outfitted, and the high-living,
extravagant cattle ranchers could get what they demanded. Besides
all these there were the modest homes of the lovers of the rough but
exhilarating and health-giving life of the Rocky Mountains. Of
course there were numerous saloons and gambling halls, and the town
was the haunt of cowboys, hunters, miners, Indians--the old frontier
with a few touches of civilization added!
What was left of the river, which had made the valley--and during the
infrequent periods of rain too brief to be known as the rainy season,
it really lived up to the name of river--flowed merrily through the
town, when it flowed at all, under the name of Picket Wire. Singular
lack of ability to bestow a poetic nomenclature upon nature might at
first seem to be exhibited by the pioneer in this nondescript title.
Not so the truth.
The pioneer was a poet unconsciously and filled with a spirit of
romance. No man adventures, unless under the pressure of some
inexorable necessity, into unknown lands as the pioneers did, without
imagination, romance; vision, if you will. Plain though he may
appear, the pioneer is the real dreamer of dreams. In the bleak and
arid present, rough, wild, and unpromising, he can see the future,
his the eyes of the seer and prophet. But when he tries to translate
what he feels and sees, even in the simplest ways by exercising the
privilege of Adam in naming the places he passes or stays by, he
seems to lack expression to fit his soul.
For instance one of the most beautiful and romantic mountain streams,
ever fresh and clear, ever dashing madly through one of the most
stupendous cañons of Colorado, is known as the Big Thompson! Shades
of Poseidon! What has water ever done to be so called? Another
example is a great swelling peak, which strives to hold up its head
when people point out that it is called Mount Bill Williams! Bill it
might have stood, or Williams, but the combination!
Well, there were romance and appositeness about the silver stream
that came dashing down from the snow-line, and in the springtime it
might fairly be said to dash, called the Picket Wire. Into that very
valley and at the base of that mesa in which the four centuries since
had effected so little change had come, in the following of Coronado,
for whom the town was named, a little party of Spanish explorers.
Why they ascended the valley over which the mesa stood sentry and why
they camped there rather than on the other side is not told in the
tradition which alone sets forth their fate. That does not enter
into this story. Suffice it, therefore, to say that a cloudburst in
the hills, a thing which seems to have been as old as the hills
themselves, wiped them out entirely. All unprepared, unblest,
unshriven, they were swept away. Battered bodies, torn garments
below the mesa told the story to those that hunted for tidings
afterward. The valley was a place of horror. The river of lost
souls, "_Rio de las Animas_," the Spaniards named it.
Somehow or other the name stuck to it until a restless French
"coureur-de-bois," ranging far southward from the Great Lakes, came
upon it and its name. Promptly identifying lost soul with purgatory
he called it in turn "_La Rivière-de-la-Purgatoire_," the river of
purgatory, as if to say, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." In
turn the name supplanted the other and abided.
When the cowboy followed the pioneer, knowing neither French nor
Spanish, he onomatopoetized the last appellation into "_The Picket
Wire_," which was as near as he could come to the pronunciation of
Purgatoire. The Spanish passed, the French disappeared, the cowboy
and his like remained. Picket Wire it became and Picket Wire it will
remain to the end of the chapter. There is no natural descent from
lost souls to Picket Wire, though many lost souls may have been lost
because of picket wires, but that is how it came to be. And the
original disaster was not entirely forgotten either. It was
perpetuated in the butte which became "Spanish Mesa." France, alas,
coming between, had no memorial.
Well, not being a purgatorial Styx, after a time the valley and the
ravine were both explored. The hills were tapped in fruitless search
for precious metals, which were not found, and then it was abandoned
to the hunter. When the railroad came the Picket Wire had been first
studied in the hope of finding a practicable way over the mountains,
but the ravine on the other side of the mesa had been found to offer
a shorter and more practicable route. And, by the way, this ravine,
taking its name from the little brook far down in its narrows, was
known as the "Kicking Horse"; so named, no one knew why, by the
Indians and freely translated by the white men. At any rate there
was at least some association between Picket Wire and Kicking Horse,
as the experienced know!
So the railroad ran up the ravine and the Picket Wire was left still
virgin to the assaults of man. But the day came when it was
despoiled of its hitherto long standing, unravished innocence. Axes
were laid to the roots of the trees, drills were driven into the
rocks of the hills. Crashed down were the pines of the centuries,
crushed were paleocosmic rocks with new and strange fires. Scarred
and gashed and torn and ripped were the grass-covered hills. Huge
expanses of yellow clay were revealed beneath the richer deposits
whereon the sod had flourished.
Shouts of men, cracking of whips, trampling of horses, groaning of
wheels, wordless but vocal protests of beasts of burden mingled with
the ringing of axes, the detonations of dynamite. The whistle of
engines and the roar of steam filled the valley. Under the direction
of engineers, a huge mound of earth arose across its narrowest part,
nearest a shoulder, or spur, of the mesa reaching westward. No more
should the silver Picket Wire flow unvexed on its way to the sea. It
was to be dammed.
All that the huge, hot inferno of baked plain, where sage brush and
buffalo grass alone grow, needed to make it burgeon with wheat and
corn was water. The little Picket Wire, which had meandered and
sparkled and chattered on at its own sweet will was now to be held
until it filled a great lake-like reservoir in the hills back of the
new earth dam. Then through skillfully located irrigation ditches
the water was to be given to the millions of hungry little wheatlets
and cornlets, which would clamor for a drink. The fierce sun was no
longer to work its unthwarted will in burning up the prairie.
The sage brush and buffalo grass were to go like the Indian before
the march of civilization. Nature is more refined than man. The
liquid that settled the Indian was accurately known as "firewater."
Incidentally, the same compound took a great many whites, not all the
baser sort either. But that which was to sweep away the greasy sage
brush and the coarse, rank grass, there being no longer any buffalo,
was the water of life which came down from heaven. At least the snow
caps of the range whence the Picket Wire flowed, and the great clouds
that once in a long time swept over the peaks and dropped their
burden on the bluff shoulders of the mountains, were as near heaven
as it is possible to get on this earth.
With the promise of water on the plain beyond, Coronado sprang into
sudden recrudescence of newer and more vigorous life. In the
language of the West it "boomed." The railroad had been a forlorn
branch running up into the mountains and ending nowhere. Its first
builders had been daunted by difficulties and lack of money, but as
soon as the great dam was projected, which would open several hundred
thousand acres for cultivation and serve as an inspiration in its
practical results to other similar attempts, people came swarming
into the country buying up the land, the price for acreage steadily
mounting. The railroad accordingly found it worth while to take up
the long-abandoned construction work of mounting the range and
crossing it. Men suddenly observed that it was the shortest distance
between two cardinal points, and one of the great transcontinental
railways bought it and began improving it to replace its original
rather unsatisfactory line.
The long wooden trestle which crossed the broad, sandy depression in
front of the town, the bed of the ancient river, through which the
Picket Wire and further down its affluent, the Kicking Horse, flowed
humbly and modestly, was being replaced by a great viaduct of steel.
Far up the gorge past the other side of the Spanish Mesa another
higher trestle had already been replaced by a splendid steel arch. A
siding had been built near the ravine, a path made to the foot of the
mesa, and arrangements were being made to run a local train up from
the town when all was completed to give the people an opportunity to
ride up the gorge and see the great pile of rock, on which enterprise
was already planning the desecration of a summer hotel, the blasphemy
of an amusement park!
XIX
THE NEW RODMAN
Up the valley of the Picket Wire one morning in early fall came a
young man roughly dressed like the average cow-puncher from the
ranches further north. He rode well, not with the carelessness and
security and mastery of the cowboy, yet with a certain attention to
detail and a niceness that betrayed him to the real rough-rider of
the range. Just as the clothes he wore, although they had been
bought at the same general store where the ordinary cattleman's
outfit was purchased, were worn in a little different way that again
betrayed him. One look into the face of the man, albeit his mustache
and beard hid the revealing outlines of mouth and chin, sufficed to
show that here was no ordinary cow-puncher.
He rode boldly enough among the rocks of the trail and along the
rough road, which had been made by the wheels of the wagons and hoofs
of the horses. Yet a close observer would have seen a certain
hesitancy in his approach. He checked his horse from time to time
and looked back. A bold man determined on a course does not check
his horse and look back, yet no one who knew him could accuse this
horseman of timidity. There was about him some of the quiet
confidence begot of achievement, some of the power which knowledge
brings and which success emphasizes, yet there were uncertainty and
hesitation, too, as if all had not been plain sailing on his course.
To be the resident engineer charged with the construction of a great
earth dam like that across the Picket Wire, requires knowledge of a
great many things beside the technicalities of the profession, chief
among them being a knowledge of men. As the newcomer threw his leg
over the saddle-horn, stepped lightly to the ground, dropping the
reins of his pony to the soil at the same time, Vandeventer, the
engineer in question, looked at him with approval. Some subtle
recognition of the man's quality came into his mind. Here was one
who seemed distinctly worth while, one who stood out above the
ordinary applicant for jobs who came in contact with Vandeventer, as
the big mesa rose above the foothill. However, the chief kept these
things to himself as he stood looking and waiting for the other man
to begin:
"Are you the resident engineer?" asked the newcomer quietly, yet
there was a certain nervous note in his voice, which the alert and
observant engineer found himself wondering at, such a strain as might
come when a man is about to enter upon a course of action, to take a
strange or perilous step, such a little shiver in his speech as a
naked man might feel in his body before he plunged into the icy
waters of the wintry sea.
"I am."
"I'd like a job."
"We have no use for cow-punchers on this dam."
"I'm not exactly a cow-puncher, sir."
"What are you?"
"Look here," said the man, smiling a little, "I've been out in this
country long enough to learn that all that it is necessary to know
about a man is 'Will he make good?' Let us say that I am nothing and
let it go at that."
"Out of nothing, nothing comes," laughed the engineer, genuinely
amused.
Some men would have been angry, but Vandeventer rather enjoyed this.
"I didn't say I was good for nothing," answered the other man,
smiling in turn, though he was evidently serious enough in his
application.
"Well, what can you do? Are you an engineer?"
"We'll pass over the last question, too, if you please. I think I
could carry a rod if I had a chance and there was a vacancy."
"Umph," said Vandeventer, "you think you could?"
"Yes, sir. Give me a trial."
"All right, take that rod over there and go out on the edge of the
dam where that stake shows, and I'll take a sight on it."
Now there are two ways--a hundred perhaps--of holding a rod; one
right way and all the others wrong. A newcomer invariably grasps it
tightly in his fist and jams it down, conceiving that the only way to
get it plumb and hold it steady. The experienced man strives to
balance it erect on its own base and holds it with the tips of his
fingers on either side in an upright position, swaying it very
slightly backward and forward. He does it unconsciously, too.
Vandeventer had been standing by a level already set up when the
newcomer arrived and the rod was lying on the ground beside it. The
latter picked it up without a word, walked rapidly to the stake,
loosened the target, and balanced the rod upon the stake. As soon as
Vandeventer observed that his new seeker after work held the rod in
the right way, he did not trouble to take the sight. He threw his
head backward and raised his hand, beckoningly.
"It so happens," he began, "that I can give you a job. The rodman
next in the line of promotion has been given the level. One of the
men went East last night. You can have the job, which is----"
"I don't care anything about the details," said the man quickly and
gladly. "It's the work I want."
"Well, you'll get what the rest do," said Vandeventer. "Now, as you
justly remarked, I have found that it is not considered polite out
here to inquire too closely into a man's antecedents and I have
learned to respect local customs, but we must have some name by which
to identify you, make out your pay check, and----"
"Do you pay in checks?"
"No, but you have to sign a check."
"Well, call me Smith."
Vandeventer threw back his head and laughed. The other man turned a
little red. The chief engineer observed the glint in his new
friend's eye.
"I'm not exactly laughing at you," he explained, "but at the singular
lack of inventiveness of the American. We have at least thirty
Smiths out of two hundred men on our pay-roll, and it is a bit
confusing. Would you mind selecting some other name?"
"If it's all the same to you," announced the newcomer amusedly--the
chief's laughter was infectious--"I'm agreeable to Jones, or Brown,
or----"
"We have numbers of all of those, too."
"Really," said the man hesitatingly, "I haven't given the subject any
thought."
"What about some of your family names?"
"That gives me an idea," said the newcomer, who decided to use his
mother's name, "you can call me Roberts."
"And I suppose John for the prefix?"
"John will do as well as any, I am sure."
"We have about fifty Johns. Every Smith appears to have been born
John."
"How did you arrange it?" asked the other with daring freedom, for a
rodman does not enter conversation on terms of equality with the
chief engineer.
"I got a little pocket dictionary down at the town with a list of
names and I went through that list with the Smiths, dealing them out
in order. Well, that will do for your name," he said, making a
memorandum in the little book he pulled out of his flannel shirt
pocket. He turned to a man who had come up to the level. "Smith,"
he said--"by the way this is Mr. Claude Smith, Mr. Roberts--here's
your new rodman. You know your job, Roberts. Get to work."
And that is how Bertram Meade, a few months after the failure of the
great bridge, once again entered the ranks of engineers, beginning,
as was necessary and inevitable, very low down in the scale.
XX
THE VALLEY OF DECISION
Much water had run under the bridges of the world and incidentally
over the wreck of the International, since that bitter farewell
between Bertram Meade and Helen Illingworth over the grave of the old
engineer. Life had seemed to hold absolutely nothing for Meade as he
knelt by that low mound and watched the woman walk slowly away with
many a backward glance, with many a pause, obviously reluctant. He
realized that the lifting of a hand would have called her back. How
hard it was for him to remain quiet; and, finally, before she
disappeared and before she took her last look at him, to turn his
back resolutely as if to mark the termination of the situation.
Father, fame, reputation, love, taken away at one and the same
moment! A weaker man might have sent life to follow. In the
troubled days after the fall of the bridge, his father's death, the
inquests, his testimony and evidence freely given, and that parting,
something like despair had filled the young engineer's heart. Life
held nothing. He debated with himself whether it would not be better
to end it than to live it. He envied his father his broken heart.
Singularly enough, the thing that made life of least value was the
thing that kept him from throwing it away--the woman.
Striving to analyze the complex emotions that centered about his
losses he was forced to admit, although it seemed a sign of weakness,
that love of woman was greater than love of fame, that in the balance
one girl outweighed bridge and father. That the romance was ended
was what made life insupportable. Yet the faint, vague possibility
that it might be resumed if he could find some way to show his
worthiness was what made him cling to it.
Of course he could have showed without much difficulty and beyond
peradventure at the inquest over Abbott and the investigation into
the cause of the failure of the bridge--unfortunate but too
obvious--that the frightful and fatal error in the design was not his
and that he had protested against the accepted plan, if only he had
found the letter addressed to his father. But that he would never do
and the letter had not been discovered anyway. He did not even
regret the bold falsehood he had uttered or the practical subornation
of perjury of which he had been guilty in drawing out and accepting
and emphasizing Shurtliff's testimony.
There had been no inquest over his father's death. The autopsy had
showed clearly heart failure. He had not been compelled to go on the
witness stand and under oath as to that. Although, if that had been
demanded, he must needs have gone through with it. Indeed so prompt
and public had been his avowals of responsibility that he had not
been seriously questioned thereon. He had left nothing uncertain.
There was nothing concealed.
He had inherited a competence from his father. It was indeed much
more than he or anyone had expected. He had realized enough ready
money from the sale of certain securities for his present needs. The
remainder he placed in Shurtliff's care and a few days after the
funeral, having settled everything possible, he took a train for the
West.
The whole world was before him, and he was measurably familiar with
many portions of it. He could have buried himself in out-of-the-way
corners of far countries, in strange continents. These possibilities
did not attract him. He wanted to get away from, out of touch with,
the life he had led. He wished to go to some place where he could be
practically alone, where he could have time to recover his poise, to
think things out, to plan his future, to try to devise a means for
rehabilitation, if it were possible. He could do that just as well,
perhaps better, in America than in any place else. And there was
another reason that held him to his native land. He would still
tread the same soil, breathe the same air, with the woman. He did
not desire to put seas between them.
He swore to himself that the freedom he had offered her, that he had
indeed forced upon her unwilling and rejecting it, should be no empty
thing so far as he was concerned. He would leave her absolutely
untrammeled. He would not write to her or communicate with her in
any way. He would not even seek to hear about her and of course as
she would not know whither he had gone or where he was she could not
communicate with him. The silence that had fallen between them
should not be broken even forever unless and until---- Ah, yes, he
could not see any way to complete that "unless and until" at first,
but perhaps after a while he might.
He knew exactly where he would go. Dick Winters, another classmate
and devoted friend at Cambridge, had gone out West shortly after
graduation. He had a big cattle ranch miles from a railroad in a
young southwestern state. Winters, like the other member of the
youthful triumvirate, Rodney, was a bachelor. He could be absolutely
depended upon. He had often begged Meade to visit him. The engineer
would do it now. He knew Winters would respect his moods, that he
would let him severely alone, that he could get on a horse and ride
into the hills and do what he pleased, think out his thoughts
undisturbed.
To Winters, therefore, he had gone. He had an idea that his future
would be outside of engineering. Indeed he had put all thought of
his chosen profession out of his mind and heart, at least so he
fancied. Yet, spending an idle forenoon in Chicago waiting for the
departure of the western train, he found himself irresistibly drawn
to the great steel-framed structures, the sky-scrapers rising gaunt
and rigid above the other buildings of the city. He remembered that
Chicago was the home of the tall building, that in it the first great
constructions that were to make American engineering famous had
astonished the world, and he took deep interest in comparing the
older buildings with the newer. Again the train was delayed and held
up for half an hour just as it reached the Mississippi River. He
left his seat in the dining-car, his dinner uneaten on the table, to
go out and inspect the bridge during the half-hour that the "Limited"
lay idle. The next day some enormous irrigation works in western
Nebraska so engrossed his attention and aroused his interest that in
spite of himself he stopped over between trains to see them. And
these actions were typical.
Yet after every one of these excursions back into his own field, his
conscience smote him. Was he never to get away from this
engineering? Was there nothing else for him but brick and stone,
steel and concrete, designs and plans and undertaking and
accomplishment in the world? Because it was the thing that he must
abandon and put out of his mind, engineering seemed the only thing he
cared for. There would be no engineering on that ranch on the slopes
of the range. He could settle the question there.
Winters was glad to see him. He and Rodney and Meade had been the
warmest of friends. Of course Meade could not tell Rodney the truth
on account of his newspaper connections, but he decided finally that
he could and would tell Winters under assurance of absolute secrecy.
For one thing the big cattleman had bluntly refused to credit his
friend's first statements; and, when he at last heard the truth, he
blamed him roundly while he appreciated fully the nobleness of his
self-sacrifice. The clear-headed, practical Winters put it this way:
Meade was capable of doing splendid service to humanity as an
engineer and bade fair to be even greater than his father, yet for
the sake of the fame of a dead man, to whom after all it would matter
little, he had thrown away that splendid opportunity!
This was a new thought to Meade and a disturbing one. Unfortunately,
as even Winters was forced to acknowledge, the suggestion came too
late. The course had been entered upon. It would be cowardly to try
to change it now. Indeed it would have been impossible with the
disappearance of the written protests and notes. Even if Shurtliff
had been willing, no one would have believed a delayed retraction and
explanation, and Shurtliff would not have been willing Meade well
knew. Neither for that matter was Meade himself. He was glad that
the affair had been settled and would not change it now even though
Winters' rough-and-ready presentation of the situation disquieted him.
Winters, who saw how greatly overwrought and unstrung his friend was,
contented himself with the assertion. He did not press the point or
argue it with him. He rested quietly confident that matters would
right themselves some way in the long run. He treated Meade exactly
right. He left him to his own devices. He did not force his company
upon him. Sometimes the engineer would mount a horse---and all at
the ranch were at his disposal--and would ride away into the woods
and mountains with a camping outfit. Sometimes he would be gone for
several days, coming back white and haggard and exhausted but victor
in some hard battle fought out alone.
Before Meade had left New York he had deposited a sufficient sum of
money with one of the leading florists there and on every Saturday a
box of the rarest and most beautiful flowers was delivered namelessly
to Helen Illingworth. She knew the florist from whom they came but
never questioned him. She divined that they came from Meade in the
absence of any card. She did not make the slightest effort, however,
to confirm that conclusion or find out how or why they were sent so
regularly. She just took the flowers to her heart, wept over them,
kissed them, and loved them; and every time they came she held her
head higher.
One day there came to the ranch a letter to Winters from Rodney, full
of friendly chat and pleasant reminiscence.
"Meade has disappeared absolutely," wrote Rodney in closing. "Even
Miss Illingworth, to whom he was reported engaged and upon whom I
have called occasionally, says she does not know his whereabouts,
although she confided to me, knowing my friendship for him, that a
New York florist sends her flowers every week, which she knows could
come only from him. Of course you saw in the papers his connection
with the tragedy and failure of the International? I happened to be
the man to whom he made the admission of the error in his
calculations. Although his frank statement was corroborated by that
of the older Meade's private secretary, I have never been able to
believe it, neither does Miss Illingworth. I know Bert, and so does
she. We can't accept even his own testimony. We have been working
together to establish the truth, but with very faint prospects of
success so far. There's some tremendous mystery about it. I have
thought that maybe Meade might have come to you. If he has show him
this letter and beg him to tell us the truth at any rate."
Winters passed the letter over to Meade without comment. The
engineer read it with passionate eagerness. He was hungry for any
news of Helen Illingworth. The flowers were being received. She had
divined whence they came. That was something. And Rodney was
calling upon her. A sharp pang of jealousy shot through him at that,
although he knew there was no reason. Dear old Rodney! He could see
his grave face, his disapproving manner, his air of unbelief, as he
had taken down Meade's words in the office that tragic day.
Of course, Helen Illingworth was not a recluse as he was. She
mingled in society. She took up life with its demands. She entered
into its pleasures and fulfilled its duties. He was jealous of
everyone who might come in contact with her, but he knew the names of
none except Rodney.
And they were suspicious of his avowal! That was balm to his soul.
Of course Helen Illingworth was suspicious, but why should Rodney
doubt his assumption of the blame? And they were working to
establish his innocence. The thought disquieted him lest they should
discover the truth in some way. And it gave him joy also. They
would work despite any remonstrance from him. He thought of that
protest to his father always with uneasiness. If he could only have
found it and destroyed it himself he would have been happier. Could
it be in existence somewhere? Would it turn up? Would they unearth
it? Well, he had done his best for his father, yet he was glad those
two disbelieved and were working for him.
Meade had been the most brilliant, Winters the most indifferent,
Rodney the most persevering, of the trio at college. He remembered
that well. His first thought was to forbid Rodney to do anything
further, although how far his friend would respect his wishes he
could not tell. Anyway, he did not have to decide that matter,
because he could not say a word to him. To have allowed Winters to
write would have betrayed his whereabouts. He was living with
Winters under an assumed name of course. He had had his hair cut
differently and had grown a beard and mustache. He thought it would
have taken a keen eye indeed to have recognized him with these
changes.
In the end he handed the letter back to Winters, only charging him
that if he wrote to Rodney he must not betray the fact that Meade was
with him. He had plenty of time to think over the situation. He
decided finally that so long as he had been born an engineer and
trained and educated as an engineer and had worked as an engineer
that an engineer he would have to be until the end of the chapter.
He would go out and seek work, not such work as his ability and
experience and education had entitled him to undertake, but under
some assumed name he would begin at the very beginning, at the foot
of the ladder as a rodman, if he could; and then he would work on
quietly, faithfully, obscurely, praying for his chance. If it came
he would strive to be equal to the opportunity; if it did not at
least he would be engaged in honest work in an honest way.
It was a very humble programme, not at all promising or heroic or
romantic, just a beginning. He would work on and wait. They say
that all things come to him who waits. That is only half true. Some
things come to him who waits sometimes. That is more nearly
accurate. Well, he could think of no better plan. So he bade
Winters good-by, swearing him again to secrecy until he should lift
the ban against speech, and rode away. When he got to the little
village on the Picket Wire below the dam he stopped a long time
gazing at the long bridge, or viaduct, of steel that was replacing
the old wooden trestle and carrying the railroad from the hills to
the eastward over the river.
It was not such an undertaking as the lost International, still it
was interesting engineering construction. It was work that would be
intensely congenial, to which he was drawn almost irresistibly, yet
he managed to hold himself aloof. The Martlet people were building
this steel bridge and they had just finished the arch up under the
mesa. A well-known construction company was building the great earth
dam across the Picket Wire in the valley.
Meade's engineering life had been spent mainly out of the United
States. He had never been connected with the Martlet and its
employees until he had been associated with his father on the
International. He could have gone among them with little danger of
immediate discovery, since most of the men he had known had gone down
with the bridge, but he decided not to do so. The work on the dam
would be simpler and he would have less opportunity to betray himself
and it would give him more chance to work up in a plausible and
reasonable way. Besides, if Colonel Illingworth came on to inspect
his bridge, as he would probably do, Meade would have to leave before
his arrival. The dam would be safer. No one would ever think of
looking for him there. And no one would ever recognize in the
rough-bearded workman the clear-cut, smooth-faced young engineer of
other days.
The dam was twenty miles up the valley. Yes, he would be less apt to
be observed working there than on the bridge. Yet as he recalled
that private car and that it might come there, he realized that she
might be on it. His heart leaped even as it had leaped at the sight
of the viaduct then building, as it had quivered to the familiar
rat-tat-tat of the pneumatic riveters and the clang and the clash of
the structural steel. But what was the use? He would not dare trust
himself to look at her even from a distance. No, it was the dam that
best suited his purpose, so he turned away from the bridge and rode
up the valley. There he was fortunate in falling into a position, as
has been set forth.
XXI
MARSHALING THE EVIDENCE
For all her sweetness and light, Helen Illingworth was dowered with
intense energy and a powerful will. What she began she finished, and
she was not deterred from beginning things by fears of consequences.
When she had so powerful an incentive as the rehabilitation of her
lover, the resumption of their engagement, and their prospective
marriage there was nothing that could stop her. She supplemented a
man's analytical powers with a woman's intuition in her work.
She was convinced that Meade had not told the truth in that famous
declaration in his father's office. She respected him for his desire
to shield his father's name and fame even at the expense of his
veracity, albeit she would not have been a woman if she had not
resented the fact that in so doing he had sacrificed her happiness as
well as his own. Indeed, perhaps, she could not have borne that
separation and delay had it not been for the consciousness that in
any event her father's hatred of the very name of Meade would have
forced her to choose between the two men, and womanlike, she shrank
from the necessity of such a decision. Time would be her ally. She
was the more content to wait, therefore.
The question whether Meade, Junior, was the more responsible or even
responsible at all was more or less academic to Illingworth. He
would have had nothing further to do with either of them if both were
living, and certainly not with the younger survivor. Really from the
point of view of wealth and station a marriage between his daughter
and Meade might have been considered a condescension on her part, in
her father's eyes at least. Nothing could have justified such an
alliance from a worldly standpoint but Meade's continued and
unequivocal success.
Rightly had the old man made the match dependent upon the successful
completion of the bridge. He congratulated himself on that wise
decision. He tried to believe that if it had come to a final choice
the daughter, in spite of the fact that such is the habit of women in
the experience of life, would not have given up age and her father
for youth and her lover. Indeed she was too genuinely devoted to her
father to do that except as a last resort. She cherished the hope
first, that Meade could re-establish himself--she had too sweeping a
confidence in his character and capacity to doubt that--and second,
that it could be shown that he had not been responsible for the
failure of the bridge. She was more and more convinced that his
assumption of the blame had been dictated by the highest of motives
and instead of being a fit subject for censure and condemnation he
merited admiration and applause. She hoped with her woman's wit to
prove this eventually, perhaps in spite of her lover, and to this end
she applied herself assiduously to solve the problem.
To her, at her request, came Rodney. Now the reporters had dealt
very gently with Helen Illingworth. They had made no announcement of
the engagement or of its breaking at her father's earnest request.
There was no necessity of bringing her into the bridge story,
although it would have added a dramatic touch to their narratives.
They had held a brief conference before they separated and at
Rodney's suggestion they had agreed to leave her out of it. There
was enough without her. None of the yellow journals had suspected
the broken engagement since it had never been announced, and the
loyal young fellows kept their compact religiously as they had
cheerfully promised themselves they would do.
Not that Helen was in the least ashamed of the engagement. Her
inclination when she found it had not been referred to in any of the
reports or discussions of the catastrophe had been to avow it. But
upon reflection she saw it would only have caused further talk, it
would have annoyed her father beyond expression, it would not have
helped Meade any, and it might hamper her in her work. She realized
that she had Rodney to thank for this omission and after she had time
to collect herself she asked him to call upon her. He was very glad
to come.
"I sent for you, Mr. Rodney, on account of Mr. Bertram Meade," she
began, after thanking him for his courtesy toward her the day the
older Meade died and thereafter.
"I divined as much, Miss Illingworth."
"I want you to help me."
"I shall be delighted to do so for three reasons."
"And those are?"
"First, for your own sake. I know, you will pardon me, how deeply
interested you are in Meade's rehabilitation. Second, because I
believe that he was not telling the truth, that he is shielding his
father. Third, because he was my dearest friend at college. We were
classmates and his happiness and future are as dear to me as my own."
"Mr. Rodney," returned the woman, flushing a little, "you know of
course that we were engaged. You heard me say it. I know that it
was due to you that the engagement was kept out of the papers.
Personally, I should have proclaimed it from the house-tops but for
my father. He considers it broken."
"And you? Forgive me, Miss Illingworth!"
"It is as binding upon me as it ever was, although Mr. Meade gave me
complete and entire release before he went away."
"I suppose so. That would be like him."
"He said he would not link my life and its possibilities with a
wrecked career like his and, although I told him frankly that nothing
could be worse than separation, he persisted and----"
"I understand," said Rodney gravely. "Indeed as a man of honor he
could do no less."
"You are all alike," said the woman a little bitterly. "Your notions
are supreme. You may break hearts, you may ruin lives, you may
sacrifice love and your best friend so long as you preserve those
notions of honor intact."
"And yet it is just because we preserve those ideas of honor, which
you call our notions, that your heart breaks in parting. If we
weren't honorable men you wouldn't care for us at all."
"Yes, I suppose that's it. Well, I do care very much, as you
understand. I may as well be frank with you. My father, of course,
is bitterly antagonistic to Mr. Meade. He won't even allow his name
to be mentioned."
"One can hardly blame him for that, Miss Illingworth. The failure of
the bridge seriously embarrassed the Martlet Bridge Company, and it
is a great handicap for them to overcome in seeking any further
contracts."
"I know it was only my father's private fortune and that of all the
others, that kept the works from going under."
"Everybody knows that and honors your father and his associates for
their sacrifices."
"But I did not summon you here to discuss the affairs of the Martlet
Bridge Company," said Helen, "interesting though they may be, but to
see if by working together there was not some way by which we could
prove that Bertram Meade has assumed the blame to save the honor and
fame of his father."
"You believe that, Miss Illingworth?"
"I am sure of it."
"So am I," said Rodney quickly.
"Thank God," cried the girl a little hysterically, surprised and
almost swept off her feet by this prompt avowal by one who, though
young, was already an authority in the literature of engineering.
"Why do you say that? What evidence have you?"
"Unfortunately," answered Rodney, "I haven't any tangible evidence
whatever, but I know Bert Meade as few people know him, Miss
Illingworth, perhaps not even you," he went on, in spite of her
unspoken, but vigorous protest at that last statement, as she shook
her head and smiled at him. "And there are several little
circumstances that make me feel that he could not have been to blame.
Have you any ground for your conviction?"
"Probably even less than you have and yet I, too, know him. You were
four years at college with him, I was five minutes in his arms," she
said boldly, "on the bridge. He saved my life there. I have never
told anyone before." Rapidly she narrated the incident. "This is
what made him speak, but this is beside the point and does not
interest you," she concluded graphically.
"On the contrary it interests me intensely. It adds the least touch
of romance to the tragedy. If I were a writer of fiction instead of
handling the dry details of engineering operations, what an
opportunity is here presented!"
"But you will respect my confidence?"
"Absolutely, my dear young lady. You may speak with perfect
assurance."
Helen Illingworth looked into the plain, homely, but strong, reliable
face of the man and dismissed any thought of reserve from her mind.
"Let us place," she began, "the little circumstances upon which our
intuitions are based, if intuitions are ever based on anything
tangible, together. Perhaps the sum of them may yield something."
"The suggestion is admirable," assented Rodney, "and as I knew him
first and longest I will begin. Perhaps it would be well, too, to
take down our evidence and then transcribe the notes so that we may
consider them at leisure, getting an eye view as well as an ear view
of them."
"That will be an admirable plan, but how?" asked the girl eagerly.
"I happen to have mastered shorthand and I can take down my words and
yours."
He drew out a note-book, pad, and pencil from his pocket and sat down
at the nearest table.
"Now, in the first place," he began, writing and speaking at the same
time--it was a little difficult at first being so unusual, but as he
spoke slowly and thoughtfully he managed it--"point one is Meade's
absolutely unbounded devotion to his father. The old man was not
always right. His theories and propositions were arguable and some
were controverted. The boy was as clear as a bell on most things,
but I recall that he would maintain his father's propositions
tenaciously, determinedly, long after everybody, perhaps even the old
man himself, had been convinced of their fallacy. Engineering is in
Meade's blood. He is the fifth of his family to graduate at Harvard
and three of his forbears were engineers, his grandfather noted and
his father world-famous. He fairly idolized his father. The
affection between them was delightful. The king could do no wrong.
Meade was quick-tempered and not very receptive to criticism, but he
would take the severest stricture from the old man without a murmur."
"Here we have," said the woman, who had listened with strained
attention, "an early devotion to a person and an unbounded respect
for his attainments."
"Exactly."
"Go on."
"The next point is, Meade was inordinately proud of his family
reputation, especially in the engineering field. Of the two of the
line who were not engineers, one was a soldier and a distinguished
one, but his career had little interest for Meade. I have heard him
say that there had been a steady, upward movement in his family, that
had reached its culmination in his father. He hoped to be a good,
useful engineer, but he never dreamed of going any higher or even
approaching the altitude of the other man."
"It was a sort of fetish with him, then, wasn't it?" asked the woman
as Rodney stopped again.
"You have hit it exactly. His love for the man, his admiration for
the engineer, which sometimes blinded him, and his pride in his
father's career as typifying his family, were unbounded."
"You have established a motive for any sacrifice: love, respect,
pride!"
"That's the way it presents itself to me, Miss Illingworth. I know
thoroughly the quixotic, impulsive, self-sacrificing nature of the
man. I know that he would have done anything on earth to save his
father, even at the sacrifice of his own career, and since I have
seen you I can realize how powerful these motives must have been."
Rodney said this quite simply, as if it were a matter of course,
rather than a compliment, and bluntly as he might have said it to a
friend and comrade, and Helen Illingworth understood and was grateful.
"It has been a grief to me that I weighed so little in comparison,"
she said simply.
"I shouldn't put it that way exactly," observed Rodney carefully.
"You see even if it could be shown that it was the old man's fault
entirely the young one would still have to share some of the blame."
"You mean he should have foreseen it and pointed it out?"
"Yes."
"I think he did."
"I think so, too, but if he did foresee it and point it out, he
should not have allowed the older man to overawe him or force him to
accept what he believed to be structurally unsound. And Meade
realized that he was practically done for when he gave you up, unless
he wished you to share his disgrace, and in the face of every
conceivable opposition a woman would have to meet. I don't know
whether he reasoned it out exactly in this way. I don't think he had
time to argue the case, the shock was so swift and sudden, but as
soon as he did see the situation he discovered that you were lost
anyway, except of the charity of your affection, which he could not
accept, and that he could save his father. This may all be the
wildest speculation, but this is the way it presents itself to me."
"And to me," said Helen, "but before we go any further, let me say I
should rather be his wife, shamed, humiliated, heartbroken,
blameworthy though he may be, than enjoy any other fate or fortune."
"If anyone did love Meade for himself that is the kind of affection
his qualities merit and would evoke in the mind of a discerning
woman."
"Thank you. Will you go on, now?"
"Of course you know that what we have said is not evidence. It is
all assumption, perhaps presumption."
"It's as true as gospel," said the girl earnestly.
"To you and to me, yes. Well," he continued, "I remember that Meade
and I were talking just before he went to Burma three years ago about
a new book by a German named Schmidt-Chemnitz, in which certain
methods of calculations were proposed for the design of lacings.
They were empiric, of course, because there haven't been enough
experiments on big members like those in the International from which
to deduce the true laws. You know it was the lacings of one of the
compression members of the cantilever that gave way."
"Wait a minute," said Helen.
She went to her desk, opened a drawer, extracted therefrom a paper.
"Look at this," she said. She put her finger on the little sketch
Abbott and Curtiss had discussed on the observation platform of the
private car. "These are lacings, aren't they?"
"Yes," said Rodney, studying the sketch with deep interest. "Where
did you get this?"
"Presently," said Miss Illingworth. "Go on with your account."
"Well, Meade and I got into a hot discussion over some of
Schmidt-Chemnitz's formulas. I maintained that they were wrong. He
took the opposite view. He was right. He was so interested in the
matter that after we separated he wrote me a letter about it, adding
some new arguments to re-enforce his contention. The other day I
made a careful search among my papers and by happy chance I found the
letter. I was half-convinced by his reasoning then, although the
matter was dropped. I am altogether convinced now. His argument is
very clear. I have examined since then the plan and sketches for
that bridge. The calculations did not agree with those of
Schmidt-Chemnitz. His methods were not used. Meade could not have
forgotten the matter. I am morally certain that he made a protest to
his father, probably in writing, then allowed himself to be persuaded
by his father's reasoning. As a matter of fact, I suppose that
Bertram Meade, Senior, was a greater authority on steel bridge
designing than even Schmidt-Chemnitz. Well, sometimes, the smaller
man is right. We know now and Bertram Meade, Senior, would admit it
if he were alive, that Schmidt-Chemnitz was right, and we can make a
good guess that young Meade did not let it pass without a protest."
"Mr. Rodney, it's wonderful."
"Well, that's not all. There was not a little bit of hesitation in
Meade's assumption of the blame, not a person who heard it doubted it
apparently. I have sounded them all carefully, except myself."
"And me."
"It was a splendid piece of dramatic acting,--one hates to call such
a sacrifice by such a name--but that is what it was."
"My thought exactly," said the woman. "Is that all?"
"Not yet. I was the first man to see the older Meade except his son
and Shurtliff."
"Oh, Shurtliff!"
"We'll come to him presently. It was obvious that the older Meade
had been writing. I don't know whether the others noticed it, but it
is my business to take in even inconsiderable details. The pen was
still between his fingers. His hand was constricted and the pen had
not dropped out, in fact I myself took it out and laid it on the
desk."
"His last conscious act was to write something, therefore?"
"Yes, for confirmation I ascertained that there were ink-stains on
his fingers."
"What did he write and to whom?"
"I don't know. I can only guess."
"What do you guess?"
"The assumption of entire responsibility and the exculpation of his
son, probably to some paper."
"From the same motives that prompted Bert?"
"No, because it was true. But that is only an assumption, although
not altogether without further evidence."
"And what is that?" asked the woman eagerly.
She had sat down opposite Rodney at the table and was leaning toward
him. Her color came and went, her breathing was rapid and strained
under the wild beating of her heart.
"The blotter on the desk. I examined it at my leisure. It had been
used some time. I went over it with a magnifying glass. Meade,
Senior, had evidently written a letter. I found the words 'fault is
mine.' I have the blotter in my desk. The word 'fault' is barely
decipherable, 'is' can be made out with difficulty, but 'mine' is
quite plain. I am familiar with the older Meade's handwriting, and
though this is weaker and feebler and more irregular than was his
custom--ordinarily he wrote a bold, free hand--this is unmistakably
his. Of course no one can say that he wrote any letter. This is
piling assumption upon assumption and, furthermore, there is no
evidence of any signature having been written beneath it."
"But there are signatures on the blotter?"
"Yes, one in particular, very clear."
"It might have been added later."
"Of course."
"Is that all?"
"There is one more bit of evidence."
"What's that?"
"The sheet of paper on which the design computations for the
compression chord members appear was not with the other plans and
tracings of the bridge."
"How do you know?"
"These plans were taken over by the Martlet Company after Meade's
death and Mr. Curtiss and I examined them. We found that sheet
missing."
"It's wonderful!" cried the girl, her eyes shining. "I was convinced
before, but, if I had not been, you would have persuaded me beyond a
doubt."
"I have persuaded myself, too," said Rodney. "But there is not a
single thing here that would justify any publicity even if we were
prepared to go against Meade's obvious desire. As I say, it is all
assumption. No one could prove it."
"You are wrong," said the girl. "One person can prove it."
"Who is that?"
"Shurtliff."
"I wondered if that would occur to you."
"Of course. You think that Meade, Senior, wrote a letter assuming
the blame because it was his. I have no doubt in the world now that
Bertram Meade had made his protest in writing. Perhaps he indorsed
it on the missing sheet," continued the woman, making bold and
brilliant guesses. "Or maybe he wrote a letter that was attached to
the sheet that we lack, and Mr. Meade got it out of the safe and
wrote his letter and attached it with Bertram's protest to the
missing drawing and gave them to Shurtliff and told him to take them
to the papers. You know Shurtliff said that Meade declared he would
assume the blame and he told the reporters so. Shurtliff has, or he
knows who has, the missing paper."
"But what motive would the secretary have for such concealment?"
"He idolized the older Meade. Mr. Curtiss told me about him. A
failure himself when he was a young man, Mr. Meade had faith in him
and offered to promote his engineering efforts, but the man preferred
to attach himself, personally, to Mr. Meade and so he became his
private secretary. By his own showing he had been with the dead man
on that afternoon. He has the papers."
The woman rose to her feet as she spoke with fine conviction.
"I believe you are right," said Rodney, leaning back in his chair and
staring at her through his glasses. "If we can only make him
speak----':
"We can."
"How?"
"I don't know, but that shall be my task."
"But where is he?"
"Working for my father."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I suspected him from the first, and as there was an
opening for a private confidential man, who understood engineering--a
vacancy made by the promotion of my father's private secretary--I
prevailed upon him to give the position to Shurtliff. Father hates
the name of Meade, but he worships efficiency and he knows that
Shurtliff is the very incarnation of the particular kind of ability
that he desires, so he is with my father constantly and I have him
always under my eye. When we go away in the car, he goes along."
"What are you going to do?"
"Win his confidence, his affection if I can, appeal to him, and----"
"By Jove," said Rodney, "I believe you can do it. You can't drive
that old man."
"I know it," said the woman.
"You haven't told him that you thought it was his fault?"
"No. Now, to return to that picture and that plan. I can remember
the day Bert saw it first."
"When was it?"
"The morning after the night I nearly fell off the bridge."
"Yes?"
"It was on the table on the observation platform where the men had
left it. I had gone to the door to tell the attendant that Mr. Meade
would breakfast with us; when I came back he was staring at it like
one possessed. We had some conversation about it. I remember every
word." She repeated it verbatim. "It was not so much what he said,
but the way he looked; strained, one might say, alarmed. I puzzled
over it a good deal and as we had"--she stopped and smiled--"we had
other things to think of, I didn't dwell upon it until afterward.
Mr. Rodney, he knew that lacing was weak. There was relief in his
look and voice when he found that Curtiss and Abbott were both
satisfied. If he knew it was weak, or if he thought it might be, he
is the kind of man who would have said so. If we can find that
missing sheet, if we can make Shurtliff tell, we can establish his
innocence beyond peradventure."
"We certainly can and, if we do, it will be through you."
"Don't forget your own part, Mr. Rodney."
"I couldn't do anything with a man like Shurtliff. You can. You can
win his devotion, you can let him see how much the reinstatement of
Bert Meade in honor again means to you. You can do it."
"Meanwhile you will help me, won't you?"
"In any way, in every way. Do you know where he has gone?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. He might be in Africa, or South
America, or out West, or up North. Do you see those flowers?"--she
pointed to a great bunch of American Beauty roses, which had been
forced for her apparently, and which she had received on that very
day--"Dards, you know the Madison Avenue florist, sends me a box of
magnificent blossoms, roses, violets, orchids, always different,
every week. They speak to me of him."
"Have you ever tried to trace them?"
"No. I know whence they come and that is all. We will hear from him
some day, somewhere, somehow. Meanwhile, we will work, work, work!"
"Miss Illingworth," said Rodney, rising, "I will transcribe this
conversation and send you a copy. We will study it. Meanwhile if
anything occurs to me I will communicate with you."
"And I with you."
"And you will allow me to say before I go that since I have had this
conversation with you I do not see how even love for his father or
his family name would have led Meade to do it."
"Don't say anything against him," said Helen Illingworth quickly.
"He was mad with anxiety, shame, regret. Whatever he did I love him
just the same."
XXII
WORKING UP
The autumn went by as a dream. Winter, warm and mild in that far
southern clime, was at hand before Meade realized it. An ordinary
engineer of half the ability of Bertram Meade so suddenly reduced to
the ranks would have chafed against the position of subordination and
would have resented the humble duties with which he was charged. But
Meade was happy to be following, even in this extremely modest way,
the profession that he loved. And he did his unimportant work with
zeal and care. It is not much to say, but he was the most efficient
of the junior engineering force on the dam. That compensated for
another not quite so admirable fact. He did not mingle with the men.
They thought him reserved and unfriendly and but for his unfailing
courtesy to everybody and his obvious expertness he would perhaps
have become unpopular. Of course, many of the men were far beneath
him socially and intellectually, but there was a spirit of democracy
among the workers on the dam. Except for the foreigners and others
of the manual laborers, rank and station were more or less laid aside
after hours. Even Vandeventer himself put on no airs.
It was not because Meade was unsocial that he kept to himself, not at
all. From his own galvanized iron quarters, he used to stare
longingly at the men grouped around the big camp fires, for the
nights were growing chill, smoking and laughing, exchanging
experiences and telling stories. Nothing would have pleased him
better than to have joined in and he could have told stories and
related experiences that would have been unique even in that gay
crowd of young adventurers. But he did not dare. He feared to
betray himself. What he wanted above everything was to preserve his
incognito. It would be fatal to his chances of ever working up to
anything worth while if they found out who he was.
And he had a tremendous pride to sustain him. They respected him
now. As a matter of fact they put his withdrawal of himself down to
vagaries of temperament or causes they could not imagine and they
grew rather to like him even as they left him alone. And a few of
the men of the humbler sort to whom he had been kind on occasion and
helpful, were stoutly devoted to him. Little indications gave him
the feeling that Vandeventer had his eye on him and that if it were
possible he would get a chance. He was not moody or morose. He was
just afraid, afraid he would be found out, questioned, pitied. So
when the others gathered together in jolly fellowship after working
hours Meade, perforce, wandered away alone.
The idleness of an aimless life did not appeal to him even in his
off-duty periods. Doing nothing had no attraction. He could not get
relief that way. Even rambling alone about the hills would not
serve. So quick and active a man, so vigorous and buoyant a spirit,
so strong a body and mind were not calculated for aimless wandering.
Meade was a very accomplished engineer indeed. There was no branch
of the art about which he did not know a little, although hydraulics
and structural steel were the things that most appealed to him. He
got relief in the duality of his affections for these branches of his
profession. Neither one of them ever palled on him because he did
not work monotonously at either of them. He had a natural instinct
for topography, and instead of purposelessly strolling about the
country, he made a careful inspection of the valley which was to be
converted into a huge reservoir by the dam.
The dam itself was, perhaps, an eighth of a mile long at the bottom
and, as it touched the receding hill on one side and the spur of
Spanish Mesa on the other at the top, it there exceeded that basic
extent considerably, perhaps twice. It was a huge mound of earth
with a clay core extending from side to side at the narrowest part of
the valley, near the south end of Spanish Mesa and a few miles above
Baldwin's Knob, the highest but by no means the most picturesque hill
or mesa in the valley of the Picket Wire. When completed the dam
would be one hundred and twenty-five feet high above the old river
bed with a roadway twenty feet broad on the top of it.
The engineers had fortunately found a long flat space of ground, like
a meadow, just at the narrows and the huge mound of earth they had
built upon it fell away in a long slope toward the lower valley.
Below the dam and on the low ground between the mesa and Baldwin's
Knob the camp, with its galvanized iron shops, bunk houses, dining
halls, kitchens, and officers' quarters, had been erected. The
configuration of the ground was such that, although it was unusual to
put them there, convenience had rendered it desirable in this case.
The hills were covered with splendid pines, except where they had
been cut to pieces by the diggers and teamsters to furnish the clay
for the work. It was intended to complete the dam before the early
spring of next year, which was, if any time in the country could be
so characterized, the rainy season. Of course, just as soon as the
dam had begun to rise, the flow of the Picket Wire below it had been
stopped, except when an occasional freshet had been allowed to pass
the under-sluice. It was known that the run-off of the river in the
rainy season of some years was so small as scarcely to fill the
reservoir, and it had been decided to store all the flow of the
autumn and winter so that even if the spring rainy season were
deficient the beginning of the next summer would find the reservoir
full and the new irrigation system could commence operations
successfully.
Vandeventer, like the lost Abbott of the International, was also a
driver, who spared neither his men nor himself. The work had
proceeded with astonishing rapidity, although this was partially
accounted for by the fact that the spill-way, which should have
occupied their attention, had as yet been only partially excavated.
Now, to those ignorant of engineering, an earth dam may seem a
temporary expedient, although most of the great irrigation dams of
the world are of that character; and everybody knows that if the
water should rise high enough to overflow an earth dam it would not
last longer than it takes to describe its utter giving way. A flood
would sweep it out of the way at once.
The device whereby possible floods are controlled and such dangers
averted, consists of a broad channel at one side of the dam, and at
such a distance below its crest that if, through any mischance or
natural happening, such as the failure of the sluice gates, excessive
rains, cloud bursts, or floods, the height of the water is increased
until it promises to overflow the dam, this opening will carry off
the surplus harmlessly. This channel, usually concreted, is called a
spill-way. It is almost always completely open, rarely being
provided with gates, and it works automatically. Just as soon as the
water rises high enough to be menacing, it flows through the
spill-way and is discharged into the valley below the dam until the
water level in the reservoir is lowered and the danger of overflowing
is ended. The discharged water can do no harm, as there is never
more than the river, without the dam, would have sent down anyway.
An earth dam without a spill-way would presage almost certain
destruction to all who lived in the valley below it.
In the case of the Picket Wire dam, the spill-way had to be cut and,
in part, blasted out of the mountain side--that is through the spur
of the mesa, which reached down from its high wall towards the
narrows. There had been a series of blunders and mishaps, which
included the explosion of a shipment of dynamite on the railroad,
with very disastrous consequences to accompanying rock-crushers and
mixers, and other machinery. The spill-way had not been completed.
Its opening should have been about twelve feet below the level of the
dam. Vandeventer was not responsible of course. The chief engineer
had fumed and protested, but had been directed by headquarters to go
ahead with the other work and tackle the spill-way later. There was,
indeed, little reason to hold up the building of that particular dam
because of the non-completion of the spill-way.
That was a country, so the most devoted inhabitants freely admitted,
in which it was always safe to bet that it would not rain, no matter
how threatening might be the appearance of the sky; for in
ninety-nine times out of a hundred the negative would win the bet.
Said inhabitants did not say the hundredth time might compensate for
all the other failures. The weather was like the little girl with
the proverbial curl--when it did rain there was no doubt in anybody's
mind as to the fact. Sometimes the fountains of the great deep,
which in Holy Scripture at least extended overhead, would be broken
open and the violence of the fall and the quantity of it, and
suddenness of it, would be such that the Westerners would graphically
call it a "cloudburst," which, indeed, it seemed to be.
Outside the rainy season cloudbursts were unheard of, and even in
that season, extremely rare. For the valley of the Picket Wire and
in the plain beneath, carefully tabulated reports of the rainfall for
years had been considered by the engineers. They had chosen the
right season for the building of the dam, but when its crest began to
rise above the designed level of the spill-way the delay in opening
the channel gave cause for some alarm. It is not the probable or
certain that is feared. An old version that, of _omne ignotum pro
magnifico_--it is only the unknown of which men are afraid, or only
the unknown is to be feared! Still there was nothing Vandeventer
could do but obey orders and go ahead. The danger after all was
trifling. Another consequence of the waiting was that in his
inability to work on the spill-way, he had more hands to devote to
the dam and it rose the quicker.
The shape of the country behind it was such that when the Picket Wire
flowed with sufficient volume to fill it, a long lake going back
through the valley, or cañon, and twisting among the hills for some
miles would result. In other words the dam would make a beautiful
artificial sheet of water bordered on one side by a high range of
hills, on the other by the dam, and on the third by the hills and the
low hog-back above Spanish Mesa, which separated the Picket Wire
valley from the Kicking Horse gorge up which the railroad ran.
Buried in his own thoughts, communing with himself, considering
ceaselessly his position, dreaming of the woman he loved, planning a
new career, Meade yet explored every foot of the valley and ravine.
He climbed to the top of Spanish Mesa and from its height the whole
country clear up the valley to the main range was visible to him. He
could look down into the deep ravine of the Kicking Horse, and note
the marvelous beauty and airiness of the arch bridge for all it so
solidly carried the heavy freight trains of the railway.
He could see far up and around the crooked course of the Picket Wire.
The big grass-covered, but otherwise bare and treeless hog-back, that
ran from the upper end of the stone island of the mesa was equally
visible to him. As it was the low side of the new reservoir he
descended to it and studied it carefully. On another occasion,
having said nothing to anyone about his excursion, he took advantage
of a half-holiday to go out and inspect the hog-back and ascertain
its elevation with relation to the dam. Of course the engineers who
planned the great irrigation works had done that, but he wanted to do
it for himself. At one place, where the distance between what might
be called the edge of the valley and the head of the ravine was
narrowest--indeed, he estimated after pacing it that it measured not
over twenty feet across--he discovered that the rounded earth crest
was slightly lower than the intended level of the top of the dam.
When he returned to the office, he found on examining the
construction drawings that an earth dike was planned to run along the
hog-back so that the top level should be higher than that of the dam.
This dike would be only a hundred and fifty feet long and a few feet
high, and could be built in a few days' time. Work on the main dam
being more important, nothing had as yet been done on the dike.
Meade had been promoted toward the end of the fall and in a rather
unusual way. One of the transit men, a young engineer, got a better
job and left his instrument. Vandeventer called Meade before him.
"Roberts," he said, "there's a vacancy for a transit man. You've
done such good work so far and shown such familiarity with field
work, that I'd give it to you if I had any idea that you know
anything about handling instruments."
"I think I may be trusted with one, sir," answered Meade, his eyes
brightening.
"Yes, perhaps; but I have watched you in odd hours. The young men
around here are constantly practicing with the transits. I've never
seen you put a hand to one. How about it?"
"I'm not exactly a youngster, Mr. Vandeventer," returned Meade, "and
I really didn't think it necessary to practice, but if you trust me
with one I believe I can manage it."
Old Vandeventer leaned back in his chair in the office and looked
carelessly away from Meade to all appearances. He clasped his hands
back of his head and seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he began
humming a little scrap of verse about another college which Cambridge
men sing with zest.
"_I'm a physical wreck,
From the grand old Tech',
But a hell of an engineer!_"
He stopped abruptly, whirled about in his swing-chair, and shot a
quick glance at Meade. It was a trap. And as he sprung it
Vandeventer surprised the ghost of a smile, repressed quickly but
there, on Meade's lips. The chief engineer was satisfied. Before
this, little things had betrayed a fellow alumnus or at least a
fellow student of the old Lawrence Scientific School. Vandeventer
was pleased at his adroitness. He did not, however, refer to it.
"There's a new transit in that box on the floor there," he said,
resuming his indifferent manner. "I've had the case opened, but I
haven't taken it out. Get it, and we'll go outside and see what you
can do with it."
Now a transit, for all it is used in rough field work, is one of the
most expensive and delicate of instruments. It is capable of the
most accurate adjustment, and if it is to be of any real use, the
refinement of these adjustments must not be impaired in any degree by
unskilled and reckless packing. The boxes in which the instruments
are shipped are very carefully constructed in accordance with the
principles which experience has shown to be necessary, and each one
is especially fitted to the particular instrument to be contained
therein. The box is a complicated thing and the transit cannot be
taken out or replaced except in one way. With a knowledge of the
combination, so to speak, it is comparatively simple to take a
transit from the box; without that knowledge, which none but an
expert transitman, or the packer himself, can have, it is rather
difficult without running a risk of ruining the instrument.
This command was another of Vandeventer's tests therefore. Meade
knew this as well as his superior. In spite of himself he would have
to betray his familiarity. Well, he had brought himself to the
conclusion that he could not continue his work without very soon
disclosing the fact that he had been an engineer. And in case of the
inevitable the sooner the better. So long as he had to betray
himself, he would have all the advantages as well as the
disadvantages. He unlocked the door of the box, slid the instrument
out quickly, accurately, without a moment's hesitation, and rapidly
unscrewed the head from the slide-board, and screwed it carefully on
the tripod. Vandeventer's eyes sparkled.
"Come outside," he said, leading the way to the side of the hill,
"and set it up there over the tack in that stake and level it."
Beginners have been known to take ten minutes to get a transit set
up, leveled, and centered. It is good work if it is done inside of a
minute, thirty seconds is very fast. In forty-five seconds Meade
reported, "all ready, sir." He could have done it in less, but he
was a little out of practice he said to himself.
"Look here," said Vandeventer, "you can't pull any more bluff on me,
Roberts; you're an engineer all right."
"I know something about the practical side of it, sir," answered
Meade, turning a little pale and wondering how far Vandeventer would
press his questions and what he would learn.
But the engineer was a man.
"Practical, yes and theoretical too, I'll be bound, but I don't seek
to pry into your antecedents. It's enough for me if you do good work
for me here."
"I'll do my best, sir."
"Good, the instrument is yours."
That was the first step and the next step came very shortly after
when, having further demonstrated his capacity in other ways, Meade
was given charge of the work on the east end of the dam.
"I don't care who he is," said Vandeventer to his chief subordinate,
"he knows what he's about and if you watch him you'll see. He's keen
on handling men. The other section foremen will be hard put to keep
up with him. He keeps watch on himself. He's got some secret he
won't betray. He doesn't mingle with the crowd, but every once in a
while something slips out. What he doesn't know about engineering
nobody needs to know, I'll wager."
"How do you account for his being out here?"
"Oh, it's the old story, I suppose; he's come a cropper
somewhere--down and out and wants to begin again, and can't do
anything but this. It's not our business, Stafford; he does good
work for us and we're satisfied."
XXIII.
THE FORMER AND THE LATTER RAIN
The work on the dam was progressing splendidly. Vandeventer, driving
his men hard, shared in all their furious efforts. He was not only
their leader, but their inspiration. He could safely work them to
the limit because by a process of elimination during the work he had
surrounded himself with a body of able assistants, and by the same
method his teamsters and workmen, many of whom were foreigners, had
been culled from a greater number, until they had become a small army
of picked men, of which to be proud. Among all these Meade stood
very high. He still occupied his comparatively humble position as
gang-foreman, but he had shown such capacity in the four months he
had been with Vandeventer, such a grasp of things, such an ability to
handle men, in one or two instances when, with intention to try him,
the resident engineer had given him charge of some special work, that
Vandeventer unconsciously looked to him in any emergency. He
actually found himself consulting Meade on occasion!
He had accompanied the younger man on one of those rambles which he
had hitherto taken alone. He had not broken down Meade's reserve,
but he had won his admiration and regard. Vandeventer was not
unknown in engineering circles. In earth work he was by way of being
an authority. His experience had been varied and extensive. Meade's
reserve and reticence rather hurt the older engineer. He had invited
confidence and had even given his affection. He intimated delicately
that if the other were under a cloud Vandeventer might be in a
position to help him.
It was fortunate for Meade's purpose of concealment, for his
incognito, that most of his engineering work had been done abroad and
that he had been out of touch with American engineering for
practically the whole of his career. Vandeventer was a Harvard man
too, and that made it especially hard for Meade to keep from
betraying himself. As a matter of fact the younger man actually
longed to make a clean breast of it, but he could not quite bring
himself to do it, yet. That might come later.
Three months ought to see the completion of the dam and the long
canal, which was to carry the stored water to the irrigation ditches
below. Vandeventer was already making plans for another big job, and
he had decided, in his own mind, that among the subordinates whom he
would take with him, the newcomer should have the first chance.
Vandeventer felt proud and satisfied when he surveyed the work that
had been accomplished in the six months of labor. To be sure the
delay in the completion of the spill-way disquieted him a little.
The dam had reached the spill-way level a fortnight before, and had
now passed it. Indeed, on the fifth of January, the dam builders
were within five feet of the top; that is, the crest of the dam was
one hundred and twenty feet above the level of the valley. They had
planned to run the spill-way around the eastern end of the dam. That
was the end near the spur of the mesa. It was fairly soft rock on
that side, except near where the end of the dam joined the hillside
it was covered over with earth. Through this rock the channel would
be opened to such a depth that when the water rose too high in the
reservoir it would flow through this channel around the dam, and
discharge into the valley a safe distance below the foot of the dam.
This was the spill-way, which had not yet been completely excavated
or blasted out on account of the delay in receiving the rock drills
and dynamite which had been ordered, as has been explained.
These supplies had finally arrived in December, and by putting as
many as possible to work on the spill-way Vandeventer had succeeded
in opening it for its entire width to an average depth of about seven
feet below the intended top of the dam; that is, it was now about two
feet deeper than the actual crest of the dam, but it still lacked
five feet of its designed depth.
The rainy season, an inspection of the records had shown, was not due
for a month and a half yet. That would give him ample time to
complete the dam and the spill-way. Sometimes it did not rain from
June until the next March. In that country that was why irrigation
was needed. This year, however, there had been some very unusual
rains during the fall and the water back of the dam was now
ninety-eight feet deep, which made it twenty-two feet below the level
to which the dam had risen and twenty feet below the spill-way. This
was much more water than anyone had dreamed would be in the reservoir
at that time, and was perhaps more than should have been allowed.
Still there was a safety margin of twenty-two feet, which Vandeventer
was sure would be ample. The financial promoters of the project were
very anxious to have the reservoir full when the irrigating season
opened, and the engineer's judgment had been influenced by their
eagerness to get it working.
The broad sheet of water ran back into the valley for many miles. In
fact the dam had transformed the country into a beautiful lake.
Sometimes it rained in the mountains when it did not rain down in the
valley, and there was a constant, if very small, rise in the level.
Vandeventer personally carefully gauged the water every day.
Naturally he had noted that it rose gradually, but as the dam rose
proportionately more rapidly, he was not uneasy. Yet, as a good
engineer, he was watchful and largely because of the unfinished
spill-way he urged the men to the very limit.
Those who could understand the situation seconded him heartily and
such was the contagion and the enthusiasm of all hands as the job
approached completion that, although the men grumbled at being so
driven, they worked with a will. The weatherwise from the town, who
sometimes rode up to inspect the work, assured Vandeventer that it
could not possibly rain before March, and the mere fact that so much
water had fallen, rendered it more improbable that any more would
come down. Yet nature has a way of doing unexpected things and
everybody knows that all calculations which depend upon nature are
empiric anyway. To lay down an invariable natural law for the
weather is impossible because of the infinite variety of permutations
and combinations of which nature is capable, especially when it comes
to weather manifestations in what are known as the "arid regions."
Whatever be the case, at three on the afternoon of January sixth it
suddenly began to rain hard without warning and with no premonition
on the part of anybody. It was not one of those terrible downpours
referred to, which are popularly and graphically, if incorrectly,
known as cloudbursts, but it was an excessively hard, steady rain.
The heavens over the range were black with clouds and so far as
anyone at the dam could see, it was raining from the crest of the
mountains down. There were some anxious discussions in the
dining-room of the resident engineer and his American assistants.
At four o'clock it was decided to open the under-sluice gate about
halfway, but when this was done the volume of water it was capable of
discharging was too small to help very much, and on opening it to its
fullest extent the velocity of the water rushing through was so great
that the river bed was rapidly scoured out. For fear of undermining
the toe of the dam it was necessary partially to close the sluice
once more.
The water was rising, first at the rate of three or four inches in an
hour, then half a foot, and finally nearly a foot. By six o'clock
that night it had risen two feet. It was still raining hard at that
hour, although not quite so furiously as it had been. There were no
signs of a break when night drew on, but it was practically
inconceivable that it could rain all night, and rough calculations
convinced them that even if it did rain until morning at the present
rate there would still be a margin of safety of perhaps fourteen or
fifteen feet at dawn, that is to say the top of the dam would still
be fourteen or fifteen feet above the water level.
Of course if the spill-way had been completed it would not have been
of so much importance if it had risen further, because before it grew
dangerous it would have been relieved by the outflow through that
channel. Well, although the situation required watchfulness and was
somewhat alarming it was not desperate. The men were advised to put
in all the time in their bunks so as to be good and ready for the
hard battle which might come in the morning, and as they were all
tired out with their day's work the little group soon broke up and
each man went to his quarters.
Vandeventer, however, could not sleep. The rain kept up steadily all
night. It thundered on the galvanized roofs of the houses with a
roar of sound which he would not have minded if he had been used to
it and gradually seemed to increase in intensity. The resident
engineer finally got up and dressed himself, and protected by high
rubber boots and a cowboy slicker and a sou'wester, he left his
quarters and went out to inspect the dam. He carried a lantern of
course, for it was pitch dark and, if possible, the rain dropping
from the black sky made it more difficult to see.
He was surprised when he got to the dam to see on the other side
another lantern. Someone else was abroad. For what purpose? There
was no reason for Vandeventer to suspect anyone of evil intent. But
by this time the situation had rather got on his nerves, what with
the rain, his sleepless night, the unopened spill-way, and the
possibilities of the situation. Closing the slide of his own lantern
to prevent observation and being on familiar ground he went straight
toward the other side. The noise of the rain subdued any sound that
he made and he was able to come quite close to the other light
without being noticed.
The lantern was standing on the roadway on top of the dam. A man was
kneeling beyond it, his figure seen dimly in the faint light of the
lantern. He was staring intently down the front of the dam at the
water. The lantern was near the edge and it faintly illuminated the
black rain-lashed surface below. Vandeventer realized with a shock
of horror how much more rapid the rise had been. A quick estimate
convinced him that the level of the water was now within eight or
nine feet of the dam--and it was still raining!
The face of the kneeling man was hidden by a sou'wester and he had on
a heavy black rubber raincoat. Vandeventer reached over and touched
him on the shoulder.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
The kneeling man sprang up with an exclamation. It was Meade. The
relief in Vandeventer's mind was great at the recognition.
"I just came out to look at the water. I couldn't sleep with all
that pounding on the iron roof of the quarters, so I dressed and came
out."
Vandeventer opened the slide of his own lantern and threw the light
on the reservoir.
"It's risen eight or ten feet since we saw it."
"At least that," said Meade.
"I judge it's about nine feet down to the water."
"Not an inch more than that."
"And with this rain--
"It's not coming down so hard as it was when I first came out here,"
said Meade. "I think you can see it slackening yourself."
"Yes," said the resident engineer, listening a moment, "I believe it
is. If it stops now," he continued thoughtfully, "we ought to be
safe."
"Yes, I think so," answered Meade.
In the night alone, together in that crisis in their fortunes, the
two men were interchanging thoughts and ideas on terms of perfect
equality. It did not occur to Vandeventer to question why, and that
they were doing so aroused no surprise in the mind of Meade.
"Of course," continued Meade, "even if it does stop raining we'll
continue to get a lot of runoff from the watershed for some time."
"Yes," said the resident engineer, "that of course, but if the rain
stops everywhere we can scarcely have a rise of more than five or six
feet and that would still be a little below the spill-way."
"It's stopping here now," pointed out Meade and, indeed, the force of
the downpour was greatly diminished.
The two stood watching the dam and the black lake beyond it in
silence for a few moments until the rain practically ceased. The air
was misty and heavy with moisture, but the rain was certainly over
for the time at any rate.
"Thank God," said the resident engineer in great relief. "Now if it
has stopped everywhere we'll be all right."
"Yes," said Meade, "and I'm inclined to think it has stopped
everywhere. Whoever thought it would rain in January here? There
hasn't a drop, to speak of, fallen in January for twenty years, or
since there have been any records. Why in heaven's name it had to
come now I don't see."
"Does the water seem to you to be rising?"
"Yes," answered Meade, after a careful survey, "but much more slowly."
"Look here, Roberts," said Vandeventer suddenly, "you know you're a
first-class engineer."
Meade shook his head.
"You can't fool me," said the older man. "I've watched you. You
know more about the game than anybody here except myself. You don't
choose to confide in me, although I like you, and I am in a position
to help you."
"I appreciate what you say, Mr. Vandeventer," returned the other,
"there is no one to whom I should rather tell the whole story than to
you, but I can't, not yet."
"Well, keep your own counsel, but if you ever want a friend count on
me; meanwhile as a man of experience and ability what would you do?"
"Get out the men and build up a temporary dam on the top of the
roadway here, to turn the flow over to the east bank and make the
spill-way do more work."
"But the rain has stopped."
"And in all probability it will stay stopped, still you never can
tell. That it rained at all is contrary to the universal expectation
and observation, but once it has done so it may do so again, however
unlikely. A few more hours of rain like that we've had and the whole
thing would go. If the water were as high as the top there'd only be
two feet of head in the uncompleted spill-way and that wouldn't be
enough to discharge it at the rate it's been coming in."
"Of course," said Vandeventer thoughtfully. "And if the dam goes,"
he added, "there are ten miles of back water up there and millions of
cubic yards impounded, which would sweep down the valley. There
wouldn't be a thing left of the camp, the town, the new railroad
bridge, or anything else."
"Coming on top of the International, the loss of this big and
expensive viaduct would about finish the Martlet Company," said Meade
thoughtlessly.
Vandeventer looked at him sharply. An idea suddenly came to him.
Meade had turned away his head as he realized his slip, so he did not
observe the light in Vandeventer's eyes. However, the resident
engineer was a good sort.
"You are right," he said quickly. "I hate to call out the men, but
we've got a little chance now the rain has stopped, and we can work
to advantage in spite of all this awful mud"--he lifted his foot up
and disclosed it caked and clogged with masses. "I'll take charge in
the center here and Stafford on the left, and I'm going to give you
charge of the east end of the dam over by the spill-way. If only
those drills had been here six weeks ago."
"We might set the men to work on that rock now," said Meade.
"It would be useless. There's too much of it. No, if we're going to
save the dam we've got to build it up and try to keep ahead of the
waters if they rise any more. The higher we can build it, the
greater will be the head on the spill-way, and the more will be
discharged. I'll turn the men out at once."
"But what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to palisade the top of the dam. There's plenty of timber
already cut down and we will cut a lot of young pines and build a
palisaded wall of timber across the top three or four feet back from
the edge. Well banked on the down-stream side it may hold."
"It might be worth while to line that palisade with galvanized iron
sheets from the houses," said Meade.
"A good idea," said Vandeventer, "and we'll pile what underbrush and
small stuff we have in front of the palisade and heap what rocks we
can find on top of that, and we'll bank it up on the other side with
earth. It's a poor dependence, but it will hold for a while anyway
and every moment of time may be precious."
"How about sand bags, sir?"
"We've got a few hundred cement bags, but not enough. I wish we had
a few thousand; however, we will fill what we have and if the water
rises and begins to trickle over the top and through the palisade
we'll jam those down at the danger points. Can you suggest anything
more?"
"Nothing."
"Good. We'll turn out the men. They've had six hours' sleep anyway."
XXIV
THE BATTLE
It was now three o'clock in the morning. In about half an hour the
men, naturally grumbling and protesting at being deprived of any of
their sleep, were out and at work. Lanterns were lighted everywhere.
The rain had fortunately not resumed, and the air was soon filled
with noise and confusion. Men with axes were busy on the hillside
cutting the young pines. Horses, which would have protested as much
as the men had they been able, were hitched to the dump wagons, the
steam shovel began tearing away the hillside. Some of the men were
detailed to knock down some of the galvanized iron houses and the
battering of the hammers on the metal added to the din.
Under Vandeventer's personal direction a row of stakes was driven
into the top of the dam about three feet from the front of it. He
had intended to put the stakes a foot apart, but he decided that in
the emergency he would not have time for so close a palisade, and
therefore they were placed about two feet from one another. There
were only about one hundred and fifty men working on the dam, and
there was a limit even to what the hardiest and most desperate worker
could do.
Big sheets of overlapping galvanized iron were nailed roughly to the
fronts of the firmly bedded stakes and the small branches and
brushwood were thrown down before it. There were a great many small
bowlders and big stones which had accumulated during the excavations
and these were carried out on the dam in the wagons and thrown down
on the brushwood so as to bind the improvised mat of branches into a
sort of revetment; spare timbers, broken wagon beds, old wheels,
joists of dismembered houses were driven into the earth to serve as
braces behind the palisade; but the main support of this wooden wall,
with its skirmish line of frail brushwood, was a bank of earth which
was piled up behind it, on which every man, even the chiefs
themselves, who could be spared from other tasks labored with
breathless energy. The water was still rising, although the rain had
stopped; the natural drainage would cause that, but the rise was
slower.
At dawn Vandeventer personally carefully measured the depth of the
water and gauged it again. It was a scant six and a half feet below
the top of the dam. At daylight the palisade at which they had
worked so hard in the darkness showed its flimsy front to all. It
was a desperate expedient. That, the least intelligent workman could
see. If the water rose above the top of the dam it was gravely
questionable whether the palisade would hold it at all, yet there was
no other way of increasing the depth of the spill-way enough to
discharge the flood volume.
Working as hard as they could, they had barely succeeded in raising
the earth bank back of it a foot high. They kept at it
unremittingly, although it did not seem to be of much use.
Vandeventer, Stafford and Meade gathered together and scanned the
sky, seeking to discern the signs of the time, the purpose of the
heavens. It was clearer in the east. The clouds to the
northwestward were in violent action apparently. Lightning flashed
through them and over the great range itself; low muttered peals of
thunder came down from the peaks lost to sight in the blackness
overhead. They observed all this carefully and Vandeventer turned
away, shaking his head.
"I don't know," he began--the three of them were over on the east
side the better to see up the valley--"it looks pretty bad, doesn't
it?"
"It does," answered Meade, while Stafford nodded his head.
"And, by the way, Stafford, have you notified the town and the bridge
people of the danger and bid them prepare for it?"
"I tried to telephone them awhile ago, but the connection has been
broken; the storm has played havoc with the line probably," answered
the assistant engineer.
"Well, what did you do, then?" asked Vandeventer a little
imperatively.
"I sent a man down on horseback in a hurry to warn them that if it
rains again the dam might go, and if it did it would go with a rush;
that the water was now only six feet below the level and that they
had better get up on the hills. Of course, last night's rain must
have made the road almost impassable, but he ought to get there by
nine o'clock. I told him to tell the Martlet people to take whatever
steps they could devise to hold their viaduct and their machinery,"
answered Stafford, as he turned and walked toward his own part of the
dam.
"Good," exclaimed Vandeventer. "There's nothing left for us to do
but keep on."
The resident engineer looked white and haggard. Although it was cold
and raw in the wet air he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"The men are doing splendidly, sir," said Meade.
"Yes," said Vandeventer, "many of them have their wives and children
back in the town. Some of the Italians have bought land on the
prairie and are going to settle here. They're fighting for
everything they've got on earth. What do you think of the chances of
this palisade of ours?"
Meade shook his head.
"You want a frank opinion?"
"Of course. What else?"
"It wouldn't hold an hour."
"That's right, and yet it's all we can do."
"That hour might save the dam, though."
"Doubtful," said Vandeventer gloomily.
"It's all we can do, as you say, sir, but if the water rises more
than seven or eight feet----"
"Say it," said Vandeventer.
"The dam would go like a house of cards."
"Exactly. And look at that cloudbank over there in the northwest.
It's spreading."
"What wind there is," said Meade, moistening his finger and holding
it up to feel the direction, "is blowing the opposite way down here,
but you can't tell what is happening up there. Well, all we can do
is to fight on."
And fight they did. It was almost at first sight like the hand of
man against the hand of God. There was no more room for science, no
more room for engineering expedient. It was chop and hew, break and
pound, dig and drive, carry and pile. Throwing off his coat,
Vandeventer seized a spade and began to work like any other laborer,
and the rest of the higher men followed his example.
At six o'clock the blackness hanging in the northwest began to turn
their way. It was coming down the mountain. It was headed for the
valley. Vandeventer saw it, every teamster, every common laborer saw
it. It was coming. Unless heaven itself interfered there would be
more rain. They had worked desperately before, but now they applied
themselves to their tasks with a kind of wild fury. A sort of
insanity took possession of them. They would not be beaten. They
cried, at first shrilly and then hoarsely and raucously, encouraging
words and phrases from one to another; terse, vivid, profane,
desperate. They stood there and they heaved and dug and piled and
hammered and hurled and drove fiercely. It was a battle madness that
came into them. They saw red like the berserker of old. Yes, it was
not unlike a battle in other ways, for with the rush of the northwest
storm came roaring mighty thunder and vivid and terrifying lightning.
It was as if great darts of light literally were hurled by some
gigantic hand behind the black screen of sweeping cloud down upon the
granite mountains. They saw splinters of fire where the thunderbolts
struck. The pealing of thunder was appalling.
Their frail palisade backing was not half completed. It must be
raining somewhere, for the water was still slowly rising. It was
five and a half feet now from the crest. It was hopeless if another
rain fell, and the rain was coming. There was an added chill in the
still air of the valley as the storm drove down upon them. A few of
the fainter hearts flung down pick and shovel and axe and stood
craven. Oaths, curses, blows even, from those of the braver sort
shamed them into work again. These brave hearts and true might be
swept away with the dam if it gave way, but they would not give up,
and no man working with them should flee his task or shirk his duty.
By the Living God, whose sport and playthings they seemed to be, they
swore it; and so weak and strong, bold and timid labored
on--desperate, resolved, god-like in their courage and persistence.
The clouds were moving swiftly now. To the east it had been clear,
but now it was also black, and then with a roar greater even than a
thousand thunderclaps the wind tore down the mountains, through the
narrow cañons, into the valleys, shrieking in the pines, and fell
upon them and hurled them down and brushed them back. And after the
wind, the rain. A drop or two struck Vandeventer's cheek; another,
another, and then the flood. He lifted his head and stared and shook
his fist at the sky and turned to the human termites he commanded.
"Carry on, carry on, boys," he cried, shrieking to be heard above the
thunder peals, "we'll beat it yet."
A cheer rose about him and was caught up and ran along the top of the
great dam. The half-maniacal yell was such a cry as men might give
vent to in the heat of battle, the excitement of wild charge, and
then they fell to it again. The more ignorant, unaware of the
feebleness of the palisade, the more knowing indifferent to it,
seeing only the job, alike realized only their duty to fight on, to
answer the appeal to their manhood, to refuse to admit defeat even
when life trembled in the balance.
Yes, to use the ancient simile again, the fountains of the great deep
were broken open. What had befallen them before was nothing to this.
The hard rain of the night seemed trifling compared to this avalanche
of water. This was a cloudburst indeed. And to make it worse, to
make their task harder, to render their efforts useless, the high
wind roaring down the valley piled the water up and drove it in
thunderous assaulting waves against the great mound of earth on which
the men struggled and labored frantically. Vandeventer, shovel in
hand--he did not dare to throw it down, lest his action be
misconstrued,--went from gang to gang, from man to man, talking to
them, appealing to them, pointing out weaknesses here and there,
inspiring them, holding them up as a man might hold a stricken line
against the onslaught of a victorious and overwhelming force. And
against wind and rain in that thick darkness, blinded by the flashing
lightning, stunned by the pealing thunder, with zeal superhuman they
toiled on and on and on.
Back and forth went the chief, showing himself a leader of leaders,
and wherever he stopped the fury and desperation of the effort to
stem the tide increased. When he came plodding along the muddy
roadway to the part committed to Meade he did not find the engineer.
"Where's Roberts?" he yelled above the noise of the storm.
"He and two men have gone, sir."
"Gone?" cried Vandeventer, cut to the heart at what he thought was a
desertion. "Well," he shouted, realizing there was nothing he could
do then and that he had neither breath nor time to waste, "there's
more need for the rest of us to take their places."
He drew a man or two from the other gangs to re-enforce this danger
point and himself directed their work.
Now it takes time for water to rise five feet, even in a cloudburst
or a succession of them. The rain constantly seemed to increase as
the wind drove it on. Vandeventer knew that the dam was doomed, that
the sluice and the half-finished spill-way combined could discharge
only a small part of the flow, but he knew that he would have two
hours at least to work before the water could pass the crest,
undermine, and batter down the palisade and begin to trickle over.
Just as soon as it did roll over the top, unless they could stop it,
the whole thing was gone. For those two hours the supermen labored
unremittingly in the downpour with a persistent and heroic courage
that should have been recorded in song and story, but which was not.
It was remembered after a while by none, save a few. To the many it
was only "all in the day's work"!
The under sluice in the side of the dam which would later serve as
head gate for the canal had been intended to pass the smaller floods
which might occur during the construction and had been open since the
rain began. It carried off a great volume of water, but hopelessly
little in comparison with the flood. Foot by foot in the torrential
downpour the water rose. At half after eight it reached the level of
the spill-way and commenced to rush through in ever increasing
volume, but the flow into the reservoir was far greater than the
spill-way's capacity.
Still the sight of the rushing water encouraged the men. Every one
of them felt that if the palisade held the discharge would be
increased enough to stop the rise, but at present the effect was
small. By nine o'clock it was within a foot of the top. They began
to measure its rise by inches. Although the dam had been carefully
kept level as it was built, the trample of horses and men, the
present digging and palisading and revetting had caused little
depressions. Now the water rose to the level. Here and there it
began to trickle over!
The rain coming down from the mountain tops was as cold as ice, yet
the men were in a fever of excitement. They had got their second
wind. They were too enthused, too desperate, to feel their
weariness. They had not worked before as they did then. It was the
last possible nervous outburst with most of them. They could keep it
up a little longer--till they dropped dead. As the mad thoroughbred
falls in his stride in the track, pushed beyond his power of
endurance, as even the common cart horse can be made to go until he
drops, so these men, white, haggard, nervous, drawn-faced, sweat
mingling with the rain on their sodden bodies, would go till they
broke. They had not quite reached that point yet.
There were some five hundred heavy cement bags which had been filled
with sand and piled up on the roadway at convenient points. As a
forlorn hope, as a last try, Vandeventer called all the diggers and
ditchers, and hewers and drivers, and bade them tackle the sand bags.
The timber wall that rose to four or five feet was now packed to a
height of three with an unequal wall of earth.
The waves were beginning to roll against the rampart, although their
force as yet was broken by the brushwood. Vandeventer jumped up on
the palisade near the center. There were some large logs there where
he could stand and whence he could get as clear a view of the whole
top of the dam as was possible through the driving rain.
"There," shouted the engineer, pointing to a red trickle--it seemed
to him like blood, taking its hideous hue from the red clay of the
banks--where the water had found a low spot and was washing across
the top and trickling through the new wall and down on the other
side. Even as he pointed the trickle became a stream and the stream
bade fair to be a flood. Men ran and dropped sand bags over in front
of the palisade right where the leak had occurred. Other men heaped
up the earth behind the wall, seeking to smother it and stop it. The
water checked there, they were forced to do the same thing at another
place. Desperately they dropped their sand bags, sturdily they plied
their shovels in the mud, scrambling and yelling they ran from leak
to leak. They lifted the heavy bags of sand as if they had been
loaves of bread and jammed them down. They swung pick and shovel
like toys, although the rain made all the earth sticky mud and the
work all the harder. The water was clear over the top of the dam now
and streaming through the revetment of brush and surging against the
palisade. Where it did not let the water through, the line of stakes
was beginning to bend backward.
The men who had expended their sand bags and could get no more in one
final effort ran to the palisade, dug their heels madly in the wet,
slimy earth and put their shoulders against the bending stakes as if
to hold them up by main strength. Thin streams were flowing here and
there, now unheeded. Checked and held in one spot, the water broke
through at another. The spill-way could not control the rise.
"She's gone, she's gone. My God!" gasped Vandeventer under his
breath. He had fought a good fight. He could do no more. There
were no more bags of sand. Save for the men straining at the wall
here and there and everywhere, there was left nothing but to stand
and wait, having done all. As one man saw another the whole hundred
and fifty caught the contagion and threw themselves against the
palisade, wet and chilled from the rain, but yet madly, recklessly,
Americans and foreigners alike. They would hold it by main strength
for another minute, they swore, oblivious to the fact that just as
soon as it went it would go with a rush.
The stockade would be swept away first and they would go with it.
What of that? The men back of it matched their brawny arms against
rain and wind, the powers of man against the powers of God, but not
mockingly. It is perhaps doubtful if they realized what they did.
It was instinct, habit, blind desperation now. If the flimsy wall
failed under the terrific water pressure they would be hurled beneath
it, swept down the slope of the dam, buried in the débris as it was
swept away, caught up if they by any chance survived so far, and
hurled broken and battered down the valley in the terrible flood that
would ensue. What did they know about that, or knowing, what did
they care, as they strained at the wavering timber wall? And still
they held as the rain poured down on them, soaking through their
soggy clothes, the colder on their exhausted bodies for the keen wind
that blew across them.
Well, they had done everything they could. Vandeventer jumped down
and pressed himself against the nearest timber with the men and
waited, silent. He had never sustained such a pressure in all his
life. Like Atlas, he felt as if he were holding up a world. And the
mocking thing about it all was his feeling, nay his realization, that
he was not really holding anything, that if the palisades failed, his
pressure, his resistance and that of all the other men amounted to
nothing. Yet he held on and they, too--demi-gods!
IV
SPILL-WAY
[Illustration: (diagram of reservoir and surrounding terrain)]
XXV
THE ANCIENT ART OF FASCINATION
And much of the last wild hurricane of work took place under the
observation of a woman!
From the top of the big mesa there was a clear view of the new
reservoir, from the dam on one side far back into the hills on the
other. In spite of the tremendous downpour and the fierce gale Helen
Illingworth stood exposed to both attacks, and, indeed, indifferent
to them,--albeit protected by slicker and boots and
sou'wester--fascinated by the titanic struggle between nature and man
of which she was a witness. How she came to be there herself is
another chapter and how the two men who stood by her came to be with
her is now to be related.
The general investigation by Rodney and Miss Illingworth had produced
no results. A careful study by each of the members of the new
alliance of Rodney's accurately reported, graphically set forth notes
upon the subject had only served the more thoroughly to convince each
of them of the correctness of their conclusions. Analyzed and
expanded, iterated and reiterated, scrutinized and emphasized by each
of them separately and then together in many long discussions, they
only made them more and more confident that Meade was blameless. But
the most assiduous effort with the heartiest will in the world and
the promptings of devotion and affection could not make a case out of
these suggestions and their inferences that would hold water. They
could not establish their contention beyond peradventure in the face
of Meade's direct admission and Shurtliff's corroboration. They
could not establish it in the public mind by any evidence at all if
Meade and Shurtliff remained silent.
If either one or the other of the two conspirators could be brought
to tell the truth, Meade could be restored, at least sufficiently so
for the purpose of argument; the argument that Helen Illingworth
sooner or later must make to her father. It was that to which she
gave the most thought, it was for that she planned and longed.
Two people cannot resolve even by mutual consent to dismiss from
their daily thought and conversation any subject whatsoever without
introducing in place of it a certain constraint. It is as futile to
attempt to dismiss anything absolutely from the human mind as is the
oft suggested cure for rheumatism--doing certain things without
thinking of the disease sought to be cured!
Colonel Illingworth had dismissed Meade from his mind because he
hated him. Helen Illingworth refrained from talking about him to her
father because she loved him. So they were never in each other's
presence without thinking of the man. This was a source of great
irritation to the father. On occasion he almost found himself at the
point of shouting at his daughter to talk about him. And that she so
carefully avoided the subject and as the avoidance was so obviously
in accordance with his own wish, the restraint irritated him the
more. The fact that they both sought so carefully to maintain the
old relationship made it the more impossible. For relationships
which are primarily founded on love cannot be maintained by
constraint without the weakening of the great force upon which their
tenure had previously depended. There is nothing like concealment to
impair and weaken a tie unless it be a ban! Prohibitions rarely
prohibit. Still there remained a deep and abiding affection between
father and daughter and they managed somehow to get along outwardly
much as before. Indeed Colonel Illingworth was more kind and
considerate than ever to his daughter, and she repaid him with more
than usual care and devotion. The very fact that she seemed to have
accepted the situation and obeyed the law he had laid down gave him
some compunctions of conscience. On that account perhaps he had been
the more willing to accede to her request to take Shurtliff into his
employ. In no way was Shurtliff responsible for the failure of the
bridge or for any mistake in the calculations of the Meades, and
Shurtliff was an invaluable man, not only for an engineer but for the
president of the Martlet Bridge Company.
He was familiar with the subjects that Colonel Illingworth discussed
and wrote about. He was intelligent and reliable to the last degree,
his reputation for steadiness and discretion unquestioned, and he was
marvelously efficient in his subordinate position. The Colonel,
having first tried him out, had advanced him rapidly after learning
his worth. He was now his private secretary. Shurtliff being an old
bachelor without kith or kin and not originally fond of women, found
himself suddenly in touch with one of the sweetest and kindest, as
well as the youngest and most beautiful of a sex about which he knew
nothing.
His new position naturally brought him into close touch with the
Colonel. The old man transacted a good deal of his business in his
own house. Shurtliff was frequently there. Under other
circumstances Helen Illingworth would have treated him with that fine
and gracious courtesy which she extended to everyone with whom she
came in contact, but she would not have especially interested herself
in him. She would not have made him the object of the delicate
attention and given him the careful consideration which would have
completely turned the head of a younger and more susceptible man.
There had been a prejudice in Shurtliff's mind against women in
general, and Helen Illingworth in particular. He had quickly
realized that she above all persons had the greatest interest in
disproving Meade's statement and his own and in laying the blame for
the failure of the bridge where it belonged, on the shoulders of the
patron, to love whom had been the habit of his life. Therefore, the
old secretary was constantly on his guard lest he be entrapped into
admissions or actions which might be used to discredit the older
Meade and convict the two conspirators.
But Helen Illingworth was far too clever to allow any inkling of such
a design to appear. Not the remotest hint of such a purpose did she
betray. She deliberately set about to win the old man's regard and
respect and perhaps eventually his affection. She had the ordering
of her father's household, of course. That was a matter in which the
Colonel concerned himself not at all so long as things went smoothly,
as they always did. He was a little astonished at her treatment of
Shurtliff, but the old secretary was at heart a gentleman and there
was no reason why, if Helen chose to include him among her friends
and invite him to dinner and otherwise make him welcome in the house,
she should not do so. And in his dry, precise way Shurtliff was
rather likable. He was touched and flattered by her kindness and in
spite of his suspicions, which gradually grew less, by the way, he
exerted himself to show his appreciation and to bear himself
seemingly in his new life.
Colonel Illingworth had no suspicions whatsoever that there had been
any conspiracy to suppress the truth and shift the blame. True his
daughter had protested on that fatal day that she did not believe
Meade and Shurtliff, but that was in the excitement of the moment and
understandable in view of her plighted troth. Helen had never
discussed that with him; even the very name of the engineer being
banned, she was silent. She was wise enough not to try to worry or
bother her father with arguments on that point, to which, of course,
he would not have listened in any event.
Accordingly the conferences with Rodney had never been brought to his
notice. There was no use stirring up trouble and strife. There was
no necessity even to discuss it with her father until she had found
more proof. So he at least had no suspicions as to her treatment of
Shurtliff. He could not see any end to be gained and therefore he
jumped to the conclusion that there was none.
In course of time, as Miss Illingworth never referred to Meade in the
secretary's presence, all his mistrust disappeared. Finally he even
brought up the subject of Meade's whereabouts of his own motion.
Although the girl was fairly wild to talk and ask questions she had
wit and resolution enough to change the subject when it had been
first broached and for many times thereafter.
Helen Illingworth was fighting for the reputation of the man she
loved and for her own happiness, and she was resolved to neglect no
point in the game. She partook in a large measure of her father's
capacity, but she added to his somewhat blunt and military way of
doing things the infinite tact of woman, stimulated by a growing,
overwhelming devotion to her absent lover. She cherished that
feeling for him in any event and would have done so but the whole
situation was so charged with mystery and surcharged with romance
that it made the most powerful and stimulating appeal to her.
She lived to vindicate Meade and she bent every effort toward that
end. She did not overdo it, either. Finally, as he himself
continued to press the subject upon her, she made no secret to
Shurtliff of her devotion to the younger Meade, her sorrow that he
had made such a declaration, and her determination to wait for him.
She was always careful to end every conversation by saying that she
knew her outlook was perfectly hopeless and that she could expect
nothing except sorrow until the younger Meade was rehabilitated. She
so contrived matters, while constantly affirming her feeling for
Meade, as to let Shurtliff infer that she was convinced that he had
been telling the truth in what he had said.
After a time she deftly appealed to him to know if he could not help
her discover the truth which she tactfully maintained even in face of
the evidence that Shurtliff had given. And she did this in such an
adroit way that Shurtliff became convinced that she did not connect
him with any willful deception, and that she believed that he was
deluded himself and occupied the position of an innocent abettor.
And Shurtliff, in his strange, old, self-contained way, finally grew
to like Helen Illingworth exceedingly. Indeed he started in his work
with natural antagonism to Colonel Illingworth, and when he sensed,
as he very soon did, the difference that had arisen between father
and daughter, he espoused the cause of the latter. He was the kind
of a man who had to devote himself to somebody. He began to wonder
if there was any way to secure the girl's happiness without betraying
the elder Meade.
She compassed the secretary, who was, of course, old enough to be her
father, with sweet observances and he found it increasingly hard to
keep true to his falsehood. Now she was capable of fascinating
bigger personalities than Shurtliff, although she cared little for
that power and rarely exercised it. The old man actually got to
thinking of her as a daughter. Sometimes when they had an hour
together he found himself seconding her arguments for the innocence
of the younger Meade, for she had progressed that far by now, with
little details which his knowledge and experience of the two men
could supply. Trifling in themselves as were these contributions, as
Rodney pointed out when she repeated them to him, they nevertheless
added something to the cumulative force of the argument so
laboriously built up by the friend and woman. And they were
decidedly indicative of a growing mental condition on the part of
Shurtliff from which much might be hoped and expected.
But Shurtliff could not bring himself to come out boldly and confess,
and his failure to do that made him more and more miserable. At
first his conscience had been entirely clear. He had viewed his
conduct in the light of a noble sacrifice for the great man. Now he
began to question: Was it right to blast the future of the living for
the sake of the fame of the dead? Probably he would have questioned
that eventually without regard to Helen Illingworth, but when he
began to grow fond of the woman and when he realized, as she
unmistakably disclosed it to him, that her own happiness was engaged
and that he was not only ruining the career of a man but wrecking the
life and crushing the heart of an entirely innocent woman, he had a
constant battle royal with himself to pursue his course and to keep
silent.
Yet such is the character of a temperament like that of Shurtliff,
narrowed and contracted by a single passion in a life and lacking the
breadth which comes from intercourse with men and women, that his
compunctions of conscience only made him the more resolved. The
lonely, heartbroken old man swore that he would never tell. The
young man could go his own gait and work out his own salvation, or be
damned, if he must. The woman's heart might break, pitiful as that
would be, but he would never tell. He was as unhappy in that
determination as any other man fighting against his conscience must
inevitably be.
Sometimes looking at the misery in the old man's face (for on his
countenance his heart wrote his secret), Helen Illingworth
experienced compunctions of conscience of her own, which she told to
Rodney in default of other confessor. That fine young man
appreciated fully the woman's feelings and understood her keen
sensibilities, and his comprehension was a great comfort to her. He
encouraged her to persevere. Since it was only through Shurtliff
that the truth could be established, she must not falter nor reject
any fair and reasonable means to gain his whole confidence and make
him speak. It was, after all, simply a question of whether the game
was worth the candle. How best could they expose or fight a deceit?
And that the deception was for a noble purpose and to serve a
laudable end in the minds of the deceivers did not alter that fact.
"You are doing nothing in the least degree dishonorable, Miss
Illingworth," said Rodney, reassuringly. "Woman's wiles have been
her weapons since the Stone Age."
"But I do feel compunctions of conscience occasionally."
"Personally I think you are abundantly justified," urged Rodney.
"Yes, to establish the truth, to give the man I love his good name
would justify more than this," she replied, "and yet"--she smiled
faintly--"my conscience does hurt me a little. The old man is
beginning to love me."
"That's the reason it hurts you," said Rodney. "When he loves you
enough he will do anything you want, as I would----"
The young man stopped, looked long at her, and then turned away with
a little gesture of--was it appeal or renunciation? He was too loyal
to his friend to speak, but he could not control everything. The
tone of his voice, the look in his eyes, his quick avoidance of her,
told the woman a little story. They had been very closely
associated, these two. Rodney also had not had much advantage of
woman's society, certainly not of a woman like Helen Illingworth.
She had given him her full confidence in the intimacy. He was a man.
He loved like others. She was too fond of him, too great, too true a
woman to pretend.
"Mr. Rodney," said the girl, laying her hand on his arm, "that way
madness lies."
"Miss Illingworth," said Rodney, turning and facing her, his lips
firmly compressed, his eyes shining, "I'm devoted to Bert Meade and
to you"--he lifted her hand from his arm and kissed it--"and I'm
going to do everything for your happiness."
Brave words and he said them bravely.
"I understand," said the woman, "and I honor you for your loyalty to
your friend and your devotion to me. Loyalty is not always the
easiest thing on earth, I know."
"You make it easy for me because you understand."
So the fall and winter were filled with interest to Helen Illingworth
and there was in her days no lack of hope. Every Saturday the
flowers that Meade had arranged for spoke words of love to her and
bade her not forget, although that was admonition she did not need.
That was the only message that she received from her lover. He had
dropped out of sight completely. They caused search to be made for
him, sought tidings of him in every possible way, but in vain. Her
heart almost broke sometimes at the separation. She had confidence
enough in her power over him, and in her woman's wit, to feel that if
she had only another opportunity she might learn the truth, force it
from him, constrain him to tell it, because she loved him!
XXVI
ONCE MORE UNTO THE WORK
The Martlet Bridge Company had finally weathered the storm, although
it was, of course, not intrusted with the new International Bridge
which was about to be commenced. When Bertram Meade read of the new
undertaking, it cut him to the heart. This time there would be no
mistake. In the necessity of recouping its fortunes, the Martlet
Bridge Company entered upon an even wider career. The directors took
contracts which they had hitherto disdained because they were
comparatively unimportant, and they bid on operations which they had
hitherto left to competitors. They cut the prices down to the lowest
limit to get work, to demonstrate that the company was still a force
to be reckoned with, a power to be considered in the engineering
problems of the world.
They were building the great steel viaduct by the town of Coronado
below the dam, and they had already built the splendid steel arch
that spanned the ravine, here almost a gorge, in the valley of the
Kicking Horse to the eastward of the big mesa.
After Christmas, Colonel Illingworth decided to make another of his
tours of inspection, and as Helen was not looking particularly well
from the strain under which she was laboring, he offered to take her
with him, especially as he was going to the far Southwest, where the
weather would be mild and pleasant, to inspect the growing viaduct
and the completed arch. She gladly availed herself of the
permission. There was always a possibility, albeit a most remote
one, that she might hear of Meade if she got in touch with
engineering works, and here was not one project but three!
Accordingly, feeling the value of his presence, she suggested to her
father, in view of the wide extent of the trip and the important
interest of engineering circles in the viaduct and dam and irrigation
project, that it might be well to invite a representative of _The
Engineering News_, to wit, Rodney, to accompany them, so that the
really splendid work the Martlet Company was doing to regain its
former high position might be made widely known. The party consisted
of the father and daughter, Curtiss, the chief engineer, Dr.
Severance, the vice-president and financial man, and Rodney.
Now Helen Illingworth had not the least reason in the world to
suspect that Bertram Meade was in any way connected with this
engineering project, but Rodney had pointed out and had imbued her
with his own belief that sooner or later when Meade was found, he
would be found engaged in engineering in some capacity.
"It's in his blood," said Rodney. "He can no more keep away from it
than he can stop breathing. He can't do anything else. Somewhere
he's at the old job. It might be in America, and it might be out
there at Coronado, or it might be in South America, Europe, Asia,
or----"
"I wonder if we can't find out all the engineering work that is being
done in the world and send representatives to seek him," said Helen
Illingworth.
Rodney laughed.
"To hunt that way would be like hunting a needle in a haystack. I
cannot bid you hope that he is there; in fact I think it is most
unlikely that he would be any place near where the Martlet people are
operating, but there's a chance, even if only the faintest one."
Well, women's hearts can build a great deal on a faint chance. They
are calculated for the forlorn hope. And so Helen Illingworth stood
on the steps of the private car as it rolled across the mile-long
temporary bridge at Coronado, and scanned the workmen grouped on one
side of the track, their work suspended for a moment that the train
might pass on the wooden trestling, in hope that she could see in one
of them the man she loved and sought. And Rodney stood by her side,
equally interested, searching the crowd with his glance, also.
There was nothing in the town to attract Helen Illingworth out of the
car. She had visited West and Southwest many times. Colonel
Illingworth, with Rodney and Severence, there left the train. They
had, of course, business connected with the bridge which Rodney
wanted to see and report upon. Miss Illingworth decided to go into
the hills and get away from the arid and heated plains. A siding had
been built near the steel arch under the slope of the hill from which
the huge mesa arose. It would be pleasanter and quieter to
side-track the car there. The siding was within two miles of the dam
and the mesa was something to look at and something to climb. The
Kicking Horse ravine and the Picket Wire valley presented rather
attractive possibilities for exploration and adventure in their
pine-clad hills and the car was to be placed there. The men left
behind would use the private car of the division superintendent of
the railroad when they had ended their several tasks.
It had been raining dismally during the afternoon and when the car
was detached and switched to the siding and left up in the hills some
twenty miles from the town, it was too wet and uncomfortable to leave
it. Disregarding the downpour, however, Curtiss, who had come up
with it, made a very careful investigation of the completed steel
arch bridge, which more than surpassed his expectations in its
appearance of sturdy grace, as well as in the evidences of careful
workmanship in its erection.
That evening the special engine pushed the other private car up from
the valley, bringing the people who had inspected the bridge. A few
more weeks would complete the great viaduct. Everything was
proceeding in the most satisfactory way and Colonel Illingworth was
very much elated over the situation.
"Who would have thought," he said as they sat down to dinner in the
brightly lighted observation room, "that it would rain in this
country at this season of the year?"
"It will probably be over by tomorrow morning," observed Rodney.
"If it continued long enough and rained hard enough that dam would
have to be looked after. We'll go over and see it tomorrow," said
the Colonel cheerfully.
"What would happen if it gave way?" asked his daughter.
"It would flood the valley, sweep away the town, and----" he paused.
"Well, father?"
"Ruin the bridge."
"We can't afford to have another failure after the International,"
said Severence.
Now there was a newcomer at the table, a big rancher named Winters,
whom Rodney had met in the town and had introduced to Colonel
Illingworth. The latter had invited him to dinner and to stay the
night in the extra sleeper, and Winters, who had particular reasons
for wanting to talk with Rodney and to meet Miss Illingworth, had
accepted.
"You can count on its stopping," he said at last. "My ranch is a
hundred miles to the north of here. I heard Rodney was with your
party and as he was an old classmate of mine, in fact my best friend
at Harvard along with Bert Meade"--and the mention of the forbidden
name caused quick glances to be passed around the table, but raised
no comment--"the chance of seeing him brought me down here. I know
the weather along this whole section of the country, it's the driest
place on earth, and I would almost offer to swallow all the rain that
will fall after this storm spends itself."
"Well, that's good," said Curtiss, "because I've heard that the dam
lacks a very little of completion but that the spill-way has been
delayed."
"You'll find that the storm has broken in the morning," said Winters
confidently.
After dinner Colonel Illingworth, desirous of talking business,
called the men of the party, except Rodney and Winters, back into the
observation room of the other car, leaving the two men with Helen.
"Mr. Shurtliff," said Helen, as the men stepped out on the platform,
the secretary following, since his employer had intimated his
services might be needed, "if you can, I wish you would come back
here as soon as possible."
"Certainly, Miss Illingworth," said the secretary, "immediately, if
your father finds that he does not need me."
"Rod," said Winters when they were alone, "I'd go a long way to see
you, but I might as well be frank. I did not come down these hundred
miles, leaving my ranch in the dead of winter with all its
possibilities of mishap to the cattle, simply to see you, or even
Miss Illingworth here, although she's worth it," he went on with the
frank bluntness of a Western man.
"Of course, you didn't," said Rodney, smiling. "I know I'm not a
sufficient attraction."
"I came to talk about Meade."
"Mr. Winters," said Helen, clasping her hands over her knees and
leaning forward, "if you know anything about him, where he is, what
he is doing, how he fares, is he well, does he think of--I beg you to
tell me."
"Miss Illingworth, there is nothing I would refuse to tell you if it
rested with me."
"I don't mind confessing to you, you are such old friends, you and
Mr. Rodney, and so devoted to Bert, that I am worrying----"
"You need say nothing more, Miss Illingworth. I know all about the
situation. Rodney wrote me and----"
"Well then, you understand my anxiety, my reason for asking?"
"I do."
"And you will tell us?"
"I wish to God I could."
"Can't you tell us anything?"
"Well, yes, I can."
"What?"
"It may be a breach of confidence."
"I'd take the risk," said the girl, her bosom heaving. Was she at
last about to hear from her lover?
"Know where he is, old man?" asked Rodney.
"I think so, not sure, but----"
"Where?" from the woman, breathlessly.
"I didn't agree to tell you that."
"What then?"
"All I can say is that after the death of his father he turned up at
my ranch one day some five months ago and told me his story."
"What!" exclaimed Rodney. "Did he tell you he was innocent?"
"Not at first. He told me he was guilty."
"But you didn't believe him, did you?" asked the woman impulsively.
"I certainly did not."
"Why not?"
"Well, I don't know why. I just didn't, that's all. I know Meade.
I know him well. I know his makeup. We get accustomed to sizing up
a man's actions out West here and it didn't take me longer than it
took him to tell the story to know that it wasn't true."
"Oh, thank you for that," said the woman.
"But our beliefs are not evidence, Dick," interposed Rodney.
"We can't prove it and that's the point, I told him," continued
Winters, "that it was a da--darned lie--I beg your pardon, Miss
Illingworth. I mean I told him that it was not true and that he was
a fool for sticking to it, and--er--he--admitted--I--er," floundered
Winters, suddenly realizing that he was on the eve of a breach of
confidence and checking himself just in time. "In fact the subject
was painful to him and I let him alone, which is what we generally do
to a man who doesn't want his affairs inquired into too closely,"
Winters ended lamely, realizing how near he had come to betraying his
friend's confidence and telling of Meade's own admission that he had
said what he had to save the fame and honor of the father.
"Well, what next?" asked Rodney, understanding as did Helen
Illingworth herself the ranchman's hesitation and respecting it,
although the unavoidable inference gave her great joy.
"He hung around the ranch for a month or six weeks to get his
balance. He was pretty badly broken up. I'm a bachelor myself and
don't know much about those things, but I can say that he loved you,
Miss Illingworth, more than life itself."
"But not more than the reputation of his father," she said with a
little tinge of bitterness.
"Well, I take it he looked at that as a matter of honor. You know a
man's got to keep his ideals of honor."
"Even at the expense of a woman's heart?" said the girl.
"It sounds hard, but I guess we've got to admit that. But that's
neither here nor there," he continued, gliding over the subject, "the
point is I found that he had to fight it out himself and I mainly let
him alone. I gave him a horse and gun and turned him loose in the
wilds. Best place on earth for a man in his condition, Miss
Illingworth. You can go out into the wilderness and get nearer to
God there than any place I know of. He came back finally, turned in
his gun, borrowed the horse, bade me good-bye and said he was going
out to make a new start."
"Where did he go? Which way?"
"He was headed south when I saw him last, and all this lay in his
way."
"You mean----?" cried the woman.
"He may be here?" said Rodney.
Winters nodded.
"I have thought so. It's only a guess, of course, and probably a
poor one. But when I read in the papers that Colonel Illingworth was
coming out here and that you were along, and Miss Illingworth, I
thought I'd just take a run down here and see what could be done."
"Oh, I'm so glad you have come."
"He's not working on the bridge," said Rodney.
"How do you know, Rod?"
"I examined all the payrolls and none of them bears his name."
"He wouldn't work under his own name in the Martlet Bridge Company,"
said the woman.
"Certainly not. That was only my first step. I went around among
the workmen, too, and I got a look at every one of them. I'm sure
he's not there."
"He wouldn't be a common workman, would he?" asked the girl, more
disappointed than she could express.
"Certainly not. He'd be keeping track of material, or running a
transit, or acting as a gang foreman. Most of the workmen are
foreigners, although the bridge erectors are Americans."
"You're sure that he's not there?"
"Absolutely."
"There's the dam," said Winters. "We'll try that in the morning."
"What good is it going to do us, Dick?" asked Rodney a little
irritably. "Even if we do find him, we can't make him speak."
"I don't know," answered the woman slowly. "But if I could just see
him once again, Mr. Rodney"--she spoke without hesitation or reserve
and both men felt deeply for her--"if I could just speak to him, if
he would only----"
"I believe you can persuade him," said Winters.
"Yes, perhaps, but I want Shurtliff to speak first, then we can
approach our friend himself with more confidence," said Rodney.
XXVII
BRUTE FORCE OR FINESSE
"What do you want me to say, Mr. Rodney?" asked Shurtliff, coming
through the door, having caught Rodney's use of his name.
"Oh, Shurtliff----" began Rodney, somewhat embarrassed at having been
overheard.
"What do you want me to speak about?" continued the old man
suspiciously, not giving the younger man time to finish. "And what
friend can you then approach, sir?"
"I'll tell you what I want," said Rodney.
He quickly came to a decision. Standing up and facing the old man,
he staked everything on one bold throw. Grasping the situation,
Helen Illingworth held her breath. Winters moved to take his own
part in the game at the proper time.
"What is it, sir?" asked the secretary.
"Shut the door and come in," was the answer.
Rodney spoke sharply and it was a sort of indication, characteristic
of the difference in station between an independent young man and a
subservient old man.
"Here I am, sir," answered Shurtliff, closing the door and standing
before it.
He shot a quick glance at the young woman. He observed her tense
position. He saw the emotions that filled her soul in her face and
bearing. All his old suspicions rose like a flood. For the moment
he no longer cared for her. He almost hated her. He looked from her
to the dark-faced, determined Rodney, to big, powerful, quiet
Winters. Was this a trap? Were they going to try to force him to
speak? He was a brave man, old Shurtliff, but his heart beat a
little faster as he faced them. He was quite master of himself,
though, cool, watchful, determined; in their eyes rather admirable
than otherwise.
"The time has come for you to tell us the truth," began Rodney
emphatically. "You know that the whole blame and responsibility for
the failure of the International Bridge is loaded on the wrong man.
You know that you permitted, and even made possible, the sacrifice of
the reputation of the son for the sake of the fame of the father.
You know that this girl here is breaking her heart, that Meade's life
is ruined, and you're to blame. Now the time has come for you to
speak. We know as well as you that young Meade is innocent. Here's
our evidence."
He drew a handful of papers from his breast pocket and shook them in
the face of the old man, who had shrunk back against the side of the
car and stood staring, white-faced, thin-lipped, close-mouthed,
inexorably resolved still.
"Read them," continued Rodney. "I'll admit to you that the whole
thing would not be worth the paper it's written on in a court of law
or even in a newspaper report, but it's convincing to us and you can
make it convincing to everybody. You've got to speak."
"Do you think, sir, that there's any power in your stretched out arm
or in your rude voice or in your threatening gesture to make me
speak?"
"By the Lord," exclaimed Winters, suddenly whipping out a Colt's
forty-five from the holster at his belt--he was dressed just as he
had been when he rode away from the ranch--"out West we've got ways
for persuading men to speak and this is one of them."
Winters was a bigger man than Rodney. His life had been wild and
rough and his manner when he wanted was according. He would fain add
physical compulsion under threat of death to Rodney's mental
insistence.
"And do you think, sir, that I'm afraid of any lethal weapon you can
produce or even use, any more than I am of Mr. Rodney's words?" The
old man's eyes flashed and his knees shook, but he had all the spirit
of a soldier as he looked into Winters' stern face, full of threat
and menace. His thin voice took on a certain quality of courage. It
even rang a little. His courage was mainly moral, but there was some
accompanying physical hardihood, that was undoubted. "You can beat
me, you can even kill me, if you wish, but you can't make me say a
word I don't want to say of my own free will," he cried out at last,
his voice strangely rising.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," said Helen Illingworth, rising and swiftly
interposing between the secretary and the two angry men. She
realized that the affair had gone far enough and that she must
intervene. They had certainly failed lamentably, almost ludicrously.
"You are wrong to threaten Mr. Shurtliff. He is old enough to be the
father of either of you. Drop your arm, Mr. Rodney. Put up that
pistol, Mr. Winters. Mr. Shurtliff," said the girl quickly, "as I am
in a certain sense your hostess and as you are in a certain sense my
guest here, I apologize to you for the improper and impulsive conduct
of these young men. They love Bertram Meade dearly as I do. Let
that be their excuse. Meanwhile, they will apologize to you here and
now, I am sure."
There was a moment of silence. Rodney and Winters stared at each
other and both looked at the girl, confronting them so confidently in
her superb and beautiful way. Winters smiled a little shamefacedly
as he shoved his gun back into its holster. His had indeed been the
greater offense.
"Mr. Winters, Mr. Rodney," said the girl insistently.
"Oh, I apologize. I suppose it was wrong to threaten him," said
Rodney disgustedly.
"Hang it," said Winters, now utterly forgetful of conventions, "it
wasn't the thing to do to draw a gun on a little, old man and I'm
sorry I did it."
"And now that we've apologized you'll tell us the truth, won't you?"
asked Rodney swiftly, with no appreciable change of manner.
"Yes, we beg it now, humbly," chimed in Winters, with anything but an
humble air or voice.
"I won't have Mr. Shurtliff even appealed to now," said Miss
Illingworth. "You have threatened him and you have apologized.
Whether he forgives you or not is for him to decide, but he shall not
be worried, or questioned, or insulted any more."
"Thank you, Miss Illingworth. I came for that book on the desk; your
father wants it," said Shurtliff grimly, bowing slightly to her.
He stepped a little tremblingly--the scene had been unnerving--past
the young men, picked up the book, bowed again formally and
unmistakably to Miss Illingworth alone, and went out of the car. The
honors of the encounter were certainly his.
"Well, Miss Illingworth," said Winters, "I don't know whether you
made a mistake or not. I think I could have scared it out of him
with this little persuader of mine----" He tapped the butt of the
pistol.
"You couldn't have done it if you had killed him," said the woman,
who had read the old secretary correctly. "He isn't what I call a
daring man, but he has courage that would take him to the stake
rather than make him give way, the courage of endurance rather than
of action. When he speaks, if he ever does, it will be of his own
free will."
"Or because you may persuade him," said Rodney. "By Jove, when I
think it over it was the finest thing you ever did."
"Bert Meade's a lucky fellow," said Winters. "You're the kind of a
girl that ought to marry out West, where we try to breed men that
will match up."
Helen Illingworth laughed a little, although she felt no inclination
to merriment.
"That's a fine compliment," she said. "Well, this has rather shaken
me and I'm going to ask you gentlemen to excuse me."
"We'll see if he is working on the dam tomorrow."
"You will stay all night, Mr. Winters?"
"Your father invited me to take a bunk in his car and to be perfectly
frank with you I'd sleep out in the open rain rather than miss a
chance of being in on the end of a game like this."
The girl bowed and left them.
"Dick," said Rodney slowly at last as the two sat smoking together in
the silence of complete understanding and good comradeship, which
requires no expression in talk, "you're not the only man who thinks
that girl would be a good wife to a man."
"Ah," said Winters, "sits the wind in that quarter, Rod?"
"Yes," answered the other, "but I'm fighting this thing through for
Meade."
"Well, by George," said the big ranchman, "you're as good a man as
Meade any day, fine fellow as he is. I wish I had some chance to get
in on this game and make myself worthy of the two of you, let alone
the lady."
It was a rare confidence that Rodney had vouchsafed to his friend,
and like every other Anglo-Saxon, having said his say he did not wish
to discuss it further.
"Do you know," he began, changing the subject abruptly, "I think
things have turned out pretty well in spite of our foolishness a
while ago. I believe if there's a spark of human gratitude in
Shurtliff's heart the girl's interposition when you and I were
threatening him, and her refusal to allow him to be questioned later,
will fan it into a flame. And I have an idea that when he thinks it
over he'll be about ready to tell."
"Are you sure he has anything to tell?"
"Certain."
"Well, I guess you're right. It sort of consoles me for having drawn
my gun, without using it, too. And if he tells in the morning and we
find Meade everything will be lovely."
"For everybody but me," said Rodney.
"I'll tell you what, old man, when this thing's over you're coming
out to spend the rest of the winter with me on the ranch. It's the
greatest place on earth for a man to buck up. There's no woman
within fifty miles."
Rodney laughed a little grimly.
"I'll go you," he said.
XXVIII
THE BATTLE FROM ABOVE
The rain had stopped by morning, to the great relief of Colonel
Illingworth, Severence and Curtiss, and the satisfaction of Helen
Illingworth. There was little sun to dry the big, red sandstone
mesa, its sides seamed into fantastic shapes, which rose grandly
between the valley of the Picket Wire and the ravine of the Kicking
Horse, and which the young woman intended to cross in her walk toward
the dam with Rodney and Winters. The siding near the steel arch
bridge was close to the rock wall of the ravine, which here had been
so scoured out of the rocky side of the mesa by torrents of other
days that it could fairly be called a gorge. Consequently the bank
of clouds above the horizon to the northwest was hid behind the big
butte from the occupants of the two private cars. Although the day
did not promise to be fair, they had no idea of the further threat of
storm presaged by the black masses to the northwest.
In sandy, porous soils such as here prevailed the rain is absorbed
quickly. They could traverse the trails carpeted with the needles of
centuries that ran through the dripping pines without getting muddy
and with nothing more to fear than a wetting. Colonel Illingworth,
Severence, and Curtiss announced their intention of going back to the
town to continue their consultations and observations concerning the
progress of work on the bridge. Shurtliff, who went about his
business gravely reserved, frigidly cold and self-contained, had work
to do at his desk. The woman and the two young men were for the dam.
After an early breakfast, therefore, the second car was uncoupled and
the engine backed it down around the mesa toward the viaduct twenty
miles below. Rodney and Winters prepared to go with Miss Illingworth
across the wooded island, with its cresting of stone, so to speak,
that lay between the ravine and the valley. The conductor of the
train, a local employee of the railroad, told them that the shortest
way was directly over the mesa. The sandstone of which this huge
mound was mainly composed had been broken and disintegrated on all
sides by centuries of erosion and weathering and there were
practicable ascents and descents at both ends. The nearest ascent
was at the side of the big tableland directly opposite which the car
was placed.
The trails through the pines which covered the hill up to the very
foot of the big butte were unfrequented and in bad repair, but
practicable if the traveler was prepared for a wetting. The shortest
and on the whole the easiest way to the dam would be to make their
way to the foot of the mesa, climb it through the big ravine and
cross it to the lower end, less than two miles away, where there was
an easy descent to the dam.
"And if you get caught in the rain," said the conductor, "which ain't
likely, for it's already rained more in the last twenty-four hours
than in the last twenty-four years, it seems to me, there's a hut,
half stone and half timber, up on the mesa that campers sometimes
make use of when they want to see the sun rise, which is a mighty
fine sight from there. It was in pretty fair shape when I visited it
last year and you can find shelter there. It's at the highest point
on the mesa. You can see a long way up the gulch there, and a longer
way down and up the Picket Wire valley. Above the dam it used to
show a level, fertile stretch between the hills, but it's all a lake
now."
Shurtliff, of course, declined Miss Illingworth's invitation to
accompany the party on plea of urgent duties and important papers to
prepare. He had spoken no words to Rodney or Winters, and those
gentlemen made no effort to engage him in conversation. They were,
in truth, a little ashamed of their actions of the night before.
They were exceedingly anxious as to whether their theories as to the
possible effect of Miss Illingworth's action would be justified, so
they carefully avoided the secretary, letting the leaven work if it
would. To their disappointment it gave no sign of life or action.
Of the four most interested in Meade, Winters was the only one who
had slept soundly that night. Rodney was too much in love with the
woman ever to sleep soundly again, he thought, certainly not until
her future had been settled and her relations to Meade finally
determined. Shurtliff's feelings were painful in the extreme. Torn
between the old habit of affection for the dead, his new habit of
affection for the woman, his oft recurring compunction of conscience,
his immediate resentment of the treatment of the two men, his
acknowledgment of the splendid action of the woman, his suspicions,
his uncertainty, as to how the younger Meade would take it if he told
the truth, he slept not at all.
Into Helen Illingworth's mind also had come, although to her credit
be it said not until she had retired and had thought over her action
in the light of the hints given, that perhaps her generous
interposition in behalf of Shurtliff might move his gratitude and
that he might at last vouchsafe her the help which she felt more
certain than ever he alone could give. She was glad when the thought
came to her that she could look herself squarely in the face and
declare to her conscience that it had not been back of her action,
which had been purely spontaneous.
The possibility, although a faint one, that Meade might be working on
the dam and that she might see him on the morrow would have sufficed
to give her a wakeful night, Rodney was a more careful observer than
Winters, but even the cattleman noticed that she looked worn and
strained as he helped her out of the car for their tramp across the
mesa to the dam.
"You know," he said, with rough and ready sympathy, "we haven't the
least assurance that Meade is there. It's only a chance, and
probably a long one."
"I shall never rest until it is decided absolutely one way or the
other," said the woman.
"Well, I'm not much of a walker," said the cattleman. "I generally
prefer to get over the ground astride of a broncho, but I guess I can
keep up with the party for two miles, if that's the distance."
It was dark and damp and wet under the pines. As the conductor had
said, the trail was an execrable one. Although the two men cleared
the way for her, holding branches back and shaking the water off the
drooping boughs, it was well Helen Illingworth was protected from the
wet. She had tramped hills and mountains many a time, camp and
forest were familiar to her. She wore a short-skirted dress, stout
boots and leggings, and a yellow western slicker.
The exertion of the upward climb, stumbling over broken branches and
uprooted logs and floundering through boggy places on the trail,
brought a touch of color to her face, and though damp, the air sweet
and fragrant, clean and pure, refreshed and pleased her greatly; the
men, too. It was a hard pull and she was out of breath when she
reached the broken coulee, or ravine, which led to the top of the big
red sandstone plateau.
"I'm terribly out of practice," she said to the two men, "but I don't
believe I'm in any worse state than you are, Mr. Winters."
"I told you I wasn't any good on foot," said Winters, who was blowing
like a grampus.
Rodney laughed at the two of them.
"Look at me," he said. "I'm as fresh as when I began."
"Well, you're used to walking," returned Winters. "It's this
plugging along this broken trail that has knocked us out. The rich,
they ride on--bronchos, you know."
"When we get on top of the mesa we will find it easier going," said
Rodney encouragingly.
"Let us start," said the girl, suddenly serious, as she thought what
might be at the end of the journey.
"Before we go any further," said Winters, staring up the ravine at
the sky which showed above it, "just take a look at that."
He pointed to the black clouds rapidly rising, apparently against the
wind, which swayed rather violently the tops of the tallest pines,
although they were protected and in comparative quiet where they
stood in the ravine.
"It looks as if there were more rain there," said Rodney.
"It's incredible," answered Winters, "after what we've had."
"But it certainly is coming down again and if I'm any judge it will
be another cloudburst."
"Perhaps we'd better go back," suggested Winters to Miss Illingworth.
"Go back!" exclaimed the girl. "When I'm as near as this?"
"But it's only a possibility, you know."
"Possibility or not it would take a deluge in my path to stop me.
Come."
She stepped toward the broken ravine. Rodney sprang before her.
Winters brought up the rear. It was an entirely practicable climb,
but rather a hard one on the wet, crumbling rocks. It did not take
the three young people long to surmount the difficulties, however,
and after a few minutes they stood on top of the mesa. It was bare
of vegetation, save in scattered little earth pockets, grass-covered,
where dwarfed pines grew, stunted trees centuries old. Its general
surface was level, but the upturned expanse was seamed and guttered
in every direction like the wrinkles in a face that had confronted
the sky for how many thousand years no one knew, for the rock was the
early old red sandstone of the triassic period.
Near at hand was the hut of which the conductor had spoken. It stood
upon a little rise above the general level and from it one could
obviously see far in every direction. There ran valley and gorge,
there extended the high waters of the new-made lake, already dark
under the clouds. Before them rose hill on hill, each overtowering
the others until they merged into the high-land of the great
rampart-like range, its serrated peaks showing whiter their crowns of
snow against the blackness of the heavens. Between the hills and
over the lower crest of Baldwin's Knob they could even see dimly the
far-off plains, a little sickly yellow light still lingering there
before the advance of the storm.
The hut was made of stone and logs. The doors and windows had long
since vanished and the broad eaves overhanging the walls were rotting
away, but the inside they found upon inspection was fairly dry. They
had not any more than reached it before the storm began. Claps of
thunder, flashes of lightning under which the army on the dam were
fighting, were heard and seen with tenfold clearness by the little
group on the huge upland.
It was a sight to awe the very soul of humanity. Miles and miles
down the mountain side and among the hills the whirling battalions of
clouds rolled and tumbled and tossed and clashed like aerial armies.
The lightning, while it was not in sheets, was practically
continuous, flash succeeding flash in uncountable and blinding
succession. Again they noticed the strange coruscating, bursting
effect as bolt after bolt apparently struck some granite ledge and
was then thrown back in splinters of fire. The heavy awful roll of
the thunder was continuous and terrific.
They stood staring through door and windows in silence, Meade and
their quest forgot in the appalling tempest by all except the woman.
It was she who recalled them.
"Let us hasten on," she said, and she had almost to scream to make
herself heard in the wild tumult. "It's magnificent, wonderful,
but----"
As a matter of fact all the manifestations of nature at its grandest
would not have sufficed to turn her head away from her lover's face
if she could have seen him.
"You can't go now," said Winters decisively, "the rain's bad enough
as it is and that cloud will burst in a minute. Old Noah's flood
won't be a circumstance to it."
"I'm protected from the rain," she answered.
Winters shook his head.
"The weight of it would almost beat you down, Miss Illingworth."
"I haven't had any experience with it, but I think Winters is right,"
said Rodney.
"I'll go on alone, then," said the girl passionately, stepping out of
the house, "if you gentlemen don't care to come."
The next moment, with a culminating scream like the shriek of all the
lost souls of creation heard above the furious detonating roll of the
thunder, the wind added its quota to the demonstration of natural
force, and now the rain fairly dropped upon them in apparently solid
sheets. Of course clouds do not burst. Such a thing is
scientifically and meteorologically impossible, but anyone who has
ever experienced the suddenness and fury and weight of a western
deluge in a normally dry land will understand the term. The wind
swept over the plateau where it had free course like a hurricane; the
rain came down in masses apparently. Until their eyes became
accustomed to it, the falling water blotted out the landscape.
The woman was hurled against the side of the house by the sudden and
violent assault of the hurricane. The two men half dragged, half
carried her around to the lee side of the cabin. The roof of the hut
had given way here and there, and within it was soon flooded. Where
they stood, however, by chance happened to be the solidest part of
the overhang of the roof and they were in some degree protected, that
is from the direct violence of the downpour. They were, of course,
drenched in a few minutes in spite of their raincoats. With one man
on either side of her to give her as much protection as possible, the
woman leaned against the stone wall and stared through the rain down
the valley, seeking to see the dam, perhaps a mile and a half away.
Of course the maximum of the downpour could not last any more than
the maximum of the gale, but the deluge was succeeded by a heavy
driving rain still swept on by a strong wind.
Below the mesa the lake was whipped into foam by the beat of the rain
and rolled into waves by the assault of the wind. All three of them
knew what this deluge portended. The downpour would raise the level
of the lake so that it would overflow the dam, which would be swept
away, the valley would be inundated by a flood, like a tidal wave,
the incompleted viaduct would be ruined, the town would be
overwhelmed, the loss of life and property would be appalling.
"The spill-way ought to take it," shouted Winters, knowing what was
in the minds of the other two by what was in his own.
"It's not finished," roared Rodney.
Winters threw up his hands.
"Will the dam hold it?" cried the woman, understanding.
"Until the water rises above it. Just as soon as it begins to wash
over it will go, and the quicker for these waves," answered Rodney at
the top of his voice.
"And the bridge and the town," screamed the woman.
"They, too."
"And father?"
"He'll be all right, they've had warning. The engineers on the dam
must know the danger now. They're working like mad."
He had brought a small six-power field glass with him and he was
straining his eyes through it. The violence of rain and wind had
sensibly abated, although it was still coming down in torrents. With
his knowledge of what would probably be attempted, Rodney was able to
see through his glass something of what was being done even at that
distance.
"They're building palisades on top of the dam and backing it with an
earth mound. See, they are dropping sand bags over," he stated,
handing the glass to the other man.
"By heaven," shouted Winters, "they're making a magnificent fight."
In his excitement he left the shelter of the hut and stalked through
the rain toward the edge of the mesa, where he could have a better
and nearer view. In spite of Rodney's remonstrances, even though
backed by his outstretched arm, the woman followed. Presently all
three, indifferent to the beat of the rain and the assault of the
wind, stood watching the battle on the dam. It was abating still
more, fortunately, or else they could scarcely have sustained the
attack of that wind and rain, nor could they have seen at all, even
with that glass.
Staring down at the dam after a moment Helen Illingworth took the
glass from Rodney. She focused it rapidly and looked steadily
through it. She knew what she was seeking as she stood steadying
herself with splendid nerve and resolution and swept the length of
the dam back and forth.
"I don't see him. He's not there," she said at last, handing the
glass back to its owner.
"If he were there, you'd see him all right," said Winters
enthusiastically, "because he'd be in the thick of the fight."
"I doubt if you can recognize anyone even through the glass, at such
a distance," said Rodney, after he had focused it and taken a look
himself. "Yet if he were there he certainly would be in the thick of
it. He's that kind. You look, Dick."
"I can't see him," said Winters in turn. "But what a fight they are
making to save that dam."
"Will it hold?" asked the woman.
"Impossible," said Rodney.
"I give it one hour," said Winters, handing over the glass.
"Not more than that," assented the other, after another look. "See
for yourself, Miss Illingworth."
From where they stood high up on the roof of the world they were
spectators of a great battle, witnesses of a terrible contest, in
which herculean effort, desperate courage, human will, all exerted to
the limit, finally degenerated into blind, mechanical habit of
continuous and frenzied endeavor. The spirit of reckless continuance
had got into them and moved them to the impossible. As men in a
battle-charge go on even with wounds enough to kill them in ordinary
circumstances, as soldiers at Winchester, though shot in the heart,
actually struggled after Sheridan until they fell, or even as a
common horse may so be imbued with blind intensity of determination
that he gallops on until he drops dead, so these men gave their all
in unmatchable persistence.
"They'd better get off that dam," said Rodney. "When it once fails
it'll go with a rush and then it'll be too late."
"Look at them. They're not going to get off," said Winters.
"They're going down with it. Damned fools, God bless 'em!" he
shouted, throwing up his arms in exultation over manhood and courage
and determination.
"Perhaps you had better go back, Miss Illingworth," said Rodney,
thinking of the horror she might witness at any moment.
"I wouldn't be elsewhere for the world," said the brave girl, white
but with firm lips--she was made of the same stuff as the fighting
men, it seemed--"Even if he were there, fighting that great battle, I
should wait to see the end."
"We're not the only people in this wilderness. Look yonder!" cried
Winters.
He pointed down through the ceaseless rain toward the lower edge of
the mesa. There far below him were three sodden figures. The water
in the lake had risen so that it had overflowed the lowlands, it had
flooded the slope of the hill and on that side it was lapping the
base of the cliff. The trail had, of course, been covered and there
was no way of progress except by taking advantage of the broken rock
at the foot of the cliff, which here and there still stood above the
water. It was a place apparently where men could only pass by
carefully choosing their way and calculating the distance of the next
point toward which to leap.
These three were moving like madmen, splashing through the water,
hurling themselves from rock to rock, falling against the wall,
clutching a tree or shrub, slipping into the lake, saving themselves
from drowning apparently only by the caprice of complacent fortune,
which they were trying to the utmost limit. They had raincoats on;
two of them, however, had lost their hats, the light slicker of the
last one was torn to rags; the first stopped a moment, jerked off his
coat, and went on without it as if the stiff and sodden garment
impeded his action.
One man carried a miner's pick, a spade and a surveyor's range pole,
the other another spade and two long stakes which looked like the
separate legs of a tripod. The bareheaded man, who had thrown his
rubber coat down in the reddish-yellow water, carried a good-sized
oilskin bag. He was the most hurried of the three. He ran some
distance in front of the others. They noticed how carefully he
sought to protect the bag. When he slipped or seemed about to fall
he always thrust it frantically away from the rock with outstretched
arm.
What the three men would be at of course no one knew. It was obvious
that they were in a desperate hurry and that the thing in the bag
must be carefully carried. Naturally the watchers connected the men
with the dam builders. They were dressed as the men engaged in such
labor would be dressed. The pick, the spades, and the pole and
stakes bore out that conclusion.
"What's in the bag?" asked the woman.
"He carries it as though it might be gold or diamonds," said Winters.
Rodney shook his head. Suddenly he divined the reason for the
extreme care with which the bag was carried. The men were
immediately below the three watchers now. He could make out pretty
well what was the size and shape of the objects that bulged the
waterproof bag.
"I have it," he shouted. "Dynamite."
"What for?"
Rodney shook his head again. The man in front was in plain view. He
was a tall figure, his face was heavily bearded. From the angle at
which they saw him it was impossible for them to recognize him, nor
was he in his frantic progress assuming the usual attitude and
bearing of a man under ordinary conditions which sometimes betray him
to those who know him well. Nor could Helen Illingworth with her
trembling hands focus the glass, which she took from Rodney before
the struggling adventurers had passed; and yet there was something in
the figure below that made her heart beat faster.
She pressed her hand to the wet garments over her heart and stared.
Suddenly Rodney raised his voice and shouted at the very top of it.
Winters joined in and even Helen Illingworth found herself screaming.
The three men below were not more than five or six hundred feet away,
but evidently they could not possibly hear in that tumult of nature.
No voices would carry through any such rain and wind. They were too
intent on their paths and on what they had to do to look upward.
They rounded the shoulder of the mesa and disappeared in the pines at
its feet.
The three on the top looked at each other.
"The dam still holds," said Rodney, quite unsuspecting what was in
the woman's heart.
Even as he spoke Helen Illingworth turned away. She ran heavily in
her sodden garments along the broken mesa top past the house to the
upper edge. There below her were the three men just emerging from
the fringe of trees. Rounding the end of the mesa they had at last
struck firmer ground. Helen Illingworth could see them through the
pines on the old trail. The going was bad enough, but it was nothing
compared to what they had passed over and presently they burst out of
the woods and ran along the greasy, well-rounded hog-back that
divided the valley from the ravine.
The woman had no idea what was toward, what was their purpose. She
could only stare and stare at the rapidly moving far-off figure
indomitably in the lead and the others following after. There
Winters joined her.
"Rodney sent me to look after you; he feels that he must stay back
and watch the dam for his paper."
"Look," said Helen, pointing far down. The men halted at the very
narrowest part of the hog-back. They were clustered together. The
bag lay on the ground behind them. One man bent over it, evidently
opening it. Another man swung the shovel viciously, the third
grabbed the pick. Winters had been too far removed from engineering
even yet to figure out what was toward. They could only watch and
wonder.
XXIX
THE VICTORS
Meade knew that they were fighting a losing battle. Every one of the
higher grade men knew it also. The spill-way was entirely
inadequate, but it suddenly flashed into his mind, with that
consciousness of the hopelessness of the struggle, that perhaps there
was another way to discharge the flood. The same idea might have
come to any other of the more intelligent of the men from Vandeventer
down if they had taken a moment for reflection. If they had not been
so frantically, so frightfully engrossed in their present puny but
gallant efforts to save the dam they certainly would have remembered.
That the possibility came to Meade rather than to any of the others
was perhaps due to the fact that he had noted the situation later and
had studied the conditions more recently. Those solitary rambles of
his, those careful inspections of the terrain of the valley, had been
made long after the original surveys and the results of his
observations were still fresh in his mind.
The water was rising so rapidly since the cloudburst and he saw the
inevitableness of the failure so clearly that he did not dare to
waste time to look up Vandeventer, tell him his plan and get his
permission. Every second was of the utmost value. When the thought
came he acted instantly. He was in the position of the commander of
a small force to whom is suddenly presented the bare possibility of
wresting victory from defeat by some splendidly daring and unforeseen
undertaking. And he was the man to seize such a possibility and make
the most of it.
It was well that he had endeared himself to some of the men and that
the respect in which he was held by Vandeventer was shared by the
others. Indeed perhaps the men under a man are quicker to estimate
his character and worth than those over him. Therefore when Meade
called two of the most capable of the workmen, a big, burly Irishman
and a stout little Italian, to follow him they did it without a
moment's hesitation.
"The rest of you keep on here," he shouted as he left the gang.
"Murphy and Funaro, come with me. Keep it up; I think I know a way
to help," he yelled back through the rain as he scrambled off the dam
up the rocks to the spill-way. It was not his fault that they could
not hear and could not understand.
The water was rushing through the spill-way about knee deep and the
three men plunging forward through it had difficulty in keeping their
footing on the broken, rocky bottom. When they reached the other
side, Meade shouted above the storm:
"Murphy, bring your pick and shovel; take that iron range pole, too.
Here, Funaro, you take your shovel and these."
As he spoke he ran into the office shack and wrecked a transit
tripod, ruthlessly separating the legs from one another by main force
and pitching two of them into the little Italian's outstretched arms.
Without a question both men complied with his direction. In a huge
crevice, almost a small cave, in the spur of the mesa which overhung
the east end of the dam the explosives were stored. The dynamite was
kept in oilskin bags, the detonating caps in waterproof boxes. There
were sixteen sticks or cartridges in each bag. Each stick was an
inch and a half in diameter and eight inches long. One bagful should
be ample. Indeed if that did not do the work the attempt would fail.
The men waited while Meade selected a bag of dynamite, a box of
detonators, and a package of fuses. It was a cardinal rule that
dynamite cartridges and detonating caps should never be carried by
the same person, because the combination so greatly increased the
risk of premature explosion. The fulminate of mercury in the
detonators was very volatile, highly explosive and immensely
destructive considering its size. One such cap could blow off a
man's hand or even his head and in its explosion might detonate the
dynamite. Hence the separation when being carried.
Meade decided to take that risk. He knew how perilous was the
undertaking, how liable he was in his hurry to fall against the
rocks, slippery and half submerged in that pouring rain. He knew
what the consequences of such a fall would be. He would center all
risks in himself. He thrust the box of detonators in his pocket, the
package of fuses inside his flannel shirt, and carried the dynamite
bag in his hand. He would need his free hand to protect himself, so
all the tools were carried by the other men.
The little Italian shook his head as he noted these preparations. He
happened to be one of the explosive force, those whose duty it was to
do the blasting. In his practical way he knew a great deal about the
properties and possibilities of usefulness of the dynamite. Meade's
purpose was obvious even to Murphy, who was only a laborer, though
where he proposed to work neither man had any idea at all.
"Dynamita no work in zis weather," said Funaro impressively.
"Probably not," answered Meade, hurrying his preparations, "but it's
our only chance."
"Give me ze caps," urged the Italian gallantly.
"No, I'll take both."
"It ees danger."
"Yes, but come on."
Meade, wasting no more words, sprang at what was left of the trail
and the two men gallantly followed him. The hog-back at which he was
aiming was perhaps a little more than two miles from the dam. On the
ordinary trail and prepared for the run he could have managed it in
fifteen minutes; as it was they made it in thirty. The extreme
possibility of the life of the dam seemed to Meade not much greater.
He went in the lead and by his direction the others kept some
distance behind him.
"If I fall and explode this dynamite there's no need of all three of
us being blown up," he had said, and it was no reflection on their
courage that they complied with his direction.
Indeed a stern command was necessary to keep the two men back. They
had caught something of the gallant spirit of the engineer and the
big Irishman and the little Italian were as eager as he. Helped by a
few hasty words as they ran, they had both of them learned what he
would be at. They both realized that they were the forlorn hope,
that if they could not save the dam nobody and nothing could. And
there was a trace of the age-long rivalry between the Celt and the
Roman. The scion of the legionary and the son of the barbarian who
had fought together in the dawn of history vied with each other then.
Again and again Meade had to order them back. He was keenly sensible
of his danger. He knew that if he fell, if the dynamite struck the
ground violently, it might explode. He knew that the unstable
fulminate of mercury in the detonators might go off at any
time--perhaps that was the greater danger--but he never checked his
pace or hesitated in a leap or sought an easy way for a second. His
soul was rising and his heart was beating as they had never risen or
beaten in his life. And the hearts of his men beat with his own.
He knew, of course, if the dam went out the railroad, the bridge, the
town, the citizens, the women and children, and everything and
everybody would go. If he could save them his act might be set off
against the loss of the International. But whether that were true or
not, whatever the consequences to him, he was bound to save them.
The weight of every man, the weight of every woman, the weight of
every child in the valley, the weight of all the business enterprises
of the town, the weight of the great viaduct of steel, the weight of
the huge dam itself, was on his shoulders as he ran. He carried the
burden lightly, as Atlas might have upborne the world with laughter.
For despite his determination and haste he had in his heart the great
joy that comes when men attempt grandly and dare greatly for their
fellow-men. If he could only by and by see his hopes justified by
success his happiness would be complete.
And there were thoughts personal as well as general. If he died,
whether successful or not, men would tell about his endeavor. She
would hear. It came to him afterward, when he learned how she had
looked down upon him as he ran, that he had somehow felt her
presence, not a presence impelling him to look up, but a presence
driving him on. He lost his hat, he tore off his long coat and threw
it aside as he plunged on with his precious bag in his hand. He did
not dare to look at his watch, he did not stop for anything, but it
seemed that he must have spent hours in that mad scramble over the
water-covered rocks. He heaved a deep breath of relief when he
rounded the mesa and struck the trail. Bad as was the going, it was
nothing to what they had passed over.
Presently he broke out into the open slope and there before him was
the rounded curve of the hog-back, to gain which he had risked so
much. Were they in time? Yes, the water in the lake was not
flowing, it was only rising. Evidently the dam still held. He ran
along it till he reached the narrowest part of it, twenty feet wide
between water-covered valley and sharply descending ravine. The
shortest separation between Picket Wire and the Kicking Horse! The
water in the lake was within three feet of the crest. The rain was
coming down steadily. He could realize by the water level where he
stood that it must be lapping the top of the dam now, or a little
above it. He had five minutes, ten at most. He was still in time.
The thoughts came to him as he ran. And as he saw the place again he
made his instant plan.
He laid the dynamite down just as Murphy and Funaro reached him and
stood panting, their heavy breathing, the sweat mingling with the
rain in their wet faces, evidencing their exhaustion. From Murphy,
who had been the faster, Meade took the two tripod legs, stout oak
staves about an inch and a half thick with sharp metal points. He
jammed them down into the ground about five feet from the edge of the
Kicking Horse ravine and about fifteen feet apart.
"Holes, there," he shouted, "deep enough for five cartridges."
Funaro nodded. He knew exactly what to do. Murphy had often seen
the explosive gang at work. He was quick-witted and he had only to
follow the Italian's actions. The work was simple. Seizing their
spades the two men cut into the sod, using the pick to dislodge small
bowlders and break up the earth. The soil was light and porous and
it had been well soaked by the rain. After they had made an
excavation about two feet deep they laid aside their shovels and with
the iron range pole as a starter and the bigger tripod stakes to
follow they made two deep holes in the ground, forcing the pole and
then the stake into the earth, which the continuing rain tended to
soften more and more. They made these holes about four feet deep
below the excavation, driving in and twisting and churning the stakes
by main strength.
They could by no means have accomplished this save for the softening
assistance of the rain and the furious energy they applied. They had
been working since four in the morning at the dam, they had made that
difficult run at headlong speed, yet they labored like men possessed.
They even wasted breath to call challengingly and provokingly and to
set forth their progress each to the other. In almost less time than
it takes to tell it they had completed the holes and so informed the
engineer triumphantly.
Meade, as usual, had reserved to himself the more dangerous, if less
arduous task. Covering himself with big Murphy's discarded slicker,
which fell over him like a shelter tent as he knelt down, he opened
the box of detonators, selected one and attached the fuse in position
carefully. Then he unfolded the paper about one of the cartridges
and placed the detonator, wrapping the paper around it thereafter.
He prepared two cartridges this way with the greatest care.
The holes now being ready, the men rapidly but carefully cut slits in
the covering of the cartridges and lowered four cartridges down each
hole, forcing them gently into place with the butt ends of the tripod
stakes and compressing them so that they filled the holes completely.
Then Meade placed his two prepared sticks with the detonators on top
of the other four. He cut the fuse to the proper length in each case
and, keeping it carefully covered with the raincoat, he held it while
the others filled in the holes and the excavations and carefully
tamped down the earth. All that remained was the lighting of the
fuse. And then? Would the dynamite go off? With fuses it was
uncertain in its action at best, and although these fuses were
supposed to be so prepared as to be independent of weather
conditions, more often than not rain spoiled a blast. If this blast
failed it was good-by dam--good-by everything.
Meade drew out from the pocket of his flannel shirt a box of matches.
He had to light the farther cartridge fuse, then run fifteen feet and
light the nearer one, and then make his escape. He had made the
nearer fuse a little shorter so as to secure a simultaneous explosion
if possible.
Tony Funaro now interposed gallantly.
"Giva me da light," he demanded, extending his hand.
"G'wan wid ye," shouted the big Irishman eagerly; "lemme do it, sor."
"Stand back, both of you," cried Meade, succeeding after some trouble
in striking a match.
He had cut off a short length fuse for a torch, the better to carry
the fire from one blast to another. As it sputtered into flame he
touched the first fuse, then the second and turned and ran for his
life after Murphy and Funaro. They had just got a safe distance away
when with a muffled roar the two blasts went off nearly together.
When they ran back they saw that two-thirds of the hillock on that
side of the ravine had gone. A wall of earth through which water was
already trickling rose between the great gap they had blown out and
the lake, the upper level of which was much higher than the bottom of
the great crater they had opened.
"Hurrah," yelled Meade, the others joining in his triumphant shout.
"Now, men, another hole right there," he pointed to the foot of the
bank. "Drive it in slanting and it will do the job."
"Will the dam be after holdin' yit, sor?" asked Mike Murphy, seizing
his pick.
"I hope so, but for God's sake, hurry."
With two men working the last hole was completed before Meade was
ready. Funaro, indeed, came to his assistance in preparing the
cartridge. Presently all was completed. Rejecting the pleas of both
men, Meade struck the match and this time, since there was but one
blast to be fired, he touched it directly to the fuse and waited a
second to see that it had caught and ran as before.
At a safe distance they drew back and waited. Nothing happened. A
few seconds dragged on. They saw no sign of life in the fuse, no
light. In spite of the care they had taken it had got wet. It would
not work. The precious moments were flying. They stared agonizingly
at the fuse through the rain.
"I'll have to take a look at it," said Meade desperately.
Funaro and Murphy caught him by the arms. They all knew the
tremendous risk in a nearer approach. The fuse might be alight
still. At any second the flame might flash to the detonator and
then---- Yet Meade had to go. That charge had to be exploded if he
detonated it by hand, he thought desperately, and he had not come so
far and worked so hard to fail now.
"Don't go," cried Murphy.
"It ees danger," shouted Funaro.
But Meade shook them off and bade them keep back. What was his
danger compared to the issue involved? That last charge had to be
exploded. He stepped quickly toward it and as he did so he threw his
eyes up toward the gray, rain-filled heaven in one last appeal.
Did he hear the blind roar, did he see the upbursting masses of
sodden earth, was he conscious of the fact that the whole side of the
hillock had been blown away, that the last explosion had completed
the shattering work of the first, that they had succeeded? Did he
mark the whirling water, driven backward at first by the violence of
the explosion, returning and rolling in vast mass through the great
opening, did he see it plunging down the slope, through the trees and
bushes, and pour thunderously into the bed of the ravine? Did he see
the tremendous rush of the water from the great lake that man had
created tear earth from earth and ever widen and deepen the opening
as it crashed in a foaming, terrible, red cataract through the
outlet, striking down great trees, roaring, boiling wildly to the
bottom of the gorge far below?
No, he saw nothing. Broken, beaten down by a huge bowlder that had
been thrown upward by the explosion and had struck him on the breast,
and lying battered under a rain of smaller stones and earth, he was
as one dead.
"By God," cried Winters in great excitement on the crest of the hill,
"he's done it. He's saved the dam; that's a man."
"Don't you know him?" screamed Miss Illingworth in his ear.
"No."
"Meade!"
Winters caught her by the arm.
"He's dead," she cried high and shrill, "but he saved the dam and the
bridge and the town. He's made atonement."
"Yes, yes, don't faint," cried Winters.
"Faint! I'm going to him."
"How?"
"The nearest way," screamed the woman, letting herself down over the
cliff wall to the broken rocks, by which only the hardy could reach
the lower level.
* * * *
What of the dam below in the valley?
"Hold it, men, hold it; for God's sake, hold it," shouted
Vandeventer, rising from his crouching position against the palisade
to resume it instantly he had spoken. "Keep it up. If it goes down
let's go down with it. Damn it to hell, hang on--hang on! We'll
hold it. We aren't beat yet."
Broken words, oaths, protestations, curses, cheers, expletives in
strange languages from the polyglot mob of men burst forth. Even
cowards had been turned into heroes because they had fought by the
side of men. Here and there a man not weaker physically perhaps, but
less resolute, less spiritually consecrated, less divinely obsessed,
dropped out of the rank that pitted itself in furious, futile, but
sublime fury against the wavering wall. Some of them fell backward
and lay still. Some had fainted and some of them were half dead. A
few here and there sank down on the trampled, muddy embankment and
buried their heads in their hands, sobbing hysterically. But most
still blind, mad, sublime, held on. And the palisade did not fall.
It did not bend back any further.
The throb that told of the tremendous pressure of the waves, the
quiver that experience could feel the prelude to failure, began to
die away, to stop. What did it mean? The thunder grew still, the
rain diminished, it ceased, the clouds broke. Some great hand, as of
God, swiftly tore the black vault of the heavens apart. Faint light
began to glow over the sodden land. Through the rift they saw dimly
one great peak of mighty range. What had happened?
"Here," said Vandeventer.
How white he looked, how haggard, streaks of gray in his black hair
that had not been there before, but his eyes were blazing. He was
still the indomitable chief of the Spartan band. The nearest men
gave him a hand. He clambered up to his former vantage point on top
of the highest log of the stockade and stared down. The rise of the
water had stopped! He could not believe it, yet it was true. The
rain had ceased again, but by every natural law the drainage from the
hills would continue for some time in full volume. Yes, by all
rights the dam was doomed. The water still trickled through the
palisades in many small streams. That had been a gallant effort they
had made, even if a vain one.
For ten minutes he stood silent, exhausted. Then he saw. The water
was not rising. No, it was falling; only a trifle, but enough.
Presently it had stopped filtering through the revetment. He looked
back. Not a drop ran on the other side of the palisade. Vandeventer
knew that the water must be discharging somewhere. The lake must
have broken through somewhere. He only needed that hint to recall
the hog-back and then Meade. He saw it all now.
"We've won, the dam's saved," he cried greatly to the men who stood
back of the palisade staring at him. "Roberts has blown up the
hog-back. The water's falling. See for yourselves."
Every man sprang up the palisade. Some one laughed and then some one
raised a cheer and those mud-covered, sodden, wornout men, who had
been about to die, saluted in heroic acclaim him who had led them to
victory and by implication him who had made that triumph possible.
XXX
THE TESTIMONY OF THE DEAD
Just as Helen Illingworth and Winters reached the lower level at the
foot of the mesa they were joined by Rodney.
"What has happened?" cried the engineer.
Winters answered as the three hurried along without stopping:
"Meade blew up the hog-back."
"Was that he?"
"Yes."
"I thought there was something familiar about him, but I did not
dare----"
"I recognized him instantly," said Helen Illingworth.
"That atones for the International," continued Rodney.
"What does?" asked his friend.
"The dam is safe; the water has stopped rising. I believe it's
beginning to fall a little. I saw someone jump up on the palisade
and wave his hand and then I saw them all gather around, evidently
cheering."
"I should think the water would be lowered," said Winters; "it's
pouring out of a hole in the hog-back as big as a church."
"It was a fine thing in Meade. Let's hurry and tell him so,"
answered Rodney.
"I'm afraid it's too late," said Winters.
"Oh, don't say that," cried the girl.
"Why, what's happened?"
"The second blast was slow in going off," said Winters; "he went back
to look at it and got knocked over. It looked pretty bad from the
top of the mesa."
Rodney would not have been human if he had not felt a leap in his
breast at the possibility, but he was too loyal a friend and too
genuinely fond of Meade for more than a passing emotion, for which he
was more than a little ashamed.
"Let us press on," he urged.
In a few moments they stopped by the three men. Meade was still
unconscious. The big Irishman sat on the grass with the engineer's
head on his knee. The deft-fingered little Italian was trying to
wash the blood away from the unconscious man's forehead with a
sodden, ragged piece of cloth. Meade was unconscious, he was
breathing heavily. There was a catch in his respiration. His breath
came at irregular intervals and was labored as if painful.
A huge rock had struck him in the breast. The two men had torn open
his shirt and undershirt. The engineer's chest was bruised and
bloody. Evidently bones had been broken and probably serious
internal injuries had resulted. Every breath was an apparent agony
and that the exquisite pain did not arouse him to consciousness was
evidence of the terrible nature of the injury. A smaller, sharper
rock had cut him across the forehead and cheek, just missing his
right eye, and they found out afterward that he had been struck by
several other pieces dislodged by the explosion, and that his body
was covered with bruises.
But there was nothing, not even in the cut on the forehead, to cause
any great alarm had it not been for the crushed chest. Winters and
Rodney were both men of action, accustomed to quick thinking and
prompt decision in emergencies; while Helen Illingworth could only
stand with clenched hands staring in mental anguish that paralleled
the physical suffering of the man she loved, the engineer and the
rancher immediately made preparations to get the wounded man to the
car.
Murphy wore in his belt a short woodman's axe. With it they cut down
two young saplings, trimmed them and thrusting them through the
sleeves of their raincoats they made a fairly practicable litter.
Using the utmost care, they laid the unconscious man upon it and
Winters and Murphy, the two biggest men, took the handles at either
end. Helen Illingworth, praying as she had never prayed before,
sought to support the unconscious man's head. The Italian gathered
up the tools and went ahead to open up the path. Rodney followed
after.
Their progress was slow of necessity. They had to handle Meade with
great care. Winters and Rodney, after the brief inspection they had
made, could not see a chance on earth for him. Neither could Helen
Illingworth. They went along without conversation, naturally, except
for an outburst of admiration from Winters.
"I tell you," he said, "it was a magnificent thing for him to do. He
risked his life a hundred times in that mad rush with the dynamite in
his hands and the detonators in his pocket. Yet if he had only
stayed back he would have been safe."
"It was his anxiety for the dam and the people that brought him
down," said Helen Illingworth. "He can't die," she murmured. "God
surely will not let him die. I love him so. And yet if he does and
I have lost him, innocent or guilty, he has redeemed his fame."
"He saved others," quoted Rodney under his breath, "himself he could
not save."
It was a work of great difficulty to get the wounded engineer into
the car, but they finally managed it. By the woman's direction they
laid him on her bed in her own private stateroom.
"One of us must go for a doctor at once," said Rodney, "and that will
be my job."
"It's twenty miles to the town," said the conductor, who had helped
to receive them. "If one of you could telegraph we could tap a wire."
None of them could.
"It's all down-grade and there's a good roadbed and I was some
sprinter in my college days," said Rodney.
"And there was never greater need for haste than now," said Winters.
"I wish I had a horse here."
"Don't give up, Miss Illingworth," continued Rodney, as he started
toward the door. "He's alive yet."
Just then, opportunely enough, rounding the last curve before the
arch bridge, they saw the end of the other car rapidly approaching
them. Had they not been so excited they could have heard the furious
puffing of the engine as it drove the car at great speed up the heavy
grade.
"Wait," said the conductor, "we can send the engine down for the
doctor. That'll be the Colonel's car."
In a few minutes the car stopped on the siding. Out of it came
Colonel Illingworth, Dr. Severence, Curtiss, and some of the
officials of the Bridge Company in town. They were all greatly
excited. The Colonel did not stop to put on his hat. He ran to the
other car and climbed aboard.
"The dam's going," he shouted. "The bridge and the town will be
flooded. We got word an hour ago by a messenger galloping down. The
telephone wires are down. I ran the car up here as the quickest way
to get over to the reservoir and the dam. Some of you who know the
way come with me."
By this time the observation room of the car was filled with men.
"You need not worry about the dam," said Rodney.
"What do you mean?"
"A man blew up the hog-back, made a spill-way, the water rushed out
through it into this ravine, you can see it below there, relieving
the pressure on the dam at once. Since it has held up till now it
will hold for good."
"Thank God!" cried the Colonel, sinking down into a chair and wiping
the sweat off his brow. "The bridge will be safe then. By George,"
he gasped, "the Martlet Company could hardly have stood another loss
like that. Who's the man who blew it up?"
"His name is Meade," said Rodney quietly.
"Not----?"
"Yes."
There was a long pause. Every man there knew of the failure of the
International and in what estimation the old Colonel held the name of
Meade because of that.
"Well, it was a fine thing," said the Colonel; "it makes up for his
blundering work on the bridge."
"Beg pardon, sir," said Shurtliff, who had stood wide-eyed and white
and suffering in silence ever since the engineer had been brought to
the car, "it was not his blunder."
"Why, you said so yourself," cried the Colonel.
"I lied," admitted the secretary.
Quick as a flash Rodney had his notebook out. Here was the proof at
last.
"Why?"
"To save the reputation of the man I loved."
"And how do I know you are not lying for this man now?" asked the
Colonel harshly.
"These will prove it," said Shurtliff, extending some papers he drew
out of his pocket, where he had placed them that morning half
intending to tell Helen Illingworth the truth at last.
"What are these?" the Colonel asked, staring at Shurtliff, who stood
erect before them, sustained more by his will than anything else, for
his knees were shaking and his body quivering; yet he was glad after
all, more happy than he had thought he could be, in making the
revelation, in vindicating the innocent, in giving that satisfaction
to Helen Illingworth, tardy, even too late, though it might be.
"Letters, sir. You will find there a blueprint of the design of the
compression members," answered Shurtliff monotonously as if he had
forced his mind to a certain action and it was working automatically.
"With it is a letter from Bertram Meade to his father suggesting that
the lacings were too light and calling attention to the empiric
formulæ of Schmidt-Chemnitz in proof of his argument. On the back of
that letter Mr. Bertram Meade, Senior, made an indorsement--you know
his handwriting and can identify it--'_Hold until bridge is finished
and then give back to the boy. We'll show him that even
Schmidt-Chemnitz doesn't know everything_.'"
Colonel Illingworth turned the paper over. There was the indorsement.
"Well, by heaven!" he began.
"There's another paper in an envelope addressed to the editor of _The
New York Gazette_. Will you read it aloud, sir?"
Almost as if he had been hypnotized Colonel Illingworth took from the
envelope the brief note. He read it:
"_I alone am responsible for the error in the design of the
International Bridge, which has resulted in this terrible disaster.
I know that my son, in an effort to shield me, will assume the
responsibility. As a matter of fact, he had previously pointed out
what he believed to be a structural weakness, but I refused to heed
his representations and overbore his objections. The fault is
entirely chargeable to me. There is no possible expiation for my
blunder. The least I can do is to assume all the responsibility.
The blame is mine._
"BERTRAM MEADE."
He laid it down with the other papers.
"The demonstration is complete and absolute," he began spontaneously,
amid a breathless silence. "The proofs are adequate. They would
establish young Meade's innocence in any court in the land. Where is
he? I have done him an injustice. I am ready to make amends,"
continued the Colonel.
"And while you are talking," said Helen Illingworth, who had been
standing in the doorway too absorbed by the dramatic recital to
interrupt it, "he's dying."
"Dying! Where?"
"He was battered to pieces by the last dynamite explosion. We
brought him here."
"Were you there?"
"We saw it from the top of the mesa. Oh, don't talk any longer."
"Severence," said Illingworth, with prompt decision, "you haven't
forgotten all your old medical skill. This is your job. One of you
jump on the engine and bring a physician up and----"
"I'm going," said Rodney. "Who's the best doctor in town?"
"Dr. Fraser. He's a young man, but very skillful," answered one of
the local bridge men.
"Bring our own Dr. Bailey up here from our hospital with him, and
tell that engine driver to get down to the town and back just as
quickly as he can go. Cheer up, Helen," said the Colonel. "I know
that a man is not going to rehabilitate himself by such an action and
have the evidence of his innocence brought out at such a moment just
to die."
"Will you give me those papers, Colonel?" said Rodney. "You'll want
this written up and----"
"Take them," said the Colonel.
"Will you come along with me, Mr. Shurtliff? After I see the doctors
I'll want your affidavit."
"Yes, sir, anything," said Shurtliff.
"It was fine of you, Shurtliff," said Winters, "to try to shield your
employer and the man you loved, but, thank God, you spoke out before
it was too late. I'm sorry I pulled that gun on you; you're a man,
all right, even if you don't look it," he added to himself as
Shurtliff bowed and followed Rodney.
Winters stood at the door of the passageway leading to the stateroom
while Helen Illingworth and Severence, who had been educated as a
physician, and the old Colonel, who knew a great deal about wounds
and accidents from his war experience, entered the stateroom. A new
spirit had come into the relations between father and daughter and
both were glad. There was no question now about the future. There
would be no opposition from Colonel Illingworth. Within an hour the
papers would have the story of how one man had saved a great dam, the
viaduct, the town, and its people, and they would have at the same
time the story of who was responsible for the fall of the
International Bridge. They would have the story of the attempted
self-sacrifice of the son to save the father. They would have the
story of the old man's splendid and magnanimous avowal of
responsibility before he died. The United States, the world, would
ring with the dramatic tale.
It was as much to tell that story in his own way as to summon medical
aid that Rodney had gone for the doctor. And so the father held the
daughter clasped to his side while both bent over the still
unconscious man, whom Dr. Severence quickly and carefully and with
wonderful skill, considering his long withdrawal from practice,
examined.
"What is it?" asked the Colonel as the vice-president looked up
presently. "My daughter is engaged to be married to him"--and he was
rewarded by the thrill and quiver that shot through his daughter's
being which he felt as he pressed her to his side--"we can't let him
die now."
"He's in God's hands," answered Severence gravely. "He's been
terribly pounded everywhere. His breastbone is shattered, some of
his ribs are broken. I don't know."
"That awful cut on his forehead?"
"That's nothing."
"And the other bruises?"
"They count but little, but the blow on the chest"--he shook his gray
head sadly, ominously.
"Do you think anything has penetrated his lungs?" asked Helen
Illingworth, as she pointed to her lover's lips, to a little bloody
froth that came therefrom.
The old man nodded.
"Perhaps," he said.
"Oh, he can't die, he can't, he can't!" wailed the woman, sinking
down on her knees by the bed.
"Not if any power on earth can keep him from it, my dear child," said
the old Colonel tenderly, bending over her.
"Send me the porter of the car," said Severence, "and take Miss
Illingworth away. I want to get him undressed and----"
"You will call me back the minute I can come?"
"Certainly, my dear girl," said the vice-president, who had known the
young woman from childhood.
XXXI
AT LAST TO THE STARS
All the men except Curtiss and Winters had discreetly withdrawn from
the car and had gone over to the mesa to look at the lake and the
outlet. Indeed the water was roaring down beneath the steel arch
bridge, filling for the first time in generations the channel of the
Kicking Horse. Fortunately it could flow that way without danger to
the town or the viaduct below.
The Colonel led his daughter to a chair and then turned to Winters.
"You were there?" he began. "Tell me about it."
Graphically the big cattle rancher told the story of Meade's mad rush
over the rocks with his two companions, of the desperate assault on
the hog-back, of the success that had met their efforts to open the
improvised spill-way, and then the final disaster. The recital lost
nothing in his graphic relation.
"It was fine, it was magnificent," said the Colonel, patting his
daughter's shoulder. "Where are the two who went with him?"
"They're outside there," said Winters.
The old Colonel went to the door of the car and called the two men
into the car.
"In the bank down in Coronado there's a thousand dollars of mine for
each of you," he said promptly.
"We didn't do it for money, sor," said the big Irishman, "although
'twill be welcome enough, but how is Mr. Roberts?"
"You mean the man who blew up the hog-back?"
"Si, signore, a greata man he ees," said the little Italian.
"I wish I could say he was all right, but there's a doctor with him
and we have sent for the best physicians in town. He's horribly
hurt."
"But, plaise God, he may pull through, sor. The Holy Virgin an' the
Saints presarve him," said the Irishman, making the sign of the cross.
And in his own language little Funaro breathed a similar prayer and
with his grimy, toil-stained hand he made the same gesture.
"Murphy," shouted a voice from the pines on the side of the hill
between the car and the mesa.
"That'll be Mr. Vandeventer, the resident engineer," said Murphy.
Colonel Illingworth turned to the door again.
"Where's Roberts?" cried Vandeventer, stumbling down the hill. He
was haggard and worn and weary to the point of exhaustion, but as
soon as he had been assured of the safety of the dam--and before he
left the water was visibly receding--he had started out to seek the
engineer whom he had, in his mind in the excitement of the moment,
accused of desertion.
"He's here in my car, sir," said Colonel Illingworth.
"And who are you, may I ask?" said Vandeventer, crossing the track
and swinging himself upon the platform of the car.
"I am Colonel Illingworth, president of the Martlet Bridge Company."
"But Roberts?"
"His name is not Roberts. It's Meade."
"What? The International man?"
"Yes."
"I knew he was an engineer. Well, he's made up for his failure
there."
"He did not fail there any more than he failed here," said the
Colonel.
"Where is he?"
"It's a long story."
"It can wait," said Vandeventer brusquely. "I want to thank him for
saving the dam and the lives of the men on it, and the town, and the
railroad, and the bridge."
"I don't know whether you can thank him or not," said the Colonel.
"You don't mean----"
"He was terribly hurt by the last explosion and they brought him
here."
"Can I see him?"
For answer Colonel Illingworth pointed to the door.
"This is my daughter. Your name is Vandeventer, is it not? Helen,
this is the engineer who is building the dam. He has come to ask
after his man."
"I've done everything I can for him," said Severence, coming out of
the stateroom, followed by the porter, as Vandeventer shook hands
with the girl. "He's still unconscious, but seems to breathe a
little easier."
Into the little room the woman and the four men crowded.
Vandeventer, accompanied by Murphy and Funaro, followed the Colonel.
Neither of the workmen would be left out. There lay the engineer,
his face as white as the linen of the pillow or the bandage which had
been deftly tied around his head. One hand, still grimy and
mud-stained, lay on the sheet. Helen Illingworth knelt down and
kissed it and laid her head on the bed.
"He is to be my husband if he lives," she said simply.
"A man and an engineer he is," whispered Vandeventer.
"I misjudged you, Meade," said the Colonel softly, speaking as if the
unconscious man could hear. "I condemned you. I wish to heaven you
could hear me make amends now."
"Begob," whispered Murphy, "you'd ought to seen him run wid the
dinnamite."
The voice of the Italian murmured words which they knew were prayers
and though they came from humble lips they brought relief to all.
They entered deeply into Helen Illingworth's heart and mingled with
her own petitions, frantic, fervent, imperative, although she offered
them to Almighty God as from a woman broken. Presently they all
filed out of the room, leaving Helen Illingworth alone with what was
left of life in the crushed body of the man she had never loved so
much before.
In the observation room Vandeventer told them of the fight for the
dam and how they had reached their maximum power of resistance and
more, and that the relief came in the very nick of time. Meanwhile
the engine driver had burned up the track going and coming and in
less than an hour he was back with two surgeons and a trained nurse.
Was it their skill and care and watchfulness that finally brought
Meade back to consciousness, or was it the passionate, consuming
intensity of will and purpose of the woman who loved him, who could
scarcely be driven from his side? Well, whatever the reason, after
many days he passed from death into life and came back again.
He was conscious of Helen's presence and lay quietly enveloped in her
love long before he could talk coherently or question. Indeed, with
Rodney and Winters, and old Shurtliff, who swore to himself that he
would never forgive himself if Meade did not recover, and the
Colonel, and Vandeventer, and all the men of the force, who used to
stroll over after hours and just sit on the side of the track and
stare at the car where the man who had saved them was fighting for
his life as desperately as they had fought to save the dam, Meade was
surrounded by such an atmosphere of admiration and devotion as might
have stayed the hand of death itself. There came a day when the
physician said he could talk a little.
"I saw you," Helen whispered. "I was standing on the high hill
watching, looking down upon you just before----"
"But I shall look up to you all the rest of my life," said the man,
as the woman knelt, as was her wont, by the side of the bed. She
kissed his hand, thin, wasted, but white and clean now.
"No, I to you," she murmured, as she pressed her lips to his fingers.
"Look up a little higher, then," whispered Meade with some of the old
humor.
"You mean?"
The voiceless movement of his lips told her the story. She raised
herself and kissed them lightly.
"I haven't dared to ask that before," said the man, closing his eyes.
"I wasn't strong enough to stand that."
"But you're going to get strong; you must. I'd like to kiss you
forever," said the woman with pitying tenderness and great joy.
"It's heavenly now, but I shall have to go away again when I am able
and----"
"We are never going to be parted again."
"I cannot let you marry a discredited man, a failure."
"Don't you know," said the woman, rising, "that the whole United
States rings with your exploit, that the splendid saving of the dam
has caught the fancy of the people as it deserves and you are a hero
everywhere and to everybody?"
"But the International Bridge and its failure?"
Unbeknown to the two the Colonel had stopped in the doorway.
"We know the truth now, my boy," said the old man, coming into the
room. "It was your father's fault, not yours."
It was characteristic of Meade's temper and temperament that his
white lips closed in a straight line at this.
"Where's Shurtliff?" he asked, after a little silent communing with
himself.
The old man had come in and out of the room like a ghost during his
slow recovery. Colonel Illingworth turned away and summoned the
secretary. Rodney and Winters came, too.
"Shurtliff," said Meade faintly but firmly, "tell them again who is
responsible for the failure of the International."
"Forgive me, Mr. Meade," said Shurtliff, "but it was your brave old
father's fault."
"You see," said the Colonel.
"We knew it all the time," said Rodney.
"But Mr. Shurtliff bravely gave us the final proof," said Winters.
"Those papers?" said Meade.
Shurtliff nodded.
"And your father's own letter that he wrote the papers before his
heart broke," said Rodney; "I'll read it to you presently."
"Why did you do it, Shurtliff?"
"To right a great wrong, sir. I saw that we were mistaken to try to
spare the dead at the expense of the living, to wreck your life and
the future, and the happiness of Miss Illingworth. God bless her for
her kindness to a lonely old man. And so when you were brought here
dead I told them the truth and gave them the papers."
"Gentlemen," said Meade, making a last try, "it is useless to deny it
now, but for the sake of my father's fame you won't let anyone know?"
"Old man," said Rodney, "it was on the wires an hour afterward and
the whole United States knows it now. Your father made the mistake;
his letter admitted it bravely. The world honors him, it honors you."
"Rodney," said Meade, "I wish you hadn't done it."
"It was for Miss Illingworth's happiness and yours that I did it,"
said Rodney. "And how much that cost me," he added, the confession
being wrung from him, "no one can ever know."
He turned and left the room. Winters followed him full of sympathy
and comprehension.
"Let me go out alone, old man," said Rodney. "I'll be back
presently. This is the last fight I've got to make."
Winters watched him from the steps of the car as he disappeared in
the pine trees _en route_ to the mesa to fight it out under the open
sky alone. The others left the room also, last of all Shurtliff.
"You forgive me, Mr. Meade. I've been through hell itself," said the
old man, "in these last six months."
"Freely," said Meade.
And Shurtliff went away with a lighter heart than he had borne for
many a long day.
The two lovers were alone again.
"You see," said Helen, "there's nothing can keep us apart now."
"Nothing, thank God," whispered the man. "But I am sorry that it all
came out this way. I'm sorry not only because of your suffering, but
for other reasons--Rodney for one. He--it's too bad! It was not
necessary for you to get yourself almost killed to win me, I mean,
for wherever and whenever I found you I was resolved to marry you,
willy-nilly."
"And is it true that poor old Rod had grown to care?" he asked,
putting by the academic discussion.
The woman nodded.
"I'm very sorry. I can't help it. We were always together, talking
about you," she said.
"And he couldn't help it, either," said Meade. "Somehow I believe he
was the better man for you to have taken."
But he looked at her wistfully and anxiously as he spoke.
"I won't argue with you," said the girl, bending close to him. "I'll
only say that I know I have the best man in all the world, but if he
were the worst, I would rejoice to have him just the same."
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[Transcriber's note: illustration captions in brackets
were added by the transcriber.]
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