Part 42 (1/2)

Wasn't it horrible in itself that he should have sunk to that? Then it shouldn't be very hard to imagine him bribing a lounger outside to buy him the whisky, and the carousal afterward with a stranger, a dead-beat and outcast low enough to profit by his evident weakness. Still, he was your father, Jimmy. Then there was the groping for matches and the upsetting of the lamp. Somebody brought Charley, and when he came your father lay with the clothes charred upon his burned limbs, still half-crazed with drink and mad with pain. Must I tell you once more what I saw when Charley brought me? I am willing, if there is nothing else that will rouse you. You have heard it before, but I want to burn it into your brain, so that however hard you try you can't blot out that scene.”

Jimmy's face was grim and white, but while he sat very still his comrade rose resolutely.

”Eleanor,” he said, ”if you attempt to recall another incident of that horrible night I shall carry you by main force out of the room.”

The girl turned to him with a little gesture. ”Then I suppose I must submit. You have a man's strength and courage in you--or I think you would be afraid to marry me; but one could fancy that Jimmy has none.

The daughter of the man who ruined his father has condescended to be gracious to him. Still, I have a little more to say. She is his daughter, his flesh and blood, Jimmy, and his pitiless, hateful nature is in her. That is the woman you wish to marry. The mere notion of it is horrible. Still, you can't marry her, Jimmy. You must crush her father, and drag him to his ruin. After all, there is a little manhood somewhere in you. You will take the engineer's statement to the underwriters and the police. You must--you have to.”

Jimmy stood up slowly, with the veins swollen on his forehead and a gray patch in his cheek. ”Eleanor,” he said hoa.r.s.ely, ”I believe there is a devil in you; but I think you are right in this. Jordan, will you hand me that paper?”

He stood still for at least a minute when his comrade pa.s.sed it to him, and the girl watched him with a little gleam in her eyes. His face was furrowed, and looked worn as well as very hard. There was not a sound in the little room, and the splash of the ripples on the _Shasta_'s plates outside came in through the open ports with a startling distinctness.

Jordan felt that the tension was becoming almost unendurable. Then Jimmy turned slowly toward his sister, and though the pain was still in his face it had curiously changed. There was a look in his blue eyes that sent a thrill of consternation through her. They were very steady, and she knew that she had failed.

”I can't do it. It was not the girl's fault, and she shall not be dragged through the mire,” he said. Then he looked at his comrade. ”What I am going to do may cost you a good deal of money, and my appointment to the _Shasta_ is, of course, in your hands. I am going straight from here to Merril's house.”

”Well,” said Jordan simply, ”it may cost us both a good deal, but I guess I must face it. If I were fixed as you are, that is just what I should do.”

Jimmy said nothing, but he went out swiftly, and Eleanor turned to her companion with a very bitter smile when the door closed behind him.

”Ah!” she said, ”has that girl beguiled you too? You had Merril in your hands, and instead of crus.h.i.+ng him you are going to smooth his troubles away.”

”No,” said Jordan dryly, ”I don't quite think Jimmy will do that. In some respects, I understand him better than you do. He wants to save the girl all the sorrow and disgrace he can, but he is going to run her father out of this city. Jimmy's not exactly clever, and it's quite likely he'll mix up things when he meets Merril; but, for all that, I guess he'll carry out just what he means to do. Somehow, he generally does. That's the kind of man he is.”

He stopped a moment, and a smile crept into his eyes. ”I don't know what the result will be, and it may be the break-up of the _Shasta_ Company; but I can't blame Jimmy.”

”Ah!” said Eleanor, ”you, the man I counted on, are turning against me as well as my brother.”

Then the sustaining purpose seemed to die out of her, and she sank back suddenly in her chair with her face hidden from him. Jordan crossed the little room, and stooping beside her slipped an arm about her.

”My dear,” he said, ”you can count on me always and in everything but this. It's because of what you are to me that I'm standing by Jimmy.”

CHAPTER x.x.xI

MERRIL CAPITULATES

Merril was not in his house when Jimmy reached it, but it appeared that he was expected shortly, and the latter, who resolved to wait for him, was shown into a big artistically furnished room. He sat there at least ten minutes, alone and grim in face, with a growing disquietude, for his surroundings had their effect on him. The house was built of wood, but expense had not been spared, and those who have visited the Western cities know how beautiful a wooden dwelling can be made. Jimmy looked out through the open windows on to a wide veranda framed with a slender colonnade of wooden pillars supporting fretted arches of lace-like delicacy. The floor of the room, which was choicely parquetted in cunningly contrasted wood, also caught his eye, and there were Indian-sewn rugs of furs on it of a kind that he knew was rarely purchased in the north, except on behalf of Russian princes and American railroad kings. The furniture, he fancied by the timber, was Canadian-made, but it had evidently been copied from artistic European models; and though he was far from being a connoisseur in such things, they had all a painful significance to him just then.

They suggested wealth and taste and luxury; and it seemed only fitting that the woman he loved should have such a dwelling, while he realized that it was his hand which must deprive her of all the artistic daintiness to which she had grown accustomed and no doubt valued. He, a steamboat skipper of low degree, had, like blind Samson, laid a brutal grasp upon the pillars of the house, and he could feel the trembling of the beautiful edifice. This would have afforded him a certain grim satisfaction, had it not been for the fact that it was impossible to tell whether the woman he would have spared every pain might not be overwhelmed amid the ruin when he exerted his strength. It must be exerted. In that he could not help himself.

While he sat there with a hard, set face, she came in, dressed, as he realized, in harmony with her surroundings. Her gracious patrician quietness and her rich attire troubled him, and he felt, in spite of all Eleanor had said, that it would be a vast relief if he could abandon altogether the purpose that had brought him there, though to do so would, it was evident, set the girl further apart from him than ever, since her father's station naturally stood as a barrier between them.

Still, he remembered what he owed the men who had sent him on board the _Shasta_--Jordan, Forster, old Leeson, and two or three more; he could not turn against them now.

Anthea stood still just inside the door, looking at him half-expectant, but with something that was suggestive of apprehension in her manner, and Jimmy felt the hot blood creep into his face when he moved quietly forward and kissed her. In view of what he had to do, it would, he felt, have been more natural if she had shrunk from him in place of submitting to his caress. She appeared to recognize the constraint that was upon him, for she turned away and sat down a little distance from him.

”Jimmy,” she said, ”I'm glad to see you back. I have been lonely without you--and a little uneasy. Indeed, though I don't know exactly why, I am anxious now.”

Then she looked at him steadily. ”It is the first time you have been here. Something unusual must have brought you. Jimmy, is it war?”