The Grafters

by Francis Lynde

  XXVI

  ON THE HIGH PLAINS

  Much to Elinor's relief, and quite as much, perhaps, to Penelope's, Mrs.Brentwood tired of Breezeland Inn in less than a fortnight and began totalk of returning to the apartment house in the capital.

  Pressed to give a reason for her dissatisfaction, the younger sister mighthave been at a loss to account for it in words; but Elinor's desire to cutthe outing short was based upon pride and militant shame. After manytrap-settings she had succeeded in making her mother confess that the stayat Breezeland was at Ormsby's expense; and not all of Mrs. Brentwood'spetulant justifyings could remove the sting of the nettle of obligation.

  "There is no reason in the world why you should make so much of it: I amyour mother, and I ought to know," was Mrs. Brentwood's dictum. "Youwouldn't have any scruples if we were his guests on the _Amphitrite_ or inhis country house on Long Island."

  "That would be different," Elinor contended. "We are not his guests here;we are his pensioners."

  "Nonsense!" frowned the mother. "Isn't it beginning to occur to you thatbeggars shouldn't be choosers? And, besides, so far as you are concerned,you are only anticipating a little."

  It was an exceedingly injudicious, not to say brutal way of putting it;and the blue-gray eyes flashed fire.

  "Can't you see that you are daily making a marriage between us more andmore impossible?" was the bitter rejoinder. Elinor's _metier_ was coolcomposure under fire, but she was not always able to compass it.

  Mrs. Brentwood fanned herself vigorously. She had been aching to have itout with this self-willed young woman who was playing fast and loose withattainable millions, and the hour had struck.

  "What made you break it off with Brookes Ormsby?" she snapped; adding: "Idon't wonder you were ashamed to tell me about it."

  "I did not break it off; and I was not ashamed." Elinor had regained herself-control, and the angry light in the far-seeing eyes was giving placeto the cool gray blankness which she cultivated.

  "That is what Brookes told me, but I didn't believe him," said the mother."It's all wrong, anyway, and I more than half believe David Kent is at thebottom of it."

  Elinor left her chair and went to the window, which looked down on thesanatorium, the ornate parterre, and the crescent driveway. These familybickerings were very trying to her, and the longing to escape them wassometimes strong enough to override cool reason and her innate sense ofthe fitness of things.

  In her moments of deepest depression she told herself that the prolongedstruggle was making her hard and cynical; that she was growing more andmore on the Grimkie side and shrinking on the Brentwood. With theunbending uprightness of the Grimkie forebears there went a prosaic andunmalleable strain destructive alike of sentiment and the artistic ideals.This strain was in her blood, and from childhood she had fought it,hopefully at times, and at other times, as now, despairingly. There weretears in her eyes when she turned to the window; and if they were merelytears of self-pity, they were better than none. Once, in the halcyonsummer, David Kent had said that the most hardened criminal in the dockwas less dangerous to humanity than the woman who had forgotten how tocry.

  But into the turmoil of thoughts half indignant, half self-compassionate,came reproach and a great wave of tenderness filial. She saw, as with asudden gift of retrospection, her mother's long battle with inadequacy,and how it had aged her; saw, too, that the battle had been foughtunselfishly, since she knew her mother's declaration that she couldcontentedly "go back to nothing" was no mere petulant boast. It was forher daughters that she had grown thin and haggard and irritable under thepersistent reverses of fortune; it was for them that she was sinking theGrimkie independence in the match-making mother.

  The tears in Elinor's eyes were not altogether of self-pity when she puther back to the window. Ormsby was coming up the curved driveway in hisautomobile, and she had seen him but dimly through the rising mist ofemotion.

  "Have you set your heart upon this thing, mother?--but I know you have.And I--I have tried as I could to be just and reasonable; to you andPenelope, and to Brookes Ormsby. He is nobleness itself: it is a shame togive him the shadow when he so richly deserves the substance."

  She spoke rapidly, almost incoherently; and the mother-love in the womanwho was careful and troubled about the things that perish put thematch-maker to the wall. It was almost terrifying to see Elinor, thestrong-hearted, the self-contained, breaking down like other mothers'daughters. So it was the mother who held out her arms, and the daughterran to go down on her knees at the chair-side, burying her face in the lapof comforting.

  "There, there, Ellie, child; don't cry. It's terrible to hear you sob likethat," she protested, her own voice shaking in sympathy. "I have beenthinking only of you and your future, and fearing weakly that you couldn'tbear the hard things. But we'll bear them together--we three; and I'llnever say another word about Brookes Ormsby and what might have been."

  "O mother! you are making it harder than ever, now," was the tearfulrejoinder. "I--there is no reason why I should be so obstinate. I haven'teven the one poor excuse you are making for me down deep in your heart."

  "David Kent?" said the mother.

  The bowed head nodded a wordless assent.

  "I sha'n't say that I haven't suspected him all along, dear. I am afraid Ihave. I have nothing against him. But he is a poor man, Elinor; and we arepoor, too. You'd be miserably unhappy."

  "If he stays poor, it is I who am to blame,"--this most contritely. "Hehad a future before him: the open door was his winning in the railroadfight, and I closed it against him."

  "You?" said the mother, astonished.

  "Yes. I told him he couldn't go on in the way he meant to. I made it amatter of conscience; and he--he has turned back when he might have foughtit out and made a name for himself, and saved us all. And it was such ahair-splitting thing! All the world would have applauded him if he hadgone on; and there was only one woman in all the world to pry into thesecret places of his soul and stir up the sleeping doubt!"

  Now, if all the thrifty, gear-getting "faculty" of the dead and goneGrimkies had become thin and diluted and inefficient in this Mrs.Hepzibah, last of the name, the strong wine and iron of the blood ofuprightness had come down to her unstrained.

  "Tell me all about it, daughter," she adjured; and when the tale was told,she patted the bowed head tenderly and spoke the words of healing.

  "You did altogether right, Ellie, dear; I--I am proud of you, daughter.And if, as you say, you were the only one to do it, that doesn't matter;it was all the more necessary. Are you sure he gave it up?"

  Elinor rose and stood with clasped hands beside her mother's chair; a verypitiful and stricken half-sister of the self-reliant, dependable youngwoman who had boasted herself the head of the household.

  "I have no means of knowing what he has done," she said slowly. "But Iknow the man. He has turned back."

  There was a tap at the door and a servant was come to say that Mr. BrookesOrmsby was waiting with his auto-car. Was Miss Brentwood nearly ready?

  Elinor said, "In a minute," and when the door closed, she made aconfidante of her mother for the first time since her childhood days.

  "I know what you have suspected ever since that summer in New Hampshire,and it is true," she confessed. "I do love him--as much as I dare towithout knowing whether he cares for me. Must I--may I--say yes to BrookesOrmsby without telling him the whole truth?"

  "Oh, my dear! You couldn't do that!" was the quick reply.

  "You mean that I am not strong enough? But I am; and Mr. Ormsby is manlyenough and generous enough to meet me half-way. Is there any other honestthing to do, mother?"

  Mrs. Hepzibah shook her head deliberately and determinedly, though sheknew she was shaking the Ormsby millions into the abyss of theunattainable.

  "No; it is his just due. But I can't help being sorry for him, Ellie. Whatwill you do if he says it doesn't make any difference?"

  The blue-gray eyes were downcast.


  "I don't know. Having asked so much, and accepted so much from him--itshall be as he says, mother."

  The afternoon had been all that a summer afternoon on the brown highlandscan be, and the powerful touring car had swept them from mile to mile overthe dun hills like an earth-skimming dragon whose wing-beat was themuffled, explosive thud of the motor.

  Through most of the miles Elinor had given herself up to silent enjoymentof the rapture of swift motion, and Ormsby had respected her mood, as healways did. But when they were on the high hills beyond the mining-camp ofMegilp, and he had thrown the engines out of gear to brake the car gentlydown the long inclines, there was room for speech.

  "This is our last spin together on the high plains, I suppose," he said."Your mother has fixed upon to-morrow for our return to town, hasn't she?"

  Elinor confirmed it half-absently. She had been keyed up to face theinevitable in this drive with Ormsby, and she was afraid now that he wasgoing to break her resolution by a dip into the commonplaces.

  "Are you glad or sorry?" he asked.

  Her reply was evasive.

  "I have enjoyed the thin, clean air and the freedom of the wide horizons.Who could help it?"

  "But you have not been entirely happy?"

  It was on her lips to say some conventional thing about the constantjarring note in all human happiness, but she changed it to a simple "No."

  "May I try if I can give the reason?"

  She made a reluctant little gesture of assent; some such signal ofacquiescence as Marie Antoinette may have given the waiting headsman.

  "You have been afraid every day lest I should begin a second time to pressyou for an answer, haven't you?"

  She could not thrust and parry with him. They were past all that.

  "Yes," she admitted briefly.

  "You break my heart, Elinor," he said, after a long pause. "But"--with asudden tightening of the lips--"I'm not going to break yours."

  She understood him, and her eyes filled quickly with the swift shock ofgratitude.

  "If you had made a study of womankind through ten lifetimes instead of apart of one, you could not know when and how to strike truer and deeper,"she said; and then, softly: "Why can't you make me love you, Brookes?"

  He took his foot from the brake-pedal, and for ten seconds the releasedcar shot down the slope unhindered. Then he checked the speed and answeredher.

  "A little while ago I should have said I didn't know; but now I do know.It is because you love David Kent: you loved him before I had my chance."

  She did not deny the principal fact, but she gave him his opportunity toset it aside if he could--and would.

  "Call it foolish, romantic sentiment, if you like. Is there no way toshame me out of it?"

  He shook his head slowly.

  "You don't mean that."

  "But if I say that I do; if I insist that I am willing to be shamed out ofit."

  His smile was that of a brother who remembers tardily to be loving-kind.

  "I shall leave that task for some one who cares less for you and for yourtrue happiness than I do, or ever shall. And it will be a mighty thanklessservice that that 'some one' will render you."

  "But I ought to be whipped and sent to bed," she protested, almosttearfully. "Do you know what I have done?--how I have----"

  She could not quite put it in words, even for him, and he helped hergenerously, as before.

  "I know what Kent hasn't done; which is more to the point. But he will doit fast enough if you will give him half a chance."

  "No," she said definitively.

  "I say yes. One thing, and one thing only, has kept him from telling youany time since last autumn: that is a sort of finical loyalty to me. I sawhow matters stood when he came aboard of our train at Gaston--I'm askingyou to believe that I didn't know it beforeand I saw then that my onlyhope was to make a handfast friend of him. And I did it."

  "I believe you can do anything you try to do," she said warmly.

  This time his smile was a mere grimace.

  "You will have to make one exception, after this; and so shall I. Andsince it is the first of any consequence in all my mounting years, itgrinds. I can't throw another man out of the window and take his place."

  "If you were anything but what you are, you would have thrown him out ofthe window another way," she rejoined.

  "That would have been a dago's trick; not a white man's," he asserted. "Isuppose I might have got in his way and played the dog in the mangergenerally, and you would have stuck to your word and married me, but I amnot looking for that kind of a winning. I don't mind confessing that Iplayed my last card when I released you from your engagement. I said tomyself: If that doesn't break down the barriers, nothing will."

  She looked up quickly.

  "You will never know how near it came to doing it, Brookes."

  "But it didn't quite?"

  "No, it didn't quite."

  The brother-smile came again.

  "Let's paste that leaf down and turn the other; the one that has DavidKent's name written, at the top. He is going to succeed all around,Elinor; and I am going to help him--for his sake, as well as yours."

  "No," she dissented. "He is going to fail; and I am to blame for it."

  He looked at her sidewise.

  "So you were at the bottom of that, were you? I thought as much, and triedto make him admit it, but he wouldn't. What was your reason?"

  "I gave it to him: I can't give it to you."

  "I guess not," he laughed. "I wasn't born on the right side of theBerkshire Hills to appreciate it. But really, you mustn't interfere. As Isay, we are going to make something of David; and a little conscience--ofthe right old Pilgrim Fathers' brand--goes a long way in politics."

  "But you promised me you were not going to spoil him--only it doesn'tmatter; you can't."

  Ormsby chuckled openly, and when she questioned "What?" he said:

  "I was just wondering what you would say if you knew what he is into now;if you could guess, for instance, that his backers have put up a coolhundred thousand to be used as he sees fit?"

  "Oh!" she exclaimed; and there was dismay and sharp disappointment in hervoice. "You don't mean that he is going to bribe these men?"

  "No," he said, relenting. "As a matter of fact, I don't know preciselywhat he is doing with the money, but I guess it is finding its way intolegitimate channels. I'll make him give me an itemized expense account foryour benefit when it's all over, if you like."

  "It would be kinder to tell me more about it now," she pleaded.

  "No; I'll let him have that pleasure, after the fact--if we can get himpardoned out before you go back East."

  She was silent so long that he stole another sidewise look between hissnubbings of the brake-pedal. Her face was white and still, like the faceof one suddenly frost-smitten, and he was instantly self-reproachful.

  "Don't look that way," he begged. "It hurts me; makes me feel how heavy myhand is when I'm doing my best to make it light. He is trying a ratherdesperate experiment, to be sure, but he is in no immediate personaldanger. I believe it or I shouldn't be here; I should be with him."

  She asked no more questions, being unwilling to tempt him to breakconfidence with Kent. But she was thinking of all the desperate things adetermined man with temperamental unbalancings might do when the touringcar rolled noiselessly down the final hill into the single street ofMegilp.

  There was but one vehicle in the street at the moment; a freighter'sore-wagon drawn by a team of mules, meekest and most shambling-prosaic oftheir tribe. The motor-car was running on the spent velocity of thedescent, and Ormsby thought to edge past without stopping. But at thecritical instant the mules gave way to terror, snatched the heavy wagoninto the opposite plank walk, and tried to climb a near-by telephone pole.Ormsby put his foot on the brake and something snapped under the car.

  "What was that?" Elinor asked; and Ormsby got down to investigate.

  "It is our brake connection," he announced,
after a brief inspection. "Andwe are five good miles from Hudgins and his repair kit."

  A ring of town idlers was beginning to form about them. An automobile wasstill enough of a rarity in the mining-camp to draw a crowd.

  "Busted?" inquired one of the onlookers.

  Ormsby nodded, and asked if there were a machinist in the camp.

  "Yep," said the spokesman; "up at the Blue Jay mine."

  "Somebody go after him," suggested Ormsby, flipping a coin; and a boystarted on a run.

  The waiting was a little awkward. The ringing idlers were good-natured butcurious. Ormsby stood by and answered questions multiform, divertingcuriosity from the lady to the machine. Presently the spokesman said:

  "Is this here the steam-buggy that helped a crowd of you fellers to getaway from Jud Byers and his posse one day a spell back?"

  "No," said Ormsby. Then he remembered the evening of small surprises--theracing tally-ho with the Inn auto-car to help; and, more pointedly now,the singular mirage effect in the lengthening perspective as theeast-bound train shot away from Agua Caliente.

  "What was the trouble that day?" he asked, putting in a question on hisside.

  "A little ruction up at the Twin Sisters. There was a furss, an' a gunwent off, accidintally on purpose killin' Jim Harkins," was the reply.

  The machinist was come from the Blue Jay, and Ormsby helped Elinor out ofher seat while the repairs were making. The town office of the Blue Jaywas just across the street, and he took her there and begged house-roomand a chair for her, making an excuse that he must go and see to thebrake-mending.

  But once outside he promptly stultified himself, letting the repairs takecare of themselves while he went in search of one Jud Byers. The deputysheriff was not hard to find. Normally and in private life he was theweigher for the Blue Jay; and Ormsby was directed to the scale shantywhich served as the weigher's office.

  The interview was brief and conclusive; was little more than a rapid fireof question and answer; and for the greater part the sheriff'saffirmatives were heartily eager. Yes, certainly; if the thing could bebrought to pass, he, Byers, would surely do his part. All he asked was anhour or two in which to prepare.

  "You shall have all the time there is," was the reply. "Have you a WesternUnion wire here?"

  "No; nothing but the railroad office."

  "That won't do; they'd stop the message. How about the Inn?"

  "Breezeland has a Western Union all right; wire your notice there, andI'll fix to have it 'phoned over. I don't believe it can be worked,though," added the deputy, doubtfully.

  "We can't tell till we try," said Ormsby; and he hurried back to his carto egg on the machinist with golden promises contingent upon haste.

  Miss Brentwood found her companion singularly silent on the five-mile raceto Breezeland; but the lightning speed at which he drove the car putconversation out of the question. At the hotel he saw her into the liftwith decent deliberation; but the moment she was off his hands he fairlyran to the telegrapher's alcove in the main hall.

  "Have you a Western Union wire to the capital direct?" he inquired.

  The young man snapped his key and said he had.

  "It has no connection with the Trans-Western railroad offices?"

  "None whatever."

  Ormsby dashed off a brief message to Kent, giving three or four addressesat which he might be found.

  "Send that, and have them try the Union Station train platform first.Don't let them spare expense at the other end, and if you can bring proofof delivery to Room 261 within half an hour, it means a month's pay toyou, individually. Can you do it?"

  But the operator was already claiming the wire, writing "deth," "deth,""deth," as rapidly as his fingers could shake off the dots and dashes.