XVI
The Man on the Bank
Brouillard, walking out of Mr. Cortwright's new offices with histhoughts afar, wondered if it were by pure coincidence that he foundCastner apparently waiting for him on the sidewalk.
"Once more you are just the man I have been wanting to see," the youngmissionary began, promptly making use of the chance meeting. "May Ibreak in with a bit of bad news?"
"There is no such thing as good news in this God-forsaken valley,Castner. What's your grief?"
"There is trouble threatening for the Cortwrights. Stephen Massingale isout and about again, and I was told this morning that he was fillinghimself up with bad whiskey and looking for the man who shot him."
Brouillard nodded unsympathetically.
"You will find that there is always likely to be a second chapter in abook of that sort--if the first one isn't conclusive."
"But there mustn't be this time," Castner insisted warmly. "We must stopit; it is our business to stop it."
"Your business, maybe; it falls right in your line, doesn't it?"
"No more in mine than in yours," was the quick retort.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" said the engineer pointlessly, catching stepwith the long-legged stride of the athletic young shepherd of souls.
"Not if you claim kinship with Cain, who was the originator of that verybadly outworn query," came the answer shot-like. Then: "What has comeover you lately, Brouillard? You are a friend of the Massingales; I'vehad good proof of that. Why don't you care?"
"Great Heavens, Castner, I do care! But if you had a cut finger youwouldn't go to a man in hell to get it tied up, would you?"
"You mean that I have brought my cut finger to you?"
"Yes, I meant that, and the rest of it, too. I'm no fit company for adecent man to-day, Castner. You'd better edge off and leave me alone."
Castner did not take the blunt intimation. For the little distanceintervening between the power company's new offices and the NiquoiaBuilding he tramped beside the young engineer in silence. But at theentrance to the Niquoia he would have gone his way if Brouillard had notsaid abruptly:
"I gave you fair warning; I'm not looking for a chance to play the GoodSamaritan to anybody--not even to Stephen Massingale, much less VanBruce Cortwright. The reason is because I have a pretty decent back-loadof my own to carry. Come up to my rooms if you can spare a few minutes.I want to talk to a man who hasn't parted with his soul for a moneyequivalent--if there is such a man left in this bottomless pit of atown."
Castner accepted the implied challenge soberly, and together theyascended to Brouillard's offices. Once behind the closed door,Brouillard struck out viciously.
"You fellows claim to hold the keys of the conscience shop; suppose youopen up and dole out a little of the precious commodity to me, Castner.Is it ever justifiable to do evil that good may come?"
"No." There was no hesitation in the denial.
Brouillard's laugh was harshly derisive.
"I thought you'd say that. No qualifications asked for, no judicialweighing of the pros and cons--the evil of the evil, or the goodness ofthe good--just a plain, bigoted 'No.'"
Castner ran a hand through his thick shock of dark hair and looked awayfrom the scoffer.
"Extenuating circumstances--is that what you mean? There are no suchthings in the court of conscience--the enlightened conscience. Right isright and wrong is wrong. There is no middle ground of accommodationbetween the two. You know that as well as I do, Brouillard."
"Well, then, how about the choice between two evils? You'll admit thatthere are times----"
Castner was shaking his head. "That is a lying proverb. No man is evercompelled to make that choice. He only thinks he is."
"That is all you know about it!" was the bitter retort. "What can you,or any man who sets himself apart as you do, know about the troubles andbesetments of ordinary people? You sit on the bank of the river and seethe water go by; what do you know about the agonies of the fellow who isfighting for breath and life out in the middle of the stream?"
"That is a fallacy, too," was the calm reply. "I am a man as other men,Brouillard. My coat makes no difference, as you have allowed at othertimes when we have been thrown together. Moreover, nobody sits on thebank in these days. What are your two evils?"
Brouillard tilted back in his chair and pointedly ignored the directquestion.
"Theories," he said half contemptuously. "And they never fit. See here,Castner; suppose it was clearly your duty, as a man and a Christian andto subserve some good end, to plant a thousand pounds of dynamite in thebasement of this building and fire it. Would you do it?"
"The case isn't supposable."
"There you are!" Brouillard broke out impatiently. "I told you you weresitting on the bank. The case is not only supposable; it exists as anactual fact. And the building the man ought to blow to high heavencontains not only a number of measurably innocent people but one inparticular for whose life and happiness the man would barter hisimmortal soul--if he has one."
The young missionary left his chair and began to walk back and forth onhis side of the office desk.
"You want counsel and you are not willing to buy it with the coin ofconfidence," he said at length, adding: "It is just as well, perhaps. Idoubt very much if I am the person to give it to you."
"Why do you doubt it? Isn't it a part of your job?"
"Not always. I am not your conscience keeper, Brouillard. Don'tmisunderstand me. I may have lived a year or so longer than you have,but you have lived more--a great deal more. That fact might be setaside, but there is another: in the life of every man there is some oneperson who knows, who understands, whose word for that man is the oneonly fitting word of inspiration. That is what I mean when I say that Iam not your conscience keeper. Do I make it clear?"
"Granting your premises--yes. Go on."
"I will. We'll paste that leaf down and turn another. Though I can'tcounsel you, I can still be your faithful accuser. You have committed agreat sin, Brouillard, and you are still committing it. If you haven'tbeen the leader in the mad scramble for riches here in this abandonedcity, you have been only a step behind the leaders. And you were the oneman who should have been like Caesar's wife, the one whose examplecounted for most."
Brouillard got up and thrust out his hand across the desk.
"You are a man, Castner--and that is better than being a priest," heasserted soberly. "I'll take back all the spiteful things I've beensaying. I'm down under the hoofs of the horses, and it's only humannature to want to pull somebody else down. You are one of the few men inMirapolis whose presence has been a blessing instead of a curse--whohasn't had a purely selfish greed to satisfy."
Again Castner shook his head. "There hasn't been much that I could do.Brouillard, it is simply dreadful--the hard, reckless, half-demoniacspirit of this place! There is nothing to appeal to; there is no room ortime for anything but the mad money chase or the still madderdissipation in which the poor wretches seek to forget. I can only tryhere and there to drag some poor soul out of the fire at the lastmoment, and it makes me sick--sick at heart!"
"You mustn't look at it that way," said Brouillard, suddenly turningcomforter. "You have been doing good work and a lot of it--more than anythree ordinary men could stand up under. I haven't got beyond seeing andappreciating, Castner; truly I have not. And I'll say this: if I hadonly half your courage... but it's no use, I'm in too deep. I can't seeany farther ahead than a man born blind. There is one end for which Ihave been striving from the very first, and it is still unattained. I'mpast help now. I have reached a point at which I'd pull the whole worlddown in ruins to see that end accomplished."
The young missionary took another turn up and down the room and thencame back to the desk for his hat. At the leave-taking he said the onlyhelpful word he could think of.
"Go to your confessor, Brouillard--your real confessor--and go all themore readily if that one happens to be a good woman--whom you love andtrust. Th
ey often see more clearly than we do--the good women. Try it;and let me help where a man can help."
For a long hour after Castner went away Brouillard sat at his desk,fighting as those fight who see the cause lost, and who know they onlymake the ruin more complete by struggling on.
Cortwright's guess had found its mark. He was loaded to break with"front feet" and options and "corners." In the latest speculative periodhe had bought and mortgaged and bought again, plunging recklessly withthe sole object of wringing another hundred thousand out of the dryingsponge against the time when David Massingale should need it.
There seemed to be no other hope. It had become plainly evident after alittle time that Cortwright's extorted promise to lift the smeltingembargo from the "Little Susan" ore had been kept only in the letter;that he had removed one obstacle only to interpose another. The newobstacle was in the transportation field. Protests and beseechings,letters to traffic officials, and telegrams to railroad headquarterswere of no avail. In spite of all that had been done, there was never anore-car to come over the range at War Arrow, and the side-track to themine was as yet uncompleted. Brouillard had seen little of Massingale,but that little had shown him that the old miner was in despair.
It was this hopeless situation which had made Brouillard bend his backto a second lifting of the "Little Susan's" enormous burden. At firstthe undertaking seemed easily possible. But with the drying of thespeculative sponge it became increasingly difficult. More and more hehad been compelled to buy and hold, until now the bare attempt to unloadwould have started the panic which was only waiting for some hedgingseller to fire the train.
Sitting in the silence of the sixth-floor office he saw that Cortwrighthad shown him the one way out. Beyond doubt, the resumption in fullforce of the work on the dam would galvanize new life into Mirapolis,temporarily, at least. After that, a cautious selling campaign,conducted under cover through the brokers, might save the day for DavidMassingale. But the cost--the heaping dishonor, the disloyalty ofputting his service into the breach and wrecking and ruining to gain theone personal end....
The sweat stood out in great drops on his forehead when he finally drewa pad of telegraph blanks under his hand and began to write a message.Painstakingly he composed it, referring often to the notes in hisfield-book, and printing the words neatly in his accurate, clearlydefined handwriting.
When it was finished he translated it laboriously into the departmentcode. But after the copy was made and signed he did not ring at once fora messenger. Instead, he put the two, the original and the cipher, undera paper-weight and sat glooming at them, as if they had been his owndeath-warrant--was still so sitting when a light tap at the door wasfollowed by a soft swishing of silken skirts, a faint odor of crushedviolets, and Genevieve Cortwright stood beside him.
The City of Numbered Days Page 16