The City of Numbered Days

by Francis Lynde

  XVII

  The Circean Cup

  While one might count ten the silence of the upper room remainedunbroken, and neither the man nor the woman spoke. It was not the firsttime by many that Genevieve Cortwright had come to stand beside theengineer's desk, holding him with smiling eyes and a charming audacitywhile she laid her commands upon him for the afternoon's motoring or theevening's bridge party or what other social diversion she might have inview.

  But now there was a difference. Brouillard felt it instinctively--and inthe momentary silence saw it in a certain hard brilliance of thebeautiful eyes, in the curving of the ripe lips, half scornful, halfpathetic, though the pathos may have been only a touch of self-pity bornof the knowledge that the world of the luxury-lapped has so little tooffer once the cold finger of satiety has been laid upon the throbbingpulse of fruition.

  "You have been quarrelling with father again," she said, with anabruptness that was altogether foreign to her habitual attitude towardhim. "I have come to try to make peace. Won't you ask me to sit down?"

  He recalled himself with a start from his abstracted study of thefaultless contour of cheek and chin and rounded throat and placed achair for her, apologizing for the momentary aberration and slippingeasily from apology into explanation.

  "It was good of you to try to bring the wine and oil," he said. "But itwas scarcely a quarrel; the king doesn't quarrel with his subjects."

  "Now you are making impossible all the things I came to say," sheprotested, with a note of earnestness in her voice that he had rarelyheard. "Tell me what it was about."

  "I am afraid it wouldn't interest you in the least," he returnedevasively.

  "I suppose you are punishing me now for the 'giddy butterfly' pose whichyou once said was mine. Isn't there a possibility, just the least littleshadow of a possibility, that I don't deserve to be punished?"

  He had sat down facing her and his thought was quite alien to the wordswhen he tried again.

  "You wouldn't understand. It was merely a disagreement in a matterof--a matter of business."

  "Perhaps I can understand more than you give me credit for," shecountered, with an upflash of the captivating eyes. "Perhaps I can behurt where you have been thinking that the armor of frivolity, orignorance, or indifference is the thickest."

  "No, you wouldn't be hurt," he denied, in sober finality.

  "How can you tell? Can you read minds and hearts as you do your maps anddrawings? Must I be set down as hopelessly and irreclaimably frivolousjust because I have chosen to laugh when possibly another woman mighthave cried?"

  "Oh, no," he denied again. Then he tried to meet her fairly on the newground. "You mustn't accuse yourself. You are of your own world and youcan't very well help being of it. Besides, it is a pleasant world."

  "But an exceedingly shallow one, you would say. But why not, Mr.Brouillard? What do we get out of life more than the day's doleof--well, of whatever we care most for? I suppose one ought to beproperly shocked at the big electric sign Monsieur Bongras has put upover the entrance to his cafe; 'Let us eat, drink, and be merry, forto-morrow we die.' He meant it as a cynical gibe at the expense ofMirapolis, of course; but do you know it appeals to me--it makes methink."

  "I'm listening," said Brouillard. "Convert me if you can."

  "Oh, I don't know how to say it, or perhaps even how to think it. Butwhen I see Monsieur Bongras's cynical little fling I wonder if it isn'tthe real philosophy, after all. Why should we be always looking forwardand striving and trying foolishly to climb to some high plane where theair is sure to be so rare that we couldn't possibly breathe it?"

  Brouillard's smile was a mere eye-lifting of grave reminiscence when hesaid: "Some of us have quit looking forward--quit trying to climb--andthat without even the poor hope of reaping the reward that Poodles'squotation offers."

  Miss Cortwright left her chair and began to make an aimless circuit ofthe room, passing the blue-prints on the walls in slow review, andcoming finally to the window looking out over the city and across to thegray, timber-crowned wall of the mighty structure spanning the gapbetween the Niquoia's two sentinel mountains.

  "You haven't told me yet what your disagreement with father was about,"she reminded him at length; and before he could speak: "You needn't,because I know. You have been getting in his way--financially, and hehas been getting in your way--ethically. You are both in the wrong."

  "Yes?" said Brouillard, neither agreeing nor denying.

  "Yes. Father thinks too much of making money--a great deal too much; andyou----"

  "Well?" he prompted, when the pause threatened to become a break. "I amwaiting to hear my indictment."

  "You puzzle me," she acknowledged frankly. "At first I thought you weregoing to be a thirsty money hunter like all the others. And--and Icouldn't quite understand why you should be. Now I know, or partly know.You had an object that was different from that of the others. You wantedto buy some one thing--not everything, as most people do. But there issomething missing, and that is what puzzles me. I don't know what it isthat you want to buy."

  "There have been two things," he broke in. "One of them you know,because I spoke of it to you long ago. The other----"

  "The other is connected in some way with the Massingales; so much Ihave been able to gather from what father said."

  "Since you know part, you may know all," he went on. "David Massingaleowes your father--technically, at least--one hundred thousand dollars,which he can't pay; which your father isn't going to let him pay, if hecan help it. And if Massingale doesn't pay he will lose his mine."

  "You interested yourself? Would you mind telling me just why?" sheasked.

  "That is one of the things you couldn't understand."

  She turned a calmly smiling face toward him.

  "Oh, you are mistaken, greatly mistaken. I can understand it very well,indeed. You are in love with David Massingale's daughter."

  Once more he neither denied nor affirmed, and she had turned to face thewindow again when she went on in the same unmoved tone:

  "It was fine. I can appreciate such devotion even if I can't fullysympathize with it. Everybody should be in love like that--once. Everywoman demands that kind of love--once. But afterward, you know--if oneshould be content to take the good the gods provide...." When she beganagain at the end of the eloquent little pause there was a new note inher voice, a note soothingly suggestive of swaying poppies in sunlitfields, of ease and peace and the ideal heights receding, of rose-strewnpaths pleasant to the feet of the weary wayfarer. "Why shouldn't we taketo-day, the only day we can be sure of having, and use and enjoy itwhile it is ours? Money?--there is money enough in the world, God knows;enough and to spare for anything that is worth the buying. I have money,if that is all--money of my own. And, if I should ask him, father wouldgive me the 'Little Susan' outright, to do with it as I pleased."

  Brouillard was leaning back in his chair studying her faultless profileas she talked, and the full meaning of what she was saying did not cometo him at once. But when it did he sprang up and went to stand besideher. And all the honesty and manhood the evil days had spared went intowhat he said to her.

  "I was a coward a moment ago, Miss Genevieve, when you spoke of themotive which had prompted me to help David Massingale. But you knew andyou said the words for me. When you love as I do you will understandthat there is an ecstasy in the very madness of it that is more preciousthan all the joys of a gold-mounted paradise without it. I must go on asI have begun."

  "You will marry her?" she asked softly.

  "There has never been any hope of that, I think; not from the verybeginning. While I remained an honest man there was the insurmountableobstacle I once told you of--the honor debt my father left me. And whenI became a thief and a grafter for love's sake I put myself out of therunning, definitely and hopelessly."

  "Has she told you so?"

  "Not in so many words; there was no need. There can be no fellowshipbetween light and darkness."

&nbs
p; Miss Cortwright's beautiful eyes mirrored well-bred incredulity, andthere was the faintest possible suggestion of lenient scorn in hersmile.

  "What a pedestal you have built for her!" she said. "Has it neveroccurred to you that she may be just a woman--like other women? Tell me,Mr. Brouillard, have you asked her to marry you?"

  "You know very well that I haven't."

  "Then, if you value your peace of mind, don't. She would probably say'yes' and you would be miserable forever after. Ideals are exceedinglyfragile things, you know. They are made to be looked up to, nothandled."

  "Possibly they are," he said, as one who would rather concede thandispute. The reaction was setting in, bringing a discomfortingconviction that he had opened the door of an inner sanctuary tounsympathetic eyes.

  Followed a little pause, which was threatening to become awkward whenMiss Cortwright broke it and went back to the beginning of things.

  "I came to tender my good offices in the--the disagreement, as you callit, between you and father. Can't you be complaisant for once, in a way,Mr. Brouillard?"

  Brouillard's laugh came because it was summoned, but there was no mirthin it.

  "I have never been anything else but complaisant in the little set-toswith your father, Miss Genevieve. He has always carried too many gunsfor me. You may tell him that I am acting upon his suggestion, if youplease--that the telegram to Washington is written. He will understand."

  "And about this Massingale affair--you will not interfere again?"

  Brouillard's jaw muscles began to set in the fighting lines.

  "Does he make that a command?" he asked.

  "Oh, I fancy not; at least, I didn't hear him say anything like that. Iam merely speaking as your friend. You will not be allowed to do as youwish to do. I know my father better than you do, Mr. Brouillard."

  "What he has done, and what he proposes to do, in Massingale's affair,is little short of highway robbery, Miss Genevieve."

  "From your point of view, you mean. He will call it 'business' and citeyou a thousand precedents in every-day life. But let it go. I've talkedso much about business that I'm tired. Let me see, what was the otherthing I came up here for?--oh, yes, I remember now. We are making up aparty to motor down to the Tri'-Circ' Ranch for a cow-boy supper withLord Falkland. There is a place in our car for you, and I know SophieSchermerhorn would be delighted if you should call her up and tell heryou are going."

  She had turned toward the door and he went to open it for her.

  "I am afraid I shall have to offer my regrets to you, and to MissSchermerhorn as well, if she needs them," he said, with the properoutward show of disappointment.

  "Is it business?" she laughed.

  "Yes, it is business."

  "Good-by, then. I'm sorry you have to work so hard. If Miss Massingalewere only rich--but I forgot, the ideals would still be in the way. No,don't come to the elevator. I can at least do that much for myself, if Iam a 'giddy butterfly.'"

  After she had gone Brouillard went back to the window and stood with hishands behind him looking out at the great dam with its stagings andrunways almost deserted. But when the westering sun was beginning toemphasize the staging timbers whose shadow fingers would presently bereaching out toward the city he went around to his chair and sat down totake the Washington telegram from beneath its paper-weight. Nothingvital, nothing in any manner changeful of the hard conditions, hadhappened since he had signed his name to the cipher at the end of theformer struggle. Notwithstanding, the struggle was instantly renewed,and once more he found himself battling hopelessly with the undertow inthe tide-way of indecision.