Life at High Tide Part 21

"And have no more music? And--and--oh, it's cruel. _Why_ had you to find it out? It didn't matter anyway when it was all done with. Why _did_ you have to know? ... And you haven't any money. You must let me help you. Let me do that--just that. Can't you forget it all enough for that? Surely you've liked me--for what you've liked in me, let me help you. Great heavens, if I thought of you alone out there, without money--_Must_ you go?"

Haldane was fast losing control of himself. With an effort he pulled himself together and tried to smile.

"You're right to go," he said. "Right. You wouldn't want anything to do with me now."

He looked up at her, though loath to meet her eyes. There was a wonderful pity in her face. "Don't!" he cried, sharply, not understanding.

"I want to say this," he broke out again, almost roughly. "I never guessed that she knew how I felt toward her. I wasn't cruel or beastly--I was kind. They say that's cruelty, too. I tried--my G.o.d!

how I tried!--never to let her know the truth. That's all I can say for myself; ... you'd better go."

She was so silent that at last he faced her again. She was crying softly, and, it appeared, without bitterness. Haldane stared at her curiously.

"I wanted to know that--that last you said," Mrs. Locke gasped, with difficulty. "I--I--I've been thinking it all over in my room. It's very hard to say--please let me go on with it just as I can, I--I've said I wanted to hear that last. But I knew it--in my heart--all the time.

I knew you couldn't be cruel to a living thing. And--and--somehow-- it changed--things. I've had such a terrible struggle all alone. I've tried to pray over it and--oh, I'm afraid I'm very wrong and very wicked--I almost know I am." Her voice sank to a whisper. "But--oh, Leonard ... somehow I just seemed to feel inside me just how you felt, just how--it was with you those two years. Oh, it's a dreadful thing to say, isn't it? Poor Ida! She was so good to me, and yet sometimes--"

The trembling old woman's voice faltered and broke.

Haldane's eyes were full of tears. A great light was slowly breaking for him. He dared not speak.

"Don't think I'm a wicked old woman, Leonard; I never even guessed--till I came here--how I felt. And then you were like a son--my son--the boy I wanted so, and--I loved the music so, and being with you, more than anything I ever knew--it doesn't seem as if--"

Haldane put his hand on hers gently, "As if you could go away now?"

She turned to him with a little sad smile, and in her face was a sweet dignity.

"Yes, I cannot go--now, my son."

THE YEARLY TRIBUTE

BY ROSINA HUBLEY EMMET

"For science is a cruel mistress. She exacts a yearly tribute of flesh and blood like the dragons of ancient pagan mythology."

The eminent scientist paused momentarily here and viewed the earnest young faces before him. In this poetic figure of speech he saw fit to present to them the hards.h.i.+ps of the life they had chosen to embark upon. It was a hot June morning, and the heavy scent of syringa came in through the high uncurtained windows of the lecture-hall. All the students stared with reverence at this distinguished stranger, who had come a long distance to speak to the graduating cla.s.s; and one of its members sighed deeply and turned his eyes to the window, and watched some maple leaves moving languidly against the blue sky. The lecturer heard his sigh, saw him fall into abstraction, realized the peculiar character of his face; and marked him as a man who would serve to the end, possibly becoming one of the victims of that cruel mistress.

Pilchard and Swan had stopped to rest in the middle of the plaza. The black Mexican night was falling and a few stars blossomed in the sky, but there was no abatement in the heat which had held since sunrise; rather, indeed, the thickness of the atmosphere seemed intensified.

The two Americans, who had spent a whole year in Mexico and become accustomed to the climate, attempted to make themselves comfortable.

Pilchard sank to a dilapidated bench and lighted a cigarette; and Swan, not having even sufficient spirit to smoke, stretched himself bodily on the flat stones which paved the plaza, and placed his old hat upon his upturned face.

Both young men seemed depressed, and without speaking they listened to the moaning of the ocean which heaved and glistened in the distance; and when Pilchard finally said, "So poor Murphy is gone too," and Swan responded, "His troubles are over, poor fellow," it showed how completely they had been absorbed in the same thought.

"And Mulligan last week," Pilchard continued, "and all the others who went before, and Peele taken sick this afternoon. Swan, we're the only white men left."

"And we've only got ten days left."

"Oh, I guess we can do it, so long as we're out of the swamp."

"So long as the swamp isn't in us."

They were alluding to the railroad they had come to Mexico to build.

The time-limit given in the contract would expire in ten days, and it would be a race to get the tracks through the town and down to the new docks in that time. Swan, whenever he thought of it, became restless, and now he sat up with a jerk, and his old hat slipped off his face.

Even in that dim light Swan's ugliness was apparent. He measured over six feet and was loose-jointed and ungainly; he had big flat feet, and big bony, capable hands; and his features, which were big and bony too, seemed in proportion to nothing but his general ungainliness.

Swan was an inventive Yankee with no background and no tradition. He could not even claim the proverbial Connecticut farm. His people had been dreary commercials in a middle-sized New Hamps.h.i.+re town, and he had worked his way through college to fit himself for a scientific career. His memory of his deceased parents was so colorless that it seemed to Swan as if they had never existed, and his contacts had been so dull, his outlook so dreary, that he had almost no conception of beauty. His plain college room, where, by the hour, he had worked out mathematical problems, and a grimy engine-room (which was the next stage of his advancement), where he had stood in a greasy black s.h.i.+rt, surrounded by an unceasing whir of machinery, and bossed a gang of men--these had been the things which had subst.i.tuted for him romance and pa.s.sion and life; and finally, when Pilchard, a college friend, had persuaded him to come down to Mexico and build a railroad, he had taken off his greasy black s.h.i.+rt and gone, princ.i.p.ally because this was such a big undertaking, and it would undoubtedly in the end lead to something very much bigger.

The company which was causing the railroad to be built had established large exporting-houses in San Francisco, which sent down certain articles of merchandise to Mexico, and the railroad was designed to transport this freight from one of the southwestern seaport towns to the city of Mexico. The undertaking included the erection of docks with swinging elevators to lift the freight from the vessels and deposit it in the cars, and as the pay was very large and Pilchard was an adventurous soul, he undertook the job when it was offered to him, and going to the manager's office, impressed him with his boldness and ability, and signed his name to the contracts without reading them through; then gayly, and feeling no uneasiness, he b.u.t.toned his coat over the neatly folded paper and went to see Swan.

Swan, in a greasy black s.h.i.+rt, was in the engine-room, hard at work, and he was just about to reprimand one of the men when Pilchard came in. Although it was early in May, a spell of precocious heat had taken New York by the throat, and what with the whir of rapidly turning wheels, and the smell of hot machine-oil and perspiring men, there was something filthy and degraded about the atmosphere. Swan suddenly realized this, although it was the only atmosphere he knew anything about. Glancing upward, he saw a little patch of blue sky through the top of one of the grimy windows ... a white cloud sailed past ... and then another ... something akin to longing welled in his heart, something like a wave of despair and hope, a desire to lift himself into a higher and less degraded world.... He looked toward the door and saw Pilchard, and crossing the room, he greeted him warmly and read the contract Pilchard pulled from his pocket.

"That's a queer business," said Swan, when he had finished.

"How so?"

"Man alive, haven't you read what you've signed your name to?"

"Certainly I've read it."

"And you think you can put the job through in a year?"

"Why not?" asked Pilchard, with his "c.o.c.k-sure" smile.

Swan, like every one else, was taken in by this smile, and to convince himself he read the contract again, out loud this time, and in a thoughtful way. Pilchard listened.

The contract guaranteed that a railroad covering two hundred and fifty miles, between the city of Mexico and the little seaport of Zacatula, on the Pacific Ocean, would be built and completed in one year's time, work starting on the 25th of June. Docks and freight-elevators were included in the work, and if the tracks were not in fit condition for the trains to run by the date specified, every penny of the very large pay would be forfeited by the builders. A strange contract, indeed!

Pilchard, however, as he heard it read, betrayed by no sign that he was as much surprised as Swan.

"Well," said Swan, looking up and meeting that "c.o.c.k-sure" smile, "you think you can do it in a year?"

"I'm certain I can."

"Of course," Swan continued, not yet convinced, "it's the worst country on earth; full of swamp and yellow fever."

"I'll run in a gang of Mexican Indians to lay the ties. They can stand their own climate."

"But you'll have to take down some white men, too, good fellows who know the business. You can't be the only man to do the bossing. It'd kill you."

All this time Pilchard was closely watching Swan, and almost unconsciously something had been growing in his mind. Swan had an ugly, resolute face, and endurance seemed to be expressed in every line of his body. Behind him the engine roared, and spit steam, and ground out the produce of a great city factory; his face and hands were grimy and covered with grease, and the black cinders around his deep-set eyes gave him a terrible, deathly look. Pilchard saw instantly that he must have Swan to do the work. He must take him down to Mexico or else the railroad would never be built. Swan would come, too, because there was a look of tragic fatigue in his deep-set eyes, an expression of sick nausea in the lines about his mouth, that showed how gladly he would change, how completely he had come to the end of his hopes here; so Pilchard suggested with a careless smile that they go down to Mexico together. "Of course," he said, "I don't say that it mightn't be better for me to do it alone--two heads to a job, you know, isn't always a good arrangement; but you've got a pretty mean berth here. It'll take years for you to get a rise, and you're wasting your youth and health shut up with this filthy gang of men. This job of mine would push you right along, and you'll get others like it.

Better come."

Swan reflected. His work was the only thing on earth that he cared for, and to progress in his work, to keep putting through more and more difficult jobs, was what he had always aimed to do. But had he a right to take advantage of Pilchard's generosity? He glanced around the room, conscious of the incessant chattering of the different parts of the engine, which he must keep going in order to turn out the produce of a great city factory. He was no more here than one of the many parts of that engine, and if some day he should be absorbed into the midst of those whirring wheels and ground up like corn, who would ever be the wiser?

So he went.