The Rim of the Desert Part 28

"That is what he told her. He said the syndicate had had his time and brains, he might as well add his soul, for three months steady, and now he was ent.i.tled to his hour. I wonder--" Elizabeth's even voice wavered--"Do you think she will refuse him?"

"I haven't a doubt." And Marcia crossed to the dressing-table and began to remove the sh.e.l.l pins from her glossy black hair.

"She seemed so changed," pursued Elizabeth following. "So, well, anxious, depressed, and you know how gay she was at the time the _Aquila_ came. And I happened to be near them when we started up-stairs. It was plain she was glad to see him. But he gave her a package that had been forwarded from Vivian Court. There was a letter; it may have been from Lucky Banks."

Marcia was silent. She lifted her brush and swept it the length of her unbound hair.

"If it was," resumed Elizabeth, "if he has experimented far enough and wants to forfeit that bonus, I am going to buy that piece of Wenatchee desert myself. The Novelty mills will pay me enough for my tide lands."

"No, Elizabeth. You will hold on to your tide lands, every foot." Mrs.

Feversham paused to watch her sister's eyes capitulate under the batteries of her own, then said: "But you need not worry; Frederic will probably take that option off Lucky Banks' hands. Now, please do my puffs; high, you know, so as to use the paradise aigrette."

Foster, too, had felt the change in Mrs. Weatherbee's mood since he left her at the foot of the staircase; the exhilaration that had been so spontaneous then, that had seemed to expand to take him in, was now so manifestly forced. And presently it came over him she was making conversation, saying all these neutral things about the villa and grounds to safeguard the one vital thing she feared to have him touch.

"Tell me about yourself," he interrupted at last. "You don't know how I've worried about you; how I've blamed myself all these slow months for leaving you as I did. Of course you understood the company decided to send me in to the Iditarod suddenly, with only a few hours' notice, and to reach the interior while the summer trails were pa.s.sable I had to take the steamer sailing that day. I tried to find you, but you were out of town; so I wrote."

"I received the letter," she responded quickly. "I want to thank you for it; it was very pleasant indeed to feel the security of a friend in reserve. But you had written if there was anything you could do, or if, any time, I should need you to let you know, and there was no reason to. I saw I had allowed you to guess the state of my finances; they had been a little depressed, I confess, but soon after you sailed, I gave an option on that desert land east of the Cascades and was paid a bonus of three thousand dollars."

"Then Tisdale did take that property off your hands, after all. I tried to make myself believe he would; but his offer to buy hinged on the practicability of that irrigation project."

"I know. He found it was practicable to carry it out. But--I gave the option to Mr. Banks."

"Lucky Banks," questioned Foster incredulously, "of Iditarod? Why, he talked of a big farming scheme in Alaska."

"I do not know about that. But he had thought a great deal of David. They had been partners, it seems, in Alaska. Once, in a dreadful blizzard, he almost perished, and David rescued him. He knew about the project and offered to make the payment of three thousand dollars to hold the land until he found out whether the scheme was feasible. I needed the money very much. There was a debt it was imperative to close. So I accepted the bonus without waiting to let Mr. Tisdale know."

Foster's brows clouded. "Well, why shouldn't you? Tisdale has himself to blame, if he let his opportunity go."

There was a silent interval. They had reached the brow of the bluff and, coming into the teeth of the wind, she dipped her head and ran to gain the shelter of the pavilion. Then, while she gathered her breath, leaning a little on the parapet and looking off to the broad sweep of running sea, Foster said: "It was that debt that worried me up there in the wilderness.

You had referred to it the evening after the theater, a week before I went away. You called it a debt of honor. You laughed at the time, but you warned me it was the hardest kind of debt because an obligation to a friend kept one continually paying interest in a hundred small ways. You said it was like selling yourself on a perpetual instalment plan. That wasn't the first time you had spoken of it, but you seemed to feel the pressure more that night and, afterwards, up there in the north, I got to thinking it over. I blamed myself for not finding out the truth. I was afraid the loan was Frederic Morganstein's." He paused and drew back a step with a quick uplift of his aggressive chin. "Was it?" he asked.

"Yes." She drew erect and turned from the parapet to meet his look. "My note came into his hands. But I see I must explain. It began in a yearly subscription to the Orthopedic hospital; the one, you know, for little deformed children. I was very interested when the movement started; I sang at concerts, danced sometimes you remember, to help along the fund. And I endowed a little bed. David always seemed just on the brink of riches in those days, his letters were full of brilliant predictions, but when the second annual payment fell due, I had to borrow of Elizabeth. She suggested it. She herself was interested deeper, financially, than I. All the people we knew, who ever gave to charity, were eager to help the Orthopedic; the ladies at the head were our personal friends; the best surgeons were giving their services and time. I hadn't the courage to have my subscription discontinued so soon, and I expected to cancel the debt when I heard again from David. But the next spring it was the same; I borrowed again from Elizabeth. After that, when she wanted to apply the sum to the hospital building fund, Mrs. Feversham advanced the money, and I gave my note. My bed, then, was given to a little, motherless boy. He had the dearest, most trusting smile and great, dark eyes; the kind that talk to you. And his father had deserted him. That seems incredible; that a man can leave his own child, crippled, ill, unprovided for; but it does happen, sometimes." She paused to steady her voice and looked off again from the parapet. "The surgeons were greatly interested in the case," she went on. "They were about to perform an unusual operation. All his future depended on it. So--I let my subscription run on; so much could happen in a year. The operation was a perfect success, and when the boy was ready to go, one of the Orthopedic women adopted him. He is the happiest, st.u.r.diest little fellow now.

"At the end of the summer when the note fell due Mrs. Feversham did not care to renew it; she was going to Was.h.i.+ngton and wished to use the money in New York. The desert tract was all I had, and when Mr. Morganstein planned the motoring trip through the mountains and down to Portland, he offered to take a day to look the land over. He did not want to enc.u.mber himself with any more real estate, he said, but would advise me on its possibilities for the market. An accident to the car in Snoqualmie Pa.s.s obliged him to give up the excursion, and Marcia disposed of the note to him. She said it could make little difference to me since her brother was willing to let the obligation rest until I was ready to meet it. I do not blame her; there are some things Marcia Feversham and I do not see in the same light. It isn't so much through custom and breeding; it's the way we were created, bone and spirit." Her voice broke but she laid her hand on the parapet again with a controlling grasp and added evenly, "That is the reason when Mr. Banks came I was so ready to accept his offer."

"So, that was your debt of honor!" Foster began unsteadily; the words caught in his throat, and for an instant her face grew indistinct through the mist he could not keep back from his eyes. "You knew you were traveling on thin ice; the break-up was almost on you, yet you handicapped yourself with those foundlings. And you never told me. I could have taken over that subscription, I should have been glad of the chance, you must have known that, but you allowed me to believe it was a loan to cover personal expenses."

She met the reproach with a little fleeting smile. "There were times when those accounts pressed, I am going to admit that, in justice to Elizabeth.

She always buoyed me through. I have known her intimately for years. We were at Mills Seminary together, and even then she was the most dependable, resourceful, generous girl in the school. I never should have had the courage to dispose of things--for money--but she offered to. Once it was the bracelet that had been my great-grandmother's; the serpent, you remember, with jewelled scales and fascinating ruby eyes. The j.a.panese consul bought it for his wife. And once it was that dagger the first American Don Silva wore. The design was Moorish, you know, with a crescent in the hilt of unique stones. The collector who wanted it promised to give me the opportunity to redeem it if ever he wished to part with it, and Elizabeth had the agreement written and signed."

"Like a true Morganstein. But I knew how much she thought of you. I used to remind myself, up there in the Iditarod wilderness, that you had her clear, practical sense and executive ability to rely on."

"That has been my one rare good-fortune; to have had Elizabeth. Not that I depreciate my other friends," and she gave Foster another fleeting smile.

"There was Mrs. Brown who in the autumn, when I saw the necessity to give up my apartment at Vivian Court, asked me to stay in exchange for piano and dancing lessons. I had often taught her little girls for pleasure, they were so sweet and lovable, when they visited in my rooms. Still, afterwards, I learned the suggestion came from Elizabeth. Now you know everything," she added with determined gaiety. "And I have had my draught of ozone. We must hurry back, or they will wonder what has become of us."

She turned to the path, and the young engineer followed in silence. He did not know everything; deep in his heart the contradiction burned. Whatever may have caused her exhilaration at the time the _Aquila_ arrived, it was not his return, and while her explanations satisfied him that she was in no immediate financial distress, he felt that her confidence covered unplumbed depths she did not wish him to sound.

They had reached the footbridge over the cascade when he said abruptly: "After all, I am glad Lucky Banks got ahead on the irrigation project. He will find it feasible, if any one can. He grew up on an Oregon farm, and what he hasn't learned about sluicing in Alaska isn't worth knowing. It leaves Hollis Tisdale no alternative."

She turned waiting, with inquiry in her eyes.

"I mean in regard to the Aurora. He hasn't the saving grace of an excuse, now, not to convey that last half interest back to you."

"I do not want a half interest in the Aurora mine." She drew herself very straight, swaying a little on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet. "You must not suggest it. I should not accept it even through a United States court. It belongs to Mr. Tisdale. He furnished the funds that made my husband's prospecting trip possible. And all the gold in Alaska could not repay him for--what he did. Sometimes, when I think of him alone on that terrible trail, he stands out more than a man. Epics have been written on less; it was a friends.h.i.+p to be glorified in some great painting or bronze. But then he touched so lightly on his own part in the story; in the incense he burned to David he was obscured."

Foster stood watching her in surprise. The color that the wind had failed to whip back to her cheeks burned now, two brilliant spots; raindrops, or tears, hung trembling on her lashes, and through them flamed the blue fires of her eyes.

"So," he said slowly, "so, Tisdale did hunt you up, after all; and, of course, you had the whole hard story from him."

"I heard him tell it, yes, but he left out about the--wolves."

"Wolves?" repeated Foster incredulously. "There were no wolves. Why, to be overtaken by a pack, single-handed, on the trail, is the worst that can happen to a man."

She nodded. "Mr. Banks told me. He had talked with the miners who found him. It was terrible." A great shudder ran through her body; for a moment she pressed her fingers to her eyes, then she added with difficulty, almost in a whisper: "He was defending David."

"No, no! Great Scott! But see here,"--Foster laid his hand on her arm and drew her on down the path, "don't try to tell me any more. I understand.

Banks shouldn't have told you. Come, remember Tisdale won through. He's safe."

After a silence, she said: "I doubt if you know how ill he has been."

"Tisdale? No, I hadn't heard."

"I only learned to-day; and he has been in a Was.h.i.+ngton hospital all these months. The surgeons advised amputating his hand," she went on with a tremulous breathlessness, "but he refused. He said he would take the risk; that right hand was more than half of him, his 'better half.'"

Involuntarily Foster smiled in recognition of that dominant note in Tisdale. "But he never seemed more physically fit than on the night I left Seattle," he expostulated. "And there isn't a man in Alaska who understands the dangers and the precautions of frostbite better than Hollis Tisdale does."

"It was not frost; it was a vicious horse," she answered. "It happened after you saw him, on that trip to Wenatchee, while he was leading the vixen over a break in the road. We were obliged to spend the night at a wretched way-house, and the hurt became infected."

Foster stopped. "You were obliged to spend the night?" he inquired.

"Yes. It happened in this way. Mr. Tisdale had taken the Milwaukee line over the mountains, intending to finish the trip on horseback, to see the country, and I, you remember, was motoring through Snoqualmie Pa.s.s with the Morgansteins. His train barely missed colliding with our car. Mr.

Morganstein was injured, and the others took the westbound home with him, but I decided to board the eastbound and go on by stage to Wenatchee, to see my desert tract, and return by way of the Great Northern. I found the stage service discontinued, so Mr. Tisdale secured a team instead of a saddle-horse, and we drove across."

"I see." Foster smiled again. So Tisdale had capitulated on sight. "I see.

You looked the tract over together, yet he hesitated with his offer."

She did not answer directly. They had reached the pergola, and she put out her hand groping, steadying herself through the shadows. "Mr. Tisdale believed at the beginning I was some one else," she said then. "I was so entirely different from his conception of David Weatherbee's wife. In the end he offered to finance the project if I would see it carried through. I refused."

"Of course you refused," responded Foster quickly. "It was preposterous of him to ask it of you. I can't understand it in Tisdale. He was always so broad, so fine, so head and shoulders above other men, so, well, chivalrous to women. But, meantime, while he hesitated, Banks came with his offer?"

"Yes. While he was desperately ill in that hospital. I--I don't know what he will think of me--when he hears--" she went on with little, steadying pauses. "It is difficult to explain. So much happened on that drive to the Wenatchee valley. In the end, during an electrical storm, he saved me from a falling tree. What he asked of me was so very little, the weight of a feather, against all I owe him. Still, a woman does not allow even such a man to finance her affairs; people never would have understood. Besides, how could I have hoped, in a lifetime, to pay the loan? It was the most barren, desolate place; a deep, dry gulf shut in by a wicked mountain--you can't imagine--and I told him I never could live there, make it my home."

They were nearly through the pergola; involuntarily she stopped and, looking up at Foster, the light from a j.a.panese lantern illumined her small, troubled face. "But in spite of everything," she went on, "he believes differently. To-day his first message came from Was.h.i.+ngton to remind me he had not forgotten the project. How can I--when he is so ill-- how can I let him know?"

Foster had had his hour; and, at this final moment, he sounded those hitherto unplumbed depths. "It will be all right," he said steadily; "wait until you see what Lucky Banks does. You can trust him not to stand in Tisdale's way. And don't think I underrate Hollis Tisdale. He is a man in a thousand. No one knows that better than I. And that's why I am going to hold him to his record."