XXIXAs It Should Be
THE conference in the Alta Vista’s sun-parlor, which was isolated for the purpose, was rather long drawn out, as it was constrained to be, but in due time the large-bodied, shrewd-eyed man who had been doing practically all of the talking for the railroad company brought it to a conclusion.
“I have no more use for a welsher than you have, Mr. Vallory,” he said, referring pointedly to one James Lushing. “You have frankly admitted that there have been the usual contractor’s shavings and parings on the job, to the manifest detriment of the railroad company’s interest. I’ll be equally frank and say that Lushing was given his place with us largely because he knew of the little parings—having devised a good many of them himself, probably—and was therefore able to check and prevent them. But I wish it to be distinctly understood that we don’t stand for any highbinding methods; and your evidence of sheercriminality on Lushing’s part seems to be entirely conclusive. You say they have found the wrecked time-clock of the infernal machine in the tunnel digging?”
David nodded. “We have that, and the testimony of the young woman I speak of. Also, we have another witness in the person of a man named Dargin, who, my assistant tells me, is ready to testify that Lushing, the man Backus, and another named Runnels, deliberately plotted the blowing up of the tunnel, partly for the purpose of smashing our company, but principally—so Dargin says—to dispose of me in a manner which would appear to be entirely accidental.”
“Dargin?” said the president, with a faint smile. “Isn’t he the head and front of these Powder Can nuisances that you described in your letter to me, and wished to have us help you clean out?”
“The same,” said David.
“Did he know of your effort in this direction?”
“He did.”
“And yet he tried to warn you through the woman Fallon? What sort of a desperado is he, Mr. Vallory?”
“Really, I don’t know,” David confessed. “He is rather beyond me. Desperado is the word; he has a perfectly horrifying list of shootings to hiscredit, and is, generally, what is known west of civilization as a ‘bad man.’ And yet he agreed with me when I told him that his dives ought to be cleaned up, and that I was going to try to clean them up; adding that some day he might do it himself, if I didn’t beat him to it.”
“That would be a miracle, indeed,” said the railroad president.
“Yet it is one that is already wrought,” David put in. “Mr. Plegg—my assistant—assures me that the Powder Can saloons and gambling dens were all closed on the night of the tunnel explosion, and that Dargin had sent him word that they would not be reopened.”
Again the big-bodied president smiled. “We are living in an age of wonders, Mr. Vallory. This man Dargin’s action proves it, and, if you will permit me to say it, so does yours in asking for this conference. Do you know what has become of Lushing?”
“I do not. When it became known, as it was almost immediately, that the tunnel disaster was not an accident, Lushing disappeared, together with his accomplices. But, as I have pointed out, we have the evidence.”
“You could scarcely make a legal case against the railroad company,” said the president.“Lushing was acting entirely on his own responsibility when he stepped over into the criminal field to satisfy his grudge against you and Mr. Grillage. But I understand from what you have said that you have no intention of taking the matter into the courts.”
“None whatever. I am merely asking you gentlemen for a square deal in return for a square deal. Our bid on this job was too low, if the work were to be done honestly. If the railroad company will allow the slight increase in the estimates that I have asked for, we shall go on and complete the job to your entire satisfaction. And you may cover the entire mileage six feet deep with inspectors if you choose.”
There was a little interval of silence to follow this statement, with some uneasy moving in their chairs on the part of the four Short Line directors who had listened to the arguments pro and con.
“I believe in you, Mr. Vallory,” said the president at length, slightly stressing the pronoun. “If the matter were solely in your hands, I should say, go ahead on the plan you have outlined. But what guaranty can you give us that Mr. Grillage will permit you to carry out your ideas? You must remember that we have had dealings with him before this.”
“Mr. Grillage will not interfere,” said David calmly. “The chief reason is that before the new plan goes into effect, I shall be his son-in-law and a partner in the business of the Grillage Engineering Company.”
“Oho!” said the railroad magnate, with a good-natured chuckle. “So the wind sets in that quarter, does it? Are we to understand that you will have your wife’s approval and—er—coöperation in these business matters?”
“To the very fullest extent,” was the prompt rejoinder. “In fact, the course I have indicated is based more upon her initiative than mine.”
“That is better. I have had the privilege of meeting Miss Virginia, and—you are to be congratulated, most heartily, Mr. Vallory. Did the—er—accident in the tunnel contribute something toward the bringing about of this happy state of affairs?”
“It did,” said David shortly. “You may, or may not, have heard that Miss Virginia took her life in her hands to save mine and those of the men of the day shift.”
President Ford rose to intimate that the conference was ended.
“We’ll meet you half-way, Mr. Vallory, and in good faith,” he said. “I am told you have a lawyerfriend here in the house; our attorneys will meet him and draw up new contracts. We shall ask only for decent economy and fairness; and if you can do as you promise—get the line open before snow flies—there will be a substantial bonus for you, individually; which may enable you to make your interest in the Grillage Engineering Company a financial as well as a—er—sentimental one. I think that is all we need to say this morning.”
David Vallory passed through the corridor to the Grillage suite with the blood hammering in his veins. In the hour-long conference with the railroad magnates he had kept his word to Virginia, fighting openly and honestly, and battling his way through to the desired end. The battle had not been won without stress. At first, there had been only silence and cold attention on the part of the magnates. But the triumphant fact remained: he had warmed them finally and the victory was won.
But now the real crisis was at hand. Would Eben Grillage, the benefactor to whom he owed his fealty in the final analysis, turn the helm over to a moneyless youngster who was masterfully proposing to marry his daughter out of hand, andto throw all of the Grillage business methods and maxims into the scrap-heap?
Virginia met him at the door of the private suite, and her eyes were full of trouble.
“You must be prepared for a great change, David,” she told him. “It is paralysis, and he will never be the same man again. You must help me, dear; in a way, you know, I was the cause of it.”
“We’ll carry the load—together,” he assured her gently, and then she led him to the bedside of the stricken giant.
Her word of warning did not come amiss. For a moment David was shocked silent, and he could scarcely realize that the big figure propped among the pillows was that of the man who had stood as the very image of strength and aggressive vigor at their last meeting on the morning of the departure for the fishing excursion. The beetle-browed eyes were undimmed, to be sure, but the heavy face hung in folds, and its color was that of age-old parchment. Yet the indomitable spirit was unbroken.
“Come to look over the wreck, have you, David?” he said, with the grim Grillage smile strangely distorted by his malady. “Makes me think of that advertisement of the insurance people:‘A house may burn, but a manmustdie.’ I’m not dead yet, though.”
“Of course you’re not,” said David cheerfully. “You’re not going to be allowed to die before I’ve paid you some of the big debt I owe you.”
Again the grim smile flitted across the flabby expanse of the wrecked face.
“Vinnie tells me you’re aiming to make the debt bigger before you make it less. Do you realize that you’re taking all I’ve got in the world worth having, David? But of course you don’t; you young robbers never do. Have you seen President Ford?”
“Yes; I have just had a talk with him and four of his directors. We are to have a new contract, with increased estimates, and a square deal all around. And bygones are to be bygones.”
Eben Grillage rocked his head slowly back and forth on the pillows, and this time the grim smile was almost ghastly.
“You might have waited until I was safely under ground, you and Vinnie, before you began on your Utopian house-wrecking,” he said, with a touch of humor that was too bitter to be merely sardonic. “Are you trying to tell me that Ford is going to pay more than the original contract calls for?”
“Just that—for the right kind of work. I had to argue for a solid hour, but I carried my point.”
“I suppose you told him that the old buccaneer was as good as dead, and that the Golden Rule had been taken out of its wrappings and polished up so you could see your face in it?”
At this the buccaneer’s daughter broke in, speaking for the first time in the brisk interchange of question and reply.
“I can’t let you torture David that way!” she protested. “He speaks of his debt to you, and you have spoken of it; can’t you see that he is trying to pay it in the biggest, finest way there is?”
Again the big head wagged on the pillows.
“You’ll tell me, you two, that it is the day of the new generation, and that I’m only a wornout back-number. Maybe it’s so. But Utopia isn’t here yet, and the world I’ve fought in ... but what’s the use? You two wouldn’t see it my way if I should talk till midnight. What is it that you want to do, David?”
David slipped an arm around Virginia to make what he was about to say a joint declaration.
“We mean to have you live to hear the Grillage Engineering Company called the squarest contracting firm in the business; to see the time when its bid will be the highest one made on a job, andyet will be the bid that is accepted. That is how we shall try to pay some part of the big debt. You’ll let us try for it, won’t you?”
For a full minute the fierce eyes were closed and the massive figure outlined under the bed-clothes lay motionless and rigid. When the eyes were unclosed the king of the contractors was himself again, in curt decision and terseness of speech, at least.
“Have your way, both of you,” he growled. “It isn’t my way, and you can’t hope to teach an old dog new tricks. Find Oswald, and we’ll draw up some kind of a document that will put you in the saddle and give you the authority to make the deal with Ford and his lawyers. And say: tell Oswald to bring me a cigar—the blackest one he can find.... No, I don’t care a damn what the doctor says!”
There was a double wedding in the Inn club-room a week later, the Grillage private car having been sent all the way to Brewster to bring the officiating clergyman. Contrary to all precedent—at least in Virginia Grillage’s world—there was no formality. The Inn guests were invited in a body; and on David’s side there was a crowdingof engineers in working clothes, of grade foremen and subcontractors, of all and sundry who could be spared from the big job.
Eben Grillage, his great body propped in a wheel-chair, gave one of the brides away; but the chief interest for the onlookers centered in the slender, sylph-like figure of the other bride, whose face, almost other-worldly in its delicate, rose-leaf beauty, was as the face of an innocent child, and whose eyes, seeing neither the throng nor the morning sunlight streaming through the windows of the transformed lounging-room, were yet shining with happiness ineffable.
“I—I simplycan’tbelieve she is blind!” whispered one white-haired mother of daughters among the witnesses; and there were others, also, to wink away the quick-springing tears of sympathy.
Again, contrary to all precedent, there was no wedding journey to follow the simple ceremony in the hotel club-room. Almost immediately the Oswalds went across to the cottage they were to occupy; and a short half-hour after her marriage, Virginia Vallory, clad in serviceable khaki, forthfared with her husband to make a round over the job.
The sun was setting crimson fires alight inQojogo’s cloud cap when they returned to a late dinner. The summerers were thickly clustered on the Inn porches, and the two who had just reached the summit of the steep ridge path turned their backs upon the conventions and their faces toward the western effulgences.
“You’ve had the better part of a day to think about it; are you sorry for that little minute of confessions in the tunnel, Vinnie?” David asked, as one still unable to realize his blessings and the full magnitude of them.
“Sorry? Why should I be sorry?”
“You might have had an old and honorable title, you know,” he reminded her. “Cumberleigh could have given you that much, at least.”
She glanced up with a bewitching little twist of the lips which carried him swiftly back to childhood days, and to his memories of her childhood.
“I have a title,” she retorted; “the most honorable title in all the world. When I die it shall be graven on my tombstone.”
“Epitaphs—already?” he deprecated, with his sober smile. Then, in a sudden rush of poignant tenderness: “Oh, my dear one—let us hope that the day is far distant!”
“Amen!” she said softly; “because I don’t want to leave you, David. But when the day does comeI shall have my title: I thought of it this afternoon when we were at McCulloch’s camp, and I stood aside and heard you say, ‘No, Mac—do the job just as if you were doing it for yourself.’ Then I saw just how my epitaph-title was going to read: ‘Here lies Virginia Vallory, the wife of an honest man.’ There now; if that crowd wasn’t looking on with all its eyes, I’m sure you’d kiss me for that. Let’s go in to dinner; I’m actually unromantic enough to be fiercely hungry. Good-by, blessed sunset,” and she blew a kiss to the crimson west.