He opened the door and, seemingly heedless of all else, hastened through to the bathroom, to shut off the flow of the shower. Lord James followed him as far as the corner cot, where Blake, wet-haired and half dressed, sat bowed far over, his elbows on his knees and his face between his hands.
"Head ache, old man?"
Blake raised his head barely enough for his friend to catch a glimpse of his haggard face and miserable eyes.
"Come now, Tommy," snapped Griffith, shuffling back from the bathroom, "we all admit you've made a damned fool of yourself; but what's the use of grouching? Sit up now—look pleasant!" He swung around a chair for Lord James, and seated himself in an old rocker. "Come, sit up, Tommy. We're going to hold an inquest on the remains."
"They need it—that's no lie," mumbled Blake.
"Bah!Cherk up, you rooster! It isn't the first time you've lost your feet. Maybe your feelings are jolted, but—the instrument is safe. Remember that time you fell down the fifty-foot bank and never even knocked your transit out of adjustment? You never let go of your grip on it! Come; you'll soon be streaking out again, same as ever."
"No, you're clean off this time, Grif." Instead of raising his head,Blake hunched over still lower. He went on in a dreary monotone, "No,I'm done for this trip—down for the count. I'm all in."
"Rot!" protested Lord James.
"All in, for keeps, this time. I'm not too big a fool to see that.Everything coming my way,—and to go and chuck it all like this.Needn't tell me she'll overlook it. Wouldn't ask her to. I'm not worthit."
"She's got to!" cried Griffith, with sudden heat. "She steered you up against this."
"What if she did? Only makes it all the worse. Didn't have sand enough to refuse. I'm no good, that's all—not fit to look at her—she's a lady. You needn't cut in with any hot air. I'm no more 'n a blackguard that got my chance to impose on her—and took it. That's the only name for it—young girl all alone!"
"No, no, old man, just the contrary, believe me!" exclaimed Lord James."I doubt if I myself could have done what you did when she—er—"
"'Cause there'd have been no need. You're in her class, while I—" He groaned, and burst out morosely: "You know I'm not, both of you. What's the use of lying?"
The two friends glanced across at each other and were silent. Blake went on again, in his hopeless, dreary monotone. "Down and out—down and out. Only son of his mother, and she a drunkard. Nothing like Scripture, Jimmy, for consoling texts."
He began to quote, with an added bitterness in his despair: "'Woe unto them that are mighty to drink, and men of strength to mingle strong drink … their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust—' 'Awake, ye drunkards, and weep and howl, all ye drinkers of wine.' 'For while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.'—Dry? Good Lord! Ring up a can of suds, Grif. I've got ten miles of alkali desert down my throat!"
"All right, Tommy," said Griffith. "We'll soon fix that. I've sent in an order already."
"You have not!" rejoined Blake, in an incredulous growl. "Well, suppose you ring 'em up again. If that can doesn't get here mighty sudden, I'll save the fellow the trouble of bringing it."
"Hold on, young man," ordered Griffith, as Blake started to heave himself to his feet. "I'm running this soiree."
He stood up and shuffled out into the front room. Blake shifted around restlessly, and was again about to rise, when there came a sharp rapping at the outer door.
"That's the man now," said Lord James. "Hold tight. It will now be only a moment."
Blake restrained himself. But it was a very long moment before Griffith came in with a pitcher and three glasses upon a battered tray. At the tinkle of the glasses Blake looked up, his face aflame. He made a clutch at the pitcher.
[Illustration: He went on in a dreary monotone, "No, I'm done for this trip—down for the count. I'm all in."]
Griffith gave him his shoulder, and cackled: "Don't play the hog, Tommy. I've been up in Canada enough to know that the nobility always get first helping. Eh, Lord Scarbridge?"
"You—you—" gasped Blake.
"But this time," went on Griffith, hastily pouring out a brimming glassful of liquid from the pitcher, "we'll make an exception."
He turned about quickly, and with his hand clasped over the top of the glass, reached it out to Blake. Half maddened by his thirst, the latter clutched the glass, and, without pausing to look at its contents, drained it at a gulp. An instant later the glass shattered to fragments on the floor, and Blake's fist flung out toward Griffith.
"Quassia!" he growled. "You dotty old idiot! Needn't think you're going to head me off this soon!"
Griffith set the tray on his bed, and crossing to the door, locked it and put the key in his pocket.
"Now, Tommy," he croaked, "you've got just two friends that I know of. They're here. Maybe you can take the key from us; but you know what you'll have to do to us first."
Blake stared at him with morose, bloodshot eyes.
"You're dotty!" he growled. "You know you can't stop me, once I'm under way. I don't want to roughhouse it, but I want something for this thirst, and I'm going to have it. Understand?"
"H'm. If that's all," said Griffith.
"That's all, if you're reasonable," replied Blake less morosely. "They gave me all I wanted when I took the gold cure."
"Cured you, too," jeered Griffith.
"That's all right. The point now is, do I get something? If I do, I agree to stay here. If I don't, I'm going out."
"Try another glass of this while you're waiting," suggested Lord James, and he poured out a second glassful of the bitter decoction.
"No," answered Blake.
"You tossed down the other too fast. Sip it. You'll find that it will ease the dryness while you are waiting," insisted Lord James. "Try it, to oblige me."
"Ugh!" growled Blake. He hesitated, then reluctantly took the glass and began to sip the quassia. After the last swallow, he turned sullenly to Griffith. "Well, what you waiting for? Get a move on you."
"It does help, doesn't it?" interposed Lord James.
Blake muttered something behind his lips that the others chose to take for assent.
"Yes, it's the real thing," said Griffith. "Try another, Tommy, same way."
"Another?Bah!You can't fool me. I'm on to your game."
"Sure you are," assented Griffith. "What's more, you're sober enough now to know that our game is your game. Own up. Don't lie."
Blake looked down morosely, and for a long quarter of a minute his friends waited in anxious suspense. At last, without looking up, he held out his empty glass for Lord James to refill it. The second battle was won.
As Lord James took the glass, Griffith interposed. "Hold on. We'll keep that for later. I've something else now."
"More dope!" growled Blake.
"No, good stuff to offset the effects of the poison you've been swilling since morning. Next course is bromide of potassium."
"Take your medicine, bo!" chimed in Lord James.
"Ugh!" groaned Blake. "Dish it out, then. Only don't forget. You know, well as I do, that if the craving comes on that bad again, I'm bound to have a drink. I tell you, I can't help myself. I've told you about it time and again. It's hell till I get enough aboard to make me forget. You know I don't like the stuff. I've hated the very smell of it since before my first real spree."
Griffith shot a significant glance at Lord James. "That's all right, Tommy,—we understand how it is. But we've got hold of it this time. You'll never quit if you can help it, and we know now you can help it, with this quassia to keep your throat from sizzling. Here's your bromide."
Blake gulped down the dose, but muttered despondently: "What's the use?You know you can't head me off for keeps, once I'm as far under way asI've got to-day. Think you're going to stop me now, do you?"
"That's what," rejoined Griffith. "You'll think the same in about ten minutes. I'm going to talk to you like a Dutch uncle."
"And I've got to sit here while you unwind your jaw! Cut it short. Don't see why you want to chin, anyway. All that's left is to haul me to the scrapheap. . . . You don't think I'd go near her after this, do you? I've got a little decency left. Only thing I can do is to open wide and cut loose. D.T. finish is the one for me. Won't take long for her to forget me. Any fool can see that."
"We're going up to Michamac, first thing tomorrow," remarked Griffith in a casual tone.
"You may be. I'm not."
"It's all arranged, Tammas," drawled Lord James. "I told Miss Leslie—"
"You told her! Mighty friendly of you! Good thing, though. Sooner she knows just what I am, the better. How soon do you figure on the wedding?"
"Chuck it, you duffer!" exclaimed the Englishman, flushing scarlet. "I didn't tell herthis. She doesn't know."
Blake's haggard face lighted with a flash of hope, only to settle back into black despair.
"She'll learn soon enough. I'm done for, for good, this trip!" he groaned. He clenched his fist and bent forward to glare at them in sullen fury. "Damn you! Call yourselves my friends, and sit here yawping, you damned Job's comforters! Think I'm a mummy?—when I've lost her! God!—to sit here with my brains going—to know I've lost all—all! Give me some whiskey—anything! … My girl—my girl!"
He bent over, writhing and panting, in an agony of remorse.
Griffith fetched a tablet and a glass of water, to which he added some of the quassia.
"Here's your dose of sulphonal," he said, in his driest, most matter-of-fact tone. "You've got to get to sleep. It's an early train."
"What's the use? Leave me alone!" groaned Blake.
"Gad, old man," put in Lord James. "Any one who didn't know you would think you were a quitter."
"What's the use? I've lost out. I'm smashed."
"All right. Let's call it a smashup," croaked Griffith. "Just the same, you don't go out of commission till you've squared accounts. You're not going to leave the Zariba Dam in the air."
"Guess I've got enough on paper for you to work out the solution, if it's workable."
"And if not?"
"I'm all in, I tell you. I'm smashed for good."
"No, you're not. Anyway, there's one thing you've got to do. You've got to settle about that bridge. You've been too busy over the dam to think of asking for a look at Ashton's plans, and I've said nothing. I've been waiting for you to make good on the dam. With that behind you, no engineer in the U.S. would doubt your word if you claimed the bridge."
"What of that? What do I care?" muttered Blake. "The game's up. What's the use?"
"This!" snapped Griffith. "Either Laffie Ashton is a dirty sneak thief, or he's a man that deserves my apologies. It's a question of fair play to me as well as to him. You're square, Tom. You'll come up to Michamac with me and settle this matter."
"Lord! Why can't you let me alone?" groaned Blake. But he took the sulphonal and washed it down with the quassia-flavored water.
Lord James went out into the office to phone his man at the hotel to fetch over clothes for a short trip. When he reentered the bedroom Blake was stretched out in bed, and Griffith was spreading a blanket for himself on the floor.
"Should I not run over to my hotel for the night?" remarked theEnglishman. "Don't want to put you out of your bed, y' know."
"No. I sleep as well, or better, on the floor. We want to be sure of an early start," said Griffith.
Blake rose on his elbow and blinked at them. His eyes were still bloodshot and his face haggard, but the change in his voice was unmistakably for the better. "Say, bos, it does pay to have friends—sometimes!"
"Forget it!" rejoined Griffith. "You go to snoozing. It's an early train, remember."
Blake sighed drowsily, and stretched out again on the flat of his back.Within a minute he was fast asleep.
At dawn they roused him out of his drugged sleep and gave him a showerbath and rubdown that brought a healthy glow to his cold skin. He turned pale at the mere mention of food, but after a drink of quassia, Griffith induced him to take a cup of clear coffee and some thickly buttered toast. After that the three hastened in a cab to the station, stopping on the way to buy half a case each of grapefruit and oranges. Aboard the train Blake was at once set to eating grapefruit and chewing the bitter pith to allay the burning of his terrible thirst.
Throughout the trip, which lasted until mid-afternoon, one or the other of the two friends was ever at his side, ready to urge more of the acid fruit upon him and continually seeking to divert and entertain him by cheerful talk. Until after the noon hour they were on the main line and had the benefit of the dining-car. Griffith ordered a hearty meal, more dinner than luncheon, and Blake was able to eat the greater part of a spring chicken.
The most trying and critical time during the trip was the short wait at the junction, where they transferred to the old daycoach that was attached to the train of structural steel for the Michamac Bridge. Blake caught sight of a saloon, and the associations roused by it quickened his craving to an almost irresistible fury. When, none too soon, the train pulled out of the little town, he sank back in his seat morose and almost exhausted by his struggle.
Though Lord James made every effort to rouse him to a more cheerful mood, his face was still sullen and heavy when the train clanked in over the switches of the material yards at the bridge. Before they left the car Griffith made certain that Blake was wrapped about in overcoat and muffler and had on the arctics that he had bought for him.
Having directed one of the trainmen to bring the boxes of fruit to the office, Griffith led the way up the path formed by the bridge-service track. The rails had been kept shovelled clear from the February snowdrifts and ran straight out through the midst of the bleak unlovely buildings grouped near the edge of Michamac Strait, at the southern terminus of the bridge.
Hardly had the three passengers stepped from the train, when Blake lifted his head for a clear view of the big electric derricks, the vast orderly piles of structural steel, floor beams, and planking, the sheds containing paint, machinery, and other stores, the gorged coal-bins, and all the other evidences of a vast work of engineering.
His gaze followed the bridge-service track past the cookhouse and bunkhouse and the storehouses, out across the completed shore span to the gigantic structure of the south cantilever. Far beyond, between its lofty skeleton towers and upsweeping side webs, appeared, in seemingly reduced proportions, the towers and webs of the north cantilever, across on the north edge of the channel of the strait.
Blake drew in a deep breath, and stared at the titanic structure, eager-eyed. There was no need for Lord James to nudge Griffith. The engineer had not missed a single shade of the great change in Blake's expression. He asked casually, "Well, how does the first sight strike you, Tommy?"
"You didn't say she was so far along," replied Blake.
"Didn't I? H. V., you know, has a pull with the Steel Trust. We've had our material delivered in short order, no matter who else waited. North cantilever is completed; ditto the south, except for part of the timbering and flooring. The central span is built out a third of the way from the north 'lever. But several miles of the feed track on that side the strait have been put into such bad shape by the weather that we'll have the central span completed from this side before the road over there is open again."
"That so?" said Blake. "I want to see about that span."
"We'll go out for a look at once, soon as we dump our baggage in onLaffie," said Griffith.
"Is that thing here?" growled Blake.
"Now, just you keep on your shirt, Tommy," warned Griffith. "He may be here, or he mayn't. You are here to look at the Michamac Bridge and hold on to yourself. Understand?"
Blake scowled and stared menacingly toward a snow-embanked, snow-covered building, the verandahs of which distinguished it as the office and quarters of the Resident Engineer.
"I want your promise you'll do nothing or say nothing to him till after you've made good on the Zariba Dam," went on Griffith. "You don't want your blast to go off before you've tamped the hole."
Blake's scowl deepened, and he clenched his fist in its thick fur glove. But after a long moment he answered morosely, "Guess you're right. He holds the cards on me now and has the drop. But if I find he slipped the aces out of my hand, it won't be long before I get the drop on him."
"And then something will drop!" added Lord James.
"I'll smash him—the dirty sneak!" growled Blake.
"Now, now, Tommy; you're not sure yet," cautioned Griffith.
"That so?" replied Blake in a tone that brought a glint of excitement into the worn eyes of the older engineer.
But before he could speak, a silk-robed figure stepped out onto the verandah of the Resident Engineer's office, and called delightedly, "Ah, Lord Avondale!—welcome to Michamac! You escaped my hospitality in town, but you can't here!"
"Thanks. Very good of you, I'm sure," replied Lord James dryly.
"I see you've come with old Grif," Ashton gayly rattled on. "Hello, Griffith! Hurry in, all of you. It's cold as the South Pole. I'll have a punch brewed in two shakes. Who's the other gentleman?"
At the question, Blake, who had been staring fixedly at the bridge, turned his muffled face full to the effusive welcomer. Before his hard, impassive look Ashton shivered as if suddenly struck through to the marrow by the cold.
"Blake!" he gasped. "Here?"
"No objections, have you?" asked Blake in a noncommittal tone. "Just thought I'd run up with Mr. Griffith and take a look at your bridge. He says it's worth seeing. But of course, if you don't allow visitors—"
"Just the opposite, Tommy," put in Griffith, quick to catch his cue. "Mr. Ashton is always glad to have his bridge examined by those who know what's what. Isn't that so, Mr. Ashton?"
"Why, of—of course—I—" stammered Ashton, his teeth chattering.
"Sure," went on Griffith. "Any man who's invented such a modification of the truss as this bridge shows, ought to have all the fame he can get out of it. In England he'd be made a lord, I suppose. Eh, Mr. Scarbridge?"
"Er—we've knighted brewers and soap-boilers. But then, y'know, with us beer and soap are two of the necessities," drawled Lord James.
"W-won't you come in?" urged Ashton. "It's chi-illy out here! I'll have that punch brewed in half a s-second."
"My God!" gasped Blake, his jaws clenched and face black with the agony of his temptation.
All unintentionally Ashton had turned the tables on his tormentors.
Griffith scowled at him and demanded: "Where's McGraw?"
"B-bunkhouse," answered Ashton.
Griffith spoke to Lord James in a low tone. "Go in and keep him there, will you? Might stay with him all night. We'll stop at the bunkhouse."
"I'm on," said Lord James.
Griffith raised his voice. "Well, then, if you prefer it that way, Mr. Scarbridge. It's true Ashton can make you more comfortable, and I'll be busy half the night checking over reports and so forth with McGraw. Ashton, if you'll send over your report, it'll leave you free to entertain Mr. Scarbridge. And say, send over the boxes that'll be coming along in a little while. I'm trying a diet of grapefruit." He turned to Blake. "Come on. We don't want to keep Mr. Ashton out here, to shiver a screw loose."
Blake uttered an inarticulate growl, but turned away with Griffith as Lord James sprang up the verandah steps and blandly led the vacillating Resident Engineer into his quarters. The visiting engineers crossed over to the big ungainly bunkhouse, and entered the section divided off for the bosses and steel workers and the other skilled men.
Within was babel. Kept indoors by the cold that enforced idleness on all the bridge force, the men were crowded thickly about their reading and card tables or outstretched in their bunks, talking, laughing, grumbling, singing, brooding—each according to his mood and disposition, but almost all smoking.
At sight of Griffith a half-hundred voices roared out a rough but hearty welcome that caused Blake's face to lighten with a flush of pleasure. The greeting ended in a cheer, started by one of the Irish foremen.
Griffith sniffed at the foul, smoke-reeking air, and looked doubtfully at Blake. He held up his hand. Across the hush that fell upon the room quavered a doleful wail from the Irish foreman: "Leave av hivin, Misther Griffith, can't ye broibe th' weather bur-r-reau? Me Schlovaks an' th' Eyetalians'll be afther a-knifin' wan another, give 'em wan wake more av this."
"There are indications that the cold snap will break within a week," replied Griffith. "You'll be at it, full blast, in two or three days. Where's McGraw?"
A big, fat, stolid-faced man ploughed forward between the crowded tables. As he came up, he held out a pudgy hand, and grunted: "Huh! Glad t' see you."
Griffith shook hands, and motioned toward Blake. "My friend Mr. Blake.Trying to get him to take charge here—nominally as AssistantEngineer—in case I have to go to Florida."
McGraw's deep-set little eyes lingered for a moment on the stranger's mouth and jaw. "Good thing," he grunted.
"The company is offering him double what Mr. Ashton gets; but he's not anxious to take it as Assistant."
The big general foreman was moved out of his phlegmatic stolidity."Huh? He's not?"
"Not under that thing," put in Blake grimly.
"Must know him."
"He may change his mind," said Griffith. "The company has authorized me to make it a standing offer. So if he turns up any time—"
McGraw nodded, and offered his hand to Blake. "Hope you'll come. C'n dom' own work. Bridge needs an engineer, though—resident one.""H'm,—Mr. Ashton might call that a slap on the wrist," remarkedGriffith. "Get on your coat. We're going out to the bridge."
McGraw headed across for his separate room. While waiting for him, Griffith introduced Blake to the engine-driver of the bridge-service train, two or three foremen, and several of the bridge workers. But the moment McGraw reappeared in arctics and Mackinaw coat, Griffith hurriedly led the way out of the smother of smoke and foul air.
As the three started bridgeward along the clean-shovelled service-track Blake fell in behind his companions. Seeing that he did not wish to talk, Griffith walked on in the lead with McGraw.
They were soon swinging out across the shore, or approach, span of the bridge. This extended from the high ground on the south side of the strait to an inner pier at the edge of the water, where it joined on to the anchor arm of the south cantilever. Almost all the area of the bridge flooring, which had been completed to beyond the centre of the cantilever, was covered with stacked lumber and piles of structural steel and rails, and kegs of nails, rivets, and bolts.
Here every chink and crevice was packed with snow and ice. But all the titanic steel structure above and the unfloored bottom-chords and girders of the outer, or extension, arm of the cantilever had been swept bare of snow by the winter gales and left glistening with the glaze of the last shower of sleet.
Blake swung steadily along after the others, his face impassive. But his eyes scrutinized with fierce eagerness the immense webs of steel posts and diagonals that ran up on either side, under the grand vertical curves of the top-chords, almost to the peaks of the cantilever towers. He had to tilt back his head to see the tops of those huge steel columns, which reared their peaks two hundred and fifty feet above the bridge-floor level and a round four hundred feet above the water of the strait.
Presently the three were passing the centre of the cantilever, between the gigantic towers, whose iron heels were socketed far below in the top-plates of the massive concrete piers, built on the very edge of deep water. From this point the outer arm of the cantilever extended far out over the broad chasm of the strait, where, a hundred and fifty feet beneath its unfloored level, the broken ice from the upper lake crashed and thundered on its wild passage of the strait.
Blake looked down carelessly into the abyss of grinding, hurtling ice cakes. The drop from that dizzy height would of itself have meant certain death. Yet without a second glance at the ice-covered waters, he followed his companions along the narrow walk of sleeted planks that ran out alongside the service-track. Though his gaze frequently shifted downward as well as upward, it went no farther than the ponderous chords and girders and posts of the bridge's framework.
Striding along the narrow runway of ice-glazed planks with the assurance of goats, the three at last passed under the main traveller, a huge structure of eleven hundred tons' weight that straddled the bridge's sides and rose higher than the towers. Its electromagnetic cranes were folded together and cemented in place by the ice.
A few yards beyond they came to the end of the extension arm of the cantilever and out upon the uncompleted first section of the central, or suspension, span. It was poised high in space, far out over the dizzy abyss. Many yards away, across a yawning gap, the completed north third of the suspension span reached out, above the gulf, from the tip of the north cantilever, like the arm of a Titan straining to clasp hands with his brother of the south shore.
Yet the mid-air companionship of this outreaching skeleton-arm served only to heighten the giddiness and seeming instability of the south-side overhang. From across the broad gap, the eye followed the curve of the bottom-chords of the north cantilever away down into the abyss toward the far shore of the strait, where the lofty towers upreared upon their massive piers.
From this viewpoint there was no relieving glimpse of the shoreward curving anchor-arm that balanced the outer half of the north cantilever alike in line and weight. There was only the vast upcurve of the top-chords and the stupendous down-curve of the bottom-chords and the line between that stood for the foreshortened sixteen hundred feet of bridge-floor level extending from the north shore to the swaying tip of that unanchored north third of the central span.
Few even among men accustomed to great heights could have stood anywhere upon the outer reach of the overhang without a feeling of nausea and vertigo. Not only did the gigantic structure on the far side of the gap seem continually on the verge of toppling forward into the abyss, but the end of the south cantilever likewise quivered and swayed, and the mad flow of the roaring, ice-covered waters beneath added to the giddiness of height the terrifying illusion that the immense steel skeleton had torn loose from its anchorage to earth and was hurtling up the strait through mid-air, ready to crash down to destruction the instant its winged driving-force failed.
Yet Griffith and Blake followed McGraw out to the extreme end of the icy walk and poised themselves, shoulder to wind, on narrow sleet-glazed steel beams, as unconcerned as sailors on a yardarm. Griffith and McGraw were absorbed in a minute inspection of the bridge's condition and in estimating the time it would take to throw forward the remaining sections of the central, or suspension, span, upon the termination of the irksome spell of extreme frosty weather.
Blake looked, as they looked, at post and diagonal, eyebolt and bottom-chord, and across the gap at the swaying tip of the north cantilever. But his face showed clearly that his thoughts were not the same as their thoughts. His eyes shone like polished steel, and there was a glow in his haggard face that told of an exultance beyond his power of repression.
At last Griffith roused from his absorption. He immediately noticedBlake's expression, and dryly demanded: "Well?"
"Well your own self!" rejoined Blake, striving to speak in an indifferent tone.
"Something of a bridge, eh?"
"It's not so bad," admitted Blake. He glanced at McGraw, who had paused in his ox-like ruminating.
Griffith addressed the general foreman. "Mr. Blake is a bit off his feed. A friend that came with us will occupy my room in Mr. Ashton's quarters. I'd like a room in the bunkhouse for Mr. Blake and myself, with a good stove and a window that'll let in lots of fresh air."
"C'n have mine," grunted McGraw. "Extra bunk in yardmaster's room,"
"It'll be a favor," said Griffith. "You might get it ready, if you will. Mr. Blake must have clean air when he goes inside. He and I will take our time going back. There are two or three things I want another look at."
McGraw at once started shoreward, without making any verbal response, yet betraying under his dull manner his eagerness to oblige the Consulting Engineer. When he had gone well beyond earshot, Griffith turned upon Blake with a quizzical look.
"So!" he croaked. "It's a certainty."
"Knew that soon's I got the first look," said Blake.
Griffith's forehead creased with an anxious frown. "You promise not to mix it with him."
"Don't fash yourself," reassured Blake. "I've waited too long for this, to go off at half-cock now."
"That's talking! You'll wait till you're sure you can settle him—the skunk! Come on, now. We'll start inshore before you get chilled."
"How about yourself?" chuckled Blake, as he led back along the runway. "Won't take the frost two shakes to reach the centre of your circumference, once it gets through that old wolfskin coat."
"Huh! I can still go you one better, young man. I'll soon be thawing out in Florida, while you'll be trotting back here to boss the completion of T. Blake's cantilever—largest suspension span cantilever in the world."
"God!" whispered Blake, staring incredulously at the titanic structure born of his brain. "But it's mine—itismine!… I sweat blood over those plans!"
"Doggone you, Tommy, you're no engineer—you're an inventor, Class A-1!" exulted Griffith. "First this; then the Zariba Dam. After that, the Lord only knows what! Trouble with you, you're a genius."
"And a whiskey soak!" added Blake, with a sudden upwelling of bitterness.
"Hey! what!—after this?" demanded Griffith, his voice sharp with apprehension. He could not see the face of his companion, but the manner in which Blake's head bent forward between his hunching shoulders was more than enough to confirm his alarm.
"Come, now, Tommy!" he reproached. "Don't be a fool—just when things are coming your way."
"Think so?" muttered Blake. "What d'you suppose I care for what I'd get out of this or the dam? Good God! You can't see it—yet you had Mollie!"
For a moment the older man was forced to a worried silence. It ended in an outflashing of hope. "I told you what she said about you—almost her last words. You'll win out—she said it!"
Blake halted and turned about to his friend, his face convulsed with doubt and a despondency that verged on despair. They were still half way out on the overhang of the extension arm. He pointed down to the crashing, tumbling ice far beneath his feet.
"Do you know what I'd do if I had any nerve?" he cried. "I'd step over … end it! … You could tell her I slipped. There wouldn't be any need to tell her about—yesterday. She would remember me as she knew me there in Mozambique. After a time she'd make Jimmy happy—and be happy herself. Trouble is, I'm what she suspected. I haven't the nerve, when it comes to the real showdown."
"Damnation!" swore Griffith. "Have you gone clean dotty? You're not the kind to quit, Tom!—to slide out from under because you haven't the grit to hang on!"
"That's it. I'm booked for the D. T. route," muttered Blake. "Wasn't born for a watery end. Whiskey for mine!"
"Rats! You're over the worst of this bump already. You're going back to-morrow and dig in to make good on the dam."
"The dam! What's it to me now?"
"Fifty thousand dollars, the credit for your bridge, and a place among the top-notchers."
"Much that amounts to—when I've lost her!" retorted Blake.
He turned about again and plodded heavily shoreward, his chin on his breast and his big shoulders bowed forward.
Though he sank into a taciturn and morose mood from which no efforts of his friends could rouse him, Blake sullenly accepted the continued treatment that Griffith thrust upon him. In the morning he muttered a confirmation of the statement of Lord James that he was looking better and that the attack must be well over.
Ashton, forced probably by an irresistible impulse to learn the worst, followed Lord James to the room occupied by the engineers. Blake cut short his vacillating in the doorway with a curt invitation to come in and sit down. Having satisfied what he considered the requirements of hospitality, Blake paid no further attention to the Resident Engineer. As nothing was said about the bridge, Ashton soon regained all his usual assurance, and even went so far as to comment upon Blake's attack of biliousness.
When, beside the car step, an hour later, Ashton held out his hand, Blake seemingly failed to perceive it. Ashton's look of relief indicated that he mistook the other's profound contempt for stupid carelessness. To one of his nature, the fact that Blake had not at once denounced him as a thief seemed proof positive that the sick man had failed to recognize in the bridge structure the embodiment of his stolen plans.
He turned from Blake to Lord James. "Ah, my dear earl, this has been such a pleasure—such a delight! You cannot imagine how intolerable it is to be cut off from the world in this dreary hole—deprived of all society and compelled to associate, if at all, with, these common brutes!"
"Really," murmured Lord James. "For my part, y' know, I rather enjoy the company of intelligent men who have their part in the world's work. Though one of the drones myself, I value the 'Sons of Martha' at their full worth."
"Oh, they have their place. The trouble is to make them keep it."
"'Pon my word, I scarcely thought you'd say that—so clever an engineer as yourself!"
Ashton glanced up to be certain that both Griffith and Blake had passed on into the car.
"Your lordship hasn't quite caught the point," he said. "One may have the brains—the intellect—necessary to create such a bridge as this, without having to lower himself into the herd of common workers."
"Ah, really," drawled the Englishman, swinging up the car steps.
Ashton raised his hat and bowed. "Au revoir, Earl. Your visit has been both a delight and an honor. I shall hope soon to have the pleasure of seeing you in town."
"Yes?" murmured Lord James with a rising inflection. "Good-day."
He nodded in response to Ashton's final bow, and hastened in to where Blake and Griffith were making themselves comfortable in the middle of the car. The three were the only passengers for the down trip.
"So he didn't get you to stay over for the winter?" remarked Griffith as the Englishman began to shed his topcoat.
"Gad, no! He couldn't afford it. Tried to show me how to play poker last night. I've his check for two thousand. He insisted upon teaching me the fine points of the game."
"Crickey!—when you've travelled with T. Blake!" cackled Griffith. "Hey, Tommy? Any one who's watched you play even once ought to be able to clean out a dub like Lallapaloozer Laf. Say, though, I didn't think even you could keep on your poker face as you have this morning. It's dollars to doughnuts, he sized it up that you had failed to get next."
"Told you I wasn't going to show him my cards," muttered Blake.
Lord James looked at him inquiringly, but he lapsed into his morose silence, while Griffith commenced to write his report on the bridge, without volunteering an explanation. Lord James repressed his curiosity, and instead of asking questions, quietly prepared for his friend one of the last of the grapefruit.
An hour or so later Blake growled out a monosyllabic assurance that he was now safely over his attack. Yet all the efforts of Lord James to jolly him into a cheerful mood utterly failed. Throughout the trip he continued to brood, and did not rouse out of his sullen taciturnity until the train was backing into the depot.
"Here we are," remarked Lord James. "Get ready to make your break for cover, old man. What d' you say, Mr. Griffith? Will it be all right for him to keep close to his work for a while—to lie low?"
"What's that?" growled Blake.
"Young Ashton's a bally ass," explained Lord James. "He bolted down whole what I said about your attack of bile. Others, however, may not be so credulous or blind. You'd better keep close till you look a bit less knocked-up. There's no need that what's happened should come to Miss Leslie."
"Think so, do you?" said Blake. "Well, I don't."
"What's that?" put in Griffith.
"There's not going to be any frame-up over this, that's what," rejoined Blake, reaching for his hat and suitcase. "Soon 's I get a shave I'm going out to tell her."
"Gad, old man!" protested Lord James. "But you can't do that—it's impossible! You surely do not realize—"
"I don't, eh?" broke in Blake bitterly. "I'm up against it. I know it,and you know it. You don't think I'm going to do the baby act, do you?I've failed to make good. Think I'm going to lie to her about it?No!—nor you neither!"
His friends exchanged a look of helplessness. They knew that tone only too well. Yet Lord James sought to avert the worst.
"Might have known you'd be an ass over it," he commented. "Best I can do, I presume, is to go along and explain to her my view of what started you off."
"Best nothing. You'll keep out of this. It's none of your funeral."
"There's more than one opinion as to that."
"I tell you, this is between her and me. You'll keep out of it," said Blake, with a forcefulness that the other could not withstand. "Don't worry. You'll have your turn later on."
"Deuce take it!" cried the Englishman. "You can't fancy I'm dwelling on that! You can't think me such a cad as to be waiting for an opportunity derived from an injustice to you!"
"Injustice,bah!" gibed Blake. "I'll get what's coming to me. It's of her I'm thinking, not you. She was right. I'm going to tell her so. That's all."
"But, in view of what she herself did—"
"I'll tell her the facts. That's enough," said Blake, and he led the way from the car.
He hastened out of the depot and would have started off afoot, had not Lord James hailed a taxicab and taken him and Griffith home. He went in with them, and when Blake had shaved and dressed, proposed that they should go on together as far as the hotel. To this Blake gave a sullen acquiescence, and they whirred away to the North Side. But instead of stopping at the hotel, their cab sped on out to the Lake Shore Drive.
Lord James coolly explained that he intended to take his friend to the door of the Leslies. Blake would have objected, but acquiesced as soon as he understood that Lord James intended to remain in the cab.
During the day the cold had moderated, and when Blake swung out of the cab he was wrapped about in the chilly embrace of a dripping wet fog from off the lake. He shivered as he hurried across and up the steps and into the stately portico of the Leslie house.
At the touch of his finger on the electric button, the heavy door swung open. He was bowed in and divested of hat and raincoat by an overzealous footman before he could protest. Silent and frowning, he was ushered to a door that he had not before entered. The footman announced him and drew the curtains together behind him.
Still frowning, Blake stepped forward and stopped short to stare about him at the resplendent room of gold and ivory enamel that he had entered. Only at the second glance did he perceive the graceful figure that had risen from the window-seat at the far end of the room and stood in a startled attitude, gazing fixedly at him.
Before he could speak, Genevieve came toward him with impetuous swiftness, her hands outstretched in more than cordial welcome.
"Tom! Is it really you?" she exclaimed. "I had not looked for you back so soon."
"It's somewhat sooner than I expected myself," he replied, with a bitter humor that should have forewarned her.
But she was too relieved and delighted to heed either his tone or his failure to clasp her hands, "Yes. You know, I've been so worried. You really looked ill Sunday, and I thought Lord James' manner that evening was rather odd—I mean when I spoke to him about you."
"Shouldn't wonder," said Blake in a harsh voice. "Jimmy had been there before. He knew."
"Knew? You mean—?" The girl stepped back a little way and gazed up into his face, startled and anxious. "Tom, youhavebeen sick—very sick! How could I have been so blind as not to have seen it at once? You've been suffering terribly!"
Again she held out her hands to him, and again he failed to take them.
"Don't touch me," he replied. "I'm not fit. It's true I've suffered. Do you wonder? I've been in hell again—where I belong."
"Tom! oh, Tom!—no, no!" she whispered, and she averted her face, unable to endure the black despair that she saw in his unflinching eyes.
"Jimmy and old Grif, between them, managed to catch me when I was under full headway," he explained. "They stopped me and took me up to the Michamac Bridge. I'm on my feet again now. Just the same, I went under, and if it hadn't been for them, I'd be beastly, roaring drunk this minute."
"No, Tom! It's impossible—impossible! I can't believe it!"
"Think I'd lie about a little thing like that?" he asked with the terrible levity of utter despair.
"But it's—it's so awful!"
"I've known funnier jokes. God! D'you think I've done much laughing over being smashed for good? It's rid you of a drunken degenerate. It's you who ought to laugh. How about me? I've lostyou!God!"
He bent over, with his chin on his breast and his big fists clenched down at his sides.
She stared at him, dazed, almost stunned by the shock. Only after what seemed an age of waiting could she find words for the stress of bitter disappointment and mortified love that drove the blood to her heart and left her white and dizzy.
"Then—you have—failed. Youare—weak!" she at last managed to say.
Simple as were the words, the tone in which they were spoken was enough for Blake.
"Yes," he answered, and he swung about toward the door.
"Have you no excuses—no defence?" she demanded.
"I might lay it to that wine at the church—and prove myself still weaker," said Blake.
"The holy communion!" she reproached.
"I never made fun even of a Chinaman's religion," he said. "Just the same, if I don't believe a thing, I don't lie and let on I do. I told you that wine meant nothing to me in a religious way. But even if it had, I don't think it would have made any difference. Drop nitric acid on the altar rail, and it will eat the brass just the same as if it was in a brass foundry. Put alcohol inside me, and the craving starts up full blast."
"Then you believe I should excuse—"
"No," he interrupted with grim firmness. "I might have thought it then—but not now. I've had two days to think it over. It all comes down to this: If, knowing how you felt about it, I could not kneel there beside you and take that taste of wine without going under, I'm just what you suspected—weak, unfit."
She clasped her hands on her bosom. "You—admit it?"
"What's the use of lying about it?" he said. "If it hadn't come about that way, you can see now it was bound to happen some other way."
"I—suppose—yes. Oh! but it's horrible!—horrible! I thought you so strong!"
"I won't bother you any more," he muttered. "Good-bye."
He went out without venturing a glance at her white face. She waited, motionless, looking toward the spot where he had stood. Several moments passed before she seemed to realize that he had gone.
Lord James did not call upon Genevieve until late afternoon of the next day, and then he did not come alone. He had called first upon Mrs. Gantry and Dolores, who brought him on in their coupe.
Genevieve came down to them noticeably pale and with dark shadows under her fine eyes, but her manner was, if anything, rather more composed than usual. She even had a smile to exchange for the gay greeting of Dolores. Mrs. Gantry met her with a kiss a full degree more fervent than was consistent with strict decorum.
"My dear child!" she exclaimed. "I have hastened over to see you. LordAvondale has told me all about that fellow."
"Yes?" asked Genevieve, looking at Lord James calmly but with a slight lift of her eyebrows that betrayed her astonishment.
"Hasn't your father told you?" replied Mrs. Gantry, reposing herself in the most comfortable seat. "It seems that he has arranged—"
"Beg pardon," said Lord James. "It was the Coville Construction Company that made the offer."
"Very true. An arrangement has been made, my dear, that will take that person to the bridge and keep him there."
"Provided he accepts the offer," added Lord James.
"How can it be otherwise? The salary is simply stupendous for a man of his class and standing."
"Laffie gets only twelve thousand a year, yet he designed the bridge," remarked Dolores. "He told me it wasn't even enough for pin-money."
"I fancy he must contrive to make it go farther since his last trip to town," said Mrs. Gantry. "The little visit proved rather expensive. His father made another reduction in his allowance."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Dolores. "Poor dear Laffie boy! If I conclude to marry him, I shall insist that Papa Ashton is to give me a separate allowance."
"My word, Miss Dolores!" expostulated Lord James. "You're not encouraging that fellow?"
"Oh, it's as well to have more than one hook on the line. Ask mamma if it isn't. Besides, Laffie would be a gilt-edged investment—provided his papa made the right kind of a will. Anyway, I could get Uncle Herbert's lawyers to fix up an agreement as to that—a kind of pre-nuptial alimony contract between me and Laffie's papa's millions."
Mrs. Gantry held up her hands. "Could you have believed it, Genevieve!She was frivolous enough before I went over for you. But now!"
Dolores coolly disregarded her mother, to turn a meaning look on LordJames. "If I have frivolled enough, it's about time you said something."
The young Englishman put an uneasy hand to his mustache. "Er—I should have preferred a—a rather more favorable time, Miss Dolores."
"Yes, and have mamma slam him before you put in the buffer," rejoined the girl. "See here, Vievie. It's too bad, but you must have tattled something to Uncle Herbert, and he—"
"Tattled!" repeated Genevieve. "I have always been candid with papa, if that is what you mean, Dolores."
"All right, then, Miss Candid. Though we called it tattling ten years ago. Anyway, Uncle Herbert wrote about it to mamma. He sent the letter out this noon. Next thing, it'll be all over Chicago—and England."
"Dolores! I must insist!" admonished Mrs. Gantry.
"So must I, mamma! If it's wrong to destroy the property of others, it's no less wrong to destroy their reputations."
Her mother expanded with self-righteous indignation. "Well, I never!—indeed! When the fellow has neither character nor reputation!"
"Dear auntie," soothed Genevieve, "I know you too well to believe you could intentionally harm any one."
"I would doanythingto save you from ruining your life!" exclaimedMrs. Gantry, moved almost to tears.
"I shall not ruin my life," replied Genevieve, with a quiet firmness that brought a profound sigh of relief from her aunt.
"A-a-h!—My dear child! Then you at last realize what sort of a man he is."
"Vievie knows heisa man—which is more than can be said of some of them," thrust Dolores, with a mocking glance at Lord James.
"My dear," urged Mrs. Gantry, "give no heed to that silly chit. I wish to commend your stand against the fatal attraction of mere brute efficiency."
"Oh, I say!" put in Lord James. "It's this I must protest against, Miss Leslie—this talk of his brute qualities—when it's only the lack of polish. You should know that. He's a thistle, prickly without, but within soft as silk."
"Do I not know?" exclaimed Genevieve, for the moment unable to maintain her perfect composure.
"The metaphor was very touching and most loyal, my dear earl," said Mrs. Gantry. "Yet you must pardon me if I suggest that your opinion of him may be somewhat biased by friendship."
"But of course mamma's opinion isn't biased," remarked Dolores. She shot an angry glance at her mother, and added—"by friendship."
"It would relieve me very much if no more were said about Mr. Blake," said Genevieve.
"We can't—now," snapped Dolores, frowning at the footman who had appeared in the doorway. "Some one must have sighted the right honorable earl in our coupe."
Her irony was justified by the actions of the three young matrons who fluttered in on the breeze of the footman's announcement. They immediately fell into raptures over his lordship, who was forced in self-defence to tug and twist at his mustache and toy with his monocle. At this last Dolores flung herself out of the room in ill-concealed disdain.
She was not to be found when, all too soon, her mother tore the "charming Earl Avondale" away from his chattering adorers. After the worshipful one had been borne off, the dejected trio did not linger long. Their departure was followed by the prompt reappearance of Dolores.
She came at her cousin with eyes flashing. "Now you're all alone,Vievie! I've been waiting for this. Do you know what I'm going to do?I'm going to give you a piece of my mind."
"Please, dear!" begged Genevieve.
"No. I'll not please! You deserve a good beating, and I'm going to give it to you. That poor Mr. Blake! Aren't you 'shamed of yourself? Breaking his big noble heart!"
"Dolores! I must ask you—"
"No, you mustn't! You've got to listen to me, you know you have. To think that you, who've always pretended to be so kind and considerate, should be a regular cat!"
"You foolish dear!" murmured Genevieve. "Do you imagine that anything that you can say can hurt me, after—after—" She turned away to hide her starting tears.
"That's it!" jeered her cousin. "Be a snivelly little hypocrite.Pretend to be so sorry—when you're not sorry at all.Pah!"
Genevieve recovered her dignity with her composure. "That is quite enough, my dear. I can overlook what you have already said. You know absolutely nothing about love and the bitter grief it brings."
"You don't say!" retorted Dolores, her nostrils quivering. "Much you know about me. But you!—the idea of pretending you love him—that you ever so much as dreamed of loving him!"
Genevieve shrank back as if she had been struck. "Oh! for any one to say that to me!"
"It's true—it must be true!" insisted Dolores, half frightened yet still too surcharged with anger to contain herself. "If it isn't true, how could you break his heart?—the man who saved you from that terrible savage wilderness!"
"I—I cannot explain to you. It's something that—"
"I know! You needn't tell me. It's mamma. She's been knocking him. I'll bet she started knocking him when she first cabled to you—at least she would have, had she known anything about him. Think I don't know mamma and her methods? If only he'd been his lordship—Owh, deah! what a difference, don't y' know! She'd never have let you get out of England unmarried!"
"Dolores! this is quite enough!"
"The Countess of Avondale, future Duchess of Ruthby! Think I don't see through mamma's little game? And you'd shillyshally around, and throw over the true, noble hero to whom you owe everything—whom you've pretended you loved—to run after a title, an Englishman, when you could have that big-hearted American!"
Genevieve's lips straightened. "What a patriot!" she rejoined with quiet irony. "You, of course, would never dream of marrying an Englishman."
"That's none of your business," snapped Dolores, not a little taken aback by the counter attack.
"You spoke about pretence and hypocrisy," went on Genevieve. "How about the way you tease and make sport of Lord Avondale?"
For a moment the younger girl stood quivering, transfixed by the dart. Suddenly she put her hands before her eyes and rushed from the room in a storm of tears.
Genevieve started up as if to hasten after her, but checked herself and sank back into her chair. For a long time she sat motionless, in the blank dreary silence of profound grief, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, dry and lustreless.
When, a few minutes before their dinner hour, her father hurried into the room, expectant of his usual affectionate welcome, she did not spring up to greet him. The sound of his brisk step failed to penetrate to her consciousness. He came over to her and put a fond hand on her shoulder.
"H'm—how's this, my dear?" he asked. "Not asleep? Brown study, eh?"
She looked up at him dully; but at sight of the loving concern in his eyes, the unendurable hardness of her grief suddenly melted to tears. She flung herself into his arms, to weep and sob with a violence of which he had never imagined his quiet high-bred daughter capable. Bewildered and alarmed by the storm of emotion, he knew not what to do, and so instinctively did what was right. He patted her on the back and murmured inarticulate sounds of love and pity.
His sympathy and the blessed relief of tears soon restored her quiet self-control. She ceased sobbing and drew away from him, mortified at her outburst.
"There now," he ventured. "You feel better, don't you?"
"I've been very silly!" she exclaimed, drying her tear-wet cheeks.
"You're never silly—that is, since you came home this time," he qualified.
"Because—because—" She stopped with an odd catch in her voice, and seemed again about to burst into tears.
"Becausehetaught you to be sensible,—you'd say."
"Ye—yes," she sobbed. "Oh, papa, I can't bear it—I can't! To think that after he'd shown himself so brave and strong—! But for that, I should never have—have come to this!"
"H'm,—from the way you talked last night, I took it that the matter was settled. You said then that you could no longer—h'm—love him."
"I can't!—I mustn't! Don't you see? He's proved himself weak. How, then, can I keep on loving him? But they—they infer that it is my fault. I believe they think I tempted him."
"How's that?"
"Because I urged him to take the communion with me. I told you what he himself said about alcohol. But he did not blame me. He pointed out that if he was too weak to resist then, he would have yielded to the next temptation."
"H'm,—no doubt. Yet I've been considering that point—the fact that you did force him against his will."
"Surely, papa, you cannot say it was my fault, when he himself admits that his own weakness—"
"Wait," broke in her father. "What do you know about the curse of drink? It's possible that he might be able to resist the craving if not roused by the taste."
"Yet if he is so weak that a few drops of the holy communion wine could cause him to give way so shamelessly—"
"Holy?—h'm!" commented Mr. Leslie. "Alcohol is a poison. Suppose the Church used a decoction containing arsenic. Would that make arsenic holy?"
"Oh, papa! But it's so very different!"
"Yes. Alcohol and arsenic are different poisons. But they're similar in at least one respect. The effects of each are cumulative. To one who has been over-drugged with arsenic a slight amount more may prove a fatal dose. So of a person whose will has been undermined and almost paralyzed with alcohol—"
"That's it, papa. Don't you see? If he lacks the will, the strength, the self-control to resist!"
"No, that isn't the point. It's your part in this most unfortunate occurrence that I'm now considering."
"My part?"
"You told him that he must not look to you for help or even sympathy. I can understand your position as to that. At the same time, should you not have been as neutral on the other side? Was it quite fair for you to add to his temptations?"
"Yet the fact of his weakness—"
"I'm not talking about him, my dear. It's what you've done—the question whether you do not owe him reparation for your part in his—misfortune."
"My part?"
"Had you not forced him into what I cannot but consider an unfair test of his strength, he would not have fallen. Griffith tells me that he was well along toward a solution of the Zariba Dam. Had you not caused this unfortunate interruption in his work, he might soon have proved himself a master engineer. That would have strengthened him in his fight against this hereditary curse."
"He was to fight it on his own strength."
"What else would this engineering triumph have been but a proof to himself of his strength? You have deprived him of that. Griffith tells me that, hard as he is striving to work out the idea which he was certain would meet the difficulties of the dam, he now seems unable to make any progress."
"So Mr. Griffith and you blame all upon me?"
"You mistake me, my dear. What I wish to make clear to you is that, however hopeless Blake's condition may be, you are responsible for his failure upon this occasion."
"And if so?"
"Premising that in one respect my attitude toward him is unalterable, I wish to say that he has risen very much in my esteem. I have had confidential talks with Griffith and Lord Avondale regarding him. I have been forced to the conclusion that you were justified in considering him, aside from this one great fault, a man essentially sound and reliable. He has brains, integrity, courage, and endurance. Given sufficient inducement, those qualities would soon enable him to acquire all that he lacks,—manners and culture."
"Oh, papa, do not speak of it! It was because I saw all that in him that I felt so certain. If only it were not for the one thing!"
"H'm," considered Mr. Leslie, scrutinizing her tense face. "Then I gather it's not true what yesterday you said and no doubt believed. You still regard him with the same feelings as before this occurrence."
"No! no! He has destroyed all my faith in him. I—I can pity him. But anything more than that is—it must be—dead."
"Can't say I regret it. But—this is another question. You've lost him one chance. I believe you should give him another."
"Another chance?—you say that?" she asked incredulously.
"You should cancel this record—this occurrence. Blot it out. Start anew."
"How can I? It is impossible to forget that he has failed so utterly."
"Thanks to the poison you put into his mouth."
"Father! I did not think that you—"
"I was unjust to him. You also have done him a wrong. I am seeking to make reparation. In part payment, I wish to make clear to you what you should do to offset your fault. In view of the development of your character (which, by the way, you claim was brought about by your African experience), I feel that I should have no need to urge this matter. You are not a thoughtless child. Think it over. Here's Hodges."
She went in with him to dinner, perfectly composed in the presence of the grave-faced old butler. But after the meal, when her father left for his customary cigar in the conservatory, she sought the seclusion of the library, and attempted to fight down the growing doubt of her justice toward Blake that had been roused by her father's suggestions.
It was easy for her to maintain the resolute stand she had taken so long as she kept her thoughts fixed on his fall from manhood. But presently she began to recall incidents that had occurred during those terrible weeks on the savage coast of Mozambique.
She remembered, most vividly of all, a day on the southern headland—the eventful day before the arrival of the steamer—when he had spoken freely of the faults of his past life…. He had never lied to her or sought to gloze over his weakness.
And he could have concealed this present failure. She divined that both Griffith and Lord James would never have betrayed him. Yet he had come direct to her and confessed, knowing that she would condemn him.
The thought was more than she could withstand. She crossed over to her desk, and wrote swiftly:—