The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

CHAPTER XXI

FOSTER'S HOUR

Frederic Morganstein did not wait until spring to open his villa. The furnishings were completed, even to the Kodiak and polar-bear rugs, in time to entertain a house-party at Christmas. Marcia, who came home for the event, arrived early enough to take charge of the final preparations, but the ideas that gave character to the lavish decorations were Beatriz Weatherbee's. She it was who suggested the chime of holly bells with tongues of red berries, hung by ropes of cedar from the vaulted roof directly over the stage; and saw the two great scarlet camellias that had been coaxed into full bloom specially for the capitalist placed at either end of the footlights, while potted poinsettias and small madrona trees, brought in from the bluffs above the grounds, finished the scheme with the effect of an old mission garden. Then there were a hundred more poinsettias disposed of, without crowding, on the landings and inside the railing of the gallery, with five hundred red carnations arranged with Oregon grape and fern in Indian baskets to cap the balustrade. To one looking up from the lower hall, they had the appearance of quaint jardinière.

There was not too much color. December, in the Puget Sound country, means the climax of the wet season when under the interminable curtain of the rain, dawn seems to touch hands with twilight. It was hardly four o'clock that Christmas eve when the Aquila arrived with the guests from Seattle, but the villa lights were on. A huge and resinous backlog, sending broad tongues of flame into the cavernous throat of the fireplace, gave to the illumination a ruddier, flickering glow. To Foster, who was the first to reach the veranda, Foster who had been so long accustomed to faring at Alaska road-houses, to making his own camp, on occasion, with a single helper in the frosty solitudes, that view through the French window must have seemed like a scene from the Arabian Nights. Involuntarily he stopped, and suddenly the luxurious interior became a setting for one living figure. Elizabeth was there, arranging trifles on a Christmas tree; and Mrs. Feversham, seated at a piano, was playing a brilliant bolero; but the one woman he saw held the center of the stage. Her sparkling face was framed in a mantilla; a camellia, plucked from one of the flowering shrubs, was tucked in the lace above her ear, and she was dancing with castanets in the old mission garden.

The next moment Frederic passed him and threw open the door with his inevitable "Bravo!" And instantly the music ceased; Marcia started to her feet; the dancer pulled off her mantilla, and the flower dropped from her hair.

"Go on! Encore!" he laughed. "My, but you've got that cachucha down to a science; bred, though, I guess, in your little Spanish feet. You'd dance all the sense a man has out of his head."

"That's the reason none of us heard the Aquila whistle," said Marcia, coming forward. "Beatriz promised to dance to-night, in a marvelous yellow brocade that was her great-grandmother's, and we were rehearsing; but she looked so like a nun, masquerading, in that gray crepe de Chine, I almost forgot the accompaniment. Why, Mr. Foster! How delightful you were able to get home for Christmas."

"I am fortunate," he answered, smiling. "The ice caught me in the Yukon, but I mushed through to Fairbanks and came on to the coast by stage. I just made the steamer, and she docked alongside the Aquila not fifteen minutes before she sailed. Mr. Morganstein brought me along to hear my report."

"I guess we are all glad to have you home for Christmas," said Elizabeth.

She moved on with her sister to meet the other guests who were trooping into the hall, and Foster found himself taking Mrs. Weatherbee's hand. His own shook a little, and suddenly he was unable to say any of the friendly, solicitous things he had found it so easy to express to these other people, after his long absence; only his young eyes, searching her face for any traces of care or anxiety the season may have left, spoke eloquently. Afterwards, when the greetings were over, and the women trailed away to their rooms, he saw he had forgotten to give her a package which he had carried up from the Aquila, and hurried to overtake her at the foot of the stairs.

"It was brought down by messenger from Vivian Court for you," he explained, "just as we were casting off, and I took charge of it. There is a letter, you see, which the clerk has tucked under the string."

The package was a florist's carton, wide and deep, with the name Hollywood
Gardens printed across the violet cover, but the letter was postmarked
Washington, D.C. "Violets!" she exclaimed softly, "'when violet time is
gone.'"

Her whole lithe body seemed to emanate a subdued pleasure, and settling the box, unopened, in the curve of her arm, she started up the staircase. Foster, looking up, caught the glance she remembered to send from the gallery railing. Her smile was radiant.

She did not turn on the electric switch when she closed her door; the primrose walls reflected the light from the great plate-glass window, with the effect of candle glow. She put the box on a table near the casement and laid the letter aside to lift the lid. The perfume of violets rose in her face like liberated incense. The box was filled with them; bunches on bunches. She bent her cheek to feel the cool touch of them; inhaled their fragrance with deep, satisfying breaths. Presently she found the florist's envelope and in it Tisdale's card. And she read, written under the name in a round, plain woman's hand, "This is to wish you a Merry Christmas and let you know I have not forgotten the project."

The sparkle went out of her face. After a moment she picked up the letter and compared the address with the writing on the card. It was the same and, seating herself by the window, she broke the seal. When she had read the first line under the superscription, she stopped to look at the signature. It was Katherine Purdy. She turned back and began again:

"My dear Mrs. Weatherbee:

"I am the night nurse on Mr. Tisdale's ward. He dictated the message on his card to me, and I learned your address through ordering the violets of the Seattle florist for him. It set me wondering whether he has ever let you know how desperate things were with him. He is the most unselfish man I ever saw, and the bravest that ever came on this floor. The evening he arrived the surgeons advised amputating his hand—it was a case of blood-poisoning—but he said, 'No, I am ready to take the risk; that right hand is more than half of me, my better half.' He could joke, even then. And when the infection spread to the arm, it was the same. After that it was too late to operate; just a question of endurance. And he could endure all right. My, but he was patient! I wish you could have seen him, as I did, lying here hour after hour, staring at the ceiling, asking for nothing, when every nerve in his body must have been on fire. But he won through. He is lying here still, weak and pale enough, but safe.

"Maybe I seem impertinent, and I suppose I am young and foolish, but I don't care; I wouldn't be hard as nails, like some in this clinic, if it was to cost me my diploma. I came from the Pacific west—I am going back there as soon as I graduate—and a girl from there never can learn to bottle her feelings till she looks like a graven image. Besides, I know I am writing to a western woman. But I want to say right here he never made a confidant of me, never said one word, intentionally, about you, but there were nights when his temperature was running from a hundred and four degrees that he got to talking some. Most of the time he was going all over that terrible trip to find poor Mr. Weatherbee, and once, when he was hunting birds along some glacier, he kept hearing David singing and calling him. Again he was just having the best, quiet little visit with him. My, how he loved that man! And when it wasn't David, it was you. 'I know you couldn't marry a man like Morgan,' he said. 'You may think so, but you will not when the time comes.' And once it was, 'Beatrice, Beatrice, in spite of everything I can't help believing in you.' Then one night, his worst before the crisis, he seemed to be helping you through some awful danger, it was a storm I think, and there were wild beasts and mountains, and at last when it was all over, he said quietly: 'You do owe your life to me, but I shall never hold you to the debt; that would be too monstrous.' And a little later it was, 'Head high, hold fast, it will be a stiff fight, soldier. My dear, my dear, do you think I don't know how near you came to loving me?' I guess you know how he said that. There are certain tones in his voice that sink straight to the bottom of your heart; I couldn't keep from crying. And it seems to me that if you really knew how much he thought of you, and how sick he had been, and how he has wanted you, nothing could keep you from packing up and coming straight to Washington. I know I should. I could go anywhere, through Alaska or the Great Sahara, it wouldn't matter which, for a man, if there is one in this world, who could love me that well."

Beatriz Weatherbee folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. The action was mechanical, and she sat twisting it with a kind of silent emphasis, looking out into the thick atmosphere. A dash of hail struck the window; the plate glass grew opaque. Then, suddenly, she lifted her arms to the table and dropped her face; her body shook. It was as though she had come at last to her blank wall; the inevitable she had so persistently evaded was upon her; there was no escape.

Presently some one knocked. And instantly her intrepid spirit was up, on guard. She sat erect and pressed her handkerchief swiftly to her eyes. Then Marcia Feversham opened the door and, finding the button, flashed on the lights.

"Why, Beatriz," she exclaimed. "Are you here in the dark? You must have fallen asleep in your chair."

"And dreaming." She rose, shading her eyes from the sudden glare. "But it was a wretched dream, Marcia; I am glad you wakened me. Where is Elizabeth?"

"Making Frederic's cocktail. He needed a bracer to go through a business meeting with Stuart Foster; but she will be here directly. I thought, since we are to share your rooms, we had better dress early to be out of the way. And I sent Celeste in to the Hallidays; Elizabeth can do everything for me."

"Much better than Celeste," she agreed. "And while you are busy, I shall go for a bracing little walk."

"A walk?" echoed Marcia in astonishment. "Why, it's storming. Hear that!"

Another burst of hail struck the window. Mrs. Weatherbee turned, listening, and so avoiding Marcia's penetrating eyes, dropped her hand from her own. "I have my raincoat and cap," she said, "and a smart brush with the wind will clear my head of cobwebs."

With this she hurriedly smoothed the letter and laid it between the pages of a book; lifting the violets from the table, she carried them out of the steam-heated apartment to the coolness of the sleeping-porch. Mrs. Feversham followed to the inner room and stood watching her through the open door.

"Violets!" she exclaimed. "At Christmas! From wherever did they come?"

"From Hollywood Gardens," she responded almost eagerly. "Isn't it marvelous how they make the out-of-season flowers bloom? But this flurry of hail is the end of the storm, Marcia; the clouds are breaking, and it is light enough to see the path above the pergola. I shall have time to go as far as the observatory."

Before she finished speaking, she was back in the room and hurrying on her raincoat. Mrs. Feversham began to lay out various toilet accessories, but presently, when the gallery door closed behind Beatriz, she walked to the table near the plate-glass window and picked up the book. It was a morocco-bound edition of Omar's Rubaiyat, which she had often noticed at the apartment in Vivian Court, yet she studied the title deliberately, and also the frontispiece, before she turned to the pages that enclosed the letter. But it was natural that, holding both her brother's and Beatriz Weatherbee's interests so at heart, her scruples should be finally dispelled, and she laid the volume face down, to keep the place, while she read the night nurse's unclinical report. After that she went to the box of violets in the sleeping-porch and found Tisdale's message, and she had slipped the card carefully back and stood looking meditatively off through the open casement when her sister entered from the gallery. At the same time Mrs. Weatherbee appeared on the path above the pergola. But she had not escaped to the solitude she so evidently had desired, for Foster accompanied her. When they stopped to look down on the villa and the little cove where the Aquila rocked at her moorings, Marcia waved her hand gaily, then turned to the brilliant room.

Elizabeth met her at the threshold. "What has sent Beatriz out in this weather?" she asked.

"Why, you see,"—Marcia answered with a little backward gesture to the figures on the slope,—"since this is Stuart Foster's first visit to the villa, he must be personally conducted through the park."

"She tried her best to discourage him. They were standing at the side entrance when I came through the dining-room. She warned him first impressions were everything and that it would be blowing a gale at the observatory; besides, if Frederic was waiting, she would not be responsible."

"But, 'come what will, what may'"—and meeting her sister's look, Marcia's eyes gathered brilliancy—"the man must have his hour."

"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 entitled 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 shell 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 passable 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, sturdiest 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 Washington 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 encumber 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 Pass 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 Japanese 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 balls 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 friendship 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 Washington 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 Pass 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 Japanese lantern illumined her small, troubled face. "But in spite of everything," she went on, "he believes differently. To-day his first message came from Washington 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."