CHAPTER XXVII
MRS. SAVINE SPEAKS HER MIND
Millicent slept brokenly while Helen carried her message, and awakening feverish, felt relieved to discover that the girl was still absent. Miss Savine was younger than herself, and of much less varied experience, but the look in the girl's eyes hurt her, nevertheless.
"I am ashamed to force myself upon you," she said to Mrs. Savine, who had shown her many small courtesies, "but I am afraid I cannot manage the journey back to the railroad to-day. I must also see Mr. Thurston before I leave for England, and it would be a great favor if I could have the interview here."
"We are glad to have you with us," said Mrs. Savine, who was of kindly nature and fancied she saw her opportunity. "Yes, I just mean it. The journey has tried you so much that you are not fit for another now. Besides, I have heard so much about you, that I want a talk with you."
"You have probably heard nothing that makes this visit particularly welcome," answered Millicent, bitterly, and the elder lady smiled.
"I guess folks are apt to make the most of the worst points in all of us," she observed. "But that is not what we are going to talk about. You are an old friend of a man we are indebted to, and, just because I believe there's no meanness in Geoffrey Thurston, you are very welcome to the best that we can do for you. I will ask him over to meet you."
Millicent flushed. Under the circumstances she was touched by the speaker's sincerity, and grateful for the way she expressed herself. Perhaps it was this which prompted her to an almost involuntary outpouring of confidence.
"I am the woman who should have married him," she said simply.
Mrs. Savine merely nodded, and dipped her needle somewhat blindly into the embroidery on her knee before she replied: "I had guessed it already. You missed a very good husband, my dear. I don't want to force your confidence, but I imagine that you have some distress to bear, and I might help you. I have seen a good deal of trouble in my time."
Millicent was unstable by nature. She was also excited and feverish. Afterwards she wondered why a kindly word from a woman she knew so slightly should excite in her such a desire for advice and sympathy. In spite of her occasional brusqueries, it was hard for anyone to say no to Mrs. Savine. So Millicent answered, with a sigh:
"I know it now when it is too late—no one knows it better. You do well to believe in Geoffrey Thurston."
Mrs. Savine looked at her very keenly, then nodded. "I believe in you, too. There! I guess you can trust me."
Millicent bent her head, and her eyes were misty. A raw wound, which the frost had irritated, marred the delicate curve of her upper lip. It became painfully visible.
"It is only fit that I should tell you, since I am your guest," she said, touching the scar with one finger. "That is the mark of my husband's hand, and I am leaving him forever because I would not connive at Geoffrey's ruin. Geoffrey is acting as trustee for my property, and I cannot leave for England without consulting him. So much is perhaps due to you, and—because of your kindness I should not like you to think too ill of me—I will tell you the rest. To begin with, Geoffrey has never shown me anything but kindness."
Mrs. Savine gently patted the speaker's arm, and Millicent related what had led up to her journey, or part of it. When she had finished, the elder lady commented:
"You are doing a risky thing; but I can't quite blame you, and if I could, I would not do it now. You will stay right here until Geoffrey has fixed up all plans for your journey, and you can trust me to be kind to you. Still, there's one favor I'm going to ask. I want you to let me tell my niece as much of what you have told me as I think desirable. Remember, Geoffrey has been good to you."
For a moment Millicent's face grew hard, and her eyes defiant. She smiled sadly as she answered: "It is his due, and can make no difference now. Tell her what seems best."
Meanwhile, Geoffrey was busy in the cañon camp. With Black and Mattawa Tom beside him, he stood holding as symbol, both of equality and authority, a bright ax in his hand, while driller, laborer, and machine-tender, wondering greatly, were passed in review before him. Black had been boarded with a trust rancher some distance from the camp. At last a certain rock driller passed in turn, and Tom from Mattawa explained: "He's a friend of Walla Jake, and as I told you, the last man we put on."
"That's the blame reptile who backed up Shackleby's story at the Blue Bird mine," cried Black, excitedly. "If there's anyone up to mischief, you can bet all you've got he's the man."
"Stop there, you!" Geoffrey's voice was sharp and stern. "Cut him down if he feels for a revolver or tries to make a break of it, section foreman. Come here, close in behind him, you two."
After a swift glance over his shoulder the man who was summoned advanced, scowling darkly. He sullenly obeyed Geoffrey's second command, "Stand there—now a few steps aside," leaving his footprints clearly outlined in a patch of otherwise untrodden snow.
"Good!" observed Geoffrey. "Lay your template [Transcriber's note: corrected from "templet">[ on those marks, Tom." After the foreman had produced a paper pattern which fitted them, Thurston added:
"We're going to make a prisoner of you, and jail you ourselves, until we can get a formal warrant. What for? Well, you're going to be tried for conspiracy among the other things. You see that pattern? It fits the foot of a man who went out one night with a spy Shackleby sent over to see how and when you would play the devil with our work in the cañon. It even shows the stump of the filed-off creeper-spike on your right boot. There's no use protesting—a friend of yours here will help us to trace your career back to the finding of the Blue Bird mine. Take him along and lock him into the galvanized store shed."
The prisoner was taken away, and Geoffrey turned to his foreman.
"He was in the drilling gang, Tom?"
"Juss so! Working under the wall bed of the cañon."
"That lets some light on to the subject. You can dismiss the others. Come with me, Tom."
Twenty minutes later Geoffrey stood among the boulders that the shrunken river had left exposed near the foot of a giant cliff which, instead of overhanging, thrust forward a slanting spur into the rush of water, and so formed a bend. It was one of the main obstacles Geoffrey, who wondered at the formation, had determined to remove by the simultaneous shock of several heavy blasting charges. To that end a gang of men had long been drilling deep holes into the projecting spur, and on the preceding day charges of high explosives had been sunk in most of them with detonators and fuses ready coupled for connection to the igniting gear. Geoffrey stood upon a boulder and looked up at the tremendous face of rock which, rising above the spur, held up the hill slope above. The stratification was looser than usual, and several mighty masses had fallen from it into the river. There were also crannies at its feet.
"You've seen all the drilled holes. Anything strike you yet?" inquired Mattawa Tom.
"Yes," was the answer. "It occurs to me that French Louis said he couldn't tally out all the sticks of giant powder that he'd stowed away a week or two ago. I think you foolishly told him he couldn't count straight."
"I did," admitted Tom from Mattawa. "Louis ain't great at counting, and he allowed he'd never let go of the key to the powder magazine."
"I fancy a smart mechanic could make a key that would do as well," remarked Geoffrey. "It strikes me, also, after considering the strata yonder, that, if sufficient shots were fired in those crannies, they would bring the whole cliff and the hillside above it down on top of us—you'll remember I cautioned you to drill well clear of the rock face itself? Now, if coupled fuses were led from the shot holes we filled to those we didn't, so that both would fire simultaneously, nobody afterwards would find anything suspicious under several thousand tons of debris. I'm inclined to think there are such fuses. Take your shovel, and we'll look for them."
They worked hard for half an hour, and then Geoffrey chuckled. Lifting what looked like a stout black cord from among the rubble where it was carefully hidden, Mattawa Tom said: "This time I guess you've struck it dead."
"Follow the thing up," Geoffrey commanded.
This was done, and further searching revealed the charges for which they were searching, skillfully concealed in the crannies. Geoffrey's face was grim as he said:
"It was planned well. They would have piled half yonder shoulder of the range into the cañon if they had got their devilish will. Pull up every fuse, and fix fresh detonators to all the charges. Change every man in that gang, and never leave this spot except when the section boss replaces you, until we're ready for firing. Thank Heaven that will be in a few more days, and my nerves may hold out that long. I've hardly had an hour's sleep in the last week, Tom."
While Geoffrey was acting in accordance with the warning she had delivered, Helen was on her way back to the ranch with his assistant as her escort. Helen had not forgotten that it was her remonstrance which had originally obtained a humble appointment for English Jim. He had several times visited the ranch with messages, and was accordingly invited to enter when they reached the house. He recognized Mrs. Leslie at once, but he could be discreet, and, warned by something in her manner, addressed no word to her until he found opportunity for a few moments' private speech before leaving.
"You remember me, I see," Millicent said, and English Jim bowed.
"I do; perhaps because I have reason to. Though most reluctant to say so, I lost a valuable paper the last time I was in your presence, and that paper was afterwards used against my employer. Pardon me for speaking so plainly; you said you were a friend of Mr. Thurston's."
"You need not be diffident," replied Millicent, checking him with a wave of her hand. "Suppose it was I who found the drawing? You would be willing to keep silence in return for——"
It was English Jim who interrupted now. "In return for your solemn promise to render no more assistance to our enemies. I do not forget your kindness, and hate the painful necessity of speaking so to you, but I am Thurston's man, soul and body."
"I ask your pardon," said Millicent. "Will you believe me if I say that I lately ran some risk to bring Mr. Thurston a much-needed warning? I am going to England in a day or two, and shall never come back again. Therefore, you can rely upon my promise."
"Implicitly," returned English Jim. "You must have had some reason I cannot guess for what you did. That sounds like presumption, doesn't it? But you can count upon my silence, madam."
"You are a good man." Millicent impulsively held out her hand to him. "I have met very few so loyal or so charitable. May I wish you all prosperity in your career?"
English Jim merely bowed as he went out, and Millicent's eyes grew dim as she thought of her treachery to Geoffrey.
"There are good men in the world after all, though it has been my misfortune to chiefly come across the bad," she admitted to herself.
Darkness had fallen when Thurston rode up to the ranch. He passed half an hour alone with Millicent and went away without speaking to anyone else. After he had gone Millicent said to Mrs. Savine:
"I start for England as soon as possible, and Mr. Thurston is going to the railroad with me. I shall never return to Canada."
Pleading fatigue, she retired early, and for a time Mrs. Savine and Helen sat silently in the glow of the great hearth upon which immense logs were burning. There was no other light in the room, and each flicker of the fire showed that Helen's face was more than usually serious.
"Did you know that it was Mrs. Leslie Geoffrey should have married?" asked Mrs. Savine at length.
"No," answered Helen, flushing. With feeling she added. "Perhaps I ought to have guessed it. She leaves shortly, does the not? It will be a relief. She must be a wicked woman, but please don't talk of her."
"That is just what I'm going to do," declared her aunt, gravely. "I wouldn't guarantee that she is wholly good, but I blame her poison-mean husband more than her. Anyway, she is better than you suppose her."
"I made no charge against her, and am only glad she is going," said Helen Savine. Mrs. Savine smiled shrewdly.
"Well, I am going to show you there is nothing in that charge. Not quite logical, is it, but sit still there and listen to me."
Helen listened, at first very much against her will, presently she grew half-convinced, and at last wholly so. She blushed crimson as she said:
"May I be forgiven for thinking evil—but such things do happen, and though I several times made myself believe, even against, the evidence of my eyes, that I was wrong, appearances were horribly against her. I am tired and will say good-night, auntie."
"Not yet," interposed Mrs. Savine, laying a detaining grasp upon her. "Sit still, my dear, I'm only beginning. Appearances don't always count for much. Now, there's Mrs. Christopher who started in to copy my elixir. Oh, yes, it was like it in smell and color, but she nearly killed poor Christopher with it."
"She said it cured him completely," commented Helen, hoping to effect a diversion; but Mrs. Savine would not be put off.
"We won't argue about that, though there'll be a coroner called in the next time she makes a foolish experiment. Now I'm going to give my husband's confidences away. Hardly fair to Tom, but I'll do it, because it seems necessary, and the last time I didn't go quite far enough. To begin with. Did you know the opposition wanted to buy Geoffrey over, paying him two dollars for every one he could have made out of your father?"
"No," answered Helen, starting. "It was very loyal of him to refuse. Why did he do so?"
Mrs. Savine smiled good-humoredly. "I guess you think that's due to your dignity, but you don't fool me. Look into your mirror, Helen, if you really want to know. Did you hear that he put every dollar he'd made in Canada into the scheme? Of course you didn't; he made Tom promise he would never tell you. Besides—but I forgot, I must not mention that."
"Please spare me any more, auntie," pleaded Helen, who was overcome by a sudden realization of her own injustice and absolute selfishness.
"No mercy this time," was the answer, given almost genially. "Like the elixir which doesn't taste pleasant, it's good for you. You didn't know, either, for the same reason, that not long ago Tom was badly scared for fear he'd have to let the whole thing go for lack of money. It would have been the end of Julius Savine if he had been forced to give up this great enterprise."
"I never thought things were so bad, but how does it concern Mr. Thurston?" Helen questioned her aunt in a voice that was trembling.
"Geoffrey straightened out all the financial affairs in just this way. A relative in England left an estate to be divided between him and Mrs. Leslie. There was enough to keep him safe for life, if he'd let it lie just where it was, but he didn't. No, he sold out all that would have earned him a life income for any price he could, and turned over every cent of it to help your father. Now I've about got through, but I've one question to ask you. Would the man who did all that—you can see why—be likely to fool with another man's wife, even if it was the handsome Mrs. Leslie?"
"No," said Helen, whose cheeks, which had grown pallid, flushed like a blush rose. "I am glad you told me, auntie, but I feel I shall never have the courage to look that man in the face again."
Mrs. Savine smiled, though her eyes glistened in the firelight as she laid a thin hand on one of Helen's, which felt burning hot as the fingers quivered within her grasp.
"You will, or that will hurt him more than all," she replied. "It wasn't easy to tell you this, but I've seen too many lives ruined for the want of a little common-sense talking—and I figure Jacob wouldn't come near beating Geoffrey Thurston."
Helen rose abruptly. "Auntie, you will see to father—he has been better lately—for just a little while, will not you?" she asked. "Mrs. Crighton has invited me so often to visit her, and I really need a change. This valley has grown oppressive, and I must have time to think."
"Yes," assented Mrs. Savine. "But you must stand by your promise to fire the final shot."
The door closed, and Mrs. Savine, removing her spectacles, wiped both them and her eyes as she remarked: "I hope the Almighty will forgive a meddlesome old woman for interfering, knowing she means well."