XX
Broken Faith
"Sweet are the uses of adversity," sang the great bard who is supposed to have known human nature in all its mutations; and humanity has echoed the aphorism until it has come to believe in some sort that bufferings are benedictions, and hard knocks merely the compacting blows that harden virtues, as the blacksmith's hammer beats a finer temper into the steel upon the anvil.
With all due respect for the shades of the mighty, and for the tacit approval of the many, I beg leave to offer the argumentum ad hominem in rebuttal. Fight the conclusion as I may, I cannot resist the convincement that ill winds have never blown me any good; that, on the contrary, the steady pressure of hardship and misfortune, during a period when my life was still in a great measure in the formative state, exerted an influence which was altogether evil, weakening the impulses which should have been growing stronger, and giving free rein to those which, under more favoring conditions, might never have been quickened.
When I forsook the breakfast-table and the hotel, after having read the newspaper story telling how effectively Agatha Geddis had removed herself from my path, it was to make a joyous dash for the first train leaving the capital for Cripple Creek. With shame I record it, I had already forgotten my own culpable weakness in permitting a dastardly fear of consequences to make me Agatha's puppet and a sharer in her more than questionable dissipations; had forgotten that by every step I had taken with Agatha Geddis I had increased the distance separating me from Mary Everton.
Perhaps it is only a characteristic of human nature to minimize evils past, and evils to come, at the miraculous removal of a great and pressing evil present; even so, one may suffer loss. I was hastening back to take up the dropped thread of my relations with Phineas Everton and his daughter, and I should have gone softly, as one who, knowing himself the chief of sinners yet ventures to tread upon holy ground. But by the time the train was slowing into the great gold camp at the back of Pike's Peak, these, and all other chastening thoughts, were crowded aside to make room for the one jubilant fact: I was free and I was going back to Polly.
Barrett was the first man I met upon reaching our offices. If he were surprised at seeing me in Cripple Creek when I should have been well on my way to the Pacific Coast, he was quite as evidently disappointed.
"I thought you had started for California," he said in his evenest tones.
"I thought so, too; but it was only a false start." Then I had it out with him. "You and I both know, Barrett, why you thought I ought to go, and the reason wasn't even remotely connected with the shipping of the car-load of test-ore. If you have seen the morning papers, you probably know why it is no longer necessary for me to leave Colorado."
He turned to stare absently out of the office window. When he faced about again there was a frown of friendly concern wrinkling between his straight-browed level eyes.