“No. I was once, I think; but, somehow, things are changing for me. The old anchorages are slipping away, and I can’t seem to find any new ones. For example: I did a thing last night which seems perfectly justifiable on one side, and almost criminal on the other. I’ve been trying all day to make up my mind as to whether I ought to pat myself on the back, or go to jail.”
“If you should tell me what you did, perhaps I might be able to help your common sense, or your conscience, or whatever it is that is involved,” she suggested.
David glanced at his watch. The hour was late, and there were but few of the Inn guests remaining on the porches.
“I’m keeping you up,” he said shortly. “Some day, perhaps, I’ll take the lid off and let you see the tangle inside of me; but it’s too late to begin on as big a job as that to-night. Are you going to let me show you over the plant to-morrow?”
“What else is there for me to do in this wilderness of a place?” she asked in mock despair. “I shall most probably tag you around like a meddlesome little boy until you’ll be glad to put me on the train and send me home.”
David was still holding the hand of leave-taking. “If you don’t go home until I send you, you’ll stay here a long time,” he said happily. And then he went his way, forgetting, in this newest prospect of joy, the troublesome underthought which had been growing, like an ominous threat, around the incident of the talk with Altman, and its outcome.
XVII
The Tar-Barrel
IN any descent to Avernus it is not often given to the wayfarer to recognize the point at which he first begins to go down-hill. In the removal of the careful Altman from the eastern tunnel boring and the substituting of the reckless, devil-may-care Regnier, David Vallory had succeeded in persuading himself that he had merely checked off an item in the day’s work, and was far enough from suspecting that the item figured as another milestone in the downward inclining path.
But certain results followed in due course, and a growth, not in grace. For one of the results, David, being a shrewd-eyed master of his trade, soon began to discover many of the things that Plegg was trying to hide from him—the dishonesties large and small by which unscrupulous Business seeks to increase the margin or profit; to discover them and pass by on the other side with closed eyes. Another result was his changed and changing attitude toward the Powder Can nuisance. From regarding the wide-open mining-camp chiefly as a moral menace, he was beginning to look upon it more as an obstacle to progress—his own industrial progress on the job. It was sapping the strength of his working force, and therefore—in spite of the contractor-king’s injunction, which he took to be another of the little kindnesses designed to make things easier for him—it was to be abolished.
In the field of the discovered dishonesties and the closed eye, effect succeeded to cause with due celerity. The conditions on a well-systematized undertaking like the line-shortening project are fairly telepathic. Almost immediately it began to be whispered about among the gang bosses and the men that the new chief was bent upon making a record; the first assistant said so, and the first assistant ought to know. This being the fact, the bridle might be taken off—always with due regard for the railroad watch-dogs, and for a decent concealment from a chief who, for the look of the thing, must be in a position to say that he knew nothing whatever of cast-off bridles and the substitution of loose halters therefor.