Lighted Windows, page 4
“Why the dickens did you fly at Hale, Tubby? Keep out of this mess. Disappointment plus his habits has crazed him. The very absurdity of his accusation should have held you.”
“Ba-gosh, I saw vermilion when he insinuated—”
“Forget it! Once get a suggestion like that in the air and the Lord only knows what it will spread into. He is savage, naturally, because he has been demoted, poor devil.”
“He wouldn’t have been demoted had he behaved himself.”
“He knows that. That’s the tragedy of it. He has dug his own professional grave and realizes it. He’s a wizard of an engineer when he’s himself. I’ve learned so much from him that I shall be everlastingly grateful.”
“Mebbe so, mebbe so. He’s going, praise to be Allah! There’s no room here for a bad boy. Every communication I receive from the authorities reiterates the order that this camp shall set an example of discipline and decency to the Indians and Eskimos—Hale—” the earnestness of his voice shifted magically to lightness. “Well, Tatima, made up your mind to sell me those beads?”
The girl who had stopped at the table, clutched her brilliant blue necklace with a bronzed hand.
“Who, me? Bead used as money by ancestors. Tatima never sell.”
“If you pull at them like that some day the string will break and you’ll wish you’d taken money for them.”
“Huh!” She shrugged disdain, spoke to Harcourt, “Miss Martha she say for you to go to her cabin, soon’s waffles eat. Walk in, she say. She come soon.”
“Tell her I’ll be there. Everything going right with you, Tatima?” Harcourt asked with friendly interest.
“Who, me? Fine.” She padded away in her moccasins.
Stephen Mallory looked after her thoughtfully. Shook his head. “Tatima’s a puzzle to me. The Christianity she professes is a veneer, and a thin veneer at that. In a crisis she’d revert to the pagan creed of her ancestors, which was to end a quarrel by the surest and easiest method, getting one’s opponent out of the way by fair means or foul. Self-preservation was the first and strongest law.”
“Ba-gosh, then she’ll get Hale sometime.”
“Cheerio, Tubby, Hale will be off before she realizes that he’s going. Get the engineers together in our office. We need to confer about the new instructions. They will move everybody up. Bring your secretary to take the minutes of the meeting, unless you’re afraid to allow him out in the night air. He is as careful of that boy as if he were a drop of radium in a glass tube. Have you seen him, Mallory?”
“No. I came in on the boat, you know.”
“Tubby keeps him under lock and key.”
Grant’s defense was spirited. “Afraid of losing him? I’ll say I am! Hard enough to get him. Independent little cuss. Says he was hired to work for me. Threatened to leave if I loaned him.”
“You’re welcome to him, Tubby. Mr. Mallory, there are two bedrooms in my cabin. One of them is yours while you are here.”
“Thank you, Harcourt. The section men have made me welcome in their dormitory. I am happy that they want me. I will make that my headquarters. I’ll talk with Hale.”
Little lines appeared between Harcourt’s brows. “Better let him alone at present, Dominie. He’s bitter over his demotion. One can’t blame him. That bridge is his triumph.”
“Now listen! You know you carried the whole contract on your shoulders, Bruce.”
“Forget it, Tubby. Don’t let Hale hear you or he will drag you into this mess. One of us at a time is enough. After I find out what Miss Martha wants I’ll join you at the office. See that every man in the outfit is there.”
“Hale included?”
“Hale included, if he will come. If possible we will play this game with all the cards on the table.”
Easier said than done, he thought, as he made his way to the living quarters of the Samp sisters. That had been a vicious thrust of Hale’s. Home-breaker! Evidently he intended to twist friendly sympathy for his wife into a sordid liaison. Tubby and he had been sorry for Millicent Hale. Dainty as a figurine, the woman, little more than a girl, had taken her marriage vow, “And leaving all others cleave only unto him,” literally. She had followed her husband into the wilderness. Once or twice when her brother had been away from headquarters, she had turned to him or to Grant in an extremity. They had done what they could to help. If Hale pushed that charge—
“Oh, forget it! Forget it!” he admonished himself. There were more imminent problems to be considered. He drew a long breath of the clear air, threw his shoulders back as though to rid them of an intolerable burden. Why did strife and jealousy and their ugly triplet, malice, have to taint this glorious northern world? He remembered Janice Trent’s request.
“Tell me of Alaska. It sounds so crisp and bracing—and clean.”
Where was she now, he wondered as he had wondered a hundred times since he had left her standing in the dim light of the vestibule. The color burned in his face as he remembered his almost uncontrollable urge to pick her up and carry her off. Young Lochinvar stuff. Somehow it didn’t suit this twentieth century. Had she married Paxton? No, she had too much spirit. Quite plainly he felt the pressure of her hand against his lips, heard her voice with its boyish note protesting:
“Don’t say it! Then you’ll never be sorry!”
He would always be sorry he hadn’t said it, he thought, as he thought in moments like this, when cold reason took an hour or two off duty. She would have loved the beauty of this northern world. The sky above the serrated crater-top of the volcano glowed rose-color. Scarfs of violet and green serpentined from the interior. The afterglow tinted the scattered drift-ice which he could see far out. Gulls, lavender-white wings outspread, dove and floated above the blue waves which rolled in to ruffle into whiteness on the shingle. From the distance came the yelp of dogs. A few stars flamed and faded like prowling fireflies in the darkening dome of the sky.
He obeyed instructions and walked into the Samp cabin without knocking. The room was characteristically New Englandish, furnished as it was with the Lares and Penates the sisters had brought. It had an atmosphere of homey charm. An old-time melodeon stood in one corner, a radio kept it company. Curious samplers, quaint silhouette portraits brightened the moss-chinked walls. Magazines and a heaped-up work-basket, which gave out a faint scent of lavender, were on the drop-leaf mahogany table, where lay an open Bible. A cathedral clock on the slab of stone which made the mantel was flanked by ancient brass candlesticks. A pair of Hessians in scarlet coats and yellow waistcoats, gold sabres drawn, stood ankle-deep in red-hot embers. From the warm security of the hearth rug a coal-black cat regarded him unblinkingly with slightly disdainful green eyes. Over one arm of a wing chair drawn near the fire dangled a pair of legs and feet encased in leather leggings above heavy shoes. From its depths came the sound of soft, regular breathing.
Harcourt smiled broadly. Grant’s secretary asleep, he’d bet a hat. The Alaskan air was getting in its remedial work. The Samp Sisters certainly were coddling him. Probably they had had to work their fingers to the bone on their Maine farm. Just like them to spoil the boy. Women of their type had to mother something if it was only a black cat.
He tiptoed across the room. He noted the boots, small for a boy even. His eyes traveled over the curled-up body in its rough brown tweed to the face. His heart suspended action. His glance flew from the vivid mouth with the faint red line of irritation above the upper lip to the tapering fingers from which dangled a small golden mustache. A wavy lock of black hair had fallen over one eye. Long lashes, golden-tipped, lay on the crimson cheeks.
The world crashed about his ears. The boy asleep in the chair wasn’t a boy! It was the girl to whom he had said goodbye in New York. It was Janice Trent.
IV
Harcourt never knew how long he stood staring incredulously at the girl’s face. Janice Trent! Impossible! What had brought her into this wilderness? Had she married Paxton and found the marriage unendurable? No, had she gone so far as that she would have stuck it out. Had she run away before the ceremony to escape the publicity attendant upon a last-minute broken engagement? He remembered the frozen voice he had heard at the telephone the night he had returned the slipper. The black slipper. He could see the buckle of it now, winking and blinking at him in the middle of that stretch of blanched asphalt. To come here disguised as a boy! Reckless child! What should he do? Let her know at once that he had found her out? Send her back on the next boat?
A slight cough at the door drew his eyes as steel to magnet. Lean, gaunt Martha Samp, with admonitory finger at her lips beckoned with the hand which clutched a newspaper. A little edge of red flannel was visible at her wrists below her sleeves. Harcourt’s grim lips relaxed. Miss Samp was taking no chances with the northern weather. A heavy crimson sweater, pulled up almost to her ears, was drawn down over the print dress which reached to her thick ankles. Her boots were as clumsy as a man’s. Her agate eyes were set in sunbursts of fine lines. She beckoned again.
Without another glance at the sleeping girl, Harcourt crossed the room. Martha Samp hooked one bony finger into the pocket of his coat and drew him outside the cabin. She soundlessly closed the door. Still holding him she led the way to a rude woodshed. Put her lips close to his ear.
“You’ve found out?”
He nodded.
“The Lord be thanked! I won’t have to take the responsibility. What you goin’ to do?”
Towers of purple dusk were rising against the afterglow. Far off snow caps, like islands, dotted a rose-streaked indigo horizon; hot blue and white stars, cool red stars spangled the sky. Harcourt’s eyes came back to the lined, gaunt face of the woman beside him.
“Send her home on the first boat. This is no place for a girl.”
“Sakes alive, I’d like to see any harm come to her with Mary and me here!”
“But, Miss Martha! You don’t think she should stay here masquerading as a boy!”
“Course not, now that you know. But, she hadn’t oughter go back. Read this. It came in today’s mail. Weeks old, I suppose.” She opened the newspaper, pointed with a knobby finger.
Bruce Harcourt stared down at the pictured faces on the sheet. Janice Trent Paxton! The letters of the caption under them danced impishly.
bride disappears four days before wedding.
Janice had run away to escape Paxton. Would he try to find her? She was here, in disguise, asleep in the cabin behind him. What should he do? What could he do but stand between her and a heart-breaking future? He looked at the paper again, tried to say lightly:
“It’s absurd to think this has any connection with—with Grant’s secretary.”
The woman sniffed. “Sakes alive, let’s you and me not play at cross-purposes. We’re the only ones that child has to help her. I know that’s her because she told me that she’d run away from marryin’. When I saw this paper I guessed that she was the girl ’twas all about. Lucky she had spunk to throw him over. You kin tell from his face, handsome as a picture, easy-goin’, that, where women’s concerned, he’s as false as Mary’s teeth.”
In spite of his anxiety Harcourt laughed as he visualized the glittering uppers and lowers of the younger Samp sister. There could be nothing more blatantly false in the world than those.
“Does Miss Mary know?”
“Of course, but she won’t tell no one. We’ve lived long enough to’ve learned that if you don’t want a thing known, you mustn’t take anyone into your confidence. When I stepped into the cabin, I knew you’d found out by the look on your face. I’m glad. The girl—Jimmy Delevan, she calls herself—told me that she’d known you back in the States, an’ then she kinder half laffed an’ half sobbed an’ said,
“ ‘Tagging him as I useter.’
“An’ I says to her, ‘Child, there’s a gate in every wall if you’ll keep huntin’ for it. I guess you found the right one when you came here.’ ”
“Does she think that I suspect her identity?”
“Sakes alive, no! She’s sure you don’t. First time she laughed since she arrived—she’s got a laugh like music—was after she came face to face with you up in the woods, the time the bridge was movin,’ an’ you didn’t recognize her. She’s safe with Martha an’ me. We’re tickled to death to have someone besides a black cat to make fools of ourselves over. The men haven’t come near Jimmy Delevan. They don’t like the red spots on his cheeks.”
Harcourt’s throat contracted unbearably. He had forgotten. That lovely girl threatened—he demanded unsteadily:
“You don’t think it’s serious?”
Martha Samp grunted derision. “Serious! Don’t you know paint when you see it? She’s as sound as I am, an’ there ain’t nothin’ sounder between here and India’s coral strands. She thought the red cheeks would be an explanation as to why she came up into this country.”
“Has she seen that paper?”
“No.”
“That helps. Be sure that no one else sees it. Burn it. A useless precaution. Others like it, doubtless, have come in this mail. I must go to the office. You haven’t told me yet why you sent for me, Miss Martha.”
“I want another room built on the cabin for her. She’s brought all her handsome wedding things, sheets and pillow slips made of pink crêpe. There’s no truer sayin’ than that one half of the world don’t know nothin’ about how the other half lives. If anyone’d told me some folks slept under such beddin’ I’d have thought them plumb crazy. Mary’s near gone out of her mind over it all. She loves pretties. If the girl is goin’ to stay she ought to have a cabin hitched on to ours.”
“I’ll talk with you about that later. I’m due now at the office. So is—is Jimmy Delevan, but tell him not to come. Grant must take the notes.”
His mind was in a turmoil. Should he let Janice stay? Suppose Hale found out that she had come to headquarters disguised as a boy? Fuse to dynamite. What wouldn’t he do with the knowledge! But Hale was ordered out on the boat which would stop on its return trip. He would have no time to discover anything. Besides, he would be drowning his anger and disappointment. The readjustment of his own status and that of the other engineers would be difficult enough without having this Janice Trent complication. He must get in touch with her brother. Billy couldn’t have known that she was coming. With the remembrance of the feel of her soft hand upon his lips, could he let her go? Most of the men in the outfit were a fine lot, he wasn’t afraid of them.
Pasca, his part Indian, part Eskimo servant, who filled the dual rôle of house-boy and mechanic, was shuffling about the cabin living-room when he entered for his papers. His coarse, jet-black hair, above his flat-nosed Mongolian face, was carefully parted and slicked down. His arched brows were heavy and sleek, his dark sharpshooter eyes were set aslant, far apart, his lips were as thick as a negro’s. His plaid shirt, blocked with clear red and green, his heavy trousers, had been designed in a New England mill for the Arctic trade.
“Office lighted?”
“Yes sirree!” The stolid face warmed into a smile. “Make heap quick work after Meester Grant tole me. Whole darn outfit come, he say.”
“You needn’t wait round, Pasca. I will attend to putting out the lights.”
The man shuffled about with a typical Indian tread. He looked up under heavy brows, as he dropped an immense log on the fire.
“We all mighty glad you big boss now, yes sirree.”
“Thank you. Don’t put on any more wood. You’ll have me roasted alive.”
“Cold later. I know these country. Much number cold nights. But, I do what you say.” He lingered.
“What is it? Got something on your mind?”
The man’s confirmatory grunt deepened the two little lines between Harcourt’s brows.
“I got Kadyama on mind.”
“What’s the matter with him? Doesn’t he like helping at the Waffle Shop after his regular work? Want more money?”
Pasca’s dark eyes narrowed to glinting slits in his heavy face. “No sirree. He lak helpin’ Mees Samp seesters, much good eats. He t’ink he marry on Tatima. He big chief’s son. One day Meester Hale tell her she fine gal—Mees Hale off in Seattle—pay her plenty money to keep hees cabin clean. Tatima lak money. She lak beads an’ gold nuggets. Now she tell Kadyama, ‘Who, me, marry on Indian! No sirree! I lak gol’-hair men.’ An’ he say, he get Hale some day. You big boss now. You do somet’ing to mak Tatima lak heem. Save much trouble.”
Harcourt’s lips tightened as he looked up into the earnest face. Another complication. If he had his way he wouldn’t have a woman within a hundred miles of camp, but the Indians and Eskimos wouldn’t work unless they could have their families with them. He didn’t like that threat to Hale.
“Tell Kadyama to take it easy, Pasca. Hale goes out on the boat day after tomorrow. He’ll never come back. Tell him to buy one of Ossa’s silver chains for Tatima. It won’t take her long to forget that she likes gol’-hair men.”
The man’s expression lightened. “He go day after tomorrer, you say? I tell Kadyama, yes sirree. He t’ink Tatima under spell. Says black cat—black debbil. T’ings happen after he come. Bad! Bad! Bad! He keel him, sometam, p’raps.”
He shuffled out. Harcourt looked after him in consternation. He had known that the native laborers regarded the black cat askance, but he hadn’t realized that Blot was looked upon with superstition. Better suggest to the Samp sisters that they keep their pet under guard at present.
He wondered if he were as colorless as he felt, as later he faced the men of the outfit, the consulting engineers, the heads of divisions. It happened that they were all at headquarters making preparations for going into the interior. Hale was not present, he noticed with relief.
“What the dickens has Janice done to her hair? I thought it was brown,” he caught himself wondering before he directed curtly:
“Take the minutes of the meeting, Grant.”
