Lighted Windows, page 6
“And you didn’t see Paxton again?”
“See Ned? Not once.”
“Go on.”
“That was what I did. I went on to Seattle. It had seemed delightfully easy when I planned it. Imagine my amazed consternation when I found that the agency at which I applied would not send a girl to an engineers’ camp in Alaska. A man had been demanded and a man would be sent. The agent glared at me with such suspicion that I scrunched like a gypsy worm beneath the heavy heel of his disapproval.”
“At least there is one man in the business with sense.”
“Don’t growl; you cramp my narrative style.” She disciplined a nervous laugh. “Because my imagination began to project all sorts of hazardous risks I determined to crash through or perish in the attempt. I won’t give in to a fear complex—ever again. I settled down to constructive thinking. I remembered a newspaper story of an English woman who for years had passed herself off as a man, remembered that because of the husky note in my voice I had taken men’s parts in dramatics. Good old subconscious had done the trick. I would apply as a boy. A dye for my hair, a low drawn hat, Prince of Wales style, tweed suit, a hectic, a super hectic flush on my cheeks to suggest a reason for my exile, and lo, Jimmy Delevan evolved.”
“You need a guardian!”
“From what Tubby Grant confided this morning I suspect that I am about to acquire one. Don’t growl, Bruce.”
Harcourt passed his hand over his face as though by the gesture he could smooth the perplexities from his mind.
“And one darnfool agent fell for you?”
“With a groan of relief he swallowed me, bait, hook and sinker, signed me on the dotted line.”
“Did you come up on the boat as a boy?”
“Don’t roar. Of course I didn’t. I’m not quite a dumbbell. I had two days to wait before the boat sailed. I invested some of my ancestral gold in a movie-camera—I’m planning to tour the country as a lecturer when I get back to civilization—packed the disguise carefully in a steamer trunk and engaged a reservation in the name of J. Delevan. That was non-committal. When the ship was in sight of headquarters I dressed as a boy again, and with the agent’s letter clutched in my hand prepared to give you the grand surprise of your life.”
“You succeeded.”
“But not as I had planned. The agent had said that he would cable you when I sailed. I expected you to meet me. Instead Mr. Grant appeared. I couldn’t tell him. What would he think? He tried to be kind, but he couldn’t conceal his disappointment as he looked at me. He said that he had orders to join you at the bridge, did I think I was strong enough for the trip? Before I could answer he told me that the Samp sisters were also going. My spirits mounted like a balloon. I assured him I was rarin’ to go, or words to that effect.”
“I have no words in which to express my opinion of your infernal recklessness in coming to this wilderness!”
“You are doing fairly well. Stop pacing the floor as though you were an Alaskan bear and listen. I’ll acknowledge that for a moment the silence, the wildness, the terrific expanse of land, sea and sky got me by the throat. I hadn’t had the slightest conception of what the word Alaska stood for, this part of it. When later I thought of the clothes I had brought—trunks of them—ordered and designed for the prospective wife of a millionaire, the table linen and bedding I had selected from my bountiful supply, for the first time in my life I touched the borderland of hysterics. I laughed till I cried. But I licked the fear-complex. I’m here.”
She rose laughing, exultant, lovely. “And I have made good, yes? Haven’t I, Mr. Grant?” she demanded of the man who entered the cabin with the husky at his heels. The dog thrust his nose into the girl’s hand. Every hair of Blot, the black cat, bristled as though electrified.
“I’ll say you have. What’s he going to do?”
Harcourt looked from Grant’s round, smooth face, with its belligerent green eyes, to Janice’s. A man like Paxton wouldn’t let such a lovely girl slip away. She was safe here. The outfit needed her.
“Sentence!” she demanded impatiently. “I hate to be kept in suspense. Sentence!”
“Jimmy Delevan goes.”
At Grant’s sharp protest and an indignant exclamation from Janice he held up his hand.
“Wait a minute! Your secretary stays, Tubby, but only as Miss Trent. And if she stays she will do exactly as I say.” Ignoring her indignant protest, he went on: “Make up your mind to it—otherwise there is a boat going out tomorrow—and you go with it.”
Color stained her face as she looked down at her tweed suit.
“What’s the matter now? Haven’t you other clothes?” Harcourt demanded with excusable impatience.
“My entire trousseau from soup to savory. I—I was only wondering what explanation you could make to the men.”
“Late to think of that. However, I’ll undertake to straighten out the tangle. Fortunately, Hale goes back on the boat tomorrow.”
“Mrs. too, of course?”
“Yes, Tubby.”
Harcourt felt himself redden as he met the question in Grant’s eyes. Did he think there was truth in that malicious accusation of Joe Hale’s? His jaw set grimly. How a feminine invasion could mess up a situation! His turmoil of mind was reflected in his voice.
“Does Jimmy Delevan go or does Miss Trent stay?”
“Miss Trent stays,” the girl assured promptly.
“Then she is not to report for work until after the boat goes out tomorrow.” Without waiting for an answer Harcourt crossed to the door. Tong lingered on the threshold to cast a biding-my-time glance over his shoulder at the bristling black cat before he followed his master.
Had he been a weak fool to allow her to stay? Harcourt asked himself as he followed a winding path through a well cleared field to the hangar. At the open door he stopped to give directions to Pasca and Kadyama who were fueling and cleaning the amphibian within. His perplexity was submerged in a glow of satisfaction as he regarded it. The authorities had provided a flock of planes of different makes and sizes, but this great winged thing was in a class of its own. In order to permit of operation in very rough water and to minimize injury from driftwood, an exceptionally strong and thick metal bottom had been provided. A touch on a control, and landing gear dropped, enabling it to taxi up a pebbly beach, or across a flying field. This was an especially desirable feature for surveying in the northern country. The landing wheels tucked away into the sides when alighting or taking off from the sea. The body was a bright yellow with the name of the outfit in huge black letters. It was equipped to carry a pilot and three passengers and enough fuel for a twenty-four-hour cruise.
As he walked toward his office Harcourt’s thoughts returned to Janice Trent. A lovely girl would raise the dickens with the men’s attention to work. Tubby argued that she was needed. She was, but he turned his motives inside out for inspection. He had wanted her to stay. No intangible presence seemed to stand between him and her. Had it been the memory of little Jan Trent which had guarded the entrance to his heart all these years? Every time she had moved her hand he had felt its satin softness against his lips. And she had run away from her prospective bridegroom because she didn’t trust him, yet loved him so much she didn’t dare stay. His lips tightened. He paraphrased the creed of the rollicking Russians in the time of Baranof:
“God’s in his heaven and Paxton is far away.”
The Hales would be off tomorrow. Millicent was sweet and much to be pitied, but she had claws, and he had a conviction that she would scratch deep and raggedly where other women were concerned. She had reigned as queen in this outpost camp. She would not abdicate gracefully. These very human men would quickly transfer their allegiance from a married woman to a charming girl. Well, she was going, Hale was going, two of his problems would sail out with the tide when the boat weighed anchor at dawn.
At the door of his office he collided with a man coming out. His red face registered relief.
“Been looking for you everywhere, Chief.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Hale! Had a slight shock. We radioed to Fairbanks to ask if we should take him to the hospital by plane. Answer came, ‘No! Keep him there.’ ”
“We can’t keep him here.”
“Search me. Mrs. Hale says he’ll go tomorrow if he goes on a stretcher—but the Doc will have the say.”
VI
“Where were we, Miss Trent?” Theodore Grant Junior tilted back in a chair beside the typewriter desk in the administration office he and Bruce Harcourt shared at headquarters.
Janice read from her note-book. “ ‘Re: Ditching gang No. 2—’ ”
“O.K. Get this: Ditching gang No. 2, operating ditcher No. 25 loaded approximately 3500 cubic yards of gravel at pit at mile 207.8 and about 1500 cubic yards at mile 265 for ballast in the vicinity of the pits.”
His voice went on and on till steam-shovel gangs and ditching gangs filed in endless procession through the girl’s mind. She stopped for an instant to flex her fingers. Grant noted the surreptitious action.
“I’m sorry. You’re such a bird at it I forget that you’re not a machine. That will do for the present. Get those reports ready. I’ll be in later to give them the once-over and my signature.”
He picked up his papers. As he rose, Tong, who had been dozing in a pool of sunlight, sprang to his feet, thrust a cold nose into his hand, looked up at him with hooded slant eyes. Grant patted the tawny head absentmindedly as he glanced out of the window. The businesslike crispness of his voice changed to companionable friendliness.
“Ba-gosh! There’s Millicent Hale. I wish she’d stop hanging round here. She’s after Bruce, I’ll bet my hat. She’s getting on his nerves. He’s pretty edgy. My mistake. She’s gone on, to the Waffle Shop probably, praise be to Allah!”
“Is Mr. Harcourt—are they—”
“They are not. But, Joe Hale is sore. If he could find the least flaw in the character of his successor, our villain without portfolio would laugh his head off. His own career has ended in disgrace. There have been some fierce rows among the Crowned Heads because through influence he has been kept on the job; some of them are seeing red. One breath of scandal about Harcourt and they’d chop his professional head off with a blow. Our Hero’s got a big career before him if he has half a chance. Sometimes I get the heebe-jeebes, feel as though we were all walking on the thin crust above a volcano which, sooner or later, is bound to erupt with a bang. I’ve been uneasy as the dickens since Jimmy Chester came back to headquarters. It’s because Hale is still hanging on. Sometimes I wonder if he’s faking helplessness. People have recovered from slight shocks quickly. I don’t know why I’m blowing off steam to you. Forget it. Get those reports ready as soon as possible.”
He departed. Tong bestowed a moist doggy kiss upon Janice’s hand before he followed at his heels. She thoughtfully watched the man and dog out of sight. The usually ebullient Tubby was troubled about his chief. Unnecessarily troubled, she decided. How could any sane person look at Bruce Harcourt and believe for an instant that he would be dishonorable? But, Hale probably wasn’t sane when he thought of his successor. After all, it wouldn’t be surprising if Bruce had fallen in love with the only attractive white woman on location or she with him when one realized the sort of man to whom she was tied. He had said the night they had dined together in New York:
“Life—human life in Alaska—is no different from life in other places. People are born, die, marry, and divorce, love and hate, the last two a little harder, perhaps, than when nearer civilization.”
She clasped her hands behind her head, tipped back in her chair, regarded the moss-chinked walls, the old-time Yukon stove, which made the modern filing cabinets seem blatantly nouveau riche, the high desk at which the chief of the outfit worked when he was in the office. Through the open window she could see the kennels and the huskies in the yard, some rollicking, some soaking in the sunshine, some yelping. Beyond them a ditcher was lumbering inland like a prehistoric monster trailing its prey. Her eyes traveled on to the sun and shadow sectored world. Fair weather after a week of gray mist, of the sound of a sullen surf pounding on the shore. Inexplicably the trickily bland blue sea chilled her; the snow-capped mountains oppressed her; the clamor of steam-shovels and rivets seemed sordid and unbearable. The land breeze blew in from the natives’ quarters laden with the smell of drying tom-cod, of simmering seal-blubber. The innumerable stakes which indicated prospective boulevards and imposing municipal buildings—now on paper—which sanguine promoters declared would make this remote spot on an Alaskan inlet a railroad terminal which would revolutionize the great white north—seemed a grisly joke. One day passed after another as monotonously alike as sardines packed in a tin. For an instant she was devastatingly homesick for the glittering show of Fifth Avenue, for the purr of luxurious automobiles, the music and laughter of tea-time, the flash of jewels.
A plane droned far overhead. She could see it, a gigantic bird against the blue dome. Bruce? Her mood changed. Silly to think for an instant that he would be interested in another man’s wife. What a glorious world! How purple the cloud shadows were upon the mountains! Did that smoky smooch mean that old Katmal was erupting again?
Months had passed since the night Bruce Harcourt had returned her slipper, had brought vividly to mind her childish adoration of him. When he had stepped out upon the stage of her life again he had seemed a divine answer to her prayer to know what was right to do. Their paths crossed. Immediately the pattern of her life was changed. Her trust, her belief in him, in his power to surmount obstacles, surged up from her subconscious where it had lain quiescent through the years. He knew what he wanted and went after it. Why shouldn’t she do the same? He had made Alaska seem a paradise where men and women lived full, clean, purposeful lives. Through a labyrinth of picturesque sounds and straits, by glaciers and totempoled villages, she had sailed north, thrilled, eager, happy, that she would be financially independent of her brother, that she had burst the chains of fascination which had shackled her, to crash into this enterprise. Had she realized the immensity of the wilderness, the rawness of this camp with its mixture of educated men, life-licked derelicts, oily Eskimos, furtive slit-eyed Indians, would she have come?
The way which had threatened to be rough with complications had smoothed out like a trotting-park when she had seen the Samp sisters. She had told them the truth at once. Gaunt Miss Martha’s agate eyes had disappeared in a network of fine lines.
“If you’re bent on keeping this job, tell Harcourt the truth, quick, or he’ll send you back hummin’. Keep clear of Hale; he might—well, just keep clear of him, that’s all.”
Three weeks had passed since she had discarded her disguise and gone to the office in one of the sports suits of her trousseau. The engineers had greeted her with smiling courtesy, the workmen with sheepish grins. What explanation had Bruce Harcourt made to them? As usual the brunt of the burden had fallen on him. She had her own log house now, connected by a covered passage with the Samp cabin. It had gone up as by magic after Bruce had decided that she might stay. Sometimes at night when she couldn’t sleep because of the long, long twilight, of strange rustlings in the chinked walls, the frenzied barking of huskies, the sombre muffled beat of Indian drums, the far faint howl of a wolf, perhaps the sharp yelp of a coyote on the trail of game, the memory of the manner in which she had forced herself into the outfit set her aching with mortification. Bruce had been right. It was no place for a girl—even a modern of the moderns. It was a primitive world and values were different. Then she would stoutly justify her presence to herself.
“I do help. I do. They couldn’t get anyone else!”
However, those moments of depression came only in the night. Why was it, when one couldn’t sleep, one thought of all the pesky little misfortunes which might occur, instead of radiant possibilities? With the day’s activities returned a Monte Cristo, the world-is-mine, assurance.
Bruce had commanded her to keep out of sight till Hale had sailed and then—Hale hadn’t sailed. The physician from Fairbanks had decided that it would be a risk to move him, that he would be better where he was, had warned him against excitement, letting his temper get the best of him. Was his wife in love with Bruce Harcourt? Was he in love with her? Had Millicent Hale been one of the lures which kept him in this northern wilderness? Did she resent the presence in camp of another woman of his class? Even lighthearted Tubby Grant was troubled by the situation.
“But to every man there openeth
A high way and a low;
And every man decideth
The way his soul shall go.”
Memory broadcast the verse. There was no doubt which way Bruce had chosen. Faint color mounted to her hair as she remembered the fascination that Ned Paxton, a man who had not chosen the high way, had had for her. Who was she to condemn another woman for a poor choice? She herself had broken away before it was too late. Had she? Suppose Ned were to come into her life again? She had tried time and again to visualize his face. It just wouldn’t materialize. She couldn’t conjure up his voice. Had change of scene, like a piece of blotting-paper, soaked up all her memories of him? She forced her thoughts back to her distrust of Mrs. Hale. Aside from the fact that she, Janice Trent, had procured the position she wanted under false pretenses—a position in which she was making royally good, she flung that sop to her uneasy conscience—what could the wife of the demoted chief say about her? Suppose she were to hear of her engagement, broken at the last minute? What capital could she make of that? What was a broken engagement in this divorced-while-you-wait era.
