Chapter XXXV: The End of a Struggle 323 (5)

"Well, sir, what can I do for you?"

"Nothing," answered the man. "I came to serve you, not to ask service."

The voice seemed familiar to Duncan--almost startlingly familiar. He instantly looked up and exclaimed:

"Why, it's Dick Temple!"

"Yes," answered the other. "You and I quarreled very bitterly once. The quarrel was a very foolish one--on my side."

"And on mine, too!" responded Duncan, grasping his former enemy's hand. "Let us forget it, and be friends."

"With all my heart. It was in that spirit that I came hither to-night--I want to render you a service."

Meanwhile Duncan had almost forced the miner into a chair.

"Tell me," he said, "how is it that you----"

"That I'm a miner? You think of me as an educated engineer, eh? Well, that's a long story and not at all so sad a one as you might suppose. I'll tell you all about it at another time. But it can wait, while there are some other things that should be said now--things that vitally affect the affairs you have in charge."

"It is very good of you to come to me with suggestions, and they will be very welcome, I assure you, and very helpful, I've no doubt. For I have faith in your skill as an engineer."

"My skill still remains to be proved," answered the other with the merest touch of sadness in his utterance. "But, at any rate, I've had the very best engineering education that the schools can give. Never mind that--and never mind me. I didn't come here to talk of myself. I want to talk to you about this mine."

"Good. That is what I am here for. Go on."

"Well, everything here is wrong. With your readiness of perception you must have seen that for yourself. With the general management I have nothing to do. I'm only one of the miners. But there is a problem of ventilation here that ought to be solved, and I have come simply to offer a solution, in the interest of the company that pays my wages and still more in the interest of the miners. Two of them were killed by choke-damp a little while ago, four of them are now ill from the same cause, while all of them are earning less than they should because the best and most easily accessible headings are closed."

"Is there any very serious difficulty involved in the problem of ventilating the mine?"

"None whatever--at least no engineering difficulty."

"Just what do you mean?"

"I prefer not to say."

"Perhaps I can guess," said Duncan. "I have myself discovered a very serious difficulty in the personal equation of Mr. Davidson. He does not want to ventilate the mine--he has his own reasons, of course. That difficulty shall no longer stand in the way. I shall eliminate it at once. Go on, please, and tell me of the engineering problem."

"It scarcely amounts to a problem. The mine lies only about seventy-five feet below the surface. At its extreme extension the depth is considerably less, because of a surface depression there. What I suggest is this: Dig a shaft at the extreme end, thus making a second opening, and pass air freely through the mine from the one opening to the other. The cost will be a mere trifle."

"But will the air pass through in that way?"

"Not without help. But we can easily give it help."

"How? Go on. Explain your plan fully."

"Well, we have here three or four of those big fans that the government had made for the purpose of ventilating the engine rooms and stoke holes of its ironclads. They utterly failed and were sold as junk. Captain Hallam bought a lot of them at the price of scrap iron, and sent them out here. Davidson tried one of them and reported utter failure as a result. The failure was natural enough, both in the case of the ironclads and in that of the mine."

"How so?"

"Why, in both cases an attempt was made to force air down into spaces already filled with an atmosphere denser than that above. That was absurdly impossible, as any engineer not an idiot should have known."

"And yet you think you can use these fans successfully in ventilating the mine?"

"I do not think--I know. If Mr. Davidson will permit me to explain----"

"Never mind Davidson. If this experiment is to be tried you shall yourself be the man to try it. Go on, please."

"But, Duncan, I simply mustn't be known in the matter at all."

"Why not?"

"I have a wife to care for. I can't afford to be discharged. Besides, the miners like me and they think they have grievances against Davidson. If he were to discharge me--as he certainly would if I were to appear in this matter--the whole force would go on strike, no matter how earnestly I might plead with them not to do so. I don't want that to happen. It would be an ill return to the company that gave me wages when it was a question of wages or starvation with me. Worse still, it would mean poverty and suffering to all the miners and all their helpless wives and children. No, Duncan, I must not be known in this matter, or have anything to do with the execution of the plans I suggest. I want you to treat them as your own; suggest them to Davidson, and persuade him to carry them out. In that way all of good and nothing of harm will be done."

"Why, then, haven't you suggested your plans to Davidson?"

"I have, and he has scornfully rejected them. Coming from you he may treat them with a greater respect."

"Now, before we go any further, Dick--for I like to call you by the old nickname that alone I knew before our foolish quarrel came to separate us--before we go any further, let me explain to you that I am absolute master here. My word is law, to Mr. Davidson as completely and as absolutely as to the old fellow who scrubs out this office--or doesn't scrub it, for it's inexcusably dirty. Davidson can no more discharge you than he can discharge me. I don't know yet what I shall do with Davidson. But at any rate he has no longer the power to discharge you, so you need have no fear in that direction. Go on, now, and tell me how you purpose to ventilate the mine. I'm mightily interested."

"Thank you," said Temple. "My plan is perfectly simple. You can't force air down into a mine with any pump that was ever invented, or any pump that ever will be devised by human ingenuity. But you can easily and certainly draw air out of a mine. And when there are two openings to the mine--one at either end--if you draw air out at one end fresh air will of itself rush in at the other end to take its place. My plan is to sink a shaft at the farther end of the mine, and to build an air-tight box at the surface opening, completely closing it, except for an outflow pipe. Then I shall put one of the big ironclad fans into that box _upside down_. When it is set spinning it will suck air out of the mine, and fresh air will rush in at the main shaft to take the place of the air removed."

Duncan was intensely interested. Very eagerly he bent forward as he asked:

"You are confident of success in this?"

"More than confident. I'm sure."

"Quite sure?"

"More than quite sure; I'm absolutely certain. I've tried it."

"Tried it? How?"

"I've reconstructed the mine in miniature. I've made a little fan whose suction capacity is in exact proportion to that of the big fan which I propose to use in the mine. I have fully experimented, and I tell you now, Guilford Duncan, that if you permit me to carry out the plan, I'll create a breeze in that mine which will compel you to hold on to your hat whenever you go into the galleries."

Duncan rarely showed excitement. When he did so, it was in ways peculiar to himself. At this point he rose to his feet, and with an unusually slow and careful enunciation, said:

"Go to work at this job early to-morrow morning, Dick--or this morning, rather, for it is now one o'clock. Your wife is Mary, of course?"

There was a choking sound in Duncan's voice as he uttered the words.

"Yes, of course," answered the other, instinctively grasping Duncan's hand and pressing it in warm sympathy.

"Will you bear her a message from me?"

"Yes, any message you are moved to send."

"Tell her that Guilford Duncan has appointed you sole engineer of these mines, with full salary, and that if you succeed in the task you have undertaken, a far better salary awaits you."

Temple hesitated a moment and at last resumed his seat before answering. Then he said:

"This is very generous of you. I will go to her now, and deliver your message. She will be very glad. She was in doubt as to how you would receive me. But may I come back? Late as it is, I have a good deal more to say to you--about the mine, of course. You and I used often to talk all night, in the old days, long ago, before--well before we quarreled."

"Go!" answered Duncan with emotion. "Go! Tell Mary what I have said. Then come back. One night's sleep, more or less, doesn't matter much to healthy men like you and me."

XVIII

DICK TEMPLE'S PLANS

When Richard Temple returned to the office of the mining company, his always cheerful face was rippling with a certain look of gladness that told its own story of love and devotion. Had he not borne good tidings to Mary? Had he not, for the first time in months, been able to stand before her in another character than that of a working miner, and to offer her some better promise of the future than she had known before?

Not that Mary ever thought of her position as one unworthy of her womanhood, not that she had ever in her innermost heart allowed herself to lament the poverty she shared with him, or to reproach him with the obscurity into which her life with him had brought her. Richard Temple knew perfectly that no shadow of disloyalty had ever fallen upon Mary Temple's soul. He knew her for a wife of perfect type who, having married him "for better or for worse," had only rejoicing in her loving heart that she had been able to accept the "worse" when it came, to make the "better" of it, and to help him with her devotion at a time when he had most sorely needed help.

He knew that his Mary was not only content, but happy in the miner's hut which had been her only home since her marriage, and which, with loving hands, she had glorified into something better to the soul than any palace is where love is not.

O, good women! All of you! How shall men celebrate enough your devotion, your helpfulness, your loyalty, and your love? How shall men ever repay the debt they owe to wifehood and motherhood? How shall civilization itself sufficiently honor the womanhood that alone has made it possible?

But while Richard Temple knew that there was never a murmur at her lot in Mary's heart any more than there was complaining upon her lips, he knew also how earnestly she longed for a better place in the world for him, how intensely ambitious she was that he should find fit opportunity and make the most of it in the way of winning that recognition at the hands of men which her loving soul knew to be his right and his due.

It was with gladness, therefore, that he had gone to her after midnight with his news. It was with joy that he had wakened her out of her sleep and told her of the good that had come to him.

She wept as she sat there on the side of her bed and listened while the moonlight, sifting through the vines that she had trained up over the window of the miner's hut, cast a soft fleecy veil over her person, in which Temple thought an angel might rejoice. But her tears were not born of sorrow. They were tears of exceeding joy, and if a drop or two slipped in sympathy from the strong man's eyes and trickled down his cheeks, he had no cause to be ashamed.

When he re-entered the company's office, Temple stood for a moment, unable to control the emotion he had brought away from Mary's bedside. When at last he regained mastery of himself, he took Duncan's hand and, pressing it warmly, delivered Mary's message:

"Mary bids me say, God bless you, Guilford Duncan. She bids me say that two weeks ago to-night a son was born to us; that he has been nameless hitherto; but that to-night, before I left, she took him from his cradle and named him Guilford Duncan Temple."

It is very hard for two American men to meet an emotional situation with propriety. They cannot embrace each other as women, and Frenchmen, and Germans do, and weep; a handclasp is all of demonstration that they permit themselves. For the rest, they are under bond to propriety to maintain as commonplace and as unruffled a front as stoicism can command. So, after Guilford Duncan had choked out the words: "Thank you, old fellow, and thank Mary," he turned to the table, pushed forward the pipes and tobacco, and said:

"Let's have a smoke."

* * * * *

"Now tell me the rest of it," said Duncan, after the pipes were set going. "About the mine, I mean."

"Well, it all seems simple. There are two hundred and seventy blind mules in the mine----"

"Blind? What do you mean?"

"Blind; yes. Not one of them has seen the light of day since he entered the mine, and some of them have been there for more than a dozen years. Living always in the dark, they have lost the power to see."

"Go on. What were you going to say?"

"Why, that those mules represent an investment of twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars, all absolutely needless. Their use involves also a wholly unnecessary expense for stablemen, feed, and general care, while the yearly deaths among them add heavily to the profit and loss account, on the loss side. Not one of those mules is needed in the mine. The work they do can be better done at one-tenth the cost--yes, it can be done at no cost at all; while if the mules are brought out and sold, they will bring from twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Go on. Explain. What do the mules do, and how is their work to be done without them?"

"They do just two things; they haul coal to the bottom of the inclined shaft, where it must be reloaded--at wholly unnecessary expense--in order to be hauled by machinery up the incline to the surface. Half the time they are employed in hauling water. The mine, you must understand, declines from the foot of the shaft to the end of the main heading. The very lowest level of all is there, where I propose to put in a ventilating shaft, with a fan; all the water flows to that point, flooding it. Under the antediluvian methods in use in this mine, all this water must be pumped into leaky cars and hauled by mules to the bottom of the the sloping shaft, whence it is drawn up by the engine, spilling half of it before it reaches the surface. Now, when I sink that ventilating shaft out there on the prairie, I must have an engine to turn the fan. Very well, I've got it. Among the junk that Captain Hallam bought when the war ended and the river navy went out of commission, there are parts of many little steam engines. I've busied myself at night in measuring these and fitting part of one to parts of another. The result is that I have made an engine out of this rubbish, which will not only drive the ventilating fan, but will also pump all the water out of the mine."

"But will not the mules be needed for hauling coal to the bottom of the shaft?"

"Not at all, if you are willing to spend a little money in an improvement--say a fourth or a third of what the mules will bring in the market--or considerably less than it costs to feed and curry them for a year."

"What is the nature of the improvement?"

"Why, simply an extension to every part of the mine of the cable system by which the engine now hauls the coal and water up the slope."

"But where are we to get power?"

"By using what we already have. Our great engine is a double one. We are using only one of its cylinders. We have only to connect the other in order to have all the power we need."

"But what about steam?"

"That's easy to make. We have several unused boilers, and as we burn nothing under our boilers but culm--the finely slaked coal for which there isn't a market, even at a tenth of a cent a ton--it will cost us absolutely not one cent to make all the steam we need."

"You seem to have thought it all out."

"I have done more than that. I have _worked_ it all out. I must work all day in a heading, of course, in order to make bread and butter. I have worked at night over these problems."

"And you are sure you've got the right answers?"

"Greatly more than sure--absolutely certain!"

"Very well. You are now chief engineer, or anything else you please, at a chief engineer's salary. You are to go to work at once digging the new ventilating and pumping shaft. You are to proceed at once to install your other improvements, and, when you report to me that there is no longer any use for the mules in the mine, I'll bring them all out and sell them. I'll look to the payments incidental to your work. My mission here is to make this mine a paying property. To that end, you are to bear in mind, I have an entirely free hand, and all the money needed is at my command. Now let that finish business for to-night. I want you to spend the rest of the dark hours in telling me your story and Mary's. I want to know all that has happened to both of you since--well, since she told me she loved you and not--me. You don't mind sitting up for the rest of the night?"

"Certainly not. I've sat up with you on far smaller provocation."

"But how about Mary?"

"She will sleep, or, if she doesn't--and I suppose she won't--she is entirely happy. She will be glad to have me spend the night with you."

"Very well, then. Tell me the story of what has happened to you and Mary since the day when we quarreled like a pair of idiots, and--like men of sense--decided not to fight. I want to hear it all."

"I'll tell it all," said the other. And he did.

XIX

DICK TEMPLE'S STORY

This is the story that Richard Temple told to his friend in the small hours of that night's morning. Let us dispense with quotation marks to cover it.

You know what my education was. My uncle, whose heir I was supposed to be, spared no expense to equip me for my life's work. He sent me to the best schools in the North, and afterwards to the best schools in Europe. Just at the beginning of the war, and because of it, I returned to Virginia. I secured a commission in the engineer corps, but I soon resigned it, because at the beginning of the war there was no earnest work for the engineer corps to do, and I foolishly thought there never would be. I enlisted as a private in the artillery, and before the end of the war I was a captain.

A few months before the war ended, I married Mary. You, of course, understand. Mary was the daughter of an ancient and honorable house, but she was living as a dependent in the family of a very remote relative--so remote that the kinship was rather mythical than real.

At that time I owned, or was supposed to own, my ancestral plantation, Robinet. My uncle at his death had left it to me.

As a man abundantly able to provide for a wife, I asked Mary to marry me, and to become the mistress of Robinet.

We were married about the time Fort Harrison fell into the enemy's hands. I remember that I had to delay the wedding in order to bombard Fort Harrison with my mortars, in preparation for the infantry assault, which it was hoped might recover the works.

When that affair was over, and our lines were reconstructed, I got leave of absence, and Mary and I were married.

I was foolish enough to believe, even in the autumn and winter of 1864, that we of the South were certain to win the war. As I look back now and consider the conditions then existing, I wonder at my own stupidity in not seeing what the end must be. However, that would have made no difference in any case. I must take Mary out of her condition of dependence, by marrying her, and I did so.

When the end came, I went home for a little while. My uncle had died in hopeless despondency. His estate, when I inherited it, was buried in debt, and with the negroes no longer mine, the creditors clearly saw that I could never pay out. They descended upon me in a swarm. There was nothing for me to do but make complete surrender of my possessions to them. These were sufficient to pay about forty cents on the dollar of the hereditary debt.

As soon as disaster thus came upon me, I set out to find employment in my profession, promising myself that I should soon be able to pay all the debts of which I had been acquitted as a bankrupt.

I knew that I had as much of skill in my profession as a young man with little practical experience could have. I saw that there must be a world of work done by way of developing the resources of the country after four years of paralyzing war. I thought there was pressing need of my services and my skill, and I confidently counted upon quickly achieving place and pay for myself.

I didn't know the ways of men then, but I soon found them out. Wherever there seemed to be an opening for me, I found that Somebody's son got the place, because Somebody could influence its bestowal.

Once I did get employment. There was a little stretch of railroad to be built, by way of connecting one line with others. I applied for the place of engineer, and was promptly informed that John Harbin had already been appointed to it. You know John. You know what a blockhead he is. I was graduated in the same class with him--he simply cheating his way through. When I heard of his appointment, I was dumbfounded. I knew that he simply could not do the work. He could not calculate a curvature to save his life. As for the more difficult operations of engineering, he was as helpless as a child.

I was curious to learn how he intended to get through with his task. I soon found out. He sent for me and asked me to become his "assistant." The pay he offered was barely sufficient to keep me alive. In brief, the arrangement was that I should do the work while he drew the pay and got the credit. That was because John Harbin's father was president of the railroad that was making the extension, and John Harbin's father had no purpose to let any good thing go out of the family.

I was rapidly getting my education in the ways of the world, and I was paying a high price for it. For a few months I did the work of a competent engineer on a salary that paid me less than a laborer's wage. Finally I resigned in disgust and set out to find something better. I tramped across country to every mine I could hear of--for in my studies I had specialized in mining--but nowhere could I secure employment. There was always some man with influence, where I had none, and always the man with the influence got the place.

At last I tramped my way out here. I had made up my mind to ask no longer for employment as an engineer. I applied to Davidson for a miner's place only. At first he refused, after looking at my hands and satisfying himself that I had had no experience in practical mining. But, as they pay miners here only by output--a certain price per ton for the coal a miner gets out--I persuaded him at last to let me go into a heading with a pick and a shovel, and a package of blasting powder.

Then I wrote to Mary, telling her of my situation, and charging her that she must from that day forth pay the cost of her living out of such money as I could send her. In order that I might send her enough--for I was determined that she should not be in any remotest way a dependent--I instantly cut off all my personal expenses. I had my soldier blanket, and my overalls. I needed no other clothes, for in the mine I always go barefoot. I was well used to sleeping out of doors, so I slept on the ground under the coal chutes. I took the job of cooking for a gang of bachelor miners, who gave me my board for my services.

In that way I planned to send all of my wages to Mary. But I didn't really know Mary. I thought of her always as a tenderly nurtured girl, who must be shielded at all hazards against hardship of every kind; and I meant so to shield her. But presently she revealed herself in another character. You know how it was in the army. The gentlemen soldiers, the men of good breeding, the men who had lived in luxury from childhood, with servants to anticipate every need, real or fancied, were the readiest to meet hardship, and to do hard work. You and I have seen such men drudging, willingly and cheerfully, in the half-frozen mud of the trenches, while other men, who had never known anything better than a log cabin for a home, bacon and greens for dinner, and a bed of straw to sleep upon, were almost in mutiny because of the hardships they must endure as soldiers.

It is true that "Blood will tell," and it is as true with women as with men. Blood asserted itself in Mary's case. Her answer was prompt to my letter telling her I had taken work as a miner. She utterly repudiated the thought that she was to go on living in idleness, while I should go on toiling to furnish her the means of living so. I shall never forget her words:

"I am coming to you quickly, Richard, to convert your miner's cabin into a home. Where the husband is, the wife should be with all she knows of helpfulness and cheer."

And she came. From that hour to this I have known what the word "home" means, far better than I ever did in my life before. We have two rooms--she built one of them, a little lean-to, with her own hands. And her presence glorifies both of them.

"I am very glad, Dick."

That was all that Duncan could say. It was all there was need for him to say.

XX

IN THE SUMMER TIME

Six months came and went before Duncan's work at the mine was done. Then, in mid-July, he returned to Cairo and gave an account of his stewardship. With Temple in control as superintendent and engineer, the mine had become a richly paying property, and with Temple there, there was no further need for Duncan's presence.

During that half year, Duncan had lived chiefly with the Temples in the superintendent's house, which Mary Temple had quickly converted from a barn-like structure, standing alone upon the face of the bald prairie, into a home in the midst of a garden of flowers.

During his long stay at the mine, Duncan had made frequent visits to Cairo. These were brief in duration, usually covering a Sunday, but each visit gave Guilford Duncan two opportunities that he desired. He could sit late on Saturday evening, discussing his plans with Captain Will Hallam, and on Sunday he had opportunity to become more and more closely acquainted with Barbara.

He made no formal calls upon her, and none were necessary. He simply adopted the plan of remaining after the one o'clock Sunday dinner and, little by little, Barbara came to feel that he expected her to join him in the little parlor, after his cigar was finished. He seemed to like the quiet conversations with her, while she regarded the opportunity to talk with a man so superior in education, culture, and intellect, to any other that she had known, as a privilege to be prized.

Their attitude toward each other at this time was peculiar. They were good friends, fond of each other's society, and seemingly, at least, they were nothing more. The fascination that Duncan had from the first felt in Barbara's presence was still upon him, but he accepted it more calmly now, and it soothed his natural restlessness, where at first it had excited it.

To Barbara, Guilford Duncan's attitude seemed a gracious condescension, which she did not dream that she deserved. She sometimes wondered that this young man of rare quality, who was sure of a welcome wherever he might go, should be content to sit with her throughout the Sunday afternoons, instead of seeking company better fit to entertain him. There were young women in Cairo who had been much more conventionally educated than she--young women who had mingled in society in Chicago, and in eastern cities. A few of them had even traveled in Europe--a thing very rare among Americans, and especially among Western Americans in the sixties. These young women knew all about operas and theaters. They had heard great musicians play and great singers sing. They had seen all the notable actors. They read the current literature of the time--the lighter part of it at least--and above all, they were mistresses of the "patter," which passes for brilliancy and sometimes even for wit in fashionable life.

Guilford Duncan visited none of these, and Barbara could not understand.

"He is too tired, I suppose," was her reflection, "when he runs down to Cairo for a Sunday rest. He doesn't want to see anybody or talk to anybody. I can easily understand that. So he just sits here instead of going out."

Barbara's explanation was obviously defective at one point. If Duncan did not care to see people, if he was too weary for conversation, how came it about that he stayed and talked gently, but constantly, with her, instead of going to the rooms he had fitted up for himself since prosperity had come to him? She had heard much of those rooms, of the multitude of books that he had put into them, of the bric-a-brac with which he had rendered them homelike and beautiful. They were in fact very simple rooms, inexpensively furnished. But Duncan had devoted a good deal of attention and an unfailing good taste to their furnishing and adornment, and thus, by the expenditure of a very little money he had managed to create a bachelor apartment which was the talk of the town.

"He is alone when he goes there," the girl explained to herself, when at last this question arose in her mind. "And I suppose he feels lonely. But why doesn't he go somewhere, instead of just sitting here in our little parlor or out in the porch?"

It was a riddle that she could not read, and for the present, at least, Duncan would not offer her any help in solving it. He knew now that Barbara Verne was the woman he loved--the only woman in all the world who could be to him what a wife must be to a man of his temperament, if two souls are to be satisfied.

But he saw clearly that Barbara Verne had no thought of that kind in her mind--or, at least, no such conscious thought. She was accustomed to think of herself as a very commonplace young woman, not at all the equal of this very superior man, to whom everybody in Cairo paid a marked deference. He understood Barbara as she did not at all understand herself. He had looked upon her white soul and bowed his head in worship of its purity, its nobility, its utter truthfulness. He knew the qualities of a mind that had no just self-appreciation. He felt, rather than knew, that no thought of his loving her--otherwise than as an elder brother might love a little sister--had ever crossed her consciousness. He felt that the abrupt suggestion of that thought would only shock and distress her.

"I'll find a way of making others suggest it, after a while," he resolved. "In the meanwhile----" He didn't finish the sentence, even in his own mind. But what he did in that "meanwhile" was to see as much as possible of Barbara, to talk with her impersonally, gently, and interestingly, to win her perfect trust and confidence, and, so far as possible, to make his presence a necessary thing to her. He paid her no public attention of any kind. But he paid no public or private attention to any other young woman. It was well understood that for a time he was living at the mine and coming to Cairo only for brief visits of a business character, at infrequent intervals. His neglect of society, therefore, seemed in need of no explanation, while his unostentatious intimacy with Barbara attracted no attention. The only person who ever spoke to him about it was Mrs. Will Hallam.

"You are going to marry Barbara Verne, of course?" she half said, half asked one day.

"If I can, yes," he answered.

"I'm very glad of that," and she said no more.

On his final return to Cairo, however, Duncan found himself expected in what is called society. Society was destined to disappointment, for Duncan went nowhere--except that he usually sat for some hours every Sunday afternoon in the vine-clad porch of the house in which he took his meals. Barbara's aunt often sat there with him. Barbara always did so, in answer to what seemed to be his wish. He made no calls. He declined all invitations to the little excursions on the river, which constituted the chief social activities of the summer time. He gave it out that he was too busily engaged with affairs to have time for anything else, and that explanation seemed for a time to satisfy public curiosity.

And that explanation was true. Guilford Duncan had begun to take upon himself the duties of a leader--in an important way--in the work of upbuilding which at that time was engaging the attention of all men of affairs. He had accumulated some money, partly by saving, but more by the profits of his little investments, and by being "let in on the ground floor" of many large enterprises, in the conception and conduct of which his abilities were properly appreciated by the capitalists who undertook them.

Except as a legal adviser, he was no longer a man employed by other men now. His relations with Will Hallam were closer than ever, but they were no longer those of secretary, or clerk, or employee in any other capacity. In many enterprises he was Hallam's partner. In all, he was his legal adviser, besides being employed in a like capacity by one or two railroad companies and the like. He had offices of his own, and while he was still not at all rich, or a man who was reckoned a capitalist, he was everywhere recognized as a young man of power and influence, whose brains had brought him into close association with the greater men of affairs, not only in Cairo, but in all parts of the country, and especially in New York. For that great city had by this time made itself completely the financial capital of the country, and its controlling hand was felt in every enterprise of large moment throughout the land.

XXI

AN INTERVIEW WITH NAPPER TANDY

For more than a year now Guilford Duncan had been diligently studying those processes of upbuilding which were so rapidly converting the West into an empire of extraordinary wealth and power. He had made many suggestions that had commended themselves for immediate execution, together with some that must wait for years to come. He had condemned some projects that seemed hopeful to others, and he had induced modifications in many.

All these things had been done mainly in his letters and reports to Captain Will Hallam, but the substance of those letters and reports had been promptly laid before others, especially before those great financiers of the East, upon whom all enterprises of moment throughout the country depended for the means of their accomplishment. In that way Guilford Duncan had become known to the "master builders" as he called these men, and had won a goodly share of their confidence. He was regarded as a young man of unusual gifts in the way of constructive enterprise--a trifle overbold, some thought, overconfident, even visionary, but, in the main, sound in his calculations, as results had shown when his plans were adopted. On the other hand, some projectors, whose enterprises he had discouraged as unsound or premature, complained that so far from being a visionary, he was in fact a pessimist, a discouraging force that stood in the way of that "development of the country" from which they hoped for personal gain of one kind or another. There were little towns that aspired to become larger towns, and stretches of undeveloped country in which Guilford Duncan was regarded as an arch enemy of progress--almost as a public enemy. The reason for this was the fact that he had advised against the construction of railroads, from which the little towns concerned, and the stretches of thinly peopled country between, had hoped to benefit, and his advice had been accepted as sound by the financiers to whom the projectors looked for the means of securing what they wanted.

Napper Tandy was Guilford Duncan's enemy from the hour in which Duncan had forced that little branch railroad in the coal regions to haul Hallam's coal on equal terms with his own. But Tandy had said nothing whatever about that. He never published his enmities till the time came. About the time of Duncan's return to Cairo, he added another to his offenses against Tandy, in a way to intensify that malignant person's hostility.

Tandy was scheming to secure a costly extension of this branch railroad through a sparsely settled and thin-soiled region, in a way that would greatly enrich himself, because of his vast property holdings there. He had well-nigh persuaded a group of capitalists to undertake the extension when, acting cautiously as financiers must, they decided to ask Duncan to study the situation and make a report upon the project. He had already studied the question thoroughly during his stay at the mines, and was convinced that nothing but loss could come of the attempt. The region through which the line must run was too poor in agricultural and other resources to afford even a hope of a paying traffic. The line itself must be a costly one because of certain topographical features, and finally another and shorter line, closely paralleling this proposed extension, but running through a much richer country, was already in course of construction.

Tandy knew all these things quite as well as Guilford Duncan did. But Tandy also knew many methods in business with which Duncan was not familiar.

As soon as he was notified by the capitalists with whom he was negotiating that they had employed Duncan to examine and report, and that their final decision would be largely influenced by his judgment, Tandy, with special politeness, wrote to Duncan, asking him to call at his house that evening "for a little consultation on business affairs that may interest both of us."

Duncan well knew that he had offended Tandy in the matter of the coal cars, but as Tandy had made no sign, he could see no possible reason for refusing this request for a business consultation. Moreover, Guilford Duncan felt himself under a double responsibility. He felt that he must not only guard and promote the interests of those who had employed him to study this question, but that he was also under obligations to consider carefully the interests involved on the other side. His function, he felt, was essentially a judicial one. He knew one side of the case. It was his duty to hear the other, and Tandy was the spokesman of that other.

Duncan's reception at Tandy's house was most gracious. The gentlewomen of the family were present to greet him, and Mrs. Tandy said, in welcoming him:

"Sometimes I feel like hating business--it so dreadfully occupies you men. But just now I am in love with business because it brings you to us in our home. We have never before had the honor of even a call from you, Mr. Duncan."

"I have given little attention to social duties, Mrs. Tandy," Duncan began apologetically. "I have done next to no calling. You see----"

"Oh, yes, I know how it is. Mr. Tandy says you are the most 'earnest' young man in Cairo, and of course we poor women folk understand that you are too much engaged with what Mr. Tandy calls 'affairs,' to give any time to us. But I am glad to greet you now, and to welcome you to our home. Perhaps, some day, when you and Mr. Tandy and--and Captain Hallam--have got all the things done that you want done, you will have more time for social duties. Mr. Tandy tells me you have achieved a remarkable success. He says you will soon be reckoned a rich man, and that you are already a man of very great influence. Now, I shouldn't say these things if I had any daughters to marry off. As I haven't any daughters, of course I am privileged. But I seriously want to say that you have won Mr. Tandy's regard in so great a degree that he is planning to make you his partner and associate in all his enterprises. He says you are to become one of our 'great men of affairs,' and that he means to have you 'with him' in all his undertakings for the development of our splendid western country."

When the voluble woman ceased, Guilford Duncan wondered whence she had got her speech.

"Tandy could never have composed it," he was sure. "She must have done it herself. But, of course, Tandy gave her the 'points.' She is a very clever woman. I remember it was she who invited Barbara as a guest of honor at some sort of a function three days after Barbara appeared at the fancy dress ball. She had never noticed her before. That woman is of a superior kind--in her way. I can't imagine a wife better 'fit' for a man like Tandy. All the same I don't mean to let her 'take up' Barbara. She's far too 'smart.' She isn't Barbara's sort."

"Now, I've ordered coffee and cigars for you gentlemen," said Mrs. Tandy, as she arose to leave. "Of course you want to 'talk business,' and when business is on the tapis we women folk must retire to our rooms. Business is our greatest rival and enemy, Mr. Duncan. On this occasion I not only take myself out of the way, but I have bidden my two sisters remain in the dining room until you two gentlemen shall have finished your talk. After that--perhaps ten o'clock will suit you--you are to come into the dining room, if you are gracious enough, and have a little supper."

Duncan bowed, in implication of a promise, which he was not destined to fulfill.

When the gracious gentlewoman had left the room, Napper Tandy came at once to the subject in hand.

"I'm more than glad, Duncan," he lyingly said, "that these financial people have asked you to examine and report upon this scheme of extension. You are so heartily in sympathy with every enterprise that looks to the development of our western country, and your intelligence is so superbly well informed that of course a project like this appeals to you."

"It does not appeal to me at all, Mr. Tandy," answered Duncan with a frankness that was the more brutal because it was his first word after Mrs. Tandy's flattering appeal.

"I do not think well of the extension. It----"

"Pardon me for interrupting," interposed Tandy, in fear that Duncan might commit himself beyond recall against the scheme. "Pardon me for interrupting, but you must see that the Redwood mines, in which, I understand, you own fifteen per cent.----"

"I own twenty-five per cent., for I have put my savings into that enterprise," answered Duncan.

"Well, so much the better. You must see that the Redwood mines, in which you own twenty-five per cent., will benefit as much as the Quentin mines do, by this extension of the railroad. It will give us two markets for our coal instead of one. We can play one market against the other, you see, and----"

"That isn't the question that I am employed and paid to answer," interrupted Duncan. "You have other and vastly greater interests than those of the mines, that would be served by the extension of the railroad. But the financiers who are asked to put their money into this project will be in nowise benefited, either by the increased earnings of your coal mine and ours, or by the development of your other and far greater interests that are dependent upon this extension. So when they employ me to report upon the project, I am not free to consider any of these things. I must consider only their interests. I must ask myself whether or not it will 'pay' them to undertake this extension. I _know_ that it will not. I _know_ that the extended line cannot, within a generation to come, pay even operating expenses, to say nothing of interest on the cost of construction. I am bound to set forth those facts in my report. They pay me to tell them what the facts are. Of course, I shall tell them truly. Otherwise I should not be an honest man. I should be a swindler, taking their money as pay for deceiving them and inducing them to undertake a losing enterprise."

"Now wait a while, Duncan. Listen to me. Your worst fault, and, in business, your worst handicap, is a tendency to go off at half-cock. You've learned a lot about business since you came to the West, but you still have your old Southern notions, and they embarrass you. Let me explain. I'm a business man, pure and simple. I haven't any ideas, or prejudices, or foolishnesses of any kind. Neither have those fellows in New York who have employed you to report on this scheme. They are playing the game, to win or lose as the case may be. Generally, they win, but now and then, in a little matter like this, they lose. Of course, they don't mind. They take their losses and their winnings together, and if the total result is on the right side they don't bother about the times they have put their money on the wrong card. It's all a gamble with them, you know."

"Is it? Then why do they pay me a large fee to find out the facts and report?"

"Oh, well----"

"Hear me out," interrupted Duncan. "These gentlemen have asked me for an opinion, and they are paying me for it. Of course I must, as an honest man, give them an honest judgment."

"Oh, that's all right. But you might be mistaken, you know. You've formed a judgment after a brief trip through the country. That country seems poverty stricken just now, but that's because it hasn't enjoyed the stimulating influence of a railroad. It is a better country than you think, as I can convince you, if you'll let me take you through it in a carriage. We can start at once--to-morrow morning--run out to the mines by rail, and there take a carriage and drive through the country. I've ordered the carriage, with abundant supplies, from Chicago. I want to show you the resources of the country. I'll convince you, before we get back, that the country will build up as soon as the railroad penetrates it, and that there will be an abundant traffic for the road."

"Pardon me," answered Duncan. "I've already been through that region. I've questioned every farmer as to his crops. I've questioned every merchant in every village as to his possible shipments by the railroad, and as to the amount of goods he hopes to sell if the railroad is built. Their replies are hopelessly discouraging. Taking their outside estimates as certain, there cannot be enough traffic over such a line for twenty years to come, to pay operating expenses. In the meantime the men whom you are asking to build the road must lose not only the interest on their investment, but the investment itself. I know all the facts that bear upon the case."

"All but one," answered Tandy.

"What is that one?"

"That a favorable report from you means a check, right now and here, to-night, payable to 'Bearer,' for ten thousand dollars. My check is supposed to be good for all it calls for. You can have it now and it will be cashed to-morrow morning. Here it is. Payable to bearer as it is, you needn't endorse it, and you need not be known in the matter in any way. I'm talking 'business' now."

Duncan scanned the face of his interlocutor for an instant. Then he rose from his seat, and with utterance choked by emotion managed to say:

"I quite understand. You would bribe me with that check. You would hire me to betray the confidence of the men who are paying me a very much smaller sum than ten thousand dollars. You propose to buy my integrity, my honor, my soul. Very well. My integrity, my honor, and my soul are not for sale at any price. I shall make an honest report in this matter. Good-night, sir! Perhaps you will make my excuses to the ladies for not joining them at supper as I promised to do. As for the rest, you may explain to them that I am not such a scoundrel as you hoped I might be."

And with that Guilford Duncan stalked out of the house, helping himself to his hat as he passed the rack in the entry way.

XXII

UNDER THE HONEYSUCKLES

If Guilford Duncan had been a little more worldly wise than he was, he would have gone at once to Captain Will Hallam. He would have told that shrewdest of shrewd men of the world all that had passed between himself and Tandy, and he would have asked Will Hallam's advice as to what course to pursue.

Instead of that Guilford Duncan went at once to Barbara. He felt a need of sympathy rather than a need of advice, and he had learned to look to Barbara, above all other people in the world, for sympathy.

He was still a good deal disturbed in his emotions when Barbara greeted him in the little porch, and it was a rather confused account that he gave her of what had happened.

"I don't quite understand," said Barbara at last. "Perhaps if you have a cup of tea you can make the matter clearer," and without waiting for assent or dissent, she glided out to the kitchen, whence she presently returned bearing a fragrant cup of Oolong.

"Now," she said, after he had sipped the tea, "tell me again just what has happened. You were too much excited, when you told me before, to tell me clearly."

"Well, it amounts to this," answered Duncan. "That scoundrel Tandy----"

"Stop!" said Barbara, in an authoritative tone. "Never mind Tandy's character. If you go off on that you'll never make me understand."

In spite of his agitation, Duncan laughed. "How you do order me about!"