Chapter XV: For the Honor of the Father

Two and one-half hours later a group of anxious reporters, clustered at the door of the Uplift Building, were galvanized into life by the arrival of a taxicab. The chauffeur had driven like one possessed. Out of it leaped Bertram Meade. He was recognized instantly.

"At last," said the foremost of them, as he recognized the newcomer. "We'll get something definite now."

"You know about the bridge, Mr. Meade," asked another, striving to force his way through the crowd, which broke into a sudden clamor of questioning.

Meade nodded. He recognized the first speaker, their hands met. This was a man of his own age named Rodney, who had been Meade's classmate at Cambridge, his devoted friend thereafter. Instead of active practice he had chosen to become a writer on scientific subjects and was there as a representative of _The Engineering News_. There were sympathy and affection in his voice, and look, and in the grasp of his hand.

"Have you seen my father, Rodney?" Meade asked, quickly moving to the elevator, followed by all the men.

"At the house they said he was not there, and here at the office we get no answer."

As Meade turned he saw his father's secretary coming slowly through the entrance.

"There's his secretary," he said. "Shurtliff," he called out.

"Yes, Mr. Meade," said the old man, who was a pitiable spectacle.

For an instant young Meade realized what this would be to Shurtliff.

"My father?"

"I left him in the office two hours ago."

"Had he heard the news?

"It had just come, sir, and----"

"Where have you been?"

"He told me to--to--go away and--and leave him alone. I have been wandering about the streets. My God, Mr. Meade, what is going to become of us?"

Outside in the street the newsboys were shrieking:

"Extry! Extry! All about the collapse of the International Bridge. Two hundred engineers and workmen lost."

Shurtliff had one of the papers in his hand. Meade tore it from him.

"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?" stared at him in big red headlines.

"Gentlemen," said Meade, "I can answer that question"--he held up the paper so that all might see--"the fault--the blame--is mine."

"We'll have to see your father, Bert," said Rodney.

"He can add nothing at all to what I have said, old man."

"He will have to confirm it," said another. "It's too grave a matter to rest on your word alone."

"You can't see my father."

"He is in this building, we know, and he'll never leave it without running the gauntlet of us all," cried another amid a chorus of approval.

Meade realized there was no escape. They all piled into the elevator with him and Shurtliff. They followed him up the corridor. He stopped before the door of the office.

"I forbid you to come in," he said. "This is my father's private office----"

"Have no fear, Bert," said Rodney firmly. "We don't intend to break in. We understand how you feel. We won't cross that threshold unless and until you invite us. But I point out to you that this is a matter of the greatest public concern, that hundreds of lives have been lost, that the whole world is interested, that somebody is to blame. You say that you are, but your father was the chief engineer. His is the responsibility unless it can be shown otherwise."

"If you will give me ten minutes, Rod, I will admit you and all the rest. You can then see my father and you may question him fully."

"Very good, that's perfectly fair," said Rodney. "And I am sure I speak for the others. We will wait here until you say the word and then all we shall want will be a statement from your father."

"Thank you, old man. Come, Shurtliff," said Meade, turning his key in the lock. The two men entered and carefully closed the door behind them.

The door was scarcely shut when Helen Illingworth left the elevator and came rapidly up the corridor. She had called at the office before and had no need to ask the way. The reporters gathered around the door moved to give her passage while they stared at her with deep if respectful curiosity. Many of these men were the iron and steel business reporters. They did not know her, of course, but her beauty, her distinction, and her interest, and even her distress, were evident. The reporters who dealt in social matters would have recognized her at once. Indeed her face was vaguely familiar to some of them because she was a reigning beauty and a belle, and her picture had appeared in different papers many times.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," she began, "but I am very anxious to see the younger Bertram Meade."

"He has just gone into the office," answered Rodney respectfully.

The girl raised her hand to knock.

"A moment, please; perhaps you had better understand the situation. The International Bridge----"

"I know all about it."

"I represent _The Engineering News_ and these other gentlemen various New York papers. Now Meade, Junior, has just assumed the full responsibility for the faulty construction and we are waiting to get confirmation of that from his father. It is a serious matter and----"

The girl came to a sudden determination. She could not declare herself too soon or too publicly.

"My name is Illingworth," she said, and as the hats of the surprised reporters came off, she continued, "I am the daughter of the president of the Martlet Bridge Company, which was erecting the International."

"Yes, Miss Illingworth," answered Rodney, "and did you come here to represent him?"

"I am Mr. Bertram Meade, Junior's, promised wife, and I am here because it is the place where I ought to be. When the man I love is in trouble I must be with him."

Now she raised her hand again, but Rodney was too quick for her. He knocked lightly on the door and then struck it heavily several times. The sound rang hollowly through the corridor as it always does when the door of an empty room is beaten upon. There was no answer for a moment.

"Oh, I must get in," said the woman.

Rodney knocked again and this time the door was opened. Shurtliff stood in the way. He had been white and shaken before, but there are no adjectives to describe his condition now. So anguished and shocked was his appearance that everybody stared. Shurtliff moistened his lips and tried to speak. He could not utter a word, but he did manage to point toward the private office.

"Perhaps I would better go first," said Rodney, as the secretary stepped back to give them passage.

Helen Illingworth followed and then the rest. Young Meade was in the private office into which they all came. He was standing erect by his father's chair. He was pale and strained also, but in his eyes burned the fire of deep determination. The great bulk of the old engineer was slouched down in that chair. His body was bent down over his desk. His head lay on the desk face downward. One great arm, his left, extended shot straight across the desk. His fist was clenched, his right arm hung limp by his side. He was still.

There was something unmistakably terrible in his motionless aspect. They had no need to ask what had happened. A sharp exclamation from the woman, not a scream but a sort of catch of the breath as if to repress an outbreak, was the only sound that broke the silence, as she alone went toward the standing engineer. The men stood there bareheaded while Helen Illingworth passed around Rodney and stepped to her lover's side.

"You can't question my father now, gentlemen," said Meade, who from Meade Junior had suddenly become Meade Only, "he is dead."

In the outer office they heard Shurtliff brokenly calling the doctor on the telephone and asking him to notify the police.

"Did he----" began one hesitatingly.

"He was too big a man to do himself any hurt, I know," answered Meade proudly, as he divined the question. "The autopsy will tell. But I am sure that the failure of the bridge has broken his heart."

"And we can't fix the responsibility now," said Rodney, who for his friend's sake was glad of this consequence of the old man's death.

"Yes, you can," said the young man.

He leaned forward and laid his right hand on his dead father's shoulder. Helen Illingworth had possessed herself of his left hand. She lifted it and held it to her heart. The engineer seemed unconscious of the action and still it was the greatest thing he had ever experienced. Meade spoke slowly and with the most weighty deliberation in an obvious endeavor to give his statement such clear definiteness that no one could mistake it.

"Here in the presence of my dead father," he began, "whose life I have ended and whose career I have ruined, but whose fame shall be unimpaired, I solemnly declare that I alone am responsible for the design of the member that failed. My father was getting along in years. He left a great part of the work to me. He pointed out what he thought was a structural weakness in the trusses, but I overbore his objections. I alone am to blame. The Martlet Bridge Company employed us both. They said they wanted the benefit of my father's long experience and my later training and research."

"Do you realize, Meade," said Rodney, as the pencils of the reporters flew across their pads, "that in assuming this responsibility which, your father being dead, cannot be----"

"I know it means the end of my career," said Meade, forcing himself to speak those words. "My father's reputation is dearer to me than anything on earth."

"Even than I?" whispered the woman.

"Oh, my God!" burst out the man, and then he checked himself and continued with the same monotonous deliberation as before, and with even more emphasis, "I can allow no other interest in life, however great, to prevent me from doing my full duty to my father."

Indeed, as he had been fully resolved to protect his old father's fame had the father survived the shock, the fact that the old man was dead and helpless to defend himself only strengthened his son's determination. The appeal of the dead man was even more powerful than if he had lived. Meade could not glance down at that crushed, broken, impotent figure and fail to respond. It was not so much love--never had he loved Helen Illingworth so much as then--as it was honor. The obligation must be met though his heart broke like his father's; even if it killed him, too.

And the woman! How if it killed her? He could not think of that. He could think of nothing but of that inert body and its demand. He had to lie, even to swear falsely, before God and man if necessary, for him. There was no other possible answer to what Meade, wrongly if you will, but nevertheless unmistakably, conceived to be his father's appeal. He completely misjudged his dead father, to be sure. But that thought did not enter his head. He spoke as he did because he must.

"Have you no witnesses, no evidence to substantiate your extraordinary statement?" asked Rodney.

"I can substantiate it," said Shurtliff, coming into the room, having finished his telephoning. "The doctor and the police will be here immediately, but before they come----" and he drew himself up and faced the reporters boldly. "Gentlemen, I can testify that everything that Mr. Bertram Meade has said is true. I happened to be here when my dead friend and employer got the telegram announcing the failure of the bridge and, although he knew it was his son's fault, he bravely offered to assume the responsibility and he told me to go to the newspapers and tell them that it was his fault and that his son had protested in vain against his design."

"Why didn't you do it?" asked one of the reporters.

"I couldn't, sir," faltered the old man. "It wasn't true. The son there was to blame."

He sank down in his seat and covered his face with his hands and broke into dry, horrible sobs. It was not easy for him either, this shifting of responsibility.

"You see," said young Meade, "I guess that settles the matter. Now you have nothing more to do here."

"Nothing," said Rodney at last, "not in this office at least. We must wait for the doctor, but we can do that outside."

"Rod, will you kindly take charge outside--my father's secretary, you see, is not able to do so--and let no one come in here except the doctor until the police arrive. You have your story?"

"Yes," said Rodney with a great pity for his friend, in whose innocence he somehow continued to believe in spite of what he had said. "We've had a full account of the accident telegraphed from the works and now this completes it."

One by one the men filed out, leaving the dead engineer with his son, the secretary, and the woman in the room.

The iron strain which Meade had put upon himself gave way and not the least part of his breakdown was the consciousness of the lie he had told so bravely and so gallantly to shield his father. And now at last came the realization that he had not only thrown away his own reputation and career, but that he had cast the woman he loved into the discard also. He drew his hand away from her, turned, rested his head on his arm on the top of the low bookcase as if to shut out from his sight what he stood to lose.

"Bert," said the woman, coming closer to him and laying her hand on his shoulder, while he made no effort to turn his head around, "why or how I feel it I cannot tell, but I know in my heart that you are doing this for your father's sake, that what you said was not true. Things you have said to me----"

"Did I ever say anything to you," began Meade in fierce alarm, while Shurtliff started to speak but checked himself, "to lead you to think that I suspected any weakness in the bridge?"

The woman was watching him keenly and listening to him with every sense on the alert. Nothing was escaping her and she detected in his voice a note of sharp alarm and anxiety as if he might have said something which could be used to discredit his assertion now.

"Perhaps not in words but in little things, suggestions," she answered quietly. "I can't put my hand on any of them, I can hardly recall anything, but the impression is there."

Meade smiled miserably at her and again her searching eyes detected relief in his.

"It is your affection that makes you say that," he said, "and as you admit there is really nothing. What I said just now is true."

It was much harder to speak the lie to this clear-eyed woman, who loved him, than to the reporters. He could scarcely complete the sentence, and in the end sought to look away.

"Bertram Meade," said the woman, putting both her hands upon his shoulder, "look me in the face and before God and man, and in the presence of your dead father and remembering I am the woman you love, to whom you have plighted yourself, and tell me that you have spoken the truth and that the blame is yours."

Meade tried his best to return her glance, but those blue eyes plunged through him like steel blades. He did not dream in their softness could be developed such fire. He was speechless. After a moment he looked away. He shut his lips firmly. He could not sustain her glance, but nothing could make him retract or unsay his words.

"I have said it," he managed to get out hoarsely.

"It's brave of you. It's splendid of you," she said. "I won't betray you. I don't have to."

"What do you mean?" asked the man.

But the woman had now turned to Shurtliff. In his turn she also seized him in her emotion and she shook him almost eagerly.

"You, you know that it is not true. Speak!"

But she had not the power over the older man that she had over the younger. The secretary forced himself to look at her. He cared nothing for Miss Illingworth, but he had a passion for the older Meade that matched hers for the younger.

"He has told the truth," he cried almost like a baited animal. "No one is going to ruin the reputation of the man I have served and to whom I have given my life without protest from me. It's his fault, his, his, his!" he cried, his voice rising with every repetition of the pronoun as he pointed at Meade.

Helen Illingworth turned to her lover again. She was quieter now.

"I know that neither of you is telling the truth," she said. "Lying for a great cause, lying in splendid self-sacrifice. You are ruining yourself for your father's name and he is abetting. Why? It can't make any difference to him now. It would not make any difference to him even if you were responsible for the collapse of the bridge. We all make mistakes. My father has made many, and Mr. Curtiss. But it makes a great difference to me. Have you thought of that? I'm going to marry you anyway. All that foolish talk about our marriage depending on the bridge is nothing. I told my father so. He said he'd repudiate me if I came here. But he'll not do that. He'll be terribly angry, but he'll forgive me. Only tell me the truth, Bert. By our love I ask you. If you want me to keep your secret I'll do it. Indeed I'll have to keep it, for I have no evidence yet to prove it false, but if you won't tell me I'll get that evidence, I will find out the truth, and then I shall publish it to the whole world and then----"

"And you would marry me then?" asked Meade, swept away by this profound pleading.

"I will marry you now, instantly, at any time," answered the girl. "Indeed you need me. Guilty or innocent, I am yours and you are mine."

"You don't understand," said Meade. "I am ruined beyond hope. I can't drag you down."

"No," said the girl, "but you can lift me up as high as your heart, and no man can place me in a nobler position."

"Listen," protested the engineer, "nothing will ever relieve me of the blame, of the shame, of the disgrace of this. My life as it has been planned is now wrecked beyond repair. I don't know whether this awful cloud can ever be lifted, whether I can ever be anything again among men. But I am a man. I have youth still, and strength and inspiration. When I can hold up my head among men and when I have won back their respect, it may even be a meed of their admiration, I shall humbly sue for that you now so splendidly offer, but until that time I am nothing to you and you are free."

There was a finality in his tone which the woman recognized. She could as well break it down as batter a stone wall with her naked fist. She looked at him a long time.

"Very well," she said at last, "unless I shall be your wife I shall be the wife of no man. I shall wait confident in the hope that there is a just God, and that He will point out some way."

"And if not?"

"I shall die, when it pleases God, still loving you."

"And being loved," he cried, sweeping her to his heart, "until the end."