Thrice Armed

"Once," she said, "once only, he held my wrist. That was all, Jimmy; but I feel it left a mark. If it could be removed that way, I would burn it out. Now you know what the thing cost me – but I did it."

The men would not look at each other, and if Eleanor had left them then it would have been a relief to both. Her suppressed passion had stirred and shaken them, and they realized that the efforts they had made were, after all, not to be counted in comparison with what the girl had done.

It was Jordan who spoke first. "Well," he said, with the air of one anxious to get away from a painful subject, "we have got to be practical. The question is, how are we to strike Merril? Seems to me, in the first case, we'll hand him a salvage claim. I'll fix it at half her value, anyway, and he'll never fight us when he hears of the engineer's statement. So far as I know, he can't recover under his policy, and we could head him off from going to the underwriters if he can. The next point is – are the miner fellow and the Adelaide's skipper likely to take any independent action on their own account? I don't think that's very probable."

"Nor do I," said Jimmy. "It isn't wise of a skipper to turn around on a man like Merril, unless it's in a court where he has the law behind him, and the prospector would scarcely attempt to do anything alone. Besides, without the document to produce, they would have very little to go upon – and what is more to the purpose, both of them promised to let me handle the thing."

Jordan nodded as if satisfied. "That," he said, "makes it easier. We're going to collect our money on the salvage claim, and when Merril has raised it he'll have strained his resources, so he won't count very much as an opponent of the Shasta Company. The man's crippled already."

The fact that his comrade was apparently not desirous of proceeding to extremities afforded Jimmy a vast relief, but it vanished suddenly when Eleanor broke in.

"Can't you understand that the affair must be looked at from another point of view as well as the commercial one?" she asked.

It was a difficult question, and when neither of them answered her the girl went on:

"It doesn't seem to occur to you that what you suggest amounts to covering up a conspiracy and allowing a scoundrel to escape his deserts," she said. "There is another point, too. You will have to inform the police about the Robertson affair, Jimmy, and his connection with Merril is bound to appear when they lay hands on him."

"That," said Jimmy, with a trace of dryness, "is hardly likely. The man will be heading for the diggings by this time if he isn't drowned, and there's very little probability of the police getting hold of him there."

Eleanor laughed, a very bitter laugh, as she fixed her eyes on him.

"So you are quite content with Charley's plan – to extort so many dollars from Merril?" she said. "It has one fatal defect; it does not satisfy me."

"Now – " commenced Jordan, but the girl checked him with a gesture.

"I want him crushed, disgraced, imprisoned, ruined altogether."

"Anyway, I owe it to my associates to make sure of the money first."

"And after that you feel you have to stand by Jimmy?"

The man winced when she flung the question at him; but when he did not answer she appeared to rouse herself for an effort, leaning forward a trifle with a gleam in her eyes and the red flush plainer in her cheek.

"Still," she said, "if Jimmy is what I think him, he will not ask it of you. I want him to go back six years to the time he came home – from Portland, wasn't it, Jimmy? – and stayed a few weeks with us. Was there any shadow upon us then, though your father was getting old? I want you to remember him as he was when you went away, a simple, kindly, abstemious, and fearless man. It surely can't be very hard."

Jimmy face grew furrowed, and he set his lips tight; but he said nothing, and the girl went on:

"It was not so the next time you came back. Something had happened in the meanwhile. The bondholder had laid his grasp on him. He was weakening under it, and the lust of drink was crushing the courage out of him. Still, you must remember that it was his one consolation. Then came the awful climax of the closing scene. I had to face it with Charley – you were away – but you must realize the horror it brought me."

Jordan turned toward her abruptly. "Eleanor," he said, with a trace of hoarseness in his voice, "let it drop. You can't bear the thing a second time."

She stopped him with a frown. "I want you to picture him deluding Prescott with one of the pitiful, cunning excuses that drunkards make. Wasn't it horrible in itself that he should have sunk to that? Then it shouldn't be very hard to imagine him bribing a lounger outside to buy him the whisky, and the carousal afterward with a stranger, a dead-beat and outcast low enough to profit by his evident weakness. Still, he was your father, Jimmy. Then there was the groping for matches and the upsetting of the lamp. Somebody brought Charley, and when he came your father lay with the clothes charred upon his burned limbs, still half-crazed with drink and mad with pain. Must I tell you once more what I saw when Charley brought me? I am willing, if there is nothing else that will rouse you. You have heard it before, but I want to burn it into your brain, so that however hard you try you can't blot out that scene."

Jimmy's face was grim and white, but while he sat very still his comrade rose resolutely.

"Eleanor," he said, "if you attempt to recall another incident of that horrible night I shall carry you by main force out of the room."

The girl turned to him with a little gesture. "Then I suppose I must submit. You have a man's strength and courage in you – or I think you would be afraid to marry me; but one could fancy that Jimmy has none. The daughter of the man who ruined his father has condescended to be gracious to him. Still, I have a little more to say. She is his daughter, his flesh and blood, Jimmy, and his pitiless, hateful nature is in her. That is the woman you wish to marry. The mere notion of it is horrible. Still, you can't marry her, Jimmy. You must crush her father, and drag him to his ruin. After all, there is a little manhood somewhere in you. You will take the engineer's statement to the underwriters and the police. You must – you have to."

Jimmy stood up slowly, with the veins swollen on his forehead and a gray patch in his cheek. "Eleanor," he said hoarsely, "I believe there is a devil in you; but I think you are right in this. Jordan, will you hand me that paper?"

He stood still for at least a minute when his comrade passed it to him, and the girl watched him with a little gleam in her eyes. His face was furrowed, and looked worn as well as very hard. There was not a sound in the little room, and the splash of the ripples on the Shasta's plates outside came in through the open ports with a startling distinctness. Jordan felt that the tension was becoming almost unendurable. Then Jimmy turned slowly toward his sister, and though the pain was still in his face it had curiously changed. There was a look in his blue eyes that sent a thrill of consternation through her. They were very steady, and she knew that she had failed.

"I can't do it. It was not the girl's fault, and she shall not be dragged through the mire," he said. Then he looked at his comrade. "What I am going to do may cost you a good deal of money, and my appointment to the Shasta is, of course, in your hands. I am going straight from here to Merril's house."

"Well," said Jordan simply, "it may cost us both a good deal, but I guess I must face it. If I were fixed as you are, that is just what I should do."

Jimmy said nothing, but he went out swiftly, and Eleanor turned to her companion with a very bitter smile when the door closed behind him.

"Ah!" she said, "has that girl beguiled you too? You had Merril in your hands, and instead of crushing him you are going to smooth his troubles away."

"No," said Jordan dryly, "I don't quite think Jimmy will do that. In some respects, I understand him better than you do. He wants to save the girl all the sorrow and disgrace he can, but he is going to run her father out of this city. Jimmy's not exactly clever, and it's quite likely he'll mix up things when he meets Merril; but, for all that, I guess he'll carry out just what he means to do. Somehow, he generally does. That's the kind of man he is."

He stopped a moment, and a smile crept into his eyes. "I don't know what the result will be, and it may be the break-up of the Shasta Company; but I can't blame Jimmy."

"Ah!" said Eleanor, "you, the man I counted on, are turning against me as well as my brother."

Then the sustaining purpose seemed to die out of her, and she sank back suddenly in her chair with her face hidden from him. Jordan crossed the little room, and stooping beside her slipped an arm about her.

"My dear," he said, "you can count on me always and in everything but this. It's because of what you are to me that I'm standing by Jimmy."

CHAPTER XXXI

MERRIL CAPITULATES

Merril was not in his house when Jimmy reached it, but it appeared that he was expected shortly, and the latter, who resolved to wait for him, was shown into a big artistically furnished room. He sat there at least ten minutes, alone and grim in face, with a growing disquietude, for his surroundings had their effect on him. The house was built of wood, but expense had not been spared, and those who have visited the Western cities know how beautiful a wooden dwelling can be made. Jimmy looked out through the open windows on to a wide veranda framed with a slender colonnade of wooden pillars supporting fretted arches of lace-like delicacy. The floor of the room, which was choicely parquetted in cunningly contrasted wood, also caught his eye, and there were Indian-sewn rugs of furs on it of a kind that he knew was rarely purchased in the north, except on behalf of Russian princes and American railroad kings. The furniture, he fancied by the timber, was Canadian-made, but it had evidently been copied from artistic European models; and though he was far from being a connoisseur in such things, they had all a painful significance to him just then.

They suggested wealth and taste and luxury; and it seemed only fitting that the woman he loved should have such a dwelling, while he realized that it was his hand which must deprive her of all the artistic daintiness to which she had grown accustomed and no doubt valued. He, a steamboat skipper of low degree, had, like blind Samson, laid a brutal grasp upon the pillars of the house, and he could feel the trembling of the beautiful edifice. This would have afforded him a certain grim satisfaction, had it not been for the fact that it was impossible to tell whether the woman he would have spared every pain might not be overwhelmed amid the ruin when he exerted his strength. It must be exerted. In that he could not help himself.

While he sat there with a hard, set face, she came in, dressed, as he realized, in harmony with her surroundings. Her gracious patrician quietness and her rich attire troubled him, and he felt, in spite of all Eleanor had said, that it would be a vast relief if he could abandon altogether the purpose that had brought him there, though to do so would, it was evident, set the girl further apart from him than ever, since her father's station naturally stood as a barrier between them. Still, he remembered what he owed the men who had sent him on board the Shasta– Jordan, Forster, old Leeson, and two or three more; he could not turn against them now.

Anthea stood still just inside the door, looking at him half-expectant, but with something that was suggestive of apprehension in her manner, and Jimmy felt the hot blood creep into his face when he moved quietly forward and kissed her. In view of what he had to do, it would, he felt, have been more natural if she had shrunk from him in place of submitting to his caress. She appeared to recognize the constraint that was upon him, for she turned away and sat down a little distance from him.

"Jimmy," she said, "I'm glad to see you back. I have been lonely without you – and a little uneasy. Indeed, though I don't know exactly why, I am anxious now."

Then she looked at him steadily. "It is the first time you have been here. Something unusual must have brought you. Jimmy, is it war?"

The man made a deprecatory gesture. "I'm afraid it is," he said. "I don't think there can be any compromise."

"Ah!" said the girl, with a start, "you don't look like a man who has come to offer terms."

Jimmy was still standing, and he leaned somewhat heavily on the back of a chair. "I have to do something that I shrink from, but it must be done. If there were no other reason, I daren't go back on the men who have confidence in me; that is – not altogether, though in a way – I am now betraying them. Anthea, you will not let this thing stand between us?"

"No;" and the girl's voice was steady, though a trifle strained. "At least, not always. Still, I have felt that some day I should have to choose whom I should hold to – my father or you. It is very hard to face that question, Jimmy."

"Yes," said Jimmy gravely; "I am afraid you must choose to-night. You know how much I want you, but I have sense enough to recognize that I may bring trouble on both of us if I urge you to do what you might afterward regret."

Anthea said nothing for almost a minute, and because of the restraint he had laid upon himself Jimmy understood the cost of her quietness. It seemed necessary that both should hold themselves in hand. Then she turned to him again.