The Helpers

"What all the world knows – and a little more. Of course you have read what the newspapers had to say?"

"I have never seen a mention of his name."

"Why, you must have; they were full of it a month or two ago, and will be again as soon as the range opens and we find out what the big bonanza has been doing through the winter. You don't mean to say that you didn't read about the free-gold strike in the Elk Mountains, and the locomotive race, and the shooting scrape in the hotel at Aspen, and all that?"

The steady eyes were veiled and Connie's breath came in nervous little gasps. Any man save downright Richard Bartrow would have made a swift diversion, were it only to an open window or back to the ballroom. But he sat stocklike and silent, letting her win through the speechlessness of it to the faltered reply.

"I – I saw it; yes. But the name of that man was – was not Jeffard."

"No, it was Jeffers, or anything that came handy in the newspaper accounts. But that was a reporter's mistake."

"Dick," – the steadfast eyes were transfixing him again, – "are you quite sure of that?"

"I ought to be. I was the man who helped him out at the pinch and got him started on the locomotive chase."

"You helped him? – then all those things they said about him were true?"

It was Bartrow's turn to hesitate. "I – I'm trying not to believe that, Connie."

"But you know the facts; or at least, more of them than the newspapers told. Did the claim really belong to him, or to James Garvin?"

Bartrow crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and again had recourse to his watch.

"I wish you'd leave the whole business up in the air, Connie, the way I'm trying to. It doesn't seem quite fair, somehow, to condemn him behind his back."

"But the facts," she insisted. "You know them, don't you?"

"Yes; and they're against him." Bartrow confessed it in sheer desperation. "The claim was Garvin's; Jeffard not only admitted it, but he started out on the chase with the declared determination of standing between Garvin and those two blacklegs who were trying to plunder him. That's all; that's as far as my facts go. Beyond that you – and the newspapers – know as much as I do."

"Not quite all, Dick. You say you helped him; that means that you lent him money, or borrowed it for him. Did he ever pay it back?"

Bartrow got upon his feet at that and glowered down upon her with mingled chagrin and awe in gaze and answer.

"Say, Connie, you come precious near to being uncanny at times, don't you know it? That was the one thing I didn't mean to tell any one. Yes, I borrowed for him; and no, he didn't pay it back. That's all – all of the all. If you put me in a stamp-mill you couldn't pound out anything else. Now, for pity's sake, let me get back to Miss Van Vetter before I fall in with the notion that I'm too transparent to be visible to the naked eye."

She rose and took his arm.

"You're good, Dickie," she said softly; "much too good for this world. I'm sorry for you, because it earns you so many buffetings."

"And you think I'm in for another on Jeffard's account."

"I am sure you are – now. The last time I saw him he wore a mask; a horrible mask of willful degradation and cynicism and self-loathing; but I saw behind it."

They were making a slow circuit of the ballroom in search of Connie's cousin, and the throng and the music isolated them.

"What did you see?"

"I saw the making of a strong man; strong for good or for evil; a man who could compel the world-attitudes that most of us have to sue for, or who would be strong enough on the evil side to flout and ignore them. I thought then that he was at the parting of the ways, but it seems I was mistaken, – that the real balancing moment came with what poppa calls the 'high-mountain bribe,' – Satan's offer of the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them."

Now, a thronged ballroom is scarcely a fit place for heart-to-heart outreachings; but there be loyal hearts who are not constrained by their encompassments, and Bartrow was of that brotherhood. They had attained a corner where one might swing a short-sword without fear of beheading the nearest of the dancers or out-sitters, and he faced about and took both of Connie's hands in his.

"Do you know, little sister, I'm awfully glad you're able to talk that way about him. There was a time when I began to be afraid – for your sake first, and afterward for" —

It is conceivable that the frankest of young women may have some reserves of time and place, if not of subjects, and before honest Dick could finish, Constance had freed herself and was reproaching young Calmaine for not seeking her out for the dance in process, – which was his.

Teddy's apology had in it the flavor of long acquaintance and the insolence thereof. "You're a cool one," he said, when they had left Bartrow behind. "As if I didn't stand for five good minutes at the door of that conservatory place, with you eye-pistoling and daggering me to make me go away!"

Thinking about it afterward, Bartrow wondered a little that Connie seemed bent on ignoring him through the remainder of the functional hours, large and small, but so it was. And when finally he was constrained to put Miss Van Vetter in the carriage, Connie's good-night and good-by were of the briefest. Miss Van Vetter, too, was silent on the homeward drive, and this Connie remarked, charging it openly to Dick's account when they were before the fire in Myra's room contemplating the necessity of going to bed.

"No, Mr. Bartrow was all that the most exacting person could demand, – and more," said Miss Van Vetter, going to the mirror to begin the relaxing process. "It was something he told me."

"About Mr. Jeffard?"

"Yes; how did you know?"

"I didn't know – I guessed."

"Isn't it dreadful!"

"No. Some of the other things he did might have been that; but this is unspeakable."

Myra turned her back upon the mirror and came to stand behind Connie's chair with her arms about her cousin's neck.

"Connie, dear, do you know that one time I was almost afraid that you, – but now I am glad, – glad that your point of view is – is quite extrinsic, you know."

Connie's gaze was upon the fire in the grate, fresh-stirred and glowing, a circumstance which may have accounted for the sudden trembling of the eyelids and the upwelling of tears in the steadfast eyes. And as for the nervous little quaver in her voice, there was fatigue to answer for that.

"I – I'm so glad you all take that for granted," she said. "I don't know what I should do if you didn't."

And a little later Myra went to bed and to sleep, wondering if, after all, there were not secret places in the heart of her transparent kinswoman which evaded the search-warrant of cousinly disinterest.

CHAPTER XXIII

The obsequious waiter had cleared the table and brought in the dessert, and was hovering in the middle distance with two cigars in a whiskey glass. The persiflant young people at the other end of the table rose and went away, leaving a grateful silence behind them; and the clerical gentleman at Lansdale's right folded his napkin in absent-minded deference to home habit, and slipped sidewise out of his chair as if reluctant to mar the new-born hush.

Bartrow was down from the mine on the ostensible business of restocking the commissariat department of the Little Myriad, – a business which, prior to Miss Van Vetter's Denver year, had transacted itself indifferently well by letter, – and Lansdale was dining with him at the hotel by hospitable appointment. There were months between this and their last meeting, an entire winter, in point of fact; but it is one of the compensations of man-to-man friendships that they ignore absences and bridge intervals smoothly, uncoupling and upcoupling again with small jar of accountings for the incidents of the lacuna.

Because of the persiflant young people, the fire of query and rejoinder had been the merest shelling of the woods on either side; but with the advent of quiet Bartrow said: "Your winter on the lamb-ranch didn't do you much good, did it?"

"Think not?" Lansdale looked up quickly, with a pathetic plea for heartening in the deep-set eyes of him. "I was hoping you'd say it had. I feel stronger – at times."

Bartrow saw the plea and the pathos of it, and added one more to the innumerable contemnings of his own maladroitness. He was quite sure of his postulate, however, – as sure as he was of the unnecessary cruelty of setting it in words. Lansdale was visibly failing. The clean-shaven face was thin to gauntness, and the dark eyes were unnaturally bright and wistful. Bartrow bribed the ubiquitous waiter to remove himself, making the incident an excuse for changing the subject.

"Never saw or heard anything more of Jeffard, did you?" he said, pitching the conversational quoit toward a known peg of common interest, and taking it for granted that Lansdale, like Connie, had not read the proletary's name into the newspaper misspellings.

"Not a thing. And I have often wondered what happened."

"Then Connie hasn't told you?"