The Helpers

Connie.

MYRA TO CONSTANCE

Dear Connie: Really, the S. P. C. C. ought to take you in hand! To think of the cold-blooded way in which you hoodwinked us up to the very last moment, making us believe that the Lodestar involvement was next to nothing, and keeping the home intact solely for the purpose of providing a proper stage-setting for the final act of our little comedy-drama! It's fairly heart-breaking; the more since you won't let us share with you, as we'd be glad to. Before you saw fit to confide in us, Dick had used every argument short of a pick-handle to convince me that I should presently go back to Denver and creature comforts, leaving him here to go on delving in the Myriad. I only laughed at him, but I'll recant if you will listen to reason, and let me make a home for you and Uncle Stephen. But as between living a three-quarter widow in Denver on mere visiting terms with you and your father, and hibernating here with Dick, you may be sure I shall choose the latter.

We are both as enthusiastic as can be over the prospects of the mine. The new machinery is on the way, and we are down twenty feet on the incline. Another month will surely carry it into pay-rock. (You see I am learning to talk "mineral-English" with the best of them.) Under the circumstances, I don't blame Dick for wanting to stay right here every day; and it won't be so lonesome for me as you may imagine. You see I have Dick, and he can be a whole cityful upon occasion.

You wouldn't know "The Eyrie" (Dick says the altitude is so great that we had to have a high-sounding name) since we have begun to remodel it. We are to have another room, a larger kitchen for Wun Ling (oh, he is a celestial treasure! – quite the archangel of the culinary host), a huge chimney, with immense fireplaces, against a possible winter here, and a wider porch, – board-floored, if you please. And inside I have rugged and portièred, and pictured and bric-a-bracked, until the pristine barkiness of the place is all but effaced.

So far, with the exception of an occasional call from Mr. McMurtrie, we have been "each other's own best company;" but if I stay up all summer it will be conditional upon your and Uncle Stephen's spending at least a month with us when the hot weather makes your block uncomfortable. Don't say no beforehand, unless you want to make me quite disgusted.

Mr. Lansdale is a lineal descendant in the direct line of the Chevalier, – the sans peur et sans reproche one; you know I've always said that of him. It chokes me when I think of what is lying in wait for him. Isn't there the least little glimmer of hope? He looked so bright and eager on our wedding day that I could almost make myself believe he was going to get well. You must be very, very careful, Connie dear; not to encourage him too much, I mean; not unless you – but I sha'n't say it without your warrant.

What you say about Margaret Gannon's Irish true-heartedness reminds me of our own wild Irishman. He is the mine blacksmith, a perfect Sheridan for wit and repartee when he is sober, and a maniac of maniacs when he is drunk, – which happens whenever Dick relaxes his vigilance for a single hour.

The other day Pat (if he has any other name I've never heard it) did a thing heroic. They are using dynamite in the tunnel, and after the noon blasts one of the miners went in before the deadly gas had been properly "ventilated" out. One of the others saw him stumble and go headlong down the incline, and the cry went back to the entrance. Pat heard it (he was sober that day), flung his tools to the four winds, dashed into the pit of death, and came out black in the face, but with the man on his shoulder, just as Dick got down to the entrance. Wasn't that fine?

As you surmise, we have read all that the newspapers are saying about Mr. Jeffard. Isn't it queer that he should develop into a millionaire miser! Dick has told me a great deal about him, – at least about the Mr. Jeffard he used to know, – and whatever sins he may have had to answer for in those days, avarice was not one of them. I suppose it is another case of money-spoiling, but I can't help wanting to doubt your latest suspicion of him. I read your letter to Dick, and he shook his head when I came to that part; said he couldn't believe it, even on your testimony, – that the man might be capable of all sorts of villainy, but not that. So I am going over to Dick's point of view far enough to ask you not to be too hard upon the "unworthy one" just because he is no longer one of your poverty-stricken sinners, – he was that once, wasn't he? The rich sinners need charity quite as really as the poor; of a different kind, to be sure, and not always as easy to exercise as the other, but none the less necessary.

This is all you are going to get to-night. Dick has just come up from the mine, and he says I sha'n't write any more whatever.

Your loving cousin,

Myra.

LANSDALE TO BARTROW

My Dear Richard: – What with a mine for a taskmaster and a wife for your leisure I can fancy you tossing this letter aside unopened. But the promise which you exacted is herein kept, and it must plead my excuse for breaking into your honeymoon with a few pages of barren gossip.

First, as to Miss Elliott and her good father. Your foreboding went nearer the mark than the ostensible fact. They were merely postponing the evil day until after your wedding, and when the crash came it turned out to be no less than a catastrophe. Stephen Elliott met it like a man, giving up everything to his creditors, and coming down to a life of the barest necessities with the serenity of a philosopher, happy, apparently, that the well of assets was deep enough to brim the tank of liability, though at the expense of the final drop.

I am told that he was left quite without resources other than a small sum of money which one of the creditors absolutely refused to accept; and he assures me that he will once more shoulder pick and shovel and go afield again as soon as the season is a little farther advanced. I confess frankly that the heroism of it bedazes me. If there be any finer example of dauntlessness in the heart of man, the novellers have not yet portrayed it for us. He was sixty-three last January, and he promises to begin the search for another competence with all the enthusiasm and ardor of youth!

Constance you know, and I need not assure you that the sudden down-dropping touches her not at all; or if at all, only on the side of her beneficences to others. So far as one may perceive, the change for her is only of encompassments. She is as much above it as she was superior to the cheapening effect of an elastic bank account. To me she seems the sweeter for the chastening, though really, I presume, she is neither better nor worse for it, – nor any different. You may be sure that my first call upon them after the submergence was made with a heartful of sympathy, – which I took away with me, and with it a lesson in sincerity and simple-heartedness rare enough in my experience. There is gentle blood and enviable in these two. My pen is too clumsy to ink in the details of this picture for you.

As to Jeffard: When he made his appearance I struck hands with your point of view sufficiently to meet him as if nothing save good fortune had overtaken him, – an attitude which it is sometimes as difficult for me to maintain as it appears altogether impossible for some others who used to know him. By which you will understand that he is ostracized in a way, or would be in any casting of the potsherd votes by the unthinking majority.

I am bound to say, however, that the whiplash of public opinion does not seem to be quite long enough to reach him. A fortnight ago, for reasons charitable or experimental, as you please, I got him a bidding to one of Mrs. Calmaine's "ridottos." You know Mrs. Calmaine and her tolerance, and you will appreciate the situation when I tell you that I had to manœuvre a bit for the formal invitation, though Jeffard used to be in her good book. Jeffard accepted, and I went with him to see what would befall. There were a good many there who had known the prehistoric Jeffard, and while they did not pointedly ignore him, they seemed to be divided between a desire to cold-shoulder the man and to conciliate the prospective millionaire; – wherefore they compromised by giving him what you would call "the high hand-shake."

Whatever may have been my motive in dragging him into it, Jeffard's own reasons for going were confessedly experimental. So much he confided to me on our early retreat from the house of mirth. "I wanted to find out where I stand," he said, "and these good people have been quite explicit. Don't get me any more invitations." And after a time he added, "I can buy them when I want them." From which you will infer that he will henceforth sit in the seat of the scornful, and this, I fear, is the lamentable fact.

Touching his present mode of life, it borders on the puzzling. With a bank deposit which is currently reported to reach seven figures, and which is doubtless well up in the sixes, he lives in two rooms in a block, and takes his meals at the club. A very rich spendthrift might do this, you will say, saving at the spigot and wasting at the bung; but so far as my observation goes, Jeffard seems not to know that his barrel has a bung. And if any of the staves have started on the side of dissipation, the leak is not yet apparent to me. The other evening, when I let drive a little arrow pointed with a gibe at his penuriousness, he laughed and reminded me of something he had said one night in the famine time when we were dining by the help of a small windfall of mine. "I told you I should be a miser if the tide ever turned," said he, "and you scoffed at me. I assure you I can account for every dollar I have spent since the Midas began to pour them in."

This is his attitude as he defines it, but I can qualify the accusation a little on the friendly side. I should rather say that he had set his mark at thrifty frugality. He is not niggardly; in benevolences which may be paid for in the coin of effort he is still generous; and if he were living on a clerk's income people would commend him.

But I fancy I hear you cry "Enough!" and this ends with the heartiest good wishes for you both.

Faithfully yours,

Robert Lansdale.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Lansdale had defined himself as a reporter on the "Coloradoan," but in reality he was rather more, – or less, – being that anomalous member of a newspaper staff known as the literary editor. Kershaw had taken him in doubtfully, and had afterward wondered why a man with such an evident gift for journalistic work should prefer to spend his days and nights writing stories which no one would buy. For, contrary to all precedent, when he could sink his literary ambitions the fictionist proved to be a general utility journalist of no uncertain ability, running the office gamut from proof-reading in an emergency to filling the editorial columns on the rare occasions when Kershaw was absent.

It was during one of the Kershawan absences that the letter to Bartrow was written; and the hands of the paper-weight clock on the desk were pointing to the supper hour when Lansdale dropped the pen and drew down the desk-curtain. Unlike his chief, he rarely ignored the supper recess, though a walk in the open air often took the place of the meal; and having his night's work well in hand, he let himself into the corridor, said "Down!" and was presently set afoot at the street level.

As usual, the swift rush down the elevator-shaft dizzied him, and he had to steady himself before he could go on. When he allowed himself to think about it he realized that these dizzyings were growing commoner, and were set awhirl by slighter exciting causes. Another man, or a man with another ailment, might have given the unnerving weakness its true name and place and succumbed to it; but Lansdale's métier had been love-transformed into unflinching hopefulness, and the trivialities of the daily walk had come to be so many blind and desperate sorties against the indrawing lines of the relentless besieger. For of the two lions standing in the way to the House Beautiful that named Inequality had been slain by the collapse of the Lodestar; wherefore this other of Ill-health must either slay or be slain, since love would not be denied.

This was what was in his resolute step when he went forth into the night; into the whirl of life on the peopled streets and sidewalks. Some vague supper promptings were present, but a stronger impulse sent him riverward, away from the thickly peopled walks and down into the wholesale district toward a shabby apartment building which had been left stranded on the bar of traffic when the uptown tide had set in.

The little excursion was purposeless, as had been many another in the same direction; but when he found himself opposite the stairway of the shabby building he wondered if he might not go up and ask Constance for a cup of tea. He was wise in his generation, and he had long since discovered that the way to Constance Elliott's heart lay through helpings accepted. With love abounding for any human soul at need, there were precious reserves of tenderness for those to whom she might minister.

Lansdale glanced up at the two lighted windows on the third floor and crossed the street. In the stair archway, which was dimly lighted by a single inefficient gas-jet, he stumbled upon a bit of by-play, in which the actors were a man and a woman leaning together across the stair-rail, and a barelegged boy spying upon the twain from the dimnesses beyond. The little tableau fell apart at the sound of the intruder's footsteps. The boy vanished mysteriously, the woman ran upstairs, and the man turned half angrily, as one faulted. It was Jeffard; and when he recognized Lansdale he spoke quickly, as if to forestall possible comment.

"Hello! – think of the devil and you'll hear the clatter of his hoofs. I was just about to go up to the print-shop to see if I could find you. Been to supper?"

"No; I was" —

Jeffard cut in again swiftly, with edgings streetward. "That's lucky; neither have I. Let's go up to the club."

Lansdale acceded rather reluctantly, since a cup of tea with Constance easily outweighed the grill-room prospect.

"I'll go with you, though I can't promise to play much of a knife and fork," he said. "I was just going up to ask Miss Elliott to give me a cup of tea."

They were turning the corner above the stranded apartment house before Jeffard returned the shuttle of speech.

"So the Elliotts live down there now, do they?"

Lansdale said "Yes," and began to rummage in recollection. Had Jeffard been on Constance Elliott's visiting list in the prehistoric time? It was probable that he had been, – with Dick Bartrow for his sponsor. But at this point recollection turned up the mental notes of a certain talk with Bartrow, in which the downright one had confessed his sins of omission Jeffardward. So Lansdale added a query to the affirmative.

"Yes; they live in the Thorson Block. Do you know them?"

Jeffard's reply was no reply. "I'll have to take time to think about it," he said; and they had traversed the necessary streets and found a table à deux in the grill-room at the club before he pieced out the unfinished rejoinder.

"You asked me if I knew the Elliotts. I did know Miss Elliott, – as I knew some of those people at Mrs. Calmaine's the other evening. It's quite likely she does not remember me."

Lansdale's brain went apart again, and the reflective half of it continued the rummaging. On the two or three occasions when he had mentioned the newest star in the bonanzine firmament Constance had been visibly disturbed. The nature of her resentment had not been quite obvious, but Jeffard's tardy rejoinder made it clear. She had known Jeffard and was sorry to be reminded of him.

Lansdale had not done full justice to himself in slurring his own point of view in the letter to Bartrow. So far as he had analyzed it he had been content to call it negative, but it was not quite that. On the contrary, it was complaisant, concerning itself chiefly with the things of past sight, and not unduly with those of present rumor. Jeffard might be an indubitable scoundrel in his later reincarnation, as certain of the mining-camp newspapers had intimated in their accounts of the fight for possession; but in the older time he had been a good fellow and a generous friend at a pinch. Lansdale remembered some of the generosities, and his heart went soft at the recollection of them. Kershaw had kept the secret of the prearranged purchase of certain unusable manuscripts, but the pigeon-holes of a newspaper office are open archives, and one day Lansdale had found a clue which he had followed out to his comforting; a string of hitherto unexplainable incidents, with two stanch friends at the end of it.

One of these loyal friends was the man at whom public opinion was now pointing a dubious finger; and while Lansdale was munching his toast and drinking his cup of weak tea in troubled silence, it began to be discomfortingly evident that he must presently take sides for or against the man whose hospitality he was at that moment sharing. Left to itself, the insularity in him would have evaded the issue. Loyalty of the crucible-test degree of fineness – the loyalty of the single eye – must needs sit below the salt at the table of any analyst of his kind; and Lansdale was a student first and a partisan only when benefits unforgot constrained him. Moreover, frankness in the last resort is rarely at its best in any vivisector of his fellow-men, and it was with no little difficulty that Lansdale made shift to overleap the barrier of reserve.

"Jeffard," he began, when the weak tea was low in the cup, "we used to be pretty near to each other in a time that I like to remember; will you bear with me if I say what is in my mind?"

"Surely," said Jeffard; but the tone was not of assurance.

"You know what the newspapers intimated last fall, and what people are saying of you now?"