The Vision of Elijah Berl

Mellin was very patient. It never occurred to Elijah to ask why. Mellin was worldly wise; Elijah was not. Therefore Elijah never asked the question, "What does the other man want me to do for him when he is so anxious to do something for me?"

Mellin was worldly wise. He had read Elijah aright. Elijah was open to conviction as to what was right and what was wrong. His well-known professions only strengthened Mellin in his belief that Elijah relied upon others for guidance more than upon himself. So he made answer:

"You are not on the same footing as the other depositors. I am cashier. Yesterday morning I got a tip that there would be a run on the bank and I passed it on to you. It's no one's business that you had a friend on the inside. You were out of town and I sent a messenger after you. After sending him, things thickened. I saw that you wouldn't get back in time, so I drew for you. Here's the stuff." Mellin held out a compact bundle carefully wrapped and tied. Elijah's hand closed upon it. He moistened his dry lips as the package rested in his hand and was transferred to his pocket. Without a word he turned toward the hotel. The parting of the ways was behind him and he was on the wrong path. The return was not irrevocably barred; but, – would he return?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The shadows that had gathered around Elijah during the night were not dispelled with the dawn of the following day. On his way to the office, he was anticipating Helen's criticism of his act in taking the money from the bank in the face of her strong opposition. He found on arrival, that the devil had a way of his own in making smooth the path of his disciples, for a time at least.

Helen greeted him as usual.

"My last night's advice was unnecessary, wasn't it?"

"How so?"

"I went around by the bank this morning. It was a sight, I can tell you. I didn't see you in the line." There was an indirect question in Helen's eyes.

"I wasn't in line." Elijah could not restrain a sigh of relief as he spoke the half-truth.

"They say the line was begun before ten o'clock last night."

"I know it was, and it was kept too." Elijah turned to his desk and became absorbed in his work.

Whether or not Helen grasped the fact that her indirect question of Elijah remained unanswered, she pursued it no farther.

Toward noon, Elijah went to the safe which stood in the back of the office. He opened the door, took from his pocket a bunch of keys and unlocked his private box. Helen's back was towards him. Without taking his eyes from her, he drew from his pocket a small package and slipped it beneath a pile of papers. Then he closed and locked the door and returned the keys to his pocket. He reseated himself, swinging his chair from his desk.

"Are you busy, Helen?"

"Not very."

"What do you think this business means?"

"What, the run on the Pacific?"

"Yes."

"It's the beginning of the end, and I'm glad it's come." Helen spoke with decision.

"The end of everything?"

"No; only a weeding out. It was bound to come, only I didn't think it would be so soon."

"I don't feel so sure that anything will be left."

"Things that are worth while, will be."

Elijah made no immediate reply. He could not get away from the thought of the thing that he had done; the thing that Helen had almost commanded him not to do. He knew what she would think could she know of the packet which he had stealthily slipped into his private box. He raised his eyes, to meet Helen's looking frankly into his own, or – was it his imagination? Was there an anxious questioning, born of a half suspicion? He put the thought from him.

"Ysleta was worth while," he ventured.

"In itself, it was." Helen's face was firm with conviction. "But these scheming rascals have made it not worth while for a long time. There will be room for Ysleta if Las Cruces is managed right."

"It's going to be." Elijah spoke with no less conviction.

"Yes, it's going to be just so long as you keep clear of boomers' methods. Not one of the boomers has cared a snap of his fingers for Ysleta's future. Every one has wanted all he could get, now."

"Now?" Elijah repeated.

"Yes, now; but we have to wait for things that are worth while."

"Good Heavens, Helen! Haven't I waited?"

"Wait a little longer." Her voice was eager, almost pleading.

"About the Pico ranch?"

"Just that, Elijah." Helen made no attempt to restrain the sigh of relief that escaped her.

"I can't wait, Helen. You saw where that ditch line was going. Others will see it. You saw that only a hill lay between it and Pico's ranch. Others will see it. A tunnel suggested itself to you. It will suggest itself to others. We were the first to see these things, why should we not take advantage of them?"

"But Seymour and Ralph, Elijah. It isn't fair to them."

"I have given them enough."

"Yes, but – "

Elijah interrupted her.

"I want to do things. You want to do things." He was striding back and forth across the floor of the office in growing excitement. "I don't care for money. You don't care for money. Look!" He laid his hand on her arm and pointed to the dusty street. "'Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' Because of this, it is falling! falling! But one can breathe the breath of life into these dry bones. It shall rise from its ashes. Deliver these lands from the hands of them who have wrought this," – he flung his hand toward the street, – "from them and their kind, and Ysleta shall yet live. It shall look forth upon waters of plenty flowing from the mountains, upon green hillsides, and upon valleys standing out with fatness." He paused, his voice dropped almost to a whisper, but vibrating with intense emotion. "The vision of the future came to me. I was alone and I waited. Then you came into my life. What I lack, you have; patience, sympathy. You don't know what it means to me."

Helen's eyes were not frank and fearless now. They were shrinking, questioning, doubting; but they could not drop from Elijah's. She felt rather than knew her feet were trembling on the brink, but she could not turn back. The old fascination was yet strong upon her, but she felt its strength as a whole. Of its elemental compounds she was ignorant; the religious fanaticism that with frenzied kisses wears smooth a block of worthless stone; the merciless vanity that comes to one who is fixed in the belief that he is God's elect; the human element that demands love, sympathy and unswerving devotion to the idols he worships, whatever the cost to others. These were strong elements and Helen felt their power even as Ralph and others had felt it. There was in Elijah an unshaken, unshakable belief in himself. His work appealed to others as it had appealed to Helen. Others selected with unclouded judgment the grains of Elijah's enthusiasm from the chaff of his fanaticism. Others had not a woman's heart; Helen had. She was not conscious of it, of how it was blinding her judgment, of where it was leading her. This consciousness was dimly suggesting itself to her, not from herself but from Elijah. Let him arouse that consciousness to active life, then she would know, then she would act!

Helen drew a deep, inspiring breath, looking up again. Her eyes were fiercely questioning.

No! This zealous passion that strode sure-footed on the brink of destruction, could not be assumed, was not assumed. Helen was quick to judge and quick to decide when she saw clearly. She was clean of heart and pure of mind. She could not know that a human soul, lashed to frenzy by the stings of an outraged conscience, can yet clothe itself in robes that might be worn by an angel of light.

"Then I saw in my dream that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of destruction."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Whether warned by intuition that one more step would be fatal, or whether his blinded sense of right was asserting itself, the fact remained that for several days, Elijah was hardly ever in the office and even then for only a brief time. He seemed to Helen, absorbed if not sullen. At first she noticed this with positive relief; later she had misgivings which grew more insistent as time went on. She saw and she could not see. She saw the dream of Elijah's solitary years daily taking shape and form. She saw that his work had roots which struck deep in solid, lasting worth; she saw Ysleta founded on drifting sand. The one had solid business principles; the other had glittering promises as worthless as fairy gold. Was this all? From here on, her vision was blurred. Was this principle which one had and the other had not, after all, rooted deep in the mysterious influence which guided Elijah's life?

It was with positive gratitude one morning that she heard Uncle Sid's ponderous knock on her door and his raucous voice calling to her.

"Come, Helen. Let's you and me take a walk before the sun has burned the dust all off o' the grass."

"All right, Uncle Sid! I'll be there in a moment."