Chapter 10

Not that Mary ever thought of her position as one unworthy of her womanhood, not that she had ever in her innermost heart allowed herself to lament the poverty she shared with him, or to reproach him with the obscurity into which her life with him had brought her. Richard Temple knew perfectly that no shadow of disloyalty had ever fallen upon Mary Temple's soul. He knew her for a wife of perfect type who, having married him "for better or for worse," had only rejoicing in her loving heart that she had been able to accept the "worse" when it came, to make the "better" of it, and to help him with her devotion at a time when he had most sorely needed help.

He knew that his Mary was not only content, but happy in the miner's hut which had been her only home since her marriage, and which, with loving hands, she had glorified into something better to the soul than any palace is where love is not.

O, good women! All of you! How shall men celebrate enough your devotion, your helpfulness, your loyalty, and your love? How shall men ever repay the debt they owe to wifehood and motherhood? How shall civilization itself sufficiently honor the womanhood that alone has made it possible?

But while Richard Temple knew that there was never a murmur at her lot in Mary's heart any more than there was complaining upon her lips, he knew also how earnestly she longed for a better place in the world for him, how intensely ambitious she was that he should find fit opportunity and make the most of it in the way of winning that recognition at the hands of men which her loving soul knew to be his right and his due.

It was with gladness, therefore, that he had gone to her after midnight with his news. It was with joy that he had wakened her out of her sleep and told her of the good that had come to him.

She wept as she sat there on the side of her bed and listened while the moonlight, sifting through the vines that she had trained up over the window of the miner's hut, cast a soft fleecy veil over her person, in which Temple thought an angel might rejoice. But her tears were not born of sorrow. They were tears of exceeding joy, and if a drop or two slipped in sympathy from the strong man's eyes and trickled down his cheeks, he had no cause to be ashamed.

When he re-entered the company's office, Temple stood for a moment, unable to control the emotion he had brought away from Mary's bedside. When at last he regained mastery of himself, he took Duncan's hand and, pressing it warmly, delivered Mary's message:

"Mary bids me say, God bless you, Guilford Duncan. She bids me say that two weeks ago to-night a son was born to us; that he has been nameless hitherto; but that to-night, before I left, she took him from his cradle and named him Guilford Duncan Temple."

It is very hard for two American men to meet an emotional situation with propriety. They cannot embrace each other as women, and Frenchmen, and Germans do, and weep; a handclasp is all of demonstration that they permit themselves. For the rest, they are under bond to propriety to maintain as commonplace and as unruffled a front as stoicism can command. So, after Guilford Duncan had choked out the words: "Thank you, old fellow, and thank Mary," he turned to the table, pushed forward the pipes and tobacco, and said:

"Let's have a smoke."

* * * * *

"Now tell me the rest of it," said Duncan, after the pipes were set going. "About the mine, I mean."

"Well, it all seems simple. There are two hundred and seventy blind mules in the mine----"

"Blind? What do you mean?"

"Blind; yes. Not one of them has seen the light of day since he entered the mine, and some of them have been there for more than a dozen years. Living always in the dark, they have lost the power to see."

"Go on. What were you going to say?"

"Why, that those mules represent an investment of twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars, all absolutely needless. Their use involves also a wholly unnecessary expense for stablemen, feed, and general care, while the yearly deaths among them add heavily to the profit and loss account, on the loss side. Not one of those mules is needed in the mine. The work they do can be better done at one-tenth the cost--yes, it can be done at no cost at all; while if the mules are brought out and sold, they will bring from twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Go on. Explain. What do the mules do, and how is their work to be done without them?"

"They do just two things; they haul coal to the bottom of the inclined shaft, where it must be reloaded--at wholly unnecessary expense--in order to be hauled by machinery up the incline to the surface. Half the time they are employed in hauling water. The mine, you must understand, declines from the foot of the shaft to the end of the main heading. The very lowest level of all is there, where I propose to put in a ventilating shaft, with a fan; all the water flows to that point, flooding it. Under the antediluvian methods in use in this mine, all this water must be pumped into leaky cars and hauled by mules to the bottom of the the sloping shaft, whence it is drawn up by the engine, spilling half of it before it reaches the surface. Now, when I sink that ventilating shaft out there on the prairie, I must have an engine to turn the fan. Very well, I've got it. Among the junk that Captain Hallam bought when the war ended and the river navy went out of commission, there are parts of many little steam engines. I've busied myself at night in measuring these and fitting part of one to parts of another. The result is that I have made an engine out of this rubbish, which will not only drive the ventilating fan, but will also pump all the water out of the mine."

"But will not the mules be needed for hauling coal to the bottom of the shaft?"

"Not at all, if you are willing to spend a little money in an improvement--say a fourth or a third of what the mules will bring in the market--or considerably less than it costs to feed and curry them for a year."

"What is the nature of the improvement?"

"Why, simply an extension to every part of the mine of the cable system by which the engine now hauls the coal and water up the slope."

"But where are we to get power?"

"By using what we already have. Our great engine is a double one. We are using only one of its cylinders. We have only to connect the other in order to have all the power we need."

"But what about steam?"

"That's easy to make. We have several unused boilers, and as we burn nothing under our boilers but culm--the finely slaked coal for which there isn't a market, even at a tenth of a cent a ton--it will cost us absolutely not one cent to make all the steam we need."

"You seem to have thought it all out."

"I have done more than that. I have _worked_ it all out. I must work all day in a heading, of course, in order to make bread and butter. I have worked at night over these problems."

"And you are sure you've got the right answers?"

"Greatly more than sure--absolutely certain!"

"Very well. You are now chief engineer, or anything else you please, at a chief engineer's salary. You are to go to work at once digging the new ventilating and pumping shaft. You are to proceed at once to install your other improvements, and, when you report to me that there is no longer any use for the mules in the mine, I'll bring them all out and sell them. I'll look to the payments incidental to your work. My mission here is to make this mine a paying property. To that end, you are to bear in mind, I have an entirely free hand, and all the money needed is at my command. Now let that finish business for to-night. I want you to spend the rest of the dark hours in telling me your story and Mary's. I want to know all that has happened to both of you since--well, since she told me she loved you and not--me. You don't mind sitting up for the rest of the night?"

"Certainly not. I've sat up with you on far smaller provocation."

"But how about Mary?"

"She will sleep, or, if she doesn't--and I suppose she won't--she is entirely happy. She will be glad to have me spend the night with you."

"Very well, then. Tell me the story of what has happened to you and Mary since the day when we quarreled like a pair of idiots, and--like men of sense--decided not to fight. I want to hear it all."

"I'll tell it all," said the other. And he did.

XIX

DICK TEMPLE'S STORY

This is the story that Richard Temple told to his friend in the small hours of that night's morning. Let us dispense with quotation marks to cover it.

You know what my education was. My uncle, whose heir I was supposed to be, spared no expense to equip me for my life's work. He sent me to the best schools in the North, and afterwards to the best schools in Europe. Just at the beginning of the war, and because of it, I returned to Virginia. I secured a commission in the engineer corps, but I soon resigned it, because at the beginning of the war there was no earnest work for the engineer corps to do, and I foolishly thought there never would be. I enlisted as a private in the artillery, and before the end of the war I was a captain.

A few months before the war ended, I married Mary. You, of course, understand. Mary was the daughter of an ancient and honorable house, but she was living as a dependent in the family of a very remote relative--so remote that the kinship was rather mythical than real.

At that time I owned, or was supposed to own, my ancestral plantation, Robinet. My uncle at his death had left it to me.

As a man abundantly able to provide for a wife, I asked Mary to marry me, and to become the mistress of Robinet.

We were married about the time Fort Harrison fell into the enemy's hands. I remember that I had to delay the wedding in order to bombard Fort Harrison with my mortars, in preparation for the infantry assault, which it was hoped might recover the works.

When that affair was over, and our lines were reconstructed, I got leave of absence, and Mary and I were married.

I was foolish enough to believe, even in the autumn and winter of 1864, that we of the South were certain to win the war. As I look back now and consider the conditions then existing, I wonder at my own stupidity in not seeing what the end must be. However, that would have made no difference in any case. I must take Mary out of her condition of dependence, by marrying her, and I did so.

When the end came, I went home for a little while. My uncle had died in hopeless despondency. His estate, when I inherited it, was buried in debt, and with the negroes no longer mine, the creditors clearly saw that I could never pay out. They descended upon me in a swarm. There was nothing for me to do but make complete surrender of my possessions to them. These were sufficient to pay about forty cents on the dollar of the hereditary debt.

As soon as disaster thus came upon me, I set out to find employment in my profession, promising myself that I should soon be able to pay all the debts of which I had been acquitted as a bankrupt.

I knew that I had as much of skill in my profession as a young man with little practical experience could have. I saw that there must be a world of work done by way of developing the resources of the country after four years of paralyzing war. I thought there was pressing need of my services and my skill, and I confidently counted upon quickly achieving place and pay for myself.

I didn't know the ways of men then, but I soon found them out. Wherever there seemed to be an opening for me, I found that Somebody's son got the place, because Somebody could influence its bestowal.

Once I did get employment. There was a little stretch of railroad to be built, by way of connecting one line with others. I applied for the place of engineer, and was promptly informed that John Harbin had already been appointed to it. You know John. You know what a blockhead he is. I was graduated in the same class with him--he simply cheating his way through. When I heard of his appointment, I was dumbfounded. I knew that he simply could not do the work. He could not calculate a curvature to save his life. As for the more difficult operations of engineering, he was as helpless as a child.

I was curious to learn how he intended to get through with his task. I soon found out. He sent for me and asked me to become his "assistant." The pay he offered was barely sufficient to keep me alive. In brief, the arrangement was that I should do the work while he drew the pay and got the credit. That was because John Harbin's father was president of the railroad that was making the extension, and John Harbin's father had no purpose to let any good thing go out of the family.

I was rapidly getting my education in the ways of the world, and I was paying a high price for it. For a few months I did the work of a competent engineer on a salary that paid me less than a laborer's wage. Finally I resigned in disgust and set out to find something better. I tramped across country to every mine I could hear of--for in my studies I had specialized in mining--but nowhere could I secure employment. There was always some man with influence, where I had none, and always the man with the influence got the place.

At last I tramped my way out here. I had made up my mind to ask no longer for employment as an engineer. I applied to Davidson for a miner's place only. At first he refused, after looking at my hands and satisfying himself that I had had no experience in practical mining. But, as they pay miners here only by output--a certain price per ton for the coal a miner gets out--I persuaded him at last to let me go into a heading with a pick and a shovel, and a package of blasting powder.

Then I wrote to Mary, telling her of my situation, and charging her that she must from that day forth pay the cost of her living out of such money as I could send her. In order that I might send her enough--for I was determined that she should not be in any remotest way a dependent--I instantly cut off all my personal expenses. I had my soldier blanket, and my overalls. I needed no other clothes, for in the mine I always go barefoot. I was well used to sleeping out of doors, so I slept on the ground under the coal chutes. I took the job of cooking for a gang of bachelor miners, who gave me my board for my services.

In that way I planned to send all of my wages to Mary. But I didn't really know Mary. I thought of her always as a tenderly nurtured girl, who must be shielded at all hazards against hardship of every kind; and I meant so to shield her. But presently she revealed herself in another character. You know how it was in the army. The gentlemen soldiers, the men of good breeding, the men who had lived in luxury from childhood, with servants to anticipate every need, real or fancied, were the readiest to meet hardship, and to do hard work. You and I have seen such men drudging, willingly and cheerfully, in the half-frozen mud of the trenches, while other men, who had never known anything better than a log cabin for a home, bacon and greens for dinner, and a bed of straw to sleep upon, were almost in mutiny because of the hardships they must endure as soldiers.

It is true that "Blood will tell," and it is as true with women as with men. Blood asserted itself in Mary's case. Her answer was prompt to my letter telling her I had taken work as a miner. She utterly repudiated the thought that she was to go on living in idleness, while I should go on toiling to furnish her the means of living so. I shall never forget her words:

"I am coming to you quickly, Richard, to convert your miner's cabin into a home. Where the husband is, the wife should be with all she knows of helpfulness and cheer."

And she came. From that hour to this I have known what the word "home" means, far better than I ever did in my life before. We have two rooms--she built one of them, a little lean-to, with her own hands. And her presence glorifies both of them.

"I am very glad, Dick."

That was all that Duncan could say. It was all there was need for him to say.

XX

IN THE SUMMER TIME

Six months came and went before Duncan's work at the mine was done. Then, in mid-July, he returned to Cairo and gave an account of his stewardship. With Temple in control as superintendent and engineer, the mine had become a richly paying property, and with Temple there, there was no further need for Duncan's presence.

During that half year, Duncan had lived chiefly with the Temples in the superintendent's house, which Mary Temple had quickly converted from a barn-like structure, standing alone upon the face of the bald prairie, into a home in the midst of a garden of flowers.

During his long stay at the mine, Duncan had made frequent visits to Cairo. These were brief in duration, usually covering a Sunday, but each visit gave Guilford Duncan two opportunities that he desired. He could sit late on Saturday evening, discussing his plans with Captain Will Hallam, and on Sunday he had opportunity to become more and more closely acquainted with Barbara.

He made no formal calls upon her, and none were necessary. He simply adopted the plan of remaining after the one o'clock Sunday dinner and, little by little, Barbara came to feel that he expected her to join him in the little parlor, after his cigar was finished. He seemed to like the quiet conversations with her, while she regarded the opportunity to talk with a man so superior in education, culture, and intellect, to any other that she had known, as a privilege to be prized.

Their attitude toward each other at this time was peculiar. They were good friends, fond of each other's society, and seemingly, at least, they were nothing more. The fascination that Duncan had from the first felt in Barbara's presence was still upon him, but he accepted it more calmly now, and it soothed his natural restlessness, where at first it had excited it.

To Barbara, Guilford Duncan's attitude seemed a gracious condescension, which she did not dream that she deserved. She sometimes wondered that this young man of rare quality, who was sure of a welcome wherever he might go, should be content to sit with her throughout the Sunday afternoons, instead of seeking company better fit to entertain him. There were young women in Cairo who had been much more conventionally educated than she--young women who had mingled in society in Chicago, and in eastern cities. A few of them had even traveled in Europe--a thing very rare among Americans, and especially among Western Americans in the sixties. These young women knew all about operas and theaters. They had heard great musicians play and great singers sing. They had seen all the notable actors. They read the current literature of the time--the lighter part of it at least--and above all, they were mistresses of the "patter," which passes for brilliancy and sometimes even for wit in fashionable life.

Guilford Duncan visited none of these, and Barbara could not understand.

"He is too tired, I suppose," was her reflection, "when he runs down to Cairo for a Sunday rest. He doesn't want to see anybody or talk to anybody. I can easily understand that. So he just sits here instead of going out."

Barbara's explanation was obviously defective at one point. If Duncan did not care to see people, if he was too weary for conversation, how came it about that he stayed and talked gently, but constantly, with her, instead of going to the rooms he had fitted up for himself since prosperity had come to him? She had heard much of those rooms, of the multitude of books that he had put into them, of the bric-a-brac with which he had rendered them homelike and beautiful. They were in fact very simple rooms, inexpensively furnished. But Duncan had devoted a good deal of attention and an unfailing good taste to their furnishing and adornment, and thus, by the expenditure of a very little money he had managed to create a bachelor apartment which was the talk of the town.

"He is alone when he goes there," the girl explained to herself, when at last this question arose in her mind. "And I suppose he feels lonely. But why doesn't he go somewhere, instead of just sitting here in our little parlor or out in the porch?"

It was a riddle that she could not read, and for the present, at least, Duncan would not offer her any help in solving it. He knew now that Barbara Verne was the woman he loved--the only woman in all the world who could be to him what a wife must be to a man of his temperament, if two souls are to be satisfied.

But he saw clearly that Barbara Verne had no thought of that kind in her mind--or, at least, no such conscious thought. She was accustomed to think of herself as a very commonplace young woman, not at all the equal of this very superior man, to whom everybody in Cairo paid a marked deference. He understood Barbara as she did not at all understand herself. He had looked upon her white soul and bowed his head in worship of its purity, its nobility, its utter truthfulness. He knew the qualities of a mind that had no just self-appreciation. He felt, rather than knew, that no thought of his loving her--otherwise than as an elder brother might love a little sister--had ever crossed her consciousness. He felt that the abrupt suggestion of that thought would only shock and distress her.

"I'll find a way of making others suggest it, after a while," he resolved. "In the meanwhile----" He didn't finish the sentence, even in his own mind. But what he did in that "meanwhile" was to see as much as possible of Barbara, to talk with her impersonally, gently, and interestingly, to win her perfect trust and confidence, and, so far as possible, to make his presence a necessary thing to her. He paid her no public attention of any kind. But he paid no public or private attention to any other young woman. It was well understood that for a time he was living at the mine and coming to Cairo only for brief visits of a business character, at infrequent intervals. His neglect of society, therefore, seemed in need of no explanation, while his unostentatious intimacy with Barbara attracted no attention. The only person who ever spoke to him about it was Mrs. Will Hallam.

"You are going to marry Barbara Verne, of course?" she half said, half asked one day.

"If I can, yes," he answered.

"I'm very glad of that," and she said no more.

On his final return to Cairo, however, Duncan found himself expected in what is called society. Society was destined to disappointment, for Duncan went nowhere--except that he usually sat for some hours every Sunday afternoon in the vine-clad porch of the house in which he took his meals. Barbara's aunt often sat there with him. Barbara always did so, in answer to what seemed to be his wish. He made no calls. He declined all invitations to the little excursions on the river, which constituted the chief social activities of the summer time. He gave it out that he was too busily engaged with affairs to have time for anything else, and that explanation seemed for a time to satisfy public curiosity.

And that explanation was true. Guilford Duncan had begun to take upon himself the duties of a leader--in an important way--in the work of upbuilding which at that time was engaging the attention of all men of affairs. He had accumulated some money, partly by saving, but more by the profits of his little investments, and by being "let in on the ground floor" of many large enterprises, in the conception and conduct of which his abilities were properly appreciated by the capitalists who undertook them.