Part 8

“and four of my old girl chums, so I just couldn’t get out of it, nor would I, particularly since she wanted me to help her, and I’ve asked her so many times to help us—now, could I?”

Idelle’s way in letters, as in person, was always bantering. To the grave with Betty Gildas and all her house parties, in so far as he was concerned, the fast, restless, heartless thing! Why couldn’t she have been here just this once, when he wanted her so much and had wired and written in plenty of time for her to be!

But no, she didn’t care for him. She never had. She merely wanted to fool him along like this, to keep his name, his position, the social atmosphere he could give her. This whole thing was a joke to her—this house, his friends, himself, all—just nothing! Her idea was to fool him along in this way while she continued to run with these other shabby, swift, restless, insatiable creatures like herself, who liked cabarets, thés dansants, automobile runs to this, that and the other wretched place, country house parties, country clubs, country this, country that, or New York and all its shallow and heartless mockery of simplicity and peace. Well, he was through. She was always weary of him, never anxious to be with him for one moment even, but never weary of any of them, you bet—of seeking the wildest forms of pleasure! Well, this was the end now. He had had enough. She could go her own way from now on. Let the beastly flowers lie there—what did he care? He wouldn’t carry them to her. He was through now. He was going to do what he said—leave. Only—

He began putting some things in another bag, in addition to the ones he had—his silk shirts, extra underwear, all his collars. Once and for all now he wouldn’t stand this—never! Never!

Only—

As he fumed and glared, his eye fell on his favorite photo of Idelle—young, rounded, sensuous, only twenty-four to his forty-eight, an air and a manner flattering to any man’s sense of vanity and possession—and then, as a contrast, he thought of the hard, smiling, self-efficiency of so many of her friends—J—— C——, for one, still dogging her heels in spite of him, and Keene, young and wealthy, and Arbuthnot—and who not else?—any one and all of whom would be glad to take her if he left her. And she knew this. It was a part of her strength, even her charm—curse her! Curse her! Curse her!

But more than that, youth, youth, the eternal lure of beauty and vitality, her smiling softness at times, her geniality, her tolerance, their long talks and pleasant evenings and afternoons. And all of these calling, calling now. And yet they were all at the vanishing point, perhaps never to come again, if he left her! She had warned him of that. “If I go,” she had once said—more than once, indeed—“it’s for good. Don’t think I’ll ever come back, for I won’t.” And he understood well enough that she would not. She didn’t care for him enough to come back. She never would, if she really went.

He paused, meditating, biting his lips as usual, flushing, frowning, darkening—a changeable sky his face—and then—

“George,” he said after the servant had appeared in answer to his ring, “tell Charles to bring the jitney around again, and you pack me the little brown kit bag out of these others. I’m going away for a day or two, anyhow.”

“Yes, suh!”

Then down the stairs, saying that Idelle was a liar, a wastrel, a heartless butterfly, worthy to be left as he proposed to leave her now. Only, once outside in his car with Charles at the wheel, and ready to take him wherever he said, he paused again, and then—sadly— “To the Gildases, and better go by the Skillytown road. It’s the shortest!”

Then he fell to thinking again.

IV

ST. COLUMBA AND THE RIVER

The first morning that McGlathery saw the great river stretching westward from the point where the initial shaft had been sunk he was not impressed by it—or, rather, he was, but not favorably. It looked too gray and sullen, seeing that he was viewing it through a driving, sleety rain. There were many ferry boats and craft of all kinds, large and small, steaming across its choppy bosom, giant steamers, and long projecting piers, great and mysterious, and clouds of gulls, and the shriek of whistles, and the clang of fog-bells,... but he did not like water. It took him back to eleven wretched seasick days in which he had crossed on the steamer from Ireland. But then, glory be, once freed from the mysteries of Ellis Island, he had marched out on dry land at the Battery, cloth bags in hand, and exclaimed, “Thanks be, I’m shut av it!”

And he thought he was, for he was mortally afraid of water. But fate, alas! had not decreed it as a permanent thing. As a matter of fact, water in one form or another had persistently seemed to pursue him since. In Ireland, County Clare, from whence he hailed, he had been a ditcher—something remotely connected with water. Here in America, and once safely settled in Brooklyn, he had no sooner sought work than the best he could seemingly get was a job in connection with a marsh which was being drained, a very boggy and pool-y one—water again, you see. Then there was a conduit being dug, a great open sewer which once when he and other members of the construction gang were working on it, was flooded by a cloudburst, a tremendous afternoon rain-storm which drove them from it with a volume of water which threatened to drown them all. Still later, he and thirty others were engaged in cleaning out a two-compartment reservoir, old and stone-rotten, when, one-half being empty and the other full, the old dividing wall broke, and once more he barely escaped with his life by scrambling up a steep bank. It was then that the thought first took root in his mind that water—any kind of water, sea or fresh—was not favorable to him. Yet here he was, facing this great river on a gray rainy November morning, and with the avowed object of going to work in the tunnel which was about to be dug under it.

Think of it! In spite of his prejudices and fears, here he was, and all due to one Thomas Cavanaugh, a fellow churchman and his foreman these last three years, who had happened to take a fancy to him and had told him that if he came to work in the tunnel and prosecuted his new work thoroughly, and showed himself sufficiently industrious and courageous, it might lead to higher things—viz., bricklaying, or plastering, in the guise of cement moulding, down in this very tunnel, or timbering, or better yet, the steel-plate-joining trade, which was a branch of the ironworkers’ guild and was rewarded by no less a compensation than twelve dollars a day. Think of it—twelve dollars a day! Men of this class and skill were scarce in tunnel work and in great demand in America. This same Cavanaugh was to be one of the foremen in this tunnel, his foreman, and would look after him. Of course it required time and patience. One had to begin at the bottom—the same being seventy-five feet under the Hudson River, where some very careful preliminary digging had to be done. McGlathery had surveyed his superior and benefactor at the time with uncertain and yet ambitious eyes.

“Is it as ye tell me now?” he commented at one place.

“Yis. Av course. What d’ye think I’m taalkin’ to ye about?”

“Ye say, do ye?”

“Certainly.”

“Well! Well! Belike it’s a fine job. I dunno. Five dollars a day, ye say, to begin with?”

“Yis, five a day.”

“Well, a man in my line could git no more than that, eh? It wouldn’t hurt me fer once, fer a little while anyway, hey?”

“It would be the makin’ av ye.”

“Well, I’ll be with ye. Yis, I’ll be with ye. It’s not five I can git everywhere. When is it ye’ll be wantin’ me?”

The foreman, a Gargantuan figure in yellow jeans and high rubber boots smeared to the buttocks with mud, eyed him genially and amiably, the while McGlathery surveyed his superior with a kind of reverence and awe, a reverence which he scarcely felt for any other man, unless perchance it might be his parish priest, for he was a good Catholic, or the political backer of his district, through whom he had secured his job. What great men they all were, to be sure, leading figures in his life.

So here he was on this particular morning shortly after the work had been begun, and here was the river, and down below in this new shaft, somewhere, was Thomas Cavanaugh, to whom he had to report before he could go to work.

“Sure, it’s no colleen’s job,” he observed to a fellow worker who had arrived at the mouth of the shaft about the same time as himself, and was beginning to let himself down the ladder which sank darkly to an intermediate platform, below which again was another ladder and platform, and below that a yellow light. “Ye say Mr. Cavanaugh is below there?”

“He is,” replied the stranger without looking up. “Ye’ll find him inside the second lock. Arr ye workin’ here?”

“Yis.”

“Come along, then.”

With a bundle which consisted of his rubber boots, a worn suit of overalls, and with his pick and shovel over his shoulder, he followed. He reached the bottom of the pit, boarded as to the sides with huge oak planks sustained by cross beams, and there, with several others who were waiting until the air pressure should be adjusted, entered the lock. The comparatively small and yet massive chamber, with its heavy iron door at either end, responding so slowly to pressure, impressed him. There was only a flickering light made by a gasoline torch here. There was a whistling sound from somewhere.

“Ever work under air pressure before, Paddy?” inquired a great hulking ironworker, surveying him with a genial leer.

“Air what?” asked McGlathery without the slightest comprehension of what was meant, but not to be outdone by mere words. “No, I never did.”

“Well, ye’re under it now, two thousand pounds to the square inch. Don’t ye feel it?”

Dennis, who had been feeling an odd sensation about his ear-drums and throat, but had no knowledge that it was related to this, acknowledged that he did. “’Tis air, is it?” he inquired. “’Tis a quare feeling I have.” The hissing ceased.

“Yuh want to look out fer that, new man,” volunteered another, a skimpy, slithery, genial American. “Don’t let ’em rush that stuff on yuh too fast. Yuh may git the ‘bends.’”

Dennis, ignorant as to the meaning of “bends,” made no reply.

“D’yuh know what the ‘bends’ is, new man?” persisted the other provocatively.

“Naw,” replied Dennis awkwardly after a time, feeling himself the centre of a fire of curious observations and solicitation.

“Well, yuh will if yuh ever git ’em—haw! haw!” this from a waggish lout, a bricklayer who had previously not spoken. The group in the lock was large. “It comes from them lettin’ the pressure be put on or took off too fast. It twists yer muscles all up, an’ does sumpin’ to yer nerves. Yuh’ll know it if yuh ever git it.”

“Member Eddie Slawder?” called another gaily. “He died of it over here in Bellevue, after they started the Fourteenth Street end. Gee, yuh oughta heerd him holler! I went over to see him.”

Good news, indeed! So this was his introduction to the tunnel, and here was a danger not commented on by Cavanaugh. In his dull way McGlathery was moved by it. Well, he was here now, and they were forcing open the door at the opposite side of the lock, and the air pressure had not hurt him, and he was not killed yet; and then, after traversing a rather neatly walled section of tunnel, albeit badly littered with beams and plates and bags of cement and piles of brick, and entering another lock like the first and coming out on the other side—there, amid an intricate network of beams and braces and a flare of a half dozen great gasoline lamps which whistled noisily, and an overhanging mass of blackness which was nothing less than earth under the great river above, was Cavanaugh, clad in a short red sweater and great rubber boots, an old yellowish-brown felt hat pulled jauntily over one ear. He was conversing with two other foremen and an individual in good clothes, one of those mighties—an engineer, no doubt.

Ah, how remote to McGlathery were the gentlemen in smooth fitting suits! He viewed them as you might creatures from another realm.

Beyond this lock also was a group of night workers left over from the night before and under a strange foreman (ditchers, joiners, earth carriers, and steel-plate riveters), all engaged in the rough and yet delicate risk of forcing and safeguarding a passage under the river, and only now leaving. The place was full. It was stuffy from the heat of the lamps, and dirty from the smear of the black muck which was over everything. Cavanaugh spied Dennis as he made his way forward over the widely separated beams.

“So here ye arr! These men are just after comin’ out,” and he waved a hand toward the forward end of the tunnel. “Git in there, Dennis, and dig out that corner beyond the post there. Jerry here’ll help ye. Git the mud up on this platform so we can git these j’ists in here.”

McGlathery obeyed. Under the earthy roof whose surface he could see but dimly at the extreme forward end of the tunnel beyond that wooden framework, he took his position. With a sturdy arm and a sturdy back and a sturdy foot and leg, he pushed his spade into the thick mud, or loosened it with his pick when necessary, and threw it up on the crude platform, where other men shoveled it into a small car which was then trundled back over the rough boards to the lock, and so on out. It was slow, dirty, but not difficult work, so long as one did not think of the heavy river overhead with its ships and its choppy waves in the rain, and the gulls and the bells. Somehow, Dennis was fearfully disturbed as to the weight of this heavy volume of earth and water overhead. It really terrified him. Perhaps he had been overpersuaded by the lure of gold? Suppose it should break through, suppose the earth over his head should suddenly drop and bury him—that dim black earth overhead, as heavy and thick as this he was cutting with his shovel now.

“Come, Dennis, don’t be standin’ there lookin’ at the roof. The roof’s not goin’ to hurt ye. Ye’re not down here to be lookin’ after the roof. I’ll be doin’ that. Just ye ‘tend to yer shovelin’.”

It was the voice of Cavanaugh near at hand. Unconsciously McGlathery had stopped and was staring upward. A small piece of earth had fallen and struck him on the back. Suppose! Suppose!

Know, O reader, that the business of tunneling is one of the most hazardous and dramatic, albeit interesting, of all known fields of labor. It consists, in these latter days at least, in so far as under-water tunneling is concerned, of sinking huge shafts at either end or side of a river, lake or channel (one hundred feet, perhaps, within the shore line) to a depth of, say, thirty feet below the water level, and from these two points tunneling outward under the bottom of the river until the two ends meet somewhere near the middle. The exact contact and precise joining of these outer ends is considered one of the true tests of skilful engineering. McGlathery personally understood all this but dimly. And even so it could not cheer him any.

And it should be said here that the safety of the men who did the work, and the possibility of it, depended first on the introduction at either end, just at the base of the shafts and then at about every hundred or so feet, as the tunnel progressed outward, of huge cylindrical chambers, or locks, of heavy iron—air locks, no less—fifteen feet in diameter, and closed at each end by massive doors swinging inward toward the shore line, so that the amazing and powerful pressure of air constantly forced outward from the shore by huge engines could not force them open. It was only by the same delicate system which causes water locks to open and close that they could be opened at all. That is, workingmen coming down into the shaft and desiring to pass into the head of the tunnel beyond the lock, would have to first enter one of these locks, which would then gradually be filled with air compressed up to the same pressure as that maintained in the main portion of the tunnel farther in. When this pressure had been reached they could easily open the inward swinging door and pass into the tunnel proper. Here, provided that so much had been completed, they might walk, say, so much as a hundred or more feet, when they would encounter another lock. The pressure in the lock, according to who had last used it, would be either that of the section of the tunnel toward the shore, or of the section beyond, toward the centre of the river. At first, bell cords, later telephones, and then electric signals controlled this—that is, the lowering or raising of the pressure of air in the locks so that one door or the other might be opened. If the pressure in the lock was different from that in your section, and you could not open the door (which you could not), you pulled the cord or pushed the button so many times, according to your position, and the air in the lock was adjusted to the section of the tunnel in which you stood. Then you could open the door. Once in, as in a water lock, the air was raised or lowered, according to your signal, and you could enter the next section outward or inward. All these things had been adjusted to a nicety even in those days, which was years ago.

* * * * *

The digging of this particular tunnel seemed safe enough—for McGlathery at least, once he began working here. It moved at the rate of two and even three feet a day, when things were going well, only there were days and days when, owing to the need of shoring and timbering and plate setting, to say nothing of the accidental encountering of rock in front which had to be drilled away, the men with picks and shovels had to be given a rest, or better yet, set to helping the joiners in erecting those cross beams and supports which made the walls safe. It was so that Dennis learned much about joining and even drilling.

Nevertheless, in spite of the increased pay, this matter of working under the river was a constant source of fear to him. The earth in which he worked was so uncertain. One day it would be hard black mud, another soft, another silt, another sand, according as the tunnel sloped further and further under the bed. In addition, at times great masses of it fell, not enough to make a hole in the roof above, but enough, had it chanced to fall on one of the workers, to break his back or half bury him in mud. Usually it was broken by the beams overhead. Only one day, some seven months after he had begun and when he was becoming fairly accustomed to the idea of working here, and when his skill had increased to such an extent that he was considered one of the most competent workers in his limited field, the unexpected happened.

He had come down one morning at eight with the rest of his gang and was working about the base of two new supports which had just been put in place, when he noticed, or thought he did, that the earth seemed wetter than usual, sticky, watery, and hard to manage. It could not have been much worse had a subterranean spring been encountered. Besides, one of the gasoline lamps having been brought forward and hung close by, he noticed by its light that the ceiling seemed to look silvery gray and beady. He spoke of it to Cavanaugh, who stood by.

“Yis,” said his foreman dubiously, staring upward, “’tis wet. Maybe the air pumps is not workin’ right. I’ll just make sure,” and he sent word to the engineer.

The shaft superintendent himself appeared.

“Everything’s all right up above,” he said. “Two thousand pounds to the square inch. I’ll just put on a little more, if you say so.”

“Ye’d better,” replied Cavanaugh. “The roof’s not actin’ right. And if ye see Mr. Henderson, send him down. I’d like to talk to him.”

“All right,” and off he went.

McGlathery and the others, at first nervous, but now slightly reassured, worked on. But the ground under their feet became sloppy, and some of the silvery frosting on the roof began to drop and even trickle as water. Then a mass of sloppy mud fell.

“Back, men!”

It was the voice of Cavanaugh, but not quicker than the scampering of the men who, always keenly alive to the danger of a situation, had taken note of the dripping water and the first flop of earth. At the same time, an ominous creak from one of the beams overhead gave warning of the imminence of a catastrophe. A pell-mell rush for the lock some sixty feet away ensued. Tools were dropped, precedence disregarded. They fell and stumbled over the beams and between, pushing each other out of the way into the water and mud as they ran, McGlathery a fair second to none.

“Open the door! Open the door!” was the cry as they reached the lock, for some one had just entered from the other side—the engineer. “For Christ’s sake, open the door!” But that could not be done so quickly. A few moments at least had to elapse.

“It’s breakin’ in!” cried some one in a panicky voice, an ironworker.

“Great God, it’s comin down!” this from one of the masons, as three lamps in the distance were put out by the mud.

McGlathery was almost dying of fear. He was sweating a cold sweat. Five dollars a day indeed! He should stay away from water, once and for all. Didn’t he know that? It was always bad luck to him.

“What’s the trouble? What’s the trouble?” called the amazed engineer as, unconscious of what was happening outside, he pushed open the door.

“Git out of the way!”

“Fer God’s sake, let us in!”

“Shut the door!” this from a half dozen who had already reached safety assuming that the door could be instantly closed.

“Wait! Cavanaugh’s outside!” This from some one—not McGlathery, you may be sure, who was cowering in a corner. He was so fearful that he was entirely unconscious of his superior’s fate.

“To hell with Cavanaugh! Shut the door!” screamed another, a great ironworker, savage with fear.

“Let Cavanaugh in, I say!” this from the engineer.

At this point McGlathery, for the first time on this or any other job, awoke to a sense of duty, but not much at that. He was too fearful. This was what he got for coming down here at all. He knew Cavanaugh—Cavanaugh was his friend, indeed. Had he not secured him this and other jobs? Surely. But then Cavanaugh had persuaded him to come down here, which was wrong. He ought not to have done it. Still, even in his fear he had manhood enough to feel that it was not quite right to shut Cavanaugh out. Still, what could he do—he was but one. But even as he thought, and others were springing forward to shut Cavanaugh out, so eager were they to save themselves, they faced a gleaming revolver in the steady hand of the big foreman.

“I’ll shoot down the first damned man that tries to shut the door before me and Kelly are in,” the big foreman was calling, the while he was pulling this same Kelly from the mud and slime outside. Then fairly throwing him into the lock, and leaping after him, he turned and quietly helped closed the door.

McGlathery was amazed at this show of courage. To stop and help another man like that in the face of so much danger! Cavanaugh was even a better and kinder man than he had thought—really a great man—no coward like himself. But why had Cavanaugh persuaded him to come down here when he knew that he was afraid of water! And now this had happened. Inside as they cowered—all but Cavanaugh—they could hear the sound of crushing timber and grinding brick outside, which made it quite plain that where a few moments before had been beams and steel and a prospective passageway for men, was now darkness and water and the might of the river, as it had been since the beginning.