Aladdin and Company Part 31

"My dear," said Alice very humbly, "I beg your pardon. I have misjudged you. Will you forgive me?"

Josie came to take her letter, and, in lieu of other answer, stood with her arm about Alice's waist.

"And now," said Alice, "have you no other confidences for us?"

"No!" she cried, "no! there is nothing more! Nothing, absolutely nothing, believe me! But, now, confidence for confidence, Albert, what is this great danger? Is it anything for which any one here--for which I am to blame? Does it threaten any one else? Can't something be done about it? Tell me, tell me!"

"I think," said I, "that the letter was written before my telegram from New York came, and after--some great difficulties came upon us. I don't believe he would have written it five hours later; and I don't believe he would have written it to any one in anything but the depression of--the feeling he has for you."

"If that is true," said she, "why does he still avoid me? Why does he still avoid me? You have not told me all; or there is something you do not know."

As we went home, Alice kept referring to Jim's letter, and was as much troubled by it as was Josie.

"How do you explain it?" she asked.

"I explain it," said I, "by ranging it with the well-known phenomenon of the love-sick youth of all lands and in every time, who revels in the thought of incurring danger or death, and heralding the fact to his loved one. Even Jim is not exempt from the feelings of the boy who rejoices in delicious tears at the thought of being found cold and dead on the doorstep of the cruel maiden of his dreams. And that letter, with a slight substratum of fact, is the result. Don't bother about it for a moment."

This answer may not have been completely frank, or quite expressive of my views; but I was tired of the subject. It was hardly a time to play with mammets or to tilt with lips, and it seemed that the matter might wait. There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us at that time, and I had my full share of it. Insomnia was prevalent, and gray hairs increased and multiplied. The time was drawing near for our meeting with Pendleton in Chicago. We had advices that he was coming in from the West, on his return from a long journey of inspection, and would pa.s.s over his Pacific Division. We asked him to run down to Lattimore over our road, but Smith answered that the running schedule could not be altered.

There seemed to be no reason for doubting that the proposed contract would be ratified; for the last desperate rally on our part appeared to have put a crash out of the question, for some time at least. To him that hath shall be given; and so long as we were supposed to possess power, we felt that we were safe. Yet the blow dealt by Cornish had maimed us, no matter how well we hid our hurt; and we were all too keenly conscious of the law of the hunt, by which it is the wounded buffalo which is singled out and dragged down by the wolves.

On Wednesday Jim and I were to start for Chicago, where Mr. Pendleton would be found awaiting us. On Sunday the weather, which had been cold and snowy for weeks, changed; and it blew from the southeast, raw and chill, but thawy. All day Monday the warmth increased; and the farmers coming into town reported great ponds of water dammed up in the swales and hollows against the enormous snow-drifts. Another warm day, and these waters would break through, and the streams would go free in freshets. Tuesday dawned without a trace of frost, and still the strong warm wind blew; but now it was from the east, and as I left the carriage to enter my office I was wet by a scattering fall of rain. In a few moments, as I dictated my morning's letters, my stenographer called attention to the beating on the window of a strong and persistent downpour.

Elkins, too much engrossed in his thoughts to be able to confine himself to the details of his business, came into my office, where, sometimes sitting and sometimes walking uneasily about, he seemed to get some sort of comfort from my presence. He watched the rain, as one seeing visions.

"By morning," said he, "there ought to be ducks in Alderson's pond.

Can't we do our ch.o.r.es early and get into the blind before daylight, and lay for 'em?"

"I heard Canada geese honking overhead last night," said I.

"What time last night?"

"Two o'clock."

"Well, that lets us out on the Alderson's pond project," said he; "the boys who hunted there weren't out walking at two. In those days they slept. It can't be that we're the fellows.... Why, there's Antonia, coming in through the rain!"

"I wonder," said I, "if la grippe isn't taking a bad turn with her father."

She came in, shedding the rain from her mackintosh like a water-fowl, radiant with health and the air of outdoors.

"Gentlemen," said she gaily, "who but myself would come out in anything but a diving-suit to-day!"

"It's almost an even thing," said Jim, "between a calamity, which brings you, and good fortune, which keeps you away. I hope it's only your ordinary defiance of the elements."

"The fact is," said she, "that it's a very funny errand. But don't laugh at me if it's absurd, please. It's about Mr. Cornish."

"Yes!" said Jim, "what of him?"

"You know papa has been kept in by la grippe for a day or so," she went on, "and we haven't been allowing people to see him very much; but Mr.

Cornish has been in two or three times, and every time when he went away papa was nervous and feverish. To-day, after he left, papa asked--" here she looked at Mr. Elkins, as he stood gravely regarding her, and went on with redder cheeks--"asked me some questions, which led to a long talk between us, in which I found out that he has almost persuaded papa to--to change his business connections completely."

"Yes!" said Jim. "Change, how?"

"Why, that I didn't quite understand," said Antonia, "except that there was logwood and mahogany and Mexico in it, and--and that he had made papa feel very differently toward you. After what has taken place recently I knew that was wrong--you know papa is not as firm in his ideas as he used to be; and I felt that he--and you, were in danger, somehow. At first I was afraid of being laughed at--why, I'd rather you'd laugh at me than to look like _that_!"

"You're a good girl, Antonia," said Jim, "and have done the right thing, and a great favor to us. Thank you very much; and please excuse me a moment while I send a telegram. Please wait until I come back."

"No, I'm going, Albert," said she, when he was gone to his own office.

"But first you ought to know that man told papa something--about me."

"How do you know about this?" said I.

"Papa asked me--if I had--any complaints to make--of Mr. Elkins's treatment of me! What do you suppose he dared to tell him?"

"What did you tell your father?" I asked.

"What could I tell him but 'No'?" she exclaimed. "And I just had a heart-to-heart talk with papa about Mr. Cornish and the way he has acted; and if his fever hadn't begun to run up so, I'd have got the rubber, or Peruvian-bark idea, or whatever it was, entirely out of his mind. Poor papa! It breaks my heart to see him changing so! And so I gave him a sleeping-capsule, and came down through this splendid rain; and now I'm going! But, mind, this last is a secret."

And so she went away.

"Where's Antonia?" asked Jim, returning.

"Gone," said I.

"I wanted to talk further about this matter."

"I don't like it, Jim. It means that the cruel war is not over."

"Wait until we pa.s.s Wednesday," said Jim, "and we'll wring his neck.

What a poisonous devil, to try and wean from us, to his ruin, an old man in his dotage!--I wish Antonia had stayed. I went out to set the boys wiring for news of washouts between here and Chicago. We mustn't miss that trip, if we have to start to-night. This rain will make trouble with the track.--No, I don't like it, either. Wasn't it thoughtful of Antonia to come down! We can line Hinckley up all right, now we know it; but if it had gone on--we can't stand a third solar-plexus blow...."

The sky darkened, until we had to turn on the lights, and the rain fell more and more heavily. Once or twice there were jarring rolls of distant thunder. To me there was something boding and ominous in the weather.

The day wore on interminably in the quiet of a business office under such a sky. Elkins sent in a telegram which he had received that no trouble with water was looked for along our way to Chicago, which was by the Halliday line. As the dark day was lowering down to its darker close, I went into President Elkins's office to take him home with me.

As I entered through my private door, I saw Giddings coming in through the outer entrance.

"Say," said he, "I wanted to see you two together. I know you have some business with Pendleton, and you've promised the boys a story for Thursday or Friday. Now, you've been a little sore on me because I haven't absolutely cut Cornish."

"Not at all," said Jim. "You must have a poor opinion of our intelligence."

"Well, you had no cause to feel that way," he went on, "because, as a newspaperman, I'm supposed to have few friends and no enemies. Besides, you can't tell what a man might sink to, deprived all at once of the friendship of three such men as you fellows!"

"Quite right," said I; "but get to the point."

"I'm getting to it," said he. "I violate no confidence when I say that Cornish has got it in for your crowd in great shape. The point is involved in that. I don't know what your little game is with old Pendleton, but whatever it is, Cornish thinks he can queer it, and at the same time reap some advantages from the old man, if he can have a few minutes' talk with Pen before you do. And he's going to do it, if he can. Now, I figure, with my usual correctness of ratiocination, that your scheme is going to be better for the town, and therefore for the _Herald_, than his, and hence this disclosure, which I freely admit has some of the ear-marks of bad form. Not that I blame Cornish, or am saying anything against him, you know. His course is ideally Iagoan: he stands in with Pendleton, benefits himself, and gets even with you all at one fell--"

"Stop this chatter!" cried Jim, flying at him and seizing him by the collar. "Tell me how you know this, and how much you know!"

"My G.o.d!" said Giddings, his lightness all departed, "is it as vital as that? He told me himself. Said it was something he wouldn't put on paper and must tell Pendleton by word of mouth, and he's on the train that just pulled out for Chicago."