Part 20 (1/2)

”I will be frank with you,” she said, ”it's so hard to know what to do. Jack was here to-night before you came, and he asked me the same question you're asking now. Jack's rough, and he isn't educated, but he's big and strong, and I know he thinks a lot of me, and, besides, he's really a man.”

Gordon, with the skill not to provoke opposition, nodded a.s.sent.

”You're right,” he said with conviction, ”no one thinks more of Jack than I do. But, Ethel, without flattery, you're a woman in a thousand--in looks, in charm, in every way. And Jack--it isn't his fault--Jack is rough and uneducated, and it's too late to change him now. And, with all his good qualities, you'd never be happy with him all your life through. You couldn't, Ethel. Think what it would mean to live your life here on the mountain, no friends, no interests, nothing but life with Jack and the mine. No, we only live once, and it's our duty to make the most of it. And think of the other side of the picture. Wealth, social position, everything you could desire. I'm not a man of great wealth yet, but let me swing the mine the way I want to, and I'll be a millionaire ten times over. Think of it, Ethel.

Your city house, your country place, servants, horses, motors, around the world in a steam yacht; we'd get out of life what only a chosen few can get. Say you'll marry me, Ethel, and you'll never live to regret it, so help me G.o.d.”

There was a silence even longer than before. Then the girl rose and began to pace the room with quick, nervous steps.

”Oh, I don't know,” she cried, ”you make it so hard. It's my whole life you're asking me to decide. And I believe you're honest, too, and sincere; but, I've known Jack all my life. Oh, I don't know what to do.”

Gordon rose, and coming quickly across the room, took her in his arms.

She made no resistance, and very gently he stooped and kissed her.

”I know it's hard,” he said. ”It's hard to give up Jack. It's hard to leave the place that's always been your home; but, Ethel, it's the only way. I'm not going to urge my claims too far. After all's said, you're the one to decide. I'm going back now, and I'm coming here at ten o'clock to-morrow morning. Make your decision then, and whatever it is, in every way, Ethel, I'll always stand your friend. Good night, and I shall hope--and expect--to find you ready when I come.”

He was gone, and the girl was left alone. Alone, to lie awake the long night through, thinking, planning, deciding and then changing her decision, in a tremor of doubt and uncertainty, until the morning sunlight, sweet and wholesome, forced its cheery way through the shutters of the little room.

For Jack Harrison, never did day seem so long. The hours dragged on leaden feet, even the minutes seemed mockingly to lengthen all through the dreary day. It was dusk when he started for the cabin, and as he neared it, absently he noticed that the light was not yet lit in the kitchen window. With a step so buoyant as to become almost a run, he thrust open the gate, and gained the porch. The door was shut, and the latch did not yield to his eager pressure. Then, suddenly coming to himself, he gave a gasp of fear, and half staggered back on the porch.

As he did so, his eye caught, pinned to the door, a square of white.

With trembling fingers he lit a match, tore open the letter, and read the few brief words it contained. Then, silent, as if mortally stricken, he staggered here and there, as if still blindly seeking, in the place she had loved so well, the girl he had loved--and lost.

On his knees he dropped, clasping the railing with his hands, and in dumb agony gazed out as if for help across the mighty silences of the darkening valley. The west wind, sweeping free, moaned through the tree tops below; dark clouds, driven low, one by one blotted out the light of stars; faintly, here and there, on the mountain side, gleamed the lights of other cabins, homes--such as the home he had some day meant to build. With a sudden uncontrollable gesture, he raised his eyes to the heavens, where, amid the flying cloud wrack, one star still faintly shone.

”Oh, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d!” he cried. ”And I loved her so.”

Faster sped the hurrying clouds, louder moaned the freshening wind; even the single star no longer shone, and darkness, like a pall, settled down over Burnt Mountain.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAUNCHING OF THE KONAHa.s.sETT

The hands of the big clock in the ”customers' room” at Gordon and Randall's pointed to five minutes of ten. Pervading the place was a general air of extreme tension, somehow suggesting that all present were about to start in a race of some kind, and were undergoing the agonies of the last few nerve-racking moments before the start. And this, indeed, in a sense was true. When the clock should strike ten, and the opening bell of the Exchange should be heard, a race of a kind began for all.

The two thin-faced, alert, nervous young men at the tickers, steadily calling the quotations, must keep pace with the whirring tape; the two boys standing in front of the big stock board, marking up the eighths and quarters, or indeed, the whole points, as the favorites receded or advanced, must make their nimble fingers fly; and the customers themselves, according to their several temperaments sitting at ease in the big arm-chairs or pacing nervously up and down the room, must keep close watch of their holdings; make up their minds, if winning, when to quit at the right time; if losing, whether to take their loss with a philosophical shrug of the shoulders, or whether to dig deeper into their pockets, make the depleted margin good, and desperately hold on for better things.

The day and hour marked the third month of the great copper boom, an ”era of good-feeling” when bulls were rampant in every pasture, and bears had retreated so far into the woods that their distant growlings pa.s.sed all unnoticed and unheard; when every little lamb had his little day and on the strength of his paper profits bought an automobile for himself and a set of furs for his wife; when brokers were encouragingly urbane and polite and customers eager and enthusiastic in their pleasant and successful chase after the jingling dollars; that splendid time, in short, when anybody and everybody could make money, when there were all winners and no losers, when ”getting rich quick” was so easy that one felt almost ashamed of his winnings, and thought with good-humored self-contempt of what he had been making in ”straight” business, his year's earnings now in a week or two doubled or even trebled, and all without effort, all with scarcely the exertion even of lifting a finger. Prosperity, happiness, glorious country, beautiful world!

Among the other customers was little Mott-Smith, as usual, anxious, worried, hesitating between the conservative wish to make sure of what he had gained by following Gordon's lead, and the maddening desire to hold on and take his chances of seeing things mount higher and yet higher still. A week ago, on Gordon's word of advice, let fall after a game of bridge at the Federal, he had bought two hundred Arizona and Eureka at forty-seven; two days later a drop to forty-five had cost him a sleepless night and two restless, nervous days; then, in a forenoon, it had jumped to forty-nine, and thence had risen steadily on what was described in the learned language of the financial columns as ”acc.u.mulative buying of the very highest cla.s.s, rumored to be that of prominent insiders who are in receipt of most gratifying news direct from the mine.” In turn it had touched fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two and one-half, and the night before had closed strong at fifty-three bid, and no stock offered.

Thus Mott-Smith worried and planned and mentally bought and sold stocks right and left twenty times in two minutes. On the one hand, twelve hundred dollars in real money was for him a sum well worth having, and yet, in spite of that, he could not forget the tone of Gordon's voice as he had looked Mott-Smith squarely in the eye in answer to the latter's timid question. ”Arizona and Eureka,” he had said, ”yes, indeed, it's a good mine; a very good mine,” and then he had glanced over his shoulder and distinctly dropped his voice a trifle before he added: ”and from what I hear, I should judge that before many days it's going considerably higher, too.”

It had been on the strength of this opinion that he had bought his two hundred shares, for Gordon and Randall were already known as a house remarkably well posted on coppers, and Gordon's weekly market letter, well-written, entirely lacking in anything bordering on the tipster's objectionable art, well poised, and steadily but conservatively bullish, numbered among its readers thousands of Gordon's eager followers. And in this special case, Gordon, as usual, had been right.

But ”considerably higher”; just what that meant was the hard point to determine. Was six points ”considerably higher” or was it not?

While he stood pondering the problem, suddenly the bell struck.

Instantly the clerks at the tickers began to call, ”Copper, one hundred fourteen and a quarter; U. P., one hundred thirty-seven; Reading, one hundred eight; Copper, one hundred fourteen and a half; Copper, one hundred fifteen;” the race was on.