The Veiled Lady, and Other Men and Women Part 7

"Absolutely. So do thousands of our citizens."

"You don't seem to agree with Senor Garlicho, then. He thought your former president, Paramba, a tyrant. As for President Alvarez, he looked upon him as the saviour of his country."

The lips had full play now, the smile of contempt wrinkling up to his eyelids.

"Saviour of his country! Saviour of his pocket! Pardon me; I am not here to discuss the polities of our people. Is this your estimate?" And he reached over and picked it from my desk. "Ah, yes: forty thousand dollars for the ironwork; one hundred and twenty thousand for the erection on the Lobo Reef; one hundred and sixty thousand in all. Thank you." Here he tucked the paper in his pocket and rose from his seat.

"You will hear from me in a month, perhaps earlier. Good-day." And he waddled out.

The return of the Tampico six weeks later brought another South American consignment. This was a roll of plans concealed in a tin case--the identical package which Mawk.u.m had handed the "Bunch of Dried Garlic" months before, together with a doc.u.ment stamped, restamped and stamped again, containing an order in due form, signed "Carlos Onativia," for a lighthouse to be erected on the "Garra de Lobo"--this last was in red ink--with s.h.i.+pping directions, etc., etc.

With it came the clerk of the bankers (he had the case under his arm), a reputable concern within a stone's throw of my office, who signed the contract and paid the first instalment.

Then followed the erection of the ironwork in the Brooklyn yard; its inspection by the engineer appointed by the bankers; its dismemberment and final coat of red lead--each tie-rod and beam red as sticks of sealing-wax--its delivery, properly bundled and packed, aboard a sailing vessel bound for San Juan, and the payment of the last instalment.

This closed the transaction, so far as we were concerned.

A year pa.s.sed--two of them, in fact--during which time no news of any kind reached us of the lighthouse. Mawk.u.m kept the duplicate blue-print of the elevation tacked on the wall over his desk to show our clients the wide range of our business, and I would now and then try to translate the newspapers which Lawton sent by every mail. These would generally refer to the dissatisfaction felt by many of the Moccadorians over the present government, one editorial, as near as I could make out, going so far as to hint that a secret movement was on foot to oust the "Usurper" Alvarez and restore the old government under Paramba. No reference was ever made to the lighthouse. We knew, of course, that it had arrived, for the freight had been paid: this we learned from the brokers who s.h.i.+pped it; but whether it was still in storage at San Juan or was flas.h.i.+ng red and white--a credit to Onativia's energy and a G.o.dsend to incoming s.h.i.+pping--was still a mystery.

Mawk.u.m would often laugh whenever Garlicho's or Onativia's name was mentioned, and once in a while we would discuss the difficulties they must have encountered in the erection of the structure in the open sea.

One part of the transaction we could never understand, and that was why Garlicho had allowed the matter to lapse if the lighthouse was needed so badly, and what were his reasons for sending Onativia to renew the negotiations instead of coming himself.

All doubts on this and every other point were set at rest one fine morning by the arrival of a sunburned gentleman with gray side-whiskers, a man I had not seen for years.

"Why, Lawton!" I cried, grasping his hand. "This is a surprise. Came by the Tampico, did you? Oh, but I am glad to see you! Here, draw up a chair. But stop--not a word until I ask you some questions about that lighthouse."

The genial Scotchman broke out into a loud laugh.

"Don't laugh! Listen!" I said to him. "Tell me, why didn't Garlicho go on with the work, and what do you know about Onativia?"

Lawton leaned back in his chair and closed one eye in merriment.

"Garlicho did not go on with the work, my dear friend, because he was breaking stone in the streets of San Juan with a ball and chain around his ankle. When Paramba came back to power he was tried for high treason and condemned to be shot. He saved his neck by turning over the lighthouse papers to Onativia. As to Carlos Onativia, he is a product of the soil. Started life as a coolie boss in a copper mine, became manager and owner, built the bridge over the Quitos River and the railroad up the Andes; is the brightest man in Moccador and the brains of the Paramba Government. One part of his duty is to keep the people satisfied, and he does it every single time; another is to divide with Paramba every dollar he makes."

"But the lighthouse!" I interrupted. "Is it up? You must have pa.s.sed it on your way out of the harbor."

"Up? Yes, and lighted every night--up in the public garden in San Juan among the palms and bananas. The people eat ice-cream on the first platform and the band plays Sundays in the balcony under the boat davits. The people are wild about it--especially the women. It was the last coat of red lead that did it."

And again the office rang with Lawton's laugh.

MISS MURDOCK,--"SPECIAL"

A row of gas jets hooded by green paper shades lighting a long table at which sit half a dozen men in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves writing like mad; against the wall other men,--one drawing Easter lilies, another blocking in the background around a photograph, a third pasting clippings on sheets of brown paper. Every few minutes a bare-headed boy in a dirty ap.r.o.n, with smudged face and ink-stained fingers, bounds into the stifling, smoke-laden room, skirts the long table, dives through a door labelled "City Editor," remains an instant and bounds out again, his hands filled with long streamers of proof.

In the opening and shutting of the swinging door a round-bodied, round-headed man in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves comes into view. Covering his forehead, s.h.i.+elding his eyes from the glare of the overhead gas jet, is a half-moon of green leather held in place by strings tied behind his ears. The line of shadow caused by this shade makes a blank s.p.a.ce about his eyes and brings into relief his pale, flabby cheeks, hard, straight mouth, and coa.r.s.e chin. Only when he lifts his head to give some order, or holds the receiver of the telephone to his ear, can his eyes be exactly located. Then they s.h.i.+ne like a cat's in a cellar,--gray, white, gray again, with a glint of metallic green,--always the same distance apart, never wavering, never blinking. Overstrung, overworked, nervous men, working at high pressure, spurred by the merciless lash of pa.s.sing minutes, have these eyes. So do cornered beasts fighting for air and s.p.a.ce. Eleven-thirty had just been tolled by the neighboring clock; deliverance would come when the last form of the morning edition was made up. Until then safety could only be found in constant attack.

Outside the city editor's office, sprawled over a pile of mail sacks, between the long table and the swinging door, lay Joe Quinn, man-of-all-work,--boy, in fact, for he was but nineteen, big for his age, with arms and legs like cordwood and a back straight and hard as a plank. Joe's duty was to keep his eyes peeled, his ears open, and his legs in working order. If a reporter wanted a fresh pad, a cup of water, or a file of papers, Joe brought them; sometimes he foraged for sandwiches and beer,--down four pair of stairs, across the street into a cellar and up again; sometimes he carried messages; oftener he made an elevator of himself, running between the presses in the bas.e.m.e.nt and the desk behind the swinging door. Fifty trips in a single night had not been an unusual tally.

To the inmates of the room the boy was known as "Joe" or "Quinn" or "Sonny." To the man with the half-moon shade over his eyes he was "Say"

or "That d.a.m.ned Kid." High-strung, high-pressure editors omit the unnecessary, condensation being part of their creed.

Up in the Franconia Notch, in a little hollow under White Face and below Bog Eddy, Joe had been known as "Jonathan's boy," Jonathan being the name his father went by, the last half never being used,--there being but one "Jonathan"--the one whom everybody loved.

The cabin was still standing, where Joe was born,--a slant of logs with a stone chimney and some out-buildings; and his old father was still alive, and so was his mother and his little "Sis." Summer mornings the smoke would curl straight up from the rude stone chimney, catch a current of air from the valley, and stretch its blue arms toward the tall hemlocks covering the slope of the mountain. Winter mornings it lay flat, buffeted by the winds, hiding itself later on among the trees. Joe knew these hemlocks,--loved them,--had hugged them many a time, laying his plump, ruddy cheek against the patches of cool moss velveting their sides. "Nothin' like trees," his old father had told him,--"real human when ye know 'em."

To-night, as he lay stretched out on the mail sacks, his ears unlatched, listening for the sound of the night city editor's bell, or his gruff "Say, you!" his mind kept reverting to their bigness and wide, all embracing, protecting arms. A letter from Jonathan received that morning, and still tucked away in his inside pocket, had revived these memories.

"They've started to cut roads, son," it read. "I was out gummin'

yesterday and got up under White Face. Won't be nothing left if they keep on. Cy Hawkins sold his timber land to them last winter and they've histed up a biler on wheels and a succular saw, and hev cleared off purty nigh every tree clean from the big windslash down to the East Branch. It ain't going into building stuff; they're sending it down to Plymouth to a pulp mill and grinding it up to print newspapers on, so the head man told me. Guess you know all about it, but it was news to me. I told him it was a gol-darn-shame to serve a tree so, being as how trees had feelings same as men, but he laughed and said it warn't none of my bizness, and I guess it ain't. Beats all what some folks will do for money."

Joe thought so too,--had been thinking so ever since he broke the seal of the letter that the postmaster at Woodstock had directed for his father. "Dad's right; trees have feelings," he kept repeating to himself. And, as to being human, he could recall a dozen that he had talked to and that had talked back to him ever since he could remember.

His father had taught him their language on the long days when he had trailed behind carrying the gum bag or had hidden in the bushes while the old man wormed himself along, his rifle in the hollow of his arm, or when the two lay stretched out before their camp fire.

"Dogs and trees, my son, will never go back on ye like some folks I've hearn tell of. Allers find 'em the same. See that yaller birch over thar?--Well, I've knowed that birch over forty-two year and he ain't altered a mite, 'cept his clothes ain't as decent as they was, and his shoes is give out 'round the roots. You kin see whar the bark's busted 'long 'round his toes,--but his heart's all right and he's alive and peart, too. You'll find him fust tree out in the spring,--sometimes 'fore the sugar sap's done runnin'. Purty soon, if you watch him same's me, ye'll see him begin to shake all over,--kind o' s.h.i.+very with some inside fun; then comes the buds and, fust thing ye know, he gives a little see-saw or two in the warm air and out busts the leaves, and he a laughin' fit to kill. Maybe the birds ain't glad, and maybe them squirrels that's been snowed up all winter with their noses out o' that crotch, ain't jes' holdin' their sides, and maybe, too, them little sunbeams don't like to sneak in and go to sleep on the bark all silvery and s.h.i.+nin' like the ribbons on Sis's hat! They're human, them trees is, I tell ye, son,--real human!

"And ye want to treat 'em with some perliteness, too they're older'n anything 'round here 'cept the rocks; and they've been holdin' up the dignity of this valley, too,--kind o' 'sponsible for things. That's another thing ye mustn't forgit. The fust folks that come travellin'

through this notch--'bout time the Injins quit,--took notice on 'em, I tell ye. That's what they come for. Bald Top and White Face was all right, but it was the trees that knocked 'em silly. That's what you kin read in the book school-teacher has, and that's true. And see how they treat their brothers that git toppled over,--by a windslash, maybe, or lightnin' or a landslide, or some such cussed thing, givin' 'em a shoulder to lean on same as you would help a cripple. When they're clean down and done for it ain't more'n a year or two 'fore they got 'em kivered all over with leaves, and then they git tergether and hev a quiltin' party and purty soon they're all over blankets o' green moss, and the others jes stand 'round solemn and straight like's if they was mountin' guard over their graves.

"It's wicked to kill most anything 'less ye got some use--and a good one, too,--for the meat, but it's a durned sight meaner to cut down a tree that took so long to grow and that's been so decent all its life, 'less ye can't do without the stuff ye git out'n it."

Joe had listened and had drunk it all in, and his love for the tall giants away back in the deep wilderness had never left him. It was these dear old friends more than anything else that had kept him at home, under plea of helping his father, months after he knew he ought to be up and doing if he would ever be of any use to the old man in his later years.

It was Plymouth first, as stable boy, and then down to Nashua and Boston as teamster and freight handler, and then, by what he considered at the time a lucky chance--(Katie Murdock, from his own town, and now a reporter in the same newspaper office with himself, had helped), man of all work in this whirl where he felt like a fly clinging to a driving wheel.

Stretching out his stout saw-log legs and settling his big shoulders into the soft cus.h.i.+ons made by the sacks, his mind went back to the old sawmill,--Baker's Mill,--and the dam backed up alongside the East Branch. An old kingfisher used to sit on a limb over the still water and watch for minnows,--a blue and white fellow with a sharp beak. He had frightened him away many a time. And there was a hole where two big trout lived. He remembered the willows, too, and the bunch of logs piled as high as the mill. These would be rolled down and cant-hooked under its saw when the spring opened, but Baker never ground any one of them up into wood pulp. It went into clapboards to keep out the cold, and s.h.i.+ngles to keep off the rain, and the "waste" went under the kettles of the neighbors, the light of the jolly flames dancing round the room. He had carried many a bundle home himself that the old man had sent to Jonathan. Most everybody sent Jonathan something, especially if they thought he needed it.

Then his mind reverted to his own share in the whirl about him. It wasn't a job he liked, but there wasn't anything else offering, and then Katie might want somebody to look after her, and so it was just as well he had the job. He and Katie had been schoolmates together not so long ago, in the wooden schoolhouse near the crossroads. She had gone to college, and had come home with a diploma. She was two or three years older than he was, but that didn't make any difference to a boy and girl from the same village when they had grown up alongside of each other. He wondered how long it was to July, when he was promised a week,--and so was Katie. He knew just what they'd do; he could get two pa.s.ses to Plymouth,--his old friend the freight boss had promised him that,--then about daylight, the time the train arrived, he'd find Marvin, who drove the stage up the valley and past his old home, and help him curry his team and hitch up, and Marvin would give them a ride free. He could feel the fresh air on his cheeks as he rattled out of the village, across the railroad track and out into the open. Tim Shekles, the blacksmith, would be at work, and old Mother Crawport would be digging in her garden, early as it was; and out in the fields the crows would be hunting corn; and pretty soon down would go the wheels into the soft, clean gravel of the brook that crossed the turnpike and out again on the other side dripping puddles in the dirt; and soon the big trees would begin, and keep on and on and on,--away up to the tops of the mountains, the morning sun silvering the mists sweeping up their sides,--and--

"Say! you! Wake up! He's been hollering at you for five minutes. GIT!"

Joe sat up and rubbed his eyes. The fresh air of the morning had vanished.

"Yes, sir." He was on his feet now, alert as a terrier that had sniffed a rat.

"YES, SIR, eh! How many times do you want me to call you? Go and find Miss Murdock, and send her here on the run. Tell her to get her hat and cloak and show up in two minutes. I've got an a.s.signment for her on the East Side,--just come over the 'phone. Hurry now! That d.a.m.ned kid ought to be--"

But Joe was already out of the room and down two pair of stairs. Before the minutes were up he was back again, Katie Murdock with him. She was sliding her arm into the sleeve of her jacket as she entered.

"Forty-third and First Avenue, Miss Murdock," said the night city editor, lifting his head so that the cat eyes had full play. "Girl overboard from one of the ferry boats,--lives at 117.--Drowned, they say,--some fellow mixed up in it. Take your snapshot along and get everything. Find the mother if she's got one and--"

But the girl had gone. She knew the value of time,--especially at that hour, even if she had been but a week in her new department of "Special." Her chief knew it, too, or he wouldn't have sent her at that hour. There was time--plenty of time if everything went right,--thirty minutes, perhaps an hour,--to spare, but they were not hers to waste.

"Wait for me, Joe," she said, as she hurried past him. "We'll go up town together, soon as the presses start."

Joe threw himself again on the pile of sacks and kept his ears open for orders. It was a bad night for Katie to go out. She was plucky and could hold her own,--had done so a dozen times,--once in a street car when some fellow tried to be familiar,--but he didn't like her to go, all the same. n.o.body who looked into her face and then down into her blue eyes would ever make any mistake, but then some men mightn't take the trouble to look. He'd wait for her, no matter how late it might be.