Peter Part 31

Jack leaned back in his seat, his face a tangle of hopes and fears. What was Uncle Peter driving at, anyhow?

"I have tried other things, and she would not listen," he said in a more positive tone. Again the two interviews he had had with Ruth came into his mind; the last one as if it had been yesterday.

"Try until she DOES listen," continued Peter. "Tell her you will be very lonely if she doesn't go, and that she is the one and only thing in Corklesville that interests you outside of your work--and be sure you mention the dear girl first and the work last--and that you won't have another happy hour if she leaves you in the--"

"Oh!--Uncle Peter!"

"And why not? It's a fact, isn't it? You were honest about Isaac; why not be honest with Ruth?"

"I am."

"No, you're not,--you only tell her half what's in your heart. Tell her all of it! The poor child has been very much depressed of late, so Felicia tells me, over something that troubles her, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were at the bottom of it. Give yourself an overhauling and find out what you have said or done to hurt her. She will never forget you for pulling her father out of that hole, nor will he."

Jack bristled up: "I don't want her to think of me in that way!"

"Oh, you don't! don't you? Oh, of course not! You want her to think of you as a great and glorious young knight who goes prancing about the world doing good from habit, and yet you are so high and mighty that--Jack, you rascal, do you know you are the stupidest thing that breathes? You're like a turkey, my boy, trying to get over the top rail of a pen with its head in the air, when all it has to do is to stoop a little and march out on its toes."

Jack rose from his seat and walked toward the fire, where he stood with one hand on the mantel. He knew Peter had a purpose in all his raillery and yet he dared not voice the words that trembled on his lips; he could tell the old fellow everything in his life except his love for Ruth and her refusal to listen to him. This was the bitterest of all his failures, and this he would not and could not pour into Peter's ears.

Neither did he want Ruth to have Peter's help, nor Miss Felicia's; nor MacFarlane's; not anybody's help where her heart was concerned. If Ruth loved him that was enough, but he wouldn't have anybody persuade her to love him, or advise with her about loving him. How much Peter knew he could not say. Perhaps!--perhaps Ruth told him something!--something he was keeping to himself!

As this last thought forced itself into his brain a great surge of joy swept over him. For a brief moment he stood irresolute. One of Peter's phrases now rang clear: "Stoop a little!" Stoop?--hadn't he done everything a man could do to win a woman, and had he not found the bars always facing him?

With this his heart sank again. No, there was no use of thinking anything more about it, nor would he tell him. There were some things that even Peter couldn't understand,--and no wonder, when you think how many years had gone by since he loved any woman.

The chime of the little clock rang out.

Jack turned quickly: "Eleven o'clock, Uncle Peter, and I must go; time's up. I hate to leave you."

"And what about the shanty and the cook?" said Peter, his eyes searching Jack's.

"I'll go,--I intended to go all the time if you approved."

"And what about Ruth?"

"Don't ask me, Uncle Peter, not now." And he hurried off to pack his bag.

CHAPTER XX

If Jack, after leaving Peter and racing for the ferry, had, under Peter's advice, formulated in his mind any plan by which he could break down Ruth's resolve to leave both her father and himself in the lurch and go out in the gay world alone, there was one factor which he must have left out of his calculations--and that was the unexpected.

One expression of Peter's, however, haunted him all the way home:--that Ruth was suffering and that he had been the cause of it. Had he hurt her?--and if so, how and when? With this, the dear girl's face, with the look of pain on it which Miss Felicia had noticed, rose before him.

Perhaps Peter was right. He had never thought of Ruth's side of the matter--had never realized that she, too, might have suffered. To-morrow he would go to her. If he could not win her for himself he could, at least, find out the cause and help relieve her pain.

This idea so possessed him that it was nearly dawn before he dropped to sleep.

With the morning everything changed.

Such a rain had never been known to fall--not in the memory of the oldest moss-back in the village--if any such ancient inhabitant existed.

Twelve hours of it had made rivers of the streets, quagmires of the roads, and covered the crossings ankle-deep with mud. It had begun in the night while Isaac was expounding his views on snuff boxes, tunnels, and Voltaire to Peter and Jack, had followed Jack across the river and had continued to soak into his clothes until he opened Mrs. Hicks's front door with his private key. It was still pelting away the next morning, when Jack, alarmed at its fury, bolted his breakfast, and, donning his oilskins and rubber boots, hurried to the brick office from whose front windows he could get a view of the fill, the culvert, and the angry stream, and from whose rear windows could be seen half a mile up the raging torrent, the curve of the unfinished embankment flanking one side of the new boulevard which McGowan was building under a contract with the village.

Hardly had he slipped off his boots and tarpaulins when MacFarlane, in mackintosh and long rubber boots, splashed in:

"Breen," said his Chief, loosening the top b.u.t.ton of his storm coat and thres.h.i.+ng the water from his cap:

Jack was on his feet in an instant:

"Yes, sir."

"I wish you would take a look at the boulevard spillway. I know McGowan's work and how he skins it sometimes, and I'm getting worried.

Coggins says the water is backing up, and that the slopes are giving way. You can see yourself what a lot of water is coming down--" here they both gazed through the open window. "I never saw that stream look like that since I've been here; there must be a frightful pressure now on McGowan's retaining walls. We should have a close shave if anything gave way above us. Our own culvert's working all right, but it's taxed now to its utmost."

Jack unhooked his water-proof from a nail behind the door--he had began putting on his rubber boots again before MacFarlane finished speaking.

"He will have to pay the bills, sir, if anything gives way--" Jack replied in a determined voice. "Garry told me only last week that McGowan had to take care of his own water; that was part of his contract. It comes under Garry's supervision, you know."

"Yes, I know, and that may all be so, Breen," he replied with a flickering smile, "but it won't do us any good,--or the road either.

They want to run cars next month."

The door again swung wide, and a man drenched to the skin, the water glistening on his bushy gray beard stepped in.

"I heard you were here, sir, and had to see you. There's only four feet lee-way in our culvert, sir, and the scour's eating into the underpinning; I am just up from there. We are trying bags of cement, but it doesn't do much good."

MacFarlane caught up his hat and the two hurried down stream to the "fill," while Jack, b.u.t.toning his oilskin jacket over his chest, and crowding his slouch hat close to his eyebrows and ears strode out into the downpour, his steps bent in the opposite direction.

The sight that met his eyes was even more alarming. The once quiet little stream, with its stretch of meadowland reaching to the foot of the steep hills, was now a swirl of angry reddish water careering toward the big culvert under the "fill." There it struck the two flanking walls of solid masonry, doubled in volume and thus baffled, shot straight into and under the culvert and so on over the broad fields below.

Up the stream toward the boulevard on the other side of its sky line, groups of men were already engaged carrying shovels, or lugging pieces of timber as they hurried along its edge, only to disappear for an instant and reappear again empty-handed. Shouts could be heard, as if some one were giving orders. Against the storm-swept sky, McGowan's short, squat figure was visible, his hands waving wildly to other gangs of men who were running at full speed toward where he stood.

Soon a knife-edge of water glistened along the crest of the earth embankment supporting the roadway of the boulevard, scattered into a dozen sluiceways, gas.h.i.+ng the sides of the slopes, and then, before Jack could realize his own danger, the whole ma.s.s collapsed only to be swallowed up in a mighty torrent which leaped straight at him.

Jack wheeled suddenly, shouted to a man behind him to run for his life, and raced on down stream toward the "fill" a mile below where MacFarlane and his men, unconscious of their danger, were strengthening the culvert and its approaches.

On swept the flood, tearing up trees, cabins, shanties, fences; swirling along the tortuous bed only to leap and swirl again, its solid front bristling with the debris it had wrenched loose in its mad onslaught, Jack in his line of flight keeping abreast of its mighty thrust, shouting as he ran, pressing into service every man who could help in the rescue.

But MacFarlane had already been forewarned. The engineer of the morning express, who had crossed close to the boulevard at the moment the break occurred, had leaned far out of his cab as the train thundered by at right angles to the "fill," and with cupped hands to his mouth, had hurled this yell into the ravine:

"Water! Look out! Everything busted up above! Water! Water! Run, for G.o.d's sake!"

The men stood irresolute, but MacFarlane sprang to instant action.

Grabbing the man next him,--an Italian who understood no English--he dragged him along, shouting to the others, the crowd swarming up, throwing away their shovels in their flight until the whole posse reached a point of safety near the mouth of the tunnel.

There he turned and braced himself for the shock. He realized fully what had happened: McGowan's ill-constructed culvert had sagged and choked; a huge basin of water had formed behind it; the retaining walls had been undermined and the whole ma.s.s was sweeping down upon him. Would there be enough of it to overflow the crest line of his own "fill" or not? If it could stand the first on-thrust there was one chance in a hundred of its safety, provided the wing-walls and the foundations of the culvert held up its arch, thus affording gradual relief until the flood should have spent its force.

It was but a question of minutes. He could already see the trees sway as the mad flood struck them, the smaller ones rebounding, the large ones toppling over. Then came a dull roar like that of a tram through a covered bridge, and then a great wall of yellow suds, boiling, curling, its surface covered with sticks, planks, s.h.i.+ngles, floating barrels, parts of buildings, dashed itself against the smoothed earth slopes of his own "fill," surged a third of its height, recoiled on itself, swirled furiously again, and then inch by inch rose toward the top.