XV
Keith got home about daylight to find Nan, terribly anxious, waiting up for him. He brushed away her anxiety with the usual masculine impatience at being made a fuss over, gave a brief account of the fire--omitting mention of his narrow escape--and insisted that she go to bed. After a few moments she obeyed, and immediately fell asleep.
Keith bathed himself and changed, made a cup of coffee, and wandered about rather impatiently waiting for time to go downtown. Wing Sam appeared, the morning paper came. The sun gained strength, and finally tempted him outside.
For some time he prowled around, examining Nan"s efforts at gardening.
There was not much to show as yet, but Keith had already the eye of faith so essential to the Californian, and saw plainly trees, shrubs, and flowers where now only spears of green were visible. The Morrells"
garden next door was already well grown, and he cast on it an appraising eye. No sign of life showed about the place except a thread of smoke from the kitchen chimney. It was still early.
Nevertheless, five minutes later Mrs. Morrell opened the side door and stepped forth. She had on a wide leghorn hat, and carried a basket and scissors as though to gather flowers. Immediately she caught sight of Keith and waved him a gay greeting. He vaulted the fence and joined her.
"Aren"t these early morning hours perfect? Isn"t this glorious sunshine?" she greeted him.
As a matter of fact Mrs. Morrell seldom rose before noon, and detested early morning hours and glorious sunshine. She was inclined to consider the usual remarks in their praise as sheer affectation. But she adored fires, and often went to them when they promised well enough. Sometimes she attended in company with certain of her men friends; and sometimes alone, cloaked as a man. She liked the destruction and stimulation of them. She had been to the fire just extinguished, and seeing Keith in the garden, had put on her fluffiest and gone out to him. It was time this most attractive young man next door paid her more attention.
"How does the hero of the fire survive?" she asked him archly.
"Hero?"
"Don"t pretend ignorance. Charles told me all about it. He heard your tale at the Monumental."
"It"s hardly heroism to get out of a sc.r.a.pe the best way possible."
"It"s heroic to save lives, I think; but especially heroic to keep your head in an emergency."
"Mr. Morrell all right?" asked Keith, to change the subject.
"He is sleeping off the fire--and the after effects. You men need watching every minute--even when we think you must be in danger of your lives."
She laughed and clipped a few flowers at random.
"Have you been moving furniture all these days? We"ve seen nothing of you. I thought we were going to have some music. I do my little five-finger exercises all by myself and n.o.body knows but I am playing Beethoven. You ought in Christian charity to help me out--whether you want to or not. What do you think of our garden? Don"t you adore flowers?"
"No, I don"t believe I do," replied Keith bluntly. "I like to see a pretty woman amongst "em," he went on gallantly, "they set her off.
It"s like dresses. No good to show me pretty frocks--unless they"re filled."
"La! You are so clever; at times I"m really afraid of you," said she.
She went on tossing a few blooms into her basket. Under the stimulus of the fire she had acted on impulse in going out into the garden. She realized it as perhaps a mistake. Keith"s early morning freshness and fitness made her feel less sure of herself than usual. She had an uneasy impression that she was not at her best, and this reacted on her ability to exercise her usual magnetism. In fact, Keith, the least observant of men in such things, could not avoid noticing her rather second-hand looking skin, and that her features were more p.r.o.nounced than he had thought.
"Do come over this evening for some music," she begged. "You can take a nap this afternoon, and you can go home early."
Keith had been just a little uneasy over this second interview with Mrs. Morrell. His straightforward nature was inclined to look back on the impression she had made on him at the supper party with a half-guilty sense of some sort of vague disloyalty he could not formulate. Now he felt much satisfied with himself, and quite relieved.
Therefore, he accepted.
"I shall be very glad to," said he.
At breakfast, which was rather late, he told Nan of the meeting and the invitation. Nan"s clear lines, fresh creamy skin, bright young eyes, looked more than usually attractive to him.
"Perhaps she _can_ play," he said. "Let"s go find out. And you must wear your prettiest gown; I"m proud of my wife, and I want her to look her very best."
A little later he remarked:
"I wonder if she isn"t considerably older than Morrell."
XVI
When he had at last reached downtown after his late breakfast, Keith found it in a fair turmoil. Knots of men stood everywhere arguing, sometimes very heatedly. Eureka members were openly expressing their anger over what they called Taylor"s "dirty trick" in putting hirelings on the brakes, men who did not belong to the Monumental organization at all. If it had not been for that the Monumentals could never have "sucked" at all. On the other hand, the Monumentals and their friends were vehemently a.s.serting that they were well within their rights.
Fists were brandished. Several fights started, but were stopped before they had become serious.
Keith avoided these storm centres, waving a friendly hand, but smilingly refusing to be drawn in. Near the Merchants" Exchange, however, he came on a quieter, attentive group, in the centre of which stood Calhoun Bennett. The Southerner"s head was thrown back haughtily, but he was listening with entire courtesy to a violent harangue from a burly, red-faced man in rough clothes.
"And I tell you that sort of a trick won"t go down with n.o.body, and the story of why you were washed won"t wash itself. It"s too thin."
"I have the honah, suh," said Bennett formally, "to info"m yo" that yo"
do not know what yo" are talkin" about."
His silken tones apparently enraged the man.
"You silk-stockinged----of a----!" said he.
Without haste Calhoun Bennett rapped the man across the face with his light rattan cane. Venting a howl of rage, the Eureka partisan leaped forward. Calhoun Bennett, quick as a flash, drew a small derringer and fired; and the man went down in a heap. Superbly nonchalant, Bennett, without a glance at his victim, turned away, the ring of spectators parting to let him through. He saw Keith, and at once joined him, drawing the young man"s arm through his own. Keith, looking back, saw the man already sitting up, feeling his shoulder and cursing vigorously.
Bennett was fairly radiating rage, which, however, he managed to suppress beneath a well-bred exterior calm.
"These hounds, suh," he told Keith, "profess not to believe us, suh!
They profess, suh, that our explanation of how we were washed is a fabrication. You will oblige me, suh, by profferin" yo" personal testimony in the case."
He faced Keith resolutely toward the Eureka engine house. Keith spared a thought to wonder what he was being let in for by this handsome young fire-eater, but he went along unprotesting.
Around the Eureka engine house was a big crowd of men. These fell silent as Bennett and Keith approached. The Eurekas represented quite a different social order from the Monumentals. Its membership was recruited from those who in the East had been small farmers, artisans, or workingmen in the more skilled trades; independent, plain, rather rough, thoroughly democratic, a trifle contemptuous of "silk stockings," outspoken, with little heed for niceties of etiquette or conduct. Bennett pushed his way through them to where stood Carter, the chief, and several of the more influential. Keith, looking at them, met their eyes directed squarely into his. They were steady, clear-looking, solid, rather coa.r.s.e-grained, grave men.
"I have brought Mr. Keith here, who was an eyewitness, to give his testimony as to the events of last evenin"," said Bennett formally.
Keith told his story. It was received in a blank noncommittal silence.
The men all looked at him steadily, and said nothing. Somehow, he was impressed. This silence seemed to him, fancifully, more than mere lack of words--it conveyed a sense of reserve force, of quiet appraisal of himself and his words, of the experiences of men who have been close to realities, who have _done_ things in the world. Keith felt himself to be better educated, to own a better brain, to have a wider outlook, to be possessed, in short, of all the advantages of superiority. He had never mingled with rough men, and he had always looked down on them. In this att.i.tude was no condescension and no priggishness, Now he felt, somehow, that the best of these men had something that he had not suspected, some force of character that raised them above his previous conception. They might be more than mere "filling" in a city"s population; they might well come to be an element to be reckoned with.
When he had quite finished his story, there ensued a slight pause. Then said Carter:
"We believe Mr. Keith. If Mr. Ward and Frank Munro were there, of course there can be no doubt." Somehow Keith could not resent the implication; it was too impersonally delivered. Carter went on with cold formality and emphasis; "Mr. Keith had a very narrow escape. It was lucky for him that your hired men had "sucked" your waterbox. In view of that we can, of course, no longer regret the fact."