The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 32

To Spurrier's house, too, during the crisp, clear weather of late winter came, without announcement or expectation another visitor. They were two other visitors to be exact, but one so overshadowed his companion in importance that the second became negligible.

At the Carnettsville station the daily train drew up one morning and uncoupled, on a siding, the first private car that had ever run over that piece of roadbed. Its chef and valet gazed superciliously down upon the a.s.sembled loungers, but the two gentlemen who alighted and gave their names as Martin Harrison and his secretary, Mr. Spooner, were to all appearances "jest ordinary folks."

Glory was housecleaning on the day of Harrison's coming, and, in neatly patched gingham and dust-protected crown, she came nearer seeming the typical mountain woman than she had for many days before.

Her fresh beauty was hard to eclipse, but she was less presentable than she wished to be when her husband's great patron saw her for the first time and contrasted her with such women as his own daughter.

When she heard the name, without previous warning, a sort of panic possessed her and for once she became tongue-tied and awkward, so that after the first, Helen Merriwell stepped into the breach and did the talking.

"My name is Martin Harrison," said the great man with simple cordiality. "I thought John Spurrier lived here--but I seem to be mistaken."

"He--he does live here," stammered Glory, catching the swiftly stifled amazement of the magnate's disapproving eyes.

"Here?" He put the question blankly as if only politeness prevented a greater vehemence of surprise. "But I expected to find a bachelor establishment. There are ladies here."

Glory fell back a step as if in retreat under attack. If this statement were true, Spurrier had never acknowledged her to the employer with whom his relations were intimately close. In her own eyes, she stood as one who had lost caste and been repudiated--and all self-confidence abandoned her, giving way to trepidation.

Harrison stood bewilderedly looking at this country girl who had turned tremulous and pale, and Helen Merriwell stepped forward.

"Then you didn't know that Mr. Spurrier was married?" she smilingly inquired.

The money baron transferred his glance to her as his shadowed face lightened into relief. This young woman had the poise and ease of his own world, which made communication facile. If Spurrier had not been candid with him, at all events he had, perhaps, not uncla.s.sed himself.

The other was presumably a local servant of whom he need think no more.

"Mr. Spurrier," he answered easily, "had not mentioned his marriage, probably because our recent correspondence has all related to business. However, I hold it unhandsome of him not to have done so."

He paused, then added deferentially: "Of course, I am better prepared now to felicitate him--since I have seen you."

But Helen Merriwell laughed and laid a hand on Glory's shoulder.

"You do me too much honor, Mr. Harrison," she a.s.sured him. "_This_ is Mrs. Spurrier."

The financier's ingrained politeness for once failed him. It was not for long, but in the breached instant he stiffened arrogantly as his eyes went back to Glory, and betrayed themselves in half-contemptuous hostility. The lieutenant whom he had chosen as his own successor in the world of lofty affairs had not only deceived him but had thrown himself wantonly away upon a stammering daughter of illiterates!

Martin Harrison bowed again, but this time with a precise formality.

"I didn't notify Mr. Spurrier of my coming, since I felt sure I would find him here," he explained briefly, directing himself pointedly to Helen Merriwell. "I am on my way south, so now I'll defer seeing him until another time--unless you expect him back shortly?"

Helen turned inquiringly to Glory and Glory shook her head. The episode, confirming her own anxieties, had unnerved her steadfast courage into collapse.

Had any warning come to her in advance of the event her bearing toward this stranger would have been a different one. The pride that bowed submissively to no one except in love, would have sustained her. The natural dignity which was the gift of her blood would have been the thing that any observer must have first and last recognized. With a chance to have shaped her att.i.tude, Glory would have received Harrison as a Barbarian princess might have met an amba.s.sador from Rome, but no such chance had been afforded her and she stood as distraught and as panicky as a stage-struck child whose speech fails.

She even slid back into the rough-hewn vernacular that had been so completely banished from her lips and custom.

"I ain't got ther power ter say," she faltered, "when he'll git back.

He's goin' ter Frankfort first."

"I'll write to him there," said the capitalist.

Harrison departed with the stiff dignity of an affronted sachem, and Helen Merriwell, looking after him, smiled with amus.e.m.e.nt for the incident which she so well understood, until she turned and saw Glory.

The girl had wilted back against the wall and stood there as if she had been stricken. Her great, violet eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the spirit of tragedy and held the despair of one who has blithely returned home--to find his house in ruin and ashes.

Glory stole away to her own room, escaping the embrace of sympathetic arms, as soon as she could. "He's done denied me ter his friends," she told herself wildly. "He dast'n't acknowledge me ter fine folks!"

Then through the first, torpid misery of hurt pride, crept a more terrifying thought. Spurrier had been practically engaged to this man's daughter. He had been diverted from his purpose by motives of pity, and now that Harrison knew, he might be ruined--probably would be ruined. If so disaster would come to him because of her--and at last she rose from the chair where she had dropped down, collapsed, with a light of new resolution in her eyes.

"If that's all I'm good for," she declared tempestuously, "he's got to be rid of me."

CHAPTER XVIII

During the sitting of the legislature John Spurrier was a sporadic onlooker, and his agents were as vigilant as sentinels in a danger zone. The last day of the term drew to a wintry sunset, and when the clock registered midnight the body would stand automatically adjourned until gavel fall two years hence.

Spurrier, outwardly a picture of serenity, but inwardly tensed for the final issue, sat in the visitors' gallery of the Senate chamber. The charter upon which all his hopes hung as upon a fulcrum was all but in his grasp. Seemingly the enemy slept on. Presumably in those last tired hours the authorizing bill would slip through to pa.s.sage with the frictionless ease of well-oiled bearings.

The needed men had been won over. Carping critics might prate, here and there, of ugly means that savored of bribery, but that was academic. The promise of forth-coming victory remained. Methods may be questionable. Results are not, and Spurrier was interested in results.

A. O. and G. had corrupted and suborned certain public servants. He had discovered their practice and played their own cards to their undoing. His ostensible clients were perhaps little cleaner-handed than their adversaries, but certainly, those other clients who did not even know themselves to be represented stood with no stain on their claims.

Those native men and women had not asked him to safeguard them, and had they been able to see what he was doing they would have guessed only that, after winning their faith, he was bent on swindling them.

But Spurrier knew not only the seeming facts but those which lay beneath and he fought with a definite sense of stewards.h.i.+p.

First the _coup_ must succeed, since that success was the foundation of all the rest, and the moment was at hand.

For this he had slaved, faced dangers and deprived himself of the contentment of home and the society of his wife. Now it was about to end in victory.

The enemy had been caught napping, and the victory would be his.

Certainly he had been as fair as the foe. What now remained was a perfunctory confirmation by the Senate, and in these final wearied hours it would slip through easily in the general wind-up of uncontested affairs.

Spurrier had not slept for two days--or had slept little. When this ended he would go to his bed and lie there in sunken hours of restoration the clock around--and after that back to Glory. Already he carried in his pocket the brief message which he meant to put upon the wires to Harrison, at the moment of midnight and success.

Characteristically it read: "Complete victory. Spurrier."

Now as the clerk droned through the ma.s.s of unfinished matters that burdened the schedule, the clock stood at ten in the evening, and a spirit of disordered peevishness proclaimed itself in the chamber.

Seats were vacated. Voices rose in unparliamentary clamor.

From the desk where a mountain senator sat in touseled disarray, a flask was drawn and tipped with scant regard to senatorial dignity.

Then the chairman of the committee which had the steering of Spurrier's affairs arose and handed a paper to the clerk.

Spurrier himself maintained the same unemotional cast of countenance with which, years before, he had watched a horse in the stretch battling for more than he could afford to lose, but Wharton, who sat at his side, chewed nervously on an unlighted cigar. Sleepy reporters yawned at the press tables as the clerk droned out his sing-song, "An act ent.i.tled an act conferring charter rights upon the Hemlock Pipe Line Company of Kentucky."

The reading of the measure seemed devoid of interest or attention. It went forward in confusion, yet when it was ended the mountain man who had taken the swig out of his flask, came slowly to his feet.

"Mr. President of the Senate," he drawled, "I want to address a few incongruvial remarks to the senators in regards to this here proposed measure."

With a sudden sense of premonition Spurrier found himself sitting electrically upright.