Chapter X: Part II: I (1)

Two weeks later Ora and Ida sailed from Havre. Gregory had cabled, and the _Herald_ had published a dramatic account, of the wounding of Mr. Mark Blake in the tunnel of his wife’s mine. The engineers’ lease had expired and he had closed down the mine temporarily. The sinking of the inclined shaft in the “Apex” had proceeded very slowly owing to the uncommon hardness of the rock; it would seem that Nature herself had taken a hand in the great fight and enlisted for once on the side of the weaker power. Although when Osborne and Douglas had turned over the mine, their cross-cut almost had reached the point on the vein which the new shaft expected to strike, Gregory had risen twice in the night and walked along the hill beyond his boundary, reasonably sure that all the blasting was not in the shaft, his keen ear detecting muffled reverberations slightly to the east and at a greater depth. He communicated his suspicions to Mark, and on the following night they examined the lock on the Primo shaft house and discovered that it had been tampered with. They went down by way of the ladder; and in the cross-cut on the chalcopyrite vein they found miners working with hand drills. There was a desperate hand-to-hand fight with the manager and shift boss; the miners, who were bohunks, proceeding phlegmatically with their work.

The four men had wrestled out into the station at the foot of the shaft, where they had drawn their “guns”; each had been wounded, but only Mark seriously. He had received a ball in the lung and another in the leg. The night was bitterly cold and it was some time before Gregory and the two antagonists could get him to the surface. He had insisted upon being taken to a hospital in Butte; and, between loss of blood, shock, and pneumonia, his condition was precarious.

The girls, who had left Monte Carlo two days after Valdobia’s sudden departure, received the news in Paris, where they were replenishing their wardrobes. Ora, torn with remorse, and terrified with vague and tragic visions of the future, was in a distracted condition; but Ida, although she sincerely lamented the possible demise of her old friend, did not lose her head. She gave final and minute orders to tailors and dressmakers, instructed them to send the trousseaux in bond directly to Great Falls, Montana, devoted a morning to the selection of hats both for herself and her friend, and packed all the trunks. Mowbray, always willing to be useful, bought their tickets and escorted them to Havre. Ida thanked him with something like real warmth as they parted at the head of the gangplank, and promised him the “time of his life” when he came to Montana in the summer.

“Now, buck up,” she said, smiling into his disconsolate face; “you know I’m not flirting with you. We’re the best of pals. I’ll be glad to see you, all right, and perhaps I’ll find a nice little heiress for you.”

“Oh, don’t!” Mowbray tried to arrange his features for the benefit of the passersby. “You know I’m fond of you no end. Why----”

“Get along now. That’s the last whistle. Good-bye, and write me nice gossippy letters. It’s only a few months, anyhow.”

Mowbray walked down the gangplank with his head in the air, and, as he turned on the dock to lift his hat, Ida noticed that his face, whose charm was its boyish gayety, looked suddenly older, and almost as determined as Valdobia’s.

“Oh, Lord!” she thought, as she turned away, “men! They’re as alike as lead pencils in a box. But I guess I can manage him.”

Ora stayed in bed for two days; reaction left her physically exhausted and she slept most of the time. On the third day Ida peremptorily dressed her and took her on deck. A wireless from Gregory, announcing that Mark was holding his own, further revived her, and before they reached New York another wireless was still more reassuring. A few years before, when the ores of Butte Hill were roasted in the open and the poisonous fumes were often as thick as the worst of London fogs, pneumonia ran its course in twenty-four hours to the grave, but in these days the patient had a fighting chance despite the altitude. The Butte doctors were experts in pneumonia, so many of the careless miners were afflicted, and Mark not only had a sound constitution but never had been a heavy drinker. There was every reason to expect him to pull through, as Ida assured her friend whenever they were alone; but she managed to meet several agreeable people, and kept herself and Ora companioned by them throughout the voyage.

Valdobia was still in Rome; his mother was dying. He had written daily to Ora and she had read and reread his letters. They said neither too much nor too little; but he was one of life’s artists and he managed to pervade them with an atmosphere that was both sweet and disturbing. His telegram, when he had read the news of her husband’s misadventure in the newspapers, was a masterpiece. If he was unable to grieve over the possibility of Mr. Blake’s abrupt removal from a scene where he was the one superfluous actor, too well-bred to betray his relief, and too little of a hypocrite to be verbose in condolence, his attitude was so finely impersonal, and it was so obvious that he knew exactly how she felt, that Ora liked him more than ever if only for rousing her stricken sense of humour.

She had thrust his letters and telegrams into the depths of her steamer trunk, but after she had made up her mind that Mark would recover (her lively imagination picturing him hobbling among the orange groves of Southern California while she guided his footsteps and diverted his mind), she retrieved the correspondence and read it every night when alone in her stateroom. Valdobia’s devotion not only gave her courage, but his strong imposing personality stood with a haughty and confident menace between herself and Gregory Compton. She refused to think on her future, beyond the long convalescence of her husband, but had it not been for her meeting with Valdobia and her deliberate installment of his image on the throne of her adventurous imagination, she doubted if she would have had the courage to return to Montana. As it was there were moments when the poignant mental life she had led with Gregory Compton reached a long finger from the depths to which it had been consigned and sketched his image in her mind as vividly as if he stood before her; while her whole being ached with longing and despair. But her will was strong; she banished him summarily and reinstated the Roman who was so like and so unlike the man compounded of the old world and the new in the mortar of the Northwest.

Ida, with an unexpected delicacy, refrained from curiosity, and although she had too much tact to avoid all mention of Valdobia, only alluded to him casually. She left Europe out of the conversation as much as possible, and amused Ora, when they were alone, with the plans of her campaign in Butte. When they reached quarantine Ora was horrified to find herself surrounded by reporters. The Paris _Herald_ had published the story of her mine as well as her picture and Ida’s, but they hardly had been sensible of their notoriety until, on the steamer, they were among Americans once more. It was manifest that they were “big news” in their own country, and Ora fled to her stateroom, leaving Ida to face the reporters alone.

Ida was undaunted; moreover she was quick to seize her first opportunity to dazzle Butte. She made herself amiable and interesting to the young men, her natural cunning steering her mid-stream, in this her first interview: an ordeal in which most novices are wrecked on the tropic or the arctic shore. She thanked them as warmly for their news that Mr. Blake had left that morning with his doctors and nurses in a private car for Southern California, and expected his wife to go directly to Los Angeles, as if Ora had not received a wireless to that effect an hour before; she modestly told them something of her social experiences abroad, answered the inevitable questions regarding suffrage, excused Ora, “who was naturally upset”, and expatiated upon her happiness in returning to live in Butte. They thought this odd, but were so delighted with her mixture of dignity and naïveté that they rushed to their respective desks and told the world that the wife of Gregory Compton had been the guest of princes and was the handsomest woman in America.

Ora was almost gay at the prospect of going directly to California, although she was obliged to make the journey alone. It was early in the afternoon when they landed. Ida established Ora in the first Overland Limited that left the Grand Central Station, and returned to the Waldorf-Astoria, where she had engaged rooms for a month. She had no intention of returning to Butte ignorant of New York. Westerners of wealth, old and recent, visited New York casually several times a year; and not to know it, even with Europe to her credit, stamped a woman with the newness of the new-rich who wore all their jewels all the time. Ida had seen many women make fools of themselves and had no intention of leaving any penetrable spaces in her armour. She spent every morning in the shops, or in the establishments of the exclusive dressmakers, tailors and milliners that were patronized by the fashionable women of Butte and Helena, giving them liberal orders. She saw all the new plays, heard the more famous of the opera singers, and even attended three symphony concerts. She drove in the Park every afternoon or joined the throngs on Fifth Avenue; and she took tea or lunch in the different hotels and restaurants devoted to fashion. Sometimes she sat in the gangways of her own famous hostellerie, recalling with a tolerant smile her early crude ambitions--had they died less than a year ago?--to trail her feathers up and down Peacock Alley. She wore one of her severest tailored suits upon these occasions, and maintained an air of stately detachment that somewhat counteracted the always startling beauty of her face and figure. No man took his courage in his hand.

One afternoon she sat longer than usual, for she had set her teeth that day and walked through the Metropolitan Museum. She fell to musing, and with a more sustained introspection than was her habit, upon the changes that had taken place within herself during the past year; wondering “how deep they had struck”, if she really were as altered as she must appear even to the raking eye of Butte; or if she merely had developed her native characteristics while polishing her surface and furnishing her mind.

She also endeavoured to analyse her attitude toward returning to her husband, but gave this up, although puzzled that it was not more obvious. But her mind was clear on one point. If Gregory desired her society he must spend his week-ends in Butte; nothing would induce her to return to the De Smet ranch. She had not even a spasm of curiosity to see the famous Perch of the Devil Mine.

II

Ida was not given to imaginative excursions, but during the three days’ journey from New York to Butte, she made no acquaintances, resting in the seclusion of her drawing-room; and after she had read all the magazines her mind began to people itself. Although the ladies of Butte, whom she now regarded as equals, moved along the central highway, Gregory was always turning the corners, and she visualised him most frequently advancing hurriedly toward the station as the train entered--both late, of course. She rehearsed the meeting many times, never without a pricking sense of awkwardness, for she now fully realised that when a woman and her husband have not communicated save on the wire for nearly a year, the first interview is liable to constraint. He always had been difficult to talk to. Would he be bored if she tried to entertain him as Ora would entertain Mark: with such excerpts of their many experiences as a confiding husband might appreciate? She never had understood him. Out of her greater knowledge of the world and men should she be better able to fathom the reserves of that strange silent nature--or did she really care whether she could or not? Although she had made up her mind to greet him at the station with the warmth of an old friend, and flatter him with her delight in returning home, she had not the faintest idea how she should carry off the long evening--if the train were on time.

It was not. Probably no Northwestern train has arrived on time in the history of the three railroads. Ida’s train, due at seven in the evening, arrived at midnight. Her Pullman was at the end of the long dark platform, and as she walked slowly toward the station building--which looked like the bunk-house of an abandoned mining camp in the desert--searching for someone to carry her hand baggage--porters being non-existent in the Northwest--she saw neither Gregory nor any other familiar face. For the first time in her life she felt a disposition to cry. But as she tossed her head higher and set her lips, a young man approached and asked if she were Mrs. Gregory Compton. He was a pleasant looking youth, and she was so grateful to be called by name that she forgot her new reserve and replied emphatically that she was.

“I am your chauffeur,” he said. “Your new car arrived a few days ago, and Mr. Compton ’phoned me to meet you. Have you any hand baggage?”

Ida indicated her portmanteau and hat box in the dark perspective and went on to inspect her car. It was a handsome limousine, lighted with electricity, and for a moment she took a childish pleasure in examining its fittings. But as the man returned and piled her baggage in front she asked irrepressibly:

“Is Mr. Compton not in Butte?”

“No, ma’am. He hasn’t been in Butte for weeks. Lively times out at the mine, I guess.”

“And my house? Had I not better go to a hotel?”

“Oh, the house is all right. Mr. Compton’s secretary ’phoned to an agency, and they put in three or four in help. I guess you’ll find everything all right.”

Ida entered her car, but scowled at its luxuries. By this time she was “mad clean through.” “The famous American husband!” she thought, gritting her teeth. “Best in the world--not. If it’s my horse, my dog, my wife with an Englishman, it’s business first last and always with an American. European men are courteous whether they mean it or not, but Americans only remember to be polite when they have time. Ten months and he can’t leave his mine long enough to meet me when I arrive at midnight!”

Her pleasure in returning to Butte had turned as flat as spilt champagne. She did not even glance at the gay electric signs and midnight activities of Broadway as her car rolled through that sleepless thoroughfare toward the West Side. But when her chauffeur, who had ignored the speed limit, stopped abruptly before a large house of admirable architecture and blazing with lights, her face flushed with excitement and she forgot her recalcitrant spouse. The door was opened at once and two maid servants ran down the steps. They were young, neatly dressed and capped, and it was evident that their service was dictated not only by curiosity but by sympathy.

“Welcome home, ma’am,” one of them, a Swede, said shyly as Ida stepped to the pavement. “It’s too bad your train was so late. The cook’s got a nice hot supper for you.”

Ida, who was not easily touched, felt as grateful to these smiling girls as to her friendly chauffeur, and for a moment was tempted to “come down off her perch” and revel in human companionship. But she knew that it “wouldn’t work”; she merely thanked them graciously and ascended the wide steps of her new home, that palatial residence of cream-colored pressed brick of her unswerving desires. While the maids were taking her bags and boxes upstairs, she walked through the large rooms of the lower floor. Everything was in the best modern style of furnishing, the prevailing tone dim and rich, with Eastern rugs on the hardwood floors; French tapestries and carved oak furniture and stained glass in the library--also a few books; paler tapestries set in panels in the immense drawing-room, and many beautiful pieces of furniture carefully selected with an eye to both contrast and mating. Out of this room opened a dining-room that looked like a baronial hall, and although the Murphys had taken their silverware they had left their china, imported from Limoges, and their glass ware, made for them by a Venetian firm that had supplied Ida’s grandes dames for thirty years. In short it was one of those stately and sumptuous interiors, furnished by the best houses in New York, which one associates exclusively with the three or four great cities of the United States, and is always unwarrantably surprised to find in the newer cities of the West.

Ida made a pretence of eating her dainty supper, remembered that she was now a grande dame and visited the kitchen to say an appreciative word to the cook, then ascended to her bedroom divided between anger and a depression so foreign to her temperament that she barely recognised it for what it was.

The large upper hall had been fitted up as a billiard room, and with a continuous divan broken only by the doors of the bedrooms. Ida threw it an appreciative glance, but it merely emphasised the fact that there was no man in the house, and she did not linger. Mrs. Murphy, evidently a brunette, had furnished her bedroom and dressing-room in primrose yellow and much lace. Ida approved both as unreservedly as she had the rest of the house, thankful there was nothing to alter; like many women she had consummate taste in dress and none whatever for house decoration; although unlike most of these disparate ladies she was quite aware of her deficiencies. She knew when a room was all that it should be, but could not have conceived one of the details, much less the unimpeachable combination. The sex instinct teaches those subtleties of personal adornment likely to allure the male, and arrest the anxious eye of other females, but ancestral brain-cells are necessary for the more civilised accomplishment.

Ida’s eyes fell on the telephone beside her bed and lingered. She forgot her beautiful room and the successive throbs of gratified ambition, in an overwhelming desire to call up Gregory and tell him what she thought of him. But she was a woman in whom calculation was stronger than impulse, and in the past year she had learned to control her temper, not only because a carefully nourished refinement had crowded out some of the weeds of her nature, but because her ever-growing intelligence despised lack of self-control in all things. So she merely undressed herself, her eyes wandering every few minutes to the telephone. It was incredible that he did not ring her up. That, at least, would take but a few moments of his precious time.

However, she fell asleep immediately after her bath, and it was the telephone bell that awakened her at eight o’clock. This time she frowned at it, for she wanted to sleep; but she sat up, put the receiver to her ear and asked languidly: “Well?”

A strange man’s voice replied: “Is this Mrs. Compton?”

“Yes. Why am I disturbed so early?”

“I’m sorry--this is Mr. Compton’s secretary speaking--but Mr. Compton told me to call you at eight o’clock. He always comes in for breakfast at this time--here he is.”

“Hello! How are you? What time did you get in?” Gregory’s voice was elaborately polite and as eager as any lover’s of yesteryear.

“Are you interested?” Ida’s heart beat thickly, but her tones were crisp. “I arrived at midnight. Really, I expected you to meet me. That is generally considered the decent thing to do.”

“Oh! I’m sorry it was impossible. I can’t leave the mine at present. How did you like the house?”

“I am enchanted with it--and with the limousine. When are you coming in?”

“I can’t say at present. I dare not leave for a moment. You will find a deposit to your credit at the Daly bank.”

“Thanks. Would--shall I run out?”

“Better not. There is always danger of rows.”

“But of course I’m wild to see the mine. You forget how famous it is.”

“Better wait awhile. It really isn’t safe.”

“Very well. How’s your wound? Where were you hurt, anyhow?”

“Not worth mentioning, as I cabled you, and I suppose you got my telegram in New York saying I was all right again. Sure you got everything you want?”

“I am overwhelmed by all this luxury, and your generosity.”

“Glad you like it. Has Mrs. Blake gone to California?”

“She went directly from the steamer. How is Mark getting on. I’ve had only notes from Ora.”

“All right. He doesn’t write but has telegraphed once or twice. He’d better stay below several months. Write Mrs. Blake to persuade him to take things easy. He had a close call. I can get along without him for awhile, but I can’t afford to lose him. Will you see to this?”

“I’ll write Ora today. She’s in no hurry to return to Butte--was delighted at the prospect of going to California, and intends to take Mark to Santa Barbara, where she knows a lot of people.”

“Ah! Good. Well, I must get some breakfast. Amuse yourself.”

“And you won’t be in for several days?”

“Afraid not. Good-bye.”

Ida set the receiver back on the table, but it was some minutes before she lay down again. She sat thinking, with compressed lips. Born with intuitive knowledge of men, she had, as she once remarked to Ora, turned a goodly number of them inside out during the past year. Gregory Compton did not intend to live with her again. She knew this as conclusively as if his kind matter-of-fact tones had expressed the direct message. Before she left home it never had occurred to Ida to wonder if her husband still loved her or not, and she had learned to accept his consuming masculine interest in matters mineralogic as all in the day’s work. Now she wondered if he had ceased to love her then or since. That he took no further interest in her as a woman, although amiably determined to do his duty as her legal provider, would have been almost patent to an imagination as riotous as Ora’s; to Ida, practical and clear-sighted, there was not a loophole for delusion.

In a few moments she relaxed the tension of her body and lay down.

“Well!” she thought impatiently, “what’s the matter with me, anyhow? Isn’t it what I always hopefully looked forward to? Did I ever pretend to be anything but resigned--or to be in love with him after the first few weeks? I guess I’m spoiled with too much devotion, that’s what. Seeing too many men lose their heads. Much their old heads are worth. But I guess I don’t like being turned down for once. Goose. It’s my lay to cut out pique and sing a song of thanksgiving that I’ve got pretty nearly everything I ever romanced about and set my mind on. It’s a pretty good old world when things come your way, and women’ll never be happy till they learn to put men in the same place that men put us--on a handy little side-track. I’ve got a whole parlour car instead of an upper berth like some poor devils, so I’ll quit whining. But if there’s another woman in the case, let them both look out--that’s all!”

III

Ida slept for two hours longer and rose in a philosophical mood. As she more than once had remarked to Ora, “nothing in life is just what you figured it out beforehand”; and this, one of life’s most unwelcome lessons, it had not taken her twenty-six years to learn. She had, in fact, accepted and docketed it while women twice her age were nursing their illusions.

She had expected to be met at the station not only by her husband but by Ruby and Pearl, to say nothing of reporters. “She had slunk in like a nobody,” and her husband declined to feed the fires of her vanity, blazing so merrily these last ten months. Never mind. She had the genius of quick readjustment and a sharp eye for the next move in the great law of compensation.

“And believe me,” she thought, as she put the finishing touches to her smart morning street costume, and taught the admiring Swede how to pin on a veil, “the gods have provided the goods pretty liberally, and I don’t belong to the immortal order of female jackasses. Nine-tenths of women’s troubles, mental and physical, sprout in that hothouse corner of their skulls they call imagination. None of it in mine. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. Wait till I’m launched in Butte. And just wait till I give a dinner party to the second son of an English duke. Tra la la!”

Before the morning was over even philosophy had folded her wings. If life had been niggardly yesterday she gave with both hands today. When Ida arrived at the bank she was received with exceeding deference by the vice-president and informed that he had recently invested two hundred thousand dollars in her name, acting on instructions from Mr. Compton; and that as a large part of it was in mortgages the interest in some cases ran as high as eight per cent. The money had been placed in his hands for investment shortly after the great land deal, details of which had reached the public ear in due course and greatly added to the prestige of Gregory Compton. In fact it had invested his remote and ambiguous personality with an almost sinister significance. As Ida listened to the story of this transaction (she barely had opened a newspaper in New York and knew nothing of it), she found herself wondering if it could be true that once she had possessed this man of whom even bankers spoke with bated breath. It was patent that they stood in awe not only of the rapid and masterly strokes which had increased his little patrimony by something over two millions in less than a year, but of his colossal luck, his sensational reputation as a “winner”, and his open defiance of the greatest of all great trusts.

It seemed to Ida, as she sat in the vice-president’s office listening to his classification of her husband with Marcus Daly, W. A. Clark, and F. Augustus Heinze, the three commanding figures heretofore in the financial history of Montana, and to predictions that Compton would go farther than any one of his predecessors, that she might have known Gregory in his extreme youth or in some previous existence; but that this man who now not only ranked first in the eyes of all Montana, but had focussed the attention of a continent, no longer touched her life save as a fairy-godfather. It was the first time that she had appreciated his fame. She had been absorbed in Europe and its diversions--and diverters; the new wealth had been accepted as a matter of course; her imagination had not been powerful enough to visualise at a distance what her mind grasped the moment the facts were presented to her in the measured yet glowing terms of a bank’s president.

“He always did feel himself a cut above me,” she thought grimly as she left the building and walked down Main Street. “And now, I suppose, he thinks Perch of the Devil is Mount Olympus, and that he is some god. It would be fun to put a nick or two in his halo--but never mind: I’ve got a cool two hundred thousand--_and_ a palatial residence, _and_ a limousine--sounds like a fairy tale. There’s nothing mean about him, anyhow.”

When she reached her beautiful home she found four reporters awaiting her. They apologised for not meeting her at the train, but as hour after hour had passed with discouraging reports, they finally had gone home to recuperate for the next day’s labours. Ida dismissed the last of her regrets, and told them all that she wished Butte to know at once, showed the women the contents of her trunks, which the maids were unpacking, promised to let them know when the newer Paris wardrobe arrived, and finally gave them lunch. Reporters are the quickest people in the world to detect affectations, assumptions, and false values, and the most merciless in their exposure; but, although these four were on the alert, they could find neither traces of original commonness nor imitation of the British aristocracy. Ida apparently had consigned the slang of her former class to the limbo of careless grammar, and she was so simple and natural that they failed to discover how clever she was; they agreed, as they walked down Broadway, that she was merely a marvel of adaptability, like so many others that had done credit to the great state of Montana, to say nothing of the fluid West in general.

But, although Ida could be anything she chose when occasion demanded, she always sought relief from the strain as quickly as possible. Immediately after the departure of the reporters she telephoned for her limousine and drove to the large “Block” in the heart of the business district where Miss Ruby Miller kept the looks of the Butte ladies up to par. As she left the elevator she saw that the familiar door was open as usual and the old screen before it. She tapped discreetly, and Miss Ruby came out into the hall, removing the cold cream from her hands with her apron.

“Ide!” she cried rapturously, throwing both arms about her friend’s velvet shoulders. “Glory be, but I’m glad to see you and you do look fine----”

“How mean of you not to meet me----”

“We had it all fixed and supper here, but gave it up at ten o’clock. For all we knew you might not get in till morning, and you know how we work----”

“Well, I’ll forgive you if you both come to dinner with me tonight. I want to have one good old time before I sit up and play the grande dame act for weeks on end----”

“I guess you’re one now without any play-acting. You look the real thing all right. And I guess we won’t see so awful much of you now----”

“Do you mean because I’m harnessed up to a bunch of money----” began Ida in high indignation.

“Oh, I know you’ll always feel the same, but grand dames and our sort don’t gee at the same table. The West is democratic but it ain’t too democratic. Don’t think I’m jealous. You’re just where I’d like to be myself, and I’m proud that one of us has got to the top so quick. My! But Mr. Compton’s a wonder. To think that I ever dared call him Greg--even behind his back. Well, he’ll be just as proud of you as you are of him. Pearl’ll want to see your hats.”

“She can copy them all. Be sure to come early.”

She felt warmed by the little interview, but as she went down in the elevator she admitted to herself that her future intercourse with her old friends must be sporadic, no matter what her loyalty; and she wondered if her new friends would take their place; or even be to her the half of what Ora had become in the long intimacy of travel. She shrugged her handsome shoulders. If you elected to mount in life, you must pay the toll. Were she abruptly returned to the old cottage in East Granite Street certainly Ruby and Pearl would not compensate her. No, not for a moment. You may slip back in life if you are not strong enough to hold on, but you do not deliberately turn back even for the friends of your youth. Neither does Progress halt and sit down to wait for its failures to catch up. Ida leaned back in her limousine and met the interested eyes of many pedestrians of both sexes as her chauffeur drove her about for an hour to get the air, and incidentally to be looked at.

Today she was in a mood to enjoy Butte, and she deliberately summoned the long anticipated sensations. She revelled in the gaunt grey ugliness of Anaconda Hill which flung its arrogant head high above the eastern end of the great hill itself; in the sensation of driving over miles of subterranean numbered streets, some of them three thousand feet below, to which that famous mass of rock and dirt and angular buildings was the portal. She leaned far out of her car to admire the glittering mountains that looked like blue ice topped with white, and decided that they were far more original and beautiful than the Alps of Austria and Switzerland; certainly they tugged at her heartstrings and at the same time filled her with an unprecedented desire to sing. She noticed for the first time that the violet foothills against the nearer mountain east of the city seemed to close the end of the streets as the Alps did in Innspruck, and gave the ragged overgrown camp clinging to its high perch in the Rockies a redeeming touch of perfect beauty.

She drove out to Columbia Gardens, bought flowers from the conservatory for her rooms, and wandered about recalling the many gay times she had had in the dancing pavilion. But her eye was suddenly arrested by the steep mountain behind, then dropped slowly to the base. It was there that she had promised to marry Gregory Compton. She remembered his young passion and her own. She had never felt anything like it again; nor had he ever been quite the same. Was it one of those “supreme moments” novelists so blithely alluded to? The logical inference of that old bit of bathos was that such moments had no duplicates. She felt faint and dizzy for a moment; then walked back to her car, smiling grimly as she realised that she had experienced a fleeting echo of that vast unattainable desire women live and die cherishing or bewailing. “Poor things! Poor things!” she thought, with the first pang of pity her sex had ever inspired. “No wonder they go in for suffrage, art, work, any old thing. Home,” she added to the chauffeur.

She peremptorily dismissed all thought of the past during the drive back to town and reverted to her pleasure in once more feeling a part of her surroundings, hideous though they might, for the most part, be; instead of walking with alert critical eye through what always must seem to her the animated pages of ancient history. But her complacency received a sudden shock. The car was rolling along Park Street when her eye rested upon a man’s face vaguely familiar. She had bowed graciously and the face was behind her before she realised that the man was Professor Whalen, and that, for a second, she had looked into a pair of pale blue eyes that sent her a swift message of hate.

Ida shuddered. The warm light air of her beloved Rockies turned cold and heavy. “I feel as if I’d stepped on a snake and just missed getting bitten,” she thought, putting her sensations into a concrete form, after her habit. “I had forgotten the little viper was alive, and I wish to goodness he wasn’t.” She had flouted superstition always, but she could not shake off the sense of menace and evil that had vibrated from the man until she was within her own doors once more. Then she became as oblivious of Whalen’s existence as during that late exotic period when everything connected with her old life had seemed too crude to be real.

The parlour maid handed her a note that had arrived an hour before from Mr. Luning, Mark’s partner. Mrs. Blake, he wrote, had bought a present for Mrs. Compton in Paris and sent it to the care of her husband’s firm. Mr. Luning had gone the day before to Great Falls to clear it in the Custom House, and now had the pleasure of forwarding the boxes, etc.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Ida, “what can it be?”

“There’s four big boxes in the back hall, ma’am.”

Ida lost no time. If Ora had given her a present it must be worth looking at, and she went as rapidly as dignity would permit to the nether regions and ordered the boxes opened. The present proved to be a magnificent silver service, from many dozens of “flat ware” to massive platters, vegetable dishes, flower, fruit and bon-bon pieces, and candelabra. The delighted servants made a shining display on the dining-room table, and after Ida had gloated over it for a time and informed her audience that it was copied from a royal service in the Louvre, she went suddenly up to her bedroom. This time she did shed a few tears, and as she looked at her handkerchief in some wonder she decided that there was at least one person that she loved, “hard-headed” as she was, and that Ora Blake had found the one soft spot in her flinty heart and wormed herself into it. She went to her desk immediately and wrote Ora a letter that was almost tender, admitting that she missed her “like fury”, and begging her to return soon.

“Greg telephoned this morning,” she concluded, oblivious that she was betraying the fact that she had not seen her husband, “and told me to tell you to keep Mark down below for several months. But his lungs must be well by this time or he’d be dead. And the rest of him will mend all the sooner in this magnificent air. Heavens, but it’s good to breathe it again! It makes one feel as if the atmosphere of Europe hadn’t been aired for a century. I’ve got a wonder of a house and a jim dandy of a limousine, but ever since I came I’ve felt kind of homesick, and I’ve just realised it’s for you, old girl. So, come home. Once more ten million thanks.”

And when Ruby and Pearl dined with her that night she realised that all her old zest in their society was gone. Ida Hook, at least, had “passed on.”

IV

It was on the morning of this same day that Gregory sat alone in his cabin uncommonly idle, for he still spent the greater part of his time underground, when not away on business connected with his new investments and deals. For the last week he had not left the hill, and although he was on the alert to hear his geological acumen vindicated, he was in no mood to find pleasure in his mine. His conscience, an organ that troubled him little, was restive. In spite of his liberal disbursements, he knew that he had treated Ida unfairly. He had long since made up his mind to obliterate her from his personal life, and, if the truth must be told about a man who had snapped his fingers in the face of the most formidable combination of capital in the world, he was afraid to meet his wife. Vanity, he argued, in such women takes the place of warmth, and he had no mind to burden his memory and resource with an endless chain of subterfuges; nor had he any relish for the bald statement that since he could not have the woman he wanted he would have none; and that his mine, as complex and mysterious, as provocative of dreams, as capricious and satisfying as woman herself--to say nothing of hard work and increasing power--was to fill his life.

Ida might rage, stamp, scream, with her hands on her hips, her superb eyes flashing. Worse still, she might weep, lamenting that he loved her no longer--if he made her hurried friendly calls. Far, far worse, he might succumb to her beauty and superlative femaleness and hate himself ever after. His was to be a life of unremitting and constructive work; he must keep that blue flame burning on the altar in his sanctuary. If he never paused to draw it up into his consciousness he must know it was there.

Better stay away until she understood all that it was necessary she should know, wore out her pique in private, and accepted the situation. But he would have felt better this morning if he had heard that her train had arrived early in the evening. He might be ruthless, even where women were concerned, but he was also sensitive and capable of tenderness.

But he was not thinking of Ida alone. He was listening for the footsteps of Joshua Mann, and in a few moments he heard them, as well as the angry growl of his foreman’s voice. Mann entered without ceremony.

“I’ve been looking for you, sir. We’ve the devil’s own luck again----”

“Apex struck the Primo vein?”

“No, and won’t for fifty feet yet. But--well--I hate to say it--we’ve lost our vein--cut off as short as if it had been sawed. Of course, it’s faulted, and God only knows where its dropped to--or how far. A prettier shoot of ore was never uncovered. What’s worrying me is that--oh, hell!--just suppose that’s what Amalgamated is sinking on. My head’s going round. Can I have something?”

Gregory waved his hand toward the cupboard where his visitors found refreshment. When Mann had braced himself, his employer tapped a large sheet of paper that lay on the table.

“Come here,” he said. “I made this map some time ago, and calculated to a day when you would lose the vein. I guessed our vein had faulted before Amalgamated got busy. But don’t worry. They’re either on a parallel vein or on a mere fork.” His pencil moved along the vein already stoped, travelled over the fault line and recovered a vein further down. “Hundred feet,” he said. “With air drills and unless the fault breccia is uncommonly hard, which I don’t think is the case, we should find it in less than three weeks. They can’t get through that rock for at least a month. Even then they may not touch us, but then again they may, and we must be there first. Cut across the fault at once and follow it on the footwall side to the east. Get well into the footwall. If you don’t recover the vein inside of a hundred feet I’ll stand to lose a thousand dollars and you’ll be the winner.”

“I guess not,” said Mann admiringly. “But, by jing! I was worried. You never can tell about them faults. When the old earth split herself up and got to slipping she not only lost one side of herself sometimes, but twisted about as if she was having fun with the apex law of Montana in advance. But I figure out that you’re like old Marcus Daly--you’ve got a sort of X-ray in your eye that sees the ore winking below. So long.”

He departed to carry encouragement to the anxious miners, and Gregory went out and walked along his hill. By this time he knew every inch of it, and had found indications of ore in his other claims while superintending the development work necessary before perfecting his patents. If Amalgamated sank on his present vein and the courts enjoined him from working it until the matter of apex rights was settled, he would simply go ahead and sink through the carbonates in his other claims to those vast deposits of chalcopyrite with which he was convinced his hill was packed. He knew the geological history of every mine in Montana, and while he had given up all hope of finding gold on his estate save in small incidental values, he believed that he possessed one of the greatest copper deposits in the Rocky Mountains. And now that even one vein of his hill was threatened, he dismissed his old dreams with a shrug and transferred his undivided affection to the exciting treasure the earth had given him. There were few surprises in gold mines. A great copper mine might make geological history. In two districts, Butte and Castle Mountain, copper glance, an ore of secondary enrichment, had been found far down in the sulphide zone below chalcopyrite, chief of the primary ores. He believed that he should find glance at depth of nine hundred feet. If there were masses of it he should take out millions in a year, for chalcopyrite was the richest of the permanent copper ores of this region, running as high as 79.8.

He had been on amiable terms with the manager and engineer of the Apex Mine since the battle underground, and he crossed the claim unmolested to make his daily inspection of the Primo shaft house. But there had been no further attempt to use the cross-cut, although the Apex people had managed before they were discovered to drive to the point upon which they expected to sink.

Gregory walked up the hill beyond to look at the cottage just completed, which was to be occupied by the manager and foreman of the Primo Mine as soon as Mark reopened it. He had been about to begin operations, cutting across the fault Gregory had demonstrated--a fault parallel to the one in Perch of the Devil--when he was shot nearly to death.

The cottage was situated in a clearing in the pine woods, somewhat apart from the cabins, which were being renovated and made comfortable for the miners. Gregory was so positive that the pyroxenite vein would be recovered just beyond the row of aspens, some sixty feet below the tableland, that Mark, who believed his friend to be an inspired geologist, was preparing for a long period of mining; although if it had been a quartz mine Gregory, sure as he was of his judgment, would not have permitted him to put up a mill and concentrating plant until sufficient ore had been blocked out to warrant the expense. But pyroxenite went direct to the smelter, and a cottage could always be rented.

The little bungalow had two bedrooms besides one for a Chinese servant, a bathroom, and a large living-room with a deep fireplace, a raftered ceiling, and pine walls stained brown. Gregory, as he realised how cosy it would be when furnished, wondered that he had been satisfied with his two-roomed cabin for so long. He had been too absorbed to think of comfort, but today he felt a desire for something more nearly resembling a home than a perch. He looked through the windows at the sibilant pines, the pink carpet of primrose moss, the distant forests rising to the blue and white mountains; and then he sighed as he glanced slowly about the long room and pictured it furnished in warm tones of red and brown, wondering if either of the men would be married. It would be an ideal home for a honeymoon.

He twitched his shoulders impatiently and went outside. To his surprise he saw a wagon ascending the hill laden with lumber, the seats occupied by the contractor and carpenters that had built the bungalow.

“What’s up?” he asked, as the contractor leaped to the ground.

“Another bungalow. Perhaps you could suggest a site. It’s to be near this, and the same size. We had a telegram from Mr. Blake yesterday.”

“But what does he want of two cottages?”

“Can’t say, sir, unless he means to come out here to get well.”

“That’s nonsense. He knows he could stay at my house on the ranch.”

But Gregory was not in the habit of thinking aloud. After indicating a site he swung back to his hill, angry and apprehensive. Could it be possible that Mark intended to spend the summer at the mine and bring his wife with him? As soon as he reached his cabin he sat down at his table, and after getting his friend’s present address from Luning, telephoned a long distance message to Pony to be telegraphed to Mr. Mark Blake in Santa Barbara. Its gist was that the weather was abominable and that Mark must not think of anything so foolish as to bring his weakened heart and lungs to this altitude. His services would be imperative later when his solicitous friend locked horns with Amalgamated, and meanwhile he was, for heaven’s sake, to take care of himself and remain on the coast until he was in a condition to work day and night.

He received an answer that afternoon.

“No intention of leaving here for two months. Lungs pretty good, but shall wait for leg to heal. Ora wants present cottage for herself as she intends to spend summer at mine. Will you be on the lookout for a manager? He can live in the lessee’s shack until the new cottage is built. Might begin operations at once. Hope this not too much trouble. Mark.”

This message was transmitted over the telephone, and, to the excessive annoyance of the operator, who happened to be the belle of Pony, Gregory asked her three times, and with no excess of politeness, to repeat it. The third time he wrote it out and stared at the words as if the unsteady characters were recombining into a sketch of the infernal regions.

“Good God!” he thought. “And I can’t get away!”

Was Mark mad? Was she mad? Then he realised the blissful ignorance of both regarding the drama he so often had swept from the stage of his mind, that secret dweller in the most secret recesses of his soul. Doubtless Ora never had thrown him a thought since they parted at her gate. He remembered her expressed intention to live at her mine when the lease was up, her desire to adventure underground, her intense appreciation of the romance of mining. He closed his eyes, his face relaxed. So long as she cared nothing for him there was no danger; he might daydream about her a bit. At least--at last!--he should see her again, talk to her, work with her, help her as no one else could help her. If the association he would have avoided was inevitable why not welcome it as a brief oasis in what must be an arid life, so far as mortal companionship was concerned?

But he was not the man to dream long. Presently he opened his eyes, set his jaw until it looked a yard long, put on his overalls, and went underground.

V

Butte long since had made up its mind as to the social future of Mrs. Gregory Compton. That Ida’s mother had been a laundress and her father a miner concerned the ladies of Butte as little as many similar outcroppings of family history peculiar not only to Montana but to all regions of recent exploitation and rapid growth.

In the hearty welcome extended to the newcomer, with either the money or the personality to command its attention, Butte more nearly resembles London than any other city in the world. To pasts she is indifferent, provided they are not resurrected as models for a present: she asks no questions of a pretty, amiable, amusing woman who pays her the compliment of sojourning in her midst, so long as the lady exercises an equal reticence--assuming reticence to be her virtue--and plays the social game with _savoir faire_. Distractions on that high perch are few, social life ebbs oftener than it flows, many of the large houses are closed for the greater part of the year, and only the very young, who care not where they are so long as they may dance, find life in an overgrown mining camp as satisfactory as their elders find New York.

But the hospitality of Butte is genuine and founded largely upon common sense. Most of the women composing its society have enjoyed wealth for many years: they have travelled extensively; and if they continue to make their homes in Butte it is solely on account of their own business interests or those of their men. They argue that to deprive themselves of even the casual diversion, assuming the exclusive airs of large and resourceful communities, would merely put them on a level with thousands of other small towns slowly stagnating, be unworthy of their worldly experience, and of the large free spirit of the Northwest which has pervaded that isolated camp since they came with their husbands or fathers to take a hand in its history.