Chapter XIII: The Woman's Choice

The message was received in ghastly silence. The blood ran cold in the veins as the people in the room took in the awful disaster. No one spoke for a moment, none moved. They had all been shocked into insensibility. Colonel Illingworth's face had lost its pallor. It was fiery red as if gorged with blood. Bertram Meade was whiter than any other man in the room. He was thinking of his father. What an end to such a career! One failure to outweigh a thousand successes.

The girl moved first. Her father and the young engineer were the two men in whom she was most interested, the two who were most deeply touched. They were both in agony, both in need of her. To which would she go? Unhesitatingly she stepped to the side of the younger. For this cause shall a woman leave her father and her mother! And never believe but that the father saw and understood even in the midst of his suffering. Youth thinks not, but fathers always know.

Helen Illingworth laid her hand on Meade's arm. She pressed close to his side. Together they confronted the older man. She had chosen.

"We are ruined," gasped the Colonel, tugging at his collar. "It's not so much the financial loss, although we put millions into that bridge, which now is only good for the scrap heap. We could stand that--but our reputation! We'll never get another contract. I might as well close the works. And it is your father's fault. It's up to him. He was the greatest bridge engineer on this continent. He revised our design. He changed it in accordance with his knowledge and experience and he gave us column formulas of his own. The blood of those men is upon his head. Well, sir, I'll let the whole world know how grossly incompetent he is, how----"

"Sir," said young Meade, standing very erect and whiter than ever, since the hour had come to take the blame, "the fault is mine. I made the calculations. I checked and rechecked them. Nobody could know with absolute certainty the ability of the lower chord members to resist compression. But whatever the fault, it is mine. My father had absolutely nothing to do with it. He is----"

"He's got to bear the responsibility," cried the Colonel passionately. "It has his name----"

"No, I tell you," thundered the younger man. "For I'll proclaim my own responsibility. You knew that I had much to do with it. You said at the time that you were playing in great luck because you got not only the experience of my father, but the knowledge and the latest methods of his son, for one figure. Now the fault is all mine and I'll publish the fact from one end of the world to the other."

"It's a load I wouldn't want to have on my conscience," said Colonel Illingworth.

"The ruin of a great establishment like the Martlet," added Dr. Severence.

"The dishonor to American engineering," said Curtiss.

"And the awful loss of life," continued the Colonel.

"I assume them all," protested the young man, forcing his lips to speak, although the cumulative burdens set forth so clearly and so mercilessly bade fair to crush him.

"It was only a mistake," protested Helen Illingworth, drawing closer to her lover's side, and with difficulty resisting a temptation to clasp him in her arms.

"A mistake!" exclaimed her father bitterly.

"You said yourself," urged the woman, turning to the chief engineer, "that you didn't know whether the designs would work out, that nobody could know, but you were convinced that they would."

"I did," admitted Curtiss.

"Under the circumstances, then," said the girl, "I stand by----"

"Wait," interrupted the father. "Meade, there is one consequence you have got to bear that you haven't thought of."

"What is that?"

"Helen."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think I'd let my daughter marry a man who had ruined me, an incompetent engineer by his own confession, a----"

"It is just," said Meade. "I have nothing further to do here, gentlemen. I must go to my father."

"Just or not," cried Helen Illingworth, "I can't allow you to dispose of me in that way, father. If he is as blamable as he says he is, and as you say he is, now is the time above all others for the woman who loves him to stand by him."

"Miss Illingworth, you don't know what you are saying," said Meade, forcing himself into a cold formality he did not feel. "I am disgraced, shamed. There is nothing in life for me. My chosen profession--my reputation--everything is gone."

"The more need you have for me, then."

"It is noble of you. I shall love you forever, but----"

He turned resolutely away and walked doggedly out of the room. Helen Illingworth made a step to follow him.

"Helen," interposed her father, catching her almost roughly by the arm in his anger and resentment, "if you go out of this door after that man, I'll never speak to you again."

"Father, I love you. I'm sorry for you. I would do anything for you but this. You have your friends. That man, yonder, has nothing, nothing but me. I must go to him."

She turned and went out of the room without a backward look or another word, no one detaining her. Now it happened that by hurrying down the hill in the station wagon, which he had bidden wait for him, Bertram Meade had just caught a local train, which made connections with the Reading Express some twenty miles away, and Helen Illingworth in her dog-cart reached the station platform just in time to see it depart. She thought quickly and remembered that ten miles across the country another railroad ran and if she drove hard she could possibly catch a train which would land her in Jersey City a few minutes before the train her lover caught.

She ran to the telephone and called for her own car in a hurry. She jumped into it a few minutes later and told the chauffeur that she wanted to catch the next express on the Pennsylvania Road. The news of the fall of the bridge was already abroad in the town. The man had heard how Meade had taken the blame, and had caught the local by furious driving. He had heard how Miss Illingworth had followed. It had become known, through her maid, that Meade and the president's daughter were engaged. The chauffeur scented a romance at once. And he drove the car as he had never driven before.

The girl caught the express and reached Manhattan Junction on time. In this case there was no delay. She had decided _en route_ that it would be impossible for her to get from the Pennsylvania station to the Reading station in Jersey City in time to intercept her lover in the short margin of time at her disposal and she had determined upon a course of action. She would ride to the Hudson Terminal in the city and then go first to the office of Bertram Meade, Senior. If he were not there she would go to his residence. She had visited both places before, and she was certain that she would find both Meades at one place or the other.

The newsboys on the street were already crying the loss of the bridge. She saw the story displayed in lurid red headlines as she sprang into the taxi and bade the chauffeur hurry her to the Uplift Building further downtown. The bill she handed him in advance made him recklessly break the speed-limit, too.