"Timber"/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV
Milt Goddard saw Philip Rowe's departure. He stepped out of the road to let his car pass and remained beside the ruts watching until it was out of sight.
Rowe could have come but from one place by that road and he hastened on to the big house under Watch Pine, At the door he paused a moment, irresolute, but when he stepped in and saw Helen at her desk his indecision departed; her head was bowed, arms about it and he saw her shudder. For the space of a dozen breaths he stood looking at the girl, sensing her trouble, but in his face appeared no sympathy—only joy!
"Helen, what is it?"
He stepped forward as she sat erect and rose, to walk toward the mantel.
"Nothing," she replied.
He was beside her.
"Don't put me off!" he said with the manner of one who is very certain of himself. "You've got to listen, now. Maybe if you'd listened when I tried to give you warning you wouldn't have been so upset this morning."
His assurance, his evident knowledge of what had happened, startled her.
"Warning? What do you mean? Do you know what has happened?"
"I don't know, but I can make a good guess; and to make a good guess a man has to know something!"
"You talked to—that man?"
"To Rowe?" He shook his head. "I've never spoken a word to him, but I know what he was here for." His mouth twisted in a half smile of triumph. The girl stood staring at him while voices came to them from the river: a sharp command and excited response, as the last of the hardwood logs swung round the bend. "He came to buy you out, didn't he?"
"Yes, I refused, of course, and he went away making threats. He knows all about us, Milt!"
"He knows all about us!" he echoed and laughed briefly. "And that's what I tried to tell you once and you wouldn't listen."
She caught her breath.
"I don't understand you."
Until then he had been tense, almost belligerent; but with her last words he relaxed and looked away, because he did not want her to detect his gladness. She was begging him, now, to reveal what he knew and the groundless warning which he had given weeks ago loomed large and real; Taylor was a traitor in her camp and he could prove it. With Taylor gone, with his own sagacity proven—It was a sweet moment for Milt Goddard!
The averting of his face set eyes toward the river. Taylor and two others worked to free a raft from the bend in which it had lodged. He saw John's lithe body put its strength to the pike pole, saw the logs sink beneath him as he shoved.
"Once you told me I was your good friend," he began. "You still think that, don't you, Helen?"
"Of course, Milt."
"It's the place of a man to look out for his friends, I take it. I've tried to look out for you, but you couldn't see it that way. You thought it was another thing."
His thumbs were hooked in his belt and he stood very close to her.
"I have worked for you, Helen, I've fought for you once or twice when it's been necessary. I've took all the interest any man could take in this forest when it's stood between you—and me. I told you once that sometimes I hated it. That's right. I do, sometimes. But I've kept on doing my best for it because you're right when you say it's your life. Anything that might harm this timber would be like somebody layin' hands on you and that's why I can stand it. If I've done that, ain't it right for you to expect that whatever I do is for your good? Ain't it reasonable for me to think that you'd—trust me?"
"I do trust you, I always—"
"Not always," he interrupted, voice rising slightly. "I tried to warn you once, but you put me off. It's been hard enough to keep still and wait for proof when I knew the Folly was in danger, but that wasn't nothin' compared to how hard it was to keep quiet when I knew—after I saw him kiss you."
One of the girl's hands went slowly to her breast. Goddard's face darkened.
"I did see that," voice trembling. "I looked through that window and saw it! I saw him hold you in his arms and saw him kiss you, and you—you didn't drive him off as you would any other man who come to strike at this pine, which is your life."
"At the pine! Milt?"
Her hand dropped to his arm and gripped the great muscles.
"You told me you didn't have time to love because this forest was your life; you've been fooled, Helen, fooled by a slick tongue and—and—you've been blind to what's goin' on. You've not only risked losin' what you call your life, but you've risked breakin' your heart! I can't talk the way he can, but I can't lie the way he can! I can't lie with words, I can't live a lie! Oh, I knew! I knew from the beginnin'. I couldn't be quite sure then, and you wouldn't believe me—But I am sure now! I could tell you the whole story. I could tell you what Taylor meant when he kisses you; I could tell you about this man Rowe, but I won't. Ask him!" He flung out an arm toward Taylor in the river. The girl held her eyes on his and her lips moved, but no sound came from them. "Bring him here," the woodsman said heavily, "and I'll make him tell you!"
For a moment she stared into his face. "You want me to bring—John Taylor here—to tell me—?"
Wretched suspicion ran through her. She was helpless to do else than yield to that suspicion before this man who was so certain, so convincing.
"Yes—Now!"
She went down the steps, crossed the plot of dry sod. Her legs were not steady. The one hand was again at her breast. She did not consciously move along; it was as though the will of the woodsman prompted every minute movement of her body. She reached the path beside the river bank and faltered and went on. Taylor, moving back to the high-riding hemlock log in the center of the freed raft, looked up. He waved and smiled; and then stopped still, for even at that distance her weakness was evident.
The hand, which had been at her breast, rose slowly and beckoned.
"You want me?" he called.
She tried to speak but could not, so merely nodded and beckoned again.
He spoke to the men with him and as the raft gained way planted his pike on bottom and vaulted across the strip of water.
She had stopped, the wind whipping her skirt about her legs, making her body appear to sway like an unstable stalk.
"Helen, what is it?" for he saw her blanched face and parted lips.
"Come," she said, hoarsely, and turned while he was yet yards away and started back towards the house.
"Tell me," he demanded, taking her arm as he came up with her.
She drew her elbow away from his grasp and looked at him as one who, even in half consciousness, shrinks from the undesirable.
"Helen?—"
They were at the steps. Goddard, glowering at Taylor, held back the screen and John followed the girl into the room. There they stood, Helen backing against the mantel beneath the bowl of roses and her father's photograph. Taylor looked from her to Goddard and caught the vengeful light in the man's gray eyes.
"What's the trouble," he asked, evenly, some deep-set impulse rising to steel him for a crisis.
Goddard spoke.
"There's been a good deal goin' on lately to cause suspicion. Some of us have had our eyes and ears open." He could not help grilling Helen for the pain she had caused him. "Now it's come to a show-down, Taylor, and we want to ask you a few questions."
His manner was galling. Resentment rose with a flush to Taylor's face, and behind that came fear.
But he said, outwardly at ease, "Fire away."
Goddard looked at Helen, who had not moved. Her breast rose and fell quickly and she was chalk white.
"In the first place you know this man Rowe, and there is no use denyin' it."
"I hadn't thought of denying it," he said, and looked to Helen as though for an explanation of this performance. He saw in her face that fright—and a growing something—suspicion?
"I thought so," jeered Goddard. "Now will you tell us what his job is?"
"He is my father's private secretary."
He saw the girl start sharply, heard an inarticulate whisper from her; saw Milt settle himself on one foot and smile grimly and nod.
"Yeah. Working for Luke Taylor. He came up here for Luke Taylor, didn't he? He was here just now on your father's business, wasn't he?"
Rowe here! He had lied, then; he had not gone back to Detroit last night; the days of grace which John expected had not materialized. He had been tricked, outguessed! It confused him.
"Look here, Goddard—Helen. This is something I've feared for a long time. I've been trying to work it out for weeks and I've kept still because you had enough to think about. I can explain if—"
"That's what we want, Taylor, is for you to explain. We know the rest—that you've known about this all along."
The man's bitterness was a trap closing about him. It was bewildering, terrible—it, and his sense of guilt. He was in a corner, hedged in by mounting suspicion.
"Helen, this isn't fair!"
His voice sounded strained. His one hand, uplifted, seemed unconvincing, only a gesture of supplication, a plea for mercy.
Helen detected this, saw his confusion contrasted with the certain strength of Goddard, and color flooded back into her face. The suspicion that had been in her eyes gave way to something else, to actual hostility. This man was also of that group for which she had no charity.
Taylor read that. His heart faltered and the hand sank slowly, but as it went down something rose within him: Pride. He had been dismayed, shaken, frightened, terror-struck by the fact that she suspected him of—Ah, he knew what suspicions his indecision could nourish! And now this other thing surged up, this pride, which would not let him beg. They had snatched at conclusions; he had made his mistake, but they would not give him opportunity to clear himself. She would not believe him innocent of wrong intent, she would not trust him.
"Yes, I will tell you why he is here," he said quietly, "My father sent him here to try to buy this forest."
"And how'd he happen to come?" Goddard advanced closer with his question. "Did you send for him?"
"I did not send for him."
"Sure of that? You had nothing to do with his coming here?"
"I—I had everything to do with it. I told my father about this timber, but I did not ask either of them to come here."
He knew that his answer sounded like an evasion even before Goddard turned to nod at the girl.
"You're wrong," Taylor cried out, moving forward impetuously, looking from one to the other. "You're all wrong; you're misjudging me, you're not giving me a chance!"
Something like hope, he thought, leaped into the girl's face, but Goddard interrupted thunderingly:
"Chance? What chance did you give Helen, here?"
"Every ch—"
"No chance at all! You brought Rowe here, you let him bring in his cruiser and go over the place and you covered it up. You let him go to Detroit and talk it over with your father. You waited for him to get back yesterday with his answer. You—"
"You're wrong, I tell you!"
"Shut up!" Drunk with the sense of dominion, Goddard brooked no interruption. "You went to Pancake yesterday. You knew Rowe was there. You went to his room in the hotel and talked with him. You want your own way in this deal; you told him that and I heard you; you ain't fooled me. I've watched every crooked move you've made. 'There's money in it,' you said, 'for my father and me. The fact that Miss Foraker is in a pinch gives us a chance to get in on the deal. If she weren't pressed for money we'd never get in.'
"You said that, Taylor, and you said you wanted this as much as your father ever wanted to cut pine in his life. You begged Rowe to help you out. Begged him to get behind you with your father's money. And you argued him over. He was here today to buy and he knows the mess Helen's in—because you told him, because you told the things she told you, you snake!"
He had said those things. His own words repeated by Goddard, pelted in on his consciousness, battering down the strength that had prompted him to admit everything before coming out with the explanation; his words, confused and rendered him helpless.
Again he turned to the girl. "Helen, do you believe—"
But his golden moment had passed. The pride which had held him quiet to take punishment and emerge with an explanation and clean hands had robbed him of the opportunity to clear himself. He had stood quiet; he had made no denial and now as he looked at the girl he saw only the tight set of her mouth, the barrier of her searching stare. She would not speak! She damned him with her silence! She had whispered love to him but in this moment she had no faith!
Love?—That was no love!
He could not know that beneath that front Helen's heart was breaking, She felt lost, like a little girl who is lost. She had given her trust, her lips to this man; she had challenged Goddard when he warned against him, but Goddard had been right. John Taylor had not been worthy of her trust, let alone her caresses—else why that silence? Why had he admitted the black charges? He had betrayed her while he made love! Oh, she was sick and weak and faint, but her high temper was up. Her forest was her life. Today John Taylor, through Phil Rowe, had struck at her life! There could be no answer to that!
She moved to her desk and sat down, trying to still the flutter of her heart; the tremor of her hands, fighting back the blackness that seeped up to clutch her consciousness.
"The last of your logs will be at the mill tonight," she said. "Here is last week's statement. We will be finished with your cut within a week."
This was dismissal and he rocked under the blow of her decisiveness.
"Yes—finished—And I will be going—now."
He turned and brushed past Goddard, leaving the house, going to his bunk, packing his suitcase with cold hands, a fog before his eyes, rage within his heart. She had no trust for him, she would not listen!
And remorse came to him because he had shrunk from facing this situation before, when there was time to explain, when he might have been believed.
Until Taylor had disappeared within the men's shanty Milt Goddard stood watching him. Then he turned. Helen sat at her desk, hands gripping the chair arms for a frantic hold on reality. He moved toward her and put his big palms on the desk.
"I warned you, "he said thickly. "I was right, wasn't I? And now I guess you know which man it is that—"
"Don't you say that word!" she cried hoarsely, springing up. "Don't you say it to me, Milt Goddard—Ever!—Nor any man! Any man!—"
She drew the back of one hand across her mouth as though she would wipe from it the memory of Taylor's kisses. She started to speak, but breath caught in her throat.
"Ever!" she cried again, chokingly and turned and fled.