Too Late For Love

: Still Jim

"Honor is the thing that makes humans different from

dogs--some dogs! When women have it, it is mingled always

with tenderness."



MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.





Jim jumped to his feet and took a stride toward Sara's couch, then

checked himself.



"Oh, I'm not accusing you of planning the thing!" sneered Sara. "I'd
< r /> have more respect for you if you had. Pen doesn't know that I know. If I

hadn't got hurt I'd probably never dreamed of it. Pen and I would have

raised a family and I'd have had no time to think of you. But it didn't

take more than a year of lying on my back and watching her to see that

it was more than my crippled condition that was changing Pen. Damn you!

Why should you have it all, health and success and Pen's love? I'll get

you yet, Jim Manning!"



Jim stood with his arms folded fighting desperately to keep his hands

off Sara. Deep in his heart Jim realized, there was none of the pity for

Sara's physical condition that civilized man is supposed to feel for the

cripple. Far within him was the loathing of the savage for something

abnormal; the loathing that once left the physically unfit to die. Yet

superimposed on this loathing was the veneer of civilization, that

forces kindness and gentleness and self-denial toward the fit that the

unfit may be kept alive.



So Jim gripped his biceps and ground his teeth and the crippled man in

the chair stared with bitter black eyes into Jim's angry gray ones. Jim

fought with himself until the sweat came out on his lips, then without a

word he left the tent, mounted his horse and rode back to the dam site.



He wanted time to think. It was very evident that Sara meant mischief,

but just how great was his capacity for doing him harm Jim could only

guess. The idea of his extremely friendly relations with Arthur Freet

bothered Jim now. If Freet were really trying to influence the sale of

the water power through Sara, the wise thing to do would be to send Sara

back to New York. And yet, if Sara went, Pen would go, too! Jim's heart

sank. He could not bear to think of the dam now without Pen. He squared

his shoulders suddenly. He would not send Sara away until he had some

real proof that his threats were more than idle. At any rate, it was not

his business to worry over the sale of the water power. If he produced

the power he was doing his share. And when he had fallen back on his old

excuse Jim gave a sigh of relief and went home to supper.



Henderson was in the office the next morning when Jim opened a letter

from the Director of the Service. He was sorry, said the director, that

there had been so much loss of time and property in the flood. He

realized, of course, that Jim had done his best, but people who did not

know him so well would not have the same confidence. The Congressional

Committee on Investigation of the Projects, on receipt of numerous

complaints regarding the flood, had decided to proceed at once to Jim's

project and there begin its work.



Jim tossed the Director's letter to Henderson and laid aside the

Secretary's letter, which he had planned to answer that morning.



"More time wasted!" grumbled Jim. "There will be a hearing and

talky-talk and I must listen respectfully while the abutments crumble.

Why in thunder don't they send a good engineer or two along with the

Congressmen? A report from such a committee would have value. How would

Congress enjoy having a committee of engineers passing on the legality

of the work it does?"



Henderson laid the letter down, rumpling his hair. "Hell's fire!" he

said gently. "My past won't stand investigating. You ask the Missis if

it will! I'm safe if they stick to Government projects and stay away

from the mining camps and the ladies."



Jim's eyes twinkled. "Perhaps your past is black enough to whiten mine

in contrast. I'll ask Mrs. Henderson."



Henderson suddenly brightened. "I've got a dying favor to ask of you.

Let me take the fattest of 'em to ride in Bill Evans' auto?"



Jim looked serious. "Your past must have been black, all right, Jack!

You show a naturally vicious disposition. Really, I haven't anything

personal against these men. It's just that they take so much time and

insist on treating us fellows as if we were pickpockets."



"I ain't as ladylike as you," said Henderson, in his tender way. "I just

naturally hate to be investigated. My Missis does all that I can stand.

I won't do anything vicious, though. I'll just show a friendly interest

in them. I might lasso 'em and hitch 'em behind the machine, but that

might hurt it and, anyhow, that wouldn't be subtle enough. These here

Easterners like delicate methods. I do myself. At least, I appreciate

them. The delicatest attention I ever had that might come under the head

of an investigation was by an Eastern lady. It was years ago on an old

irrigation ditch. Her husband was starting a ranch and I caught him

stealing water. I was pounding him up when she landed on me with a

steel-pronged garden rake. She raked me till I had to borrow clothes

from her to go home with. That sure was some delicate investigation."



"The world lost a great lyric soloist in you, Jack," commented Jim.

"Jokes aside, it's fair enough for them to investigate us. If the

members of the committee are straight, it ought to do a lot toward

stopping this everlasting kicking of the farmers. We've nothing to fear

but the delay they cause."



Jack sighed regretfully. "Well, I'll be good, if you insist. Let's give

'em a masquerade ball while they're here."



"Good," said Jim. "Will you take charge?"



"Bet your life!" replied Henderson, whose enthusiasm for social affairs

had never flagged since the day of the reception to the Director, up on

the Makon.



Jim spent a heavy morning on the dam, climbing about, testing and

calculating. Already the forms were back in place ready to restore the

concrete swept away by the flood. Excavation for the next section of

the foundation was proceeding rapidly. At mid-afternoon, Jim was

squatting on a rock overlooking the excavation when Oscar Ames appeared.



"Mr. Manning," he said angrily, "that main ditch isn't being run as near

my house as I want it. You'd better move it now, before I make you move

it."



"Go to my irrigation engineer, Mr. Ames," replied Jim shortly. "He has

my full confidence."



"Well, he hasn't mine nor nobody's else's in the valley, with his darned

dude pants! I am one of the oldest farmers in this community. I had as

much influence as anybody at getting the Service in here and I propose

to have my place irrigated the way I want it."



"By the way," said Jim, "you folks use too much water for your own good,

since the diversion dam was finished. Why do you use three times what

you ought to just because you can get it from the government free? Don't

you know you'll ruin your land with alkali?"



Ames looked at Jim in utter disgust. "Did you ever run an irrigated

farm? Did you ever see a ditch till eight years ago? Didn't you get your

education at a darned East college where they wouldn't know a ditch from

the Atlantic Ocean?"



"Look here, Ames," said Jim, "do you know that you are the twelfth

farmer who has been up here and told me he'd get me dismissed if we

didn't put the ditch closer to his ranch? I tell you as I've told them

that we've placed the canal where we had to for the lie of the land and

where it would do the greatest good to the greatest number when the

project was all under cultivation. Some of you will have to dig longer

and some shorter ditches. I can't help that. Isn't that reasonable?"



"It would be," sniffed Ames, "if you knew enough to know where the best

place was. That's where you fall down. You won't take advice. Just

because I don't wear short pants and leather shin guards is no reason

I'm a fool."



Jim's drawl was very pronounced. "The shin guards would help you when

you clear cactus. And if you'd adopt a leather headguard, it would

protect you in your favorite job of butting in."



"I'll get you yet!" exclaimed Ames, starting off rapidly toward the

trail. "I've got pull that'll surprise you."



Jim swore a little under his breath and began again on his interrupted

calculations. When the four o'clock whistle blew and the shifts changed,

some one sat down silently near Jim. Jim worked on for a few moments,

finishing his problem. Then he looked up. Suma-theek was sitting on a

rock, smoking and watching Jim.



"Boss," he began, "you sabez that story old Suma-theek tell you?"



Jim nodded. "Why don't you do it, then?" the old Indian went on.



Jim looked puzzled. Suma-theek jerked his thumb toward the distant tent

house. "She much beautiful, much lonely, much young, much good. Why you

no marry her?"



"She is married, Suma-theek," replied Jim gently.



"Married? No! That no man up there. She no his wife. Let him go. He bad

in heart like in body. You marry her."



Jim continued to shake his head. "She belongs to him. The law says so."



Suma-theek snorted. "Law! You whites make no law except to break it.

Love it have no law except to make tribe live. Great Spirit, he must

think she bad when she might have good babies for her tribe, she stay

with that bad cripple. Huh?"



"You don't understand, Suma-theek. There is always the matter of honor

for a white man."



Suma-theek smoked his cigarette thoughtfully for a moment and then he

said, wonderingly: "A white man's honor! He will steal a nigger woman or

an Injun woman. He will steal Injun money or Injun lands. He will steal

white man's money. He will lie. He will cheat. Where he not afraid,

white man no have honor. But when talk about steal white man's wife, he

afraid. Then he find he have honor! Honor! Boss, white honor is like

rain on hot sand, like rotten arrow string, like leaking olla. I am old,

old Injun. I heap know white honor!"



Old Suma-theek flipped his cigarette into the excavation and strode

away. Jim rose slowly and looked over at the Elephant with his gray eyes

narrowed, his broad shoulders set.



"On your head be it!" he murmured. "I am going to try!"



He climbed the trail to his house, washed and brushed himself and went

over to the tent house. Pen was sitting on the doorstep. Oscar Ames was

talking to Sara.



"Hello, Sara!" said Jim coolly. "Pen, I've got a free hour. Will you

come up back of the camp with me and let me show you the view from Wind

Ridge? It's finer than what you get from the Elephant."



Sara's face was inscrutable. Oscar said nothing. Pen laid aside her book

and picked up her hat.



"I knew there was something the matter with me," she said gaily. "It was

Wind Ridge I was missing though I never heard of it before! I won't be

long, Sara."



"Don't hurry on my account," said Sara, with a sardonic glance at Jim.



The trail led up the mountain slope with a steady twist toward a ridge

at the top that showed a sawtooth edge. Almost to the top the mountain

was dotted with little green cedars, dwarfed and wind-tortured. Up at

the saw edge they stopped. Here the wind caught them, wind flooding

across desert and mountain, clean, sweet, with a marvelous tang to it,

despite the desert heat.



"Why, it's a world of lavenders!" cried Pen.



Jim nodded and steadied her against the great warm rush of the wind. Far

to the east beyond the purple Elephant the San Juan mountains lay on the

horizon. They were the faintest, clearest blue lavender, with iridescent

peaks merging into the iridescent sky. The desert that swept toward the

Elephant was a yellow lavender. The mountain that bore the ridge was a

gray lavender. To the west, three great ranges vied with each other in

melting tints of purple, that now were blue, now were lavender. The two

might have been sitting at the top of the world, the sweep of the view

and the sense of exaltation in it were so great.



Mighty white clouds rushed across the sky, sweeping their blue shadows

over the desert, like ripples in the wake of huge sailing ships.



When Pen had looked her fill, Jim led her to a clump of cedars that

broke the wind and made a seat for her from branches. Then he tossed his

hat down and stood before her. Pen looked up into his face.



"Why so serious, Still Jim?" she asked.



"Penelope," asked Jim, "do you remember that twice I held you in my arms

and kissed you on the lips and told you that you belonged to me?"



Pen whitened. If he could only dream how the pain and sweetness of those

embraces never had left her!



"I remember! But let's not talk of that. We settled it all on the day

you got back from Washington. We must forget it all, Jim."



"We can never forget it, Pen. We're not that kind." Jim stood struggling

for words with which to express his emotion. It always had been this

way, he told himself. The great moments of his life always found him

dumb. Even old Suma-theek could tell his thoughts more clearly than he.

Jim summoned all his resources.



"Pen, it never occurred to me you wouldn't wait. There has never been

any other woman in my life and I suppose I just couldn't picture any

other man having a hold on you. But it all goes in with my general

incompetence to grasp opportunity. I felt that I had no right to go any

farther until I had more than hopes to offer you. I planned to make a

reputation as an engineer. I knew money didn't interest you. I wanted to

offer myself to you as a man of real achievement. You see how I failed.

I have made a reputation as a grafting, inefficient engineer with the

public. You are another man's wife. But, Penelope, I am not going to

give you up!



"One gets a new view of life out here. You are wrong in staying with

Saradokis. Why should three lives be ruined by his tragedy? Pen! Pen! If

I could make you understand the torture of knowing you are married to

Sara! You are mine! From the first day I came upon you in the old

library, we belonged to each other. Pen, I've tramped the desert night

after night on the Makon and here, sweating it out with the stars and I

have determined that you shall belong to me."



Pen, white and trembling, did not move her gaze from Jim's face. All her

tired, yearning youth stood in her eyes.



Jim spoke very slowly and clearly. "Penelope, I love you. Will you leave

Saradokis and marry me?"



Pen did not answer for a long moment. A to-hee trilled from the cedar:



"O yahee! O yahai!

Sweet as arrow weed in spring!"



The Elephant lay motionless. The flag rippled and fluttered, a faint red

spot far below on the mountainside. Pen's youth was fighting with her

bitterly won philosophy. Then she summoned all her fortitude.



"Jim, dear, it would be a cowardly thing for me to leave Sara."



"It would be greater cowardice to stay. Pen, shall you and I die as Iron

Skull did? I can marry no other woman feeling as I do about you. Sara's

life is useless. Let the world say what it will. Marry me, Penelope."



"Jim, I can't."



"Why not, Penelope?"



"I love you very dearly, but I've had enough of marriage. I've done my

duty. I don't see how I could keep on loving a man after I married him,

even if he weren't a cripple. The process of adjustment is simply

frightful. Marriage is just a contract binding one to do the

impossible!"



Jim scowled. More and more he was realizing how Sara had hurt Pen.



"You don't care a rap about me, Pen. Why don't you admit it?"



Pen gave a sudden tearful smile. "You know better, Jim. But just to

prove to you what a silly goose I am, I'll show you something. Girls in

real life do this even more than they do it in novels!"



Pen opened a flat locket she always wore. A folded bit of paper and a

tiny photograph fluttered into her lap. She gave both to Jim. The

picture was a snapshot of Jim in his football togs. The bit of paper,

unfolded, showed in Pen's handwriting a verse from Christina Rossetti:



"Too late for love, too late for joy;

Too late! Too late!

You loitered on the road too long,

You trifled at the gate:

The enchanted dove upon her branch

Died without a mate:

The enchanted princess in her tower

Slept, died, behind the grate:

Her heart was starving all this time

You made it wait."



Jim put the bit of paper into his pocket and gave Pen the picture. His

eyes were full of tears.



"Pen! Pen!" he cried. "Let me make it up to you! We care so much!

Suppose we aren't always happy. Oh, my love, a month of life with you

would make me willing to bear all the spiritual drudgery of marriage!"



White to the lips, Pen answered once more: "Jim, I will never leave

Sara. There is such a thing as honor. It's the last foundation that the

whole social fabric rests on. I promised to stay with Sara, in the

marriage service. He's kept his word. It's my business to keep mine,

until he breaks his."



Jim stood with set face. "Is this final, Penelope?"



"It's final, Still."



"Do you mind if I go on alone, Pen?"



Pen shook her head and Jim turned down the mountainside. And Pen, being

a woman, put her head down on her knees and cried her heart out. Then

she went back to Sara.



That night Jim answered the Secretary's letter:



"My work has always been technical. I know that the Projects are not the

success their sponsors in Congress hoped they would be, but I feel that

you ask too much of your engineers when you ask them not only to make

the dam but to administer it. I have about concluded that an engineer is

a futile beast of triangles and n-th powers, unfitted by his very

talents for associating with other human beings. I suppose that this

letter must be interpreted as my admission of inefficiency."



It was late when Jim had finished this letter. He was, he thought, alone

in the house. He laid down his pen. A sudden overpowering desire came

upon him for Exham, for the old haunts of his childhood. There it

seemed to him that some of his old confidence in life might return to

him. He dropped his arm along the back of his chair and with his

forehead on his wrist he gave a groan of utter desolation.



Mrs. Flynn, coming in at the open door, heard the groan and saw the

beautiful brown head bowed as if in despair. She stopped aghast.



"Oh, my Lord!" she gasped under her breath. "Him, too! Mrs. Penelope

ain't the only one that's broken up, then! Ain't it fierce! I wonder

what's happened to the poor young ones! I'd like to go to Mr. Sara's

wake. I would that! Oh, my Lord! Let's see. He's had two baths today. I

can't get him into another. I'll make him some tea. You have to cheer up

either to eat or take a bath."



She slipped into the kitchen and there began to bang the range and

rattle teacups. When she came in, Jim was sitting erect and stern-faced,

sorting papers. Mrs. Flynn set the tray down on the desk with a thud.

She was going to take no refusal.



"Drink that tea, Boss Still Jim, and eat them toasted crackers. You

didn't eat any supper to speak of and you're as pindlin' as a knitting

needle. Don't slop on your clean suit. That khaki is hard to iron."



She stood close beside him and made an imaginary thread an excuse for

laying her hand caressingly on Jim's shoulder. "You're a fine lad," she

said, uncertainly. "I wish I'd been your mother."



The touch was too much for Jim. He dropped the teacup and, turning, laid

his face against Mrs. Flynn's shoulder.



"I could pretend you were tonight, very easily," he said brokenly, "if

you'd smooth my hair for me."



Mrs. Flynn hugged the broad shoulders to her and smoothed back Jim's

hair.



"I've been wanting to get my hands on it ever since I first saw it, lad.

God knows it's as soft as silk and just the color of oak leaves in

winter. There, now, hold tight a bit, my boy. We can weather any storm

if we have a friend to lean on, and I'm that, God knows. It's a fearful

cold I've caught, God knows. You'll have to excuse my snuffing. There

now! There! God knows that in my waist I've got a letter for you from

Mrs. Penelope. She seemed used up tonight. Her jewel of a husband took

dope tonight, so she and I sat in peace while she wrote this. I'll leave

it on your tray. Good-night to you, Boss. Don't slop on your suit."