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First to recover from the good news that she and Maizie would escape the punishment they merited, Marian Seaton now said with a faint touch of asperity: "Why won't you allow us to come back to Madison Hall next year, Mrs. Weatherbee? We prefer it to any other campus house. If we give you our word of honor to let Judith Stearns and her crowd alone, isn't that sufficient?"
When fifteen minutes had passed and she was still waiting, the stock of "calm courage" attributed to her by Adrienne, began to dwindle into nettled impatience. She now wished that she had not given her name to the maid. It looked as if Mrs. Weatherbee were purposely keeping her waiting. This thought stirred afresh in Jane the old antagonism that the matron had always aroused.
There was no sun. This was the Universe, dead and cold and dark, and he its only citizen. Weatherbee? At such moments Weatherbee did not count. He was a Caliban, a monstrous phantom, fettered to him for untold ages, the penalty of some forgotten crime. He lived with Death among the dead, emasculated by the sense of his own insignificance, crushed by the passive mastery of the slumbering ages.
He slid a hand up the clerk's belt to the sheath-knife; and they drew very close to each other in that last clinch. Percy Cuthfert felt his strength leave him. The lower portion of his body was useless, The inert weight of Weatherbee crushed him crushed him and pinned him there like a bear under a trap. The cabin became filled with a familiar odor, and he knew the bread to be burning.
The grass had frozen, and before we reached a cache of oats I had relied on, most of our horses perished; we arrived at Nome too late for the last steamer of the year. That is how I came to winter there, and why a letter Weatherbee had written in October was so long finding me.
Southeastward, from her alcove, lifted the matchless, solitary crest of Rainier. It was the morning following the cruise on the Aquila, and Mrs. Weatherbee was taking a light breakfast in her room. The small table, placed near an open casement, allowed her to enjoy both views.
"But the stories of the Aurora are very much inflated. It is a comparatively new mine, and though it promises to be one of the great discoveries, the expense of operating so far has exceeded the output. Heavy machinery has been transported and installed, and Mrs. Weatherbee could not have met any part of these payments.
"You know it is not a simple infatuation with Frederic," she hurried on, "to be forgotten tomorrow. He has loved her passionately from the day he first met her, four years ago. He can't think of anything else; he never will do anything of credit to the family until she is his wife. And now, with David Weatherbee safely buried, it seems reasonably sure.
His mouth drooped disconsolately. "And you called this your proudest day," he broke out at last. "It would be great to help create a city," she said then. "To start with it ourselves, at the foundations and grow." And she added very softly, with a little break in her voice: "I've decided to resign and go to Weatherbee."
Weatherbee tells us that she is going to report us to Miss Rutledge, Maizie, we must beg her not to do it," quavered Marian. "We must promise her anything rather than let her go to Miss Rutledge. That's what I intend to do and so must you." Maizie regarded Marian with the air of one who was carefully weighing the cowardly counsel. All she said was: "Come on. We mustn't keep her waiting."
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