For the first time in weeks the Kentuckian was able to invite his soul and to think and speak in terms of comfortable unembarrassment. The long strain of the industrial battle was off, and Mr. Pelham's triumphal beating of drums had been accomplished without loss of life, and with no more serious consequences than a lamed arm for the man who was best able to keep his own counsel. Having definitely determined to send in his resignation in the morning, and thus to avoid any possible entanglement which might arise when the instability of the great dam's foundations should become generally known, the burden of responsibility was immeasurably lightened. And to cap the ecstatic climax in its sentimental part, Elsa's mood was not mocking; it was sympathetic to a heart-mellowing degree.
One thing only sounded a jarring note in the soothing theme. That was young Blacklock's very palpable anxiety and restlessness. When the collegian had placed the big car, and had stopped its motor and extinguished its lights, he had betaken himself to the desert of stone chips, rambling therein aimlessly, but never, as Ballard observed, wandering out of eye-reach of the great gray wall of masonry, of the growing lake in the crooking elbow of the canyon, and the path-girted hillside of the opposite shore. Blacklock's too ostentatious time-killing was the latest of the small mysteries; and when the Kentuckian came to earth long enough to remark it, he fancied that Jerry was waiting for a cue of some kind--waiting and quite obviously watching.
It was some time after Mrs. Van Bryck, plaintively protesting against being kept out so late, had begun to doze in her chair, and Bigelow had fetched wraps from the car wherewith to cloak a shuddery Miss Cantrell, that Ballard's companion said, guardedly: "Don't you think it would be in the nature of a charity to these two behind us if we were to share Jerry's wanderings for a while?"
"I'm not sharing with Jerry--or any other man--just now," Ballard objected. None the less, he rose and strolled with her across the stone yard; and at the foot of the great derrick he pulled out one of the cutter's benches for a seat. "This is better than the porch step," he was saying, when Blacklock got up from behind a rejected thorough-stone a few yards away and called to him.