第56章

He seemed nearly ready to countenance Osterman's scheme.The very fact that he was willing to talk of it to her so often and at such great length, was proof positive that it occupied his mind.The pity of it, the tragedy of it! He, Magnus, the "Governor," who had been so staunch, so rigidly upright, so loyal to his convictions, so bitter in his denunciation of the New Politics, so scathing in his attacks on bribery and corruption in high places; was it possible that now, at last, he could be brought to withhold his condemnation of the devious intrigues of the unscrupulous, going on there under his very eyes? That Magnus should not command Harran to refrain from all intercourse with the conspirators, had been a matter of vast surprise to Mrs.

Derrick.Time was when Magnus would have forbidden his son to so much as recognise a dishonourable man.

But besides all this, Derrick's wife trembled at the thought of her husband and son engaging in so desperate a grapple with the railroad--that great monster, iron-hearted, relentless, infinitely powerful.Always it had issued triumphant from the fight; always S.Behrman, the Corporation's champion, remained upon the field as victor, placid, unperturbed, unassailable.But now a more terrible struggle than any hitherto loomed menacing over the rim of the future; money was to be spent like water;personal reputations were to be hazarded in the issue; failure meant ruin in all directions, financial ruin, moral ruin, ruin of prestige, ruin of character.Success, to her mind, was almost impossible.Annie Derrick feared the railroad.At night, when everything else was still, the distant roar of passing trains echoed across Los Muertos, from Guadalajara, from Bonneville, or from the Long Trestle, straight into her heart.At such moments she saw very plainly the galloping terror of steam and steel, with its single eye, cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon, symbol of a vast power, huge and terrible; the leviathan with tentacles of steel, to oppose which meant to be ground to instant destruction beneath the clashing wheels.No, it was better to submit, to resign oneself to the inevitable.She obliterated herself, shrinking from the harshness of the world, striving, with vain hands, to draw her husband back with her.

Just before Annixter's arrival, she had been sitting, thoughtful, in her long chair, an open volume of poems turned down upon her lap, her glance losing itself in the immensity of Los Muertos that, from the edge of the lawn close by, unrolled itself, gigantic, toward the far, southern horizon, wrinkled and serrated after the season's ploughing.The earth, hitherto grey with dust, was now upturned and brown.As far as the eye could reach, it was empty of all life, bare, mournful, absolutely still; and, as she looked, there seemed to her morbid imagination--diseased and disturbed with long brooding, sick with the monotony of repeated sensation--to be disengaged from all this immensity, a sense of a vast oppression, formless, disquieting.The terror of sheer bigness grew slowly in her mind; loneliness beyond words gradually enveloped her.She was lost in all these limitless reaches of space.Had she been abandoned in mid-ocean, in an open boat, her terror could hardly have been greater.She felt vividly that certain uncongeniality which, when all is said, forever remains between humanity and the earth which supports it.

She recognised the colossal indifference of nature, not hostile, even kindly and friendly, so long as the human ant-swarm was submissive, working with it, hurrying along at its side in the mysterious march of the centuries.Let, however, the insect rebel, strive to make head against the power of this nature, and at once it became relentless, a gigantic engine, a vast power, huge, terrible; a leviathan with a heart of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing out the human atom with sound less calm, the agony of destruction sending never a jar, never the faintest tremour through all that prodigious mechanism of wheels and cogs.

Such thoughts as these did not take shape distinctly in her mind.

She could not have told herself exactly what it was that disquieted her.She only received the vague sensation of these things, as it were a breath of wind upon her face, confused, troublous, an indefinite sense of hostility in the air.

The sound of hoofs grinding upon the gravel of the driveway brought her to herself again, and, withdrawing her gaze from the empty plain of Los Muertos, she saw young Annixter stopping his horse by the carriage steps.But the sight of him only diverted her mind to the other trouble.She could not but regard him with aversion.He was one of the conspirators, was one of the leaders in the battle that impended; no doubt, he had come to make a fresh attempt to win over Magnus to the unholy alliance.

However, there was little trace of enmity in her greeting.Her hair was still spread, like a broad patch of back, and she made that her excuse for not getting up.In answer to Annixter's embarrassed inquiry after Magnus, she sent the Chinese cook to call him from the office; and Annixter, after tying his horse to the ring driven into the trunk of one of the eucalyptus trees, came up to the porch, and, taking off his hat, sat down upon the steps.

"Is Harran anywhere about?" he asked."I'd like to see Harran, too.""No," said Mrs.Derrick, "Harran went to Bonneville early this morning."She glanced toward Annixter nervously, without turning her head, lest she should disturb her outspread hair.

"What is it you want to see Mr.Derrick about?" she inquired hastily."Is it about this plan to elect a Railroad Commission?