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Chapter 10
File I/O

◼ Multiple Choice
1) An ___________ allows data to flow into your program.
(a) input stream
(b) output stream
(c) file name
(d) all of the above
Answer: A

2) An ____________ allows data to flow from your program.

(a) input stream
(b) output stream
(c) file name
(d) all of the above
Answer: B

3) Files whose contents must be handled as sequences of binary digits are called:
(a) text files
(b) ASCII files
(c) binary files
(d) output files
Answer: C

4) The output stream connected to the computer screen is:

(a) System.exit
(b) System.quit
(c) System.in
(d) System.out
Answer: D

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

1
2 Walter Savitch • Absolute Java 5/e Chapter 10 Test Bank

5) In Java, when you open a text file you should account for a possible:
(a) FileNotFoundException
(b) FileFullException
(c) FileNotReadyException
(d) all of the above
Answer: A

6) There are two common classes used for reading from a text file. They are:
(a) PrintWriter and BufferedReader
(b) FileInputStream and Scanner
(c) BufferedReader and Scanner
(d) None of the above
Answer: C

7) The scanner class has a series of methods that checks to see if there is any more well-formed input
of the appropriate type. These methods are called __________ methods:
(a) nextToken
(b) hasNext
(c) getNext
(d) testNext
Answer: B

8) All of the following are methods of the Scanner class except:

(a) nextFloat()
(b) next()
(c) useDelimiter()
(d) readLine()
Answer: D

9) The method _________ reads a single character from an input stream.

(a) readLine()
(b) skip()
(c) read()
(d) close()
Answer: C

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 Chapter 10 File I/O 3

10) When the method readLine() tries to read beyond the end of a file, it returns the value of:
(a) 1
(b) -1
(c) null
(d) none of the above
Answer: C

11) A __________ path name gives the path to a file, starting with the directory that the program is in.
(a) relative
(b) descendant
(c) full
(d) complete
Answer: A

12) The stream that is automatically available to your Java code is:
(a) System.out
(b) System.in
(c) System.err
(d) all of the above
Answer: D

13) All of the following are methods of the File class except:
(a) exists()
(b) delete()
(c) getDirectory()
(d) getName()
Answer: C

14) The class ObjectOutputStream contains all of the following methods except:
(a) writeInt()
(b) writeChar()
(c) writeDouble()
(d) println()
Answer: D

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
4 Walter Savitch • Absolute Java 5/e Chapter 10 Test Bank

15) The method __________ from the File class forces a physical write to the file of any data that is
buffered.
(a) close()
(b) flush()
(c) writeUTF()
(d) writeObject()
Answer: B

16) The class ObjectInputStream contains all of the following methods except:
(a) readLine()
(b) readChar()
(c) readObject()
(d) readInt()
Answer: A

17) The read() method of the class RandomAccessFile returns the type:
(a) byte
(b) int
(c) char
(d) double
Answer: B

◼ True/False
1) A stream is an object that allows for the flow of data between your program and some I/O device or
some file.
Answer: True

2) Every input file and every output file used by your program has only one name which is the same
name used by the operating system.
Answer: False

3) The FileNotFoundException is a descendant of the class IOException.

Answer: True

4) When your program is finished writing to a file, it should close the stream connected to that file.
Answer: True

5) Only the classes provided for file output contain a method named close.
Answer: False

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 Chapter 10 File I/O 5

6) The methods of the scanner class do not behave the same when reading from a text file as they do
when used to read from the keyboard.
Answer: False

7) Using BufferedReader to read integers from a file requires the String input to be parsed to an integer
type.
Answer: True

8) A full path name gives a complete path name, starting from the directory the program is in.
Answer: False

9) The File class contains methods that allow you to check various properties of a file.
Answer: True

10) Binary files store data in the same format that is used by any common text editor.
Answer: False

11) Binary files can be handled more efficiently than text files.
Answer: True

12) The preferred stream classes for processing binary files are ObjectInputStream and
ObjectOutputStream.
Answer: True

◼ Short Answer/Essay
1) Explain the differences between a text file, an ASCII file and a binary file.
Answer: Text files are files that appear to contain sequences of characters when viewed in a text
editor or read by a program. Text files are sometimes also called ASCII files because they contain
data encoded using a scheme known as ASCII coding. Files whose contents must be handled as
sequences of binary digits are called binary files.

2) Write a Java statement to create and open an output stream to a file named autos.txt.
Answer: PrintWriter outputStream = new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream("autos.txt"));

3) Explain what happens when an output file is opened in Java.

Answer: In Java, when an output stream is connected to a file, the program always starts with an
empty file. If the file you are trying to connect to exists, the contents of the file are deleted before
the output stream writes new data to the file. If the file you are trying to connect to does not exist,
then a new empty file is created.

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
6 Walter Savitch • Absolute Java 5/e Chapter 10 Test Bank

4) Write a Java method that returns a String representing a file name entered by the user. Use the
BufferedReader class to obtain input.
Answer:

public static String getFileName() throws IOException

BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(new

InputStreamReader(System.in));

System.out.print("Enter the name of the file to open: ");

String fileName = stdin.readLine();

return fileName.trim();

5) Use the output stream to the file autos.txt created above in number 2 to write the line “Mercedes” to
the file.
Answer: outputStream.println("Mercedes");

6) What happens when the method close is invoked on a stream?

Answer: When the close method is invoked, the system releases any resources used to connect the
stream to the file and does any other housekeeping that is needed.

7) Create try and catch block that opens a file named statistics.txt for output. Writes the integers 24,
55, and 76 to the file, and then closes the file.
Answer:

PrintWriter outputStream = null;

try

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 Chapter 10 File I/O 7

outputStream = new PrintWriter(new

FileOutputStream("statistics.txt"));

outputStream.println(24);

outputStream.println(55);

outputStream.println(76);

outputStream.close();

catch(FileNotFoundException e)

System.out.println("Error opening the file autos.txt");

System.exit(0);

8) Write a Java statement that creates an output stream to append data to a file named autos.txt.
Answer: PrintWriter outputStream = new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream("autos.txt", true));

9) Write a Java statement to create an input stream to a file named autos.txt. Use the BufferedReader
class.
Answer: BufferedReader inputStream = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("autos.txt"));

10) Write a complete Java program using a BufferedReader object that opens a file named autos.txt and
displays each line to the screen.
Answer:

import java.io.BufferedReader;

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
8 Walter Savitch • Absolute Java 5/e Chapter 10 Test Bank

import java.io.FileReader;

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

import java.io.IOException;

public class TextDemo

public static void main(String args[])

BufferedReader inputStream = null;

try

inputStream = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("autos.txt"));

String line = inputStream.readLine();

while(line != null)

System.out.println(line);

line = inputStream.readLine();

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 Chapter 10 File I/O 9

inputStream.close();

catch(FileNotFoundException e)

System.out.println("Error opening files.");

catch(IOException e)

System.out.println("Error reading from file.");

11) Write a Java statement that creates an output stream to a binary file named statistics.dat.
Answer:

ObjectOutputStream outputStream =

new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("statistics.dat"));

12) Use the output stream created in number 11 above to write the String BBC to the file named
statistics.dat.
Answer: outputStream.writeUTF("BBC");

13) Write a Java statement to create an input stream to the binary file statistics.dat.
Answer:

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
10 Walter Savitch • Absolute Java 5/e Chapter 10 Test Bank

ObjectInputStream inputStream =

new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream("statistics.dat"));

14) Write a complete Java program that opens a binary file containing integers and displays the contents
to the screen.
Answer:

import java.io.ObjectInputStream;

import java.io.FileInputStream;

import java.io.EOFException;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

public class BinaryInputDemo

public static void main(String args[])

try

ObjectInputStream inputStream =

new ObjectInputStream(new

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 Chapter 10 File I/O 11

FileInputStream("statistics.dat"));

int stat = 0;

try

while(true)

stat = inputStream.readInt();

System.out.println(stat);

catch(EOFException e)

System.out.println("End of file encountered");

inputStream.close();

catch(FileNotFoundException e)

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
12 Walter Savitch • Absolute Java 5/e Chapter 10 Test Bank

System.out.println("Unable to locate file");

catch(IOException e)

System.out.println("Unable to read file");

15) Write a Java statement that creates a stream that provides read/write access to the file named
autos.txt.
Answer: RandomAccessFile ioStream = new RandomAccessFile("autos.txt", "rw");

16) Write a Java statement to create an input stream to a file named “statistics.dat”.
Answer: Scanner inputStream = new Scanner(new FileReader("statistics.dat"));

17) Write a complete Java program using a Scanner object that opens a file named autos.txt and displays
each line to the screen.
Answer:

import java.util.*;

import java.io.FileReader;

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

public class TextDemo

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 Chapter 10 File I/O 13

public static void main(String args[])

Scanner inputStream = null;

try

inputStream = new Scanner(new FileReader("autos.txt"));

String line = inputStream.nextLine();

while(line != null)

System.out.println(line);

line = inputStream.nextLine();

inputStream.close();

catch(FileNotFoundException e)

System.out.println("Error opening files.");

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
14 Walter Savitch • Absolute Java 5/e Chapter 10 Test Bank

©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
Other documents randomly have
different content
disappointment had left him peculiarly susceptible to impression, a
resolvent was added; that occurred which precipitated his thought.
It took form in Michigan Red, who entered with another
teamster and sat down at the opposite table. The task that delayed
them had sharpened appetite, and their attack on the food the cook
set before them was positively wolfish. Using fingers as much or
more than forks, they shovelled greasy beans into their mouths with
knives, as stokers feed a furnace; and as they bolted masses of
pork, washed whole biscuits down with gulps of coffee, Carter's
glance wandered between them and the delicate girl at his side.
Here, indeed, was one of the "points of contact" of her intuitive
wisdom. Once before he had seen, realized it. But whereas he had
thrust the thought away the night that he watched Michigan Red eat
in the lumber-camp, he now gave it free admittance, mentally
writhed as he realized how this and other gaucheries must have
ground on Helen's sensitive mental surfaces. Fascinated by their
gluttony, he watched until dulled eyes and heavy, stertorous
breathing signalled repletion and the close of their meal.
On her part, Dorothy was quietly observing him. Given such
knowledge as the Silver Creek teamsters had sown through the
camp, it would have been easy for her to guess the rest—if his
conduct had borne out her surmise. But he had learned so much and
so quickly under the stings of injured pride that observation failed to
reveal any wide departures from the conventional. She had to give it
up—for the present.
"What a strange man!"
Her whisper dissipated his painful reflections, and, looking up,
he saw that, after lighting his pipe with a coal from the stove,
Michigan Red was surveying them with cool effrontery through the
tobacco smoke. His fiery beard split in a sneer as Carter asked if he
had finished supper. But he did not take the hint nor move when
ordered to call Bender.
"Mister Bender"—he spat at the title—"is down at the grading-
camp."
"I said for you to call him." Carter's tone, in its very gentleness,
caused the girl to look quickly so she caught his queer expression.
Compounded of curiosity, interest, expectation, his glance seemed to
flicker above, below, around the red teamster, to enfold, wrap him
with its subtle questioning. Impressed more than she could have
been by threat or command, she waited—she knew not for what—
oppressed by the loom of imminent danger.
But it was not in the teamster's book to disobey—just then.
Lingering to pick another coal, he sauntered down the room under
flow of that curious, flickering glance, and closed the door behind
him with a bang. Sharp as the crack of a gun, Dorothy half expected
to see smoke curling up to the massive roof-logs. But though her
father and lover looked their surprise, Carter resumed his eating,
and there was no comment until he excused himself a few minutes
later.
Tugging his gray beard, the chief engineer then turned to the
surveyor. "Why doesn't he fire that fellow?"
Shrugging, the young fellow passed the question up to the
cook. "You've known them longest."
Thus tapped, the cook turned on a flow of information,
appending his own theory of Carter's patience to a short and
unflattering history of Michigan Red. "You see, Red thought he was
the better man from the beginning, an' it was just up to the boss to
give him fair chance to prove it. As for him, he likes the excitement.
You've seen a cat play with a mouse? Well—an' when the cat does
jump—"
"Good-bye mouse," the surveyor finished.
The cook's significant nod filled Dorothy with astonishment.
From the social heights upon which the accident of birth had placed
her, she had looked down upon the laboring-classes, deeming them
rude, simple, unsophisticated. Yet here she found complex moods, a
vendetta conducted with Machiavellian subtlety, a drastic code that
compelled a man to cherish his enemy till he had had opportunity to
strike.
The knowledge helped her to a conclusion which she stated as
they walked back to her father's tent. "Such pride! I understand now
why he left her. Just fancy his keeping on that man?"
"Damned nonsense, I call it," her father growled. "That fellow
will make trouble for him yet."
The prediction amounted to prophecy in view of a conversation
then proceeding in the bunk-house. As Michigan's table-mate had
fully reported the scene at supper, the teamsters were ready with a
fire of chaff when he stumbled over the dark threshold after
delivering Carter's message.
"Been dinin' in fash'n'ble sassiety, Red?" a man questioned.
"Nope!" another laughed. "Voylent colors ain't considered tasty
any more, so the boss fired him out 'cause his hair turned the chief's
gal sick."
Hoarse chuckling accompanied the teamster's answering
profanity, but when, after roundly cursing themselves, Carter, the
surveyor, chief engineer, he began on Dorothy, laughter ceased and
Big Hans called a stop.
"That's right." A voice seconded Hans's objection. "We ain't
stuck on the boss any more'n you are, Red; but this gal isn't no kin
of his'n. Leave her alone."
"Sure!" the first man chimed in. "An' if he's feeling his oats jes'
now, he'll be hit the harder when we spring our deadfall. Did you
sound the graders to-day? Will they—"
"Shet up!" Michigan hissed. "That big mouth o' yourn spits clean
across the camp to the office." And thereafter the conversation
continued in sinister whispers that soon merged in heavy snoring.
Silence and darkness wrapped the camp.

Awaking while it was still dark, the camp rubbed sleepy eyes and
looked out, shivering, on smouldering smudges. Outside, the air
whined of mosquitoes. At the long hay-racks horses snorted and
pawed frantically under the winged torture; patient oxen uttered
mained lowings. Growling and grumbling, the camp distributed itself
—teamsters to feed and rebuild smudges, choppers and sawyers to
the grindstone and filing-benches. It was a cold, dank world.
Pessimism prevailed to the extent that a man needed to walk straitly,
minding his own business, if he would avoid quarrel. But optimism
came with dawn—teamsters hissed cheerfully over their currying,
saw-filers and grinders indulged in snatches of song—reaching a
climax with the breakfast-call. When, half an hour later, Dorothy
appeared in the cook-house doorway, the camp had spilled its freight
of men and teams into the forest.
 Warned by the shadow, the cook looked up and saw her in
Stetson hat, short skirt, high-laced shoes, a sunlit vision with the
freshness of the morning upon its cheeks. "God bless you! Come
right in," he exclaimed. "Your daddy an' Mr. Hart hev' gone down
line. Devil's Muskeg got hungry las' night an' swallered ten thousand
yards of gradin'."
As yet she knew nothing of those treacherous sinks that gulp
grades, trestles, and the reputations of their builders as a frog
swallows flies, and he went on, answering her puzzled look:
"Morass, you know, swamp with quicksand foundation that goes
clean down to China. Nope, 'tain't Mr. Carter's loss. He ain't such a
fool as to go an' load a muskeg down with clay and rock. An
Easterner had it on a sub-contract, an' though Mr. Carter warned
him, he reckoned he could make it bear a grade on brush hurdles.
Crowed like a Shanghai rooster because it carried trains for a week.
"Oh, I don't know," he commented upon her pity for the
luckless contractor. "You kain't do nothin' with them Easterners. He
was warned. Besides," he vengefully added, "he shedn't ha' come
crowing over us. More coffee, miss?"
Leaving the cook-house, a shadow fell between her and the sun,
and Carter gave her good-morning. "Breaks the poor devil," he
supplemented the cook's information, "and bothers us. Cuts off our
communications. We shall have to move the outfits back to prairie
grading till they are re-established. I'm going down there—now, if
you'd like a hand-car ride?"
Would she? In five minutes she was speeding along under urge
of ten strong arms, over high trestles which gave her sudden livid
gleams of water far below, through yellow cuts, across hollow-
sounding bridges, always between serried ranks of sombre spruce.
Sometimes the car rolled in between long lines of men who were
tamping gravel under the ties. Rough fellows at the best, they had
herded for months in straw and dirt, seeing nothing daintier than
their unlovely selves, and as they were not the kind that mortifies
the flesh, the girl was much embarrassed by the fire of eyes. Apart
from that, she hugely enjoyed the ride. With feet almost touching
the road-bed, she got all there was of the motion, besides most of
the wind that blew her hair into a dark cloud and set wild roses
blooming in her cheeks.
She gained, too, a new view-point of Carter, who chatted gayly,
pointing, explaining, as though they were merely out for pleasure
and another had not been just added to the heavy cares that
burdened his broad shoulders. She learned more of the life, its
hardship, comedy, tragedy, in half an hour's conversation, than she
could have obtained for herself in a year's experience.
These different elements sometimes mixed—as when he
indicated a blackened excavation. "See that? A man was sitting on
the stump that was blasted out there. Reckon he got sort of tired of
the world," he replied to her horrified question, "and wanted a good
start for the next." Then, easily philosophical, quietly discursive, he
wandered along, touching the suicide's motives. There had been
different theories—drink, religion, a girl—but he himself inclined to
aggravated unsociability. The sombre forest, with its immensity of
sad, environing space, had translated mere moroseness into
confirmed hypochondria. He had so bored the stumping outfit, to
which he belonged, with pessimistic remarks on things in general
that, in self-defence, they threw something at him whenever he
opened his mouth; and so, bottled up, his gloom accumulated until,
in an unusually dismal moment, he placed a full box of dynamite
under a stump and sat down to await results.
"Why didn't some one pull him off?" she cried.
His answer was pregnant. "Short fuse. Anyway, the boys didn't
feel any call to mix in his experiments—especially as he swore a blue
streak at them till the stump lifted."
"Horrible!" she breathed.
"Just what they said." He solemnly misunderstood her. "They
never heard such language. 'Twas dreadfully out of place at a
funeral."
"Oh—I didn't mean that!" Then, considering his serious gravity,
"Was—was there—"
"Pretty clean." He relieved her of the remainder of the question.
"Mostly translated."
Incredulous, she glanced from him to his men and received
grisly confirmation, for one thrust out a grimy finger to show a
horseshoe ring. "I picked it up on the track, miss, forty rod from the
—obseq'ses. Didn't allow he'd want it again."
Shuddering, she turned back to Carter, but before she could
make further comment the car rolled from a cut out on the edge of
the Devil's Muskeg.
She thought him cold-blooded until, that evening, she learned
from her friend, the cook, that he had been caught on the edge of
the blast as he rushed to save the man and had been thrown a
hundred feet. A little disappointed by his apparent callousness, she
joined her father and lover, who, with the contractor, stood looking
out over the muskeg. Sterile, flat, white with alkali save where black
slime oozed from the sunken grade, it stretched a long mile on
either side of the right of way. Around its edges skeleton trees thrust
blanched limbs upward through the mud, and beyond this charnel
forest loomed the omnipresent spruce. In spring-time its quaking
depths would have opened under a fox's light padding, but the
summer's sun had dried the surface until it carried a team—which
fact had lured the contractor to his financial doom. A fat, gross man,
he stood mopping his brow and wildly gesticulating towards the half-
mile of rails that, with their ties, lay like the backbone of some
primeval lizard along the mud, calling heaven and the chief engineer
to witness that this calamity was beyond the prevision of man.
"'Jedgment of God,' it's termed in government contrac's," he
exclaimed to the chief, who, however, shrugged at such blackening
of Providence.
"Well, Mr. Buckle," he answered, as Carter came up, "the
judgment was delivered against you, not us."
"Yes, yes!" the man grovellingly assented. "I know—mine's the
loss. But you gentlemen orter give me a chance to make it up
building round this cursed mud-hole?"
"Round what?"
He turned scowlingly upon Carter. "This mud-hole, I said." With
a greasy sneer, he added: "But mebbe you kin build across it?"
"I can."
"What?" he screamed his angry surprise. "Why, hell! Wasn't it
you that tol' me it wouldn't carry a grade?"
"I said it wouldn't carry yours."
His quiet assurance gave the contractor pause, while engineer
and surveyor looked their surprise. "Going to drive piles down to
China?" The contractor grew hysterically sarcastic. "You'll need a
permit from Li Hung Chang. What do you know about grades,
anyway? I was building this railroad while you was wearing long
clothes."
"Likely." Carter's easy drawl set the others a-grin and caused
Dorothy to hide her smile in her handkerchief. "But you ain't out of
yours yet. A yearling baby wouldn't try to stack rock on top of mud.
But that isn't the question. D' you allow to finish the contract?"
"Think I'm a fool?" the man rasped.
"'Tain't always polite to state one's thoughts. But—do you?" And
when the other tendered a surly negative, he turned to the engineer.
"You hear, sir? And now I file my bid."
The chief, however, looked his doubt. As yet engineering science
offered no solution for the muskeg problem, and this was not the
first grade he had seen sacrificed to a theory. "Are you serious?"
"As a Methodist sermon," Carter answered his grave question.
Then, drawing him aside, he pulled a paper from his pocket—an
estimate for the work. It was dated two weeks back, prevision that
caused the chief to grimly remark: "Pretty much like measuring a
living man for his coffin, wasn't it? But look here, Carter! I'd hate to
see you go broke on this hole. I doubt—and your figure is far too
low. What's your plan?"
"I'm going to make a sawdust fill with waste from the Portage
Mills."
Whistling, the chief looked his admiration, then grinned, the
idea was so ludicrous in its simplicity. For, all said, the problem
resolved itself into terms of specific gravity—iron sinks and wood
floats in water; and the muskeg which swallowed clay would easily
carry a sawdust bank. Moreover, the idea was thoroughly
practicable. Situated five miles from Winnipeg, the Portage Mills
were the largest in the province and their owners would willingly
part with the refuse that cumbered their yards.
"You've got it!" he cried, slapping his thigh.
"That's not all. If old Brass Bowels—" Noticing that the
contractor was looking their way, he finished in a whisper, the
significance of which caused the chief's grizzled brows to rise till lost
in the roots of his hair.
"You'll break camp—?" he questioned.
"To-morrow. Build a spur into the mills, then start prairie
grading at the American line and run north. Ought to make a
junction about the time the sink is filled."
And this he did. The few miles of spur-track being quickly built,
a yellow tide of sawdust was soon flowing out to the Devil's Muskeg,
where Bender's wood gang directed its flow. At first there was great
argument about this new material, some holding that one might as
well try to build a road-bed with feathers. But it proved itself.
Tamping hard as clay, it had greater resilience, and soon the twisted
track rose like a mained serpent from the slimy clutch of the devil.
Yes, miles of flat-cars, boarded up till they loomed big as houses,
moved between mill and slough through that summer, and no one
dreamed of their slow procession having other significance up to the
moment that Helen heard newsboys crying a special in the hot
streets—
"Monopoly refuses new line a crossing. Section gangs tear up
Carter's diamond."
 XXVI
WINNIPEG

By that time Helen had shaken down to a life that was new as
strange—though not without travail; shaking is always
uncomfortable.
Coming in to the city, a natural nervousness—that indefinite
apprehension which assails the stoutest under the frown of new
adventures—had been accentuated by heart-sickness from her late
experiences, and was justified by some to come. She viewed its
distant spires very much as an outlaw might contemplate far-off
hostile towers. Entering from the west, as she did, one sees taller
buildings poke, one by one, from under the flat horizon. For the city
sits by the Red River—smoothest, most treacherous of streams—in
the midst of vast alluvial plains, its back to the "Ragged Lands,"
facing the setting sun. North, south, east, and west of it they
stretch, these great flat plains. Vividly emerald in spring-time, June
shoots their velvet with chameleon florescences that glow and blaze
with the seasons, fix in universal gold, then fade to purest white.
Dark, dirty, the city stands out on the soft snow-curtain like a sable
blot on an ermine mantle. Withal it is a clean city, for if the black
muck of its unpaved streets cakes laboring wagons and Red River
carts to the hubs after spring thaws, the dirt is all underfoot. No
manufactures foul the winds that sweep in from boreal seas with the
garnered essences of an empire of flowers.
Purely agricultural, then, in its functions, the bulk of its
burgesses were, as might be expected, store-keepers, implement
men, bankers, lawyers, land agents, all who serve or prey upon the
farmer; for there, also, lurked the usurers, the twenty-per-cent.
Shylocks, fat spiders whose strangling webs enmeshed every
township from the Rockies to the Red. Spring, fall, or winter, grist
failed not in their dark mills, which ground finer and faster than
those of the gods. Scattering their evil seed on the dark days, it was
their habit to reap in the sunshine, competing for the last straw with
their fellows, the business men, in their single season of profit—
Harvest. For in summer the city drowsed amid green wheat seas
that curved with the degrees over the western world; it slept,
nodding, till the wheat, its life-blood, came in huge arterial gushes to
gorge its deflated veins.
Thus Helen found it—asleep under the midsummer sun. Walking
to her destination, she met few people; after the hotel 'buses rattled
by, the streets were deserted save for an occasional buck-board or
slow ox-team chewing the peaceful cud at the wooden sidewalk.
When, later, she walked those hot streets on that most wearisome of
occupations, the search for an occupation, she became familiar with
the city's more intimate topography—the huge concrete foundations,
vacant, gaping as though at the folly which planned them and their
superstructures, the aërial castles that blew up with the boom; the
occasional brick blocks that raised hot red heads proudly above
surrounding buildings, the river, with its treacherous peace; old Fort
Garry, which she repeopled with governors, commissioners, factors,
and trappers of the Hudson Bay Company.
Also she grew sensitive to its varied life, easily distinguishing
between emigrants, who were injected by daily spurts into the
streets, the city's veins, from the old-timers—remittance-men, in
yellow cords and putties; trappers from Keewatin, Athabasca, the
Great Slave Lake, in fringed moose-skins; plethoric English farmers,
or gaunt Canadian settlers from the rich valley round-about; Indians
of many tribes—Cree, Sioux, Ojibway; the heterogeneous mixture
that yet lacked a drop of the Yankee or continental blood which
would flow, ten years later, in a broad river over the American
border. But this was after she had fallen into her place in the
household of Glaves's big sister among a scattering of teachers, up
for the Normal course, a brace of lawyers, three store-keepers, and
a Scotch surgeon.
Just what or where that place was would be hard to say, seeing
that it varied with the view-point of each lodger, nor remained the
same in the opinion of any specific one. Thus did she shine, for one
whole week, the particular star in the heaven of an English teacher,
a mercurial lad of twenty; then having rejected his heart with a
pecuniary attachment of thirty-five dollars per mensem, she fell like
a shooting-star and became a mere receptacle for his succeeding
passions, which averaged three a month. His fellow-teachers swung
on an opposite arc. Canadians, and mostly recruited from the
country, the soil still clung to their heavy boots. The profession, its
aims and objects, formed their staple of conversation. Deeply
imbued with the sense of the central importance of pedagogy in the
scheme of things, they wore an air of owlish wisdom that was
incompatible with the contemplation of such sublunary things as
girls. Having wives, it was not to be expected that the store-keepers
could notice a young person whose attractions so far exceeded her
known acquaintance, and though the surgeon, a young man
prodigiously bony as to the leg and neck, really worshipped her from
behind the far folds of his breakfast newspaper, thought transference
still lay in the womb of future humbuggery and she catalogued him
as injuriously cold.
From this conglomerate of humanity she gained one friend, the
young wife of a lawyer who had lately come West. Prettily dark as
Helen was delicately fair, each made a foil for the other, which
necessary base for feminine friendships being established, their
relations were further cemented by an equal loneliness, and made
more interesting by the expectation of an event. As it was not yet
fashionable to shoo the stork away from the roof-tree, behold the
pair fussing and sewing certain small garments with much tucking,
trimming, insertioning, regulating said processes by the needs of
some future mystery dight "shortening"—all of which brought Helen
mixed feelings. The young husband's part in said operations was
particularly trying. Supposedly immersed in his paper of evenings, he
would watch them over the tip with a delighted sagacity akin to the
knowing look which a bull-dog bestows on a crawling kitten. At
times, too, he would descend upon the work and lay wee undervests
out on his big palm, tie ridiculously small caps over his shut fist, ask
absurd questions, and generally display the manly ignorance so
sweet to the wifely soul; while Helen sat, a silent spectator of their
happiness. It is a question which the acquaintance brought her
most, pain or pleasure.
The tale of the boarders would not be complete without
mention of Jean Glaves, a buxom woman, fair of hair, whose strong,
broad face seemed to incarnate the very spirit of motherhood. With
her Helen's place was never in doubt. Opening her big heart, she
took the lonely girl right in, and proved a veritable fount of energy in
her disheartening search for work.
In this her first experience conformed to that usual with a
working-girl—she shivered under icy stares, shrank from the rude
rebuffs of busy men, and blushed under smiles of idle ones;
sustained the inevitable insult at the hands of a rascally commission
broker at the end of one day's employment. His quick, appraising
glance, following a first refusal, would have warned a sophisticated
business woman, but the innocence which betrayed Helen later
proved her best protection. The horror in her eyes, childlike look of
hurt surprise, set the dull reds of shame in the fellow's cheeks, but
she was out in the street with hat and jacket while he was still
muttering his apology. Yet his grossness fell short of the vile
circumspection of her next employer. A smug pillar of society and
something in a church, caution would not permit him to stake
reputation against possible pleasure on a single throw, yet she
labored under no illusions as to the motive behind her second
discharge.
"Oh, I can't bear it! I just can't try again!" she cried that night
to Jean Glaves.
"You won't have to, dearie," the big woman comforted, and
having tucked her comfortably upon her own lounge with a wet cloth
upon her aching head, she went straight to the Scotch surgeon's
room.
Her choice of confidant may have been due either to intuition or
knowledge of what was going on behind the ramparts of the young
man's breakfast paper. The event proved it wise, for his giraffe neck
lengthened under his angry gulps, his bony hands and nodding head
emphasized and attested Jean's scathing deliverence upon men in
general. "The scoundrel!" he exclaimed, when she paused for lack of
breath. "The scoundrel! I'd flog him mysel' but for the scandal. But
see you he'll no' go unpunished. He's a bid in for the hospital
supplies, and I'll be having a word with the head doctor." And thus,
later, was the smug villain hit to the tune of some hundreds in his
tenderest place, the pocket.
Not content with future revenge, the Scotchman's sympathy
expressed itself in practical suggestion. "If ye'd think, Mistress
Glaves"—he always accorded Jean the quaint title, and it fell
gracefully from his stiff lips—"now if ye'd suppose the young leddy
would like to try her hand at nursing, there's a vacancy in the
hospital."
While he hesitated, Jean literally grabbed opportunity by the
collar. "You come along with me."
Introduced a few seconds thereafter to man and subject, Helen
exclaimed that she would love the work; nor were her thanks less
sincere for being couched in stereotyped form. How could she thank
him? Being sincere to the point of pain, after the fashion of his
nation, the young man had almost answered that the obligation lay
with him in that his studies behind the newspaper would be
furthered and facilitated. He replied, instead, that the pay would be
small, the work hard.
Not to be discouraged, she was thus launched upon what, in her
condition, was the best of possible careers. For the mental suffering
which, lacking an outlet, burns inwardly till naught is left of feeling
but slag and cinders, becomes the strongest of motor forces when
expended in service for others. Throwing herself body and soul into
the new work, she forgot the suspicion, scandal that had lately
embittered her days, and had such surcease of loneliness that in one
month the lines of pain disappeared from around her eyes, her
drooping mouth drew again into the old firm tenderness.
Besides content, the month brought her other satisfactions.
Owing to lack of accommodation at the hospital, she still slept at the
boarding-house, and dropping into Jean Glaves's room for a chat
one evening, she found her conversing with a girl of her own age.
She would have retired but that Jean called her back. "Don't go! We
were talking of you. This is Miss Dorothy Chester, who used to board
with me. Miss Chester—Mrs. Morrill."
There was, of course, nothing in the names to convey the
significance of the introduction to either. After that period of secret
study which is covered by the feminine amenities, each decided that
she liked the other. Helen gladly accepted Dorothy's invitation to call,
and in this ordinary fashion began a momentous acquaintance that
soon developed through natural affinity into one of those rare and
softly beautiful friendships which are occasionally seen between
women. And as friendship means association in a city that has no
theatre and few amusements, it soon happened that any evening
might see Dorothy in Helen's room, or Helen on the way to her
friend's hotel. Naturally Helen quickly learned that her friend's father
and lover were head engineers on Carter's road, and that she had
visited them in camp; and as Dorothy was as willing to talk of her
novel experience as Helen to listen, imagine the pair in the former's
cosey bedroom, one snugged up on a lounge, the other coiled in
some mysterious feminine fashion on pillows at her side, fair girl
hanging on dark girl's lips as she prattled of Carter, or joining in
speculations as to what kind of a woman his wife might be.
She positively jumped when Dorothy declared one evening: "I'm
sure he still loves her. Ernest says that he scoured the city for her;
only gave up when he felt sure that she had gone East to her
friends. When the road is finished, he is going back to look for her."
He had searched for her! Still loved her! It rhymed with her deft
fingers rolling bandages; tuned her feet as she bore medicine-trays
from ward to ward; ousted the dry anatomical terms of the daily
lecture from their proper place in her mind. The thought illumined
her face so that maimed men twisted on their cots to watch her
down the ward. Meeting her on the main stairs, one day, Carruthers,
the Scotch surgeon, almost mistook her for the Virgin Mother in the
stained window above the landing. He searched for me! is going
back East to look for me! The days spun by to that magical refrain.
Why, in view of all this, did she not confide in Dorothy? Though
its roots grip deep down in woman nature, the strange,
contradictory, inconsequential, yet wise woman nature, the reason
lies close to the surface. Physically akin to the impulse which urges a
shy doe to fly from its forest mate, her feeling flowed, mentally, from
injured wifehood. For all her natural sweetness and joy over the
thought of reunion, she was not ready to purchase happiness with
unconditional surrender; to make overtures directly, or through
Dorothy, that might be construed as a bid for executive clemency. As
he had deserted her, so he must return; and that prideful resolution
was strengthened and justified by the suffering which had
immeasurably exceeded her fault. Yes, first he must return, then—
would she instantly forgive him? Any lover can answer the question;
if not, let him consult his sweetheart. "I'd make him suffer!" she will
cry, gritting pretty teeth. So Helen. Very unchristian, wicked, but
natural.
No, she did not confide in Dorothy, went quietly about her
business, hugging her sweet secret to her own soul, until— But this
summary of her thought and feeling would not be complete without
mention of a last, perhaps greatest, satisfaction—her joy in reading
newspaper accounts of Carter's progress. Editorials, politics, reports,
she read all, day by day, glowing over red-hot denunciations of the
monopoly while she thought what good men the editors must be,
and how intelligent to so clearly discern her husband's merits. She
was mightily troubled by the insatiate appetite of the Devil's Muskeg,
studying its rapacious dietary as though it were a diabetes patient.
She triumphed when Carter successfully treated its ineffable hunger
with vegetarian diet of sawdust; shivered when he was refused a
crossing of the trunk line; thrilled over the battle when Bender and
the woodmen beat back the monopoly's levies while the trackmen
laid the "diamond," and grew sick with fear, as before mentioned,
when she heard the newsboys crying out Carter's final repulse as
she was walking home to her room about eight o'clock one evening.
Though very tired, she immediately turned in her agitation, and,
undeterred by the continent of blue-print uniform that spread below
her brown ulster, she hurried to Dorothy's hotel, an old caravansary
that had survived two rebellions and the bursting of the boom. Once
chief of the city's hostelries, the old house still attracted people who
preferred its solid comfort to the gilt, lacquer, garish splendors of
more modern rivals. The parlor in which she waited while her name
was taken up to Dorothy, was panelled with sombre woods; her feet
literally sank in a pile carpet, thick, green, and dark as forest moss.
Walls were upholstered in hammered leather; chairs, heavy table,
massive furnishings, all were of black oak. The portraits of
governors, high commissioners, and chief factors of the Hudson Bay
Company, soldiers and traders or both, seemed ready to step down
from their frames to engage in wise council and issue fiats that
would set a hundred tribes in motion. Time stood still in that solid
atmosphere. Heavy odors of leather and wood, the pervading feeling
of peaceful age combined to soothe her fretted nerves, and she had
just relaxed her tired body within the embrace of a mighty chair
when passing footsteps and a voice brought her up, tense and rigid.
Returning just then, the bell-boy repeated her question:
"Gentlemen who just passed, Miss? Mr. Greer and Mr. Smythe,
people that are financing the new line, and Mr. Carter, their head
contractor. They are dining here with the general manager of the
trunk line. If you'd like to see them," he added, interpreting her
interest as curiosity, "just step this way. They've all gone in, and you
can peep through the glass doors. It's that dark in the passage no
one will see you."
As she tiptoed after him down the dark hallway he whispered
further—"Reminds me of them old Romans, the general manager;
them fellows that used to invite a man to a poisoned dinner. He's got
those chaps shooed up into a corner, and now he's going to kill their
financial goose over the cigars and wine. Sure, Miss, everybody
knows that Greer's on his last legs. Bit off more than he could chew
when he went to railroading; but old Brass Bowels will treat his
indigestion. That's him, stout gent with his back this way. Greer and
Smythe's either side of him. That's Mr. Carter opposite. T'other
gentleman, Mr. Sparks, is general superintendent of the western
division."
Slipping by the others her glance glued—the term is eschewed
by purists, who ironically inquire if the adhesive used was of the
carpenter variety, but it exactly describes her steadfast gaze—her
glance glued to Carter's face. From above an arc lamp streamed
white light down upon him, darkening the hollows under his eyes,
raising his strong features in bold relief. This, be it remembered, was
the first she had seen of him since he broke in upon the Ravell
dinner-party, black, sooty, smelling evilly of sweat and smoke. And
now he sat with a waiter behind his chair, at meat with the greatest
man in the north, at a table that was spread with plate, cut-glass,
linen, all of a costly elegance that transcended her own experience.
The champagne bucket, at his elbow, of solid silver, with gold-
crusted bottles thrusting sloping shoulders out of cracked ice, the
last accessory of luxurious living, took on wonderful significance in
that it accentuated to the last degree their changed positions. For
surely the gods had turned the tables by bringing her in print
hospital uniform and shabby ulster to witness this crowning of his
development.
Be sure she felt the contrast. How could she do otherwise? Yet
her feeling lacked the slightest touch of humiliation. Above such
snobbishness, she was filled by joy and pride in his achievement,
joined with tremulous fear, for the bell-boy's remarks had quickened
her apprehension. That distinguished company, costly appointments,
perfect service, impressed her as little as it did Carter, which is
saying a good deal, for the pomp of civilization counts more with
women than men, and he was bearing himself with the easiness of
one who has conquered social circumstance. He chose the right fork
for his salad, knife for his butter; broke his bread delicately, trifled
with green olives as if born to the taste—though this edible
presented itself as a new and bitter experience—small things and
foolish if made an end in themselves, yet important in that, with
improper usage, they become as barbed thorns in the side of self-
respect. Significant things in Carter's case because they showed that
he had applied to his social relations the same shrewdness,
common-sense, keen sight that was making him successful in large
undertakings.
Of course she noted his improvement? That he no longer used
knife for spoon, squared elbows over his head, sopped bread in
gravy? On the contrary, she saw only his face, dark and stern save
when a smile brought the old humor back to his mouth. Her hungry
eyes traced its every line, marking the minutest changes wrought by
thought, care, sorrow, time's graving tools. Hands pressing her
breast, she struggled for his voice with thick oak and heavy plate-
glass, and so stood, wrapped up in him and their past, till the bell-
boy spoke.
"Miss Chester said you was to go right up, Miss."
She jumped, and her tremulous fear took form in words. "You
are sure the general manager will—"
"—Do things to 'em?" he finished, as he led her upstairs.
"They're dead ones, Miss."

XXVII
THE NATURE OF THE CINCH