The Gold Trail (7 page)

"It's the only one I've got," he said to Kinnaird. "Anyway, I guess the thing will dry, and I've had a sail that has made me feel young again."

Then they went ashore, and Weston, who was very wet, was left shivering in the wind to straighten up the gear, until a bush rancher, who had been engaged to wait on the party until he arrived, paddled off for him. The rancher had prepared a satisfactory supper; and some time after it was over, Stirling and Mrs. Kinnaird sat together on the veranda. There was, at the time, nobody in the house. The breeze had fallen lighter, though a long ripple still lapped noisily upon the beach, and a half-moon had just sailed up above the clustering pines. Their ragged tops rose against the sky black as ebony, but the pale radiance they cut off from the beach stretched in a track of faint silvery brightness far athwart the lake.

Mrs. Kinnaird, however, was not watching the ripple flash beneath the moon, for her eyes were fixed on two dusky figures that moved through the shadow toward the water's edge. By and by there was a rattle of shingle, and presently the black shape of a canoe slid down into the moonlight. It rose and dipped with the languid ripple, and the two figures in it were silhouetted against the silvery gleam. One was a man in a wide hat who knelt and dipped the flashing paddle astern, and the other a girl. The craft crossed the strip of radiance and vanished round the point, after which Mrs. Kinnaird flashed a keen glance at her companion. He sat still, and his face, on which the moonlight fell, was almost expressionless, but Mrs. Kinnaird fancied he had noticed as much as she had, and that he had possibly grasped its significance. In case he had not done the latter, she felt it her duty to make the matter clear to him.

"I suppose that is Ida in the canoe," she said.

"It seems quite likely," replied her companion. "It couldn't have been your daughter, because she went along the beach not long ago with the major, and I don't think there's another young lady in the vicinity."

"Then the other must be-the packer."

The pause and the slight change of inflection as she said "the packer" had not quite the effect she had intended. Stirling himself had once labored with his hands, and, what was more, afterward had a good deal to bear on that account. He was not particularly vindictive, but he remembered it.

"Yes, it's Weston," he said, and his companion felt herself corrected; but she was, at least where Major Kinnaird was not concerned, in her quiet way a persistent woman. Besides, Miss Stirling, who was going with her to England, would some day come into considerable possessions, and she had a son who found it singularly difficult to live on the allowance his father made him.

"Is it altogether advisable that she should go out with him?" she asked.

Stirling smiled somewhat dryly, for there was a vein of combativeness in him, and she had stirred it.

"You mean, is it safe? Well, I guess she's quite as safe as she would be with me or the major."

"Major Kinnaird was a flag officer of a rather famous yacht club," said the lady, who, while she fancied that her companion meant to avoid the issue, could not let this pass. She was, however, mistaken in one respect, for Stirling usually was much more ready to plunge into a controversy than to back out of it.

"Well," he said reflectively, "the other man has earned his living handling sail and people, which is quite a different thing."

Then he leaned toward her, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Madam," he added, "wouldn't you better tell me exactly what you meant?"

Mrs. Kinnaird had a certain courage, and she was endeavoring to do her duty as she understood it.

"That packer," she said, "is rather a good-looking man, and girls of Ida's age are sometimes a trifle-impressionable."

Then, somewhat to her astonishment, Stirling quietly agreed with her.

"Yes," he said, "that's so. Seems to me it was intended that they should be. It's part of the scheme."

He made a little gesture.

"We'll let that point slide. Anything strike you as being wrong with Weston?"

"No," said the somewhat startled lady, "the man is of course reliable, well-conducted, and attentive; but, after all, when one says that--"

"When you said reliable you hit it. It's a word that means a good deal; but couldn't you say a little more than well-conducted? From something your daughter learned by chance, his relatives are people of position in the old country. That counts for a little, though perhaps it shouldn't."

Once more Mrs. Kinnaird's astonishment was very evident.

"It shouldn't?"

"That's just what I meant. If a man is clean of character, and has grit and snap in him, I don't know that one could reasonably look for anything further. I can't see how the fact that his grandfather was this or that is going to affect him. The man we're talking of has grit. I offered him promotion, and he wouldn't take it."

"Ah," said his companion, "didn't that strike you as significant?"

Stirling looked thoughtful.

"Well," he admitted slowly, "as a matter of fact, it didn't; but it does now."

He sat silent for almost a minute, with wrinkled forehead, while Mrs. Kinnaird watched him covertly. Then, feeling the silence embarrassing, she made another effort.

"Supposing that my fancies concerning what might perhaps come about are justified?" she suggested.

Stirling faced the question.

"Well," he said, "whether they're justified or not is a thing we don't know yet; but I want to say this. I have never had reason to worry over my daughter, and it seems to me a sure thing that she's not going to give me cause for it now. When she chooses her husband, she'll choose the right one, and she'll have her father's money; it won't matter very much whether he's rich or not. All I ask is that he should be straight and clean of mind, and nervy, and I guess Ida will see to that. When she tells me that she is satisfied, I'll just try to make the most of him."

He broke off for a moment, and laughed softly.

"I guess it wouldn't matter if I didn't. My girl's like her mother, and she's like-me. When she comes across the right man she'll hold fast by him with everything against her, if it's necessary, as her mother did with me."

He rose and leaned against a pillar, with a curious look in his face.

"The struggle that her mother and I made has left its mark on me. The friends we left in the rut behind us looked for my failure, and it seemed then that all the men with money had leagued themselves together to stop me from going on. Somehow I beat them, one by one-big engineers, financiers, financiers' syndicates, corporations-working late and working early, sinking every dollar made in another venture, and living any way. There were no amenities in that fight until those we had against us found that it was wiser to keep clear of me."

Then, with a little forceful gesture, he took off his hat.

"What I am, in part, at least, my girl's mother made me. She's asleep at last, and because of what she bore it's up to me to make things smoother for her daughter. Madam," he added, turning to his companion with a smile, "I have to thank you for doing what you must have figured was your duty; but in the meanwhile we'll-let things slide."

He turned away and left her before she could answer, astonished but a little touched by what she had heard. Still, the gentler impression vanished, and when she informed Major Kinnaird of what had been said she was once more somewhat angry with Stirling.

"It is really useless to reason with him," she said. "The man has wholly preposterous views."

* * *

It was early on a fine spring evening when Clarence Weston lay somewhat moodily on the wooded slope of the mountain that rises behind Montreal. It is not very much of a mountain, though it forms a remarkably fine natural park, and from where Weston lay he could look down upon a vast sweep of country and the city clustering round the towers of Notre Dame. It is, from almost any point of view, a beautiful city, for its merchants and financiers of English and Scottish extraction have emulated the love of artistic symmetry displayed by the old French Canadian religious orders, as well as their lavish expenditure, in the buildings they have raised. Churches, hospitals, banks and offices delight the eye, and no pall of coal-smoke floats over Montreal. It lies clean and sightly between its mountain and the river under the clear Canadian sky.

On the evening in question the faintest trace of thin blue vapor etherealized its clustering roofs and stately towers, and the great river, spanned by its famous bridge, gleamed athwart the flat champaign, a wide silver highway to the distant sea. Beyond it, stretches of rolling country ran back league after league into the vast blue distance where Vermont lay. Still, Weston, who was jaded and cast down, frowned at the city and felt that he had a grievance against it. During the last week or two he had, for the most part vainly, endeavored to interview men of importance connected with finance and company promoting. Very few of them would see him at all, and those with whom he gained audience listened to what he had to say with open impatience, or with a half-amused toleration that was almost as difficult to bear. Perhaps this was not astonishing, as most of them already had had somewhat costly experiences with what they called wild-cat mining schemes.

There was, however, a certain vein of dogged persistency in Clarence Weston; and, almost intolerably galling as he-found it, he would still have continued to obtrude his presence on gentlemen who had no desire whatever to be favored with it, and to waylay them in the hotels, but for the fact that the little money he had brought with him was rapidly running out. One can, in case of stern necessity, put one's pride in one's pocket, though the operation is occasionally painful, but one cannot dispense with food and shelter, and the latter are not, as a rule, to be obtained in a Canadian city except in exchange for money. Weston, who had had no lunch that day, took out the little roll of bills still left in his wallet, and, when he had flicked them over, it became unpleasantly clear that he could not prosecute the campaign more than a very few days longer. Then he took out his pipe, and, filling it carefully, broke off a sulphur match from the block in his pocket. He felt that this was an extravagance, but he was in need just then of consolation. He had wandered up on the mountain, past the reservoir and the M'Gill University, after a singularly discouraging afternoon, to wait until supper should be ready at his boarding-house.

One or two groups of loungers, young men and daintily dressed women, strolled by; and then he started suddenly at the sound of a voice that sent a thrill through him. He would have recognized it and the laugh that followed it, anywhere. He sprang to his feet as a group of three people came out from a winding path among the trees. For a moment or two a wholly absurd and illogical impulse almost impelled him to bolt. He knew it was quite unreasonable, especially as he had thought of the girl every day since he had last seen her; but he remembered that she was a rich man's daughter and he a wandering packer of no account, with an apparently unrealizable project in his mind, and in his pocket no more money than would last a week. While he hesitated, she saw him. He stood perfectly still, perhaps a little straighter than was absolutely necessary, and not looking directly toward her. If she preferred to go by without noticing him, he meant to afford her the opportunity.

She turned toward her father and said something that Weston could not hear, but he felt his heart beat almost unpleasantly fast when, a moment later, she moved on quietly straight toward him. She looked what she was, a lady of station, and her companion's attire suggested the same thing, while, though Weston now wore city clothes, he was morbidly afraid that the stamp of defeat and failure was upon him. Much as he had longed for her it would almost have been a relief to him if she had passed. Ida, however, did nothing of the kind. She stopped and held out her hand while she looked at him with gracious composure. It was impossible for him to know that this had cost her a certain effort.

"Where have you come from? We certainly didn't expect to see you here," she said.

"From Winnipeg. That is, immediately," said Weston, and added, "I hired out to bring a draft of cattle."

Ida, who was quite aware that the tending of cattle on trains was not a well-paid occupation, and was usually adopted only by those who desired to save the cost of a ticket, fancied that she understood why he mentioned this, and was not sure that she was pleased. It was, as she recognized, the man's unreasonable pride which impelled him to thrust facts of that kind into the foreground. Just then, however, her father, who had waited a moment or two, stepped forward and shook hands with him.

"Where are you staying in the city?" he asked.

"At Lemoine's boarding-house," answered Weston, mentioning a street in the French Canadian quarter, from which any one acquainted with the locality could deduce that he found it desirable to study economy.

"Doing anything here?" asked Stirling.

Weston said that he had some mining business in hand; and he looked down at his clothes, when Stirling 'suggested that he should come' home with them to supper, though, from his previous acquaintance with the man, he was not astonished at the invitation. Stirling laughed.

"That's quite right," he said. "We call it supper, and that's how I dress. I don't worry about the little men when I bring them along, and the big ones don't mind."