Agatha"s face softened. "Ah," she said, "she would not grudge the effort in the case of one she loved."
Then she looked up again with a smile. "I wonder," she added, "if you really thought I should flinch."
"When I first heard of it, I thought it quite likely. Then when I read your letter my doubts vanished."
He saw he had not been judicious, for there was, for the first time, a trace of hardness in the girl"s expression.
"He showed you that?" she asked.
"One small part of it," said Wyllard. "I want to say that when I saw this house, and how you seemed fitted to it, my misgivings about Gregory"s decision troubled me once more. Now"--and he made a little impressive gesture--"they have vanished altogether, and they"ll never come back again."
He spoke as he felt. This girl, he fancied, would feel the strain; but it seemed to him that she had strength enough to bear it cheerfully.
In spite of her daintiness, she was one who, in time of stress, could be depended on. He often remembered afterwards how they had sat together in the little, luxuriously furnished room, she leaning back, with the soft light on her delicately tinted face, in her big, low chair. In the meanwhile she said nothing, and by and bye he looked up at her.
"It"s curious that I had your photograph ever so long, and never thought of showing it Gregory," he said.
Agatha smiled. "I suppose it is," she admitted. "After all, except that it might have been a relief to Major Radcliffe if he had met you sooner, the fact that you didn"t show it Gregory doesn"t seem of any particular consequence."
Wyllard was not quite sure of this. He had thought about this girl often, and had certainly been conscious of a curious thrill of satisfaction when he had met her at the stepping-stones a few days earlier. That feeling had also suddenly disappeared when he had learned that she was his comrade"s promised wife. He had, however, during the last hour or two made up his mind to think no more of her.
"Well," he said, "the next thing is to arrange for Mrs. Hastings to meet you in London, or, perhaps, at the Grange. Her husband is a Canadian, a man of education, who has quite a large homestead not far from Gregory"s. Her folks are people of station in Montreal, and I feel sure that you"ll like her."
They decided that he was to ask Mrs. Hastings to stay a few days at the Grange, and then he looked at the girl somewhat diffidently.
"She suggests going in a fortnight," he said.
Agatha smiled at him. "Then," she said, "I must not keep her waiting."
She rose, and they went back together to join their hostess.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TRAVELLING COMPANION.
A grey haze, thickened by the smoke of the city, drove out across the water when the _Scarrowmania_ lay in the Mersey, with her cable hove short, and the last of the flood tide gurgling against her bows. A trumpeting blast of steam swept high aloft from beside her squat funnel, and the splash of the slowly turning paddles of the couple of steam tugs that lay alongside mingled with the din it made. A gangway from one of them led to the _Scarrowmania"s_ forward deck, and a stream of frowsy humanity that had just been released from overpacked emigrant boarding-houses poured up it. There were apparently representatives of all peoples and languages among that unkempt horde--Britons, Scandinavians, Teutons, Italians, Russians, Poles--and they moved on in forlorn apathy, like cattle driven to the slaughter. One wondered, from the look of them, how they had raised their pa.s.sage money, and how many years" bitter self-denial it had cost them to provide for their transit to the land of promise.
At the head of the gangway stood the steamboat doctors, for the _Scarrowmania_ was taking out an unusual number of pa.s.sengers, and there were two of them. They were immaculate in blue uniform, and looked very clean and English by contrast with the ma.s.s of frowsy aliens. Beside them stood another official, presumably acting on behalf of the Dominion Government, though there were few restrictions imposed upon Canadian immigration then, nor for that matter did anybody trouble much about the comfort of the steerage pa.s.sengers. Though they have altered all that latterly, each steamer, in a general way, carried as many as she could hold.
As the stream poured out of the gangway, the doctor glanced at each new comer"s face, and then seizing him by the wrist uncovered it. Since this took him two or three seconds, one could have fancied that he either possessed peculiar powers, or that the test was a somewhat inefficient one. Then he looked at the official, who made a sign, and the man moved on.
In the meanwhile a group of first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers leaning on the thwart-ship rails close by looked on, with complacent satisfaction with the fact that they were born in a different station, or half-contemptuous pity, as their temperament varied. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. The latter noticed that Wyllard sat on a hatch forward near the head of the gangway, with a pipe in his hand. She drew Mrs. Hastings"s attention to it.
"Whatever is Mr. Wyllard doing there?" she asked.
Her companion, who was wrapped in furs, for there was a sting in the east wind, smiled at her.
"That," she said, "is more than I can tell you; but Harry Wyllard seems to find an interest in what other folks would consider most unpromising things, and, what"s more to the purpose, he"s rather addicted to taking a hand in. It"s a habit that costs him something now and then."
Agatha asked nothing further. She was interested in Wyllard, but she was at the moment more interested in the faces of those who swarmed on board. She wondered what they had endured in the lands that had cast them out, and what they might still have to bear. It seemed to her that the murmur of their harsh voices went up in a great protest, an inarticulate cry of sorrow. While she looked on the doctor held back a long-haired man who was following a haggard woman shuffling in broken boots. He drew him aside, and when, after he had apparently consulted with the other official, two seamen hustled the man towards a second gangway that led to the tug, the woman raised a wild, despairing cry.
It, however, seemed that she blocked the pa.s.sage, and a quartermaster drove her, expostulating in an agony of terror, forward among the rest.
n.o.body appeared concerned about this alien"s tragedy, except one man, but Agatha was not astonished when Wyllard rose and quietly laid his hand upon the official"s shoulder.
A parley appeared to follow, somebody gave an order, and when the alien was led back again the woman"s cries subsided. Agatha looked at her companion, and once more a smile crept into Mrs. Hastings"s eyes.
"Yes," she said, "I guessed he would feel he had to stand in. That"s a man who can"t see any one in trouble." Then she added, with a little whimsical sigh, "He had a bonanza harvest last fall, any way."
They moved aft soon afterwards, and the _Scarrowmania_ was smoothly sliding seawards with the first of the ebb when Agatha met Wyllard. He glanced at the Lancashire sandhills, which were fading into a pale ochre gleam amidst the haze over the starboard hand, and then at the long row of painted buoys that moved back to them ahead.
"You"re off at last! The sad grey weather is dropping fast astern," he said. "Out yonder, the skies are clear."
"Thank you," said Agatha, "I"m to apply that as I like? As a matter of fact, however, our days weren"t always grey. But what was the trouble when those steerage people came on board?"
Wyllard"s manner, as she noticed, was free alike from the complacent self-satisfaction which occasionally characterises the philanthropist, and any affectation of diffidence.
"Well," he said, "there was something wrong with that woman"s husband.
Nothing infectious, I believe, but they didn"t seem to consider him a desirable citizen. They make a warning example of somebody with a physical infirmity now and then. The man, they decided, must be put ash.o.r.e again. In the meanwhile, somebody else had hustled the woman forward, and it almost looked as if they"d have taken her on without him. The tug was almost ready to cast off."
"How dreadful!" said Agatha. "But what did you do?"
"Merely promised to guarantee the cost of his pa.s.sage back if they"d refer his case to the immigration people at the other end. It"s scarcely likely that they"ll make trouble. As a rule, they only throw folks who"re certain to become a charge on the community."
"But if he really had any infirmity, mightn"t it lead to that?"
"No," said Wyllard drily. "I would engage to give him a fair start if it was necessary. You wouldn"t have had that woman landed in Montreal, helpless and alone, while the man was sent back again to starve in Poland?"
He saw a curious liquid gleam in Agatha"s eyes, and added in a deprecating manner, "You see, I"ve now and then limped without a dollar into a British Columbian mining town."
The girl was a little stirred; but there was another matter that must be mentioned, though she felt that the time was somewhat inopportune.
"Miss Rawlinson, who had only a second-cla.s.s ticket, insists upon being told how it is that she has been transferred to the saloon."
Wyllard"s eyes twinkled, but she noticed that he was wholly free from embarra.s.sment, which was not quite the case with her.
"Well," he said, "that"s a matter I must leave you to handle. Anyway, she can"t go second-cla.s.s now. One or two of the steerage exchanged when they saw their quarters, for which I don"t blame them, and they"ve filled every room right up."
"You haven"t answered the question."
Wyllard waved his hand. "Miss Rawlinson is your bridesmaid, and I"m Gregory"s best man. It seems to me it"s my business to do everything just as he"d like it done."
He left her a moment later, and, though she did not know how she was to explain the matter to Miss Rawlinson, who was of an independent disposition, it occurred to her that he, at least, had found a rather graceful way out of the difficulty. The more she saw of this Western farmer, the more she liked him.
It was after dinner when she next met him, and, for the wind had changed, the _Scarrowmania_ was steaming head-on into a glorious north-west breeze. The shrouds sang; chain-guy, and stanchion, and whatever caught the wind, set up a deep-toned throbbing; and ranks of little, white-topped seas rolled out of the night ahead. A half-moon hung low above them, blurred now and then by wisps of flying cloud, and odd spouts of spray that gleamed in the silvery light leapt up about the dipping bows. Wyllard was leaning on the rails, with a cigar in his hand, when she stopped beside him, and she glanced towards the lighted windows of the smoke-room not far away.
"How is it you are not in there?" she asked, for something to say.
"I was," said Wyllard. "It"s rather full up, and it seemed they didn"t want me. They"re busy playing cards, and the stakes are rather high.