CHAPTER XXVI
THE DRAUGHT OF JOY
The great library was the prettiest room in Robert Maitland"s magnificent mansion in Denver"s most favored residence section. It was a long, low studded room with a heavy beamed ceiling. The low book cases, about five feet high, ran between all the windows and doors on all sides of the room. At one end there was a huge open fireplace built of rough stone, and as it was winter a cheerful fire of logs blazed on the hearth. It was a man"s room preeminently. The drawing room across the hall was Mrs. Maitland"s domain, but the library reflected her husband"s picturesque if somewhat erratic taste. On the walls there were pictures of the west by Remington, Marchand, Dunton, Dixon and others, and to set them off finely mounted heads of bear and deer and buffalo. Swords and other arms stood here and there. The writing table was ma.s.sive and the chairs easy, comfortable and inviting. The floor was strewn with robes and rugs. From the windows facing westward, since the house was set on a high hill, one could see the great rampart of the range.
There were three men in the room on that brilliant morning early in January something like a month after these adventures in the mountains which have been so veraciously set forth. Two of them were the brothers Maitland, the third was Newbold.
The shock produced upon Enid Maitland by the death of Armstrong, together with the tremendous episodes that had preceded it, had utterly prostrated her. They had spent the night at the hut in the mountains and had decided that the woman must be taken back to the settlements in some way at all hazards.
The wit of old Kirkby had effected a solution of the problem. Using a means certainly as old as Napoleon and the pa.s.sage of his cannon over the Great St. Bernard--and perhaps as old as Hannibal!--they had made a rude sled from the trunk of a pine which they hollowed out and provided with a back and runners. There was no lack of fur robes and blankets for her comfort.
Wherever it was practicable the three men hitched themselves to the sled with ropes and dragged it and Enid over the snow. Of course for miles down the canon it was impossible to use the sled. When the way was comparatively easy the woman supported by the two men, Newbold and Maitland, made shift to get along afoot. When it became too difficult for her, Newbold picked her up as he had done before and a.s.sisted by Maitland carried her bodily to the next resting place. At these times Kirkby looked after the sled.
They had managed to reach the temporary hut in the old camp the first night and rested there. They gathered up their sleeping bags and tents and resumed their journey in the morning. They were strong men, and, save for old Kirkby, young. It was a desperate endeavor but they carried it through.
When they hit the open trails the sledding was easy and they made great progress. After a week of terrific going they struck the railroad and the next day found them all safe in Maitland"s house in Denver.
To Mr. Stephen Maitland his daughter was as one who had risen from the dead. And indeed when he first saw her she looked like death itself. No one had known how terrible that journey had been to the woman. Her three faithful attendants had surmised something, but in spite of all even they did not realize that in these last days she had been sustained only by the most violent effort of her will. She had no sooner reached the house, greeted her father, her aunt and the children than she collapsed utterly.
The wonder was, said the physician, not that she did it then but that she had not done it before. For a short time it appeared as if her illness might be serious, but youth, vigor, a strong body and a good const.i.tution, a heart now free from care and apprehension and a great desire to live and love and be loved, worked wonders.
Newbold had enjoyed no opportunity for private conversation with the woman he loved, which was perhaps just as well. He had the task of readjusting himself to changed conditions; not only to a different environment, but to strange and unusual departures from his long cherished view points.
He could no longer doubt Armstrong"s final testimony to the purity of his wife, although he had burned the letters unread, and by the same token he could no longer cherish the dream that she had loved him and him alone. Those words that had preceded that pistol shot had made it possible for him to take Enid Maitland as his wife without doing violence to his sense of honor or his self-respect. Armstrong had made that much reparation. And Newbold could not doubt that the other had known what would be the result of his speech and had chosen his words deliberately. Score that last action to his credit. He was a sensitive man, however; he realized the brutal and beastlike part he and Armstrong had both played before this woman they both loved, how they had battled like savage animals and how but for a lucky interposition he would have added murder to his other disabilities.
He was honest enough to say to himself that he would have done the same thing over under the same circ.u.mstances, but that did not absolve his conscience. He did not know how the woman looked at the transaction or looked at him, for he had not enjoyed one moment alone with her to enable him to find out.
They had buried Armstrong in the snow, Robert Maitland saying over him a brief but fervent pet.i.tion in which even Newbold joined. Enid Maitland herself had repeated eloquently to her Uncle and old Kirkby that night before the fire the story of her rescue from the flood by this man, how he had carried her in the storm to the hut and how he had treated her since, and Maitland had afterwards repeated her account to his brother in Denver.
Maitland had insisted that Newbold share his hospitality, but that young man had refused. Kirkby had a little place not far from Denver and easily accessible to it and the old man had gladly taken the younger one with him. Newbold had been in a fever of anxiety over Enid Maitland"s illness, but his alarm had soon been dispelled by the physician"s a.s.surance and there was nothing now left for him but to wait until she could see him. He inquired for her morning and evening at the great house on the hill, he kept her room a bower of beauty with priceless blossoms, but he had sent no word.
Robert Maitland had promised to let him know, however, so soon as Enid could see him and it was in pursuance of a telephone message that he was in the library that morning.
He had not yet become accustomed to the world, he had lived so long alone that he had grown somewhat shy and retiring, the habits and customs of years were not to be lightly thrown aside in a week or a month. He had sought no interview with Enid"s father heretofore, indeed had rather avoided it, but on this morning he had asked for it, and when Robert Maitland would have withdrawn he begged him to remain.
"Mr. Maitland," Newbold began, "I presume that you know my unfortunate history."
"I have heard the general outlines of it, sir, from my brother and others," answered the other kindly.
"I need not dwell upon it further then. Although my hair is tinged with gray and doubtless I look much older, I was only twenty-eight on my last birthday. I was not born in this section of the country, my home was in Baltimore."
"Do you by any chance belong to the Maryland Newbolds, sir?"
"Yes, sir."
"They are distantly related to a most excellent family of the same name in Philadelphia, I believe?"
"I have always understood that to be the truth."
"Ah, a very satisfactory connection indeed," said Stephen Maitland with no little satisfaction. "Proceed, sir."
"There is nothing much else to say about myself, except that I love your daughter and with your permission I want her for my wife."
Mr. Stephen Maitland had thought long and seriously over the state of affairs. He had proposed in his desperation to give Enid"s hand to Armstrong if he found her. It had been impossible to keep secret the story of her adventure, her rescue and the death of Armstrong. It was natural and inevitable that gossip should have busied itself with her name. It would therefore have been somewhat difficult for Mr. Maitland to have withheld his consent to her marriage to almost any reputable man who had been thrown so intimately with her, but when the man was so unexceptionably born and bred as Newbold, what had appeared as a more or less disagreeable duty, almost an imperative imposition, became a pleasure!
Mr. Maitland was no bad judge of men when his prejudices were not rampant and he looked with much satisfaction on the fine, clean limbed, clear eyed, vigorous man who was at present suing for his daughter"s hand. Newbold had shaved his beard and had cropped close his mustache, he was dressed in the habits of civilization and he was almost metamorphosed. His shyness wore away as he talked and his inherited ease of manner and his birthright of good breeding came back to him and sat easily upon him.
Under the circ.u.mstances the very best thing that could happen would be a marriage between the two; indeed, to be quite honest, Mr. Stephen Maitland would have felt that perhaps under any circ.u.mstances his daughter could do no better than commit herself to a man like this.
"I shall never attempt," he said at last, "to constrain my daughter. I think I have learned something by my touch with this life here, perhaps we of Philadelphia need a little broadening in airs more free. I am sure that she would never give her hand without her heart, and therefore, she must decide this matter herself. From her own lips you shall have your answer."
"But you, sir; I confess that I should feel easier and happier if I had your sanction and approval."
"Steve," said Mr. Robert Maitland, as the other hesitated, not because he intended to refuse but because he was loath to say the word that so far as he was concerned would give his daughter into another man"s keeping, "I think you can trust Newbold. There are men here who knew him years ago; there is abundant evidence and testimony as to his qualities; I vouch for him."
"Robert," answered his brother, "I need no such testimony; the way in which he saved Enid, the way he comported himself during that period of isolation with her, his present bearing--in short, sir, if a father is ever glad to give away his daughter, I might say that I should be glad to entrust her to you. I believe you to be a man of honor and a gentleman, your family is almost as old as my own, as for the disparity in our fortunes, I can easily remedy that."
Newbold smiled at Enid"s father, but it was a pleasant smile, albeit with a trace of mockery and a trace of triumph in it.
"Mr. Maitland I am more grateful to you than I can say for your consent and approval which I shall do my best to merit. I think I may claim to have won your daughter"s heart, to have added to that your sanction completes my happiness. As for the disparity in our fortunes, while your generosity touches me profoundly, I hardly think that you need be under any uneasiness as to our material welfare."
"What do you mean?"
"I am a mining engineer, sir; I didn"t live five years alone in the mountains of Colorado for nothing."
"Pray explain yourself, sir."
"Did you find gold in the hills?" asked Robert Maitland, quicker to understand.
"The richest veins on the continent," answered Newbold.
"And n.o.body knows anything about it?"
"Not a soul."
"Have you located the claims?"
"Only one."
"We"ll go back as soon as the snow melts," said the younger Maitland, "and take them up. You are sure?"
"Absolutely."
"But I don"t quite understand?" queried Mr. Stephen Maitland.