He broke off, and hesitated a moment.
"You see, I know the place."
"Ah," said Ida, with no sign of surprise. "What were you doing there?"
The man smiled rather bitterly.
"I was something similar to head gamekeeper. It wasn"t an occupation I cared much about."
"You got tired of it?"
"Anyway, that wasn"t why I gave it up. I was turned out. Fired, they call it in this country."
Ida for a moment was almost angry with him. She felt, simply because he had said it, that this must be correct as far as it went, but she was equally sure that he could have gone a good deal further. She was, of course, aware that there were a good many men in Canada whose absence from the old country was not regretted by their friends, and she was a little hurt that he did not seem to shrink from the possibility of her setting him down as one of them. She could not know that he was in a very bitter mood just then.
"Well," she said, "as you say, it is not likely that I shall have any occasion to mention you, and I certainly won"t do it casually. You must, however, be content with that."
"Yes," said Weston. "After all, it really doesn"t matter very much anyway."
Ida let the matter drop, for she had something else to say, and it had been in her mind rather often lately.
"When we leave here you will be without an occupation, won"t you?" she asked; and then proceeded somewhat hastily without waiting for him to answer. "Now, you have done a good deal to make the time pa.s.s pleasantly both here and in British Columbia."
"It did pa.s.s pleasantly?"
The question was suggestively abrupt, and Ida saw that, as happened now and then, the man was for the moment off his guard. This, however, did not displease her.
"Of course," she said. "For that matter it couldn"t have been very burdensome to you."
Weston laughed in a rather curious fashion, and she saw the blood creep into his face.
"I"m glad you have enjoyed it," he said. "It seems unfortunately certain that I shall not have another time like this."
Ida was aware, of course, that the real man had spoken then, but in another moment he once more, as she sometimes described it to herself, drew back into his sh.e.l.l.
"I interrupted what you were going to say," he observed, with a deprecatory gesture.
"It"s very simple," said the girl. "If my father or any one else makes you an offer, I should like you to take it. In one sense, chopping trees and shoveling gravel on the track leads to nothing."
The flush Ida had already noticed grew a little plainer in the man"s face, but he smiled.
"I"m afraid I can"t promise to do that," he said. "You see," and he seemed to search for words, "there is a good deal of the vagabond in me. I never could stand the cities, and that ought to be comprehensible to you when you have seen the wilderness."
"In summer," said the girl dryly. "Isn"t it very different during the rest of the year?"
"Oh," declared Weston, "it"s always good in the bush, even when the pines are gleaming spires of white, and you haul the great logs out with the plodding oxen over the down-trodden snow. There is nothing the cities can give one to compare with the warmth of the log shack at night when you lie, aching a little, about the stove, telling stories with the boys, while the shingles snap and crackle under the frost.
Perhaps it"s finer still to stand by with the peevie, while the great trunks go crashing down the rapids with the freshets of the spring; and then there"s the still, hot summer, when the morning air"s like wine, and you can hear the clink-clink of the drills through the sound of running water in the honey-scented shade, and watch the new wagon road wind on into the pines. You have seen the big white peaks gleam against the creeping night."
It was evident that he was endeavoring to find cause for contentment with the life before him, but Ida fancied that he wished to avoid the question she had raised.
"You forget to mention the raw hands and the galled shoulders, as well as the snow-slush and the rain. However, that"s not quite the point.
As I said, all that leads to nothing. Are you too proud to take a trifling favor because it comes through me?"
Weston met her gaze, and there was a grave forcefulness in his manner which almost astonished her. He evidently for once had suffered his usual self-restraint to relax, and she felt it was almost a pity that he had not done so more frequently.
"Miss Stirling," he said, "you are, as it happens, one of the few people from whom I could not take a favor of that kind."
She understood him, and for a moment a flicker of color crept into her cheek. It was, she felt, a clean pride that had impelled him to the speech. There were, she admitted, no benefits within her command that she would not gladly have thrust upon him; but, for all that, she would not have had him quietly acquiesce in them. Perhaps she was singular in this, but her forebears had laid the foundations of a new land"s future with ax and drill, clearing forest and breaking prairie with stubborn valor and toil incredible. They had flung their wagon roads over thundering rivers and grappled with stubborn rock, and among them the soft-handed man who sought advancement through a woman"s favor was, as a rule, regarded with quiet scorn. She said nothing, however, and it was a few moments before Weston looked at her again.
"Anyway," he said, "I couldn"t do what you suggest. I am going back into the ranges with Grenfell to look for the mine."
"Ah," said Ida, "you haven"t given up that notion yet?"
The man smiled grimly.
"I am keener about it than ever. Perhaps it"s somewhat curious, but I seem certain that we shall strike that quartz lead one of these days."
Ida was glad to let the conversation take this new turn, for she understood his eagerness now, and she had felt that they were skirting a crisis each time she had talked with him of late. She had the courage to make a sacrifice, and, indeed, had the occasion arisen, would probably have considered none too costly; but it seemed due to him as well as to her that he should at least make some strenuous effort to pull down the barriers between them.
"Well," she said quietly, "it is very curious that you discovered no trace of it. You said you found Grenfell"s partner lying dead upon the range, and, as their provisions were running out when he left the lake, he could not have gone very far. Was it a big lake?"
"It couldn"t have been. Grenfell said he walked round it in a couple of hours."
Ida looked thoughtful.
"Still, when you had the spot where you came upon Verneille to work from, you should have seen it from one of the spurs of the range."
"Yes," admitted Weston, "that seems reasonably evident, though we certainly saw no sign of it." He broke off and laughed. "The whole thing sounds crazy, doesn"t it? Still, as I said, I believe we are going to be successful."
He turned away and busied himself with some of the gear; and neither of them said anything further until they ran into the bay before the house. Three or four days later Weston conveyed the party down the lake to the carriage that was waiting to take them to the station; and Ida laid her hand in his for only a moment before she drove away.
CHAPTER XVII
SCARTHWAITE-IN-THE-FOREST
Ida Stirling had spent some time in England when, one autumn evening, she descended the wide oak staircase of Scarthwaite Hall at Scarthwaite-in-the-Forest. There was no forest in the vicinity, though long ago a certain militant bishop had held by kingly favor the right of venery over the surrounding moors, and now odd wisps of straggling firs wound up the hollows that seamed them here and there. n.o.body seemed to know who first built Scarthwaite Hall, though many a dalesman had patched it afterward and pulled portions of it down. It was one of the ancient houses, half farm and half stronghold, which may still be found in the north country. They were, until a few decades ago, usually in possession of the Statesmen who worked their own land. The Statesmen have gone--economic changes vanquished them--but the houses they inherited from the men who bore pike and bow at Bannockburn and Flodden are for the most part standing yet. They have made no great mark in history, but their stout walls have time and again been engirdled by Scottish spears, and after such occasions there was not infrequently lamentation by Esk and Liddell.
It was clear that Scarthwaite Hall had been built in those days of foray, for one little, ruined, half-round tower rose from the brink of a ravine whose sides the hardiest of moss-troopers could scarcely have climbed. A partly filled-in moat led past the other, and in between stretched the curtain wall which now formed the facade of the house itself. Its arrow slits had been enlarged subsequently into narrow, stone-ribbed windows, and a new entrance made, while the ancient courtyard was girt with decrepit stables and barns. Most of the deep, winding dale still belonged to it, but the last Weston had signally failed to make a living out of it, or to meet his debts. He lived in a little town not far away, and let Scarthwaite for the shooting when he could, which explains how Major Kinnaird had taken it.
Ida looked about her as she came down the stairway. It led into a dark-paneled, stone-arched hall, which, since habitable s.p.a.ce was rather scarce at Scarthwaite, served as general living-room. A fire was burning in the big, ancient hearth, and a handful of people were scattered here and there, waiting for dinner, which should have been ready a few minutes earlier. Kinnaird, who appeared a trifle impatient, was standing near his wife and a couple of shooting men, and his daughter was talking to one or two of his neighbors. Ida smiled as one of the latter glanced up at her, and she moved toward him when she reached the foot of the stairway. Ainslie, the owner of some quarries in the vicinity, was a middle-aged man whom she had met once or twice before.
When she had greeted him, she stood still a moment or two, listening to the murmurs of general conversation. Then she saw Kinnaird, who was standing not far from her, take out his watch.
"It"s a little too bad of Weston. I shouldn"t have waited for anybody else," he said. "As it is, I suppose we"ll have to give him a minute or two longer."