He broke off abruptly, and Ida met his gaze.
"Thank you," she said. "The honesty of that admission would have counted a good deal in your favor had the thing been possible."
The man straightened himself and clenched one hand.
"Ah!" he said. "Then it"s quite out of the question?"
Ida saw the blood rise into his face, and noticed the sudden hardness in his eyes. Her answer evidently had hurt him more than she expected, and she felt sorry for him. The man"s quietness and control and the absence of any dramatic protestation had a favorable effect on her, and she was almost certain that she could have married him had she met him a year earlier. In the meanwhile, however, she had met another man, dressed in old blue duck, with hands hard and scarred; and the well-groomed soldier became of less account as she recalled the man she had left in the mountains. Then Kinnaird turned to her again.
"Can"t you give me a chance?" he said. "If it"s necessary, I"ll wait; and in the meanwhile I may do something worth while out yonder, if that"s any inducement."
"I"m very sorry," replied Ida. "I"m afraid it wouldn"t be."
She looked him steadily in the eyes, and he had sense enough to recognize that no words of his would move her. Though it was not an easy matter, he retained his self-control.
"Well," he admitted, "it hurts, but I must bear it. And I want to say that I"m glad in several ways that I met you." Then the blood crept into his face again. "I should, at least, like you to think kindly of me, and I"m rather afraid appearances are against me. Because that is so, there"s a thing that I should like you to understand. I"d have been proud to marry you had you been a beggar."
"Thank you," said Ida, who saw that he meant it. "I"m more sorry than ever, but the thing is--out of the question."
Kinnaird gravely held out his arm, but she intimated by a little sign that she did not wish to go back with him, and in a moment the curtains swung to behind him, and he had gone.
Ida became conscious that she was growing cold; but she sat quite still for at least five minutes, thinking hard, and wondering why she felt so sorry to give up Gregory Kinnaird. It was a somewhat perplexing thing that one could be really fond of an eligible man and yet shrink from marrying him, and there was no doubt whatever that the one she had just sent away had in several respects a good deal to offer her.
She admitted that London was, as she expressed it, getting hold of her. She supposed that its influence was insidious, for she no longer looked on its frivolities with half-amused contempt, as she had at first. She realized the vast control that that city had over so much of the rest of the world, and that when some of the men with whom she had lightly laughed and chatted pulled the strings, new industries sprang up far away in the scorching tropics or on the desolate prairie, and new laws were made for hosts of dusky people. It was certainly a legitimate bargain Kinnaird had suggested. She had wealth sufficient for them both, and he could offer her the entry into a world where wealth well directed meant power, and this she undoubtedly desired to possess. There was a vein of ambition in this girl whose father had risen to affluence from a very humble origin, and while she listened to Gregory Kinnaird she had felt that she could rise further still.
She knew that she had will and charm enough to secure, with the aid of her father"s money, almost what place she would, and for a few moments she saw before her dazzling possibilities, and then, with the resolution that was part of her nature, she turned her eyes away.
After all, though a high position with the power and pride of leading was a thing to be desired, life, she felt, had as much to offer in different ways; and she recalled a very weary man limping, gray in face, up the steep range. The picture was very plainly before her as she sat there shivering a little, and her heart grew soft toward the wanderer. She knew at last why nothing that Kinnaird could have said or offered would have moved her, and she looked down at the lamps that blinked among the leafless boughs with a great tenderness shining in her eyes. The stir of the city fell faintly on unheeding ears, and she was conscious only of a longing for the stillness of the vast pine forest through which she had wandered with Weston at her side.
Then she rose abruptly and went back into the lighted room. Though she danced once or twice, and talked to a number of people who, perhaps fortunately, did not seem to expect her to say anything very intelligent, she was glad when Mrs. Kinnaird sent for her, and they and Arabella drove away together. The elder lady troubled her with no questions; but soon after they reached home she came into the room where Ida sat, and as she left the door open the girl saw Gregory go down the stairway with a letter in his hand. He met his sister near the foot of it, and his voice, which seemed a trifle strained, came up to Ida clearly.
"I"ll just run out and post this. I"ve told those people that I"ll go as soon as they like," he said.
Then Mrs. Kinnaird quietly closed the door before she crossed the room and sat down near the girl.
"It"s rather hard to bear," she said. "Perhaps I feel it the more because Arabella will leave me soon."
The woman"s quietness troubled Ida, and her eyes grew hazy.
"Oh," she said, "though it isn"t quite my fault, how you must blame me. It"s most inadequate, but I can only say that I"m very sorry."
"I suppose what you told Gregory is quite irrevocable?" inquired her companion.
Ida saw the tense anxiety in the woman"s eyes, and her answer cost her an effort.
"Yes, quite," she said. "I wish I could say anything else."
"I can"t blame you, my dear. I blame only myself," said Mrs. Kinnaird.
"I"m afraid I brought this trouble on Gregory, and it makes my share of it harder to bear. Still, there is something to be said. I wanted Gregory to marry you because I wanted him near me, but I can"t have you think that I would have tried to bring about a match between him and any girl with money. My dear," and she leaned forward toward her companion, "I am fond of you."
Ida made a gesture of comprehension and sympathy, and the little quiet lady went on again.
"There is just another thing," she said. "Gregory will have very little--a few hundred a year--but it would not have been a dreadfully one-sided bargain. He had, after all, a good deal to offer."
Ida raised a hand in protest.
"Oh," she said, "I know."
"Still," continued Mrs. Kinnaird, "I want you to feel quite sure that he loved you. Without that nothing else would have counted. You will believe it, won"t you? It is due to my son."
She rose with a little sigh.
"Things never go as one would wish them to."
Ida was very sorry for her, but there was so little that could be said.
"I shall always think well of Gregory," she answered. "You will try to forgive me?"
Then an impulsive restless longing came over her with the knowledge that she had brought this woman bitter sorrow.
"I will go home," she broke out. "It will hurt you to see me near you when Gregory has gone away. There are friends of ours--Mrs. Claridge and her daughter, you met them--leaving for Paris on Wednesday, and they sail for New York in a week or two."
It was a relief to both of them to discuss a matter of this kind, and, before Mrs. Kinnaird left her, all had been arranged. Still, it was not Montreal and its winter amus.e.m.e.nts that Ida thought of then, but the shadowy bush, and the green river that stole out from among the somber pines.
CHAPTER XX
IDA CLAIMS AN ACQUAINTANCE
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 cl.u.s.tering 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 cl.u.s.tering 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 pa.s.sed. 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."