"And staggering painfully under my burden, I wade out to the middle of this subterranean lake." He stopped.
"You see, I"ve learned to do things. I could pick you from that slippery street and put you in your carriage, and I can pick you up now without wasting words about it--"
"But you"re wasting time--hurry, please--and, anyway, you"re a miner and used to such things."
He remained standing.
"But I"m _not_ wasting time, and I"m not a miner in the sense you mean.
I own this mine, and I suppose for the most part I"m the sort of man you seem to have gotten tired of; the man who doesn"t have to do anything. Even now I"m this close to work only because my grandfather wanted me to look over the properties my father left."
"But, hurry, please, and set me down."
"Not until I warn you that I"m just as apt to do things as the kind of man you thought I was. This is twice I"ve picked you up now. Look out for me;--next time I may not put you down at all."
She gave a low little laugh, denoting unruffled serenity. She was glorying secretly in his strength, and she knew his boldness and timidity were still justly balanced. And there was the rather astonishing bit of news he had just given her. That needed a lot of consideration.
With slow, sure-footed steps he reached the farther side of the water and put her on her feet.
"There, I thought I"d reveal the distressing truth about myself while I had you at my mercy."
"I might have suspected, but I gave the name no thought. Bines, to be sure. You are the son of the Bines who died some months ago. I heard Mr. Shepler and my father talking about some of your mining properties.
Mr. Shepler thought the "One Girl" was such a funny name for your father to give a mine."
Now they neared the foot of the shaft where the rest of the party seemed to await them. As they came up Percival felt himself raked by a broadside from the maternal lorgnon that left him all but disabled. The father glowered at him and asked questions in the high key we are apt to adopt in addressing foreigners, in the instinctive fallacy that any language can be understood by any one if it be spoken loudly enough.
The mother"s manner was a crushing rebuke to the young man for his audacity. The father"s manner was meant to intimate that natives of the region in which they were then adventuring were not worthy of rebuke, save such general rebukes as may be conveyed by displaying one"s natural superiority of manner. The other members of the party, excepting Shepler, who talked with Pangburn at a little distance, took cue from the Milbreys and aggressively ignored the abductor of an only daughter. They talked over, around, and through him, as only may those mortals whom it hath pleased heaven to have born within certain areas on Manhattan Island.
The young man felt like a social outcast until he caught a glance from Miss Milbrey. That young woman was still friendly, which he could understand, and highly amused, which he could not understand. While the temperature was at its lowest the first load ascended, including Miss Milbrey and her parents, a chatty blonde, and an uncomfortable little man who, despite his being twelve hundred feet toward the centre thereof, had three times referred bitterly to the fact that he was "out of the world." "I shall see you soon above ground, shall I not?" Miss Milbrey had asked, at which her mother shot Percival a parting volley from her rapid-fire lorgnon, while her father turned upon him a back whose sidelines were really admirable, considering his age and feeding habits. The behaviour of these people appeared to intensify the amus.e.m.e.nt of their child. The two solemn young men who remained continued to chat before Percival as they would have chatted before the valet of either. He began to sound the spiritual anguish of a pariah.
Also to feel truculent and, in his own phrase, "Westy." With him "Westy" meant that you were as good as any one else "and a shade better than a whole lot if it came to a show-down." He was not a little mortified to find how easy it was for him to fall back upon that old cushion of provincial arrogance. It was all right for Uncle Peter, but for himself,--well, it proved that he was less finely Eastern than he had imagined.
As the cage came down for another ascent, he let the two solemn young men go up with Shepler and Pangburn, and went to search for Uncle Peter.
"There, thank G.o.d, is a man!" he reflected.
CHAPTER VII.
The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked
He found Uncle Peter in the cross-cut, studying a bit of ore through a gla.s.s, and they went back to ascend.
"Them folks," said the old man, "must be the kind that newspaper meant, that had done something in practical achievement. I bet that girl"s mother will achieve something practical with you fur cuttin" the girl out of the bunch; she was awful tormented; talked two or three times about the people in the humbler walks of life bein" strangely something or other. You ain"t such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say, that yellow-haired woman, she ain"t a bit diffident, is she? She"s a very hearty lady, I _must_ say!"
"But did you see Miss Milbrey?"
"Oh, that"s her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin", but a heap too wise fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she"d have your pelt nailed to the barn while you was wonderin" which way you"d jump."
"Oh, I know I"m only a tender, teething infant," the young man answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long"s you got that bank roll you jest look out fur cupboard love--the kind the old cat has when she comes rubbin" up against your leg and purrin" like you was the whole thing."
The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth"s G.o.dlike faith in its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him.
At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey, the pleasing model of all a city"s refinements, awaiting the boon of a hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively.
"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us--my daughter has been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to find the gold--"
He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted effusion of affability that was music to his ears.
Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look Percival had noted below.
"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her lorgnon. "Here"s Mr. Shepler to second the invitation--and then we shall chat about this very interesting West."
Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly.
In the s.p.a.cious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was presently at lunch.
"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided graciously to Percival on her right.
"We cal"late he"ll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so,"
put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young man"s bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like this boy went to."
Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old man"s failure to identify it as such.
Mr. Milbrey caressed his gla.s.s of claret with ardent eyes and took the situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master.
"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In truth, it"s amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not suspect their--er--humble origin."
"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret intent to brew strife.
"Well--er--to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,--of course--perhaps I should have said--"
"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey,"
interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"--he lowered his voice to the pitch of impressiveness--"has over eighty pairs of trousers and complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston."
"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his lines under the surface.
"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men, "he must still talk like a banjo."
"And gargle all his "r"s,"" added the other, very earnestly. "They never get over that, you know."
"Instead of losin" "em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it "Ne"
Yawk," and prob"ly he don"t like it in Boston because they always call "em "rawroystahs.""
"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It _is_ hard for the West and the East to forgive each other"s dialects. The inflated "r" and the smothered "r" never quite harmonise."
"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time.
Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with indifferent success their twin impulses to frown.