A Damaged Reputation Part 19

A newly-felled cedar lay conveniently near the trail, but its wide-girthed trunk stood high above the underbrush, and Brooke dragged up a big hewn-off branch to make a footstool before his companion sat down on it. The branch was heavy, and she watched his efforts approvingly.

"Canada has made you another man. Now, I do not think Shafton could have done that in a day," she said. "Of course, he would never have tried, even to please me."

Brooke, who was by no means certain what she wished him to understand from this, leaned against a cedar looking down at her gravely. This was the woman who had embittered several years of his life, and for whom he had flung a good deal away, and now he was most clearly sensible of his folly. Had he met her in a drawing-room or even the Vancouver opera-house, it might not have been quite so apparent to him, but she seemed an anachronism in that strip of primeval wilderness. Nature was dominant there, and the dull pounding of the stamp-heads, which came faintly through the silence among the great trunks that had grown slowly during centuries, suggested man's recognition of the curse and privilege that was laid upon him in Eden. Graceful idleness was not esteemed in that country, where bread was won by strenuous toil, and the stillness and dimness of those great forest aisles emphasized the woman's artificial superficiality. Voice and gesture, befrizzled, straw-colored hair which he had once called golden, constricted waist, and figure which was suggestively wooden in its curves, enforced the same impression, until the man, who realized that she had after all probably made at least as good a use of life as he had, turned his eyes away.

"You really couldn't expect him to," he said, with a little laugh. "He has never had to do anything of that kind for a living as I have."

He held up his hands and noticed her little s.h.i.+ver as she saw the scarred knuckles, hard, ingrained flesh, and broken nails.

"Oh," she said, "how cruel! Whatever have you been doing?"

Brooke glanced at his fingers reflectively. "On the contrary, I suppose I ought to feel proud of them, though I scarcely think I am. Building flumes and dams, though that will hardly convey any very clear impression to you. It implies swinging the axe and shovel most of every day, and working up to the waist in water occasionally."

"But you were always so particular in England."

"I could naturally afford to be. It cost me nothing when I was living on another man's bounty."

The woman made a little gesture. "And you gave up everything for me!"

Brooke laughed softly, for it seemed to him that a little candor was advisable. "As a matter of fact, I am not quite sure that I did. My native wrong-headedness may have had its share in influencing me.

Anyway, that was all done with--several years ago."

"You will not be bitter, Harford," and she cast him a glance of appeal which might have awakened a trace of tenderness in the man had it sprung from any depth of feeling. "Can anything of that kind ever be quite done with?"

Brooke commenced to feel a trifle uneasy. "Well," he said, reflectively, "I certainly think it ought to be."

To his relief his companion smiled and apparently decided to change the subject. "You never even sent me a message. It really wasn't kind."

"It appeared considerably more becoming to let myself sink into oblivion. Besides, I could scarcely be expected to feel certain that you would care to hear from me."

The woman glanced at him reflectively. "I have often thought about you.

Of course, I was dreadfully sorry when I had to give you up, but I really couldn't do anything else, and it was all for the best."

"Of course!" said Brooke, with a trace of dryness, and smiled when she glanced at him sharply. "I naturally mean in your case."

"You are only involving yourself, Harford. You never used to be so unfeeling."

"I was endorsing your own statement, and it is, at least, considerably easier to believe that all is for the best when one is prosperous. You have a wealthy husband, and Helen, who wrote me once, testified that he indulged you in--she said every caprice."

"Yes," said his companion, thoughtfully, "Shafton is certainly not poor, and he is almost everything any one could expect him to be. As husbands go, I think he is eminently satisfactory."

"One would fancy that an indulgent and wealthy husband of distinguished appearance would go a tolerably long way."

Again the woman appeared to reflect "Prosperity is apt to kill romance,"

she said. "One is never quite content, you know, and I feel now and then that Shafton scarcely understands me. That is a complaint people appear to find ludicrous, of course, though I really don't see why they should do so. Shafton is conventional and precise. You know exactly what he is going to do, and that it will be right, but one has longings now and then for something original and intense."

Brooke regarded her with a little dry smile. One, as he had discovered, cannot have everything, and as she had sold herself for wealth and station it appeared a trifle unreasonable to repine because she could not enjoy a romantic pa.s.sion at the same time. It was, in fact, very likely that had anything of the kind been thrust upon her she would not have known what to do with it. It also occurred to him that there were depths in her husband's nature which she had never sounded, and he remembered the look of cynical weariness in the man's face. Lucy Coulson was one who trifled with emotions as a pastime, but Brooke had no wish to be made the subject of another experiment in simulated tenderness, even if that was meant, which, under the circ.u.mstances, scarcely seemed likely.

"Well," he said, "no doubt most people long for a good deal more than they ever get; but your friends must have reached the stamps by now, and they will be wondering what has become of you."

"I scarcely think they will. The men seem to consider it a waste of time to talk to anybody who doesn't know all about ranches and mines, and Shafton has Miss Goldie to attend to. She has attached herself to him like a limpet, but she is, of course, a Canadian, and I really don't mind."

Almost involuntarily Brooke contrasted her with a Canadian who had spent a week in the woods with him. Barbara Heathcote had never appeared out of place in the wilderness, for she was wholly natural and had moved amidst those scenes of wild grandeur as though in harmony with them, with the stillness of that lonely land in her steady eyes. There was no superficial sentimentality in her, for her thoughts and emotions were deep as the still blue lakes, and he could not fancy her disturbing their serenity for the purpose of whiling an idle day away. Then his face hardened, for it was becoming unpleasantly evident that she could not much longer even regard him with friendliness and there was nothing to be gained by letting his fancy run away with him.

"You are not the man I used to talk nonsense with, Harford," said his companion, who had in the meanwhile been watching him. "This country has made you quiet and a little grim. Why don't you go back again?"

"I am afraid they have too many men with no ostensible income in England."

"Still you could make it up with the old man."

Brooke's face was decidedly grim. "I scarcely think I could. Rather more was said by both of us than could be very well rubbed off one's memory.

Besides, I think you know what kind of man he is?"

Lucy Coulson leaned forward a trifle and there was a trace of genuine feeling in her voice. "Harford," she said, "he frets about you--and he is getting very old. Of course, he would never show anybody what he felt, but I could guess, because he was once not long ago almost rude to me. That could only have been on your account, you know. It hurts me a little, though one could scarcely take exception to anything he said--but you know the quiet precision of his manner. If it wasn't quite so perfect it would be pedantic now. One feels it's a relic of the days of the hoops and patches ever so long ago."

"What did he say?" asked Brooke, a trifle impatiently.

"Nothing that had any particular meaning by itself, but for all that he conveyed an impression, and I think if you were to go back----"

"Empty-handed!" said Brooke. "There are circ.u.mstances under which the desire for reconciliation with a wealthy relative is liable to misconception. If I had prospered it would have been easier."

Lucy Coulson looked at him thoughtfully. "Perhaps I did use you rather badly, and it might be possible for me to do you a trifling kindness now. Shall I talk to the old man when I go home again? I see him often."

Brooke shook his head. "I shall never go back a poor man," he said.

"What are you doing here?"

"Everybody travels nowadays, and Shafton is never happy unless he is going somewhere. We started for j.a.pan, and decided to see the Rockies and look at the British Columbian mines. That is, of course, Shafton did. He has money in some of them, and is interested in the colonies. I have to sit on platforms and listen while he abuses the Government for neglecting them. In fact, I don't know when I shall be able to get him out of the country now. Of course, I never expected to meet you here--and almost wonder if there is any reason beyond the one you mentioned that has kept you here so long."

She glanced at him in a curious fas.h.i.+on and made the most of her eyes, which he had once considered remarkably expressive ones.

"I can't quite think of any other, beyond the fact that I have a few dollars at stake," he said.

"There is nothing else?"

"No," said Brooke, a trifle too decisively. "What could there be?"

His companion smiled. "Well," she said, "I fancied there might have been a Canadian. They are not all very good style, but some of them are almost pretty, and--when one has been a good while away----"

The man flushed a trifle at the faint contempt in her tone. "I scarcely think there is one of them who would spare a thought for me. I should not be considered especially eligible even in this country."

"And you have a good memory!"

Brooke felt slightly disconcerted, for it was not the first delicate suggestion she had made. "I don't know that it is of any benefit to me.

You see, I really haven't anything very pleasant to remember."

Lucy Coulson sighed. "Harford," she said, dropping her voice a trifle, "you must try not to blame me. If one of us had been richer--I, at least, can't help remembering."

Brooke looked at her steadily. Exactly where she wished to lead him he did not know, but she had flung away her power to lead him anywhere long ago. Perhaps she was influenced by vanity, for there was no genuine pa.s.sion or tenderness in her, but Brooke was a well-favored man, and she had her caprices and drifted easily.