The Spenders Part 4

"-r-r-r. Bines, how _do_ you do!" concluded the girl with an eye-flash of grat.i.tude at the humble instrument that had prevented an undue hiatus in her salutation. They were apart from the others and for the moment unnoticed.

The young man took the hand so cordially offered, and because of all the things he wished and had so long waited to say, he said nothing.

"Isn't it jolly! I am Miss Milbrey," she added in a lower tone, and then, raising her voice, "Mamma, Mr. Bines--and papa," and there followed a hurried and but half-acknowledged introduction to the other members of the party. And, behold! in that moment the young man had schemed the edifice of all his formless dreams. For six months he had known the unsurpa.s.sable luxury of wanting and of knowing what he wanted. Now, all at once, he saw this to be a world in which dreams come more than true.

Shepler and the party were to go through the mine as a matter of sight-seeing. They were putting on outer clothes from the store-room to protect them from the dirt and damp.

Presently Percival found himself again at the bottom of the shaft.

During the descent of twelve hundred feet he had reflected upon the curious and interesting fact that her name should be Milbrey. He felt dimly that this circ.u.mstance should be ranked among the most interesting of natural phenomena,--that she should have a name, as the run of mortals, and that it should be one name more than another. When he discovered further that her Christian name was Avice the phenomenon became stupendously bewildering. They two were in the last of the party to descend. On reaching bottom he separated her with promptness and guile from two solemn young men, copies of each other, and they were presently alone. In the distance they could see the others following ghostly lamps. From far off mysterious recesses came the m.u.f.fled musical clink of the sledges on the drills. An employee who had come down with them started to be their guide. Percival sent him back.

"I've just been through; I can find my way again."

"Ver' well," said the man, "with the exception that it don't happen something,--yes?" And he stayed where he was.

Down one of the cross-cuts they started, stepping aside to let a car of ore be pushed along to the shaft.

"Do you know," began the girl, "I am so glad to be able to thank you for what you did that night."

"I'm glad you _are_ able. I was beginning to think I should always have those thanks owing to me."

"I might have paid them at the time, but it was all so unexpected and so sudden,--it rattled me, quite."

"I thought you were horribly cool-headed."

"I wasn't."

"Your manner reduced me to a groom who opened your carriage door."

"But grooms don't often pick strange ladies up bodily and bear them out of a pandemonium of waltzing cab-horses. I'd never noticed before that cab-horses are so frivolous and hysterical."

"And grooms know where to look for their pay."

They were interrupting nervously, and bestowing furtive side-looks upon each other.

"If I'd not seen you," said the girl, "glanced at you--before--that evening, I shouldn't have remembered so well; doubtless I'd not have recognised you to-day."

"I didn't know you did glance at me, and yet I watched you every moment of the evening. You didn't know that, did you?"

She laughed.

"Of course I knew it. A woman has to note such things without letting it be seen that she sees."

"And I'd have sworn you never once so much as looked my way."

"Don't we do it well, though?"

"And in spite of all the time I gave to a study of your face I lost the detail of it. I could keep only the effect of its expression and the few tones of your voice I heard. You know I took those on a record so I could make 'em play over any time I wanted to listen. Do you know, that has all been very sweet to me, my helping you and the memory of it,--so vague and sweet."

"Aren't you afraid we're losing the others?"

She halted and looked back.

"No; I'm afraid we won't lose them; come on; you can't turn back now.

And you don't want to hear anything about mines; it wouldn't be at all good for you, I'm sure. Quick, down this way, or you'll hear Pangburn telling some one what a stope is, and think what a thing that would be to carry in your head."

"Really, a stope sounds like something that would 'get you' in the night! I'm afraid!"

Half in his spirit she fled with him down a dimly lighted incline where men were working at the rocky wall with sledge and drill. There was that in his manner which compelled her quite as literally as when at their first meeting he had picked her up in his arms.

As they walked single-file through the narrowing of a drift, she wondered about him. He was Western, plainly. An employee in the mine, probably a manager or director or whatever it was they called those in authority in mines. Plainly, too, he was a man of action and a man who engaged all her instinctive liking. Something in him at once coerced her friendliest confidence. These were the admissions she made to herself. She divined him, moreover, to be a blend of boldness and timidity. He was bold to the point of telling her things unconventionally, of beguiling her into remote underground pa.s.sages away from the party; yet she understood; she knew at once that he was a determined but unspoiled gentleman; that under no provocation could he make a mistake. In any situation of loneliness she would have felt safe with him--"as with a brother"--she thought. Then, feeling her cheeks burn, she turned back and said:

"I must tell you he was my brother--that man--that night."

He was sorry and glad all at once. The sorrow being the lesser and more conventional emotion, he started upon an awkward expression of it, which she interrupted.

"Never mind saying that, thank you. Tell me something about yourself, now. I really would like to know you. What do you see and hear and do in this strange life?"

"There's not much variety," he answered, with a convincing droop of depression. "For six months I've been seeing you and hearing you--seeing you and hearing you; not much variety in that--nothing worth telling you about."

Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to affect mirth to seem at ease.

"Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since these rocks were made; and now you say it,--well, I admit--"

"But there's nothing new under the sun, you know."

"No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?"

"Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work in little variations of his own to-day. For example--"

"I'm sure we'd best be returning."

"For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpa.s.ses any tonic advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that--"

"I think that's enough; I see you _could_ vary the formula, in case--"

"--_have_ varied it--but don't forget I prefer the original unvaried.

After all, there are certain things that you can't tell in too few words. Now, you--"

"You stubborn person. Really, I know all about myself. I asked you to tell me about yourself."

"And I began at once to tell you everything about myself--everything of interest--which is yourself."

"I see your sense of values is gone, poor man. I shall question you.

Now you are a miner, and I like men of action, men who do things; I've often wondered about you, and seriously, I'm glad to find you here doing something. I remembered you kindly, with real grat.i.tude, indeed.

You didn't seem like a New York man either, and I decided you weren't.

Honestly, I am glad to find you here at your work in your miner's clothes. You mustn't think we forget how to value men that work."

On the point of saying thoughtlessly, "But I'm not working here--I own the mine," he checked himself. Instead he began a defence of the man who doesn't work, but who could if he had to. "For example," he continued, "here we are at a place that you must be carried over; otherwise you'd have to wade through a foot of water or go around that long way we've come. I've rubber boots on, and so I pick you up this way--" He held her lightly on his arm and she steadied herself with a hand between his shoulders.