The Bail Jumper Part 5

"You are referring to Gardiner," said Harry. "And in the first place, I want you to know that every one will not say that that would be a more appropriate arrangement. It may be true that you are young, that you have your own way to make in the world, but all that is in your favour.

You are well educated; better than most town boys, for you have learned to spend your idle hours to advantage, which they, as a rule, do not; you have a good const.i.tution and a clear conscience, and the girl who isn't willing to face the battle of life with a companion so equipped isn't worthy to be his wife. In this country women do not marry men who have achieved distinction; in almost every case where wealth or honour come, they come after marriage. If you think my cousin isn't wise enough to know that in the battle of life as it must be waged in this great new country a man's mental and physical equipment count for more than any cash capital, you do her intelligence a grave injustice. But I want to warn you that I am not speaking for her; I have not been given, and I have not asked, her confidence in these matters. But I know Gardiner well, and I know you a little, and I have my cousin's happiness sufficiently at heart to say what I have said."

This was a remarkable speech for the young farmer, who usually disposed of a subject in a sentence, and Burton felt that it was, indeed, a great compliment to him. He knew that Harry had spoken in all sincerity; had opened a corner of his heart to one who was little more than a stranger, and he resolved to follow the cue he had been given.

Mrs. Grant, Susy Grant, and Miss Vane were in the garden as the young men drove up. They greeted Burton cordially, and as Harry went to look after his team entertained their visitor with a walk through the garden and a discussion of the various flowers in which Mrs. Grant so much delighted. Presently, however, the elder lady felt the night air becoming chill, and, reminding Susy that the separator would be ready to wash, entered the house, accompanied by her daughter.

"Oh, you haven't seen my pony, have you, Mr. Burton?" said Miss Vane.

"He's the dearest little fellow. Uncle gave him to me because he said he couldn't have me walking to town and getting home at midnight, although when he knew I had your protection he admitted that altered the circ.u.mstances. I keep him in the pasture-the pony, you know. Shall we walk over and see him? Then you can lead him home, and I will ride."

Nothing pleased the young man better, and in a few minutes they were tripping along the well-beaten cowpath that led into the pasture. Night was setting in, and when they reached the stream, girded with dense willows, it was quite dark. The pony was not easily found, and several times they approached cattle in mistake; but at length Miss Vane's call brought his answering whinny, as he came running to her, through the bushes.

"Now sir, I shall ride you home," she said, rubbing her pet's nose, "and Mr. Burton will lead you. This is Mr. Burton, Frisky."

"But you have no saddle," said Burton.

"Surely I am westernised enough to ride without a saddle by this time,"

said the young woman, "especially as the gait is not to exceed a walk.

But I am afraid I shall have to have some a.s.sistance before we can start."

She stood with her right arm over the pony's back. In the darkness he seemed unusually tall.

For a lady in an ordinary habit to mount a horse, especially without the a.s.sistance of a saddle, is a feat of some difficulty, as Burton discovered before it was accomplished. As they journeyed slowly back to the farmhouse the young man inquired if Miss Vane had ever been to Crotton's Crossing.

"No, indeed, and they say it is one of the most delightful drives. I have been at Harry a dozen times to take me, but he always has some excuse, and George-well, I must admit that George seems to be more interested in our friend Miss Green than in his little orphan cousin."

"I was wondering," said Burton, mustering all his resolution for the task, "if you would accept an invitation to drive there with me next Sunday?"

"One can never tell," said the young woman demurely.

"Tell what?" asked Burton, a little piqued at the irrelevance of the remark.

"What one will do under certain circ.u.mstances, until the circ.u.mstances occur."

"By which you mean?"

"Well, if I must be blunt, Mr. Burton, I cannot tell you whether I would accept such an invitation until I receive it."

"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Raymond, and both laughed. "Miss Vane, will you honour me with your company to Crotton's Crossing on Sunday?"

"Rather formal, but strictly correct," commented Miss Vane. "But there is the choir--"

"Ah, yes, I had thought of that."

"And what solution had you discovered?"

"Not any, I fear."

"Under those circ.u.mstances it seems I will not be able--"

"Of course," Burton admitted, "they can't get along without you in the choir."

"Do you think so? Well, that is too bad, because next Sunday-they'll have to."

Sunday dawned, cloudless and warm. The rainy season had not set in in earnest, and, although farmers complained, the liverymen were well pleased that the roads were conducive to pleasure drives. A light wind blew from the south-east, just fresh enough to keep the air in motion, as at 9 a.m. Burton drove out of town with as good an equipage as the place afforded. The fields wore a heavy coat of dark green grain, waving in the breeze like ripples on a pond; the mirthsome gophers frolicked on the road, and clear-voiced barnyard fowl rent the air with their morning dissertations. As Burton drove up to the Grant farmhouse he was met by Harry and George; the former in his working clothes, but his brother dressed in his Sunday best.

"Wish I could get the fever too," lamented Harry. "Here's George with a special engagement at church, and Susy tidying up for a caller, and pretty cousin Myrtle putting the final tiffics on her fascination, while I come down to the prosaic business of running milk through the separator. But mind you, Burton, a word of warning. They say the road to a popular resort is paved with good intentions. There's many in this district will aver the road to Crotton's Crossing is paved with broken hearts."

"Don't pay any attention to him, Ray," called Susy Grant from the verandah. Susy never troubled to "mister" her male acquaintances after the second meeting. "Harry'd be only too glad to take your drive himself if Myrtle was somebody else's cousin."

"And he'd be no man if he wouldn't," declared George. "Hang it, I'm kind o' sorry I'm barred, myself."

"Don't say that," said Harry. "Many a good wife has graduated from pedagogy."

This allusion to Miss Green had the effect of silencing the younger brother, and in a moment Miss Vane appeared. She wore a dress of creamy white, such as on the night Raymond had first seen her. From the toes of her little kid shoes to the tip of her modest hat she was white, absolutely white, save where one large red rose nestled in the hat's protecting shelter, and an historic brooch gleamed at her half-exposed throat. Her dark, waving hair, the wonderfully deep, l.u.s.trous eyes, the electrically sensitive mouth, the superb lines of her chin and neck, the whole supported by a figure chaste, symmetrical and beautiful, asked no grander setting than the emblem of purity she wore. Burton had thought her beautiful on the night he first met her, but he told himself it was her mentality that had so irresistibly attracted his, and as their acquaintance had ripened his delight had been in her alert intellect, her glorious voice, her easy grace of manner, gesture, and speech; but this morning he saw in her a ravishment of personal, physical beauty such as he thought had never before been vested in woman. The joy he felt in her mere presence, which had been to him a delightful and inexplicable mystery, was revealed in an instant as though a great cloud had been swept away. He recognised the magnet and the steel, wedded in an affinity defying every a.n.a.lysis of man, but everlasting and indissoluble as the eternal hills. In one brief glance the great light and the great responsibility had burst upon him, and his heart swelled and throbbed in a panic of prayer that he might be able to keep his secret.

"I bet you have forgotten something," cried Mrs. Grant, to her niece, as Burton tightened the reins.

"I never bet," laughed Miss Vane, "but Mr. Burton will defend my memory."

"In that case, I bet she didn't," declared Burton, gallantly.

"Well, here is the proof," said Mrs. Grant, advancing with a well laden basket.

"It isn't mine," said Miss Vane. "I don't know anything about it."

"But it's yours, just the same. It's well you have an aunty to think about you, dearie. You are so excited over your drive with Mr. Burton that you would let the poor boy starve for his trouble."

For a moment the young woman looked aghast. "Oh, Aunty, you darling,"

she cried, as the basket was tucked in the back of the buggy, "and you with so much other work. You should have told me to do it."

"Hush, hush, child. You may please the young gentleman's eyes best, but I'm thinkin' your old aunty still knows the short cut to a man's heart."

In the pioneer days the Poplar river had presented a serious obstacle to traffic in the spring and early summer freshets, until old Simon Crotton had squatted on the bank and constructed a pa.s.sable ford. Simon had a team of s.h.a.ganappies whose only virtue seemed to be that they were proof against every form of abuse, and when the settler, with his wagonload of rude implements or household effects, became entangled in the river, old Simon, if not too thoroughly intoxicated, could be depended upon to lend the a.s.sistance of himself and team, receiving therefore such dole as the settler could afford or his generosity prompted. A fine steel bridge now spanned the river at the spot, and Simon Crotton had long ago been gathered to his fathers, but the place retained the name of Crotton's Crossing and will probably so be known until the end of time. In such humble ways do common men leave their indelible impress upon a new country.

The road from Grant's to the crossing lay through a well-settled farming district where almost every acre except the road allowances had come under the plough. At one time the country had been partly covered with shrub, and willows and poplars still grew along the road, affording cover for prairie chickens and resting roosts for their relentless enemy, the hawk. The air was laden with the smell of wild flowers, of bursting buds, of fragrant red willows and balm-of-Gileads. For a mile or two there was little conversation; Burton knew not what to say, and Miss Vane was so enwrapped in the beauty of the country, so thrilled with its glorious air, so inspired with its immensity, that she seemed to have almost forgotten her companion's presence. At last, as they crested a hill, and a vista of long, narrow road, of neat, quadrangular farms, of comfortable homes, of pastures fencing sleek, drowsy cattle and horses turned out for their Sunday holiday, with a white church and school-house by the road, opened before them, she turned to Burton with a strange mildness in her eyes, and exclaimed, "And still people with means at their command, who are in a measure the masters of their destiny, live in the cities!"

"Then you prefer the country?"

"Prefer! How is any other choice possible? What great thing has ever been that could not be traced to the land?"

"Yet our great men go to the cities, and these men you see about you, these farmers, every one of them laments his lot. They feel that the hands of all mankind are against them."

"The same spirit prevails in the city, especially among the labouring cla.s.ses. They think how fortunate they would be if they were wringing their living from the soil, instead of in the service of what they call capital."

"But the intellectual advantages of the city?"

"Ah, there you have it. And yet, although you have had no college education, no free lectures, no public night schools, no young men's clubs, I venture to think you are better prepared for the battle of life than many of those whom, you imagine, are more fortunately situated."

The words recalled Harry Grant's statement, and Burton did not pursue the subject.