Vane of the Timberlands Part 40

Nairn looked thoughtful.

"A month or two ago, I would have agreed with ye; but general investors are kittle folk, and the applications for the new stock are no numerous."

"Howitson promised to subscribe largely; and Bendle pledged himself to take a considerable block."

"I'm no denying it. But we have no been favored with their formal applications yet."

"You had better tell me if you have anything particular in your mind,"

Vane said bluntly.

An unqualified affirmation is not strictly in accordance with the Scottish character, and Nairn was seldom rash.

"I would have ye remember what I told ye about the average investor," he replied. "He has no often the boldness to trust his judgment nor the sense to ken a good thing when he sees it--he waits for a lead, and then joins the rush when other folk are going in. What makes a mineral or other stock a favorite for a time is now and then no easy to determine; but we'll allow that it becomes so--ye will see men who should have mair sense thronging to buy and running the price up. Like sheep they come in, each following the other; and like sheep they run out, if anything scares them. It's no difficult to start a panic."

"The plain English of it is that the mine is not so popular as it was,"

retorted Vane impatiently.

"I'm thinking something of the kind," Nairn agreed. Then he proceeded with a cautious explanation: "The result of the first reduction and the way ye forced the concern on the market secured ye notice. Folk put their money on ye, looking for sensational developments, and when the latter are no forthcoming they feel a bit sore and disappointed."

"There's nothing discouraging in our accounts. Even if the ore all ran as poor as that,"--Vane pointed to the specimens on the table--"the mine could be worked on a reasonably satisfactory paying basis. We have issued no statements that could spread alarm."

"Just so. What was looked for was more than reasonable satisfaction--ye have no come up to expectations. Forby, it's my opinion that damaging reports have somehow leaked out from the mine. Just now I see clouds on the horizon."

"Bendle pledged himself to take up a big block of the shares," repeated Vane. "If Howitson does the same, as he said he would, our position would be secure. As soon as it was known that they were largely interested, others would follow them."

"Now ye have it in a nutsh.e.l.l--it would put a wet blanket on the project if they both backed down. In the meanwhile we canna hurry them. Ye will have to give them time."

Vane rose.

"We'll leave it at that. I've promised to take Mrs. Nairn and Miss Chisholm for a sail."

By the time he reached the water-front he had got rid of the slight uneasiness the interview had occasioned him. He found Mrs. Nairn and Evelyn awaiting him with Carroll in attendance, and in a few minutes they were rowing off to the sloop. As they approached her, the elder lady glanced with evident approval at the craft, which swam, a gleaming ivory shape, upon the s.h.i.+ning green brine.

"Ye have surely been painting the boat," she exclaimed. "Was that for us?"

Vane disregarded the question.

"She wanted it, and paint's comparatively cheap. It has been good drying weather the last few days."

It was a little thing, but Evelyn was pleased. The girls had not been greatly considered at the Dene, and it was flattering to recognize that the man had thought it worth while to decorate his craft in her honor; she supposed it had entailed a certain amount of work. She did not ask herself if he had wished to please her; he had invited her for a sail some days ago, and he was thorough in everything he did. He helped her and Mrs. Nairn on board and when they sat down in the well he and Carroll proceeded to hoist the mainsail. It looked exceedingly large as it thrashed and fluttered above their heads, and there seemed to be a bewildering quant.i.ty of ropes, but Evelyn was interested chiefly in watching Vane.

He was wonderfully quick, but no movement was wasted. His face was intent, his glances sharp, and she liked the crisp, curt way in which he spoke to Carroll. The man's task was, in one sense, not important, but he was absorbed in it. Then while Carroll slipped the moorings, Vane ran up the headsails and springing aft seized the tiller as the boat, slanting over, commenced to forge through the water. It was the first time Evelyn had ever traveled under sail and, receptive as she was of all new impressions she sat silent a few minutes rejoicing in the sense of swift and easy motion. The inlet was crisped by small white ripples, and the boat with her boom broad off on her quarter drove through them, with a wedge of foam on her lee bow and a stream of froth sluicing past her sides. Overhead, the great inclined sail cut, sharply white, against the dazzling blue of the mid-morning sky.

Evelyn glanced farther around. Wharves stacked with lumber, railroad track, cl.u.s.tering roofs, smoking mills, were flitting fast astern. Ahead, a big side-wheel steamer was forging, foam-ringed, toward her, with the tall spars of a four-master towering behind, and stately pines, that apparently walled in the harbor, a little to one side. To starboard, beyond the wide stretch of white-flecked water, mountains ran back in ranks, with the chilly gleam of snow, which had crept lower since her arrival, upon their shoulders. It was a sharp contrast: the noisy, raw-new city and, so close at hand, the fringe of the wilderness.

They swept out through the gate of the Narrows, and Vane luffed the boat up to a moderately fresh breeze.

"It's off the land, and we'll have fairly smooth water," he explained.

"How do you like sailing?"

Evelyn watched the white ridges, which were larger than the ripples in the inlet, smash in swift succession upon the weather bow and hurl the glittering spray into the straining mainsail. There was something fascinating in the way the gently-swaying boat clove through them.

"It's glorious!" she cried, looking first ahead then back toward the distant snow. "If anything more were wanted, there are the mountains, too."

Vane smiled, but there was a suggestive sparkle in his eyes.

"Yes; we have them both, and that's something to be thankful for. The sea and the mountains--the two grandest things in this world!"

"If you think that, how did you reconcile yourself to the city?"

"I'm not sure that I've done so." He indicated the gleaming heights.

"Anyway, I'm going back up yonder very soon."

Mrs. Nairn glanced at Carroll, who affected to be busy with a rope; then she turned to Vane.

"It will no be possible with winter coming on."

"It's not really so bad then," Vane declared. "Besides, I expect to get my work done before the hardest weather's due."

"But ye canna leave Vancouver until ye have settled about the mine!"

"I don't want to," Vane admitted. "That's not quite the same thing."

"It is with a good many people," Carroll interposed with a smile.

Evelyn fancied that there was something behind all this, but it did not directly concern her and she made no inquiry. In the meanwhile they were driving on to the southward, opening up the straits, with the forests to port growing smaller and the short seas increasing in size. The breeze was cold, but the girl was warmly clad and the easy motion in no way troubled her. The rush of keen salt air stirred her blood, and all round her were spread wonderful harmonies of silver-laced blue and green, through which the straining fabric that carried her swept on. The mountains were majestic, but except when tempests lashed their crags or torrents swept their lower slopes they were wrapped in eternal repose; the sea was filled with ecstatic motion.

"The hills have their fascination; it's a thing I know," she said, to draw the helmsman out. "I think I should like the sea, too; but at first sight it's charm isn't quite so plain."

"You have started him," interposed Carroll. "He won't refuse that challenge."

Vane accepted it with a smile which meant more than good-humored indulgence.

"Well," he declared, "the sea's the same everywhere, unbridled, unchanging; a force that remains as it was in the beginning. Once you're out of harbor, under sail, you have done with civilization. It has possibly provided you with excellent gear, but it can do no more; you stand alone, stripped for the struggle with the elements."

"Is it always a struggle?"

"Always. The sea's as treacherous as the winds that vex it, pitiless, murderous. When you have only sail to trust to, you can never relax your vigilance; you must watch the varying drift of clouds and the swing of the certain tides. There's nothing and n.o.body to fall back upon when the breeze pipes its challenge; you have sloughed off civilization and must stand or fall by the raw natural powers with which man is born, and chief among them is the capacity for brutal labor. The thras.h.i.+ng sail must be mastered; the tackle creaking with the strain must be hauled in. Perhaps, that's the charm of it for some of us whose lives are pretty smooth--it takes one back, as I said, to the beginning."

"But haven't human progress and machines made life more smooth for everybody?"

Vane laughed somewhat grimly.

"Oh, no; I think that can never be done. So far, somebody pays for the others' ease. At sea, in the mine and in the bush man still grapples with a rugged, naked world."

The girl was pleased. She had drawn him out, and she thought that in speaking he had kept a fair balance between too crude a mode of colloquial expression and poetic elaboration. There was, she knew, a vein of poetic conception in him, and the struggle he had hinted at could be described fittingly only in heroic language. It was in one sense a pity that those who had the gift of it and cultivated imagination had, for the most part, never been forced into the fight; but that was, perhaps, not a matter of much importance. There were plenty of men, such as her companion, endowed with steadfast endurance who, if they seldom gave their thoughts free rein, rejoiced in the struggle; and by them the world's sternest work was clone.

"After all," she went on, "we have the mountains in civilized England."