Vane of the Timberlands Part 41

Vane did not respond with the same freedom this time. He was inclined to think he had spoken too unrestrainedly.

"Yes," he agreed, smiling; "you can walk about them--where you won't disturb the grouse--and they're grand enough; but if you look down you can see the motor dust trails and the tourist coaches in the valleys."

"But why shouldn't people enjoy themselves in that way?"

"I can't think of any reason. No doubt most of them have earned the right to do so. But you can't rip up those hills with giant-powder where you feel inclined, or set to work to root out some miles of forest. The Government encourages that kind of thing here."

"And that's the charm?"

"Yes; I suppose it is."

"I'd better explain," Carroll interposed. "Men of a certain temperament are apt to fall a prey to fantasies in the newer lands; any common sense they once possessed seems to desert them. After that, they're never happy except when they're ripping things--such as big rocks and trees--to pieces, and though they'll tell you it's only to get out minerals or to clear a ranch, they're wrong. Once they get the mine or ranch, they don't care about it; they set to work wrecking things again. Isn't that true, Mrs. Nairn?"

"There are such crazy bodies," agreed the lady. "I know one or two; but if I had my way with them, they should find one mine, or build one sawmill."

"And then," supplied Carroll, "you would chain them up for good by marrying them."

"I would like to try, but I'm no sure it would act in every case. I have come across some women as bad as the men; they would drive their husbands on."

She smiled in a half wistful manner.

"Maybe," she added, "it's as well to do something worth the remembering when ye are young. There's a long while to sit still in afterward."

Half in banter and half in earnest, they had given Evelyn a hint of the master pa.s.sion of the true colonist, whose pride is in his burden.

Afterward, Mrs. Nairn led the conversation until Carroll laid out in the saloon a somewhat elaborate lunch which he had brought from the hotel.

Then the others went below, leaving Vane at the helm. When they came up again, Carroll looked at his comrade ruefully.

"I'm afraid Miss Chisholm's disappointed," he said.

"No," declared Evelyn; "that would be most ungrateful. I only expected a more characteristic example of sea cookery. After what Mr. Vane told us, a lunch like the one you provided, with gla.s.s and silver, struck me as rather an anachronism."

"It's better to be broken in to sea cookery gently," Vane interposed with some dryness.

Evelyn laughed.

"It's a poor compliment to take it for granted that we're afraid of a little hards.h.i.+p. Besides, I don't think you're right."

Vane left the helm to Carroll and went below.

"He won't be long," Carroll informed the girl, with a smile. "He hasn't got rid of all his primitive habits yet. I'll give him ten minutes."

When Vane came up, he glanced about him before he resumed the helm and noticed that it was blowing fresher. They were also drawing out from the land and the short seas were getting bigger; but he held on to the whole sail, and an hour or so afterward a white iron bark, light in ballast, with her rusty load-line high above the water, came driving up to meet them. She made a striking picture, Evelyn thought, with the great curve of her forecourse, which was still set, stretching high above the foam that spouted about her bows and tier upon tier of gray canvas diminis.h.i.+ng aloft. With the wind upon her quarter, she rode on an even keel, and the long iron hull, gleaming snowily in the suns.h.i.+ne, drove on, majestic, through a field of white-flecked green and azure. Abreast of one quarter, a propeller tug that barely kept pace with her belched out a cloud of smoke.

"Her skipper's been up here before--he's no doubt coming for salmon," Vane explained. Then he turned to Carroll. "We'd better pa.s.s to lee of her."

Carroll let a foot or two of a rope run out and the sloop's bows swung round a little. Her rail was just awash, and she was sailing very fast.

Then her deck slanted more sharply and the low rail became submerged in rus.h.i.+ng foam.

"We'll heave down a reef when we're clear of the bark," Vane said.

The vessel was now to windward and coming up rapidly; to shorten sail they must first round up the boat, for which they no longer had room. A few moments later a fiercer blast swept suddenly down and the water boiled white between the bark and the sloop. The latter's deck dipped deeper until the lower part of it was lost in streaming froth. Carroll made an abrupt movement.

"Shall I drop the peak?"

"No. There's the propeller close to lee."

The tug was hidden by the inclined sail, but Evelyn, clinging tightly to the coaming, understood that they were running into the gap between the two vessels and in order to avoid collision with one or the other, must hold on as they were through the stress of the squall. How much more the boat would stand she did not know, but it looked as if it were going over bodily. Then a glance at the helmsman's face rea.s.sured her. It was fixed and expressionless, but she somehow felt that whatever was necessary would be promptly done. He was not one to lose his nerve or vacillate in a crisis, and his immobility appealed to her, because she knew that if occasion arose it would be replaced by prompt decisive action.

In the meanwhile the slant of sail and deck increased. One side of the sloop was hove high out of the sea. It was all the girl could do to hold herself upright, and Mrs. Nairn had fallen against and was only supported by the coaming to leeward. Then the wind was suddenly cut off and the sloop rose with a bewildering lurch, as the tall iron hull to weather forged by, hurling off the sea. She pa.s.sed, and while Vane called out something and Carroll scrambled forward, the sloop swayed violently down again. Everything in her creaked; the floorings sloped away beneath Evelyn's feet, and now the madly-whirling froth poured in across the coaming. The veins stood out on the helmsman's forehead, his pose betrayed the tension on his arms; but the sloop was swinging round, and she fell off before the wind when the upper half of the great sail collapsed.

Rising more upright, she flung the water off her deck, and for some moments drove on at a bewildering speed; then there was a mad thras.h.i.+ng as Vane brought her on the wind again. The two men, desperately busy, mastered the fluttering sail, and in a few more minutes they were running homeward, with the white seas splas.h.i.+ng harmlessly astern. It was now difficult to believe they had been in any danger, but Evelyn felt that she had had an instance of the sea's treachery; what was more, she had witnessed an exhibition of human nerve and skill. Vane, with his half-formulated thoughts which yet had depth to them and his flashes of imagination, had interested her; but now he had been revealed in his finer capacity, as a man of action.

"I'd have kept to weather of the bark, where we'd have had room to luff, if I'd expected that burst of wind," he explained. "Did you hurt yourself against the coaming, Mrs. Nairn?"

The lady smiled rea.s.suringly.

"It's no worth mentioning, and I'm no altogether unused to it. Alic once kept a boat and would have me out with him."

The remainder of the trip proved uneventful, and as they ran homeward the breeze gradually died away. The broad inlet lay still in the moonlight when they crept across it with the water lapping very faintly about the bows, and it was over a mirror-like surface they rowed ash.o.r.e. Nairn was waiting at the foot of the steps and Evelyn walked back with him, feeling, she could not tell exactly why, that she had been drawn closer to the sloop's helmsman.

CHAPTER XXIII

VANE PROVES OBDURATE

Vane spent two or three weeks very pleasantly in Vancouver, for Evelyn, of whom he saw a good deal, was gracious to him. The embarra.s.sment both had felt on their first meeting in the western city had speedily vanished; they had resumed their acquaintance on what was ostensibly a purely friendly footing, and since both avoided any reference to what had taken place in England, it had ripened into a mutual confidence and appreciation.

This would have been less probable in the older country, where they would have been continually reminded of what the Chisholm family expected of them; but the past seldom counts for much in the new and changeful West, where men look forward to the future. Indeed, there is something in its atmosphere which banishes regret and retrospection; and when Evelyn looked back at all, she felt inclined to wonder why she had once been so troubled by the man's satisfaction with her company. She decided that this could not have been the result of any aversion for him, and that it was merely an instinctive revolt against the part her parents had wished to force upon her. Chisholm and his wife had blundered, as such people often do, for it is possible that had they adopted a perfectly neutral att.i.tude everything would have gone as they desired. Their mistake was nevertheless a natural one. Somewhat exaggerated reports of Vane's prosperity had reached them; but while they coveted the advantages his wealth might offer their daughter, in their secret hearts they looked upon him as a raw Colonial and something of a barbarian, and the opinions he occasionally expressed in their hearing did not dispel this idea. Both feared that Evelyn regarded him in the same light, and it accordingly became evident that a little pressure might be required. In spite of their prejudices, they did not shrink from applying it.

In the meanwhile, several people in Vancouver watched the increase of friendliness between the girl and Vane. Mrs. Nairn and her husband did so with benevolent interest, and it was by Mrs. Nairn's adroit management, which even Evelyn did not often suspect, that they were thrown more and more into each other's company. Jessy Horsfield, however, looked on with bitterness. She was a strong-willed young woman who hitherto had generally contrived to obtain whatever she had set her heart on; and she had set it on this man. Indeed, she had fancied that he returned the feeling, but disillusionment had come on the evening when he had unexpectedly met Evelyn. Her smoldering resentment against the girl grew steadily stronger, until it threatened to prove dangerous on opportunity.

There were, however, days when Vane was disturbed in mind. Winter was coming on, and although it is rarely severe on the southern seaboard, it is by no means the season one would choose for an adventure among the ranges of the northern wilderness. Unless he made his search for the spruce very shortly he might be compelled to postpone it until the spring, at the risk of some hardy prospector's forestalling him; but there were two reasons which detained him. He thought that he was gaining ground in Evelyn's esteem and he feared the effect of absence, and there was no doubt that the new issue of the Clermont shares was in very slack demand. To leave the city might cost him a good deal in several ways, but he had pledged himself to go.

That fact was uppermost in his mind one evening when he set off to call on Celia Hartley. As it happened, Evelyn and Mrs. Nairn were driving past as he turned off from a busy street toward the quarter in which she lived. It had been dark for some time, but the street was well lighted and Evelyn had no difficulty in recognizing him. Indeed, she watched him for a few moments while he pa.s.sed on into a more shadowy region, where the gloom and dilapidation of the first small frame houses were noticeable. Beyond them there was scarcely a light at all; the neighborhood looked mysterious, and she wondered what kind of people inhabited it. She did not think that Mrs. Nairn had noticed Vane.

"You have never taken me into the district on our left," she said.

"I'm no likely to. We're no proud of it."

Evelyn was a little astonished. She had seen no signs of squalor or dissipation since she entered Canada, and had almost fancied that they did not exist.

"I suppose the Chinese and other aliens live there?"

"They do," was the dry answer. "I'm no sure, however, that they're the worst."

"But one understands that you haven't a criminal population."