The Protector
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Jessie made herself comfortable in an easy-chair, before she referred to one of her companion’s remarks.
“Where has Mr. Bendle gone now?” she asked.
“Into the bush to look at a mine. He left this morning, and it will be a week before he’s back. Then he’s going across the Selkirks with that Clavering man about some irrigation scheme.”
This suggested one or two questions, which Jessie desired to ask, but she did not frame them immediately. “It must be dull for you,” she said sympathetically.
“I don’t mean to complain,” her companion informed her. “Tom’s reasonable; the last time I said anything about being left alone he bought me the pair of ponies.”
“You’re fortunate in several ways; there are not a great many people who can make such presents. But while everybody knows how your husband has been successful lately, I’m a little surprised that he’s able to go into Clavering’s irrigation scheme. It’s an expensive one; but I understand, they intend to confine it to a few, which means that those interested will have to subscribe handsomely.”
“Tom,” said her companion, “likes to have a number of different things in hand. He told me it was wiser when I said I couldn’t tell my friends back East what he really is, because he seemed to be everything at once. But your brother’s interested in a good many things too, isn’t he?”
“I believe so,” answered Jessie. “Still, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t afford to join Clavering and at the same time take up a big block of shares in Mr. Vane’s mine.”
“But Tom isn’t going to do the latter now.”
Jessie was almost startled; this was valuable information which she could scarcely have expected to obtain so easily. There was more she desired to ascertain, but she had no intention of making any obvious inquiries.
“It’s generally understood that Mr. Vane and your husband are on good terms,” she said. “You know him, don’t you?”
“I’ve met him at one or two places, and I like him, but when I mention him, Tom smiles. He says it’s unfortunate Mr. Vane can only see one thing at once, and that the one which lies right in front of his eyes. For all that I’ve heard him own that the man is likeable.”
“Then it’s a pity he’s unable to stand by him now.”
“I really believe Tom was half sorry he couldn’t do so last night. He said something that suggested it. I don’t understand much about these matters, but Howitson was here, talking business, until late.”
Jessie was satisfied. Her hostess’s previous incautious admission had gone a long way, but to this was added the significant information that Bendle was inclined to be sorry for Vane. The fact that he and Howitson had decided on some joint action after a long private discussion implied that there was trouble in store for the absent man, unless he could be summoned to deal with the crisis in person. Jessie wondered if Nairn knew anything about the matter yet, and decided that she would try to sound him. In the meanwhile, she led her companion away from the subject, and they discussed millinery and such matters until she took her departure.
It was early in the evening when she reached Nairn’s house, which she had thought it better to arrive at a little before he came home, and was told that Mrs. Nairn and Miss Chisholm were out but were expected back shortly. Evelyn had been by no means cordial to her since their last interview, and Mrs. Nairn’s manner had been colder; but Jessie decided to wait, and for the second time that day fortune seemed to play into her hands.
It was dark outside, but the entrance hall was brightly lighted, and she could see into it from where she sat. Highly-trained domestics are generally scarce in the West, and the maid had left the door of the room open. By and by there was a knock at the outer door and a young lad came in with some letters in his hand. He explained to the maid that he had been to the post office and had brought his employer’s private mail. Then he withdrew, and the maid, who first laid the letters carelessly on a little table, also retired, banging a door behind her. The concussion shook down the letters, and several, fluttering forward with the sudden draught, fell near the threshold of the room. Jessie rose to replace them.
When she reached the door, she stopped abruptly, for she recognised the writing on one envelope. There was no doubt it was from Vane, and she noticed that it was addressed to Miss Chisholm. Jessie picked it up, and when she had laid the others upon the table stood with it in her hand.
“Has the man no pride?” she said, half aloud.
Then she looked about her, listening, greatly tempted, and considering. There was no sound in the house; Evelyn and Mrs. Nairn were out, and she was cut off from its other occupants by a closed door. Nobody would know that she had entered the hall, and if the letter were subsequently missed it would be unlikely that any question regarding its disappearance would ever be asked. If there was no response from Evelyn, Vane, she thought, would not renew his appeal. Jessie had no doubt that the letter contained an appeal of some kind, which might lead to a reconciliation, and she knew that silence is often more potent than an outbreak of anger. She had only to destroy the letter, and the breach between the two people whom she desired to separate would widen automatically.
There was little risk of detection, but standing tensely still, with set lips and her heart beating faster than usual, she shrank from the decisive action. She could still replace the letter, and look for other means of bringing about what she wished. She was self-willed, and endowed with few troublesome principles, but until she had poisoned Evelyn’s mind against Vane she had never done anything flagrantly dishonourable. Then, while she waited, irresolute, a fresh temptation seized her in the shape of a burning desire to learn what the man had to say. He would reveal his feelings in the message, and she could judge the strength of her rival’s influence over him.
Yet she hesitated, with a half-instinctive recognition of the fact that the decision she must make was an eventful one. She had transgressed grievously in one recent interview with Evelyn, but, while she had no idea of making reparation, she could, at least, stop short of a second offence. She had perhaps, not gone too far yet, but if she ventured a little farther, she might be driven on against her will and become inextricably involved in an entanglement of dishonourable treachery.
The issue hung in the balance – the slightest thing would have turned the scale – when she heard footsteps outside and the tinkle of a bell. Moving with a start, she slipped back into the room just before the maid opened the adjacent door. In another moment or two, she thrust the envelope inside her dress, and gathered her composure as Mrs. Nairn and Evelyn entered the hall. The former approached the table and turned over the handful of letters.
“Two for ye from England, Evelyn, and one or two for me,” she said, and, as Jessie noticed, flashed a quick glance at her companion. “Nothing else,” she added. “I had thought Vane would maybe send a bit note from one of the Island ports to say how he was getting on.”
Then Jessie rose to greet her hostess. The question was decided; it was too late to replace the letter now. She could not remember what they talked about during the next half-hour, but she took her part until Nairn came in, and contrived to have a word with him before leaving. Mrs. Nairn had gone out to give some instructions about supper and, when Evelyn followed her, Jessie turned to Nairn.
“Mr. Vane would be at Comox now,” she said. “Have you any idea of recalling him? Of course, I know a little about the Clermont affairs.”
Nairn glanced at her with thoughtful eyes. “I’m no acquainted with any reason that would render such a course necessary.”
Evelyn reappeared shortly after this, and on the whole Jessie was glad of it, but she excused herself from staying for the evening meal, and walked home thinking hard. It was needful that Vane should be recalled, and though he had written to Evelyn, she still meant to send him word. He would be grateful to her, and, indignant and wounded as she was, she would not own herself beaten. She would warn the man, and afterwards, perhaps allow Nairn to send him a second message.
On reaching her brother’s house she went straight to her own room and tore open the envelope. The colour receded from her face as she read, and sinking into a chair she sat still with hands clenched. The message was terse, but it was stirringly candid, and even where the man did not fully reveal his feelings in his words she could read between the lines. There was no doubt that he had given his heart unreservedly into her rival’s keeping.
For a while she sat still, and then, stooping swiftly, seized the letter, which she had dropped, and rent it into fragments. Her eyes had grown hard and cruel; love of the only kind she was capable of had suddenly turned to hate. What was more, it was a hate that could be gratified.
A little later, Horsfield came in, and though she was very composed now, she noticed that he looked at her in an unusual manner once or twice during the meal that followed.
“You make me feel you have something on your mind,” she said at length.
“That’s a fact,” Horsfield confessed. The man was attached to and rather proud of his sister.
“Well?”
Horsfield leaned forward confidentially. “See here,” he said, “I’ve always imagined that you would go far, and I’m anxious to see you do so. I wouldn’t like you to throw yourself away.”
His sister could take a hint, but there was information she desired, and the man was speaking with unusual reserve.
“Oh!” she said, with a slight show of impatience, “you must be plainer.”
“Then you have seen a good deal of Vane, and, in case you have any hankering after his scalp, I think I’d better mention that there’s reason to believe he won’t be worth powder and shot before very long.”
“Ah!” said Jessie, with a calmness which was difficult to assume, “you may as well understand that there is nothing between Vane and me. I suppose you mean that Howitson and Bendle are turning against him?”
“Something like that,” Horsfield agreed in a tone which implied that her answer had afforded him relief. “The man has trouble in front of him.”
Jessie changed the subject. What she had gathered from Mrs. Bendle was fully confirmed, but she had made up her mind. Evelyn’s lover might wait for the warning which could save him, but he should wait in vain.
CHAPTER XXVI – ON THE TRAIL
It was a long, wet sail up the coast with the wind ahead, and Carroll was content, when, on reaching Comox, Vane announced his intention of stopping there until the mail came in. Immediately after its arrival, Carroll went ashore, and came back empty-handed.
“Nothing,” he said. “Personally, I’m pleased. Nairn could have advised us here if there had been any striking developments since we left the last place.”
“I wasn’t expecting to hear from him,” Vane replied.
Carroll read keen disappointment in his face, and was not surprised, although the absence of any message meant that it was safe for them to go on with their project, which should have afforded his companion satisfaction.
They got off shortly afterwards and stood out to the northwards.
Most of that day and the next two they drifted with the tides through narrowing waters, though now and then for a few hours they were wafted on by light and fickle winds. At length they crept into the inlet where they had landed on the previous voyage, and on the morning after their arrival set out on the march. There was on this occasion reason to expect more rigorous weather, and the load each carried was an almost crushing one. Where the trees were thinner, the ground was frozen hard, and even in the densest bush the undergrowth was white and stiff with frost, while, when they could see aloft through some chance opening, a forbidding grey sky hung over them.
On approaching the rift in the hillside which he had glanced at when they first passed that way, Vane stopped a moment.
“I looked into that place before, but it didn’t seem worth while to follow it up,” he said. “If you’ll wait, I’ll go a little farther along it.”
Though the air was nipping, Carroll, who was breathless, was content to remain where he was, and he spent some time sitting upon a log before a faint shout reached him. Then he rose, and making his way up the hollow, found his comrade standing upon a jutting ledge.
“I thought you were never coming,” the latter remarked. “Climb up; I’ve something to show you.”
Carroll joined him with difficulty, and Vane stretched out his hand.
“Look yonder,” he said.
Carroll looked and started. They stood in a rocky gateway with a river brawling down the chasm beneath them; but a valley opened up in front. Filled with sombre forest, it ran back almost straight between stupendous walls of hills.
“It answers Hartley’s description,” he said. “After all, I don’t think it’s extraordinary we should have taken so much trouble to push on past the right place.”
“How’s that?” Vane demanded.
Carroll sat down and filled his pipe. “It’s the natural result of possessing a temperament like yours. Somehow, you’ve got it firmly fixed into your mind that everything worth doing must be hard.”
“I’ve generally found it so.”
“I think,” said Carroll, grinning, “you’ve generally made it so. There’s a marked difference between the two. If any means of doing a thing looks easy, you at once conclude it can’t be the right way, which is a mode of reasoning that has never convinced me. In my opinion, it’s more sensible to try the easiest method first.”
“As a rule, that leads to your having to fall back upon the other one; and a frontal attack on a difficulty’s often quicker than considering how you can work round its flank. In this case I’ll own we have wasted a lot of time and taken a good deal of trouble that might have been avoided. But are you going to sit here and smoke?”
“Until I’ve finished my pipe,” Carroll answered. “I expect we’ll find tobacco, among other things, getting pretty scarce before this expedition ends.”
He carried out his intention, and they afterwards pushed on up the valley during the rest of the day. It grew more level as they proceeded, and in spite of the frost, which bound the feeding snows, there was a steady flow of water down the river, which was free from rocky barriers. Vane, who now and then glanced at the latter attentively, stopped when dusk was drawing near, and fixed his gaze on the long ranks of trees that stretched away in front of him; fretted spires of sombre greenery lifted high above a colonnade of mighty trunks.
“Does anything in connection with this bush strike you?” he asked.
“Its stiffness, if that’s what you mean,” Carroll suggested, smiling. “These big conifers look as if they’d been carved. They’re impressive, in a way, but they’re too artificial.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Vane informed him impatiently.
“To tell the truth,” said Carroll, “I didn’t suppose it was. Anyway, these trees aren’t spruce. They’re red cedar, the stuff they make the roofing shingles of.”
“Precisely. Just now, shingles are in good demand in the Province, and with the wooden towns springing up on the prairie, Western millers can hardly send roofing material across the Rockies fast enough. Besides this, I haven’t struck a creek more adapted for running logs down, and the last sharp drop to tidewater would give power for a mill. I’m only puzzled that none of the timber-lease prospectors has recorded the place.”
“That’s easy to understand,” said Carroll. “Like you, they’d no doubt first search the most difficult spots to get at.”
They went on in another minute, and pitched their light tent beside the creek when darkness fell.
“By the by, I thought you were disappointed when you got no mail at Comox,” Carroll remarked at length, feeling that he was making something of a venture.
“I was,” said Vane.
This was not encouraging, but Carroll persisted. “That’s strange, because your hearing nothing from Nairn left you free to go ahead, which, one would suppose, was what you wanted.”
Vane, as it happened, was in a confidential mood; though usually averse from sharing his troubles, he felt he needed sympathy. “I’d better confess I wrote Miss Chisholm a few lines from Nanaimo.”
“Ah!” said Carroll softly; “and she didn’t answer you. Now, I couldn’t well help noticing that you were rather in her bad graces that night at Nairn’s. No doubt, you’re acquainted with the reason?”
“I’m not,” Vane replied. “That’s just the trouble.”
Carroll reflected. He had an idea that Miss Horsfield was somehow connected with the matter, but this was a suspicion he could not mention.
“Well,” he said, “as I pointed out, you’re addicted to taking the hardest way. When we came up here before, you marched past this valley, chiefly because it was close at hand; but I don’t want to dwell on that. Has it occurred to you that you did something of the same kind when you were at the Dene? The way that was then offered you was easy.”
“This is not the kind of subject one cares to talk about; but you ought to know I couldn’t allow them to force Miss Chisholm upon me against her will. It was unthinkable! Besides, looking at it in the most cold-blooded manner, it would have been foolishness, for which we’d both have to pay afterwards.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Carroll thoughtfully. “There were the Sabine women among other instances. Didn’t they cut off their hair to make bow-strings for their abductors?”
His companion made no answer, and Carroll, deciding that he had ventured as far as was prudent, talked of something else until they crept into the little tent, and soon afterwards they fell asleep.
They started with the first of the daylight next morning, but the timber grew denser and more choked with underbrush as they proceeded, and for several days they wearily struggled through it and the clogging masses of tangled, withered fern. Besides this, they were forced to clamber over fallen trunks, when the ragged ends of the snapped-off branches caught their loads. Their shoulders ached, their boots were ripped, their feet were badly galled; but they held on stubbornly, plunging deeper into the mountains all the while.
Soon after setting out one morning, they climbed a clearer hillside to look about them. High up ahead, the crest of the white range gleamed dazzlingly against leaden cloud in a burst of sunshine; below, dark forest, still wrapped in gloom, filled all the valley; and in between, on the middle slopes, a belt of timber touched by the light shone with a curious silvery lustre. Though it was some distance off, probably a day’s journey, allowing for the difficulty of the march, Vane gazed at it earnestly. The trees were bare – there was no doubt of that, for the dwindling ranks, diminished by the distance, stood out against the snow-streaked rock like rows of rather thick needles set upright. Their straightness and the way they glistened suggested the resemblance.
“Ominous, isn’t it?” Carroll said at length. “If this is the valley Hartley came down, and everything points to that, we should be getting near the spruce.”
Vane’s face grew set. “Yes,” he agreed. “There has been a big fire up yonder; but whether it has swept the lower ground or not is more than I can tell. We’ll find out early to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XXVII – THE END OF THE SEARCH
The two men made a hurried breakfast in the cold dawn and not long afterwards they were struggling through thick timber, when the light suddenly grew a little clearer. Carroll remarked upon the fact and Vane’s face hardened.
“We’re either coming to a swamp, or the track the fire has swept is close in front,” the latter said.
A thicket lay before him, but he smashed savagely through the midst of it, the undergrowth snapping and crackling about his limbs. Then there was a network of tangled branches to be crossed, and afterwards, reaching slightly clearer ground, he broke into a run. Three or four minutes later, he stopped, breathless and ragged, with his rent boots scarcely clinging to his feet; and Carroll, who came up with him, gazed eagerly about.
The living forest rose behind them, an almost unbroken wall, but ahead the trees ran up in detached and blackened spires. Their branches had vanished; every cluster of sombre-green needles and delicate spray had gone; the great rampikes, as they are called, looked like shafts of charcoal. About their feet lay crumbling masses of calcined wood which grew more and more numerous where there were open spaces farther on and then the bare, black columns ran on again, up the valley and the steep hill benches on either hand. It was a weird scene of desolation; impressive to the point of being appalling in its suggestiveness of widespread ruin.
For the space of a minute the men gazed at it; and then Vane, stretching out his hand, pointed to a snow-sheeted hill.
“That’s the peak Hartley mentioned,” he said in a voice which was strangely incisive. “Give me the axe.”
He took it from his comrade and, striding forward, attacked the nearest rampike. Twice the keen blade sank noiselessly overhead, scattering a black dust in the frosty air; and then there was a clear, ringing thud. After that, Vane smote on with a determined methodical swiftness, until Carroll grabbed his shoulder.
“Look out!” he cried. “It’s going.”
Vane stepped back a few paces; the trunk reeled and rushed downwards: there was a deafening crash, and they were enveloped in a cloud of gritty dust. Through the midst of it they dimly saw two more great trunks collapse; and then somewhere up the valley a series of thundering shocks, which both knew were not echoes, broke out. The sound jarred upon Carroll’s nerves, as the thud of the felled rampike had not done, but Vane picked up one of the chips and handed it to him.
“We have found Hartley’s spruce,” he said.
Carroll did not answer for a minute. After all, when defeat must be faced, there was very little to be said, though his companion’s expression troubled him. Its grim stolidity was portentous.
“I suppose,” he remarked at length, “nothing could be done with it?”
Vane pointed to the butt of the tree, which showed a space of clean wood surrounded by a blackened rim.
“You can’t make marketable pulp of charcoal, and the price would have to run pretty high before it would pay for ripping most of the log away to get at the residue,” he answered harshly.
“But there may be some unburned spruce farther on,” Carroll urged.
“It’s possible,” said Vane. “I’m going to find out.”
This was a logical determination; but, in spite of his recent suggestion, Carroll realised that he would have abandoned the search there and then, had the choice been left to him, in which he did not think he was singular. After all they had undergone, the shock of the disappointment was severe. He could have faced a failure to locate the spruce with some degree of philosophical calm; but to find it at last, useless, was very much worse. But he did not expect his companion to turn back yet: before he desisted, Vane would seek for and examine every unburned tree. What was more, Carroll, who thought the search could serve no purpose, would have to accompany him. Then the latter noticed that Vane was waiting for him to speak, and he decided that this was a situation which he had better endeavour to treat lightly.
“I think I’ll have a smoke,” he said. “I’m afraid any remarks I could make wouldn’t do justice to the occasion. Language has its limits.”
He sat down on the charred log and took out his pipe before he proceeded: “A brûlée’s not a nice place to wander about in when there’s any wind, and I’ve an idea there’s some coming, though it’s quiet now.”
Shut in, as they were, in the deep hollow with the towering snows above them, it was impressively still; and in conjunction with the sight of the black desolation the deep silence reacted upon Carroll’s nerves. He longed to escape from it, to make a noise, though this, if done unguardedly, might bring more of the rampikes thundering down. He could hear tiny flakes of charcoal falling from them, and though the fire had long gone out, a faint and curious crackling, as if the dead embers were stirring. He wondered if this were some effect of the frost; it struck him as disturbing and weird.