Читать книгу The Intriguers - Harold Bindloss - Страница 11

After an excellent dinner, Mrs. Keith took Blanche away, and the men found a quiet corner in the rotunda, where they sat talking for a while.

"I have an appointment to keep and must go in a few minutes," Blake said, glancing at his watch. "Make my excuses to your wife; I shall not see her again. It would be better: there's no reason why she should be reminded of anything unpleasant now. She's a good woman, Bertram, and I'm glad she didn't shrink from me. It would have been a natural thing, but I believe she was sorry and was anxious to make all the allowances she could."

Challoner was silent for a few moments, his face showing signs of strain.

"I don't deserve her, Dick; the thought of it troubles me. She doesn't know me for what I really am!"

"Rot!" Blake exclaimed. "It's your misfortune that you're a sentimentalist with a habit of exaggerating things; but if you don't indulge in your weakness too much, you'll go a long way. You showed the true Challoner pluck when you smoked out that robbers' nest in the hills, and the pacification of the frontier valley was a smart piece of work. When I read about the business I never thought you would pull it off with the force you had. It must have impressed the authorities, and you'll get something better than your major's commission before long. I understand that you're already looked upon as a coming man."

It was a generous speech, but it was justified, for Challoner had shown administrative as well as military skill in the affairs his cousin mentioned. However, he still looked troubled, and his color was higher than usual.

"Dick," he said, "you know all I owe to you. I wish you would let me repay you in the only way I can. You know———"

"No," Blake interrupted curtly; "it's impossible! Your father made me a similar offer, and I couldn't consent. I suppose I have the Blakes' carelessness about money, but what I get from my mother's little property keeps me on my feet." He laughed as he went on: "It's lucky that your people, knowing the family failing, arranged matters so that the principal could not be touched. Besides, I've a plan for adding to my means."

Bertram dropped the subject. Dick was often rather casual and inconsequent, but there was a stubborn vein in him. When he took the trouble to think a matter out he was apt to prove immovable.

"Anyway, you will let me know how you get on?"

"I think not. What good would it do? While I'm grateful, it's better that the Challoners should have nothing more to do with me. Think of your career, keep your wife proud of you—she has good reason for being so—and let me go my way and drop out of sight again. I'm a common adventurer and have been mixed up in matters that fastidious people would shrink from—which may happen again. Still, I manage to get a good deal of pleasure out of the life; it suits me in many ways." He rose, holding out his hand. "Good-by, Bertram. We may run across each other somewhere again."

"I'll always be glad to do so," Challoner said with feeling. "Be sure

I won't forget what a generous thing you've done for me, Dick."

Blake turned away, but when he left the hotel his face was sternly set. It had cost him something to check his cousin's friendly advances and break the last connection between himself and the life he once had led; but he knew it must be broken, and he felt no pang of envious bitterness. For many years Bertram had been a good and generous friend, and Blake sincerely wished him well.

The Challoners left by the Pacific Express the next morning, and that evening a group of men were engaged in conversation at one end of the hotel rotunda. One was a sawmill owner; another served the Hudson Bay Company in the northern wilds; the third was a young, keen-eyed American, quick in his movements and concise in speech.

"You're in lumber, aren't you?" he said, taking a strip of wood from his pocket and handing it to the mill owner. "What would you call this?"

"Cedar, sawn from a good log."

"That's so; red cedar. You know something about that material?"

"I ought to, considering how much of it I've cut. Been in the business for twenty years."

The American took out another strip.

"The same stuff, sir. How would you say it had been treated?"

The sawmill man carefully examined the piece of wood.

"It's not French polish, but I've never seen varnish as good as this. Except that it's clear and shows the grain, it's more like some rare old Japanese lacquer."

"It is varnish. Try to scrape it with your knife."

The man failed to make a mark on it, and the American looked at him with a smile.

"What would you think of it as a business proposition?"

"If not too dear, it ought to drive every other high-grade varnish off the market. Do you make the stuff?"

"We're not ready to sell it yet: can't get hold of the raw material in quantities, and we're not satisfied about the best flux. I'll give you my card."

It bore the address of a paint and varnish factory in Connecticut, with the words, "Represented by Cyrus P. Harding," at the bottom.

"Well," said the lumber man, "you seem to have got hold of a good thing, Mr. Harding; but if you're not open to sell it, what has brought you over here?"

"I'm looking round; we deal in all kinds of paints, and miss no chance of a trade. Then I'm going 'way up Northwest. Is there anything doing in my line there?"

"Not much," the Hudson Bay man answered him. "You may sell a few kegs along the railroad track, but as soon as you leave it you'll find no paint required. The settlers use logs or shiplap and leave them in the raw. The trip won't pay you."

"Well, I'll see the country, and find out something about the coniferous gums."

"They're soft and resinous. Don't you get the material you make good varnish of from the tropics?"

Harding laughed.

"You people don't know your own resources. There's 'most everything a white man needs right on this American continent, if he'll take the trouble to look for it. Lumber changes some of its properties with the location in which it grows, I guess. We have pines in Florida, but when you get right up to their northern limit you'll find a difference."

"There's something in that," the sawmill man agreed.

"If you're going up to their northern limit, you'll see some of the roughest and wildest country on this earth," declared the Hudson Bay agent. "It's almost impossible to get through in summer unless you stick to the rivers, and to cross it in winter with the dog sleds is pretty tough work."

"So I've heard." said Harding. "Well, I'm going to take a smoke. Will you come along?"

They declined, and when he left them one smiled at the other.

"They're smart people across the frontier, but to send a man into the northern timber belt looking for paint trade openings or resin they can make varnish of is about the limit to commercial enterprise."

Harding was leaning back in his chair in the smoking-room with a frown on his face when Blake joined him. He had a nervous, alert look, and was dressed with fastidious neatness.

"So you have come along at last!" he remarked in an ironical tone.

"Feel like getting down to business, or shall we put it off again?"

"Sorry I couldn't come earlier," Blake replied. "Somehow or other I couldn't get away. Things kept turning up to occupy me."

"It's a way they seem to have. Your trouble is that you're too diffuse; you spread yourself out too much. You want to fix your mind on one thing; and that will have to be business as soon as we leave here."

"I dare say you're right. My interest's apt to wander; but if you take advantage of every opportunity that offers, you get most out of life. Concentration's good; but if you concentrate on a thing and then don't get it, you begin to think what a lot of other things you've missed."

"That may be all right," said Harding dubiously; "but we're going to concentrate on business right now. I have a wife, and I don't forget it. Marianna—that's Mrs. Harding—is living in a two-room tenement, making her own dresses and cooking on a gasoline stove, so's to give me my chance for finding the gum. And I'm here in an expensive hotel, where I've made about two dollars' commission in three days. We have got to pull out as soon as possible. Did you get any information from the Hudson Bay man?"

"I learned something about our route through the timber belt, and the kind of camp outfit we'll want; the temperature's often fifty below in winter. Then I was in Revillons', looking at their cheaper furs, and in a store where they supply especially light hand-sleds, snowshoes, and patent cooking cans. We must have these things good, and I estimate they'll cost about six hundred dollars."

"Six hundred dollars will make a big hole in our capital."

"I'm afraid so, but we can't run the risk of freezing to death; and we may have to spend all winter in the wilds."

"That's true; I don't go back until I find the gum."

Harding's tone was resolute, and when he leaned forward, musing, with knitted brows, Blake gave him a sympathetic glance. Harding had entered the paint factory when a very young man, and had studied chemistry in his scanty spare time, with the object of understanding his business better. He found the composition of varnishes an interesting subject, and as the best gums employed came from the tropics and were expensive he began to experiment with the exudations from American trees. His employers hinted that he was wasting his time, but Harding continued, trying to test a theory that the texture and hardness of the gums might depend upon climatic temperature. By chance, a resinous substance which had come from the far North fell into his hands, and he found that, when combined with an African gum, it gave astonishing results. Before this happened, however, his employers had sent him out on the road; and as they were sceptical about his discovery and he would not take them fully into his confidence, they merely promised to keep his place open for a time. Now he was going to search for the gum at his own expense.

"We'll order the outfit in the morning," he said presently, glancing toward a man who sat across the room. "Do you think that fellow Clarke can hear? I've a notion that he's been watching us."

"Does it matter?"

"You must bear in mind that we have a valuable secret; and I understand that he lives somewhere in the country we are going through."

As he spoke, the Hudson Bay agent came in and walked over to Clarke.

"That was good stuff you gave me a dose of last night," he said to him.

"It cured my ague right off."

"It's a powerful drug," Clarke answered, "and must be used with discretion. If you feel you need it, I'll give you another dose. It's an Indian remedy; I learned the secret up in the timber belt, but I Spent some time experimenting before I was satisfied about its properties."

"Then you get on with Indians?"

"Yes," Clarke said shortly. "It isn't difficult when you grasp their point of view. You ought to know something about that. On the whole, the Hudson Bay people treat the Indians well; there was a starving lad you picked up suffering from snow-blindness near Jack-pine River and sent back safely to his tribe."

"That's so; but I don't know how you knew. I'm sure I haven't talked about it, and my clerk has never left the factory. There wasn't another white man within a week's Journey."

Clarke smiled.

"I heard, all the same. You afterward had some better furs than usual brought in."

The agent looked surprised.

"Some of these people are grateful, but although I've been in the country twelve years I don't pretend to understand them."

"They understand you. The proof of it is that you can keep your factory open in a district where furs are rather scarce, and you have had very few mishaps. You can take that as a compliment."

Blake noticed something significant in Clarke's tone.

"Then you know the Jack-pine?" the agent asked.

"Pretty well, though it's not easy to reach. I came down it one winter from the Wild-goose hills. I'd put in the winter with a band of Stonies."

"The Northern Stonies? Did you find them easy to get on with?"

"They knew some interesting things," Clarke answered dryly. "I went there to study."

"Ah!" said the agent. "What plain folk, for want of a better name, call the occult. But it's fortunate that there's a barred door between white men and the Indian's mysticism."

"It has been opened to a white man once or twice."

"Oh, yes! He stepped through into the darkness and never came out again. There was an instance I could mention."

"Civilized people would have no use for him afterward," Harding broke in. "We want sane, normal men on this continent. Neurotics, hoodoos and fakirs are worse than the plague; there's contagion in their fooling."

"How would you define them? Those who don't fit in with your ideas of the normal?" Clarke sneered.

"I know a clean, straight man when I meet him, and that's enough for me," Harding retorted.

"I imagine that cleverer people are now and then deceived," said

Clarke, moving away as he spoke.

"That's a man I want to keep clear of," Harding declared. "There's something wrong about him; he's not wholesome!"