Читать книгу The Protector - Harold Bindloss - Страница 3

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A light breeze was blowing down the inlet, scented with the smell of the firs, and the tiny ripples it chased across the water splashed musically against the bows of the canoe. There was a thud as the blade struck the water, and the long, light hull forged onwards with slightly lifted, bird’s-head prow, while the two men swung forward for the next stroke with a rhythmic grace of motion. They knelt, facing forward, in the bottom of the craft; and dissimilar as they were in features and, to some extent, in character, the likeness between them was stronger than the difference. Both bore the unmistakable stamp of a wholesome life spent in vigorous labour in the open. Their eyes were clear, and like those of most bushmen singularly steady; their skin was weather-darkened, and they were leanly muscular.

On either side of the lane of green water giant firs, Cedars and balsams, crept down the rocky hills to the whitened driftwood fringe. They formed part of the great coniferous forest which rolls westwards from the wet coast range of Canada’s Pacific province, and, overleaping the Strait, spreads across the rugged and beautiful wilderness of Vancouver Island. Ahead, clusters of little frame houses showed up here and there in openings among the trees, and a small sloop, towards which the canoe was heading, lay anchored near the wharf.

The men had plied the paddle during most of that day, from inclination rather than necessity, because they could have hired Siwash Indians to undertake the labour for them, had they been so minded. They were, though their appearance did not suggest it, moderately prosperous; but their prosperity was of recent date, and they had been accustomed to doing everything for themselves, as are most of the men who dwell among the woods and ranges of British Columbia.

Vane, who knelt nearest the bows, was twenty-seven years of age, and he had spent nine of them chopping trees, driving cattle, poling canoes, and assisting in the search for useful minerals among the snow-clad ranges. He wore a wide, grey felt hat which had lost its shape from frequent wettings, an old shirt of the same colour, and blue duck trousers, rent in places; but the light attire revealed a fine muscular symmetry. He had brown hair and brown eyes, and a certain warmth of colouring which showed through the deep bronze of his skin hinted at a sanguine and somewhat impatient temperament.

His companion, Carroll, had lighter hair and grey eyes, and his appearance was a little less vigorous and a little more refined, though he, too, had toiled hard and borne many privations in the wilderness. His dress resembled Vane’s. The two had located a valuable mineral property some months earlier, and though this does not invariably follow, had held their own against city financiers during the negotiations that preceded the floating of a company to work the mine. That they had succeeded in securing a good deal of the stock was largely due to Vane’s pertinacity, and said something for his acumen; but both had been trained in a very hard school.

As the wooden houses ahead rose higher and the sloop’s grey hull grew into sharper shape upon the clear green shining of the brine, Vane broke into a snatch of song.

“Had I the wings of a dove, I would fly,

Just for to-night, to the Old Country.”

He stopped and laughed. “It’s nine years since I’ve seen it, but I can’t get those lines out of my head. Perhaps it’s because of the girl who sang them. Somehow, I felt sorry for her. She had remarkably fine eyes.”

“Sea-blue,” said his companion. “I don’t grasp the connection between the last two remarks.”

“Neither do I,” Vane admitted. “I suppose there isn’t one. But they weren’t sea-blue, unless you mean the depth of indigo, when you’re out of sounding. They’re Irish eyes.”

“You’re not Irish. There’s not a trace of the Celt in you, unless it’s your habit of getting indignant with the folks who don’t share your views.”

“No, sir,” answered Vane. “By birth, I’m North Country—England, I mean. Over there, we’re respectable before everything, and smart at getting hold of whatever’s worth having. As a matter of fact, you Ontario Scotsmen are mighty like us.”

“You certainly came out well ahead of those city men who put up the dollars,” said Carroll. “I guess it’s in the blood, though I fancied they would take the mine from you.”

Vane brought his paddle down with a thud. “‘Just for to-night, to the Old Country,’” he hummed, and added: “It sticks to one.”

“Why did you leave the Old Country?”

“That’s a blamed injudicious question to ask, but you shall have an answer. There was a row at home—I was a sentimentalist then and just eighteen—and as the result of it I came out to Canada.” His voice changed and grew softer. “I hadn’t many relatives, and except one sister, they’re all gone now. That reminds me—she’s not going to lecture for the county education authorities any longer.”

The sloop was close ahead, and, slackening the paddling they ran alongside. Vane glanced at his watch when they had climbed on board.

“Supper will be finished at the hotel,” he remarked. “You had better get the stove lighted. It’s your turn, and that rascally Siwash seems to have gone off again. If he’s not back when we’re ready, we’ll sail without him.”

Carroll, accordingly, prepared the meal, and when they had finished it they lay on deck smoking with a content which was not altogether accounted for by a satisfied appetite. They had spent several anxious months, during which they had come very near the end of their slender resources, arranging for the exploitation of the mine, and now at last the work was over. Vane had that day made his final plans for the construction of a road and wharf by which the ore could be economically shipped for reduction, or as the alternative to this, for the erection of a small smelting plant. They had bought the sloop as a convenient means of conveyance and shelter, since they could live in some comfort on board. Now they could take their ease for a while, which was a very unusual thing to both of them.

“I suppose you’re bent on sailing this craft back?” Carroll said at length, “We could hire a couple of Siwash to take her home while we rode across the island and got the cars to Victoria. Besides, there’s that steamboat coming down the coast to-night.”

"Either way would cost a good deal extra, Vane pointed out.

“That’s true,” Carroll agreed with an amused look, “You could charge it to the Company.”

Vane laughed. “You and I have a big stake in the concern, and I haven’t got used to spending money unnecessarily yet. I’ve been mighty glad to earn 2.50 by working from sun-up until dark, though I didn’t always get it afterwards. So have you.”

“How are you going to dispose of your dollars, then? You have a balance in cash, as well as the shares.”

“It has occurred to me that I might spend a few months in the Old Country. Have you ever been over?”

“I was across some time ago, but if you would sooner I went with you, I’ll come along. We could start as soon as we’ve arranged the few matters left open in Vancouver.”

Vane was glad to hear it. He knew little about Carroll’s antecedents, but the latter was obviously a man of education, and they had been comrades for the last three years. During that time they had learnt to trust each other, and to bear with each other’s idiosyncrasies. Filling his pipe again as he lay in the fading sunlight, Vane looked back on the nine years he had passed in Canada; and allowing for the periods of exposure to cold and wet, and the almost ceaseless toil, he admitted that he might have spent them more unpleasantly.

Having quarrelled with his relatives, he had come out with only a few pounds and had promptly set about earning a living with his hands. When he had been in the country several years, however, a friend of the family had sent him a small sum, and the young man had made a judicious use of the money. The lot he bought outside a wooden town doubled in value, and the share he took in a new orchard paid him well; but he had held aloof from the cities, and his only recklessness had been prospecting journeys into the wilderness. Prospecting for minerals is at once an art and a gamble, but even in this direction, in which he had had keen wits against him, Vane had held his own; but there was one side of life with which he was practically unacquainted.

There are no social amenities on the rangeside or in the bush, and women are scarce. Vane had lived in Spartan simplicity; his passions had remained unstirred, and now he was seven-and-twenty, sound and vigorous of body and, as a rule, level of head. At length, however, there was to be a change. He had earned an interlude of leisure, and he meant to enjoy it, without, as he prudently determined, making a fool of himself.

Presently Carroll took his pipe from his mouth.

“Are you going ashore to the show to-night?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Vane lazily. “It’s a long while since I’ve struck another entertainment of any kind, and that yellow-haired mite’s dancing is one of the prettiest things I’ve seen.”

“You’ve been twice already,” Carroll pointed out. “The girl with the blue eyes sings her first song rather well.”

“I think so,” Vane agreed with a significant absence of embarrassment. “In this case a good deal depends upon the singing—the interpretation, don’t they call it? The thing’s on the border, and I’ve struck places where they’d have made it gross; but the girl only brought out the mischief. Strikes me she didn’t see there was anything else in it.”

“That’s curious, considering the crowd she goes about with,” Carroll suggested. “Aren’t you cultivating a critical faculty?”

Vane disregarded the ironical question. “She’s Irish; that accounts for a good deal.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “If I knew how to do it, I’d like to give the child who dances five dollars. It must be a tough life, and her mother—the woman at the piano—looks ill. I wonder why they came to a place like this?”

“Struck a cold streak at Nanaimo, the storekeeper told me,” Carroll replied. “Anyway, since we’re to start at sun-up, I’m staying here.” Then he smiled. “Has it struck you that your attendance in the front seats is liable to misconception?”

His companion rose without answering and dropped into the canoe. Thrusting her off, he drove the craft towards the wharf with vigorous strokes, and Carroll shook his head whimsically as he watched him.

“Anybody except myself would conclude that he was waking up at last,” he said.

A minute or two later, Vane swung himself up on to the wharf and strode into the wooden settlement. There were one or two hydraulic mines and a pulp mill in the vicinity, and though the place was by no means populous, a company of third-rate entertainers had arrived some days earlier. On reaching the rude wooden building in which they had given their performance and finding it closed, he accosted a lounger.

“What’s become of the show?” he asked.

“Busted,” replied the man. “Didn’t take the boys’ fancy, and the crowd went out with the stage this afternoon, though I heard that two of the women stayed behind.”

Vane turned away with a slight sense of compassion. He, however, dismissed the matter from his mind, and having been kneeling in a cramped position in the canoe most of the day, decided to stroll along the waterside before going back to the sloop.

Great firs stretched out their sombre branches over the smooth shingle, and now the sun had gone their clean resinous smell was heavy on the dew-cooled air. Here and there brushwood grew among out-cropping rock, and catching sight of what looked like a stripe of woven fabric beneath a brake, he strode towards it. Then he stopped with a start, for a young woman lay with her face hidden from him in an attitude of dejected abandonment. He was about to turn away softly, when she started and looked up at him. Her eyes were wet, but they were of the deep blue he had described to Carroll, and he stood still.

“You shouldn’t give way like that,” he said.

It was all he could think of; but he spoke without obtrusive assurance or pronounced embarrassment, and the girl, who shook out her crumpled skirt over one little foot with a swift movement, choked back a sob, and favoured him with a glance of keen scrutiny as she rose to a sitting posture. She was quick at reading character—the life she led had made that necessary—and his manner and appearance were reassuring. She, however, said nothing, and sitting down on a neighbouring boulder, he took out his pipe from force of habit.

“Well,” he added, in much the same tone as he would have used to a distressed child, “what’s the trouble?”

She told him, speaking on impulse. “They’ve gone off and left me. The takings didn’t meet expenses.”

“That’s bad,” said Vane gravely. “Do you mean they’ve left you alone?”

“No,” replied the girl; “in a way it’s worse than that. I suppose I could go—somewhere—but there’s Mrs.Marvin and Elsie.”

“The child who danced?”

The girl assented, and Vane looked thoughtful.

“The three of you stick together,” he suggested.

“Of course. Mrs.Marvin’s the only friend I have.”

“Then I suppose you’ve no idea what to do?”

His companion confessed it, and explained that it was the cause of her distress and that they had had bad luck of late. Vane could understand that as he looked at her; her dress was shabby, and he fancied she had not been bountifully fed.

“If you stayed here a few days, you could go out with the next stage, and get on to Victoria with the cars,” he said. He paused and continued diffidently: “It could be arranged with the hotel-keeper.”

She laughed in a half-hysterical manner, and he remembered that fares were high in the country.

“I suppose you have no money,” he added, with blunt directness. “I want you to tell Mrs.Marvin that I’ll lend her enough to take you all to Victoria.”

Her face crimsoned, which was not quite what he had expected, and he suddenly felt embarrassed.

“No,” she replied; “I can’t do that. For one thing, it would be too late when we got to Victoria. I think we could get an engagement if we reached Vancouver in time to get to Kamloops by—-”

Vane knitted his brows when he heard the date, and it was a moment or two before he spoke.

“Then,” he said, “there’s only one way you can do so. There’s a little steamboat coming down the coast to-night, and I had half thought of intercepting her and handing the skipper some letters to post in Victoria. He knows me. That’s my sloop yonder, and if I put you on board the steamer, you’d reach Vancouver in good time. We would have sailed at sun-up anyway.”

The girl hesitated, which struck Vane as natural, and turned partly from him. He surmised that she did not know what to make of his offer, though her need was urgent. In the meanwhile he stood up.

“Come along and talk it over with Mrs.Marvin,” he went on. “I’d better tell you I’m Wallace Vane of the Clermont mine. Of course, I know your name from the programme.”

She rose and they walked back to the hotel. Once more it struck him that the girl was pretty and graceful. On reaching the hotel, he sat down on the verandah while she went in, and a few minutes later the elder woman came out and looked at him much as the girl had done. He grew hot under her gaze and repeated his offer in the curtest terms.

“If this breeze holds, we’ll put you on board the steamer soon after daybreak,” he explained.

The woman’s face softened, and he recognised now that there had been suspicion in it. “Thank you,” she added, “we’ll come.” Then she added with an eloquent gesture: “You don’t know what it means to us.”

Vane merely took off his hat and turned away, but a minute or two afterwards he met the hotel-keeper.

“Do these people owe you anything?” he asked.

“Five dollars,” answered the man.

Vane handed him a bill. “Take it out of this, and make any excuse you like. I’m going to put them on board the steamboat.”

The man made no comment, and Vane, striding down to the beach, sent a hail ringing across the water. Carroll appeared on the sloop’s deck and answered him.

“Hallo!” he cried. “What’s the trouble?”

“Get ready the best supper you can manage for three people as quick as you can.”

Then he turned away in a hurry, wondering rather uneasily what Carroll would say when he grasped the situation.