Читать книгу The Ghost of Hemlock Canyon - Harold Bindloss - Страница 3

III

DENIS STARTS WEST

Locomotive bells rang, wheels rolled, and soft-coal smoke floated about the high roof. In the morning the C.P.R. station at Montreal is a busy spot, and Denis Aylward, sitting on his Colonist mattress, studied the hurrying crowd. It looked as if the smart young men and women were importantly occupied; they went by as fast as they could go, and but one or two gave him and his belongings an interested glance.

Denis admitted with a touch of humor that in the busy station he was perhaps exotic, although a swarm of ruder foreign emigrants waited at the end of the platform. His clothes, used on an English farm, were not remarkably good, and he had given the railroad a dollar for his straw bed. Denis, studying the emigrants, hoped the bed had not been used before. A baggage-master at the dock had taken his trunk; his other luggage was on the mattress; a shabby British-warm greatcoat, a tin kettle and plate, and a basket of food. To some extent he obstructed the traffic, but he could not find a quiet spot, and he waited philosophically for the Vancouver express to start.

Since he landed, two or three hours ago, he had got breakfast on a high stool at a cheap restaurant where an electric organ blared. To walk up St. James’s afterward to the big quiet cathedral was some relief; and then in the clear, fresh morning he climbed the Mountain. From the wooded slopes he saw the noble river, and the blue hills rolling back to Vermont. Denis wanted to stay, but at the station all he could find out was that his train would start when the emigrants were on board.

Going downhill by the Windsor, he regarded the ambitious block humorously. At one time, he had stopped at hotels like that; but it was in the good days before the war, and he had since occupied dugouts in France. He strolled back down St. James’s, and bought and loaded a basket at a grocery-store by the Grand Trunk depot. Now he sat on his mattress against the station wall and, smoking a cigarette, reviewed the circumstances that accounted for his being there.

His father was long since dead; his mother died when he was in France, but Denis refused to dwell on that. Although Mrs. Aylward was rather an important lady at the small market town, she was not as rich as Denis had thought and money melted in the war. A council of relations, however, decided that Denis’s sisters must remain at their expensive school and he resume his studies at the lawyer’s office. When he was a registered solicitor, they would talk about things again. In the meantime, the chief trustee promised to see the young fellow through his articled apprenticeship.

Denis was not altogether willing, but he went. In France he had known adventure, strain that stimulated as well as exhausted one, and before the end, responsibility. Young as he was, he had used command, and men had confidently followed where he led. When the war was over he had had enough, but he frankly could not stand the office. To draft a prolix conveyance bored him horribly, and he hated the disputes about small sums at the county court. He wanted to use his nerve and muscle, and when the days got long and spring winds blew, the wide world called.

At length he rebelled, and the trustee who administered Mrs. Aylward’s supposititious estate was frank. Denis had got already all there was for him, and his relations imagined he did not want to squander his sisters’ vanishing inheritance. For all that, if he were resolved to emigrate, his relations would, for six months, help him study practical agriculture at an English farm. Then, if a winter spent in byres and muddy fields had not discouraged him, he might start for Canada.

Denis agreed, and when the winter was gone the trustee wrote him a check. “If at the end of twelve months, you have as much money as you have now, I’ll undertake to double the sum,” he said. “If you have not, you must not expect a fresh subsidy.”

Denis thanked him and said the offer was a sporting offer and he hoped to claim the check. Since he had refused a useful occupation, his relations were perhaps justified to think him something of a wastrel. The check was small; Denis imagined old Stormont meant to try him out, and since he had no illusions about the golden West, he resolved to use stern economy. It accounted for his buying a second-class steamship ticket and crossing Canada on board an emigrant car. Denis was young and sometimes romantic, but he was not at all a fool.

At length it looked as if his train would start. Bells clashed and big, flat-sided baggage-cars, dusty Colonists, dining-cars, and Pullmans rolled into the track; Denis had not imagined a locomotive could haul so large a load. Kneeling on the grimy slabs, he began to roll up his mattress, and two young women passed. One gave him a swift but rather careless glance; the other turned her head and Denis thought her amused. They no doubt knew him for an impecunious tenderfoot, but not very long since fashionable young women had acclaimed him a conquering hero. People soon forgot!

Denis had cultivated philosophy in France, but for a moment or two his glance followed the girls. Their clothes were fashionable and he imagined them important at some Western town. She who had studied him walked with a queer rhythmic grace. Denis did not know if he exaggerated, but he thought her glance imperious. The girl, in fact, had followed the rocky trails of the Pacific Slope, and mountaineers and woodsmen know how to use their feet. They went to a first-class car and Denis folded his greatcoat. He had nothing to do with young women of their type and he must get on board.

Another two girls advanced along the platform. They were young and, in spite of their rather naïve shyness, attractive. Their eyes were liquidly bright, and the bloom the wet west wind gives was on their skin. Denis had got to know the Misses Cullen on board ship.

“We cannot find Danny,” said one in a disturbed voice, marked by a soft Irish intonation. “He went to the lawyer’s office and he’s not come back. The train is going to start. And what will we do?”

“Where is the office?” Denis inquired.

“Danny didn’t tell us. He was to be back in half an hour,” the other replied.

Denis jumped to his feet. He did not consciously stand like a soldier, but he was an athletic young fellow and his balance and pose were good. As a rule his look was careless, but now he knitted his brows. The Misses Cullen trusted him, he knew they had not much money, and he must think for them. Somehow one did trust Denis Aylward.

“You have got your tickets. I suppose your friends will meet you at the other end?”

They agreed and waited, with an implied respect for his judgment that Denis thought humorous.

“It’s awkward, but I think you ought to start,” he said. “You see, the next train goes to-morrow and Montreal hotels are expensive. Then your friends will be at the station and I believe Danny said their home was some distance off across the hills. But you must decide—”

An interpreter began to shout, gates were thrown back, and loaded foreign emigrants streamed across the platform. The girls glanced at the noisy, pushing crowd, hesitated, and then signing Denis, started for the train. He put them on board a second-class car and went back as fast as possible. Nobody had removed his luggage, but he admitted it was not remarkably tempting loot.

Pushing through the crowd about the steps, he put the stuff on board a Colonist car, and surveyed his quarters for the next five days. At one end, behind a partition, was a rusty stove, and a water-tank in the roof supplied a row of small basins. A passage went along the middle of the car, and between the seats on either side were sliding boards, on which one could dine and sleep. Above, hung by chains, polished shelves pulled down from the roof for upper berths. Since he had a British-warm and a dollar mattress, Denis thought he had not much grounds to grumble.

In another way, his luck was good; his traveling companions were British. The women were not numerous, and their clothes carried the stains of the crowded emigrant deck. After the stormy voyage they were pale and jaded. Denis thought the men small clerks, artisans, and so forth, who on their return from France had found their occupation gone. He saw some pinched faces and bent shoulders, but for the most part they were a sturdy lot. Men of their stamp had followed him nobly across the Salient’s mud. Moreover, it looked as if they were resolved to hold the car. Those who knew the Eastern Front had not much use for their recent allies, and three or four muscular fellows kept the steps.

“All British here! Next truck for that lot,” one shouted to a railroad official shepherding a foreign mob.

“I was at Salonika, and I’ve had some,” he explained to Denis.

“Some?” said a companion. “At my shop on another front, we had a ruddy sight too much. The blighters, to show how they liked us, charged us double for all we got—” He turned and gave Denis a twinkling glance. “Looks as if you’d got into the wrong horse-truck, sir!”

Denis smiled. “I expect you spotted the old coat? Well, you see, the pips are gone, and I was not entitled to wear them very long. Anyhow, my ticket is Colonist.”

He got a seat by a window and pulled out his pipe. On the platform the pushing crowd began to melt; steam throbbed, and raucous voices shouted, “All ab-o-a-rd.”

The throbbing steam was quiet, a bell tolled, and the couplings jarred.

“Tails up, the old brigade!” said somebody. “We’re over the top.”

The clanging bell got louder, wheels began to roll, and the long cars lurched ahead. Hoarse shouts marked the Colonists’ advance, and when somebody pulled out a concertina, swelled into a song, and Tipperary rolled along the half-mile train. Laughing and singing, the boys took the Western road, as they took the roads in France; but Denis had not thought to see Montreal citizens on the platforms stand fast and lift their hats. All had not forgotten, and where the job was sternest, the Maple Leaves lay thick in Flanders mud.

Denis thrilled with queer emotion. For one thing, he thought the joker’s remark logical. On board the swift, clean steamship he, so to speak, was yet on British soil; England went where the red ensign flew. Now the flag carried the Canadian beaver, and he fronted an adventure in which headquarters would not think for him. He must trust his luck and his talents, and for all his youth, he admitted they were not remarkably numerous.

In fact, when he studied his companions he thought their chance to make good better than his. For example, one was a blacksmith, and another a carpenter. Men like that could take a job for which, in Canada, the pay was first-class. He knew some athletic games, some old Greek and Latin, and a little about English law; but there he stopped. All he really had was his nerve and muscle. When he turned down his occupation he, so to speak, stripped himself of the rather imaginary advantages one claimed for his sort.

Yet he must not be daunted. In France he had more than once started on a forlorn hope and somehow had triumphantly seen it out. The morning was fresh, the sun shone, and adventure called.