Part 18 (1/2)

But a spirit of restlessness drove her back into the city. And at nightfall she went up to her room and threw herself wearily on the bed.

She was tired, body and spirit, and lonely. Nor was this lightened by the surety that she would be lonelier still before she found a niche to fit herself in and gather the threads of her life once more into some orderly pattern.

In the morning she felt better, even to the point of going over the newspapers and jotting down several advertis.e.m.e.nts calling for office help. Her brief experience in Cariboo Meadows had not led her to look kindly on teaching as a means of livelihood. And stenographers seemed to be in demand. Wherefore, she reasoned that wages would be high.

With the list in her purse, she went down on Hastings--which runs like a huge artery through the heart of the city, with lesser streets crossing and diverging.

But she made no application for employment. For on the corner of Hastings and Seymour, as she gathered her skirt in her hand to cross the street, some one caught her by the arm, and cried:

”Well, forevermore, if it isn't Hazel Weir!”

And she turned to find herself facing Loraine Marsh--a Granville school chum--and Loraine's mother. Back of them, with wide and startled eyes, loomed Jack Barrow.

He pressed forward while the two women overwhelmed Hazel with a flood of exclamations and questions, and extended his hand. Hazel accepted the overture. She had long since gotten over her resentment against him. She was furthermore amazed to find that she could meet his eye and take his hand without a single flutter of her pulse. It seemed strange, but she was glad of it. And, indeed, she was too much taken up with Loraine Marsh's chatter, and too genuinely glad to hear a friendly voice again, to dwell much on ghosts of the past.

They stood a few minutes on the corner; then Mrs. Marsh proposed that they go to the hotel, where they could talk at their leisure and in comfort. Loraine and her mother took the lead. Barrow naturally fell into step with Hazel.

”I've been wearing sackcloth and ashes, Hazel,” he said humbly. ”And I guess you've got about a million apologies coming from everybody in Granville for the shabby way they treated you. Shortly after you left, somebody on one of the papers ferreted out the truth of that Bush affair, and the vindictive old hound's reasons for that compromising legacy were set forth. It seems this newspaper fellow connected up with Bush's secretary and the nurse. Also, Bush appears to have kept a diary--and kept it posted up to the day of his death--poured out all his feelings on paper, and repeatedly a.s.serted that he would win you or ruin you. And it seems that that night after you refused to come to him when he was hurt, he called in his lawyer and made that codicil--and spent the rest of the time till he died gloating over the chances of it besmirching your character.”

”I've grown rather indifferent about it,” Hazel replied impersonally.

”But he succeeded rather easily. Even you, who should have known me better, were ready to believe the very worst.”

”I've paid for it,” Barrow pleaded. ”You don't know how I've hated myself for being such a cad. But it taught me a lesson--if you'll not hold a grudge against me. I've wondered and worried about you, disappearing the way you did. Where have you been, and how have you been getting on? You surely look well.” He bent an admiring glance on her.

”Oh, I've been every place, and I can't complain about not getting on,”

she answered carelessly.

For the life of her, she could not help making comparisons between the man beside her and another who she guessed would by now be bearing up to the crest of the divide that overlooked the green and peaceful vista of forest and lake, with the Babine Range lying purple beyond. She wondered if Roaring Bill Wagstaff would ever, under any circ.u.mstances, have looked on her with the scornful, angry distrust that Barrow had once betrayed. And she could not conceive of Bill Wagstaff ever being humble or penitent for anything he had done. Barrow's att.i.tude was that of a little boy who had broken some plaything in a fit of anger and was now woefully trying to put the pieces together again. It amused her. Indeed, it afforded her a distinctly un-Christian satisfaction, since she was not by nature of a meek or forgiving spirit. He had made her suffer; it was but fitting that he should know a pang or two himself.

Hazel visited with the three of them in the hotel parlor for a matter of two hours, went to luncheon with them, and at luncheon Loraine Marsh brought up the subject of her coming home to Granville with them. The Bush incident was discussed and dismissed. On the question of returning, Hazel was noncommittal. The idea appealed strongly to her.

Granville was home. She had grown up there. There were a mult.i.tude of old ties, a.s.sociations, friends to draw her back. But whether her home town would seem the same, whether she would feel the same toward the friends who had held aloof in the time when she needed a friend the most, even if they came flocking back to her, was a question that she thought of if she did not put it in so many words. On the other hand, she knew too well the drear loneliness that would close upon her in Vancouver when the Marshes left.

”Of course you'll come! We won't hear of leaving you behind. So you can consider that settled.” Loraine Marsh declared at last. ”We're going day after to-morrow. So is Mr. Barrow.”

Jack walked with her out to the Ladysmith, and, among other things, told her how he happened to be in the coast city.

”I've been doing pretty well lately,” he said. ”I came out here on a deal that involved about fifty thousand dollars. I closed it up just this morning--and the commission would just about buy us that little house we had planned once. Won't you let bygones be bygones, Hazie?”

”It might be possible, Jack,” she answered slowly, ”if it were not for the fact that you took the most effective means a man could have taken to kill every atom of affection I had for you. I don't feel bitter any more--I simply don't feel at all.”

”But you will,” he said eagerly. ”Just give me a chance. I was a hot-headed, jealous fool, but I never will be again. Give me a chance, Hazel.”

”You'll have to make your own chances,” she said deliberately. ”I refuse to bind myself in any way. Why should I put myself out to make you happy when you destroyed all the faith I had in you? You simply didn't trust me. You wouldn't trust me again. If slander could turn you against me once it might a second time. Besides, I don't care for you as a man wants a woman to care for him. And I don't think I'm going to care--except, perhaps, in a friendly way.”

And with that Barrow had to be content.

He called for her the next day, and took her, with the Marshes, out for a launch ride, and otherwise devoted himself to being an agreeable cavalier. On the launch excursion it was settled definitely that Hazel should accompany them East. She had no preparations to make. The only thing she would like to have done--return Roaring Bill's surplus money--she could not do. She did not know how or where to reach him with a letter. So far as Granville was concerned, she could always leave it if she desired, and she was a trifle curious to know how all her friends would greet her now that the Bush mystery was cleared up and the legacy explained.

So that at dusk of the following day she and Loraine Marsh sat in a Pullman, flattening their noses against the car window, taking a last look at the environs of Vancouver as the train rolled through the outskirts of the city. Hazel told herself that she was going home.