Part 29 (1/2)
”There,” said Ainslie, ”you have the thing in a nutsh.e.l.l. You have, no doubt, formed some idea of Weston's wants, which are rather numerous.
In fact, some of us seem to consider it the correct thing to cultivate them. The more wants you have the greater man you are.”
Ida smiled a little as she remembered a man of considerable importance in the wheat-lands of a.s.siniboia, whom she had last seen sitting, clad in blue s.h.i.+rt and very old trousers, on a huge machine which a double span of reeking horses hauled through the splendid grain. He had driven it since sunrise, and it was dusk of evening then, and his wants were, as she knew, remarkably simple. He bore his share of the burden under a burning sun, but it seemed to her that, had Weston been in his place, he would have ridden around that farm with a gloved hand on his hip, and would have raised it only now and then, imperiously, to direct the toilers. Then she thought of another man, who was like him in some respects, and was then, in all probability, plodding through the lonely bush.
”You mentioned a son,” she said. ”What became of him?”
”He went out to Canada. Quarreled with his father. As I believe I suggested, the lad was at heart a rebel.” Ainslie smiled rather dryly.
”A good many of us are. He wouldn't see that his mother's ideas were apt to get him into trouble when he tried to apply them.”
Ida sat silent for a few moments. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that Weston who had turned his back on Scarthwaite was identical with Weston the camp-packer.
”Do you remember what they quarreled over?” she asked at length.
”Yes,” said Ainslie, who was inclined to wonder at her interest in the subject, ”it was water-finding. It's a thing of which you probably have never heard.”
”I have,” said Ida. ”Won't you go on?”
”Well,” continued Ainslie, ”there was a tenant on this estate who was rather more badly off than the rest of them. He had a piece of upland with rock under it, and in a dry season--though we don't often get one--it was with the greatest trouble he got water enough for his stock. He asked young Weston to find him a likely spot to drive a well. The lad was walking over one parched meadow with the hazel twig in his hand, when his father came upon the procession--everybody belonging to the farm was out with him. Weston, I heard, went purple when he saw what was going on, and, from his point of view, his indignation was perhaps comprehensible. His son was openly, before one of the tenants and a parcel of farm-hands, making use of a superst.i.tious device in which no sane person could believe. Weston, as I remember it, compared him to a gipsy fortune-teller, and went on through the gamut of impostor, mountebank and charlatan, before he commanded him to desist on the moment. I don't quite know what came next, though something was said about a lifted riding-crop, but within the week Clarence started for Canada.”
”He abandoned the attempt to find water?”
Ainslie smiled.
”The farmer dug a well in that meadow, and I believe he uses it still.
He held a lease, and Weston couldn't get rid of him.”
He looked rather hard at Ida, and was slightly astonished at the sparkle in her eyes.
”I'm afraid I've been somewhat talkative,” he said.
”No,” Ida a.s.sured him, and he saw that she was stirred. ”Thank you for telling me.”
He moved away; and by and by Arabella Kinnaird and one of the other women approached the seat. Arabella left her companion a moment, and made a little whimsical gesture as she met Ida's gaze.
”I've been throwing away a good many blandishments on Weston,” she observed. ”He appears prudently reticent on the subject of his relations, and if he has any in Canada, it's evident that he isn't proud of them. Still, I haven't abandoned the amiable intention of extorting a little more information from him.”
CHAPTER XVIII
WESTON'S ADVOCATE
A week had pa.s.sed when Weston, who apparently had some business with Kinnaird, drove over to Scarthwaite again. This time he brought a daughter, who, it appeared, lived for the most part with some more prosperous members of the family. Arriving a little before lunch, they remained until the evening. As it happened, Miss Weston displayed what she evidently considered a kindly interest in Ida, and graciously patronized her as a stranger and a Colonial, who was necessarily ignorant of a good many of the little amenities of life in the old country.
Her intentions were no doubt laudable, but the methods she adopted to set the stranger at her ease were not those most likely to endear the insular English to their cousins across the Atlantic. Ida, to begin with, had not only a spice of temper but also no great reverence for forms and formulas, and the people that she was accustomed to meeting were those who had set their mark upon wide belts of forest and long leagues of prairie. At first she was quietly amused by the patronage of a woman whose right to bestow it consisted apparently in an acquaintance with English people of station, and some proficiency at bridge; but by and by her condescension grew wearisome, and finally exasperating. Miss Weston, however, could not have been expected to recognize this. She was a tall, pale woman, with a coldly formal manner and some taste in dress.
There were several other guests in the house, and the party spent most of the hot afternoon about the tennis net and lounging under the shadow of a big copper beech on the lawn. Once when Miss Weston left her to play in a set at tennis, Arabella Kinnaird leaned over the back of Ida's chair.