Part 33 (1/2)

Ida, who was quite aware that the tending of cattle on trains was not a well-paid occupation, and was usually adopted only by those who desired to save the cost of a ticket, fancied that she understood why he mentioned this, and was not sure that she was pleased. It was, as she recognized, the man's unreasonable pride which impelled him to thrust facts of that kind into the foreground. Just then, however, her father, who had waited a moment or two, stepped forward and shook hands with him.

”Where are you staying in the city?” he asked.

”At Lemoine's boarding-house,” answered Weston, mentioning a street in the French Canadian quarter, from which any one acquainted with the locality could deduce that he found it desirable to study economy.

”Doing anything here?” asked Stirling.

Weston said that he had some mining business in hand; and he looked down at his clothes, when Stirling 'suggested that he should come'

home with them to supper, though, from his previous acquaintance with the man, he was not astonished at the invitation. Stirling laughed.

”That's quite right,” he said. ”We call it supper, and that's how I dress. I don't worry about the little men when I bring them along, and the big ones don't mind.”

Weston glanced at Ida, and when he saw that she seconded the invitation, he said that he would run around to his boarding-house first to see whether there were any letters or messages for him.

Stirling made a sign of comprehension, for this was a thing he could understand. There had been a time when he had watched and waited for the commissions which very seldom came.

”Then you can come straight across as soon as you have called there,”

said Ida.

She presented him to her companion, who, it appeared, came from Toronto; and then she explained that they had climbed the mountain so that her friend might see the surroundings of the city. They walked back together until they reached a spot where two roads led downhill, and Weston left them.

It was some little time later when he reached Stirling's house, and was left to wait a few minutes in a very artistically-furnished room.

Its floor was of polished parquetry with a few fine skins from British Columbia spread upon it here and there, and the dainty, spindle-legged chairs, the little tables, the cabinets and the Watteau figures were, he fancied, either of old French manufacture or excellent copies. The big bas.e.m.e.nt heater had apparently been extinguished, but a snapping wood-fire blazed upon the English pattern hearth, and, for the light was fading outside, it flung an uncertain, flickering radiance about the room. Weston, sitting down, contrasted its luxury with the grim bareness of his match-boarded cubicle in the boarding-house, and with the log shanties of the railroad and logging camps. He frowned as he did so, for all that his eyes rested on made unpleasantly plain the distinction between himself and the girl whose room it evidently was.

Then he rose as she came in, attired in a long, trailing dress that rustled as she moved. It seemed to become her wonderfully, and he became conscious of a faint embarra.s.sment. He had not seen her dressed in that fas.h.i.+on before, and, after the years that he had spent in lonely bush and noisy railroad camp, her beauty and daintiness had an almost disconcerting effect on him. She drew a low chair a little nearer the hearth, and, sinking into it, motioned to him to be seated.

”My father is busy, and Nellie Farquhar will not be down for a little while,” she said. ”We shall probably have half an hour to ourselves, and I want you to tell me all that you have been doing since we left you.”

Weston understood that she meant to resume their acquaintance--though he was not sure that was quite the correct word for it--at the point at which it had been broken off, and he was rather glad that she asked him what he had been doing. It was a safe topic and naturally one on which he could converse, and he felt that any silence or sign of constraint would have been inadmissible.

”Oh,” he said, ”we went up to look for the mine again.”

”You were not successful?”

”No,” said Weston. ”It was winter, and we had rather a rough time in the ranges. In fact, I got one foot frost-bitten, and was lame for some while afterward. It was the one I cut, which probably made it more susceptible.”

His face hardened a trifle as he recalled the agony of the march back through the snowy wilderness, and the weeks he had afterward spent, unable to set his foot to the ground, in the comfortless log hotel of a little desolate settlement.

”Wasn't it rather foolish to go up into the ranges in winter?” Ida asked.

”It was,” admitted Weston, with a faint, dry smile. ”Still, you see, I couldn't stay away. The thing has become an obsession.”

Ida fancied that she understood. He had on several occasions revealed to her his stubborn pride, and she knew that, whatever he thought of her, he would keep it to himself unless he found that mine. She also had some idea of what one would have to face floundering over the snow-barred pa.s.ses into the great desolation in winter time.

”Well,” she asked quietly, ”what did you do then?”

”We worked in a logging camp until spring, and then I went down to Vancouver to raise money for the next campaign. n.o.body seemed inclined to let me have any, for which one couldn't very well blame them. After all,” and Weston laughed softly, ”the thing looks uncommonly crazy.

Later on, we got a pa.s.s to do some track-grading back east, on one of the prairie lines, and when we'd saved a few dollars I started to try my luck in Montreal.”