Part 41 (2/2)

”From me?” said Stirling, dryly, with an emphasis on the last word which brought the blood to Weston's cheek. ”Well, you can come for the advice on any matter of detail when you feel like it. In a general way I can only throw out one suggestion now, and it's at variance with the views you seem to hold. Go over to the Hogarth people, and make the most reasonable terms you can with them.”

”That's what you would do in my place?” Weston asked, with a twinkle in his eyes.

”I've been a blame fool once or twice in my time,” Stirling admitted.

”It's curious that it didn't cost me quite as much as most people expected. Still, what I've given you is excellent advice.”

He waved his hand as though to indicate that he had closed the subject, but when Weston took his departure half an hour later the contractor looked remarkably thoughtful.

”If he weren't up against the Hogarth Combine he and Wannop might put that scheme through,” he mused. ”As it is, I guess one way or another I've got to help him out.”

Then he rose and descended to the room where his daughter was.

”I've had an interesting talk with Mr. Weston,” he said indifferently.

”That's quite a smart young man, but I guess one could call him a little obstinate.”

Ida smiled at this, though she suspected her father's observation was not quite as casual as it seemed.

”Yes,” she said, ”in some respects I think he is. But how has he made that clear to you?”

Stirling, sitting down opposite her, laughed.

”He's had an offer for his mine that most of the bush prospectors would have jumped at, and if he'd played his cards judiciously the people who made it would no doubt have doubled it. I suggested that course to him, but it wasn't any use. Mr. Weston is one of the men who can't make a compromise.”

”Isn't that a reasonable att.i.tude? He presumably wants his rights.”

”The little man,” observed Stirling, ”has no rights that he isn't prepared to hold on to in a rather uneven fight. With Weston it's all or nothing, and just now I don't quite know which he'll get. He and his partners will have to stake everything they own on a very uncertain game.”

”Hasn't everybody who goes into business speculations to do that now and then?”

”No,” said Stirling, reflectively, ”I don't think they have. Quite often the people who deal with them have to face part of the hazard.

In a general way they've something to fall back on if they're men of position: the money they've settled on their wives, a name that would get them credit on the market, or friends who'd give them a lift if they came down with a bang. Now, that young man has nothing. If he fails, he won't have a dollar to get out of this city with, for the mine won't count. He can't even hold it unless he puts in his a.s.sessment work on it, and he couldn't do that without something to live on in the meanwhile. He hasn't a friend in Canada from whom he could borrow a dollar.”

Ida said nothing, and Stirling added, as if in explanation:

”I might be willing to give him a lift if it were absolutely necessary, but it seems that he's quite determined not to take a favor from me. He didn't offer me any reason for adopting that att.i.tude.”

He looked at the girl rather curiously, and she noticed the significance of his last sentence. Stirling had not said that he was unacquainted with Weston's reason, but he seemed to be waiting for her to make a suggestion, and she found the situation embarra.s.sing.

”Well,” she said, ”he probably has one that seems sufficient to him.”

Stirling said nothing further on the subject, and presently went out and left her; but her expression changed when he had done so, and she sat very still, with one hand tightly closed, for she now realized what the cost of her lover's defeat might be. In his case it would not mean a grapple with temporary difficulties, or a curtailing of unnecessary luxuries, but disaster complete and irretrievable, perhaps for years. If he failed, he would vanish out of her life; and it was becoming rapidly clear that, however hard pressed he might be, there was, after all, no way in which she could help him. The unyielding pride or stubbornness which animated him at length appeared an almost hateful thing.

Ida did not sleep particularly well that night, and when she went down to breakfast rather late the next morning there was a letter beside her plate. She looked up at her father when she had opened it.

”Susan Frisingham is coming here from Toronto for a day or two before she goes back to New York,” she said. ”She suggests taking me back with her.”

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