Part 43 (1/2)
He pulled up his team and pointed to the clump of giant trees.
”Look there! That's nature's challenge to man in this country.”
Evelyn recognized that it was an impressive one. The great trunks ran up far aloft, tremendous columns, before their brighter portions were lost in the vaulted roof of somber greenery. They dwarfed the rig and team; she felt herself a pygmy by comparison.
”They're a little larger than the average,” her companion explained, ”Still, that's the kind of thing you run up against when you buy land to start a ranch or clear the ground for a mine. Chopping, sawing up, splitting those giants doesn't fill one with languorous dreams; the only dreams that our axmen indulge in materialize. It's an unending, bracing struggle. There are leagues and leagues of trees, shrouding the valleys in a shadow that has lasted since the world was young; but you see the dawn of a wonderful future breaking in as the long ranks go down.”
Once more, without clearly intending it, he had stirred the girl. He had not spoken in that rather fanciful style to impress her; she knew that, trusting in her comprehension, he had merely given his ideas free rein.
But in doing so he had somehow made her hear the trumpet-call to action which, for such men, rings through the roar of the river and the song of the tall black pines.
”Ah!” she murmured, ”it must be a glorious life, in many ways; but it's bound to have its drawbacks. Doesn't the flesh shrink from them?”
”The flesh?” He laughed. ”In this land the flesh takes second place--except, perhaps, in the cities.” He turned and looked at her curiously. ”Why should you talk of shrinking? The bush couldn't daunt you; you have courage.”
The girl's eyes sparkled, but not at the compliment. His words rang with freedom; the freedom of the heights, where heroic effort was the rule, in place of luxury. She longed now, as she had often done, to escape from bondage; to break away.
”Ah, well,” she said, smiling half wistfully; ”perhaps it's fortunate that such courage as I have may never be put to the test.”
Though reticence was difficult, Vane made no comment. He had already spoken unguardedly, and he decided that caution would be desirable.
As he started the team, an automobile came up, and he looked around as he drove on.
”It's curious that I never heard the thing,” he remarked.
”I didn't, either,” replied Evelyn. ”I was too much engrossed in the trees. But I think Miss Horsfield was in it”
”Was she?” responded Vane in a very casual manner; and Evelyn, for no reason that she was willing to recognize, was pleased.
She had not been mistaken. Jessy Horsfield was in the automobile, and she had had a few moments in which to study Vane and his companion. The man's look and the girl's expression had struck her as significant; and her lips set in an ominously tight line as the car sped on. She felt that she almost hated Vane; and there was no doubt that she entirely hated the girl at his side. It would be soothing to humiliate her, to make her suffer, and though the exact mode of setting about it was not very clear just yet, she thought it might be managed. Her companion wondered why she looked preoccupied during the rest of the journey.
CHAPTER XXIV
JESSY STRIKES
It was the afternoon before Vane's departure for the North, and Evelyn, sitting alone for the time being in Mrs. Nairn's drawing-room, felt disturbed by the thought of it. She sympathized with his object, as it had been briefly related by her hostess, but she supposed there was a certain risk attached to the journey, and that troubled her. In addition to this, there was another point on which she was not altogether pleased.
She had twice seen him acknowledge a bow from a very pretty girl whose general appearance suggested that she did not belong to Evelyn's own walk in life, and that very morning she had noticed him crossing a street in the young woman's company. Vane, as it happened, had met Kitty Blake by accident and had asked her to accompany him on a visit to Celia. Evelyn did not think she was of a jealous disposition, and jealousy appeared irrational in the case of a man whom she had dismissed as a suitor; but the thing undoubtedly rankled in her mind. While she was considering it, Jessy Horsfield entered the room.
”I'm here by invitation, to join Mr. Vane's other old friends in giving him a good send-off,” she explained. ”Only, Mrs. Nairn told me to come over earlier.”
Evelyn noticed that Jessy laid some stress upon her acquaintance with Vane, and wondered whether she had any motive for doing so.
”I suppose you have known him for some time?”
”Oh, yes,” was the careless answer. ”My brother was one of the first to take him up when he came to Vancouver.”
The phrase jarred on Evelyn. It savored of patronage; besides, she did not like to think that Vane owed anything to the Horsfields.
”Though I don't know much about it, I understood that they were opposed to each other,” she said coldly.