Part 19 (1/2)
A newly-felled cedar lay conveniently near the trail, but its wide-girthed trunk stood high above the underbrush, and Brooke dragged up a big hewn-off branch to make a footstool before his companion sat down on it. The branch was heavy, and she watched his efforts approvingly.
”Canada has made you another man. Now, I do not think Shafton could have done that in a day,” she said. ”Of course, he would never have tried, even to please me.”
Brooke, who was by no means certain what she wished him to understand from this, leaned against a cedar looking down at her gravely. This was the woman who had embittered several years of his life, and for whom he had flung a good deal away, and now he was most clearly sensible of his folly. Had he met her in a drawing-room or even the Vancouver opera-house, it might not have been quite so apparent to him, but she seemed an anachronism in that strip of primeval wilderness. Nature was dominant there, and the dull pounding of the stamp-heads, which came faintly through the silence among the great trunks that had grown slowly during centuries, suggested man's recognition of the curse and privilege that was laid upon him in Eden. Graceful idleness was not esteemed in that country, where bread was won by strenuous toil, and the stillness and dimness of those great forest aisles emphasized the woman's artificial superficiality. Voice and gesture, befrizzled, straw-colored hair which he had once called golden, constricted waist, and figure which was suggestively wooden in its curves, enforced the same impression, until the man, who realized that she had after all probably made at least as good a use of life as he had, turned his eyes away.
”You really couldn't expect him to,” he said, with a little laugh. ”He has never had to do anything of that kind for a living as I have.”
He held up his hands and noticed her little s.h.i.+ver as she saw the scarred knuckles, hard, ingrained flesh, and broken nails.
”Oh,” she said, ”how cruel! Whatever have you been doing?”
Brooke glanced at his fingers reflectively. ”On the contrary, I suppose I ought to feel proud of them, though I scarcely think I am. Building flumes and dams, though that will hardly convey any very clear impression to you. It implies swinging the axe and shovel most of every day, and working up to the waist in water occasionally.”
”But you were always so particular in England.”
”I could naturally afford to be. It cost me nothing when I was living on another man's bounty.”
The woman made a little gesture. ”And you gave up everything for me!”
Brooke laughed softly, for it seemed to him that a little candor was advisable. ”As a matter of fact, I am not quite sure that I did. My native wrong-headedness may have had its share in influencing me.
Anyway, that was all done with--several years ago.”
”You will not be bitter, Harford,” and she cast him a glance of appeal which might have awakened a trace of tenderness in the man had it sprung from any depth of feeling. ”Can anything of that kind ever be quite done with?”
Brooke commenced to feel a trifle uneasy. ”Well,” he said, reflectively, ”I certainly think it ought to be.”
To his relief his companion smiled and apparently decided to change the subject. ”You never even sent me a message. It really wasn't kind.”
”It appeared considerably more becoming to let myself sink into oblivion. Besides, I could scarcely be expected to feel certain that you would care to hear from me.”
The woman glanced at him reflectively. ”I have often thought about you.
Of course, I was dreadfully sorry when I had to give you up, but I really couldn't do anything else, and it was all for the best.”
”Of course!” said Brooke, with a trace of dryness, and smiled when she glanced at him sharply. ”I naturally mean in your case.”
”You are only involving yourself, Harford. You never used to be so unfeeling.”
”I was endorsing your own statement, and it is, at least, considerably easier to believe that all is for the best when one is prosperous. You have a wealthy husband, and Helen, who wrote me once, testified that he indulged you in--she said every caprice.”
”Yes,” said his companion, thoughtfully, ”Shafton is certainly not poor, and he is almost everything any one could expect him to be. As husbands go, I think he is eminently satisfactory.”
”One would fancy that an indulgent and wealthy husband of distinguished appearance would go a tolerably long way.”
Again the woman appeared to reflect ”Prosperity is apt to kill romance,”
she said. ”One is never quite content, you know, and I feel now and then that Shafton scarcely understands me. That is a complaint people appear to find ludicrous, of course, though I really don't see why they should do so. Shafton is conventional and precise. You know exactly what he is going to do, and that it will be right, but one has longings now and then for something original and intense.”
Brooke regarded her with a little dry smile. One, as he had discovered, cannot have everything, and as she had sold herself for wealth and station it appeared a trifle unreasonable to repine because she could not enjoy a romantic pa.s.sion at the same time. It was, in fact, very likely that had anything of the kind been thrust upon her she would not have known what to do with it. It also occurred to him that there were depths in her husband's nature which she had never sounded, and he remembered the look of cynical weariness in the man's face. Lucy Coulson was one who trifled with emotions as a pastime, but Brooke had no wish to be made the subject of another experiment in simulated tenderness, even if that was meant, which, under the circ.u.mstances, scarcely seemed likely.
”Well,” he said, ”no doubt most people long for a good deal more than they ever get; but your friends must have reached the stamps by now, and they will be wondering what has become of you.”