Part 33 (1/2)

Then, as one making a strenuous effort, he turned abruptly away, and Barbara, who let him go, went back to the room where her sister sat, very thoughtfully.

Brooke in the meanwhile swung savagely along the trail, beneath the shadowy pines, for he recognized, with a painful distinctness, that Barbara Heathcote's view of his conduct was by no means likely to coincide with Devine's, and he could picture her disgust and anger when the revelation came, while it was only now, when he would in all probability never meet her on the same terms again, he realized the intensity of his longing for the girl. He had also, he felt, succeeded in making himself ridiculous by a display of sentimentality that must have been incomprehensible to her, and though that appeared of no great importance relatively, it naturally did not tend to console him. When he reached his tent Jimmy stared at him.

”I guess you look kind of raised,” he said. ”Where's your hat?”

Brooke laughed hoa.r.s.ely. ”I believe I must have left it at the ranch.

Still, that's not so very astonis.h.i.+ng, because, even if I didn't do it altogether, I came very near losing my head.”

Jimmy again surveyed him, with a grin. ”Devine,” he said, suggestively, ”has been giving you whisky, and it mixed you up a little? That's what comes of drinking tea.”

Brooke made no answer, though a swift flush rose to his face, as he remembered his half-coherent speeches at the ranch, and the astonishment in the girl's eyes, for it seemed probable that the explanation that had occurred to Jimmy had also suggested itself to her. Then he smiled grimly, as he decided that it did not greatly matter, after all, since she could not think more hardly of him than she would do when the truth came out presently.

XXII.

THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS.

It was already late at night, but the mounted mail carrier had not reached the Dayspring mine, and Allonby, who was impatiently waiting news of certain supplies and plant, had insisted on Brooke sitting up with him. It was also raining hard, and, in spite of the glowing stove, the shanty reeked with damp, while there was a steady splas.h.i.+ng upon the iron roof above. Now and then a trickle descended from a defective joint in it, and formed a rivulet upon the earthen floor, or fizzled into a puff of steam upon the corroded iron pipe which stretched across the room. The latter was strewn with soil-stained clothing, and wet knee-boots with the red mire of the mine still clinging about them.

Brooke lay drowsily in a canvas chair, while Allonby sat at the uncleanly table, with a litter of burnt matches and tobacco ash as well as a steaming gla.s.s in front of him. His eyes were bleared and watery, and there were curious little patches of color in his haggard face, while the gorged, blue veins showed upon his forehead. He had been discoursing in a maudlin fas.h.i.+on which Brooke, who had endeavored to make the best of his company during the last three months, found singularly exasperating, but he moved abruptly when a stream from the roof suddenly descended upon his grizzled head.

”That,” he said, ”is one of the trifles a man with a sense of proportion and a contemplative temperament makes light of. The curse of this effete age is its ceaseless striving after luxury.”

Brooke laughed softly, as he watched the water run down the moralizer's nose. ”It is,” he said, ”at least, not often attainable in this country.”

”Which is precisely why men grow rich in the Colonies. Now, here are you and I, who at one time in our lives required four or five courses for dinner, not only subsisting, but thriving upon grindstone bread, flapjacks, mola.s.ses, and the contents of certain cans from Chicago, which one cannot even be certain are what they are averred to be, though the Colonist consumes them with the faith that asks no questions.”

”I fancy you are, in one respect, taking a good deal for granted,”

Brooke said, drily.

Allonby made a deprecatory gesture. ”Being, although you might occasionally find a difficulty in crediting it, one myself, I am seldom mistaken about the points of a man who has moved in good society, though I may admit that it was the ruin of me. Had I been brought up in this country, one-third of my income would have sufficed me, and I should have made provision for my grey hairs with the rest, while I fed, like a Canadian, out of vessels of enamel and the useful wood pulp. As it was, I wasted my substance, and, unfortunately, that of other men who had undue confidence in me, in London clubs, with the result that I am now what is sometimes termed a waster in the land of promise.”

”It is not very difficult to get through a good deal of one's substance in a certain fas.h.i.+on, even in Canada,” and Brooke glanced reflectively at the array of empty bottles.

”That point of view, although a popular one, is illusory, which can be demonstrated by mathematics. A man, it is evident, cannot drink more than a certain quant.i.ty of whisky. His physical capacity precludes it, while even in my bad weeks the cost of it could not well exceed some eight dollars. Excluding that item, one could live contentedly here at an outlay of one dollar daily, if he did not, unfortunately, possess a memory.”

It seemed to Brooke that this latter observation might be true, if one had, at least, any hope for the future. Allonby's day was nearly done, and he had only the past to return and trouble him, but Brooke felt just then that, in spite of his pride in the profession which had been rather forced upon him than adopted, he had very little to look forward to, since he had, by his own folly, made the one thing he longed for above all others unattainable. He had been three months at the Dayspring, and had heard nothing from Barbara. She must, he fancied, have discovered the part he had played by this time, and would blot him out of her memory, while now, when it seemed conceivable that he might make his mark in Canada, all that this implied had become valueless to him.

Wealth and celebrity might perhaps be attainable, but there would be n.o.body to share them with, for he realized that Barbara Heathcote did not possess the easy toleration on certain points which appeared to characterize Saxton and Devine. In the meanwhile, Allonby did not seem pleased with his silence.

”You are,” he said, a trifle quickly, ”by no means an entertaining companion for a man who is at times too sensible of the irony of his position, and appear to be without either comprehension or sympathy.

Here am I, who was accustomed to fare sumptuously in London clubs, living on the husks and other metaphorical et ceteras, and endeavoring--for that is all it amounts to--to console myself with profitless reflections. I am, of course, in the elegant simile of the country, a tank, or whisky-skin, but I am still a man who found a fortune and stripped himself of everything but whisky to develop it.”

Brooke laughed to conceal his impatience. ”Then you are as sure as ever about the silver? We have got a good way down without finding very much sign of it.”

Allonby rose, with a little flush in his watery eyes, and leaned, somewhat unsteadily, upon the table.

”It is the one thing I believe in. The rest, and I once had my fancies and theories like other men, are shadows and chimeras now. Only the silver is real--and there. All I made in Canada is sunk in this mine, which no longer belongs to me, and when I make the great discovery not a dollar will fall to my share.”

”Then it is a little difficult to understand what you are so anxious to find the silver for.”