Part 34 (2/2)
Devine appeared thoughtful. ”You'll have to knock off the big boring machine anyway. The mine's just swallowing dollars, and we'll have to go a trifle slower until some more come in. English directors didn't seem quite pleased last mail. Somebody in their papers has been slating the Dayspring properties, and there's a good deal of stock they couldn't work off. In fact, they seemed inclined to kick at my last draft, and we'll want two or three more thousand dollars before the month is up.”
Brooke would have liked to ask several questions, but between the clanging of the locomotive bell and the roar of steam conversation was difficult, and when they stopped a moment at the foot of the gangway Devine's voice only reached him in broken s.n.a.t.c.hes.
”Got to keep your hand down--spin every dollar out. I'm writing straight about another draft. Use the wires the moment you strike anything that would give the stock a lift.”
”If you're going I guess it's 'bout time you got aboard,” said a seaman, who stood ready to launch the gangway in; and Brooke, making a sign of comprehension to Devine, went up with a run.
Then the ropes were cast off, and he sat down to open his letter under the deckhouse, as with a sonorous blast of her whistle the big white steamer swung out from the wharf. It was from the English kinsman who had previously written him, and confirmed what Devine had said.
”I'm sorry you are holding so much of the Canadian mining stock,” he read. ”You are, perhaps, better posted about the mine than I am, but though the shares were largely underwritten, I understand the promoters found it difficult to place a proportion of the rest, and my broker told me that several holders would be quite willing to get out at well under par already.”
It was not exactly good news from any point of view, and Brooke was pondering over it somewhat moodily when he heard a voice he recognized, and looking up saw a woman with pale blue eyes smiling at him.
”Lucy!” he said, with evident astonishment, but no great show of pleasure.
”You looked so occupied that I was really afraid to disturb you,” said the woman. ”Shafton is talking Canadian politics with somebody, and I wonder if you are too busy to find a chair for me.”
Brooke got one, and his companion, who was the woman Barbara had alluded to as Mrs. Coulson, sat down, and said nothing for a while as she gazed back across the blue inlet with evident appreciation. This was, in one respect, not astonis.h.i.+ng, though so far as Brooke could remember she had never been remarkably fond of scenery, for the new stone city that rose with its towering telegraph poles roof beyond roof up the hillside, gleaming land-locked waterway, and engirdling pines with the white blink of ethereal snow high above them all, made a very fair picture that afternoon.
”This,” she said at last, ”would really be a beautiful country if everything wasn't quite so crude.”
”It is certainly not exactly adapted to landscape-gardening,” said Brooke. ”A two-thousand foot precipice and a hundred-league forest is a trifle big. Still, I'm not sure its inhabitants would appreciate such praise.”
Lucy Coulson laughed. ”They are like it in one respect--I don't mean in size--and delightfully touchy on the subject. Now, there was a girl I met not long ago who appeared quite displeased with me when I said that with a little improving one might compare it to Switzerland. I told her I scarcely felt warranted in dragging paradise in, if only because of some of its characteristic customs. I think her name was Devane, or something equally unusual, though it might have been her married sister's. Perhaps it's Canadian.”
She fancied a trace of indignation crept into the man's bronzed face, but it vanished swiftly.
”One could scarcely call Miss Heathcote crude,” he said.
Lucy Coulson did not inquire whether he was acquainted with the lady in question, but made a mental note of the fact.
”It, of course, depends upon one's standard of comparison,” she said.
”No doubt she comes up to the one adopted in this country. Still, though the latter is certainly pretty, what is keeping--you--in it now?”
”Then you have heard of my good fortune?”
”Of course! Shafton and I were delighted. Your executors wrote for your address to me.”
Brooke started visibly as he recognized that she must in that case have learned the news a month before he did, for a good deal had happened in the meanwhile.
”Then it is a little curious that you did not mention it in the note you sent inviting me to meet you at the Glacier Lake,” he said.
Lucy Coulson lifted her eyes to his a moment, and then glanced aside, while there was a significant softness in her voice as she said, ”The news seemed so good that I wanted to be the one who told it you.”
Again Brooke felt a disconcerting sense of embarra.s.sment, and because he had no wish that she should recognize this looked at her steadily.
”It apparently became of less importance when I did not come,” he said with a trace of dryness. ”There is a reliable postal service in this country. Do you remember exactly what day you went to the Lake on?”
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