Part 36 (1/2)

It was a relief to talk of matters of minor interest, for he dare not let his thoughts dwell too much on the subject that was nearest them.

”Well,” he replied, ”there's the economic pressure, for one thing; the growth of your cities; the demand for food. I see land lying almost idle that could be made productive at a very moderate outlay. Our people often give nearly as much as it's worth here for no better soil.”

”But how do they make it pay?”

He laughed.

”The secret is that they expect very little--enough to eat, a shack they build with their own hands to sleep in--and they're willing to work sixteen hours out of the twenty-four.”

”They can't do so in winter.”

”The hours are shorter, but where the winter's hardest--on the open middle prairie--the work's more severe. There the little man spends a good deal of his time hauling home stove-wood or building-logs for new stables or barns. He has often to drive several leagues with the thermometer well below zero before he can find a bluff with large enough trees. In the Pacific Slope forests, where it's warmer, work goes on much as usual. The bush rancher spends his days chopping big trees in the rain and his nights making odd things--furniture, wagon-poles, new doors for his outbuildings. What you would call necessary leisure is unknown.”

This was not exaggeration; but he spoke of it from a desire to support his resolution by emphasizing the sternest aspects of western life. It had others more alluring: there were men who dwelt more or less at their ease; but they were by no means numerous, and the toilers--in city office, lonely bush, or sawmill--were consumed by or driven into a feverish activity. As one of them, it was his manifest duty to leave this English girl in her sheltered surroundings. There was, however, one remote but alluring possibility that made this a little easier--he might, after all, win enough to surround her with some luxury and cultured friends in one of the cities of the Pacific coast. Though they differed from those in England, they were beautiful, with their vistas of snow-capped mountains and the sea.

”But you are not a farmer,” she objected.

”No; mining's my vocation and it keeps me busy. In the city, I'm at work long before they think of opening their London offices, and it's generally midnight before I've finished worrying engineers and contractors at their homes or hotels. In the wilds, we're more or less continuously grappling with rock or treacherous gravel, or out on the prospecting trail, while the northern summer lasts; it's then light most of the night. In the winter, we sometimes sleep in the snow, with the thermometer near the bottom of its register.”

Millicent s.h.i.+vered a little, wondering uneasily why he had taken the trouble to impress this upon her. It was, she thought, certainly not to show what he was capable of.

”Are you glad to go back, or do you dread it?” she asked.

”I don't dread it--it's my life, and things may be easier by and by.

Still, I'm very loath to go.”

Millicent could believe that. His troubled expression confirmed it; and she was strangely pleased. She had never had a companion in whom she could have so much confidence, and she had already recognized that she was, in one sense of the word, growing fond of him. Indeed, she had begun to be curious about the feeling and to wonder whether it stopped quite short at liking.

”Well,” she told him, ”I'm glad that you asked me to come with you. I think I was one of your first friends and I'm pleased that you should wish to spend part of your last day in my company.”

”You come first of all!”

”That's flattering,” she smiled. ”What about Nasmyth?”

”An unusually fine man, but he has his limits. You have none.”

”I'm not sure I quite understand you.”

”Then,” he explained seriously, ”what I think I mean is this--you're one of the people who somehow contrive to meet any call that is made on them.

You would never sit down, helpless, in a trying situation; you'd find some way of getting over the difficulties. It's a gift more useful than genius.”

”You're rating me too highly,” she answered with some embarra.s.sment. ”You admitted that you thought my place was here--the inference was that I shouldn't fit into a different one.”

”No,” he corrected her; ”you'd adapt yourself to changed conditions; but that wouldn't prevent your suffering in the process. Indeed, I think people of your kind often suffer more than the others.”

He was to some extent correct in his estimate of her, but she shrank from the direct personal application of his remarks.

”Aren't the virtues you have described fairly common?” she asked. ”I think that must be so, because they're so necessary.”