A Damaged Reputation

"Yes," he said, a trifle hoarsely, "you would have the greatest difficulty in finding one, and I am almost glad that I am going away to-morrow. Such a man as I am is scarcely fit to speak to you."

Barbara was, though she did not show it, distinctly startled. She had never heard the man speak in that fashion, and his set face and vibrant voice were new to her. Indeed, she had now and then wondered whether he ever really let himself go. Still, she looked at him quietly, and, noticing the swollen veins on his forehead, and the glow in his eyes, decided it would not be advisable to admit that she attached much importance to what he had said. He was, she fancied, fit for any rashness just then.

"I suppose we, all of us, have moods of self-depreciation occasionally," she said. "Still, one would not have fancied that you were unduly morbid, and one part of that little speech was a trifle inexplicable."

Brooke laughed curiously, but the girl noticed that one of his lean, hard hands was closed as he looked down on her.

"There are times when one has to be one's self, and civilities don't seem to count," he said. "I am glad that I am going away, because if I stayed here I should lose the last shred of my self-respect. As a matter of fact, I have very little left, but that little is valuable, if only because it was you who gave it me."

"Still, one would signally fail to see how you could lose it here."

Brooke stood still, looking at her with signs of struggle, and, she could almost fancy, passion, in his set face; and then made a little gesture, which seemed to imply that he had borne enough.

"You will probably understand it all by and by," he said. "I can only ask you not to think too hardly of me when that happens."

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 hoarsely. "I believe I must have left it at the ranch. Still, that's not so very astonishing, 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 splashing 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 glass 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 fashion 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, molasses, 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 fashion, 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 quantity 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 nobody 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."

Allonby swayed a trifle on his feet, but the gleam in his eyes grew brighter. "You," he said, "are, as I pointed out, curiously deficient in comprehension, but you never won a case of medals that were coveted by the keenest brains among all those who hoped to enter your profession. Of what use are dollars to a whisky-tank who will, in all probability, be found mangled at the bottom of the shaft one day? Still, when I made the calculations we are now working on, there was no man in the province with a knowledge equal to mine, and I ask no more than to prove them right."

Brooke sat silent, because he could think of nothing appropriate to say. He had asked the question lightly, and had got his answer. It made the attitude of this broken-down wreck of humanity plain to him, and he vaguely realized the pathos underlying it. Possessed by the one fancy, the man had lost or flung away all that life might have offered him, while he clung to the apparently worthless mine, not, it seemed, for the dollars that success might bring him, but from pride in his professional skill and the faculties which had long deserted him. That, as he said, was his one point of faith, and he lived only to vindicate it.

Then Allonby lurched unsteadily to the door, and held his hand up as he opened it.

"Listen!" he said. "Is that the mail carrier? I must know when we'll get those drills and the giant powder before I sleep. The sinking goes on slowly, and life is very uncertain when one drinks whisky as I do."

Brooke listened, and, for a time, heard only the splash from the pine boughs and the patter of the rain, while Allonby's frail figure cut against the white mists that slid past the doorway. Then a faint, measured thudding came up the valley, and he remembered afterwards that he felt a curious sense of anticipation. The sound swelled into the beat of horse hoofs floundering and slipping on the wet gravel, and Brooke smiled at his eagerness, for though he had, he fancied, cut himself off from all that concerned his past in England, he had never been quite able to await the approach of a mail carrier with complete indifference, and he felt the suggestiveness of the drumming of the weary horse's feet. There had been a time when he had listened with beating heart while it drew nearer down the shadowy trail, and once more a little thrill ran through him.

Then there was a clatter of hoofs on wet rock, and a shout, as a man pulled his jaded beast up in the darkness outside, while a dripping packet was flung into the room. Brooke could see nobody, but a voice said, "That's your lot; I guess I can't stop. Got to make Truscott's before I sleep, and the beast's gone lame."

The rattle of hoofs commenced again, and Brooke sat idly watching Allonby, who was tearing open the packet with shaky fingers.

"The tools and powder are coming up," he said. "Hallo! Excuse my inadvertence, Brooke. This one's apparently for you."

Brooke caught the big blue envelope tossed across to him, and when he had taken out several precisely folded papers and glanced at the sheet of stiff legal writing, sat still, staring vacantly straight in front of him. The uncleanly shanty faded from before his eyes, and he was not even conscious that Allonby, who had laid down his own correspondence, was watching him until the latter broke the silence.

"I know that style of envelope, but it is, presumably, too long since you left England for it to contain any unpleasant reference to a debt," he said. "Has somebody been leaving you a fortune?"

Brooke smiled in a curious, listless fashion. "No," he said, "not a fortune. Still, I suppose one could almost consider it a competence."

"Then you appear singularly free from the satisfaction one would naturally expect from a man who had just received any news of that description," said Allonby, drily.

Brooke's face grew suddenly grim. "If it had come a little earlier, it might have been of much more use to me."

Allonby had, apparently, sufficient sense left in him to recognize that any further observations he might feel inclined to make were scarcely likely to be appreciated just then, and once more Brooke sat motionless, with the letter in his hand, and the inclosures that had slipped from his fingers strewn about the floor. He had been left with what any one with simple tastes would have considered a moderate competence, at least, in Canada, by the man he had quarrelled with, and he gathered from the lawyer's letter that, if he wished it, there would be no difficulty in at once realizing the property. It naturally amounted to considerably more than the six thousand dollars he had sold his self-respect for, and at the moment he was only sensible of a bitter regret that the news had not come to hand a little earlier.

If that had happened, he would never have made the attempt upon the papers, and might have broken with Saxton without the necessity for any explanation with Devine. He had no doubt that the latter had acquainted his wife and Barbara, which meant that he would be branded for ever as rather worse than a thief in her eyes. The money which would have saved him, and might have bought him happiness, was he felt, almost useless to him now.

In the meanwhile, Allonby had turned to his own correspondence, and the shanty was very still, save for the patter of the rain outside and the doleful wailing of the pines. Brooke gazed at the letter he held with vacant eyes, but though he scarcely seemed to notice his surroundings, he could long afterwards recall them clearly – the litter of soil-stained garments and mining boots, the crackling stove, the rain that flashed through the stream of light outside the open door, and Allonby's haggard face and wasted figure.

Then it occurred to him that there was a discrepancy between the time when the will was made and that on which the news of it had been sent to him, and as he stooped to pick up the papers from the floor, he came upon a black-edged envelope. He recognized the writing, and, hastily opening it, found it was from an English kinsman.

"You will be sorry to hear that Austin Dangerfield has succumbed at last," he read. "He was, perhaps, a little hard upon you at one time, but Clara and I felt that he was right in his objections to Lucy all along, and no doubt you realized it when she married Shafton Coulson. However that may be, the old man mentioned you frequently a little before the end, and seemed to feel the fact that he had driven you away, which was, no doubt, what induced him to leave you most of his personal property. Baron and Rodway will have sent you a schedule, and, as one of the executors, I would say that we had some difficulty in finding where to address you until we heard from Coulson that Lucy had met you. There is one point I feel I should refer to. As you will notice, part of the estate is represented by stock in a Canadian mine. Austin, whose mental grip was getting a trifle slack latterly, appears to have been led rather too much by Shafton Coulson in the stock operations he was fond of dabbling in, and I fancy it was by the latter's advice he made the purchase. There is very little demand for the shares on the market here, but you will perhaps be able to form an accurate opinion concerning their value."

Brooke laid down the letter, and took up the lawyers' schedule. Then he laughed curiously as he realized that a considerable proportion of his legacy was represented by shares in the Dayspring Consols. One of the mines, he knew, was liable to be jumped at any moment, and the other was worthless, unless the opinion of his half-crazy companion could be taken seriously. There were one or two more small gashes in the hillside, concerning which the miners he had questioned appeared distinctly dubious.

Allonby turned at the sound. "One would scarcely have fancied from that laugh that you were feeling very much more pleased than you were when you hadn't gone into the affair," he said.

"Then it was a tolerably accurate reflection of my state of mind," said Brooke. "This legacy, which came along two or three months after the time when it would have been of vital importance to me, consists in part of shares in this very mine. That is naturally about the last thing I would have desired or expected, and results from one of the curious conjunctions of circumstances which, I suppose, come about now and then. When the thing one has longed for does come along, it is generally at a time when the wish for it has gone."

"Commiseration would be a little unnecessary," said Allonby, with unusual quietness. "The competence you mention will certainly prove a fortune before you are very much older."

"I don't feel by any means as sure of it as you seem to be. Still, under the circumstances, it doesn't greatly matter."

Allonby, with some difficulty, straightened himself. "I am," he said, not without a certain dignity which almost astonished Brooke, "a worn-out wastrel and a whisky-tank, but I'll live to show the men who look down on me with contemptuous pity what I was once capable of. That is all I am holding on to life for. It is naturally not a very pleasant one to a man with a memory."

For a moment he stood almost erect, and then collapsed suddenly into his chair. "Devine has a brain of another and very much lower order, though it is of a kind that is apt to prove more useful to its possessor, and in his own sphere there are very few men to equal him. If I do not fall down the shaft in the meanwhile, we will certainly show this province what we can do together. And now I believe it is advisable for me to go to bed, while I feel to some extent capable of reaching it. My head is at least as clear as usual, but my legs are unruly."

XXIII.
BROOKE'S CONFESSION

The Pacific express had just come in, and the C. P. R. wharf at Vancouver was thronged with a hurrying crowd when Barbara Heathcote and her sister stood leaning upon the rails of the S. S. Islander. Beneath them the big locomotive which had hauled the dusty cars over the wild Selkirk passes was crawling slowly down the wharf with bell tolling dolefully, and while a feathery steam roared aloft above the tiers of white deckhouses a stream of passengers flowed up the gangway. Barbara, who was crossing to Victoria, watched them languidly until an elaborately-dressed woman ascended, leaning upon the arm of a man whose fastidious neatness of attire and air of indifference to the confusion about him proclaimed him an Englishman. She made a very slight inclination when the woman smiled at her.

"It is fortunate she can't very well get at us here," she said, glancing at the pile of baggage which cut them off from the rest of the deck. "Three or four hours of Mrs. Coulson's conversation would be a good deal more than I could appreciate."

"You need scarcely be afraid of it in the meanwhile," said Mrs. Devine. "It is a trifle difficult to hear one's self speak."

"For which her husband is no doubt thankful. Until I met them once or twice I wondered why that man wore an habitually tired expression. Of course there are Englishmen who consider it becoming, but one feels that in his case his looks are quite in keeping with his sensations."

Mrs. Devine laughed. "You don't like the woman?"

"No," said Barbara, reflectively. "I really don't know why I shouldn't, but I don't. She certainly poses too much, and the last time I had the pleasure of listening to her at the Wheelers' house she patronized me and the country too graciously. The country can get along without her commendation."

"I wonder if she asked you anything about Brooke?"

"No," said Barbara, a trifle sharply. "Where could she have met him?"

"In England. She seemed to know he was at the Dayspring, and managed, I fancy, intentionally, to leave me with the impression that they were especial friends in the Old Country. I wonder if she knows he will be on board to-day?"

"Mr. Brooke is crossing with us?" said Barbara, with an indifference her sister had some doubts about.

"Grant seemed to expect him. He is going to buy American mining machinery or something of the kind in Victoria. I believe it was he Grant left us to meet."

Barbara said nothing, though she was sensible of a curious little thrill. She had not seen Brooke since the evening he had behaved in what was an apparently inexplicable fashion at the ranch, and had heard very little about him. She, however, watched the wharf intently, until she saw Devine accost a man with a bronzed face who was quietly threading his way through the hurrying groups, and her heart beat a trifle faster than usual as they moved together towards the steamer. Then almost unconsciously she turned to see if the woman they had been discussing was also watching for him, but she had by this time disappeared. Barbara, for no very apparent reason, felt a trifle pleased at this.

In the meanwhile Devine was talking rapidly to Brooke.

"Here is a letter for you that came in with yesterday's mail," he said. "Struck anything more encouraging at the mine since you wrote me?"

"No," said Brooke. "I'm afraid we haven't. Still, Allonby seems as sure as ever and is most anxious to get the new plant in."

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 snatches.

"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 astonishing, 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 embarrassment, 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?"

Mrs. Coulson laughed, and made a little half-petulant gesture. "I fancied you did not deserve to hear it when you could not contrive to come forty miles to see me. Still, I think I can remember the day. Shafton had to be in Vancouver on the Wednesday – "

She told him in another moment, and Brooke was sensible of a sudden thrill of anger that was for the most part a futile protest against the fact that his destiny should lie at the mercy of a vain woman's idle fancy, for had he known on the day she mentioned he would never have made the attempt upon Devine's papers. Barbara Heathcote, he decided, doubtless knew by this time what had brought him to the ranch on the eventful night, and even if she did not the imposition he had been guilty of then remained as a barrier between him and her. After permitting her to give him credit for courage and a desire to watch over her safety he dare not tell her he had come as a thief. Still, he recognized that it was, after all, illogical to blame his companion for his own folly.

"Harford," she said, gently, "are you very vexed with me?"

Brooke smiled in a somewhat strained fashion. "No," he said, "I scarcely think I am, and I have, at least, no right to be. I don't know whether you will consider it a sufficient excuse, but I was very busy on the day in question. I was, you see, under the unfortunate necessity of earning my living."

"I think there was a time when you would not have let that stand in the way, but men are seldom very constant, are they?"

Brooke made no attempt to controvert the assertion. It seemed distinctly wiser to ignore it, since his companion apparently did not remember that she had now a husband who could hardly be expected to appreciate any unwavering devotion offered her, which was a fact that had its importance in Brooke's eyes, at least. Then she turned towards him with disconcerting suddenness.

"Why don't you go home now you have enough to live, with a little economy, as you were meant to do?" she said. "This country is no place for you."

Brooke, who did not remember that she previously endeavored to lead up to the question, started, for it was one which he had not infrequently asked himself of late, and the answer that the opportunity of proving his capabilities as a dam-builder and mining engineer had its attractions was, he knew, not quite sufficient in itself. Then, as it happened, Barbara Heathcote and Mrs. Devine, who appeared in the companion, came towards them along the deck, and Lucy Coulson noticed the glow in his eyes that was followed by a sudden hardening of his face. Perhaps she guessed a little, or it was done out of wantonness, for she laid her white-gloved hand upon his arm and leaned forward a trifle.