The Protector

“We ought to get it.”

“A month or two ago I would have agreed with ye, but general investors are kittle cattle, and the applications for the new stock are no numerous.”

“The plain English of it is that the mine is not so popular as it was,” said Vane impatiently.

“I’m thinking something of the kind,” Nairn agreed, and then proceeded with a cautious explanation: “The result of the first reduction and the way ye forced the concern on the market secured ye notice. Folks put their money on ye, looking for sensational developments, and when the latter are no forthcoming they feel a bit sore.”

“There’s nothing discouraging in our accounts. Even if the ore all ran as poor as that” – Vane pointed to the specimens on the table – “the mine could be worked on a paying basis. We have issued no statements that could spread alarm.”

“Just so,” said Nairn. “What was looked for was mair than a paying basis – ye have no come up to expectations. Forby, it’s my opinion that damaging reports have somehow leaked out from the mine. I see clouds on the horizon.”

“Bendle pledged himself to take up a big block of the shares,” pointed out Vane. “If Howitson does the same, as he said he would, our position would be secure. As soon as it was known that they were largely interested, others would follow them.”

“Now ye have it in a nutshell – it would put a wet blanket on the project if they both backed down. In the meanwhile we cannot hurry them.”

Vane rose. “We’ll leave it at that. I’ve promised to take Mrs. Nairn and Miss Chisholm for a sail.”

He went out and had got rid of the slight uneasiness the interview had occasioned him before he reached the water-front, where he found Mrs. Nairn and Evelyn awaiting him with Carroll in attendance. In another few minutes they were rowing off to the sloop, and as they approached her the elder lady glanced with approval at the craft, which swam, a gleaming ivory shape, upon the shining green brine.

“Ye have surely been painting the boat,” she said. “Was that for us?”

Vane disregarded the last question. “She wanted it, and paint’s comparatively cheap.”

It was a little thing, but Evelyn was pleased. The girls had not been greatly considered at the Dene, and it was flattering to recognise that the man had thought it worth while to decorate his craft in her honour. She did not ask herself if he had wished to please her; he had invited her for a sail some days ago, and he was thorough in everything he did. He handed her and Mrs. Nairn on board and when they sat down in the well, he and Carroll proceeded to hoist the mainsail. It looked exceedingly large as it thrashed and fluttered above their heads, and there seemed to be a bewildering quantity of ropes, but Evelyn was chiefly interested in watching Vane.

He was wonderfully quick, but no movement was wasted. His face was intent, his glances sharp, and she liked the crisp, curt way in which he spoke to Carroll. The man’s task was, in one sense, not important, but he was absorbed in it. Then, while Carroll slipped the moorings, he ran up the headsails, and springing aft, seized the tiller as the boat, slanting over, began to forge through the water. It was the first time Evelyn had ever travelled under sail and, receptive as she was of all new impressions, she sat silent a few minutes rejoicing in the sense of swift and easy motion. The inlet was crisped by small white ripples, and the boat with her boom broad off on her quarter drove through them; a sparkling wedge of foam on her lee bow and a stream of froth sluicing past her sides. Overhead, the great inclined sail cut, sharply white, against the dazzling blue, and close by her Vane sat gripping the tiller.

They swept out through the gate of the Narrows, and Vane luffed the boat up to a moderately fresh breeze. “It’s off the land, and we’ll have fairly smooth water,” he explained, and added: “How do you like sailing?”

“It’s glorious on a day like this,” she declared and looked back towards the distant snow. “If anything more were wanted, there are the mountains, too.”

Vane smiled, but there was a suggestive sparkle in his eyes. “Yes,” he said; “we have them both, and that’s something to be thankful for. The sea and the mountains: the two grandest things in this world.”

“If you think that, how did you reconcile yourself to the city?”

“I’m not sure I’ve done so.” He indicated the gleaming heights. “I’m going back up yonder very soon.”

Mrs. Nairn glanced at Carroll, who affected to be busy with a rope; then she turned to Vane. “It will no be possible with winter coming on.”

“It’s not really so bad then,” Vane declared. “Besides, I expect to get my work done before the hardest weather’s due.”

“But ye cannot leave Vancouver until ye have settled about the mine.”

“I don’t want to,” Vane admitted. “That’s not quite the same thing.”

“It is with a good many people,” Carroll interposed with a smile.

In the meanwhile, they were driving out to the southwards, opening up the Strait, with the forests to port growing smaller and the short seas increasing in size. The breeze was cold, but the girl was warmly clad and the easy motion in no way troubled her. The rush of keen salt air stirred her blood, and all round her were spread wonderful harmonies of silver-laced blue and green, through which the straining fabric that carried her swept on. The mountains were majestic, but except when tempests lashed their crags or torrents swept their lower slopes they were wrapped in eternal repose; the sea was filled with ecstatic motion.

“The hills have their fascination; it’s a thing I know,” she said, to draw the helmsman out. “I think I should like the sea, too; but at first sight its charm isn’t quite so plain.”

“You have started him,” interposed Carroll. “He won’t refuse that challenge!”

Vane accepted it with a smile which meant more than good-humoured indulgence. “Well,” he began, “the sea’s the same everywhere, unbridled, unchanging; a force that remains as it was in the beginning. Once you’re out of harbour, under sail, you have done with civilisation. It has possibly provided you with excellent gear, but it can do no more; you stand alone, stripped for the struggle with the elements.”

“Is it always a struggle?” Evelyn asked, to prompt him.

“Always. The sea’s as treacherous as the winds that vex it; pitiless, murderous. When you have only sail to trust to, you can never relax your vigilance; you must watch the varying drift of clouds and the swing of the certain tides. There’s nothing and nobody to fall back upon when the breeze pipes its challenge; you have sloughed off civilisation and must stand or fall by the raw natural powers man is born with, and chief among them is the capacity for brutal labour. The thrashing sail must be mastered; the tackle cracking with the strain must be hauled in. Perhaps that’s the charm of it for some of us whose lives are pretty smooth – it takes one back, as I said, to the beginning.”

“But haven’t human progress and machines made everybody’s lives more smooth?”

Vane laughed somewhat grimly. “Oh, no; I think that can never be done. So far, somebody pays for the other’s ease. At sea, in the mine, and in the bush, man still grapples with a rugged, naked world.”

The girl was pleased. She had drawn him out, and she thought he had in speaking kept a fair balance between too crude a mode of colloquial expression and poetic elaboration. There was, she knew, a vein of poetic conception in him, and the struggle he had hinted at could only be described fittingly in heroic language. It was, in one sense, a pity that those who had the gift of it and cultivated imagination had, for the most part, never been forced into the fight; but that was, perhaps, not a matter of much importance. There were plenty of men, such as her companion, endowed with endurance, who if they seldom gave their thoughts free rein, rejoiced in the struggle; and by them the world’s sternest work was done.

“After all,” she said, “we have the mountains in civilised England.”

Vane did not respond with the same freedom this time. He was inclined to think he had spoken too unrestrainedly.

“Yes,” he agreed, smiling; “you can walk about them – where you won’t disturb the grouse – and they’re grand enough; but if you look down you can see the motor dust trails and the tourist coaches in the valleys.”

“But why shouldn’t people enjoy themselves in that way?”

“I can’t think of any reason. No doubt, most of them have earned the right to do so. But you can’t rip up those hills with giant-powder where you feel inclined, or set to work to root out some miles of forest. The Government encourages that kind of thing here.”

“And that’s the charm?”

“Yes,” said Vane. “I suppose it is.”

“I’d better explain,” Carroll broke in. “Men of a certain temperament are apt to fall a prey to fantasies in the newer lands; any common sense they once possessed seems to desert them. After that they’re never happy, except when they’re ripping things – such as big rocks and trees – to pieces, and though they’ll tell you it’s only to get out minerals or clear a ranch, they’re wrong. Once they get the mine or ranch they don’t care about it, and set to work wrecking things again. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Nairn?”

“There are such crazy bodies,” agreed the-lady. “I know one or two, but if I had my way with them they should find one mine, or build one saw-mill.”

“And then,” said Carroll, “you would chain them up for good by marrying them.”

“I would like to try, but I’m no sure it would act in every case. I have come across some women as bad as the men; they would drive their husbands on. Maybe” – and she smiled in a half-wistful manner – “it’s as well to do something worth the remembering when ye are young. There’s a long time to sit still in afterwards.”

Half in banter, and half in earnest, they had given Evelyn a hint of the master passion of the true colonist, whose pride is in his burden. Afterwards, Mrs. Nairn led the conversation, until Carroll laid out in the saloon a somewhat elaborate lunch which he had brought from the hotel. Then the others went below, leaving Vane at the helm; and Carroll looked at him ruefully when they came up again.

“I’m afraid Miss Chisholm’s disappointed,” he explained.

“No,” said Evelyn; “that would be most ungrateful. I only expected a more characteristic example of sea cookery. After what Mr. Vane told us, a lunch like the one you provided, with glass and silver, struck me as rather an anachronism.”

“It’s better to be broken in to sea cookery gently,” Vane interposed with some dryness.

“It’s a poor compliment to take it for granted that we’re afraid of a little hardship. Besides, I don’t think you’re right.”

Vane, who left the helm to Carroll, went below, and the latter smiled at Evelyn.

“He won’t be long,” he informed her. “He hasn’t got rid of his primitive habits yet.”

Vane came up satisfied in about ten minutes, and glancing about him before he resumed the helm, noticed that it was blowing fresher, but it did not inconvenience the party, and as they ran homewards the breeze gradually died away. The broad inlet lay still in the moonlight when they crept across it with the water lapping very faintly about the bows, and it was over a mirror-like surface they rowed ashore. Nairn was waiting at the foot of the steps, and Evelyn walked back with him, feeling, she could not tell exactly why, that she had been drawn closer to the sloop’s helmsman.

CHAPTER XXIII – VANE PROVES OBDURATE

Vane spent two or three weeks very pleasantly in Vancouver, for Evelyn, of whom he saw a good deal, was gracious to him. The embarrassment both had felt on their first meeting in the Western city had speedily vanished; they had resumed their acquaintance on what was ostensibly a purely friendly footing, and, since both avoided any reference to what had taken place in England, it had ripened into a mutual confidence.

This would have been less probable in the older country, where they would have been continually reminded of what the Chisholm family had expected of them; but the past seldom counts for much in the new and changeful West, whose inhabitants look forward to the future. Indeed, there is something in its atmosphere which banishes regret and retrospection; and when Evelyn looked back at all, she felt inclined to wonder why she had once been so troubled by the man’s satisfaction with her company. She decided that this could not have been the result of any aversion from him, and that it was merely an instinctive revolt against the part her parents had wished to force upon her. Chisholm and his wife had blundered as such people often do, for it is possible that had they adopted a perfectly neutral attitude everything would have gone as they desired.

Their mistake was nevertheless a natural one. Somewhat exaggerated reports of Vane’s prosperity had reached them; but while they coveted the advantages his wealth might offer their daughter, in their secret hearts they looked upon him as something of a barbarian, which idea the opinions he occasionally expressed in their hearing did not dispel. Both feared that Evelyn regarded him in the same light, and it accordingly became evident that a little pressure might be required. In spite of their prejudices, they did not shrink from applying it.

In the meanwhile, several people in Vancouver watched the increase of friendliness between the girl and Vane. Mrs. Nairn and her husband did so with benevolent interest, and it was by the former’s adroit management, which Evelyn did not often suspect, that they were thrown more and more into each other’s company. Jessie Horsfield, however, looked on with bitterness. She was a strong-willed young woman who had hitherto generally contrived to obtain what she had set her heart upon, and she had set it upon this man. Indeed, she had fancied that he returned the feeling, but disillusionment had come on the evening when he had unexpectedly met Evelyn. Her resentment against the girl grew steadily stronger, until it threatened to prove dangerous on opportunity.

There were, however, days when Vane was disturbed in mind. Winter was coming on, and although it is rarely severe on the southern seaboard, it is by no means the season one would choose for an adventure among the ranges of the northern wilderness. Unless he made his search for the spruce very shortly, he might be compelled to postpone it until the spring, at the risk of being forestalled; but there were two reasons which detained him. He thought he was gaining ground in Evelyn’s esteem, and he feared the effect of absence; while there was no doubt that the new issue of the Clermont shares was in very slack demand. To leave the city might cost him a good deal, but he had pledged himself to go.

The latter fact was uppermost in his mind one evening when he set off to call upon Celia Hartley, and, as it happened, Evelyn and Mrs. Nairn were driving past as he turned off from a busy street towards the quarter in which she lived. It had been dark some little time, but Evelyn had no difficulty in recognising him. Indeed, she watched him for a few moments while he passed on into a more shadowy region, where the gloom and dilapidation of the first small frame houses were noticeable, and she wondered what kind of people inhabited it. She did not think Mrs. Nairn had noticed Vane.

“You have never taken me into the district on our left,” she said.

“I’m no likely to,” was the answer. “We’re no proud of it.”

“I suppose the Chinese and other aliens live there,” Evelyn suggested.

“They do,” said Mrs. Nairn with some dryness. “I’m no sure, however, that they’re the worst.”

“But one understands that you haven’t a criminal population.”

“We have folks who’re on the fringe of it, only we see they live all together. People who would be respectable live somewhere else, except, a few who have to consider cheapness, but it’s no a recommendation to be seen going into yon quarter after dark.”

This left Evelyn thoughtful, since she had undoubtedly seen Vane going there. She considered herself a judge of character and generally trusted her intuitions, and she believed the man’s visit to the neighbourhood in question admitted of some satisfactory explanation. On the other hand, she felt that her friends should be beyond suspicion. Taking it all round, she was rather vexed with Vane, and it cost her some trouble to drive the matter out of her mind, though she succeeded in doing so.

She did not see Vane next day, but the latter called upon Nairn at his office during the afternoon.

“Have you had any more applications for the new stock?” he asked.

“I have not,” said Nairn. “Neither Bendle nor Howiston has paid up yet.”

“Investors are shy; that’s a fact,” Vane confessed. “It’s unfortunate. I’ve already put off my trip north as long as possible; I wanted to see things on a satisfactory basis before I went.”

“A prudent wish. I would advise ye to carry it out.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Something like this: If the money’s no forthcoming, we may be compelled to fall back upon a different plan, and, unless ye’re to the fore, the decision of a shareholders’ meeting might not suit ye. Considering the position and the stock ye hold, any views ye might express would carry mair weight than mine could do in your absence.”

Vane drummed with his fingers on the table. “I suppose that’s the case; but I’ve got to make the journey. With moderately good fortune it shouldn’t take me long.”

“Ye would be running some risk if anything delayed ye and we had to call a meeting before ye got back.”

“I see that, but it can’t be helped. I expect to be back before I’m wanted. Anyway, I could leave you authority to act on my behalf.”

After a further attempt to dissuade him, Nairn spread out one hand resignedly. “He who will to Cupar maun be left to gang,” he said. “Whiles, I have wondered why any one should be so keen on getting there, but doubtless a douce Scottish town has mair attractions for a sensible person than the rugged North-West in winter time.”

Vane, who smiled at this, went out and left him; and when he reached home Nairn briefly recounted the interview to his wife over his evening meal. Evelyn, who was with them, listened attentively.

“Yon man will no hear reason,” Nairn concluded. “He’s thrawn.”

Evelyn had already noticed that her host, for whom she had a strong liking, spoke broader Scots when he was either amused or angry, and she supposed that Vane’s determination disturbed him.

“But why should he persist in leaving the city, when it’s to his disadvantage to do so, as you lead one to believe it is?” she asked.

“If the latter’s no absolutely certain, it’s very likely,” Nairn informed her.

“You have only answered half my question,” Evelyn pointed out.

Mrs. Nairn smiled. “Alec,” she said, “is reserved by nature, but if ye’re anxious for an answer I might tell ye.”

“Anxious hardly describes it,” Evelyn replied.

“Then we’ll say curious. The fact is, Vane made a bargain with a sick prospector, in which he undertook to locate some timber the man had discovered away among the mountains. He was to pay the other a share of its value when he got his Government licence.”

“Is the timber very valuable?”

“No,” broke in Nairn. “One might make a fair business profit out of pulping it, though the thing’s far from certain.”

“Then why is Mr. Vane so keen on finding it?”

The question gave Mrs. Nairn a lead, but she decided to say no more than was necessary. “The prospector died, but that bound the bargain tighter, in Vane’s opinion. The man died without a dollar, leaving a daughter worn-out and ill with nursing him. According to the arrangement, his share will go to the girl.”

“Then,” said Evelyn, “Mr. Vane is really undertaking the search in order to keep his promise to a man who is dead; and he will not even postpone it, because if he did so this penniless girl might, perhaps, lose her share? Isn’t that rather fine of him?”

“On the whole, ye understand the position,” Nairn agreed, “If ye desire my view of the matter, I would merely say that yon’s the kind of man he is.”

Evelyn made no further comment, though the last common phrase struck her as a most eloquent tribute. She had heard Vane confess that he did not want to go north at present, and she now understood that to do so might jeopardise his interests in the mine; but he was undoubtedly going. He meant to keep his promise – this was what one would expect of him.

As it happened, he took her for a drive among the Stanley pines one mild afternoon a few days later, and though she knew she would regret his departure she was unusually friendly. Vane rejoiced at it, but he had already decided that he must endeavour to proceed with caution and content himself in the meanwhile with the part of trusted companion. For this reason, he chatted lightly, which he felt was safer, during most of the drive, but he once or twice responded without reserve when, by chance or design, she asked a leading question.

“I wonder if you ever feel any regret at having left England for this country,” she said.

“I did so pretty often when I first came out,” he answered. “In those days, I had to work in icy water, and carry massive lumps of rock.”

“I dare say regret was a very natural feeling then; but that wasn’t quite what I meant.”

“So I supposed,” Vane confessed. “Well, I’d better own that when I spent a week or two in England – at the Dene – I began to think I missed a good deal by not staying at home. It struck me that the life you led had a singular charm. Everything went so smoothly there among the sheltering hills. One felt that care and anxiety could not creep in. Somehow the place reminded me of Avalon.”

“The impression was by no means correct,” said Evelyn. “But I don’t think you have finished. Won’t you go on?”

“Then if I get out of my depth you mustn’t blame me. By and by I discovered that charm wasn’t the right word – the place was permeated with a narcotic spell.”

“Narcotic?” said Evelyn. “Do you think the term’s more appropriate?”

“I do,” Vane declared, “Narcotics, one understands, are insidious things. If you take them regularly, in small doses, they increase their hold on you, until you become wrapped up in dreams and unrealities. If, however, you get too big a dose at the beginning, it leads to a vigorous revulsion. It’s nature’s warning and remedy.”

“You’re not flattering,” said Evelyn. “But I almost fancy you are right.”

“We are told that man was made to struggle; to use all his powers. If he rests too long beside the still backwaters of life in fairylike dales, they’re apt to atrophy, and he finds himself slack and nerveless when he goes out to face the world again.”

Evelyn nodded, for she had felt and striven against the insidious influence he spoke of. She had now and then left the drowsy dale for a while; but the life she had then caught glimpses of was equally sheltered, one possible only to the favoured few. Even the echoes of the real tense struggle seldom passed its boundaries.

“But you confessed not long ago that you loved the Western wilderness,” she said. “You have spent a good deal of time in it; you expect to do so again. After all, isn’t that only exchanging one beautiful, tranquil region for another? The bush must be even quieter than the English dales.”

“I expect I haven’t made the point quite clear. When one goes up into the bush it’s not to lounge and dream there, but to make war upon it with the axe and drill.” He pulled up his team and pointed to a clump of giant trees. “Look here. That’s Nature’s challenge to man in this country.”

Evelyn confessed that it was a very impressive one. The great trunks ran up far aloft, tremendous columns, before their higher portions were lost in the vaulted roof of sombre greenery. They dwarfed the rig and team; she felt herself a pigmy by comparison.

“They’re rather bigger than the average,” her companion resumed. “Still, that’s the kind of thing you run up against when you buy land to make a ranch of or clear the ground for a mine. Chopping, sawing up, splitting those giants doesn’t fill one with languorous dreams; the only ones our axe-men indulge in materialise. It’s a bracing struggle. There are leagues and leagues of trees, shrouding the valleys in a shadow that has lasted since the world was young; but you see the dawn of a wonderful future breaking in as the long ranks go down.”