A Man of Two Countries Part 15

"Soft rose!" came the correction from the man who never noticed.

The doctor's mouth twitched, but he smoked on in silence, and when he bade Philip good-night he gave him a G.o.d-bless-you pat on the shoulder, which the coming senator from Chouteau interpreted solely as due to his long friendship.

Danvers was wakeful that night, and a name sang through his drowsy brain until he roused, impatient.

"It was only her voice that interested me!" he exclaimed aloud. "She's probably like the rest of them." The nettle of one woman's fickleness had stung so deeply when he first took to the primrose path of love that he had never gone farther along the road leading to the solving of life's enigma, and now the overgrowth of other interests had almost obliterated the trail.

Although the days at Helena were busy ones for Philip Danvers, he found time before the convention to make his dinner call at the Latimer's. On the shaded lawn before the house he found Miss Blair entertaining little Arthur while she kept watch over the baby asleep in its carriage.

"Mrs. Latimer is away for the afternoon. She will be sorry to have missed you," exclaimed the girl, as Arthur ran to greet the visitor, always a favorite.

"You called on Aunt Winnie and me! Didn't you? Didn't you?" chanted the boy, tugging at the hand of the visitor.

"May I stay?" asked Danvers, smiling at the eager little man. "And how is the sprain?"

"Of course you may," a.s.sented Winifred brightly. "And as for the sprained ankle, wicked and deceitful creature that I am, I made it the excuse for not going with Mrs. Latimer. Good people, really good people, would think that I merited punishment for not doing my duty in my small sphere of life. Yet see! Instead of that I'm rewarded--here _you_ come to entertain Arthur and me!"

"It is a bad example!" decided Danvers, with a stern eye that did not deceive anyone. He was amused at her navete, and had no wish to decry such open good-will.

"But I do limp! Don't I, Arthur?" Miss Blair appealed to the child, gravely.

He nodded and stooped to examine the low, narrow shoe, peeping from her sheer summer gown. Winifred pulled the foot back with a sudden flush. "I am, perhaps, helping along in this world as much as though I were playing cards, by staying with the children instead of their being with the maid," she said hastily.

Philip leaned over to look at the baby. Arthur pulled the parasol to one side proudly.

"Her name is Winifred," he announced.

"I believe I never saw a really little baby before," said Danvers, looking with awe at the tiny sleeper. "My sister and I were near of an age; we grew up together. How _little_ babies are!"

Miss Blair laughed. "Winifred is a very nice baby--big for her few months of life. I'm very proud to be her G.o.dmother." Danvers watched as she pulled the fleecy covering around the sleeping child. With the act a maternal look came into her lovely face, unconscious as she was of scrutiny, and a thrill of manhood shook him deeply.

"So you did not care for the party?" inquired the caller, presently. "I thought all ladies adored card parties and enjoyed fighting for the prizes."

"Play cards when the mountains look like that?" Winifred rejoined. "It would be a sacrilege!"

"I do not care for cards myself," agreed Danvers.

"Wouldn't you like to be out there?" Winifred seemed scarcely to have heard him.

Following the direction of her gaze, he thought her wide-flung gesture a deserved tribute to the view. The p.r.i.c.kly Pear Valley lay before them, checkered in vivid green or sage-drab as water had been given or withheld. The Scratch Gravel Hills jutted impertinently into the middle distance; while on the far western side of the plain the Jefferson Range rose, tier on tier, the distances shading the climbing foothills, until the Bear's Tooth, a prominent, jagged peak, cleft the azure sky. A stretch of darker blue showed where the Missouri River, itself unseen, broke through the Gate of the Mountains. The view took one away from the affairs of men. On their side of the valley towered Mount Helena and Mount Ascension with auriferous gulches separating and leading up to the main range of the Rockies. As the foothills sank into the valley the gulches, washed of their golden treasure, were transformed into the streets of Helena--irregular, uneven, unpaved often; in the residence part of the town young trees ambitiously spread their slender branches; the main street and intersecting steeper ones were bordered with business blocks as ambitious, in their way, as the transplanted trees.

"'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,'" quoted Winifred, softly.

"What a singer David was. But these mountains seem worthy of the grand old psalms."

"Yes," a.s.sented Danvers, simply; and he liked her better on this second meeting than he had at the dinner party--a crucial test where a woman is concerned.

"I never weary of looking," she breathed.

"I think--I never should, either," he declared, and looked--at her!

Unconscious of his gaze, she absently jogged the carriage while the baby slept, and Arthur, holding Danvers' hand, waited his turn.

"Mamma hates Helena," was his contribution.

"Sh-h-h!" warned Winifred.

"Then if I can't talk, make Uncle Phil show us a good time." The lad turned appealing, beautiful eyes toward Danvers, so like his father's that Philip drew him closer. "Tell us about the Crow Indians stealing the Blackfeet ponies." This was a favorite story.

"Not to-day, laddie," refused Philip, gently. "Miss Blair would not----"

"Yes, I should," contradicted Winifred.

"Aunt Winnie will just love to hear that story," affirmed Arthur. "_I_ do! She tells me lots of stories. She was telling one when you came--the one I like the best of all. It had a be-u-ti-ful trooper in it who rescued her from a water-y grave!" The child's recital was as melodramatic as his words. "He held her just so!" Arthur ill.u.s.trated by a tight clasp of the embarra.s.sed girl. "Now, you tell one."

Philip saw that Winifred had a real interest in the old days, and while relieving her embarra.s.sment by gratifying the little story-teller, he spoke of the Whoop Up Country.

Winifred had the rare gift of bringing out the best in people. Danvers needed such incentive; although denying it, he was a good conversationalist. Now his whole being responded to this clear-eyed, pleasant-voiced girl who sat in the low rocker beside him. She would understand. The few times he had essayed to speak to others of his service in the Mounted Police, he had met with such indifference that the words were killed; and with the exception of the Doctor, Danvers had never shared his experiences with any one. To the women he had met in Helena and Fort Benton that lonely life had brought a shudder, and to the men unpleasant reminiscences. So far as his a.s.sociates of the early days were concerned it was a closed chapter.

To the child Winifred, Danvers had been a hero--handsome, debonair; to the woman Winifred, he found himself talking as easily as to the little girl who listened years before. The life at Fort Macleod was the one subject that would win Danvers from his silence, and in the next hour Miss Blair had good reason to think that she would not exchange this call for all the card parties in the world.

Presently he challenged, "You are bored?"

"I've been delightfully entertained. It is all fascinating to me.

Charlie will seldom speak of the freighting days, and I remember very little of Fort Benton."

"The old place isn't big enough for most of us. The Macleod men are scattered, too."

"Have you ever been back?"

"Never! I could not bear to see the country fenced in, the old cottonwood barracks replaced, the railroad screaming in the silence, and Colonel Macleod dead. No, I shall never go back."

The baby awoke and diverted them, and soon the maid came for both children. Half-way to the house little Arthur ran back.

"I'm going to be a Police when I grow up," he announced. "I prayed about it last night. I know G.o.d'll fix it. I put it right to Him. It was peachy!"

"Arthur is always saying the drollest things," remarked Miss Blair as the child ran out of hearing distance. "Yesterday he told me that when he went fishing with his papa his fish wouldn't hook on tight."

"I'm afraid he'll find the same difficulty later in life," laughed Philip, and rose to say good-afternoon.

"I will not wait longer for Mrs. Latimer, but leave my card," he decided. "The doctor will be wondering what has become of me."

But the doctor found him very silent over his pipe that evening. The sight of Arthur Latimer's little son had wakened the old longing, the inborn desire of every Englishman to bestow the ancestral name upon the heir of his house. Philip Danvers! For eight generations a son had borne the name. Would he be the last to inherit it in this far country that had come to be his own?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chapter III