Delilah of the Snows Part 13

"I was looking at the officer man, and scarcely noticed him. It occurred to me that the att.i.tude you complain of probably runs in the family."

"I can't say I understand you."

"Well," said Leger reflectively, "I can't help a fancy that we once met somebody very like him on another occasion when we both lost our temper."

"At Willow Dene?"

"Exactly!" said Leger. "You can think it over. I'll wash the plates at the creek and get some water."

He turned away, leaving Ingleby considerably astonished and half-persuaded that he was right. The latter was still looking into the darkness when Hetty spoke to him.

"It's not worth worrying about. Come and sit down," she said. "Who was that girl, Walter?"

"Miss Coulthurst," said Ingleby.

Hetty moved a little so that the firelight no longer fell upon her, and Ingleby noticed that she was silent a somewhat unusual time. Then she asked, "The girl you used to play tennis with at Holtcar?"

"Yes."

Hetty wished that she could see his face. "You have met her before, in Canada?"

"Once only. On the Vancouver wharf, the day I let them put the tea into the wrong car. She was coming from the steamer."

Hetty's face grew a trifle hard for a moment as she made a tolerably accurate guess at the cause of his neglect on the afternoon in question.

Then with a sudden change of mood she laid her hand gently on his arm.

"Don't you think it would have been better for everybody if she had stayed in England, Walter?"

"I expect it would have been for Tom and you. If I had remembered what my business on the wharf was I should never have brought all this upon you."

Hetty's hand closed almost sharply on his arm. "No," she said, "I don't mean that. You see, I was really glad to get away from the boarding house."

"You a.s.sured me you liked it once," said Ingleby.

"Well, perhaps I did, but we needn't go into that. I was thinking of you just now."

Ingleby would not pretend to misunderstand her. He felt it would probably be useless, for Hetty, he knew, could be persistent.

"Men get rich in this country now and then," he said. "It would, at least, be something to work and hope for."

He could not see Hetty's face, but he noticed that there was a faint suggestion of strain in her voice.

"Do you think she would ever be happy with you even if you found a gold mine?" she said.

"What do you mean, Hetty?" and Ingleby turned towards her suddenly with a flush in his face.

"I only want to save you trouble. Don't you think when a girl of that kind found out how much there was that she had been accustomed to think necessary and that you knew nothing about, she might remember the difference between herself and you. After all, it's not always the most important points that count with a girl, you know."

She stopped somewhat abruptly, but Ingleby made a little gesture. "I would rather you would go on and say all you mean to."

"Well," said Hetty reflectively, "if I had been rich I think I should like the man I married to do everything--even play cards and billiards and shoot pheasants--as well as my friends did. It wouldn't be nice to feel that I had to make excuses for him, and I'm not sure I wouldn't be vexed if he didn't seem to know all about the things folks of that kind get for dinner."

Ingleby's laugh was a protest, but it was only half-incredulous, for he had now and then realized with bitterness the deference paid to conventional niceties in England.

"You can't believe that would trouble any sensible woman?" he said.

"Well," answered Hetty, "perhaps it mightn't, for a little while, or if there was only one thing, you see--but if you put everything together and kept on doing what jarred on her?"

"One could get somebody to teach him."

Hetty laughed. "To be like the officer man, or Mr. Esmond of Holtcar?"

Ingleby understood the significance of the question. The little conventional customs might be acquired, but the constant jarring of opinion, and absence of comprehending sympathy or a common point of view was, he realized, quite a different thing. Still, though there was concern in his face, he had the hope of youth in him. There was silence for a moment or two, and then Hetty spoke again.

"Besides," she said, "after all, aren't gold mines a little hard to find?"

Just then Leger made his appearance, somewhat to Ingleby's relief, and ten minutes later Hetty retired to the tent while the men, rolling themselves in their blankets, lay down upon the cedar twigs beside the fire. One of them, however, did not sleep as well as usual, and Leger noticed that his sister appeared a little languid when she rose in the morning. They were weary still, and it was afternoon when they once more pushed on into the wilderness along the climbing trail that had for guide-posts empty provision cans.

IX

HETTY FINDS A WAY

The day's work was over, and once more the white mists were streaming athwart the pines when Ingleby lay somewhat moodily outside the tent that he and Leger occupied on the hillside above the Green River. Just there the stream swirled, smeared with froth and spume, through a tremendous hollow above which the mountains lifted high their crenellated ramparts of ice and never-melting snow. Still, though usually termed one, that gorge was not a canon in the strict sense of the word, for a st.u.r.dy climber could scale one side of it through the shadow of the clinging pines, and there was room for a precarious trail, the one road to civilization, between the hillside and the thundering river.

Farther back, the valley opened out, and up and down it were scattered the Green River diggings. From its inner end an Indian trail, which as yet only one or two white men had ever trodden, led on to the still richer wilderness that stretched back to the Yukon. Above the tent stood a primitive erection of logs roofed with split cedar and hemlock bark which served at once as store and Hetty's dwelling. She was busy inside it then, for Ingleby could hear the rattle of cooking utensils and listened appreciatively, for he was as hungry as usual, although dispirited. His limbs ached from a long day's strenuous toil, and the stain of the soil was on his threadbare jean. He and Leger had spent a good many weeks now upon a placer claim, and the result of their labours was a few grains of gold.

He rose, however, when Hetty came out of the shanty and stood looking down into the misty valley. She was immaculately neat, as she generally was, even in that desolation divided by a many days' journey from the nearest dry-goods store and where the only approach to a laundry was an empty coal-oil can, and she turned to Ingleby with a little smile in her eyes. Hetty had her sorrows, and the life she led would probably have been insupportable to most women reared in an English town, but she had long been accustomed to turn a cheerful face upon a very hard world, and Ingleby, though he did not know exactly why, felt glad that she was there. There are women who produce this effect on those they live among, and they are seldom the most brilliant ones. Still, he did not speak, for Hetty Leger was not a young woman who on all occasions demanded attention.

"No sign of Tom!" she said.

"No," said Ingleby. "I only hope he brings something with him, and hasn't lost the flies again. I gave a man who went out a dollar each for them, and I couldn't get another if I offered ten. The plain hooks I got in Vancouver are no use either when there apparently isn't a worm in the country."

Hetty smiled, though there were reasons why a trout fly was worth a good deal to them, and one of them became apparent when she glanced at the empty spider laid beside the fire, which burned clear and red between two small logs laid parallel to each other and about a foot apart.

"If he doesn't you'll have to put up with bread and dried apples. The pork's done," she said.

It was, perhaps, not the kind of conversation one would have expected from a man at an impressionable age and a distinctly pretty girl, especially when they stood alone in such a scene of wild grandeur as few men's eyes have looked upon, but Hetty did not appear to consider it in any way out of place. Indeed, though there had been a time when she had accepted Ingleby's compliments with a smile and even became a trifle venturesome in her badinage, there had been a difference since they left England, and while Ingleby did not realize exactly what that difference was he felt that it was there. Hetty Leger had not enjoyed any of the training which is, usually, at least, bestowed upon young women of higher station; but she had discovered early that, as she expressed it, there is no use in crying for the moon, and she had a certain pride. It was also a wholesome one and untainted by petulance or mortified vanity.

"I don't think," she said reflectively, "I would worry too much about those flies."

"No?" said Ingleby. "n.o.body could have called that pork good; but dried apples _ad libitum_ are apt to pall on one."

Hetty shook her head. "I'm afraid they're not even going to do that,"

she said. "There's very few of them left in the bottom of the bag."