King Spruce Part 2

Hastening away from his humiliation, he confessed to himself that in his optimism of love he had been dreaming a beautiful but particularly foolish dream; but having realized the blessed hope that had once seemed so visionary--having won Elva Barrett's love--the winning of even John Barrett had not seemed an impossible task. The millionaire's frank greeting had held a warmth that Wade had grasped at as vague encouragement. But now the clairvoyancy of his sensitiveness enabled him to understand John Barrett's nature and his own pitiful position in that great affair of the heart; he had not dared to look at that affair too closely till now.

So he hurried on, seeking the open country, obsessed by the strange fancy that there was something in his soul that he wanted to take out and scrutinize, alone, away from curious eyes.

The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had watched that hasty exit with sudden ire that promptly changed to amus.e.m.e.nt. He turned slowly and gazed at the timber baron with that amus.e.m.e.nt plainly showing--amus.e.m.e.nt spiced with a bit of malice. The reverse of Britt's hard character as bully and tyrant was an insatiate curiosity as to the little affairs of the people he knew and a desire to retail those matters in gossip when he could wound feelings or stir mischief. If one with a gift of prophecy had told him that his next words would mark the beginning of the crisis of his life, Pulaski Britt would have professed his profane incredulity in his own vigorous fashion. All that he said was, "Well, John, your girl has picked out quite a rugged-lookin' feller, even if he ain't much inclined to listen to good advice on forestry."

Confirmed gossips are like connoisseurs of cheese: the stuff they relish must be stout. It gratified Britt to see that he had "jumped" his friend.

"I didn't know but you had him in here to sign partnership papers,"

Britt continued, helping himself to a cigar. "I wouldn't blame you much for annexin' him. You need a chap of his size to go in on your lands and straighten out your bushwhackin' thieves with a club, seein' that you don't go yourself. As for me, I don't need to delegate clubbers; I can attend to it myself. It's the way I take exercise."

"Look here, Pulaski," Barrett replied, angrily, "a joke is all right between friends, but hitching up my daughter Elva's name with a beggar of a school-master isn't humorous."

Britt gnawed off the end of the cigar, and spat the fragment of tobacco into a far corner.

"Then if you don't see any humor in it, why don't you stop the courtin'?"

"There isn't any courting."

"I say there is, and if the girl's mother was alive, or you 'tending out at home as sharp as you ought to, your family would have had a stir-up long ago. If you ain't quite ready for a son-in-law, and don't want that young man, you'd better grab in and issue a family bulletin to that effect."

"d.a.m.n such foolishness! I don't believe it," stormed Barrett, pulling his chair back to the desk; "but if you knew it, why didn't you say something before?"

"Oh, I'm no gossip," returned Britt, serenely. "I've got something to do besides watch courtin' sc.r.a.pes. But I don't have to watch this one in _your_ family. I know it's on."

Barrett hooked his gla.s.ses on his nose with an angry gesture, and began to fuss with the papers on his desk. But in spite of his professed scepticism and his suspicion of Pulaski Britt's ingenuousness, it was plain that his mind was not on the papers.

He whirled away suddenly and faced Britt. That gentleman was pulling packets of other papers from his pocket.

"Look here, Britt, about this lying scandal that seems to be snaking around, seeing that it has come to your ears, I--"

"What I'm here for is to go over these drivin' tolls so that they can be pa.s.sed on to the book-keepers," announced Mr. Britt, with a fine and brisk business air. He had shot his shaft of gossip, had "jumped" his man, and the affair of John Barrett's daughter had no further interest for him. "You go ahead and run your family affairs to suit yourself. As to these things you are runnin' with me, let's get at 'em."

In this manner, unwittingly, did Pulaski D. Britt light the fuse that connected with his own magazine; in this fashion, too, did he turn his back upon it.

CHAPTER II

THE HEIRESS OF "OAKLANDS"

"Pete Lebree had money and land, Paul of Olamon had none, Only his peavy and driving pole, his birch canoe and his gun.

But to Paul Nicola, lithe and tall, son of a Tarratine, Had gone the heart of the governor's child, Molly the island's queen."

--_Old Town Ballads._

The coachman usually drove into town from the "Oaklands" to bring John Barrett home from his office, for Barrett liked the spirited rush of his blooded horses.

But when his daughter occasionally antic.i.p.ated the coachman, he resigned himself to a ride in her phaeton with only a sleepy pony to draw them.

Once more absorbed in his affairs, after the departure of Pulaski Britt, Barrett had forgotten the unpleasant morsel of gossip that Britt had brought to spice his interview.

But a familiar trilling call that came up to him stirred that unpleasant thing in his mind. When Barrett walked to the window and signalled to her that he had heard and would come, his expression was not exactly that of the fond father who welcomes his only child. It was not the expression that the bright face peering from under the phaeton's parasol invited. And as he wore his look of uneasiness and discontent when he took his seat beside her, her face became grave also.

"Is it the business or the politics, father?" she asked, solicitously.

"I'm jealous of both if they take away the smiles and bring the tired lines. If it's business, let's make believe we've got money enough.

Haven't we--for only us two? If it's politics--well, when I'm a governor's daughter I'll be only an unhappy slave to the women, and you a servant of the men."

But he did not respond to her rallying.

"I can't get away from work this summer, Elva," he said, with something of the curtness of his business tone. "I mean I can't get away to go with you."

"But I don't want you to go anywhere, father," protested the girl.

She was so earnest that he glanced sidewise at her. His air was that of one who is trying a subtle test.

"I feel that I must go north for a visit to my timber lands," he went on; "I have not been over them for years. I've had pretty good proof that I am being robbed by men I trusted. I propose to go up there and make a few wholesome examples."

He was accustomed to talk his business affairs with her. She always received them with a grave understanding that pleased him. Her dark eyes now met him frankly and interestedly. Looking at her as he did, with his strange thrill of suspicion that another man wanted her and that she loved the man, he saw that his daughter was beautiful, with the brilliancy of type that transcends prettiness. He realized that she had the wit and spirit which make beauty potent, and her eyes and bearing showed poise and self-reliance. Such was John Barrett's appraisal, and John Barrett's business was to appraise humankind. But perhaps he did not fully realize that she was a woman with a woman's heart.

The pony was ambling along lazily under the elms, and the reflective lord of lands was silent awhile, glancing at his daughter occasionally from the corner of his eye. He noted, with fresh interest, that she had greeting for all she met--as gracious a word for the tattered man from the mill as for the youth who slowed his automobile to speak to her.

"These gossips have misunderstood her graciousness," he mused, the thought giving him comfort.

But he was still grimly intent upon his trial of her.

"Because I cannot go with you, and because I shall be away in the woods, Elva," he said, after a time, "I am going to send you to the sh.o.r.e with the Dustins."

There was sudden fire in her dark eyes.

"I do not care to go anywhere with the Dustins," she said, with decision. "I do not care to go anywhere at all this summer. Father!"

There was a volume of protest in the intonation of the word. She had the bluntness of his business air when she was aroused. "I would be blind and a fool not to understand why you are so determined to throw me in with the Dustins. You want me to marry that bland and blessed son and heir. But I'll not do any such thing."

"You are jumping at conclusions, Elva," he returned, feeling that he himself had suddenly become the hunted.

"I've got enough of your wit, father, to know what's in a barrel when there's a knot-hole for me to peep through."

"Now that you have brought up the subject, what reason is there for your not wanting to marry Weston Dustin? He's--"

"I know all about him," she interrupted. "There is no earthly need for you and me to get into a snarl of words about him, dadah! He isn't the man I want for a husband; and when John Barrett's only daughter tells him that with all her heart and soul, I don't believe John Barrett is going to argue the question or ask for further reasons or give any orders."

He bridled in turn.

"But I'm going to tell you, for my part, that I want you to marry Weston Dustin! It has been my wish for a long time, though I have not wanted to hurry you."

She urged on the pony, as though anxious to end a _tete-a-tete_ that was becoming embarra.s.sing.