Lady Merton, Colonist Part 19

"You knew, of course, that I was a mining engineer?" he said at last, pulling up in his examination.

"Well, I heard of you that onst at Dawson City," was the slow reply. "I supposed you were nosin' round like the rest."

"Why, I didn't go as a mere prospector! I'd had my training at Montreal." And Anderson resumed his questions.

But McEwen presently took no pains to answer them. He grew indeed less and less communicative. The exact locality of the mine, the names of the partners, the precise machinery required--Anderson, in the end, could get at neither the one nor the other. And before many more minutes had pa.s.sed he had convinced himself that he was wasting his time. That there was some swindling plot in his father's mind he was certain; he was probably the tool of some shrewder confederates, who had no doubt sent him to Montreal after his legacy, and would fleece him on his return.

"By the way, Aunt Sykes's money, how much was it?" Anderson asked him suddenly. "I suppose you could draw on that?"

McEwen could not be got to give a plain answer. It wasn't near enough, anyhow; not near. The evasion seemed to Anderson purposeless; the mere shifting and doubling that comes of long years of dishonest living. And again the question stabbed his consciousness--were his children justified in casting him so inexorably adrift?

"Well, I'd better run down and have a look," he said at last. "If it's a good thing I dare say I can find you the dollars."

"Run down--where?" asked McEwen sharply.

"To the mine, of course. I might spare the time next week."

"No need to trouble yourself. My pardners wouldn't thank me for betraying their secrets."

"Well, you couldn't expect me to provide the money without knowing a bit more about the property, could you?--without a regular survey?" said Anderson, with a laugh.

"You trust me with three or four thousand dollars," said McEwen doggedly--"because I'm your father and I give you my word. And if not, you can let it alone. I don't want any prying into my affairs."

Anderson was silent a moment.

Then he raised his eyes.

"Are you sure it's all square?" The tone had sharpened.

"Square? Of course it is. What are you aiming at? You'll believe any villainy of your old father, I suppose, just the same as you always used to. I've not had your opportunities, George. I'm not a fine gentleman--on the trail with a parcel of English swells. I'm a poor old broken-down miner, who wants to hole-up somewhere, and get comfortable for his old age; and if you had a heart in your body, you'd lend a helping hand. When I saw you at Winnipeg"--the tone became a trifle plaintive and slippery--"I ses to myself, George used to be a nice chap, with a good heart. If there's anyone ought to help me it's my own son.

And so I boarded that train. But I'm a broken man, George, and you've used me hard."

"Better not talk like that," interrupted Anderson in a clear, resolute voice. "It won't do any good. Look here, father! Suppose you give up this kind of life, and settle down. I'm ready to give you an allowance, and look after you. Your health is bad. To speak the truth, this mine business sounds to me pretty shady. Cut it all! I'll put you with decent people, who'll look after you."

The eyes of the two men met; Anderson's insistently bright, McEwen's wavering and frowning. The June sunshine came into the small room through a striped and battered blind, illuminating the rough planks of which it was built, the "cuts" from ill.u.s.trated papers that were pinned upon them, the scanty furniture, and the untidy bed. Anderson's head and shoulders were in a full mellowed light; he held himself with an unconscious energy, answering to a certain force of feeling within; a proud strength and sincerity expressed itself through every detail of att.i.tude and gesture; yet perhaps the delicacy, or rather sensibility, mingling with the pride, would have been no less evident to a seeing eye. There was Highland blood in him, and a touch therefore of the Celtic responsiveness, the Celtic magnetism. The old man opposite to him in shadow, with his back to the light, had a crouching dangerous look.

It was as though he recognised something in his son for ever lost to himself; and repulsed it, half enviously, half malignantly.

But he did not apparently resent Anderson's proposal. He said sulkily: "Oh, I dessay you'd like to put me away. But I'm not doddering yet."

All the same he listened in silence to the plan that Anderson developed, puffing the while at the pipe which he had made Mrs. Ginnell give him.

"I shan't stay on this side," he said, at last, decidedly. "There's a thing or two that might turn up agin me--and fellows as 'ud do me a bad turn if they come across me--dudes, as I used to know in Dawson City. I shan't stay in Canada. You can make up your mind to that. Besides, the winter'ud kill me!"

Anderson accordingly proposed San Francisco, or Los Angeles. Would his father go for a time to a Salvation Army colony near Los Angeles?

Anderson knew the chief officials--capital men, with no cant about them.

Fruit farming--a beautiful climate--care in sickness--no drink--as much work or as little as he liked--and all expenses paid.

McEwen laughed out--a short sharp laugh--at the mention of the Salvation Army. But he listened patiently, and at the end even professed to think there might be something in it. As to his own scheme, he dropped all mention of it. Yet Anderson was under no illusion; there it lay sparkling, as it were, at the back of his sly wolfish eyes.

"How in blazes could you take me down?" muttered McEwen--"Thought you was took up with these English swells."

"I'm not taken up with anything that would prevent my looking after you," said Anderson rising. "You let Mrs. Ginnell attend to you--get the leg well--and we'll see."

McEwen eyed him--his good looks and his dress, his gentleman's refinement; and the s.h.a.ggy white brows of the old miner drew closer together.

"What did you cast me off like that for, George?" he asked.

Anderson turned away.

"Don't rake up the past. Better not."

"Where are my other sons, George?"

"In Montreal, doing well." Anderson gave the details of their appointments and salaries.

"And never a thought of their old father, I'll be bound!" said McEwen, at the end, with slow vindictiveness.

"You forget that it was your own doing; we believed you dead."

"Aye!--you hadn't left a man much to come home for!--and all for an accident!--a thing as might ha' happened to any man."

The speaker's voice had grown louder. He stared sombrely, defiantly at his companion.

Anderson stood with his hands on his sides, looking through the further window. Then slowly he put his hand into his pocket and withdrew from it a large pocket-book. Out of the pocket-book he took a delicately made leather case, holding it in his hand a moment, and glancing uncertainly at the figure in the bed.

"What ha' you got there?" growled McEwen.

Anderson crossed the room. His own face had lost its colour. As he reached his father, he touched a spring, and held out his hand with the case lying open within it.

It contained a miniature--of a young woman in the midst of a group of children.

"Do you remember that photograph that was done of them--in a tent--when you took us all into Winnipeg for the first agricultural show?" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I had a copy--that wasn't burnt. At Montreal, there was a French artist one year, that did these things. I got him to do this."

McEwen stared at the miniature--the sweet-faced Scotch woman, the bunch of children. Then with a brusque movement he turned his face to the wall, and closed his eyes.

Anderson's lips opened once or twice as though to speak. Some imperious emotion seemed to be trying to force its way. But he could not find words; and at last he returned the miniature to his pocket, walked quietly to the door, and went out of the room.

The sound of the closing door brought immense relief to McEwen. He turned again in bed, and relit his pipe, shaking off the impression left by the miniature as quickly as possible. What business had George to upset him like that? He was down enough on his luck as it was.

He smoked away, gloomily thinking over the conversation. It didn't look like getting any money out of this close-fisted Puritanical son of his.

Survey indeed! McEwen found himself shaken by a kind of internal convulsion as he thought of the revelations that would come out. George was a fool.

In his feverish reverie, many lines of thought crossed and danced in his brain; and every now and then he was tormented by the craving for alcohol. The Salvation Army proposal half amused, half infuriated him.

He knew all about their colonies. Trust him! Your own master for seventeen years--mixed up in a lot of jobs it wouldn't do to go blabbing to the Mounted Police--and then to finish up with those hymn-singing fellows!--George was most certainly a fool! Yet dollars ought to be screwed out of him--somehow.

Presently, to get rid of some unpleasant reflections, the old man stretched out his hand for a copy of the _Vancouver Sentinel_ that was lying on the bed, and began to read it idly. As he did so, a paragraph drew his attention. He gripped the paper, and, springing up in bed, read it twice, peering into it, his features quivering with eagerness. The pa.s.sage described the "hold up" of a Northern Pacific train, at a point between Seattle and the Canadian border. By the help of masks, and a few sticks of dynamite, the thing had been very smartly done--a whole train terrorised, the mail van broken open and a large "swag" captured. Billy Symonds, the notorious train robber from Montana, was suspected, and there was a hue and cry through the whole border after him and his accomplices, amongst whom, so it was said, was a band from the Canadian side--foreign miners mixed up in some of the acts of violence which had marked the strike of the year before.

Bill Symonds!--McEwen threw himself excitedly from side to side, unable to keep still. _He_ knew Symonds--a chap and a half! Why didn't he come and try it on this side of the line? Heaps of money going backwards and forwards over the railway! All these thousands of dollars paid out in wages week by week to these construction camps--must come from somewhere in cash--Winnipeg or Montreal. He began to play with the notion, elaborating and refining it; till presently a whole epic of attack and capture was rushing through his half-crazy brain.