The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 42

CHAPTER XXVII

THE AWAKENING CONTINUED

It was all over, the inquest, the coroner's finding, the reading of the will, the revelation of the real errand on which the old frontiersman had come from Saskatchewan. The parting of the ways had come to her, as it comes to us all. The death of her father had shut the door on opportunity in the Valley; and the little old lady, waiting for Matthews up in Prince Albert, Canada, to take her back to the inheritance of her father's family in Scotland, opened elsewhere another door of opportunity. As one door had swung shut, another had swung open. Were we creatures of circ.u.mstances, as the fatalists declared; or could we master and bend circ.u.mstances to human will? Was her feeling of rebellion but the kicking of ructious heels against the closed door of fate? Would time teach the futility of barking one's shins in such fashion? Eleanor sat in the parlor of the suite of rooms reserved by the Williams and herself. The Williams and Matthews had gone out for the evening to some women's club meeting on missions.

Eleanor's nerves were too tension-strung for people to-night. They had read her father's will that afternoon. The quiet man doing the duty next and making no professions had left her secure against want; and after the lawyer who read the will had gone, the Williams went out, and Matthews had drawn his chair near to hers and told her the same story of her father's people that he had told Wayland in the Desert.

"They were a' dark fearsome men," he had said, telling her of the first Fraser-MacDonald who fought with Wolfe at Quebec, and the Man of the Iron Hand. "They were a' dark fearsome men; but of stainless honor, child! Not a man of them left a bar sinister on th' scutcheon! Even the man who married th' squaw, had a priest tie th' knot so that children would come stainless t' life; but they were dark fearsome men, undyin' in their hates an' unhappy in their loves. Y'r own mother's people turned against y'r father for th' part he took in th' Rebellion."

"Don't you think," asked Eleanor, "it's time one of the race broke the spell of unhappy love?"

"Aye, child! 'Tis why A'd take y' back t' th' little old lady waitin'

in Prince Albert, an' put y' in y'r own place in th' halls o' Scotland?

D' y' know there's been none o' y'r race direct t' occupy th' manor since th' first Frazer fled from th' Jacobite Rebellion to French Canada? 'Twas part o' his stubborn spirit that he fought for the Nation that had cast him out."

"Oh, I'm not interested in the Jacobites and Wolfe and things of the past," interrupted Eleanor. "I want to live my life full in the present."

"Aye; an' 'tis because y're a Fraser-MacDonald of the Lovatt clan that ye want t' live a full present! If you were an upstart new-rich, my dear, y'd be sellin' y'r soul t' th' Devil an' y'r body t' some leprous kite with ulcerous weddin' kisses for the privilege o' claimin' this inheritance that's yours! There's a male decendant o' some collateral line on th' place adjoinin' yours. Man alive, he's had th' pick o'

every pork packer's an' brewer's daughter; but he's waitin' th' little lady who's his aunt t' come back from Prince Albert--"

He knew the minute he had spoken that he had struck a false note.

Eleanor jumped from her chair.

"Oh, bother the little lady at Prince Albert. Leave me, please! I want to think--"

He withdrew as far as the door. "Would y' like me to see y'r lawyer man 'bout puttin' th' ranch lands o' th' Upper Pa.s.s on th' market, an'

settlin' up th' estate?"

"No," answered Eleanor. "I'm not going to sell any of my father's estate."

And when Matthews withdrew to join the Williams at the missionary meeting, she burst into tears.

She went across to the window wondering about Wayland. She had not seen him since early morning, before breakfast, when he called at the sitting room door to arrange their return up the Valley next day. The Williams and Matthews would go up in the buckboard. Would she ride back up the hog's back trail with him? He would hire horses and riding togs now if she would say? Yes, he knew it would be steep up grade; but then, they could go it slow; he laughed as he said that. You see the hog's back trail was fifteen miles shorter than the Valley road and they could afford to go it slow; in fact, _very slow_.

"Come on in," urged Eleanor, throwing open the parlor door. "The Williams are not up, yet!"

"That's why I came! No, I'll not come in: not much! I'm keeping resolutions!"

She had not understood the wistfulness beneath his forced gayety until Matthews told her all that afternoon.

"It will be our last ride: you'll come, won't you?" asked Wayland.

She had promised. Then, she had spent a most miserable morning. Why was it to be the _last_ ride? She had not cared to go out. Though the papers had suppressed all details of the cowardly a.s.sa.s.sination, the glare of publicity had been focussed too keenly on her for comfort by that explosion of the old frontiersman in the court room. She had remained in all morning watching the motley crowds of a frontier town surge past the hotel windows down the dusty hot main street, with its medley of fine brick blocks, and poor shacks, and saloons, and false fronts--little unpainted restaurants and cigar stands and gambling places of one-story, with a false timber wall running up a couple of stories.

"United States of the World," the old frontiersman had called this country. Surely that was the true name of the wonderful new country that had defied all traditions and mingled in her making the races from every corner of the world! An immigrant train had come in. Eleanor lifted the parlor window, and looked, and listened. j.a.p and Chinese and Hindoo--strikingly tall fellows with turbaned head gear; negro and West Indians and Malay; German and Russian and Poles and a.s.syrians. In half an hour, she did not hear one word of pure English, or what could be called American. Oh, it was good to be alive in this wonderful new world under these wonderful new conditions working out the age-old problem of right and wrong that had defied solution since time began!

She did not mind the crudity. And if I am to be frank, she did not mind the rudity. It was not a boiled shirt-front, kid-glove world. In fact, at that moment she saw her hero stage driver shooting out tobacco squids at the innocent granolithic, which showed no target because so many other contributors had preceded the stage driver. In fact, it was not a world for a lady with a train, though Eleanor saw some trollopy immigrant "ladies" emerging from a big tent on a back lot decked with tawdry lace and sporting trains in inverse proportions to the sufficiency of their "h's." Nor was it a perfumed world. She could smell the reek of the whiskey saloons all down the street--eleven of them, there were in a succession of twelve buildings; and the twelfth building, if Eleanor had known it, was a gambling joint of the Chinese variety that had iron shutters and iron doors and signs up for "Gentlemen Only." Let us hope, dear reader, that "gentlemen only"

entered behind the dark of those iron doors! She could not help wondering had the old day pa.s.sed forever in the West. Was a new day not dawning? What was to become of all these incoming people? Could the cattle barons and the sheep kings and the land rings fence them off the vast, broad, idle acres forever?

Yet this was the world where her father had come penniless, a refugee from miscarried justice, and had won out. It was the world where he had been shot down by some miserable, criminal a.s.sa.s.sin, who, it was more than likely, had mistaken him for Wayland. It was Wayland's world, a world in the making. Well had Matthews designated it--The United States of the World! More Jews than in Palestine; more Germans than in Berlin; more Italians than in Rome; more Russians than in St.

Petersburg; more Canadians than in any four Canadian cities combined; more descendants of the British than in the British Isles--the United States of the World in the Making! Was it any wonder crime was rampant; and Democracy rocked to the shock of collision and miscalculation and inexperience; and Righteousness became a tacking to progress, not a straight line, like the zig-zag of the ship making headway all the time, but tacking back and forward to wind and current?

It was good to be alive and take part in the making of the United States of the World!

She had had breakfast and luncheon in her apartments. At mid-day, she saw Wayland coming along the thronged main street. At every step, some man stopped him to shake hands; and groups turned and gazed after him as he pa.s.sed, and spat their approval or disapproval with great emphasis at the mottled pavement. Below the window, a big Swede grabbed his two shoulders with the grip of a steam crane.

"Say, you Vaylan', huh?" he asked. "Say, you a' right! You ever need yob, Vaylan', you 'ply our union! Huh?" and he laughed, and went on; and the tears welled to Eleanor's eyes.

Then came the lawyer to read the will; and after the lawyer's departure, Matthews had told her how she concerned his errand down from the North; and when the door closed on Matthews, she burst into tears.

She saw the street lights come twinkling out, and she did not turn on the light of the sitting room chandelier. Did he love her at all; or if he did, did he know what this waiting all day meant to a woman?

Then, it came to her in a flash, his wistful look in the morning behind the forced gayety, his reference to the last ride, to keeping resolutions. Was that resolution for the sake of his work at all; or for her? Of course, Matthews had told him in the Desert; and with the thought, the weight that had oppressed her rolled from her heart. She jumped from her chair and uttered a low cry of happy laughter.

"Oh, I'll soon make short work of that resolution," she vowed.

Alas and alas! Samson straining his manhood for strength to sh.o.r.e up a resolution, and here was a sharpening of scissors to shear him well!

There was a knock on the door. She thought it the waiter coming up with a late dinner and had called "come in," when the door opened, and in the glare of light from the hall way stood the news editor, embarra.s.sed and hesitating.

"Please come in." She pressed the electric b.u.t.ton, shook hands with him and shut the door. His air was at once apologetic and glad, but all the bitterness and anger seemed to have gone. He stood holding his soft felt hat in his hand and looking through his gla.s.ses, very steadily and kindly, Eleanor thought.

"Won't you sit down?"

"We newspaper chaps should pretty nearly apologize for coming into your presence, Miss MacDonald," he began. "I've wanted to tell you how we fellows all regret that. I hope you know that kind of thing doesn't come from inside the office. It comes from influences outside."

He had seated himself shading his eyes from the light with his hand, an old trick of his compositor days, and still looked at her in the same friendly way.

"Ever hear of the Down-East daily that black-guarded one of our greatest presidents the very day he died? I've often wondered if the public realized when that item appeared that not an editor on the staff knew it was coming out, that when two of the editors read it, they cried and went to pieces right there and then before their men for very shame! Item had been sent straight to the composing room just before the forms were locked up, by man who owned the paper. President had refused him some public concession. Such things sometimes happen to lesser folks than presidents."

"Were you so kind as to come here to say all this to me?" asked Eleanor.

"No, Miss MacDonald, I wasn't!" He blushed furiously, like a boy caught in the act culpable. "Fact is, I'm keen to see Wayland, been such a crush of men round him all day, haven't been able to get in a word with him."

It was her turn to blush furiously.

"I didn't want him to go off up the Valley before I could get hold of him. I wanted to have a shake with him. We're in the same boat now, Miss MacDonald."

"I don't the very least bit in the world understand what you are saying."

The news editor laughed and laid his hat on the onyx centre table beneath the electric lights.

"Why, we're both fired," he said.

"Fired?" repeated Eleanor.

This time he laughed aloud: "I don't mean fired out of a gun," he explained. "We're fired out of our job. I knew after the inquest, I'd get the sack," he went on, making light of it, "but the wire didn't come till this morning."

There were a lot of things the news editor didn't tell Eleanor just here; and I beg of you, dear reader, to remember these things when you execrate the press; for they happen every day to plain fellows, some of them profane fellows, who make no professions and blow no trumpet.

When the news editor walked out of the office that morning, he owned, besides the Smelter City lots, which were mortgaged to the hilt, and six "kiddies," who had to be fed, precisely the five dollar bill in his pocket, the clothes on his back and the duster coat that he carried out on his arm. It was a mere detail, of course; but it was one of the details he didn't tell Eleanor. When he had gone home and told his wife, she had asked, "For Heaven's sake, Joe, what ever will we do, run a fruit stand; or peddle milk?" Joe had answered the distracted question with a lighter hearted laugh than she had heard for many a day. Then he had gone off to catch Wayland.

But Eleanor did not know all this. Her quick wit grasped one salient fact. You think, perhaps, it was that Wayland had been dismissed? It wasn't.