The Gold Trail Part 29

"There," said Ainslie, "you have the thing in a nutsh.e.l.l. You have, no doubt, formed some idea of Weston's wants, which are rather numerous.

In fact, some of us seem to consider it the correct thing to cultivate them. The more wants you have the greater man you are."

Ida smiled a little as she remembered a man of considerable importance in the wheat-lands of a.s.siniboia, whom she had last seen sitting, clad in blue shirt and very old trousers, on a huge machine which a double span of reeking horses hauled through the splendid grain. He had driven it since sunrise, and it was dusk of evening then, and his wants were, as she knew, remarkably simple. He bore his share of the burden under a burning sun, but it seemed to her that, had Weston been in his place, he would have ridden around that farm with a gloved hand on his hip, and would have raised it only now and then, imperiously, to direct the toilers. Then she thought of another man, who was like him in some respects, and was then, in all probability, plodding through the lonely bush.

"You mentioned a son," she said. "What became of him?"

"He went out to Canada. Quarreled with his father. As I believe I suggested, the lad was at heart a rebel." Ainslie smiled rather dryly.

"A good many of us are. He wouldn't see that his mother's ideas were apt to get him into trouble when he tried to apply them."

Ida sat silent for a few moments. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that Weston who had turned his back on Scarthwaite was identical with Weston the camp-packer.

"Do you remember what they quarreled over?" she asked at length.

"Yes," said Ainslie, who was inclined to wonder at her interest in the subject, "it was water-finding. It's a thing of which you probably have never heard."

"I have," said Ida. "Won't you go on?"

"Well," continued Ainslie, "there was a tenant on this estate who was rather more badly off than the rest of them. He had a piece of upland with rock under it, and in a dry season--though we don't often get one--it was with the greatest trouble he got water enough for his stock. He asked young Weston to find him a likely spot to drive a well. The lad was walking over one parched meadow with the hazel twig in his hand, when his father came upon the procession--everybody belonging to the farm was out with him. Weston, I heard, went purple when he saw what was going on, and, from his point of view, his indignation was perhaps comprehensible. His son was openly, before one of the tenants and a parcel of farm-hands, making use of a superst.i.tious device in which no sane person could believe. Weston, as I remember it, compared him to a gipsy fortune-teller, and went on through the gamut of impostor, mountebank and charlatan, before he commanded him to desist on the moment. I don't quite know what came next, though something was said about a lifted riding-crop, but within the week Clarence started for Canada."

"He abandoned the attempt to find water?"

Ainslie smiled.

"The farmer dug a well in that meadow, and I believe he uses it still.

He held a lease, and Weston couldn't get rid of him."

He looked rather hard at Ida, and was slightly astonished at the sparkle in her eyes.

"I'm afraid I've been somewhat talkative," he said.

"No," Ida a.s.sured him, and he saw that she was stirred. "Thank you for telling me."

He moved away; and by and by Arabella Kinnaird and one of the other women approached the seat. Arabella left her companion a moment, and made a little whimsical gesture as she met Ida's gaze.

"I've been throwing away a good many blandishments on Weston," she observed. "He appears prudently reticent on the subject of his relations, and if he has any in Canada, it's evident that he isn't proud of them. Still, I haven't abandoned the amiable intention of extorting a little more information from him."

CHAPTER XVIII

WESTON'S ADVOCATE

A week had pa.s.sed when Weston, who apparently had some business with Kinnaird, drove over to Scarthwaite again. This time he brought a daughter, who, it appeared, lived for the most part with some more prosperous members of the family. Arriving a little before lunch, they remained until the evening. As it happened, Miss Weston displayed what she evidently considered a kindly interest in Ida, and graciously patronized her as a stranger and a Colonial, who was necessarily ignorant of a good many of the little amenities of life in the old country.

Her intentions were no doubt laudable, but the methods she adopted to set the stranger at her ease were not those most likely to endear the insular English to their cousins across the Atlantic. Ida, to begin with, had not only a spice of temper but also no great reverence for forms and formulas, and the people that she was accustomed to meeting were those who had set their mark upon wide belts of forest and long leagues of prairie. At first she was quietly amused by the patronage of a woman whose right to bestow it consisted apparently in an acquaintance with English people of station, and some proficiency at bridge; but by and by her condescension grew wearisome, and finally exasperating. Miss Weston, however, could not have been expected to recognize this. She was a tall, pale woman, with a coldly formal manner and some taste in dress.

There were several other guests in the house, and the party spent most of the hot afternoon about the tennis net and lounging under the shadow of a big copper beech on the lawn. Once when Miss Weston left her to play in a set at tennis, Arabella Kinnaird leaned over the back of Ida's chair.

"You seem to have made rather a favorable impression upon Julia Weston, and, as a rule, she's unapproachable," she said, with a mischievous smile.

Ida's eyebrows straightened, which, to those acquainted with her, was a rather ominous sign.

"Won't you keep that woman away from me?" she begged. "I don't want to be rude, but if I see very much more of her, I may not be able to help it. In one way, I'm sorry I met her. You're not all like that."

"Well," said Arabella, "perhaps it is a pity. There really are some of us to whom you could talk without having your pet illusions about the old country shattered. In fact, I can think of one or two women about here who would strengthen them. Can't you, Mr. Ainslie?"

Ainslie, who was standing near them, smiled.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Unfortunately, however, they are, as a rule, retiring. It's the other kind that is usually in evidence. Do you feel very badly disappointed with us, Miss Stirling?"

"No," replied Ida, with a thoughtfulness which brought the smile more plainly into his eyes. "In fact, I want to think well of you. It's a thing we wouldn't quite admit, but at bottom I believe we all do."

Then she turned to Arabella.

"By the way, what has become of Mr. Weston?"

"He is shut up with my father in the library; and there are reasons for supposing that his business requires the consumption of a considerable quant.i.ty of soda and whisky. The major, I am afraid, will be a trifle difficult to get on with this evening. As a matter of fact, he isn't used to it, though he was, one understands, rather popular at the mess table. That's a trifle significant, considering what is said about us, isn't it, Mr. Ainslie?"

"Ah," said Ainslie, "we're a maligned people; and the pity of it is that it's our own people who give us away. You don't believe in doing that in the Colonies?"

"No," laughed Ida, "we are rather fond of making it clear that we are quite above the average as a people. However, it's excusable, perhaps, for, after all, there's a germ of truth in it. I think Miss Kinnaird will agree with that."

Arabella leaned a little farther over her chair.

"I'll leave you to talk it out with Mr. Ainslie. But there's another matter. Does Miss Weston recall to you anybody we have met?"

"No," said Ida, with a somewhat incautious decisiveness. "If you mean our camp-packer, she certainly does not."

Arabella understood this to mean that any comparison of the kind suggested would be derogatory to the packer, which was somewhat significant.

"Well," she said, "there is at least a physical resemblance, and though I haven't probed the matter very deeply, yet I've not abandoned it."

Then she laughed and turned to Ainslie.

"You and Miss Stirling can thrash out the question."

She strolled away, and Ainslie watched Ida, whose eyes were following Miss Weston at the tennis net.

"Yes," he remarked, "we play these games rather well; and, after all, is there any reason why we shouldn't? There are a good many people in this country who don't consider them as of the first importance."

"Oh," said Ida, "I'm really not looking for faults. Why should you suspect me of such an unpleasant att.i.tude?"

"Well," observed her companion reflectively, "I can't help thinking that we now and then give our visitors wrong impressions by showing them the wrong things. Personally, I should recommend an inspection of our mines and mills and factories. Besides, one has rather a fancy that some of our young men, who were brought up, we'll say, to play tennis well, have shown that they can do rather more than that in western Canada."

Ida's eyes softened a little as she recalled a weary, gray-faced man limping back up the hillside one eventful morning; but the turn that the conversation had taken had its effect on her, and that effect was to have its result. Like others born in the newer lands, she believed first of all in practical efficiency, and she had learned during journeys made with her father that the man with few wants and many abilities, or indeed the man with only one of the latter strenuously applied to a useful purpose, is the type in most favor in western Canada. Graces do not count for much in the west, nor does the a.s.sumption of ability carry a man as far as it sometimes does in older communities. As Stirling had once said, when they want a chopper in that country they make him chop, and facility in posing is of very little service when one is called on to grapple with virgin forest or stubborn rock.