The Gold Trail Part 3

"The difficulty is that you really can't interpret anything until you are quite sure what it means. You see, I'm feverishly restless by temperament, and accustomed to indulge in all kinds of petty, purposeless activities. They are petty, though the major calls them duties--social duties--and being, I'm afraid, a rather frivolous person in spite of my love of art, they appeal to me."

Ida said nothing. It was not necessary, and as a rule not advisable, to encourage Arabella Kinnaird when she commenced, as she sometimes described it, to talk seriously; and she rattled on:

"My dear, I'm all appreciation, and graciously pleased with the wonders that you are showing me; but still this valley strikes me as being short of something. It's too calm and quiet. Even Eden was not complete until man appeared in it, though, as usual, he made trouble shortly afterward. It is a thing he has kept on doing ever since."

Ida laughed.

"I'm not sure you're sticking to historical facts," she said.

"Facts," returned her companion, "don't count for much with me. I deal in impressions; and sometimes I feel full of them. I could astonish everybody if I could get them out; but that, of course, is the difficulty. Feeling, unfortunately, isn't quite the same thing as power of expression. Still, you asked me what I thought about these mountains, and I'm trying to tell you. You have brought it on yourself, you see. The key-tone of this place is an almost overwhelming tranquillity. One rather shrinks from that kind of thing when one is not used to it, and longs to do something to disturb it.

It's a natural impulse. When you see a smooth sheet of ice you generally look for a big stone with which to smash it."

She swung around and favored her companion with a glance of critical scrutiny; and there was no reason why Ida Stirling should shrink from it. She sat leaning forward, looking out at the mountains with steady eyes that had a half-smile in them. Her att.i.tude was reposeful and her face quiet; but there was something in both that faintly suggested a decided character.

"I don't think I'm readily disturbed," she said.

"No," answered her companion reflectively, "but the disturbance will no doubt come. You're in harmony with the key-tone of this valley; but too much serenity isn't good for me; and it's probable that n.o.body ever retains it very long. There's always the disturbing element in a world that's full of men. It was, as I remarked, man who brought trouble into Paradise."

Miss Kinnaird was addicted to talking a good deal of nonsense, and she frequently wearied her listeners; but there was a certain shrewdness in her, and at times she got near the truth. Indeed, her companion afterward decided that she had done so in this case. Ida Stirling had met many rising young men, and some who had made their mark, but none of them had aroused in her the faintest thrill of unrest or pa.s.sion.

So far, the depths of her nature had remained wholly unstirred. One could almost have told it from her laugh as she answered her companion's last observation.

"I thought it was woman's curiosity," she said; and then remembered suddenly that on the previous evening she had certainly been a trifle curious about the strange packer from the railroad gang.

Miss Kinnaird made no reply to this; but in a moment she stretched out a pointing hand.

"Now," she said, "the disturbing element is obtruding itself."

Farther down the river there was a flash of something white amidst the pale green shimmer of the flood. Ida rose, but her companion beckoned her to sit down again.

"Oh," she said, a trifle impatiently, "don't be prudish. He's ever so far off, and I've never had an opportunity to study anybody swimming."

It was, of course, Weston, who supposed himself far enough from camp not to be troubled by spectators, swimming with a powerful side-stroke upstream. Ida sat down again, and both of them watched him as he drew a little nearer. So many times every minute his left arm swept out into the sunlight as he flung it forward with far-stretched palm. It fell with the faintest splash, and there was a little puff of spray as his head dipped and the water washed across his lips. Then the white limbs flashed amidst the green shining of the river, and the long, lithe form contracted, gleaming as a salmon gleams when it breaks the surface with the straining line. The still river rippled, and a sun-bronzed face shot half-clear again. Miss Kinnaird watched the swimmer's progress with open appreciation.

"Dancing," she said didactically, "isn't to be compared with that!

It's the essence of rhythmic movement! I must certainly study swimming. I wish he'd come right on."

Ida was not sure that she agreed with her; and, just then, Weston, swinging suddenly around, went down into the green depths, and, shooting up with white shoulders high above the water, swept away again down-stream. Miss Kinnaird rose as he did so, and turned back toward the camp.

"That packer is rather fine, considered as a muscular animal," she said.

Ida smiled at this, somewhat sardonically.

"In your country you wouldn't think of regarding him as anything else.

Doesn't being an artist emanc.i.p.ate one from the conventional point of view?"

"No," replied Miss Kinnaird reflectively, "it doesn't, that is, when you do not paint for your living--which, of course, alters everything."

Then her eyes twinkled as she favored her companion with a pa.s.sable imitation of her father's didactic tone and manner.

"As the major says, social distinctions are necessary safeguards, and cannot lightly be disregarded. If they were not, they could not have existed as long as they have."

She laughed.

"In the case of a man who has inherited his station and his possessions," she added, "it is a very natural and comfortable creed."

"Ah," said Ida, "my father worked in a sawmill."

She spoke quietly, but there was something in her voice that warned her companion that there were subjects upon which they might have a clash of opinion. In the east there is pride of possession; but the pride of achievement, which is, perhaps, more logical, is more common in the west.

It was an hour later when Weston laid breakfast before them; and Ida, who regarded him un.o.btrusively with careful attention, decided that Arabella Kinnaird was right. The packer, with his lean, symmetrical litheness, his pleasant English face, his clear eyes, and his clean, bronzed skin, was certainly well-favored physically, and she began to wonder whether her companion could not have gone further in her comments; until she remembered again that the commencement of a good many troubles is probably woman's curiosity.

The canoes were launched after breakfast, and it was afternoon when they pitched camp beside a still, blue lake. Then Major Kinnaird strolled away with a trout-rod to a neighboring rapid, and Mrs.

Kinnaird went to sleep in a hammock. Her daughter got out her sketch-book, and sitting down among the boulders bade Ida summon Weston. He came, and stood looking at them inquiringly, picturesque in his wide hat and his fringed deerskin jacket. Miss Kinnaird pursed up her face.

"I want to make a sketch of you. You have rather a good head," she said.

Weston gazed at her a moment in astonishment, and then a twinkle crept into his eyes. Her matter-of-fact brusqueness, which made it perfectly plain that his views in the matter did not count, might have roused a sense of opposition in some men, but he had acquired a wide toleration in western Canada.

"Shall I stand here, miss?" he asked.

"No," said the girl, "a little farther to the right, where the sunlight falls upon the trunks behind you; but you mustn't look wooden. That will do. Still, you'll have to take off that jacket. It's frippery."

The suspicion of a flush crept into Weston's face; but, after all, a loose blue shirt and duck trousers are considered dress enough in the bush of the Pacific Slope, and he discarded the offending jacket. Miss Kinnaird, however, was not quite satisfied.

"Can't you take up that ax and look as if you were ready to use it?"

she said. "Oh, no! That is far too much like a waxwork! Hold up your head a little! Now, don't move any more than you can help! I think that will do."

Weston stood as he was for the best part of an hour. He felt inclined to wonder why he did it, as he had not found shoveling gravel anything like so difficult. Then Miss Kinnaird informed him that, as she desired to make a study of the background, she would not keep him any longer; and he strolled away to the waterside, where, after stretching himself wearily, he lay down and took out his pipe. He had not been there long when Ida, who came out from among the trees, sat down on one of the boulders not far from him.

"You must have been horribly cramped, but it didn't strike Miss Kinnaird, or she wouldn't have kept you there so long," she said.

"No," answered Weston, reflectively, "I don't think it would strike Miss Kinnaird. She's English, isn't she?"

"Of course. But aren't you English, too?"

Weston's eyes twinkled.

"I am. Still, I don't want you to think that it's merely because Miss Kinnaird comes from the same country that I do that I didn't expect her to realize that to stand posed for an hour or so is apt to cramp one."

Ida laughed. It evidently was clear to him that Miss Kinnaird regarded him as a packer and nothing else, and had decided that he had probably grown used to physical discomfort. Ida was, however, rather pleased to see that he accepted the fact good-humoredly and did not resent it.

She was in no way astonished that he should answer her as he had, for, in the west, a man may speak naturally to any young woman who addresses him, without feeling called on to remember the distinctions of caste.

"I wonder," she said, "whether you would tell me what caused the trouble you were mixed up in two or three nights ago."

Weston's face grew slightly flushed, for he was still in certain respects somewhat ingenuous; but he told her simply what had led up to the affray.

"After all you could hardly blame the boys," he added. "They had had a hard day, and it was not the first time Grenfell had done them out of their supper."

"Still, he had spoiled your supper, too," said Ida. "If you couldn't blame them, why did you interfere?"