The Impostor Part 28

Dane dare urge nothing further, and spent the rest of that day wandering up and down the city, in a state of blissful content, with Alfreton and Witham. One of them had turned his losses into a small profit, and the other two, who had, hoping almost against hope, sown when others had feared to plough, saw that the harvest would repay them beyond their wildest expectations. They heard nothing but predictions of higher prices everywhere, and the busy city seemed to throb with exultation. The turn had come, and there was hope for the vast wheat lands it throve upon.

Graham had much to tell them when they sat down to the somewhat elaborate meal Witham termed supper that night, and he nodded approvingly when Dane held out his gla.s.s of champagne and touched his comrade's.

"I'm not fond of speeches, Courthorne, and I fancy our tastes are the same," he said. "Still, I can't let this great night pa.s.s without greeting you as the man who has saved not a few of us at Silverdale.

We were in a very tight place before you came, and we are with you when you want us from this time, soul and body, and all our possessions." Alfreton's eyes glistened, and his hand shook a little as he touched the rim of Witham's goblet.

"There are folks in the old country who will bless you when they know," he said. "You'll forget it, though I can't, that I was once against you."

Witham nodded to them gravely, and when the gla.s.ses were empty shook hands with the three.

"We have put up a good fight, and I think we shall win; but, while you will understand me better by-and-by what you have offered me almost hurts," he said.

"What we have given is yours. We don't take it back," said Dane.

Witham smiled, though there was a wistfulness in his eyes as he saw the faint bewilderment in his companions' faces.

"Well," he said slowly, "you can do a little for me now. Colonel Barrington was right when he set his face against speculation, and it was only because I saw dollars were badly needed at Silverdale, and the one means of getting them, I made my deal. Still, if we are to succeed as farmers we must market our wheat as cheaply as our rivals, and we want a new bridge on the level. Now, I got a drawing of one and estimates for British Columbia stringers, yesterday, while the birches in the ravine will give us what else we want. I'll build a bridge myself, but it will cheapen the wheat-hauling to everybody, and you might like to help me."

Dane glanced at the drawing laid before him, but Alfreton spoke first.

"One hundred dollars. I'm only a small man, but I wish it was five,"

he said.

"I'll make it that much, and see the others do their share," said Dane, and then glanced at the broker with a curious smile.

"How does he do it--this and other things? He was never a business man!"

Graham nodded. "He can't help it. It was born in him. You and I can figure and plan, but Courthorne is different--the right thing comes to him. I knew, the first night I saw him, you had got the man you wanted at Silverdale."

Then Witham stood up, winegla.s.s in hand. "I am obliged to you, but I fancy this has gone far enough," he said. "There is one man who has done more for you than I could ever do. Prosperity is a good thing, but you at least know what he has aimed at stands high above that. May you have the head of the Silverdale community long with you!"

CHAPTER XVIII

UNDER TEST

The prairie lay dim and shadowy in the creeping dusk when Witham sat on a redwood stringer near the head of his partly-finished bridge.

There was no sound from the hollow behind him but the faint gurgle of the creek and the almost imperceptible vibration of countless minute wings. The birches which climbed the slope to it wound away sinuously, a black wall on either hand, and the prairie lying grey and still stretched back into the silence in front of him. Here and there a smouldering fire showed dully red on the brink of the ravine, but the tired men who had lighted them were already wrapped in heavy slumber.

The prairie hay was gathered, harvest had not come, and for the last few weeks Witham, with his hired men from the bush of Ontario, had toiled at the bridge with a tireless persistency which had somewhat astonished the gentlemen farmers of Silverdale. They, however, rode over every now and then, and most cheerfully rendered what a.s.sistance they could, until it was time to return for tennis or a shooting sweepstake, and Witham thanked them gravely, even when he and his Ontario axemen found it necessary to do the work again. He could have told n.o.body why he had undertaken to build the bridge, which could be of no use to him, but he was in a measure prompted by instincts born in him; for he was one of the Englishmen who, with a dim recognition of the primeval charge to subdue the earth and render it fruitful, gravitate to the newer lands, and usually leave their mark upon them.

He had also a half-defined notion that it would be something he could leave behind in reparation, that the men of Silverdale might remember the stranger who had imposed on them more leniently, while in the strain of the mental struggle strenuous occupation was a necessity to him.

A bundle of papers it was now too dim to see lay beside him, clammy with the dew, and he sat bareheaded, a pipe which had gone out in his hand, staring across the prairie with an ironical smile in his eyes.

He had planned boldly and striven tirelessly, and now the fee he could not take would surely be tendered him. Wheat was growing dearer every day, and such crops as he had sown had not been seen at Silverdale.

Still, the man, who had had few compunctions before he met Maud Barrington, knew now that in a little while he must leave all he had painfully achieved behind. What he would do then he did not know, for only one fact seemed certain--in another four months, or less, he would have turned his back on Silverdale.

Presently, however, the sound of horse-hoofs caught his ears, and he stood up when a mounted figure rose out of the prairie. The moon had just swung up, round and coppery, from behind a rise, and when horse and rider cut black and sharp against it his pulses throbbed faster and a little flush crept into his face, for he knew every line of the figure in the saddle. Some minutes had pa.s.sed when Maud Barrington rode slowly to the head of the bridge, and pulled up her horse at the sight of him.

The moon, turning silver now, shone behind her head, and a tress of hair sparkled beneath her wide hat, while the man had a glimpse of the gleaming whiteness of rounded cheek and neck. Her face he could not see, but shapely shoulders, curve of waist, and sweeping line of the light habit were forced up as in a daguerreotype, and as the girl sat still looking down on him, slender, lissom, dainty, etherealized almost by the brightening radiance, she seemed to him a visionary complement of the harmonies of the night. It also appeared wiser to think of her as such than a being of flesh and blood whom he had wildly ventured to long for, and he almost regretted when her first words dispelled the illusion.

"It is dreadfully late," she said. "Pluto went very lame soon after I left Macdonald's, and I knew if I went back for another horse he would have insisted on riding home with me. I had slipped away while he was in the granary. One can cross the bridge?"

"Not mounted," said Witham. "There are only a few planks between the stringers here and there, but, if you don't mind waiting, I can lead your horse across."

He smiled a little, for the words seemed trivial and out of place in face of the effect the girl's appearance had on him, but she glanced at him questioningly.

"No!" she said. "Now, I would have gone round by the old bridge, only that Allardyce told me you let him ride across this afternoon."

"Still," and the man stopped a moment, "it was daylight then, you see."

Maud Barrington laughed a little, for his face was visible, and she understood the slowness of his answer. "Is that all? It is moonlight now."

"No," said Witham dryly, "but one is apt to make an explanation too complete occasionally. Will you let me help you down?"

Maud Barrington held out her hands, and when he swung her down watched him tramp away with the horse with a curious smile. A light compliment seldom afforded her much pleasure, but the man's grim reserve had now and then piqued more than her curiosity, though she was sensible that the efforts she occasionally made to uncover what lay behind it were not without their risk. Then he came back, and turned to her very gravely.

"Let me have your hand," he said.

Maud Barrington gave it him, and hoped the curious little thrill that ran through her when his hard fingers closed upon her palm did not communicate itself to him. She also noticed that he moved his head sharply a moment, and then looked straight in front again. Then the birches seemed to fall away beneath them, and they moved out across the dim gully with the loosely-laid planking rattling under their feet, until they came to a strip scarcely three feet wide which spanned a gulf of blackness in the shadow of the trees.

"Hold fast!" said Witham with a trace of hoa.r.s.eness. "You are sure you feel quite steady?"

"Of course!" said the girl with a little laugh, though she recognized the anxiety in his voice, and felt his hand close almost cruelly on her own. She was by no means timorous, and still less fanciful, but when they moved out into the blackness that closed about them above and beneath along the slender strip of swaying timber she was glad of the masterful grip. It seemed in some strange fashion portentous, for she felt that she would once more be willing to brave unseen perils, secure only in his guidance. What he felt she did not know, and was sensible of an almost overwhelming curiosity, until when at last well-stiffened timber lay beneath them, she contrived to drop a glove just where the moonlight smote the bridge. Witham stooped, and his face was clear in the silvery light when he rose again. Maud Barrington saw the relief in it, and, compelled by some influence, stood still looking at him with a little glow behind the smile in her eyes. A good deal was revealed to both of them in that instant, but the man dare not admit it, and was master of himself.

"Yes," he said, very simply, "I am glad you are across."

Maud Barrington laughed. "I scarcely fancy the risk was very great, but tell me about the bridge," she said. "You are living beside it?"

"Yes," said Witham, "in a tent, I must have it finished before harvest, you see!"

The girl understood why this was necessary, but deciding that she had on other occasions ventured sufficiently far with that topic, moved on across the bridge.

"A tent," she said, "cannot be a very comfortable place to live in, and who cooks for you?"

Witham smiled dryly. "I am used to it, and can do all the cooking that is necessary," he said. "It is the usual home for the beginner, and I lived six months in one--on grindstone bread, the tinctured glucose you are probably not acquainted with as 'drips,' and rancid pork--when I first came out to this country and hired myself, for ten dollars monthly, to another man. It is a diet one gets a little tired of occasionally, but after breaking prairie twelve hours every day one can eat almost anything, and when I afterwards turned farmer my credit was rarely good enough to provide the pork."

The girl looked at him curiously, for she knew how some of the smaller settlers lived, and once more felt divided between wonder and sympathy. She could picture the grim self-denial, for she had seen the stubborn patience in this man's face as well as a stamp that was not borne by any other man at Silverdale. Some of the crofter settlers, who periodically came near starvation in their sod hovels, and the men from Ontario who staked their little handful of dollars on the first wheat crop to be wrested from the prairie, bore it, however. From what Miss Barrington had told her, it was clear that Courthorne's first year in Canada could not have been spent in this fashion, but there was no doubt in the girl's mind as she listened. Her faith was equal to a more strenuous test.

"There is a difference in the present, but who taught you bridge-building? It takes years to learn the use of the axe," she said.

Witham laughed. "I think it took me four, but the man who has not a dollar to spare usually finds out how to do a good many things for himself, and I had working drawings of the bridge made in Winnipeg.

Besides, your friends have helped me with their hands as well as their good-will. Except at the beginning, they have all been kind to me, and one could not well have expected very much from them then."

Maud Barrington coloured a trifle as she remembered her own att.i.tude towards him. "Cannot you forget it?" she said, with a curious little ring in her voice. "They would do anything you asked them now."

"One generally finds it useful to have a good memory, and I remember most clearly that, although they had very little reason for it, most of them afterwards trusted me. That made, and still makes, a great difference to me."