The Long Portage Part 13

"Oh, well, since you're so persistent, the Crestwicks have evidently been left with ample means, acquired by their parents, not much education, and big ambitions. They can get into certain circles, but that won't content them, and other doors, which Gladwyne can open to them, are shut. After all, he's a good sportsman, a man of some culture, with a manner that's likely to impress such people. The lad's holding on to him and taking his worst aspect for a copy, while Clarence seems willing to extend his patronage."

"For some consideration?"

Nasmyth looked disturbed.

"It's unpleasant, but I can't help feeling that you're right. One way or another, young Crestwick will have to pay his entrance fees." He rose and stretched himself lazily. "I'll spoil my temper if I say any more about it, and as we've had a long day I'm off to bed."

Lisle followed him from the room, but he was up early the next morning and strolled down to the river while the light was creeping across the moors and the dew lay thick upon the gra.s.s, thinking over what he had heard on the previous night. It was his nature to be interested in almost everything and he was curious to learn what he could of the people to whom his father had belonged. In Canada he had, for the most part, met only men of somewhat primitive habits and simple desires, grappling with rock and forest, or with single purpose toiling to acquire wealth in the new cities. What was more to the purpose, few of them were married. Now he was thrown among a people not more intelligent--indeed, he thought they were less endowed with practically useful knowledge--but in some respects more complex, actuated by different and less obvious ambitions and desires. He felt impelled to watch them, though he recognized that, as Nasmyth had predicted, this might not be all. It was possible that sooner or later he would be drawn into action.

He reached the stream at a spot where it flowed, still and clear, beneath a birch wood. A few of the leaves were green, but most of them gleamed a delicate saffron among the gray and silver stems, and the ground beneath was flecked with yellow. Behind the trees rough, lichened rock and stony slopes ran up to a bare ridge, silhouetted against the roseate glow of the morning sky. The sun had not risen, the water lay in shadow; it was very quiet and rather cold, and Lisle was surprised to see Millicent Gladwyne picking her way cautiously over a bank of stones. It was only her movements that betrayed her, for her neutral-tinted attire harmonized with the background; but when she caught sight of him she left the foot of the slope she was skirting and came directly toward him. He thought she looked wonderfully fresh and wholesome, and he noticed that she carried a small camera.

"I'm afraid you have spoiled my sport," she laughed. "I was after an otter--though you mustn't tell Nasmyth that there is one about here."

"Certainly not," acquiesced Lisle. "But why?"

"He would consider it his duty to bring up the hounds the next meet.

Isn't it curious how slaughter appeals to a man? But Nasmyth isn't unreasonable; there are reserves in which even the jays he longs to shoot have sanctuary."

"But you were looking for an otter?"

"Yes; I wanted its picture, not its life. I've got several, but I'm not satisfied; though I've been lucky lately. I got a dabchick--they're growing scarce--not long ago."

"We'll try the next pool, if you'll let me come," suggested Lisle. "I'm pretty good at trailing. But what do you want with their pictures?"

"For my book," she told him. "I have to make ever so many drawings in color before I get them right. If you're fond of the wild creatures, I'll show them to you."

Lisle said that he would be delighted, and they went on, keeping back among tall brushwood where they skirted the swift stream at the head of the pool, and then proceeding cautiously with the outline of their figures softened by the heathy slopes behind. At length, creeping up through a thin growth of alders, they stopped near another still reach and the girl pointed to a few floating objects on its surface.

"You're good at trailing or they'd have taken fright," she said. "Still, I think I will surprise you, if you will wait here."

"Mallard," Lisle commented. "Young birds--even where we seldom disturb them, they're shy."

She slipped away through the alders and he noticed how little noise she made, though the lower branches here and there brushed against her gliding form. She was wonderfully light and graceful in her movements. As she came out into the open there was a startled quack or two from the birds. Lisle expected to see them rise from the water, but she called softly and, to his vast astonishment, they ceased paddling away from her.

She called again and they turned and swam cautiously toward her, and when she took a handful of something from a pocket and flung it upon the surface of the stream, three or four heads were stretched forward to seize the morsels.

While the birds drew nearer Lisle looked on admiring. She had roused his interest when he had first seen her in her rich evening dress, but now he thought she made a far more striking picture, and her sympathy with the timid wild creatures which evidently knew and trusted her awakened something responsive in him. Half the pool now glimmered in the rosy light, with here and there an alder branch reflected upon its mirror-like surface, and Millicent stood on a strip of gravel with her figure clearly outlined against it. Dressed in closely-fitting, soft-colored tweed, tall and finely symmetrical, she harmonized with rock and flood wonderfully well. Lisle had occasionally seen a bush rancher's daughter, armed with gun or fishing-rod, look very much at home in similar surroundings; but this English lady, of culture and station, reared in civilized luxury, appeared equally in her right place.

He afterward recollected each adjunct of the scene--the stillness, the pale gleam of the water, and the aromatic smell of fallen leaves, but the alluring, central figure formed the sharpest memory. By and by she clapped her hands, the ducks rose and flew away up-stream with necks stretched out, and she came back toward him, laughing softly.

"Sometimes they will come almost up to my feet; but I'm afraid it's hardly fair to inspire them with an undue confidence in human nature. It might cost them dear."

"You're wonderful!" Lisle exclaimed, expressing what he felt, for she seemed to him endowed with every gracious quality.

"Oh," she smiled, "there's nothing really remarkable in what I showed you. I happened to find the nest and by slow degrees disarmed the mother bird's suspicions; mallard have been domesticated, you know, though they're often hard to get very near. But we may as well turn back; it's now too late to see an otter. I'm inclined to think they're the shyest of all the British wild creatures."

They moved away down-stream side by side, and some time later she left him where a stile-path crossed a meadow.

"Come and see my drawings whenever you like," she said on parting.

Lisle determined to go as soon as possible. Quite apart from the drawings, the idea of going had its attractions for him, and he walked homeward determined that this girl should never marry Clarence Gladwyne.

It was unthinkable--that was the only word for it.

CHAPTER X

BELLA'S CHAMPION

It was early in the afternoon when Lisle arrived at Millicent's house and, after a glance at its quaint exterior, was ushered into her drawing-room. There he sat down and looked about while he waited. The salient tones of its decoration were white and aqueous blue, and the effect struck him as pleasantly chaste and cool. Among the rather mixed ornaments were a couple of marble statuettes, the figures airily poised and very finely wrought. Next, he noticed some daintily carved objects in ivory, and a picture in water-color of a wide, gray stretch of moor with distance and solitude skilfully conveyed. He had risen to examine it when Millicent entered.

"I'm glad you came, though, as you're used to the life of the woods and rivers, I'm a little diffident about showing you my sketches," she said.

"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting."

Lisle smiled and she liked the candidly humorous gleam in his eyes.

"Nasmyth warned me that I was early--or rather he said that if I were going to visit anybody else I would have been too soon. I'd better confess, however, that I've been making a good use of the time. Things of this kind"--he indicated the statuettes--"are almost new to me. They strike me as unusually fine."

"Yes," she answered, realizing that he had an artistic eye, "they are beautiful--and one sees so many that are not. George brought them from Italy for me. This"--she moved toward a representation in ivory of a Mogul gateway--"is of course a different style, but it's remarkable in its patient elaboration of detail. The mosque's not so fine. Nasmyth sent me the pair from India; he once made a trip to the fringe of the Himalayas."

Lisle examined the object carefully, and she waited with some interest for his comment.

"It's wonderful," he declared. "I suppose it's a truthful copy?"

"I'm inclined to think the man who carved that had not the gift of imagination. He merely reproduced faithfully what he saw."

"Different peoples have strikingly different ways, haven't they?"

commented Lisle. "While they were making that small Eastern arch, we'd fling up a thriving wooden town or build a hotel of steel and cement to hold a thousand guests. The biggest bridges that carry our great freight-trains across the roaring gorges in the Rockies cost less labor."

"I should imagine it. What then?"

He studied the carved ivory.

"In a dry climate the original of this would last for centuries--it has lasted since the days of the Moguls--an object of beauty for generations to enjoy. Perhaps those old builders used their time as well as we do.

Our works serve their purpose, but one can't call them pretty."

She was pleased with his answer.

"I think that gets the strongest hold on me," he went on, glancing toward the picture of the moor; "it's real!"

There was a hint of diffidence in Millicent's expression.

"But you can hardly judge, can you? You have scarcely seen the English moors."

"I've spent a while on the high Albertan plains, and you have the same things yonder; the vast sweep of sky, the rolling waste running on forever. It's all in that picture; how expressed, I don't know--there are only the grades of color, scarcely a line to gage the distance by. Still, the sense of s.p.a.ce is vivid."

Millicent blushed.