The Protector Part 31

"I dare say regret was a very natural feeling then; but that wasn't quite what I meant."

"So I supposed," Vane confessed. "Well, I'd better own that when I spent a week or two in England--at the Dene--I began to think I missed a good deal by not staying at home. It struck me that the life you led had a singular charm. Everything went so smoothly there among the sheltering hills. One felt that care and anxiety could not creep in. Somehow the place reminded me of Avalon."

"The impression was by no means correct," said Evelyn. "But I don't think you have finished. Won't you go on?"

"Then if I get out of my depth you mustn't blame me. By and by I discovered that charm wasn't the right word--the place was permeated with a narcotic spell."

"Narcotic?" said Evelyn. "Do you think the term's more appropriate?"

"I do," Vane declared, "Narcotics, one understands, are insidious things. If you take them regularly, in small doses, they increase their hold on you, until you become wrapped up in dreams and unrealities. If, however, you get too big a dose at the beginning, it leads to a vigorous revulsion. It's nature's warning and remedy."

"You're not flattering," said Evelyn. "But I almost fancy you are right."

"We are told that man was made to struggle; to use all his powers. If he rests too long beside the still backwaters of life in fairylike dales, they're apt to atrophy, and he finds himself slack and nerveless when he goes out to face the world again."

Evelyn nodded, for she had felt and striven against the insidious influence he spoke of. She had now and then left the drowsy dale for a while; but the life she had then caught glimpses of was equally sheltered, one possible only to the favoured few. Even the echoes of the real tense struggle seldom pa.s.sed its boundaries.

"But you confessed not long ago that you loved the Western wilderness,"

she said. "You have spent a good deal of time in it; you expect to do so again. After all, isn't that only exchanging one beautiful, tranquil region for another? The bush must be even quieter than the English dales."

"I expect I haven't made the point quite clear. When one goes up into the bush it's not to lounge and dream there, but to make war upon it with the axe and drill." He pulled up his team and pointed to a clump of giant trees. "Look here. That's Nature's challenge to man in this country."

Evelyn confessed that it was a very impressive one. The great trunks ran up far aloft, tremendous columns, before their higher portions were lost in the vaulted roof of sombre greenery. They dwarfed the rig and team; she felt herself a pigmy by comparison.

"They're rather bigger than the average," her companion resumed. "Still, that's the kind of thing you run up against when you buy land to make a ranch of or clear the ground for a mine. Chopping, sawing up, splitting those giants doesn't fill one with languorous dreams; the only ones our axe-men indulge in materialise. It's a bracing struggle. There are leagues and leagues of trees, shrouding the valleys in a shadow that has lasted since the world was young; but you see the dawn of a wonderful future breaking in as the long ranks go down."

Once more, without clearly intending it, he had stirred the girl. He had not spoken in that rather fanciful style to impress her; she thought he had, trusting in her comprehension, merely given his ideas free rein.

But in doing so he had somehow made her hear the clear trumpet-call to action, which, for such men, rings through the roar of the river and the song of the tall black pines.

"Ah!" she said, "I dare say it's a fine life in many ways, but it must have its drawbacks. The flesh must shrink from them."

"The flesh?" he said and laughed. "In this land it takes second place--except, perhaps, in the cities." Then he turned and looked at her curiously. "Why should you talk of shrinking? The bush couldn't daunt you; you have courage."

The girl's eyes sparkled, but it was not at the compliment. His words rang with freedom, the freedom of the heights, where heroic effort was the rule in place of luxury. She longed now, as she had often done, to escape from bondage, to break away.

"Ah, well," she said, half-wistfully, "I expect it's fortunate that such courage as I have may never be put to the test."

Though reticence was difficult, Vane made no comment. He had spoken unguardedly already, and he had decided that caution was desirable. As it happened, an automobile came up when he restarted his team, and he looked round as he drove on again.

"It's curious that I never heard the thing," he said.

"I didn't either," said Evelyn, and added, as if any explanation were needed: "I was too engrossed in the trees. But I think Miss Horsfield was in it."

"Was she?" said Vane in a very casual manner, and Evelyn, for no reason that she was willing to admit, was pleased.

She had not been mistaken. Jessie Horsfield was in the automobile, and she had had a few moments in which to study Vane and his companion. The man's look and the girl's expression had struck her as significant; and her lips set ominously tight as the car sped on. She felt she almost hated Vane, and there was no doubt that she entirely hated the girl at his side.

CHAPTER XXIV

JESSIE STRIKES.

It was the afternoon before Vane's departure for the north, and Evelyn, sitting alone for the time being in Mrs. Nairn's drawing-room, felt disturbed by the thought of it. She sympathised with his object, but she supposed there was a certain risk attached to the journey, and that troubled her. In addition to this there was another point on which she was not altogether pleased. She had twice seen Vane acknowledge a bow from a very pretty girl whose general appearance suggested that she did not belong to Evelyn's own walk of life, and that very morning she had noticed him crossing a street in the young woman's company. Vane, as it happened, had met Kitty Blake by accident and had asked her to accompany him on a visit to Celia.

Evelyn did not think she was of a jealous disposition, and jealousy appeared irrational in the case of a man whom she had dismissed as a suitor; but the thing rankled in her mind. While she considered it, Jessie Horsfield entered the room.

"I'm here by invitation, to join Vane's other old friends in giving him a good send-off," she explained.

Evelyn noticed that Jessie laid some stress upon her acquaintance with Vane, and wondered if she had any motive for doing so.

"I suppose you have known him for some time," she said.

"Oh, yes," was the careless answer. "My brother was one of the first to take him up when he came to Vancouver."

The phrase jarred on Evelyn. It savoured of patronage; besides, she did not like to think that Vane owed anything to the Horsfields.

"Though I don't know much about it, I understood they were opposed to each other," she said coldly.

"Their business interests don't coincide; but it doesn't follow that they should disagree about anything else. My brother did all he could to dissuade Vane from going on with his search for the timber until the winter was over."

"I think it is rather fine of him to persist in it," Evelyn declared.

Jessie smiled, though she felt venomous just then. "Yes," she agreed; "one undoubtedly feels that. Besides, the thing's so characteristic of him; the man's impulsively generous and not easily daunted. He possesses many of the rudimentary virtues, as well as some of the corresponding weaknesses, which is very much what one would look for."

"What do you mean by that?" Evelyn inquired, suppressing her resentment.

Though she was not prepared to pose as Vane's advocate, she was conscious of a growing antagonism against her companion.

"It's difficult to explain, and I don't know that the subject's worth discussing," said Jessie. "However, what I think I meant was this--Vane's of a type that's not uncommon in the West, and it's a type one finds interesting. He's forcibly elementary, which is the only way I can express it; the restraints the rest of us submit to don't bind him; he breaks through them."

This, so Evelyn fancied, was more or less correct. Indeed, the man's disregard of hampering customs had pleased her, but she allowed that some restraints were needful. As it happened, her companion followed up the same train of thought.

"When one breaks down or gets over fences, it's necessary to discriminate," she went on lightly. "Men of the Berserker type, however, are more addicted to going straight through the lot. In a way, they're consistent--having smashed one barrier, why should they respect the next?"

Jessie, as she was quite aware, was playing a dangerous game; one that might afterwards be exposed. Still, the latter possibility was of less account because detection would come too late if she were successful.

She was acquainted with the salient points of Evelyn's character.

"They're consistent, if not always very logical," she concluded after a pause. "One endeavours to make allowances for men of that description."

Something in her tone roused Evelyn to sudden imperious anger. It was intolerable that this woman should offer excuses for Vane.

"What particular allowances do you feel it needful to make in Mr. Vane's case?" she asked.

Now she was faced by the direct question, Jessie hesitated. As a rule, she was subtle, but she could be ruthlessly frank, and she was possessed by a hatred of the girl beside her.

"You have forced me to an explanation," she expostulated. "The fact is that while he has a room at the hotel he has an--establishment--in a different neighbourhood. Unfortunately, what you could best describe as a Latin quarter is a feature of some Western towns."