Thurston of Orchard Valley Part 7

"Chopping down trees for sawmills, or something of the kind. The man said Geoffrey had evidently been what they call 'up against it' until lately when he seems to have got upon his feet. It will probably convince you that you were perfectly right in not marrying him."

This time Millicent laughed. "It wouldn't have counted for much with you?"

Marian looked at her with unwavering eyes. "No," she replied, "if I'd had any particular tenderness for Geoffrey it certainly wouldn't have had the least effect beyond making me more sorry for him, but, as it happens, he never did anything to encourage vain ideas of the kind in me." She changed the subject with the abruptness which usually characterized her. "I suppose you haven't seen old Anthony Thurston since you married Leslie? He, at least, is openly bitter against you."

"I haven't. In a way, I suppose he is right. Of course, he would take the stereotyped view that it was all my fault--that is to say, that I had discarded Geoffrey?"

"I believe he did, but it struck me once or twice that Geoffrey proclaimed that view a little too loudly. Of course, with his rather primitive notions of delicacy and what is due to us, it's very much what one would have antic.i.p.ated in his case. He naturally wouldn't want to leave room for any suspicion that he--wasn't altogether satisfied with you."

Millicent's face clouded. "That is a point which concerns n.o.body except Geoffrey and myself," she declared.

"And Anthony Thurston," Marian broke in. "Of course, it's an open secret that if you had married Geoffrey you would both have benefited by his will. As things have turned out, my own opinion is that the question whether either of you ever gets a penny of the property depends a great deal on the view he continues to take of the matter.

Any way, that's not the least concern of mine, except that I'm sorry for Geoffrey. I wonder if I'm going too far in asking what it was you and he actually split upon. I'm referring to the immediate cause of the trouble."

"I can tell you that," Millicent answered quickly, for she was glad to remove the ground for one suspicion, which was evidently in Marian's mind. "Geoffrey insisted on giving up the mine when he could have sold it, and going out to Australia or Canada. I wouldn't go with him. I think n.o.body could have reasonably expected me to."

Marian smiled. "Well," she said, "I wonder if you know that your husband was one of the men who were willing to take the mine over.

There are reasons for believing it was what brought him here in the first place."

Millicent's start betrayed the fact that this was news to her, but just then there was a rattle of wheels outside, and Marian rose. A murmur of voices and laughter grew clearer when the outer door was opened, and the two could hear the returning shooters talking with their host, who had gone out another way to meet them.

"The birds were scarce and very wild," announced one of them. "We had only two or three brace all morning, though we were a little more fortunate when we got up onto the higher land. It's my candid opinion that we should have done better there, but Leslie had all the luck in the turnips, and he made a shocking bad use of it."

"That's a fact," a.s.sented Leslie with what struck Millicent as a rather strained laugh. "I was right off the mark. There are some days when you simply can't shoot."

Several of the women guests now entered the hall, but the men did not come in. Judging from the sounds outside they seemed to be waiting while coats or cartridge bags were handed down to them from the dog-cart, and they were evidently bantering one another in the meanwhile.

"It depends upon how long you sit up in the smoking-room on the previous night," said one of them, and another observed:

"If you happen to be in business, the state of the markets has its effect."

Millicent started again at this, for she remembered her husband's expression when he had read his letter on the preceding evening. A third speaker took up the conversation.

"I don't think any variation in the price of Colonials or Kaffirs, or of wheat and cotton, for that matter, should prevent a man from telling the difference between a hare and a dog. I've a suspicion that if Tom cares to look he'll find one or two number six pellets in the hindquarters of the setter. It's a good thing our friend wasn't quite up to his usual form that time."

A burst of laughter followed, and Leslie's voice broke through it rather sharply as he replied: "He should have kept the brute in hand.

The difference isn't a big one when you can only see a liver-colored patch through a clump of bracken. Besides, there was a hare."

"Undoubtedly," cried somebody. "Lawson got it."

Then they came in one after another, and while some of them spoke to their hostess and the other women Leslie walked up to the little table where several letters were spread out. Millicent watched him as he did it, and there was no doubt that the very way he moved was suggestive of restrained eagerness. She saw him tear open a telegram and crumple it in his hand, after which he seized a second one and ripped it across the fold in his clumsy haste. Then as he put the pieces together his face grew suddenly pale and haggard. n.o.body else, however, appeared to notice him, and he leaned with one hand upon the table for a moment or two with his head turned away from her. She felt her heart beat painfully fast, for it was clear that a disaster of some kind had befallen him, though a large part of her anxiety sprang from the question how far the fact was likely to affect herself. He moved away from the table, and went towards the stairway at the further end of the hall, and she followed him a few minutes later. He was sitting by an open window when she reached their room. A candle flickered beside him and a little bundle of papers was clenched in one hand.

"What is it, Harry?" she asked.

He looked up at her, and his voice sounded hoa.r.s.e. "I'll try to tell you later," he answered. "There's a dinner to be got through, and it will be a big enough effort to sit it out. Slip away as soon as you can afterward without attracting attention. You'll find me on the terrace."

He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and she turned towards the little dressing-room. When she came out again he had gone, leaving his outdoor clothing scattered on the floor.

The dinner that followed was an ordeal to Millicent, but she took her part in the conversation, and glanced towards her husband only now and then. He did not eat a great deal, and though he spoke when it seemed necessary, she noticed the trace of unsteadiness in his voice. At last, however, the meal, which seemed to drag on interminably, was finished and as soon as possible she slipped out upon the terrace where she found Leslie leaning against a seat. The moon which had risen higher was brighter now, and she could see his face. It showed set and somber in the pale silvery light.

"Well?" she said impatiently. "Can't you speak?"

"I'll try," he answered. "Winkleheim Reef Explorations went down to four and six pence to-day, and as there's 5 shillings a share not paid up, it's very probable that one wouldn't be able to give the stock away before the market closes to-morrow."

"Ah," replied Millicent sharply, "didn't you tell me that they were worth sixteen shillings not very long ago? Why didn't you sell them then?"

"Because, as it seems to me now, my greediness was greater than my judgment. I wanted twenty shillings, and I thought I saw how I could get it." He paused with a little jarring laugh. "As a matter of fact--strange as it may seem--I believed in the thing. That is why I let them send out their independent expert, and held on when the stock began to drop. At the worst, I'd good reasons for believing Walmer would let me see the cipher report in time to sell. As it happened, he and the other traitor sold their own stock instead and that must have started the panic. Now they've got their report. There's no ore that will pay for milling in the reef."

It was not all clear to Millicent, but she understood from his manner that her husband was ruined. "Then what are we to do?" she asked. "Is there n.o.body who will give you a start again? You must be known in the business."

"That is the precise trouble. I'm too well known. So long as a man is a winner at this particular game and can make it worth while for interested folks to applaud him, or, at least, to keep their mouths shut, he can find a field for his talents when he wants it, but once he makes a false move or comes down with a bang, they get their claws in him and keep him from getting up again. n.o.body has any sympathy with a broken company exploiter, especially when he has for once been crazy enough to believe in his own venture."

Leslie found it a small relief to run on with ironical bitterness, but Millicent, who was severely practical in some respects, checked him.

"You haven't answered my other question."

"Then I won't keep you waiting. In a few weeks we'll go out to the Pacific Slope of North America. I may save enough from the wreck to start me in the land-agency business somewhere in British Columbia."

Millicent turned from him, and gazed down the moon-lit valley.

Troubled as she was, its rugged beauty and its stillness appealed to her, and she knew it would be a wrench to leave the land which had hitherto safely sheltered her. She had known only the smoother side of life in it, and n.o.body could appreciate the ease and luxury it could offer some of its inhabitants better than she did. Now, it seemed, she must leave it, and go out to struggle for a mere living in some unlovely town in what she supposed must be a wild and semi-barbarous country. She felt bitter against the man who, as she thought of it, had dragged her down, but she hid her resentment.

"But you know nothing about the land-agency business," she pointed out.

Leslie laughed ironically. "I have a few ideas. Milligan--we had him over at dinner once--made a good deal of money that way, and from what he told me it doesn't seem very different from the business I have been engaged in. Success evidently depends upon one's ability to sell the confiding investor what he thinks he'd like to get. Somehow I fancy that, with moderately good luck, two or three years of it should set us on our feet."

"But those two or three years. It's unthinkable!" Millicent broke out.

"I'm afraid you will have to face them," said Leslie dryly. He turned and looked hard at her. "You can't reasonably rue your bargain. You knew when I married you that while I had the command of money my business was a risky one."

Again Millicent stood silent a moment or two. She recognized that it was largely because Leslie enjoyed that command of money that she had discarded Geoffrey. Now his riches had apparently taken wings and vanished, but the man was bound to her still. One could fancy that there was something like retribution in the thing.

"It's rather dreadful, but I suppose I shall not make it any better by complaining," she remarked after a long silence.

Her husband's manner became embarra.s.sed. "I understand that Anthony Thurston is well off and you were a favorite of his," he said. "Would it be of any use if you explained the trouble to him?"

"No," was the answer, "it would be perfectly useless, and for other reasons that course is impossible. He meant me to marry Geoffrey and I've mortally offended him. He's a hard, determined man."

Leslie made a sign of a.s.sent, though there was a suggestion of grim amus.e.m.e.nt in his manner. "I suppose you couldn't very well explain that it was Geoffrey who threw you over? That would, no doubt, be too much to expect of you, and, after all, when you get to the bottom of the matter it wouldn't be true. In reality you finished with Geoffrey when he decided to emigrate instead of selling the mine, didn't you?"

Millicent flashed a swift glance at him, but he met it half-mockingly, and she turned her head away. "Why should you make yourself intolerable?" she returned. "I'm sorry for you--that is, I want to be, if you will let me."

Leslie shrugged his shoulders as he lit a cigar. "Well," he said, "it can't be helped. We must face the thing! And now I don't want to set the others wondering why we have slipped away; we had better go in again." They walked back info the house.

Leslie, with one or two of the other men, sat up late in the smoking-room. Leslie told a number of stories with force and point, and when at length two of his companions went up the stairway together, one of them looked at the other with a lifting of the eyebrows.

"After what Leslie has got through to-night, I'll take the farthest place in the line from him to-morrow," he said. "If his nerves aren't unusually good it seems quite possible that there'll be more than a setter peppered."