Vane of the Timberlands Part 16

Lucy looked up at her brother.

"Did you attempt to give somebody money there?"

"I did. It's not worth discussing; and, anyway, she wouldn't listen to me."

They strolled on, Vane frowning, while Carroll, noticing signs of suppressed interest in Lucy's face, smiled un.o.bserved. Neither he nor the others thought of Mabel, who was following them.

Some time after they joined the others, Carroll lay back in a deep chair, with his half-closed eyes turned in Lucy's direction.

"Are you asleep, or thinking hard?" Mrs. Chisholm asked him.

"Not more than half asleep," he laughed. "I was trying to remember _A Dream of Fair Women_. It's a suitable occupation for a drowsy summer afternoon in a place like this, but I must confess that it was Miss Vane who put it into my head. She reminded me of one or two of the heroines when she was championing the cause of the suffragist."

"You mustn't imagine that Englishwomen in general sympathize with her, or that such ideas are popular at the Dene."

Carroll smiled rea.s.suringly.

"I shouldn't have imagined the latter for a moment. But, as I said, on an afternoon of this kind one may be excused for indulging in romantic fancies. Don't you see what brought those old-time heroines into my mind?

I mean the elusive resemblance to their latter-day prototype?"

Mrs. Chisholm looked puzzled.

"No," she declared. "One of them was Greek, another early English, and the finest of all was the Hebrew maid. As they couldn't have been like one another, how could they, collectively, have borne a resemblance to anybody else?"

"That's logical, on the surface. To digress, why do you most admire Jephthah's daughter, the gentle Gileadite?"

His hostess affected surprise.

"Isn't it evident, when one remembers her patient sacrifice; her fine sense of family honor?"

Carroll felt that this was much the kind of sentiment one could have expected from her; and he did her the justice to believe that it was genuine and that she was capable of living up to her convictions. His glance rested on Vane for a moment, and the latter was startled as he guessed Carroll's thought.

Evelyn sat near him, reclining languidly in a wicker chair. She had been silent, and now that her face was in repose the signs of reserve and repression were plainer than ever. There was, however, pride in it, and Vane felt that she was endowed with a keener and finer sense of family honor than her thin-lipped mother. Her brother's career was threatened by the results of his own imprudence, and though her father could hardly be compared with the Gileadite warrior, there was, Vane fancied, a disturbing similarity between the two cases. It was unpleasant to contemplate the possibility of this girl's being called upon to bear the cost of her relatives' misfortunes or follies.

Carroll looked across at Lucy with a smile.

"You won't agree with Mrs. Chisholm?" he suggested.

"No," answered Lucy firmly. "Leaving out the instance in question, there are too many people who transgress and then expect somebody else--a woman, generally--to serve as a sacrifice."

"I don't agree, either," Mabel broke in. "I'd sooner have been Cleopatra, or Joan of Arc--only she was burned, poor thing."

"That was only what she might have expected. An unpleasant fate generally overtakes people who go about disturbing things," Mrs.

Chisholm said severely.

The speech was characteristic, and the others smiled. It would have astonished them had Mrs. Chisholm sympathized with the rebel idealist whose beckoning visions led to the clash of arms.

"Aren't you getting off the track," Vane asked Carroll. "I don't see the drift of your previous remarks."

"Well," drawled Carroll, "there must be, I think, a certain distinctive stamp upon those who belong to the leader type--I mean the people who are capable of doing striking and heroic things. Apart from this, I've been studying you English--I've been over here before--and it has struck me that there's occasionally something imperious, or rather imperial, in the faces of your women in the most northern counties. I can't define the thing, but it's there--in the line of nose, in the mouth, and, I think, most marked in the brows. It's not Saxon, nor Norse, nor Danish; I'd sooner call it Roman."

Vane was slightly astonished. He had seen that look in Evelyn's face, and now, for the first time, he recognized it in his sister's.

"Perhaps you have hit it," he said with a laugh. "You can reach the Wall from here in a day's ride."

"The Wall?"

"The Roman Wall; Hadrian's Wall. I believe one authority states that they had a garrison of one hundred thousand men to keep it."

Chisholm joined the group. He was a tall, rather florid-faced man, with a formal manner, and was dressed immaculately in creaseless clothes.

"The point Wallace raises is interesting," he remarked. "While I don't know how long it takes for a strain to die out, there must have been a large civil population living near the Wall, and we know that the characteristics of the Teutonic peoples who followed the Romans still remain. On the other hand, some of the followers were vexillaries, from the bounds of the Empire; Gauls, for example, or Iberians."

When, later on, the group broke up, Evelyn was left alone for a few minutes with Mabel.

"Gerald should have been sent to Canada instead of to Oxford," the younger girl declared. "Then he might have got as rich as Wallace Vane and Mr. Carroll."

"What makes you think they're rich?" Evelyn asked with reproof in her tone.

Mabel grimaced.

"Oh, we all knew they were rich before they came. They were giving Lucy guineas for the suffragists an hour ago. They must have a good deal of money to waste it like that. Besides, I think Wallace wanted her to take some more; and he seemed quite vexed when he said he'd tried to give money to somebody else in Canada who wouldn't have it. As he said 'she,'

it must have been a woman, but I don't think he meant to mention that. It slipped out."

"You had no right to listen," Evelyn retorted severely; but the information sank into her mind, and she afterward remembered it.

She rose when the sunshine, creeping farther across the gra.s.s, fell upon her, and Vane carried her chair, as well as those of the others, who were strolling back toward them, into the shadow. This she thought was typical of the man. He seemed happiest when he was doing something. By and by a chance remark of her mother's once more set Carroll to discoursing humorously.

"After all," he contended, "it's difficult to obey a purely arbitrary rule of conduct. Several of the philosophers seem to have decided that the origin of virtue is utility."

"Utility?" Chisholm queried.

"Yes; utility to one's neighbors or the community at large. For instance, I desire an apple growing on somebody else's tree--one of the big red apples that hang over the roadside in Ontario. Now the longing for the fruit is natural, and innocent in itself; the trouble is that if it were indulged in and gratified by every person who pa.s.sed along the road, the farmer would abandon the cultivation of his orchard. He would neither plant nor prune his trees, except for the expectation of enjoying what they yield. The offense, accordingly, concerns everybody who enjoys apples."

Mrs. Chisholm smiled a.s.sent.

"I believe that idea is the basis of our minor social and domestic codes. Even when they're illogical in particular cases, they're necessary in general."

Evelyn looked across at Vane, as if to invite his opinion, and he knit his brows.

"I don't think Carroll's correct. The traditional view, which, as I understand it, is that the sense of right is innate, ingrained in man's nature, seems more reasonable. I'll give you two instances. There was a man in charge of a little mine. He had had the crudest education, and no moral training, but he was an excellent miner. Well, he was given a hint that it was not desirable the mine should turn out much paying ore."

"But why wasn't it required to produce as much as possible?"

Evelyn asked.

"I believe that somebody wanted to break down the value of the shares and afterward quietly buy them up. Anyway, though he knew it would result in his dismissal, the man I mentioned drove the boys his hardest. He worked savagely, taking risks he could have avoided by spending a little more time in precautions, in a badly timbered tunnel. He didn't reason--he was hardly capable of it--but he got the most out of the mine."

"It was fine of him!" Evelyn exclaimed.