Treasure Valley Part 25

The man raised his whip over his horses' backs and then paused.

Plainly she intended to be slain rather than yield, and though murder was in Sandy's heart he hesitated to commit it. He glanced about him with a movement of impotent rage. Never before had he been balked in his will by man, nor had he ever met the woman who had dared to cross him. And here he was, held up in his own particular saw-log road by one of the despised s.e.x! He remembered, in choking wrath, that he was a pillar of the Glenoro church, that before him was the schoolmistress, and behind the doctor and old Hughie Cameron's niece, and he dared not give adequate expression to the rage with which he was being consumed.

In a voice inarticulate with anger he opened a parley. He declared that he would have the law, that he would publish her high-handed act from one end of the county of Simcoe to the other, that he would get himself elected for trustee and drive her out of the section. He bl.u.s.tered, he threatened, he scolded, he argued. And through it all the obstacle sat on her basket, in the middle of the highway, not deigning him even a glance. But as the maddened man foamed on, there arose once to the surface the lurking twinkle in the Duke's gray eyes.

For there was no doubt Sandy was weakening. He had even stooped to reason with her now.

"The snow's no more nor a half fut deep!" he was bellowing.

The Duke caught the first symptom of yielding, but was too wise to make answer.

"Yon's the doctor back there," he cried, with a great show of righteous concern, "he'll mebby be in a hurry."

There was no sign of impatience from the two, choking down their laughter, in the cutter behind; and though she could not see them, well the Duke knew they were enjoying themselves. Nevertheless, she condescended to answer.

"You'd better not keep him waiting, then," she advised.

The man darted one more glance around, the glance of an imprisoned lion which suddenly realizes its position. Slowly, his brows erect, his face dark, he descended from the sleigh and walked around to her side.

He stood for a moment regarding her, with a dawning expression of something like respect struggling with the gleam of his fierce eyes.

"If Ah tramp ye a path 'round the sleigh will ye walk in it?" he asked, his voice tremulous with wrath.

The Duke weighed the proposition with great deliberation. She would have died there under the horses' feet rather than show the slightest interest in it. "Well," she admitted indifferently, "I can't say. If I don't get my skirts snowy, I might. You tramp the road, and then I'll see."

With smothered imprecations, Sandy plunged into the snow.

Dr. Allen, quenching his unseemly mirth, sprang from the cutter and came to his aid. There was something to arouse pity in the downfall of the man of strength. Neither by word nor sign did Sandy recognize either his or Elsie Cameron's presence. The atmosphere was too highly charged to admit of ordinary courtesies. When the two men had trampled a wide pathway, and made it sufficiently smooth and firm, the Duke of Wellington condescended to march out of her citadel. There was no smallest sign of haste in her movements; she stood and eyed the track critically, as if doubtful as to whether she would use it, after all.

Her hesitation proved the last straw to her enemy's endurance. With an inarticulate cry of rage Sandy McQuarry sprang toward her. The Duke was tall and stately, and of no light weight, but he caught her up as if she had been a child, and with a few mighty strides bore her along the pathway. Reaching the road, he planted her in the middle of it with a violent thud.

"The Lord Almighty peety the man that gets a wumman like you!" he exclaimed with vehement solemnity. He strode back to his sleigh, leaped upon his load, and lashed his horses into a gallop.

The Duke was perfectly calm. She bowed in her stateliest fas.h.i.+on to Elsie and the doctor, but the twinkle in her eye answered the laughter in the girl's. Then, arranging her basket more carefully on her arm, she pa.s.sed on her way as if nothing had happened.

Gilbert sprang into his cutter, and the two witnesses of poor Sandy's Waterloo followed his tumultuous retreat up the valley. They were young and light-hearted, and what wonder if one put aside her gravity and the other his troubles, and both laughed all the way to the village?

It was not until they had gained the main highway, and Sandy had disappeared, that they recovered their composure and could speak of other things.

"And you did not get away for your vacation at New Year's," the girl said. "That was too bad."

"No," said Gilbert, suddenly growing somber at the recollection.

"Everything conspired against me, it seemed. I couldn't get away."

"Uncle Hughie would say that everything had conspired for you. His theory is the happiest one. He would tell you that if you had gone probably some disastrous circ.u.mstance would have followed."

"Perhaps he is right," said the young man meditatively. He could not yet regard his failure to meet Rosalie's demands as anything but a misfortune. And yet, there was that money still in the bank that Martin might have. That was surely a satisfaction.

"Oh, everything seems to me to be guided by the merest chance," he said half bitterly.

The girl shook her head. "I think it seems so only on the surface.

There can be no hazard about one's duty. The results are as sure as cause and effect. You know that, Dr. Allen."

"Yes, I know it," said Gilbert as he a.s.sisted her to alight at the door. "I am aware of it, I mean, but I don't act upon it."

He looked up at her, standing on the steps above him, and felt again that longing her presence always inspired within him to do something good and great. Why was he such a sham? John McIntyre's words of praise returned, with their weight of humiliation, and he drove away in utter self-contempt.

At college, the boys always said that generally Easy Allen, as they called him, was only a very ordinary football player. He ambled cheerily about the field, and seemed to enjoy the game so much that he did not bother trying to do anything remarkable. But let something arouse him to a sense of responsibility, a goal for the other side, a knockdown that stirred his temper, then look out! He would put his head down and pitch himself into the fray, and then something had to give way, and the boys knew it wouldn't be Easy. To-day, something of that old conquering mood had come over him. He was possessed with a rage against his former dilatory self, and a fierce desire to win, to do the clean, square thing, no matter what the consequences. He had done it that New Year's morning, when John McIntyre's life lay in his hand. The call of duty had been imperative then. He had not even considered the possibility of s.h.i.+rking it, and in spite of all the disappointment and sorrow his action had brought, he had never once viewed it with regret. And now, once more, he had his head down, in fierce determination, and cared for nothing but to score and feel himself a man.

He marched straight past a group of patients waiting in his office and sat down at his desk. What a long time since he had written to Martin!

He had almost forgotten his address. The letter was short and humble, and inside it he slipped a check. When he left it at the post-office, half an hour later, he was a poor man, and his prospects of starting a city practice in the spring were of the slimmest sort; nevertheless, he walked very straight, and held up his head with an air of pride, as though he owned the whole earth.

But his exultation did not last long. The next morning Miss Ella Anne Long handed him a letter; it was in Rosalie's handwriting. He tore it open on the street, not being able to wait till he reached home. It was merely a note, very short and very merry, telling how she had just returned from New York, and in a brief postscript, crowded in at the bottom, she announced her engagement to Guy Blackburn.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TREASURE-BOOK

And yet, O G.o.d, I know not how to fail!

Within my heart still burns an unquenched fire, Like Israel of old I must prevail, Or failing, still reach on to something higher.

They counted _Him_ a failure when He trod The slopes of Calvary that led to G.o.d!

--HELENA COLEMAN.

All winter the eldest orphan's reformed conduct had been the subject of joyous wonder on the part of his parents. Hannah was of the opinion that the boy had been converted at Mr. Scott's series of special meetings at Christmas time, but Jake, having been a boy himself, shook his head, and said it was likely just a spell he had taken with the cold weather, and it would work off when the summer came, like Joey's whooping-cough. But, strange to say, Tim went no more abroad with Davy Munn on lawless expeditions. Sawed-Off Wilmott and the young Lochinvar from Glenoro came regularly, on alternate evenings, to see Ella Anne Long, and never found ropes tied across the gate, nor whips nor lap-robes missing, as in Tim's unregenerate days. Even Miss Weir testified that sometimes he would not do anything particularly outrageous in school for a week at a time. The truth was that the eldest orphan had neither time nor inclination for childish mischief.

Mentally, he had grown up. He dwelt no more in the common walks of humanity, but in the land of romance. For one who consorted with heroes, fought great battles, and performed mighty deeds of valor, childish pranks had no interest. He cared now for nothing in the world but to read all day long, and half the night; to read anything and everything, from the hair-raising cowboy tales Davy Munn loaned him, to the ponderous histories from the minister's book-shelf. Through this selfsame book-shelf the minister had become one of Tim's closest friends, and might have made a pastoral visitation every day in the week and been welcome. He had almost got ahead of the doctor in the eldest orphan's regard; for while the doctor had plenty of books, whole shelves of them, they were queer, stupid things, full of long, hard words, and never a battle or a s.h.i.+pwreck from one cover to the other.

At first, the boy's greedy desire to devour a story at one sitting filled him with impatience at his own slowness. He found, to his chagrin, that he could not read the "Waverley Novels" with the swiftness the course of events demanded. He tried having them read aloud by his father, but though Jake was always willing, he stumbled and spelled his way through the battles and adventures with a laboriousness that nearly set his young listener mad.

But one winter night Tim discovered a royal road to learning. The minister had called, and left "Quentin Durward." It was an evening the boy had been in the habit of spending with John McIntyre, so he slipped the volume inside his coat and sped away with it down to the Drowned Lands.

And wonderful good fortune, John McIntyre proved a splendid reader.

Not only that, but after his first reluctance had been overcome, he seemed to like the task.

That was the beginning of a new life for both of them. The boy came almost every evening now, and as John McIntyre grew stronger he often read on, as absorbed as his listener, until the hour was late. Then, instead of going home, Tim would curl up snugly in bed behind his friend, and sleep until he was awakened in time to start for school.

One evening, when the sick man had almost recovered his wonted strength, Tim came hobbling down the road with a large volume bulging out the front of his coat. John McIntyre sat before his fire, looking through his little frosted panes at the beauty of the winter sunset, and something of the sadness in his weary eyes vanished as the little figure appeared against the filmy rose mists of Treasure Valley, and came trotting down the glittering road. There seemed to be a reflection of the sunset glow in the man's face as the boy bounded in.

"h.e.l.lo!" he shouted, pitching his snowy mittens under the stove and his cap upon the bed. "I've got a new story." He struggled to extract the book from his coat. "Old Hughie Cameron gave it to me. Hech! hech!

hoots! toots! indeed and indeed!" he added, hobbling about the room, and imitating the old man's caressing manner to perfection.

No one in Elmbrook had ever seen John McIntyre smile, nor did he do so now; but as he watched the absurd attempts of the youngster to portray the queer gait of the village philosopher there came into his eyes a look as though there had pa.s.sed before them the ghost of the days when he, himself, was young and light-hearted and full of boyish pranks. He arose, and lighting the little lamp, placed it upon the table.

"It's a bully story," went on the boy. "Old Hughie started to read it to me an' the twins las' night, but they got to sc.r.a.ppin', an' I had to lambaste 'em both, an' so he didn't finish. He said mebby you would.

It's about an old guy who was rich an' had chunks o' money, an' a big family, an' all the rest; an' the devil got after him an' busted up the whole thing. He got all his cows an' his horses an' things struck with lightning, an' his boys an' his girls were all at a swell birthday spree, an' the house up an' fell down, an' smashed every bloomin' one o' them--oh, say! it's a dandy!"

He placed the book on the table and shoved it toward John McIntyre.

The man reached for it, but quickly drew back.

"It's--the Bible!" he said sharply.