Scarlett of the Mounted Part 21

Our rint-roll, I'm thinking." He stood by with an air of partners.h.i.+p while Scarlett opened the envelope.

"Your rent-roll!" Puzzled, Evelyn looked at the address. "'Sir Gerald Scarlett.' Is that some joke?"

"A hereditary wan, begorra," Barney hastened to a.s.sure her. "It runs in our family."

"More roll than rent, though." Scarlett held out to her a long, legally drawn-up doc.u.ment.

"Not to mintion the castle," remarked Barney.

"Just a ruin in a bit of a potato patch," Scarlett hastened to apologize for his ancestral glories.

"And a cow to chaperon it--G.o.d bless her!" Barney saluted respectfully, as he turned to go.

Sir Gerald looked down on his lady-love with laughing eyes.

"My offence is rank," he quoted.

"Oh, it's not an unpardonable sin," Evelyn a.s.sured him, also laughing, but confused. "What a goose you must have thought me all this time--the way I have condescended to you!"

"The greater my triumph in winning you on my own recognizances," he replied.

Evelyn held him at arms' length, contemplatively. "What a difference,"

she remarked, "between the myself of to-day and of a year ago! Then I should have suspected myself of being influenced by this--but now nothing seems to matter so much as that we care for each other."

"Miss Durant! O Miss Durant!" The lovers broke apart as, by a cross-cut through the bushes, the minister came hurrying toward them. "Here is--some one who brings you news of your father."

He pointed to an elderly man who, with lagging footstep, followed him.

"Of daddy? Hurrah!" Evelyn clapped her hands. "That was the one thing needed to complete my happiness! How is he? And where? Why hasn't he come to me himself?" she demanded impatiently of the stranger.

"Our friend here has traveled far," Maclane gently reminded her. "He is worn and spent."

"Oh, how thoughtless I am!" As Evelyn placed the newcomer in a comfortable chair she noticed that his features, as she saw them between his slouch hat and heavy beard, were pinched, and that his frame was bowed beyond his years, as if from recent suffering. "How tired you look! You have been ill?" she asked him considerately.

"He has undergone great hards.h.i.+ps for the sake of a dearly loved daughter," Maclane hastened to explain. "He has escaped with but little besides his life. But for that let us give thanks. Let us make him feel that, so long as he is spared, his daughter will not mind poverty."

"To be sure!" Evelyn tried not to show the impatience she felt at the concerns of outsiders being placed before her own, with a touch of her old patronizing manner adding, "And I dare say my father and I can arrange matters so that this good man's daughter need not complain of poverty."

The stranger opened his lips to speak, but unable to command himself, turned his head aside with a slight groan.

With an inexplicable foreboding, Evelyn looked from him to Maclane, and in the latter's kind eyes reading a deep pity, "What is wrong?" she faltered. "Has anything happened to my father?"

"Nothing that sympathy and loving care cannot cure," replied the minister. "Mr. Durant was on his way to you a year ago when he fell into the power of ruffians, even as Travers, for his own evil purposes, informed you. After serious ill-treatment at their hands he escaped, but so broken in mind and body that for months he wandered about, unable to fix his own ident.i.ty or put himself in communication with his friends.

Now, thank G.o.d, he is almost cured."

"He shall be completely so, if, as you say, love can accomplish it."

Evelyn started up. "I'll go to him at once." She addressed the stranger.

"Where is he?"

"First----" Again Maclane hurriedly interposed. "There is something you should know about your father's finances. He is not rich, as you think him. By incessant toil from time to time he used to make vast sums, as miners are apt to do--and as miners are apt to do, he spent as fast as he made, his one extravagance being your pleasure. But the inexhaustible supply, the purse of Fortunatus--that was a fable that somehow grew up between your romanticism and his optimism. It does not exist. It never has existed. To-day he is absolutely penniless."

The words rained on her like hailstones. Evelyn met them, standing erect, very white and still.

At last, "I do not grasp your meaning," she replied. "Every one in the district knows that my father is a very rich man."

"Not so." Maclane shook his head. "Every one knows the reverse; has always known it. Believe me, my child, what I tell you is true."

"My father's wealth does not exist." Evelyn's mind seemed to take slow, cautious steps backward over the minister's statements, with every impact feeling surer of the truth. "To-day he is absolutely penniless.

Every one knows it; has always known it. Then why," she demanded with sudden pa.s.sion, "has it been kept from me?"

"Out of kindness," replied Maclane, simply.

"Kindness!" Evelyn laughed scornfully, hysterically; calmed herself, then laughed again. "Kindness! When I recall how I used to brag of what my wealth would do for the place--and all the time, poor fool that I am, I have been the laughing-stock----"

"Again not so," emphatically said Maclane. "Think how quickly you fell into our primitive ways, becoming the heart and spirit of the camp.

Believe me, Evelyn, you have endeared yourself, accomplished a thousand times as much by this year's bread-winning toil and good-fellows.h.i.+p as had you been the Lady Bountiful you started out to be. It isn't money that builds up camps, closing dives and opening reading-rooms--it's neighborliness--working and suffering with people, side by side. And in all his grief, remorse for your bitter disappointment, your poor father may take this comfort: that it has been the making of you as a woman, just as you, the real woman, have been the making of the camp."

"Thank you." Evelyn spoke in a hard little dry voice. "Some day I may bring myself to see it in that light." She took a few steps to and fro, then came to a standstill opposite the minister. "Mr. Maclane, I want you to give my love to the 'boys'--to all who, by their silence, have s.h.i.+elded me as they thought, from the painful truth. Tell them that I appreciate it. Also ask them to try not to show that they pity me. I'm going to do something that's not easy for me. It would be easiest to go away to a strange place, where I could hide my head--but I have my poor father to think of. I have a good business here, which will support us both decently, at least. I shall bring him here to care for him--and mind! not one word of reproach, or mockery, is he ever to hear from any one! Not one word!"

"Bravely spoken," cried Maclane. "Oh, there's happiness in store for you, my child. You'll see."

"Together, sweetheart!" Scarlett, who had been standing by in mute distress for her great trouble, now came to her and took her hand.

"We'll fight it out together--you and I."

"Oh, no." Evelyn wrenched her hand from him. "That is all over. Things are changed with me. My eyes are open at last. I can forgive every one but you, Sir Gerald Scarlett--you who let me condescend to you, lead you on--and finally almost do the asking!"

"Faith, your eyes may be open, but they don't see as straight as they did when closed," Scarlett indignantly contradicted her. "I've loved ye all along, and sooner; since the moment I saw your picture smiling up to me among the roses."

"We won't discuss it. I only know"--Evelyn's voice broke--"I never want to see you again."

"But if only I could make people understand--believe in me----"

The stranger, who, all this time, had been sitting bowed forward, his face buried in his hands, suddenly broke forth. "It's not a fable! The Rainbow Mine--it's _true!_ I discovered it the day--but where--where--where? My G.o.d, where?" He looked about wildly.

Evelyn turned sharply on the speaker. "Who are you?"

Matthew Durant, his pa.s.sion spent, lifted streaming eyes to his daughter's face. "Don't you know me, Evie?"

"Oh, no, no! You're not--oh, daddy!" Falling on her knees beside him, she gathered the feeble form into her strong young arms.

Then Maclane led Scarlett quietly away.

XIV

CONCLUSION