Vane of the Timberlands Part 9

"Been seeing the train away?" the latter suggested. "It's a popular diversion with idle folk."

"I was saying good-by to somebody I met on the west coast," Vane explained.

"Weel," chuckled Nairn, "she has bonny een."

CHAPTER V

THE OLD COUNTRY

A month after Vane said good-by to Kitty he and Carroll alighted one evening at a little station in northern England. Brown moors stretched about it, for the heather had not bloomed yet, rolling back in long slopes to the high ridge which cut against leaden thunder-clouds in the eastern sky. To the westward, they fell away; and across a wide, green valley smooth-backed heights gave place in turn to splintered crags and ragged pinnacles etched in gray and purple on a vivid saffron glow. The road outside the station gleamed with water, and a few big drops of rain came splas.h.i.+ng down, but there was a bracing freshness in the mountain air.

The train went on, and Vane stood still, looking about him with a poignant recollection of how he had last waited on that platform, sick at heart, but gathering his youthful courage for the effort that he must make. It all came back to him--the dejection, the sense of loneliness--for he was then going out to the Western Dominion in which he had not a friend. Now he was returning, moderately prosperous and successful; but once again the feeling of loneliness was with him--most of those whom he had left behind had made a longer journey than he had done. Then he noticed an elderly man, in rather shabby livery, approaching, and he held out his hand with a smile of pleasure.

"You haven't changed a bit, Jim!" he exclaimed. "Have you got the young gray in the new cart outside?"

"T' owd gray was shot twelve months since," the man replied. "Broke his leg comin' down Hartop Bank. New car was sold off, done, two or t'ree years ago."

"That's bad news. Anyway, you're the same."

"A bit stiffer in the joints, and maybe a bit sourer," was the answer.

Then the man's wrinkled face relaxed. "I'm main glad to see thee, Mr.

Wallace. Master wad have come, only he'd t' gan t' Manchester suddenly."

Vane helped him to place their baggage into the trap and then bade him sit behind; and as he gathered up the reins, he glanced at the horse and harness. The one did not show the breeding of the gray he remembered, and there was no doubt that the other was rather the worse for wear.

They set off down the descending road, which wound, unconfined, through the heather, where the raindrops sparkled like diamonds. Farther down, they ran in between rough limestone walls with gleaming spar in them, smothered here and there in trailing brambles and clumps of fern, while the streams that poured out from black gaps in the peat and flowed beside the road flashed with coppery gold in the evening light. It was growing brighter ahead of them, though inky clouds still clung to the moors behind.

By and by, ragged hedges, rent and twisted by the winds, climbed up to meet them, and, clattering down between the straggling greenery, they crossed a river sparkling over banks of gravel. After that, there was a climb, for the country rolled in ridge and valley, and the crags ahead, growing nearer, rose in more rugged grandeur against the paling glow.

Carroll gazed about him in open appreciation as they drove.

"This little compact country is really wonderful, in its way!" he exclaimed. "There's so much squeezed into it, even leaving out your towns. Parts of it are like Ontario---the southern strip I mean--with the plow-land, orchards and homesteads sprinkled among the woods and rolling ground. Then your Midlands are like the prairie, only that they're greener--there's the same sweep of gra.s.s and the same sweep of sky, and this"--he gazed at the rugged hills rent by winding dales--"is British Columbia on a miniature scale."

"Yes," agreed Vane; "it isn't monotonous."

"Now you have hit it! That's the precise difference. We've three belts of country, beginning at Labrador and running west--rock and pine scrub, level prairie, and ranges piled on ranges beyond the Rockies. Hundreds of leagues of each of them, and, within their limits, all the same. But this country's mixed. You can get what you like--woods, smooth gra.s.s-land, mountains--in a few hours' ride."

Vane smiled.

"Our people and their speech and habits are mixed, too. There's more difference between county and county in thirty miles than there is right across your whole continent. You're cast in the one mold."

"I'm inclined to think it's a good one," laughed Carroll. "What's more, it has set its stamp on you. The very way your clothes hang proclaims that you're a Westerner."

Vane laughed good-humoredly; but as they clattered through a sleepy hamlet with its little, square-towered church overhanging a brawling river, his face grew grave. Pulling up the horse, he handed the reins to Carroll.

"This is the first stage of my pilgrimage. I won't keep you five minutes."

He swung himself down, and the groom motioned to him.

"West of the tower, Mr. Wallace; just before you reach the porch."

Vane pa.s.sed through the wicket in the lichened limestone wall, and there was a troubled look in his eyes when he came back and took the reins again.

"I went away in bitterness--and I'm sorry now," he said. "The real trouble was unimportant; I think it was forgotten. Every now and then the letters came; but the written word is cold. There are things that can never be set quite right in this world."

Carroll made no comment, though he knew that if it had not been for the bond between them his comrade would not have spoken so. They drove on in silence for a while, and then, as they entered a deep, wooded dale, Vane turned to him again.

"I've been taken right back into the old days to-night; days in England, and afterward those when we worked on the branch road beneath the range. There's not a boy among the crowd in the sleeping-shack I can't recall--first, wild Larry, who taught me how to drill and hid my rawness from the Construction Boss."

"He lent me his gum-boots when the muskeg stiffened into half-frozen slush," Carroll interrupted him.

"And was smashed by the snowslide," Vane went on. "Then there was Tom, from the boundary country. He packed me back a league to camp the day I chopped my right foot; and went down in the lumber schooner off Flattery.

Black Pete, too, who held on to you in the rapid when we were running the bridge-logs through. It was in firing a short fuse that he got his discharge," He raised his free hand, with a wry smile. "Gone on--with more of their kind after them; a goodly company. Why are we left prosperous? What have we done?"

Carroll made no response. The question was unanswerable, and after a while Vane abruptly began to talk about their business in British Columbia. It pa.s.sed the time; and he had resumed his usual manner when he pulled up where a stile path led across a strip of meadow.

"You can drive round; we'll be there before you," he said to the groom as he got down.

Carroll and he crossed the meadow. Pa.s.sing around a clump of larches they came suddenly into sight of an old gray house with a fir wood rolling down the hillside close behind it. The building was long and low, weather-worn and stained with lichens where the creepers and climbing roses left the stone exposed. The bottom row of mullioned windows opened upon a terrace, and in front of the terrace ran a low wall with a broad coping on which were placed urns bright with geraniums. It was pierced by an opening approached by shallow stairs on which an iridescent peac.o.c.k stood, and in front of all that stretched a sweep of lawn.

A couple of minutes later, a lady met them in the wide hall, and held out her hand to Vane. She was middle-aged, and had once been handsome, but now there were wrinkles about her eyes, which had a hint of hardness in them, and her lips were thin. Carroll noticed that they closed tightly when she was not speaking.

"Welcome home, Wallace," she said effusively. "It should not be difficult to look upon the Dene as that--you were here so often once upon a time."

"Thank you," was the response. "I felt tempted to ask Jim to drive me round by Low Wood; I wanted to see the place again."

"I'm glad you didn't. The house is shut up and going to pieces. It would have been depressing to-night."

Vane presented Carroll. Mrs. Chisholm's manner was gracious, but for no particular reason Carroll wondered whether she would have extended the same welcome to his comrade had the latter not come back the discoverer of a profitable mine.

"Tom was sorry he couldn't wait to meet you, but he had to leave for Manchester on some urgent business," she apologized.

Just then a girl with disordered hair and an unusual length of stocking displayed beneath her scanty skirt came up to them.

"This is Mabel," said Mrs. Chisholm. "I hardly think you will remember her."

"I've carried her across the meadow."

The girl greeted the strangers demurely, and favored Vane with a critical gaze.

"So you're Wallace Vane--who floated the Clermont Mine! Though I don't remember you, I've heard a good deal about you lately. Very pleased to make your acquaintance!"

Vane's eyes twinkled as he shook hands with her. Her manner was quaintly formal, but he fancied that there was a spice of mischief hidden behind it. Carroll, watching his hostess, surmised that her daughter's remarks had not altogether pleased her. She chatted with them, however, until the man who had driven them appeared with their baggage, when they were shown their respective rooms.

Vane was the first to go down. Reaching the hall, he found n.o.body there, though a clatter of dishes and a clink of silver suggested that a meal was being laid out in an adjoining room. Sitting down near the hearth, he looked about him. The house was old; a wide stairway with a quaintly carved bal.u.s.trade of dark oak ran up one side and led to a landing, also fronted with ponderous oak rails. The place was shadowy, but a stream of light from a high window struck athwart one part of it and fell upon the stairs.

Vane's eyes rested on many objects that he recognized, but as his glance traveled to and fro it occurred to him that much of what he saw conveyed a hint that economy was needful. Part of the rich molding of the Jacobean mantel had fallen away, and patches of the key pattern bordering the panels beneath it had broken off, though he decided that a clever cabinet-maker could have repaired the damage in a day. There were one or two choice rugs on the floor, but they were threadbare; the heavy hangings about the inner doors were dingy and moth-eaten; and, though all this was in harmony with the drowsy quietness and the faint smell of decay, it had its significance.