STIRLING LETS THINGS SLIDE
It was early evening when Weston swung himself down from the platform
of the Colonist car in a little roadside station shut in by the pine
bush of Ontario. There was a wooden hotel beside the track, and one or
two stores; but that was all, and the fact that nobody except the
station-agent had appeared to watch the train come in testified to the
industry, or, more probably, the loneliness of the district. While
Weston stood looking about him a man came out of the office, and he
was somewhat astonished to find himself face to face with his
employer.
The smart straw hat and light summer suit did not become the
contractor. He was full-fleshed and red of face, and the artistically
cut garments striped in soft colors conveyed a suggestion of ease and
leisure which seemed very much out of place on him. One could not
imagine this man lounging on a sunlit beach, or discoursing airily on
a cool veranda.
"Got here," he said abruptly, and then swung around and looked at
Grenfell. "This is the other man? Well, he can stay and bring along
the baggage. There's most a freight-car full. They'll give him a wagon
and team at the hotel."
He indicated a great pile of trunks and cases with a wave of his hand,
and, seeing Weston's astonishment, added with a twinkle in his eyes:
"My daughter and her friends are camping. They have to have these
things."
Weston understood his employer's smile. This, he recognized, was a man
who could be content with essential things, and in all probability had
at one time esteemed himself fortunate when he succeeded in obtaining
them.
"Hadn't I better help him load them up?" he asked.
"No," said Stirling, with a curtness at which Weston could not take
offense. "He can put in the evening that way if it's necessary. It
will supple him, and I guess he needs it. I have a rig ready. You're
coming along with me."
Weston took his place in the light, four-wheeled vehicle, and found it
difficult to keep it, for the trail was villainous, and Stirling drove
rapidly. Their way led between shadowy colonnades of towering firs,
and the fragile, two-seated frame bounced and lurched into and out of
deep ruts, and over the split trees that had been laid flat-side
downward in the quaggy places--like a field gun going into action was
the best comparison Weston could think of. The horses, however, kept
their feet, and the wheels held fast. Once, when a jolt nearly pitched
him from his seat, Stirling laughed.
"After the city it's a relief to let them out," he said. "I did this
kind of thing for a living once. The mine was way back in the bush,
leagues from anywhere, and I hired out as special store and despatch
carrier. There was red-hot trouble unless I got through on time when
the mail came in."
He drove the team furiously at an unguarded log bridge which was
barely wide enough to let the wheels pass.
"It's quite a way to the lake yet, and we want to make the camp before
it's dark," he explained. "Know anything about sailing a boat?"
Weston said that he did, and Stirling nodded.
"That's good," he observed somewhat dryly, "so does the major man."
Weston ventured to smile at this, and once more his employer's eyes
twinkled.
"Some of you people from the old country are quite hard to amuse;
though I'm open to admit that we have a few of the same kind on this
side," he said. "My daughter seemed to fancy they wouldn't find a lake
camp quite right without a boat, so I sent along and bought one at
Toronto. Had her put on a flat car, and hired half the teams in the
district to haul her to the lake. Now, I guess there are men in this
country who, if they wanted a boat, would just take an ax and whipsaw
and build one out of the woods."
Weston laughed. He was commencing to understand the man better, for he
had met other men of Stirling's description in Canada. As a matter of
fact, they are rather common in the Dominion, men who have had very
little bestowed on them beyond the inestimable faculty of getting what
they want at the cost of grim self-denial and tireless labor. Still,
as it was in Stirling's case, some of them retain a whimsical
toleration for those of weaker fiber.
"It's a bush camp?" Weston asked.
Stirling smiled good-humoredly.
"They call it that," he said. "It cost me quite a few dollars. You'll
see when you get there."
Weston was somewhat relieved when they safely accomplished the first
stage of the journey, and, turning the team over to a man by the
waterside, paddled off to a big, half-decked boat beautifully built
and fitted in Toronto. Stirling, who admitted that he knew nothing
about such matters, sat down aft and lighted a cigar, while Weston
proceeded to get the tall gall mainsail and big single headsail up. He
was conscious that his companion was watching him closely, and when he
let go the moorings and seated himself at the tiller the latter
pointed up the lake.
"About a league yet--round that long point," he said.
A moderately fresh breeze came down across the pines, and when Weston,
getting in the sheet, headed her close up to it, the boat, slanting
sharply, leaped forward through the smooth water. He sat a little
farther to windward, and the slant of deck decreased slightly when
Stirling did the same.
"You can't head there straight?" the latter asked.
"No," said Weston, "not with the wind as it is. She'll lie no higher."
"Well," observed Stirling, "she's going, anyway. That pleases me. It
helps one to get rid of the city. We'll have a talk, in the meanwhile.
I sent for you before. Why didn't you come?"
It was somewhat difficult to answer, and Weston wrinkled his forehead,
stiffening his grasp on the tiller.
"I was fortunate enough to be of some little service to Miss
Stirling's friends on the range, and I fancied that because of it you
meant to offer me promotion of some kind," he said.
"Well?" queried Stirling, with his eyes fixed on his companion's face.
Weston hesitated. He could not very well tell this man that a vein of
probably misguided pride rendered him unwilling to accept a favor from
Ida Stirling's father.
"I don't think there was any obligation, sir," he said.
"That," remarked Stirling dryly, "is a kind of feeling that may trip
you up some day. Still, you came this time."
"I did," said Weston. "You see, the case was rather different. You
offered to hire me to do a thing I'm accustomed to. It's my
occupation."
His companion made a little sign of comprehension, though there was a
faintly whimsical smile in his eyes.
"Now, you're wondering why I brought you back east all this way?"
Weston admitted it, and the contractor fixed his eyes on him.
"Well," he said, "it seems that there's fishing and sailing to be
done, and I'm not quite sure about that major man. Guess he's always
had people to wait on him, and that doesn't tend to smartness in any
one. When my daughter and her friends go out on the lake, or up the
river, you'll go along with them."
This was, perhaps, a little hard on Major Kinnaird, but Weston to some
extent sympathized with his employer's point of view. The contractor
was not a sportsman as the term is generally understood, but he was a
man who could strip a gun, make or mend harness, or break a horse.
When he had gone shooting in his younger days it was usually to get
something to eat, and, as a rule, he obtained it, though he rent his
clothes or got wet to the waist in the process. He could not sail a
boat, but if he had been able to do so he would also in all
probability have been capable of building one. Stirling was a man who
had never depended very much on others, and could, if occasion arose,
dispense with their services. He recognized something of the same
resourcefulness in Weston, and, because of it, took kindly to him.
In the meanwhile the breeze had freshened, and the boat, slanting more
sharply, commenced to throw the spray all over her as she left the
shelter of the woods behind. She met the short, splashing head sea
with streaming bow, and the sliding froth crept farther and farther up
her lee deck as she smashed through it. Then as the water found its
way over the coaming and poured down into her, Stirling glanced at his
companion.
"Got all the sail she wants?" he asked. "Is she fit to stand much more
of it?"
"She should be safe with another plank in, but I was thinking of
taking some of the canvas off her now," said Weston.
Stirling hitched his twelve stone of flesh farther up to windward.
"Then," he said, "until she puts that plank in you can let her go."
A wisp of spray struck him in the face, but Weston, who saw the smile
in his eyes, was curiously satisfied. It suggested, in the first
place, an ample confidence in him, which was naturally gratifying, and
in the second, that Stirling in spite of his years could take a keen
pleasure in that particular form of the conflict between the great
material forces and man's nerve and skill. It is a conflict that goes
on everywhere in the newer lands.
For another half-hour Weston kept the staggering over-canvased craft
on her feet by a quick thrust of the tiller or a slackening of the
sheet, and his companion appeared oblivious of the fact that he was
getting wetter and wetter. She was fast, and she went through the
little curling ridges with an exhilarating rush, while the foam
swirled higher up her depressed deck, and the water flung up by her
streaming bows beat in between her shrouds in showers. Then, when half
the deck dipped under, Weston thrust down his helm, and the craft,
rising upright, lay with her big mainsail thrashing furiously above
her.
For ten minutes Weston was very busy with it, and, when he had hoisted
it again with a strip along the foot of it rolled up, he crouched
forward in the spray struggling with the big single headsail, which
was a much more difficult matter. Once or twice he went in bodily when
the hove-down bowsprit put which he crawled, dipped under, but he
succeeded in tying up the foot of that sail too, and scrambled aft
again breathless and gasping. He noticed that his employer, who did
not seem to mind it, was almost as wet as he was.
"I'm sorry, but you told me I could let her go," he apologized.
Stirling smiled somewhat dryly.
"I'm not blaming you; but you don't quite finish. Wondering why I did
it, aren't you?"
Weston did not admit it, but perhaps his face betrayed him, for his
companion nodded.
"Well," he said, "you told me that you could sail a boat, and I wanted
to make sure of it. Seems to me anybody could hold the tiller when
she's going easy in smooth water. Know how I used to choose when I
wanted a chopper, in the days when I worked along with the boys? Well,
I gave the man an ax, set him up in front of the biggest tree I could
find, and made him chop."
There could be no doubt about the efficiency of that simple test, and
Weston recognized that it was very much in keeping with his employer's
character, though he fancied that it was one which, if rigorously
applied everywhere, would leave a good many men without an occupation.
He only laughed, however; and nothing more was said until the boat
reached in shoreward on another tack. It carried her round the long
point, and a deep, sheltered bay with dark pine forest creeping close
down to the strip of white shingle which fringed the water's edge
opened up. Then, as the trees slid past one another, a little clearing
in the midst of them grew rapidly wider, and Weston was somewhat
astonished to see a very pretty wooden house grow into shape. He
glanced at Stirling.
"Yes," said the latter, with a suggestion of grim amusement, "that's
the camp."
Once more Weston understood him, and, as their eyes met, man and
master smiled. Both of them knew there were hosts of strenuous,
hard-handed men growing wheat and raising cattle in that country who
would have looked on that camp as a veritable mansion. They were,
however, men who had virgin soil to break or stupendous forests to
grapple with, tasks of which many would reap the benefit, and they
very seldom troubled much about their personal comfort.
After a while, Weston, lowering the headsail, dropped the anchor over
close to the beach, and Major Kinnaird paddled a canoe off gingerly.
He was, as usual, immaculately neat, and Weston noticed the contrast
between him and Stirling, whose garments had apparently grown smaller
with the wetting. The latter pitched his valise into the canoe without
waiting for Weston to see to it, and then stood up endeavoring to
squeeze some of the water from his jacket.
"It's the only one I've got," he said to Kinnaird. "Anyway, I guess
the thing will dry, and I've had a sail that has made me feel young
again."
Then they went ashore, and Weston, who was very wet, was left
shivering in the wind to straighten up the gear, until a bush rancher,
who had been engaged to wait on the party until he arrived, paddled
off for him. The rancher had prepared a satisfactory supper; and some
time after it was over, Stirling and Mrs. Kinnaird sat together on the
veranda. There was, at the time, nobody in the house. The breeze had
fallen lighter, though a long ripple still lapped noisily upon the
beach, and a half-moon had just sailed up above the clustering pines.
Their ragged tops rose against the sky black as ebony, but the pale
radiance they cut off from the beach stretched in a track of faint
silvery brightness far athwart the lake.
Mrs. Kinnaird, however, was not watching the ripple flash beneath the
moon, for her eyes were fixed on two dusky figures that moved through
the shadow toward the water's edge. By and by there was a rattle of
shingle, and presently the black shape of a canoe slid down into the
moonlight. It rose and dipped with the languid ripple, and the two
figures in it were silhouetted against the silvery gleam. One was a
man in a wide hat who knelt and dipped the flashing paddle astern, and
the other a girl. The craft crossed the strip of radiance and vanished
round the point, after which Mrs. Kinnaird flashed a keen glance at
her companion. He sat still, and his face, on which the moonlight
fell, was almost expressionless, but Mrs. Kinnaird fancied he had
noticed as much as she had, and that he had possibly grasped its
significance. In case he had not done the latter, she felt it her duty
to make the matter clear to him.
"I suppose that is Ida in the canoe," she said.
"It seems quite likely," replied her companion. "It couldn't have been
your daughter, because she went along the beach not long ago with the
major, and I don't think there's another young lady in the vicinity."
"Then the other must be--the packer."
The pause and the slight change of inflection as she said "the packer"
had not quite the effect she had intended. Stirling himself had once
labored with his hands, and, what was more, afterward had a good deal
to bear on that account. He was not particularly vindictive, but he
remembered it.
"Yes, it's Weston," he said, and his companion felt herself corrected;
but she was, at least where Major Kinnaird was not concerned, in her
quiet way a persistent woman. Besides, Miss Stirling, who was going
with her to England, would some day come into considerable
possessions, and she had a son who found it singularly difficult to
live on the allowance his father made him.
"Is it altogether advisable that she should go out with him?" she
asked.
Stirling smiled somewhat dryly, for there was a vein of combativeness
in him, and she had stirred it.
"You mean, is it safe? Well, I guess she's quite as safe as she would
be with me or the major."
"Major Kinnaird was a flag officer of a rather famous yacht club,"
said the lady, who, while she fancied that her companion meant to
avoid the issue, could not let this pass. She was, however, mistaken
in one respect, for Stirling usually was much more ready to plunge
into a controversy than to back out of it.
"Well," he said reflectively, "the other man has earned his living
handling sail and people, which is quite a different thing."
Then he leaned toward her, with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Madam," he added, "wouldn't you better tell me exactly what you
meant?"
Mrs. Kinnaird had a certain courage, and she was endeavoring to do her
duty as she understood it.
"That packer," she said, "is rather a good-looking man, and girls of
Ida's age are sometimes a trifle--impressionable."
Then, somewhat to her astonishment, Stirling quietly agreed with her.
"Yes," he said, "that's so. Seems to me it was intended that they
should be. It's part of the scheme."
He made a little gesture.
"We'll let that point slide. Anything strike you as being wrong with
Weston?"
"No," said the somewhat startled lady, "the man is of course reliable,
well-conducted, and attentive; but, after all, when one says that----"
"When you said reliable you hit it. It's a word that means a good
deal; but couldn't you say a little more than well-conducted? From
something your daughter learned by chance, his relatives are people of
position in the old country. That counts for a little, though perhaps
it shouldn't."
Once more Mrs. Kinnaird's astonishment was very evident.
"It shouldn't?"
"That's just what I meant. If a man is clean of character, and has
grit and snap in him, I don't know that one could reasonably look for
anything further. I can't see how the fact that his grandfather was
this or that is going to affect him. The man we're talking of has
grit. I offered him promotion, and he wouldn't take it."
"Ah," said his companion, "didn't that strike you as significant?"
Stirling looked thoughtful.
"Well," he admitted slowly, "as a matter of fact, it didn't; but it
does now."
He sat silent for almost a minute, with wrinkled forehead, while Mrs.
Kinnaird watched him covertly. Then, feeling the silence embarrassing,
she made another effort.
"Supposing that my fancies concerning what might perhaps come about
are justified?" she suggested.
Stirling faced the question.
"Well," he said, "whether they're justified or not is a thing we don't
know yet; but I want to say this. I have never had reason to worry
over my daughter, and it seems to me a sure thing that she's not going
to give me cause for it now. When she chooses her husband, she'll
choose the right one, and she'll have her father's money; it won't
matter very much whether he's rich or not. All I ask is that he should
be straight and clean of mind, and nervy, and I guess Ida will see to
that. When she tells me that she is satisfied, I'll just try to make
the most of him."
He broke off for a moment, and laughed softly.
"I guess it wouldn't matter if I didn't. My girl's like her mother,
and she's like--me. When she comes across the right man she'll hold
fast by him with everything against her, if it's necessary, as her
mother did with me."
He rose and leaned against a pillar, with a curious look in his face.
"The struggle that her mother and I made has left its mark on me. The
friends we left in the rut behind us looked for my failure, and it
seemed then that all the men with money had leagued themselves
together to stop me from going on. Somehow I beat them, one by
one--big engineers, financiers, financiers' syndicates,
corporations--working late and working early, sinking every dollar
made in another venture, and living any way. There were no amenities
in that fight until those we had against us found that it was wiser to
keep clear of me."
Then, with a little forceful gesture, he took off his hat.
"What I am, in part, at least, my girl's mother made me. She's asleep
at last, and because of what she bore it's up to me to make things
smoother for her daughter. Madam," he added, turning to his companion
with a smile, "I have to thank you for doing what you must have
figured was your duty; but in the meanwhile we'll--let things slide."
He turned away and left her before she could answer, astonished but a
little touched by what she had heard. Still, the gentler impression
vanished, and when she informed Major Kinnaird of what had been said
she was once more somewhat angry with Stirling.
"It is really useless to reason with him," she said. "The man has
wholly preposterous views."