WESTON'S ADVOCATE
A week had passed when Weston, who apparently had some business with
Kinnaird, drove over to Scarthwaite again. This time he brought a
daughter, who, it appeared, lived for the most part with some more
prosperous members of the family. Arriving a little before lunch, they
remained until the evening. As it happened, Miss Weston displayed what
she evidently considered a kindly interest in Ida, and graciously
patronized her as a stranger and a Colonial, who was necessarily
ignorant of a good many of the little amenities of life in the old
country.
Her intentions were no doubt laudable, but the methods she adopted to
set the stranger at her ease were not those most likely to endear the
insular English to their cousins across the Atlantic. Ida, to begin
with, had not only a spice of temper but also no great reverence for
forms and formulas, and the people that she was accustomed to meeting
were those who had set their mark upon wide belts of forest and long
leagues of prairie. At first she was quietly amused by the patronage
of a woman whose right to bestow it consisted apparently in an
acquaintance with English people of station, and some proficiency at
bridge; but by and by her condescension grew wearisome, and finally
exasperating. Miss Weston, however, could not have been expected to
recognize this. She was a tall, pale woman, with a coldly formal
manner and some taste in dress.
There were several other guests in the house, and the party spent most
of the hot afternoon about the tennis net and lounging under the
shadow of a big copper beech on the lawn. Once when Miss Weston left
her to play in a set at tennis, Arabella Kinnaird leaned over the back
of Ida's chair.
"You seem to have made rather a favorable impression upon Julia
Weston, and, as a rule, she's unapproachable," she said, with a
mischievous smile.
Ida's eyebrows straightened, which, to those acquainted with her, was
a rather ominous sign.
"Won't you keep that woman away from me?" she begged. "I don't want to
be rude, but if I see very much more of her, I may not be able to help
it. In one way, I'm sorry I met her. You're not all like that."
"Well," said Arabella, "perhaps it is a pity. There really are some of
us to whom you could talk without having your pet illusions about the
old country shattered. In fact, I can think of one or two women about
here who would strengthen them. Can't you, Mr. Ainslie?"
Ainslie, who was standing near them, smiled.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Unfortunately, however, they are, as a rule,
retiring. It's the other kind that is usually in evidence. Do you feel
very badly disappointed with us, Miss Stirling?"
"No," replied Ida, with a thoughtfulness which brought the smile more
plainly into his eyes. "In fact, I want to think well of you. It's a
thing we wouldn't quite admit, but at bottom I believe we all do."
Then she turned to Arabella.
"By the way, what has become of Mr. Weston?"
"He is shut up with my father in the library; and there are reasons
for supposing that his business requires the consumption of a
considerable quantity of soda and whisky. The major, I am afraid, will
be a trifle difficult to get on with this evening. As a matter of
fact, he isn't used to it, though he was, one understands, rather
popular at the mess table. That's a trifle significant, considering
what is said about us, isn't it, Mr. Ainslie?"
"Ah," said Ainslie, "we're a maligned people; and the pity of it is
that it's our own people who give us away. You don't believe in doing
that in the Colonies?"
"No," laughed Ida, "we are rather fond of making it clear that we are
quite above the average as a people. However, it's excusable, perhaps,
for, after all, there's a germ of truth in it. I think Miss Kinnaird
will agree with that."
Arabella leaned a little farther over her chair.
"I'll leave you to talk it out with Mr. Ainslie. But there's another
matter. Does Miss Weston recall to you anybody we have met?"
"No," said Ida, with a somewhat incautious decisiveness. "If you mean
our camp-packer, she certainly does not."
Arabella understood this to mean that any comparison of the kind
suggested would be derogatory to the packer, which was somewhat
significant.
"Well," she said, "there is at least a physical resemblance, and
though I haven't probed the matter very deeply, yet I've not abandoned
it."
Then she laughed and turned to Ainslie.
"You and Miss Stirling can thrash out the question."
She strolled away, and Ainslie watched Ida, whose eyes were following
Miss Weston at the tennis net.
"Yes," he remarked, "we play these games rather well; and, after all,
is there any reason why we shouldn't? There are a good many people in
this country who don't consider them as of the first importance."
"Oh," said Ida, "I'm really not looking for faults. Why should you
suspect me of such an unpleasant attitude?"
"Well," observed her companion reflectively, "I can't help thinking
that we now and then give our visitors wrong impressions by showing
them the wrong things. Personally, I should recommend an inspection of
our mines and mills and factories. Besides, one has rather a fancy
that some of our young men, who were brought up, we'll say, to play
tennis well, have shown that they can do rather more than that in
western Canada."
Ida's eyes softened a little as she recalled a weary, gray-faced man
limping back up the hillside one eventful morning; but the turn that
the conversation had taken had its effect on her, and that effect was
to have its result. Like others born in the newer lands, she believed
first of all in practical efficiency, and she had learned during
journeys made with her father that the man with few wants and many
abilities, or indeed the man with only one of the latter strenuously
applied to a useful purpose, is the type in most favor in western
Canada. Graces do not count for much in the west, nor does the
assumption of ability carry a man as far as it sometimes does in older
communities. As Stirling had once said, when they want a chopper in
that country they make him chop, and facility in posing is of very
little service when one is called on to grapple with virgin forest or
stubborn rock.
Young as Ida was, she had a grip of essential things, and a dislike of
shams. It generally happened, too, that, when she felt strongly on any
subject, she sooner or later expressed her thoughts in forcible words;
and before that afternoon was over she and Arabella Kinnaird between
them disturbed the composure of more than one of Mrs. Kinnaird's
guests.
Tea was being laid out on a little table beneath the beech when Weston
strolled across the lawn. He was redder in face than when Ida had last
seen him, and a trifle heavier of expression. Pushing unceremoniously
past two of the women, he dropped into a basket-chair, which bent
under him, and glanced around at the others with coldly, assertive
eyes. Ida, watching him, became conscious of a sense of repulsion and
indignation. This arrogant, indulgent, useless man had, it seemed, not
the manners of a western ranch-hand. He accepted a cup of tea from
Mrs. Kinnaird with an ungraciousness which aroused Ida to downright
anger; and shortly afterward he contrived to spill a quantity of the
liquid upon Arabella's dress, for which he offered no excuses, though
he blamed the narrow-bottomed cup. Then some one, who of course could
not foresee the result, asked Arabella if she would show them some of
her Canadian sketches.
Miss Kinnaird made no objection, and when, soon after the tea was
cleared away, the easel she sent for had been set up in the shadow of
the beech, she displayed on it several small canvases and water-color
drawings. There were vistas of snow mountains, stretches of frothing
rivers, and colonnades of towering firs, until at last she laid a
canvas on the easel.
"This," she said, "is, I think, the best figure drawing I ever did."
Ida, leaning forward in her chair, felt the blood creep into her face.
There was no doubt that the sketch was striking. It showed a man
standing tensely poised, with a big, glinting ax in his hand. He was
lean and lithely muscular, and his face was brown and very grim; but
the artist had succeeded in fixing in its expression the elusive but
recognizable something which is born of restraint, clean living, and
arduous physical toil. It is to be seen in the eyes of those who,
living in Spartan simplicity, make long marches with the dog-sledges
in the Arctic frost, drive the logs down roaring rivers, or toil
sixteen hours daily under a blazing sun in the western harvest field.
In all probability it was as plainly stamped on the honest countenance
of many an unconsidered English Tommy who plodded doggedly forward
with the relief columns across the dusty veldt. Drivers of great
expresses, miners, quarrymen, now and then wear that look. Springing,
as it does, not from strength of body, but from the subjugation of the
latter and all fleshy shrinking and weariness, it links man with the
greatness of the unseen.
There was only the one figure silhouetted against long rows of dusky
pines, but the meaning of the way in which the hard, scarred hands
were clenched on the big ax was very plain, and Ida could fill in from
memory the form of the big chopper and the clusters of expectant men.
"Excellent!" said one of the guests. "That fellow means to fight. He's
in hard training, too, and that has now and then a much bigger effect
than the toughening of his muscles upon the man who submits himself to
it. Is it a portrait or a type?"
The speaker was from the metropolis, and while Arabella hesitated, Ida
answered him with a suggestive ring in her voice.
"It's both, one should like to think," she said. "The man came from
England; and if you can send us out more of that type we shall be
satisfied."
Then she and the questioner became conscious of the awkward silence
that had fallen upon the rest. They belonged to the dales, and they
glanced covertly at Weston, who was gazing at the picture, purple in
face, and with a very hard look in his eyes. Ida guessed that it was
the scarred workman's hands and the track-grader's old blue shirt and
tattered duck that had hurt his very curious pride. Still, it was
evident that he could face the situation.
"Yes," he said, a trifle hoarsely, "it's a portrait--an excellent one.
In fact, as some of you are quite aware, it's my son."
He rose, and crossing a strip of lawn sat down heavily near Ida. The
latter, looking around, saw Arabella's satisfied smile suddenly
subside; but the next moment Weston, leaning forward, laid his hand
roughly on her arm.
"Why Clarence permitted that portrait to be painted I don't quite
understand, though he was fond of flying in the face of all ideas of
decency," he said. "You must have met him out yonder. What was he
doing?"
"Shoveling gravel on a railroad that my father was grading," said Ida,
with rather grim amusement, for she was determined that the man should
face the plain reality, even if it hurt him.
"Shoveling gravel!" said Weston. "But he is my son."
"I'm afraid that doesn't count out yonder. In any case, he's in one
sense in reasonably good company. Did you send your son to Sandhurst
or an English university?"
"I didn't," said the man, gazing at her with hot, confused anger in
his eyes. "For one thing, he hadn't brains enough, and, for another,
there were too many charges on the property. What do you mean by good
company?"
"Just a moment before I answer. Why did you turn him out?"
"That does not describe it. He went. We had a difference of opinion.
He would hear no reason."
"Exactly," said Miss Weston, who now appeared close by. "Since you
seem to have heard a little about the matter, I feel I must say that
my brother deliberately left us at a time when his father had expected
him to be of service to him."
Ida did not know whether the others could hear what was being said, as
there was a strip of lawn between them and where she sat, but she felt
that it did not greatly matter. She had no pity for this man or his
daughter, who preferred to malign the absent rather than to admit an
unpleasant fact. She would strip them of any solace they might find in
shams, after which there was a little more to be said.
"The difference of opinion was, I believe, decided with a
riding-crop," she said. "Still, that is a side issue, and I will tell
you what I meant by good company. We have quite a few of your
graduates out yonder laying railroad ties, as well as lawyers who have
got into trouble over trust money, and army men who couldn't meet
their turf debts or were a little too smart at cards. Some of them are
of unexceptionable family--at least from your point of view. As a
rule, they sleep packed like cattle in reeking redwood shacks, and
either dress in rags or mend their own clothes. Among their companions
are ranchers who can't live all the year on the produce of their
half-cleared land, absconders from half the Pacific Slope cities, and
runaway sailormen. The task set before them every morning would kill
most of you."
Weston, who had winced once or twice, glanced apprehensively toward
the rest. They were sitting very still, and their appearance suggested
that, whether warrantable or not, they were listening.
"His insane folly has brought him down to that?" he asked.
Ida straightened herself a little, with a sparkle in her eyes.
"I don't think there has been any very great descent," she went on.
"You must try to realize that those men are not wastrels now, however
they may have lived in England, Montreal, or the cities down Puget
Sound. They're rending new roads through the mountains to let in
progress and civilization, and making fast the foundations of the
future greatness of a wide and prosperous land. Already, because of
what they and their kind have done, you can travel through it without
seeing a ragged, slatternly woman, or a broken-down, desperate man.
Besides, many of them, and certainly most of the small bush ranchers,
lead lives characterized by the old heroic virtues that seem to have
gone out of fashion in the cities, though you'll find some of them
held up for emulation in the Pauline epistles."
Weston gazed at her in blank astonishment. She made a little,
half-contemptuous gesture.
"You can't understand that? Well, one really couldn't expect you to.
You have never starved your body, or forced it day after day to a task
that was crushing you. Those men work in icy water, keep the trail
with bleeding feet, and sleep in melting snow. They bear these things
cheerfully, and I think there are no men on this earth who can match
their wide charity. The free companions never turn away the ragged
stranger. What is theirs is his, from the choicest of their provisions
to the softest spruce-twig bed."
She laughed, and then continued:
"That's in a general way. To be particular, I'll try to tell you what
Clarence Weston has done. It's worth hearing."
She had spoken more clearly the last few moments, and it became
evident at length that she had secured the attention of everybody.
With an impulsive gesture she invited them all to listen.
"I'll tell you what that picture leaves out," she said. "There was an
old man in the railroad camp, played-out and useless. The boys were
handling him roughly because he'd spoiled their supper rather often,
when Clarence Weston stepped in. The old man, you must understand,
hadn't a shadow of a claim on him. Now, those are not nice men to make
trouble with when they have a genuine grievance, and there were three
or four of them quite ready to lay hands on Weston, while there was
nobody who sympathized with him. He stood facing them, one man against
an angry crowd, and held them off from the stranger who had no claim
on him. Have you heard of anything finer?
"Again, when Arabella lamed herself up on a great snow range--he'd
carried our food and blankets since sunrise--he went down to bring
help in the darkness, through the timber and along the edge of
horrible crags. The man had badly cut his foot, and the wound opened
on the march, but when he made the camp, almost too weary to crawl, he
went back right away, so that the Indians he took up might get there a
little quicker."
She broke off for a moment, with a flush in her face and a curious
little laugh.
"Now," she said, "I think I've made the thing quite plain, and I'm
glad I did."
There was an expressive silence for a moment or two, and then Major
Kinnaird looked at the others.
"I know nothing about the first incident, but I think that Miss
Stirling could have gone a little further when she described the last
one," he said. "My daughter, who was badly injured, would probably
have been left another day on the range, without food or any
attention, if it had not been for the courage and endurance the man
displayed. I wish to say, however, that I had no idea he was any
connection of Mr. Weston's until this moment."
Ida's heart warmed toward Kinnaird. Reserved and formal as he was, the
man could be honest, and it was evident that his few quiet words had
made almost as deep an impression as the outbreak to which she had
been impelled. There was another rather awkward silence; and then
Weston, who seemed to have forgotten the others, made a little abrupt
movement.
"What had my son to do with you?" he asked.
The question was flung at Kinnaird, but Ida saw that it was a relief
to him when she answered it.
"My father hired him. He was our camp-packer, the man who set up the
tents, made the fires, and poled the canoes," she said.
Weston stood up and, looking hard at Kinnaird, straightened himself.
His face was an unpleasant red, and there was badly-suppressed anger
in his eyes.
"Time is getting on, and we have rather a long drive," he said. "I may
ask Miss Stirling's leave to call on her later. In the meanwhile, if
Mrs. Kinnaird will excuse us----"
His hostess made no attempt to keep him; and, as he moved away, his
daughter stopped for a moment beside Ida's chair.
"I don't know whether what you have done was excusable or not, but you
have, at least, succeeded in making the breach between Clarence and
his father wider than ever," she said. "That was probably what you
intended?"
Ida was momentarily puzzled.
"Intended?" she said. "If either of you had done your brother justice,
I don't think I should have mentioned him at all."
Miss Weston smiled scornfully and moved away, but the blood crept into
the face of the girl she left. That she had outraged these people's
sense of their importance she felt reasonably sure, and their
resentment, which she admitted was, perhaps, more or less warranted,
did not trouble her, but the drift of Miss Weston's last observation
filled her with anger. They evidently regarded her as a raw Colonial,
endued with no sense of what was fitting, who could not expect to be
countenanced by an insolvent land-owning family. This was amusing; but
the suggestion that she recognized the fact, and because of it had
endeavored to alienate Clarence Weston from his relatives, who had
apparently been very glad to get rid of him, was a very different
matter. However, she recovered her composure with an effort, and
succeeded in taking a part in the general conversation which broke out
when Weston drove away.