VANE YIELDS A POINT
The short afternoon was drawing toward its close when Vane came out
of a large building in the city. Glancing at his watch, he stopped on
the steps.
"The meeting went pretty satisfactorily, taking it all round," he
remarked to Carroll.
"I think so," agreed his companion. "But I'm far from sure that Horsfield
was pleased with the stockholders' decision."
Vane smiled in a thoughtful manner. After returning from the mine, he had
gone inland to examine a new irrigation property in which he had been
asked to take an interest, and had got back only in time for a meeting of
the Clermont shareholders, which Nairn had arranged in his absence. The
meeting, of the kind that is sometimes correctly described as
extraordinary, was just over, and though Vane had been forced to yield to
a majority on some points, he had secured the abandonment of a
proposition he considered dangerous.
"Though I don't see what the man could have gained by it, I'm inclined to
believe that if Nairn and I had been absent he'd have carried his total
reconstruction scheme. That wouldn't have pleased me."
"I thought it injudicious."
"It was only because we must raise more money that I agreed to the issue
of the new block of shares," Vane went on. "We ought to pay a fair
dividend on the moderate sum in question."
"You think you'll get it?"
"I've not much doubt."
Carroll made no reply to this. Vane was capable and forceful; but his
abilities were of a practical rather than a diplomatic order, and he was
occasionally addicted to somewhat headstrong action. Knowing that he had
a very cunning antagonist intriguing against him, his companion had
misgivings.
"Shall we walk back to the hotel?" he suggested.
"No," answered Vane; "I'll go across and see how Celia Hartley's getting
on. I'm afraid I've been forgetting her."
"Then I'll come too. You may need me; there are matters which you're not
to be trusted to deal with alone."
Just then Nairn came down the steps and waved his hand to them.
"Ye will no forget that Mrs. Nairn is expecting both of ye this evening."
He passed on, and they set off together across the city toward the
district where Celia lived. Though the quarter in question may have been
improved out of existence since, a few years ago rows of low-rented
shacks stood upon mounds of sweating sawdust which had been dumped into a
swampy hollow. Leaky, frail and fissured, they were not the kind of
places anyone who could help it would choose to live in; but Vane found
the sick girl still installed in one of the worst of them. She looked
pale and haggard; but she was busily at work upon some millinery; and the
light of a tin lamp showed Drayton and Kitty Blake sitting near her.
There were cracks in the thin, boarded walls, from which a faint resinous
odor exuded, but it failed to hide the sour smell of the wet sawdust upon
which the shack was built. The room, which was almost bare of furniture,
felt damp and unwholesome.
"You oughtn't to be at work; you don't look fit," Vane said to Celia. He
paused a moment, hesitating, before he added: "I'm sorry we couldn't find
that spruce; but, as I told Drayton, we're going back to try again."
The girl smiled bravely.
"Then you'll find it the next time. I'm glad I'm able to do a little; it
brings in a few dollars."
"But what are you doing?"
"Making hats. I did one for Miss Horsfield, and afterward some friends of
hers sent me two or three more to trim. She said she'd try to get me work
from one of the big stores."
"But you're not a milliner, are you?" asked Vane, feeling grateful to
Jessy for the practical way in which she had kept her promise to assist.
"Celia's something better," Kitty broke in. "She's a genius."
"Isn't that a slight on the profession?" Vane laughed.
He was anxious to lead the conversation away from Miss Horsfield's
action; he shrank from figuring as the benefactor who had prompted her.
"I'm not quite sure," he continued, "what genius really is."
"I don't altogether agree with the definition of it as the capacity for
taking infinite pains," Carroll, guessing his companion's thoughts,
remarked with mock sententiousness. "In Miss Hartley's case, it strikes
me as the instinctive ability to evolve a finished work of art from a few
fripperies, without the aid of technical training. Give her two or three
feathers, a yard of ribbon and a handful of mixed sundries, and she'll
magically transmute them into--this."
He took up a hat from the table and surveyed it with an air of critical
intelligence.
"It was innate genius that set this plume at the one artistic angle. Had
it been done by less capable hands, the thing would have looked like a
decorated beehive."
The others laughed, and he led them on to general chatter, under cover of
which Vane presently drew Drayton to the door.
"The girl looks far from fit," he said. "Has the doctor been over
lately?"
"Two or three days ago," answered Drayton. "We've been worried about
Celia. It's out of the question that she should go back to the hotel, and
she can only manage to work a few hours daily. There's another thing--the
clerk of the fellow who owns these shacks has just been along for his
rent. It's overdue."
"Where's he now?"
Drayton laughed, for the sounds of a vigorous altercation rose from
farther up the unlighted street.
"I guess he's yonder, having some more trouble with his collecting."
"I'll fix that matter, anyway."
Vane disappeared into the darkness, and it was some time later when
he re-entered the shack. He waited until a remark of Celia's gave
him a lead.
"You're really a partner in the lumber scheme," he told her; "I can't
see why you shouldn't draw part of your share in the proceeds
beforehand."
"The first payment isn't to be made until you find the spruce and get
your lease," the girl reminded him. "You've already paid a hundred
dollars that we had no claim on."
"That doesn't matter; I'm going to find it."
"Yes," agreed Celia, with a look of confidence, "I think you will.
But"--a flicker of color crept into her thin face--"I can't take any more
money until it is found."
Vane, failing in another attempt to shake her resolution, dropped the
subject, and soon afterward he and Carroll took their departure. They
were sitting in their hotel, waiting for dinner, when Carroll looked up
lazily from his luxurious chair.
"What are you thinking about so hard?" he inquired.
Vane glanced meaningly round the elaborately furnished room.
"There's a contrast between all this and that rotten shack. Did you
notice that Celia never stopped sewing while we were there, though she
once or twice leaned back rather heavily in her chair?"
"I did. I suppose you're going to propound another conundrum of a kind
I've heard before--why you should have so many things you don't
particularly need, while Miss Hartley must go on sewing when she's hardly
able for it in her most unpleasant shack? I don't know whether the fact
that you found a mine answers the question; but if it doesn't the thing's
beyond your philosophy."
"Come off!" Vane bade him with signs of impatience. "There are times
when your moralizing gets on one's nerves. Anyhow, I straightened out one
difficulty--I found the rent man, who'd been round worrying her, and got
rid of him."
Carroll groaned in mock dismay, which covered some genuine annoyance with
himself; but Vane frowned.
"What's the matter?" he inquired. "Do you want a drink?"
"I'll get over it," Carroll informed him. "It isn't the first time I've
suffered from the same complaint. But I'd like to point out that your
chivalrous impulses may be the ruin of you some day. Why didn't you let
Drayton settle with the man? You gave him a check, I suppose?"
"Sure. I'd only a few loose dollars with me." Vane frowned again. "Now I
see what you're driving at; and I want to say that any little reputation
I possess can pretty well take care of itself."
"Just so. No doubt it will be necessary; but it doesn't seem to have
struck you that you're not the only person concerned."
"It didn't," Vane confessed with a further show of irritation. "But who's
likely to hear or take any notice of the thing?"
"I can't tell; but you make enemies as well as friends, and you're
walking in slippery places which you're not altogether accustomed to. You
can't meet your difficulties with the ax here."
"That's true," assented Vane. "It's rather a pity. Anyhow, I'm not to be
scared out of my interest in Celia Hartley."
"What is your interest in her? It's a question that may be asked."
"As you pretend that you don't know, I'll have pleasure in telling you
again. When I first struck this city, played out and ragged, she was
waitress at a little hotel, and she brought me a double portion of the
nicest things at supper. What's more, she sewed up some of my clothes,
and I struck a job on the strength of looking comparatively decent. It's
the kind of thing you're apt to remember. One doesn't meet with too much
kindness in this blamed censorious world."
"I'd expect you to remember," Carroll smiled.
They went in to dinner and when the meal was over they walked across to
Nairn's. They were ushered into a room in which several other guests were
assembled, and Vane sat down beside Jessy Horsfield. A place on the sofa
she occupied was invitingly empty; he did not know, of course, that she
had adroitly got rid of her previous companion as soon as he came in.
"I want to thank you; I was over at Miss Hartley's this
afternoon," he began.
"I understood that you were at the mining meeting."
"So I was, your brother would tell you that--"
Vane broke off, remembering that he had defeated Horsfield; but Jessy
laughed encouragingly.
"He did so--you were opposed to him; but it doesn't follow that I share
all his views. Perhaps I ought to be a stauncher partizan."
"If you'll be just to both of us, I'll be satisfied."
Jessy reflected that while this was, no doubt, a commendable sentiment,
he might have made a better use of the opening she had given him by at
least hinting that he would value her sympathy.
"I suppose that means that you're convinced of the equity of your cause?"
she suggested.
"I dare say I deserve the rebuke; but aren't you trying to switch me off
the subject?" Vane retorted with a laugh. "It's Celia Hartley that I want
to talk about."
He did her an injustice. Jessy felt that she had earned his gratitude,
and she had no objection to his expressing it.
"It was a happy thought of yours to give her hats and things to make; I'm
ever so much obliged to you," he went on. "I felt that you could be
trusted to think of the right thing. An ingenious idea of that kind would
never have occurred to me."
Jessy smiled up at him.
"It was very simple," she said sweetly. "I noticed a hat and dress of
hers, which she admitted she had made. The girl has some talent; I'm only
sorry I can't keep her busy."
"Couldn't you give her an order for a dozen hats? I'd be glad to be
responsible."
Jessy laughed.
"The difficulty would be the disposal of them. They would be of no use to
you; and I couldn't allow you to present them to me."
"I wish I could," Vane declared. "You certainly deserve them."
This was satisfactory, so far as it went, though Jessy would have
preferred that his desire to bestow the favor should have sprung from
some other motive than a recognition of her services to Celia Hartley.
She was, however, convinced that his only feeling toward the girl was
one of compassion. Then she saw that he was looking at her with
half-humorous annoyance in his face.
"Are you really grieved because I won't take those hats?" she
asked lightly.
"I am," Vane confessed, and then proceeded to explain with rather
unnecessary ingenuousness: "I'm still more vexed with the state of things
that it's typical of--I suppose I mean the restrictedness of this
civilized life. When you want to do anything in the bush, you take the ax
and set about it; but here you're continually running up against some
quite unnecessary barrier."
"One understands that it's worse in England," Jessy returned dryly.
"But in regard to Miss Hartley, I'll recommend her to my friends, as
far as I can."
Vane made an abrupt movement, and Jessy realized by his expression that
he had suddenly become oblivious of her presence. She had no doubt about
the reason, for just then Evelyn Chisholm had entered the room. The
lamplight fell upon her as she crossed the threshold, and Jessy
recognized unwillingly that she looked surprisingly handsome. Handsome,
however, was not the word Vane would have used. He thought Evelyn looked
exotic: highly cultivated, strangely refined, as though she had grown up
in a rarefied atmosphere in which nothing rank could thrive. Exactly what
suggested this it was difficult to define; but the man felt that she had
brought along with her the clean, chill air of the heights where the
cloud-berries bloom. She was a flower of the dim and misty North, which
has nevertheless its flashes of radiant, ethereal beauty. Though Evelyn
had her faults, the impression she made on Vane was, perhaps, more or
less justifiable.
Then he remembered that the girl had been offered to him and he had
refused the gift. He wondered how he had exerted the necessary strength
of will, for he was conscious that admiration, respect, pity, had now,
changed and melted into sudden passion. His blood tingled, and he felt
strangely happy.
Laying a check upon his thoughts, he resumed a desultory conversation
with Jessy, but he betrayed himself several times during it, for no
change of his expression was lost upon the girl. At length she let him
go. It was some time, however, before he secured a place beside Evelyn, a
little apart from the others. He was now unusually quiet and
self-contained.
"Nairn promised me an astonishment this evening, but it exceeds all my
expectations," he said. "How are your people?"
Evelyn informed him that their health was satisfactory and added,
watching him the while:
"Gerald sent his best remembrances."
"Thank you," Vane responded in a casual manner; "I am glad to have them."
Evelyn was now convinced that Mabel had been correct in concluding that
he had assisted Gerald financially, though she was aware that nothing
would induce either of the men to acquaint her with the fact.
"And Mopsy?" he inquired.
"I left her in tears because she could not come. She sent you so many
confused messages that I'm afraid I've forgotten them."
Vane's face grew gentle.
"Dear little girl! It's a pity you couldn't have brought her. Mopsy and
I are great friends."
Evelyn smiled at him. The tenderness of the man appealed to her; and she
knew that to be the friend of anyone meant a good deal to him.
"You are her hero," she told him. "I don't think it is because you pulled
her out of the water, either; in fact, I think you won her regard when
you mended her canoe. You have a reputation to keep up with Mopsy."
There was no answering smile in Vane's eyes.
"Well, I shouldn't like to disappoint her; but isn't it curious what
effect some things have? A patch on Mopsy's canoe, for instance--and I've
known a piece of cold pie carry with it a big obligation."
The last was somewhat cryptic, and Evelyn looked at him with surprise,
until it dawned on her that he had merely been half-consciously
expressing a wandering thought aloud.
"I understood from Mrs. Nairn that you were away in the bush," she said.
"That was the case; and I'm shortly going off again. Perhaps it's
fortunate that I may be away some time. It will leave you more at ease."
The last remark was more of a question than an assertion. Evelyn knew
that the man could be direct; and she esteemed candor.
"No," she answered; "I shouldn't wish you to think that--and I shouldn't
like to believe that I had anything to do with driving you away."
Vane saw a faintly warmer tone show through the clear pallor of her skin,
but while his heart beat faster than usual he recognized that she meant
just what she said and nothing more. He must proceed with caution, and
this, on the whole, was foreign to him. Shortly afterward he left her.
When he had gone, Evelyn sat thinking about him. She had shrunk from the
man in rebellious alarm when her parents would have bestowed her hand on
him; but even then, and undoubtedly afterward, she had felt that there
was something in his nature which would have attracted her had she been
willing to allow it to do so. Now, though he had said nothing to rouse
it, the feeling had grown stronger. Then she remembered with a curious
smile her father's indignation when Vane had withdrawn from the field. He
had done this because she had appealed to his generosity, and she had
been grateful to him; but, unreasonable as she admitted the faint
resentment she was conscious of to be, the recollection of the fact that
he had yielded to her wishes was somehow bitter.
In the meanwhile Carroll had taken his place by Jessy's side.
"I understand that you steered your comrade satisfactorily through the
meeting to-day," she began.
"No," objected Carrol; "I can't claim any credit for doing so. In matters
of that kind Vane takes full control; and I'm willing to own that he
drove us all, including your brother, on the course he chose."
Jessy laughed good-humoredly.
"Then it's in other matters you exercise a little judicious pressure on
the helm?"
The man looked at her in well-assumed admiration of her keenness.
"I don't know how you guessed it, but I suppose it's a fact. It's an open
secret, however, that Vane's now and then unguardedly ingenuous; indeed,
there are respects in which he's a babe by comparison with, we'll say,
either of us."
"That's rather a dubious compliment. By the way, what do you think of
Miss Chisholm? I suppose you saw a good deal of her in England?"
Carroll's eyes twinkled.
"I spent a month or two in her company; so did Vane. I fancy she's rather
like him in several ways; and there are reasons for believing that he
thinks a good deal of her."
Having watched Vane carefully when Evelyn came in, Jessy was inclined to
agree with him. She glanced round the room. One or two people were moving
about and the others were talking in little groups; but there was nobody
very near, and she fancied that she and her companion were safe from
interruption.
"What are some of the reasons?" she asked boldly.
Carroll had expected some question of this description, and had decided
to answer it plainly. It seemed probable that Jessy would get the
information out of him in one way or another, anyway; and he had also
another reason, which he thought a commendable one. Jessy had obviously
taken a certain interest in Vane, but it could not have gone very far as
yet, and Vane did not reciprocate it. His comrade, however, was
impulsive, while Jessy was calculating and clever; and Carroll foresaw
that complications might follow any increase of friendliness between her
and Vane. He thought it might be wise to warn her to leave Vane alone.
"Well," he answered, "since you have asked, I'll try to tell you."
He proceeded to recount what had passed at the Dene and Jessy listened,
sitting perfectly still, with an expressionless face.
"So he gave her up--because he admired her?" she said at length.
"That's my view of it. Of course, it sounds unlikely, but I don't think
it is so in my partner's case."
Jessy made no comment, but he felt that she was hit hard, and that was
not what he had anticipated. He began to wonder whether he had acted
judiciously. He glanced about the room, as it did not seem considerate to
study her expression just then. A few moments later she turned to him
with a smile in which there was the faintest hint of strain.
"I dare say you are right; but there are one or two people to whom I
haven't spoken."
She moved away from him, and a little while afterward Mrs. Nairn came
upon Carroll standing for the moment alone.
"It's no often one sees ye looking moody," she said. "Was Jessy no
gracious?"
"That," replied Carroll, smiling, "is not the difficulty. I'm an
unsusceptible and a somewhat inconspicuous person--not worth powder and
shot, so to speak; for which I'm sometimes thankful. I believe it saves
me a good deal of trouble."
"Then is it something Vane has done that is on your mind? Doubtless, ye
feel him a responsibility."
"He's what you'd call all that," Carroll declared. "Still, you see, I've
constituted myself his guardian. I don't know why; he'd probably be very
vexed if he suspected it."
"The gods give ye a good conceit of yourself," Mrs. Nairn laughed.
"I need it. This afternoon I let him do a most injudicious thing; and now
I've done another which I fear is worse. On the whole, I think I'd better
take him away to the bush. He'd be safer there."
"Ye will no; no just now," declared his hostess firmly.
Carroll made a sign of resignation.
"Oh, well," he agreed, "if you say so. I'm quite willing to stand out and
let things alone. Too many cooks are apt to spoil the kale."
Mrs. Nairn left him, but she afterward glanced thoughtfully once or twice
at Vane and Evelyn, who had again drawn together.