HER PICTURE
Wyllard stayed at the inn three days without seeing anything more of the
girl whom he had met beside the stream, although he diligently watched
for her. He had long felt it was his duty to communicate with the
relatives of the lad that he had befriended, and the fact that he had
found the girl's photograph in the young Englishman's possession made it
appear highly probable that she could assist him in tracing the family.
Apart from this, he could not quite analyze his motives for desiring to
see more of the Englishwoman, though he was conscious of the desire. Her
picture had been a companion to him in his wanderings, and now and then
he had found a certain solace in gazing at it. Now that he had seen her
in the flesh he was willing to admit that he had never met any woman who
had made such an impression on him.
It was, of course, possible for him to call at the vicarage, but though
he meant to adopt that course as a last resort, there were certain
objections to it. He did not know the girl's name, and there was nobody
to say a word for him. So far as his experience went, the English were
apt to be reticent and reserved to a stranger. It seemed to him that,
although the girl might give him the information which he required,
their acquaintance probably would terminate then and there. She would,
he decided, be less likely to stand upon her guard if he could contrive
to meet her casually without prearrangement.
On the fourth day fortune favored him, for he came upon her endeavoring
to open a tottering gate where a stony hill track led off from the
smooth white road. As it happened, he had received a letter from Mrs.
Hastings that morning, fixing the date of her departure, and it was
necessary for him to discharge the duty with which Hawtrey had saddled
him as soon as possible. The Grange, where he understood Miss Ismay was
then staying, lay thirty miles away across the fells, and he had decided
to start early on the morrow. That being the case, it was clear that he
must make the most of this opportunity; but he realized that it would be
advisable to proceed circumspectly. Saying nothing, he set his shoulder
to the gate, and lifting it on its decrepit hinges swung it open.
"Thank you," said the girl. Remembering that the words were the last
that she had said to him, she smiled, as she added: "It is the second
time you have appeared when I was in difficulties."
In spite of his resolution to proceed cautiously, a twinkle crept into
Wyllard's eyes, and suggested that the fact she had mentioned was not so
much of a coincidence as it probably appeared. She saw the look that
told her what he was thinking, and was about to pass on, when he stopped
her with a gesture.
"The fact is, I have been looking out for you the last three days," he
confessed.
He feared the girl had taken alarm at this candid statement, and spread
his hands out deprecatingly. "Won't you hear me out?" he added. "There's
a matter I must put before you, but I won't keep you long."
The girl was a little puzzled, and naturally curious. It struck her as
strange that his admission should have aroused in her very little
indignation; but she felt that it would be unreasonable to suspect this
man of anything that savored of impertinence. His manner was reassuring,
and she liked his face.
"Well?" she said inquiringly.
Wyllard waved his hand toward a big oak trunk that lay just inside the
gate.
"If you'll sit down, I'll get through as quick as I can," he promised.
"In the first place, I am, as I told you, a Canadian, who has come over
partly to see the country, and partly to carry out one or two missions.
In regard to one of them I believe you can help me."
The girl's face expressed a natural astonishment.
"I could help you?"
Wyllard nodded. "I'll explain my reasons for believing it later on," he
said. "In the meanwhile, I asked you a question the other night, which
I'll now try to make more explicit. Were you ever acquainted with a
young Englishman, who went to Canada from this country several years
ago? He was about twenty then, and had dark hair and dark eyes. That, of
course, isn't an unusual thing, but there was a rather curious white
mark on his left temple. If he was ever a friend of yours, that scar
ought to fix it."
"Oh!" cried the girl, "that must have been Lance Radcliffe. I was with
him when the scar was made--ever so long ago. We heard that he was dead.
But you said his name was Pattinson."
"I did," declared Wyllard gravely. "Still, I wasn't quite sure about the
name being right. He's certainly dead. I buried him."
His companion made an abrupt movement, and he saw the sudden softening
of her eyes. There was, however, only a gentle pity in her face, and
nothing in her manner suggested the deeper feeling that he had half
expected.
"Then," she said, "I am sure that his father would like to meet you.
There was some trouble between them--I don't know which was wrong--and
Lance went out to Canada, and never wrote. Major Radcliffe tried to
trace him through a Vancouver banker, and only found that he had died in
the hands of a stranger who had done all that was possible for him." She
turned to Wyllard with a look which set his heart beating faster than
usual. "You are that man?"
"Yes," said Wyllard simply, "I did what I could for him. It didn't
amount to very much. He was too far gone."
Briefly he repeated the story that he had told to Hawtrey, and, when he
had finished, her face was soft again, for what he said had stirred her
curiously.
"But," she commented, "he had no claim on you."
Wyllard lifted one hand with a motion that disclaimed all right to
commendation. "He was dying in the bush. Wasn't that enough?"
The girl made no answer for a moment or two. She had earned her living
for several years, and she was to some extent acquainted with the grim
realities of life. She did not know that while there are hard men in
Canada the small farmers and ranchers of the West--and, perhaps above
all, the fearless free lances who build railroads and grapple with giant
trees in the forests of the Pacific slope--are as a rule, distinguished
by a splendid charity. With them the sick or worn-out stranger is seldom
turned away. Watching the stranger covertly, she understood that this
man whom she had seen for the first time three days before had done
exactly what she would have expected of him.
"I saw a great deal of Lance Radcliffe--when I was younger," she said.
"His people still live at Garside Scar, close by Dufton Holme. I presume
you will call on them?"
Wyllard said that he purposed doing so, as he had a watch and one or two
other mementos that they might like to have, and she told him how to
reach Dufton Holme by a round-about railway journey.
"There is one point that rather puzzles me," she said, after she had
made it plain how he was to find the Radcliffe family. "How did you know
that I could tell you anything about him?"
Wyllard thrust his hand into his pocket, and took out a little leather
case.
"You are by no means a stranger to me," he remarked as he handed her the
photograph. "This is your picture; I found it among the dead lad's
things."
The girl, who started visibly, flashed a keen glance at him. It was
evident that he had not intended to produce any dramatic effect. She
flushed a little.
"I never knew he had it," she asserted. "Perhaps he got it from his
sister." She paused, and then, as if impelled to make the fact quite
clear, added, "I certainly never gave it to him."
Wyllard smiled gravely, for he recognized that while she was clearly
grieved to hear of young Radcliffe's death, she could have had no
particular tenderness for the unfortunate lad.
"Well," he said, "perhaps he took it in the first place for the mere
beauty of it, and it afterwards became a companion--something that
connected him with the Old Country. It appealed in one of those ways to
me."
Again she flashed a sharp glance at him, but he went on unheeding:
"When I found it I meant to keep it merely as a clew, and so that it
could be given up to his relatives some day," he added. "Then I fell
into the habit of looking at it in my lonely camp in the bush at night,
and when I sat beside the stove while the snow lay deep upon the
prairie. There was something in your eyes that seemed to encourage me."
"To encourage you?"
"Yes," Wyllard assented gravely, "I think that expresses it. When I
camped in the bush of the Pacific slope we were either out on the gold
trail--and we generally came back ragged and unsuccessful after spending
several months' wages which we could badly spare--or I was going from
one wooden town to another without a dollar in my pocket and wondering
how I was to obtain one when I got there. For a time it wasn't much more
cheerful on the prairie. Twice in succession the harvest failed. Perhaps
Lance Radcliffe felt as I did."
The girl cut him short. "Why didn't you mention the photograph at once?"
Wyllard smiled at her. "Oh," he explained, "I didn't want to be
precipitate--you English folk don't seem to like that. I think"--and he
seemed to consider--"I wanted to make sure you wouldn't be repelled by
what might look like Colonial _brusquerie_. You see, you have been over
snow-barred divides and through great shadowy forests with me. We've
camped among the boulders by lonely lakes, and gone down frothing
rapids. I felt--I can't tell you why--that I was bound to meet you some
day."
His frankness was startling, but the girl showed neither astonishment
nor resentment. She felt certain that this stranger was not posing or
speaking for effect. It did not occur to Wyllard that he might have gone
too far, and for a moment or two he leaned against the gate, while she
looked at him with what he thought of as her gracious English calm.
Pale sunshine fell upon them, though the larches beside the road were
rustling beneath a cold wind, and the song of the river came up brokenly
out of the valley. An odor of fresh grass floated about them, and the
dry, cold smell of the English spring was in the air. Across the valley
dim ghosts of hills lighted by evanescent gleams rose out of the east
wind grayness with shadowy grandeur.
Then Wyllard aroused himself. "I wonder if I ought to write Major
Radcliffe and tell him what my object is before I call," he said. "It
would make the thing a little easier."
The girl rose. "Yes," she assented, "that would, perhaps, be wiser." She
glanced at the photograph which was still in her hand. "It has served
its purpose. I scarcely think it would be of any great interest to Major
Radcliffe."
She saw his face change as she made it evident that she did not mean to
give the portrait back to him. There was, at least, one excellent reason
why she would not have her picture in a strange man's hands.
"Thank you," she said, "for the story. I am glad we have met; but I'm
afraid I have already kept my friends waiting for me."
She turned away, and it occurred to Wyllard that he had made a very
indifferent use of the opportunity, since she had neither asked his name
nor told him hers. It was, however, evident that he could not well run
after her and demand her name, and he decided that he could in all
probability obtain it from Major Radcliffe. Still, he regretted his lack
of adroitness as he walked back to the inn, where he wrote two letters
when he had consulted a map and his landlady. Dufton Holme, he
discovered, was a small village within a mile or two of the Grange
where, as Miss Rawlinson had informed him, Agatha Ismay was then
staying. One letter was addressed to her, and he formally asked
permission to call upon her with a message from George Hawtrey. The
other was to Major Radcliffe, and in both he said that an answer would
reach him at the inn which his landlady had informed him was to be found
not far from both of the houses he intended to visit.
He set out on foot next morning, and, after climbing a steep pass,
followed a winding track across a waste of empty moor until he struck a
smooth white road, which led past a rock-girt lake and into a deep
valley. It was six o'clock in the morning when he started, and three in
the afternoon when he reached the inn, where he found an answer to one
of the letters awaiting him. It was from Major Radcliffe, who desired an
interview with him as soon as possible.
Within an hour he was on his way to the Major's house, where a
gray-haired man, whose yellow skin suggested long exposure to a tropical
sun, and a little withered lady were waiting for him. They received him
graciously, but there was an indefinite something in their manner and
bearing which Wyllard, who had read a great deal, recognized, though he
had never been brought into actual contact with it until then. He felt
that he could not have expected to come across such people anywhere but
in England, unless it was at the headquarters of a British battalion in
India.
He told his story tersely, softening unpleasant details and making
little of what he had done. The gray-haired man listened gravely with an
unmoved face, though a trace of moisture crept into the little lady's
eyes. There was silence for a moment or two when he had finished, and
then Major Radcliffe, whose manner was very quiet, turned to him.
"You have laid me under an obligation, which I could never wipe out,
even if I wished it," he said. "It was my only son you buried out there
in Canada."
He broke off for a moment, and his quietness was more marked than ever
when he went on again.
"As you have no doubt surmised, we quarreled," he said. "He was
extravagant and careless--at least I thought that then--but now it seems
to me that I was unduly hard on him. His mother"--and he turned to the
little lady with an inclination that pleased Wyllard curiously--"was
sure of it at the time. In any case, I took the wrong way, and he went
out to Canada. I made that, at least, easy for him--and I have been
sorry ever since."
He paused again with a little expressive gesture. "It seems due to him,
and you, that I should tell you this. When no word reached us I had
inquiries made, through a banker, who, discovering that he had
registered at a hotel as Pattinson, at length traced him to a British
Columbian silver mine. He had, however, left the mine shortly before my
correspondent learned that he had been employed there, and all that the
banker could tell me was that an unknown prospector had nursed my boy
until he died."
Wyllard took out a watch and the clasp of a workman's belt from his
pocket, and laid them gently on Mrs. Radcliffe's knee. He saw her eyes
fill, and turned his head away.
"I feel that you may blame me for not writing sooner, but it was only a
very little while ago that I was able to trace you, and then it was only
by a very curious--coincidence," he explained presently.
He did not consider it advisable to mention the photograph. It seemed to
him that the girl would not like it. Nor, though he was greatly tempted,
did he care to make inquiries concerning her just then. In another
moment or two the Major spoke again.
"If I can make your stay here pleasanter in any way I should be
delighted," he said. "If you will take up your quarters with us I will
send down to the inn for your things."
Wyllard excused himself, but when Mr. Radcliffe urged him to dine with
them on the following evening he hesitated.
"The one difficulty is that I don't know yet whether I shall be engaged
then," he said. "As it happens, I've a message for Miss Ismay, and I
wrote offering to call upon her at any convenient hour. So far, I have
heard nothing from her."
"She's away," Mrs. Radcliffe informed him. "They have probably sent your
letter on to her. I had a note from her yesterday, however, and expect
her here to-morrow. You have met some friends of hers in Canada?"
"Gregory Hawtrey," said Wyllard. "I have promised to call upon his
people, too."
He saw Major Radcliffe glance at his wife, and he noticed a faint gleam
in Mrs. Radcliffe's eyes.
"Well," she observed, "if you promise to come I will send word over to
Agatha."
Wyllard agreed to this, and went away a few minutes later. He noticed
the tact and consideration with which his new friends had refrained from
indicating any sign of the curiosity they naturally felt, for Mrs.
Radcliffe's face had suggested that she understood the situation, which
was beginning to appear a little more difficult to him. It was, it
seemed, his task to explain delicately to a girl brought up among such
people what she must be prepared to face as a farmer's wife in Western
Canada. He was not sure that this task would be easy in itself, but it
was rendered much more difficult by the fact that Hawtrey would expect
him to accomplish it without unduly daunting her. Her letter certainly
had suggested courage, but, after all, it was the courage of ignorance,
and he had now some notion of the life of ease and refinement her
English friends enjoyed. He was beginning to feel sorry for Agatha
Ismay.