THE DRONE OF THE HIVE
A black cloud of smoke was rolling up from the funnel of the _Stanley
D._ as Bill Wagstaff piloted Hazel from the grimy Bella Coola hotel to
the wharf.
"There aren't many passengers," he told her. "They're mostly cannery
men. But you'll have the captain's wife to chaperon you. She happens
to be making the trip."
When they were aboard and the cabin boy had shown them to what was
dignified by the name of stateroom, Bill drew a long envelope from his
pocket.
"Here," he said, "is a little money. I hope you won't let any foolish
pride stand in the way of using it freely. It came easy to me. I dug
it out of Mother Earth, and there's plenty more where it came from.
Seeing that I deprived you of access to your own money and all your
personal belongings, you are entitled to this any way you look at it.
And I want to throw in a bit of gratuitous advice--in case you should
conclude to go back to the Meadows. They probably looked high and low
for you. But there is no chance for them to learn where you actually
did get to unless you yourself tell them. The most plausible
explanation--and if you go there you must make some explanation--would
be for you to say that you got lost--which is true enough--and that you
eventually fell in with a party of Indians, and later on connected up
with a party of white people who were traveling coastward. That you
wintered with them, and they put you on a steamer and sent you to
Vancouver when spring opened.
"That, I guess, is all," he concluded slowly. "Only I wish"--he caught
her by the shoulders and shook her gently--"I sure do wish it could
have been different, little person. Maybe you'll have a kindlier
feeling for this big old North when you get back into your cities and
towns, with their smoke and smells and business sharks, where it's
everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Maybe some time
when I get restless for human companionship and come out to cavort in
the bright lights for a while, I may pass you on a street somewhere.
This world is very small. Oh, yes--when you get to Vancouver go to the
Ladysmith. It's a nice, quiet hotel in the West End. Any hack driver
knows the place."
He dropped his hands, and looked steadily at her for a few seconds,
steadily and longingly.
"Good-by!" he said abruptly--and walked out, and down the gangplank
that was already being cast loose, and away up the wharf without a
backward glance.
The _Stanley D.'s_ siren woke the echoes along the wooded shore. A
throbbing that shook her from stem to stern betokened the first
turnings of the screw. And slowly she backed into deep water and swung
wide for the outer passage.
Hazel went out to the rail. Bill Wagstaff had disappeared, but
presently she caught sight of him standing on the shore end of the
wharf, his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, staring after the
steamer. Hazel waved the envelope that she still held in her hand.
Now that she was independent of him, she felt magnanimous,
forgiving--and suddenly very much alone, as if she had dropped back
into the old, depressing Granville atmosphere. But he gave no
answering sign save that he turned on the instant and went up the hill
to where his horses stood tied among the huddled buildings. And within
twenty minutes the _Stanley D._ turned a jutting point, and Bella Coola
was lost to view.
Hazel went back into her stateroom and sat down on the berth.
Presently she opened the envelope. There was a thick fold of bills,
her ticket, and both were wrapped in a sheet of paper penciled with
dots and crooked lines. She laid it aside and counted the money.
"Heavens!" she whispered. "I wish he hadn't given me so much. I
didn't need all that."
For Roaring Bill had tucked a dozen one-hundred-dollar notes in the
envelope. And, curiously enough, she was not offended, only wishful
that he had been less generous. Twelve hundred dollars was a lot of
money, far more than she needed, and she did not know how she could
return it. She sat a long time with the money in her lap, thinking.
Then she took up the map, recognizing it as the sheet of paper Bill had
worked over so long their last night at the cabin.
It made the North more clear--a great deal more clear--to her, for he
had marked Cariboo Meadows, the location of his cabin, and Bella Coola,
and drawn dotted lines to indicate the way he had taken her in and
brought her out. The Fraser and its tributaries, some of the crossings
that she remembered were sketched in, the mountains and the lakes by
which his trail had wound.
"I wonder if that's a challenge to my vindictive disposition?" she
murmured. "I told him so often that I'd make him sweat for his
treachery if ever I got a chance. Ah well--"
She put away the money and the map, and bestowed a brief scrutiny upon
herself in the cabin mirror. Six months in the wild had given her a
ruddy color, the glow of perfect physical condition. But her garments
were tattered and sadly out of date. The wardrobe of the steamer-trunk
lady had suffered in the winter's wear. She was barely presentable in
the outing suit of corduroy. So that she was inclined to be diffident
about her appearance, and after a time when she was not thinking of the
strange episodes of the immediate past, her mind, womanlike, began to
dwell on civilization and decent clothes.
The _Stanley D._ bore down Bentick Arm and on through Burke Channel to
the troubled waters of Queen Charlotte Sound, where the blue Pacific
opens out and away to far Oriental shores. After that she plowed south
between Vancouver Island and the rugged foreshores where the Coast
Range dips to the sea, past pleasant isles, and through narrow passes
where the cliffs towered sheer on either hand, and, upon the evening of
the third day, she turned into Burrard Inlet and swept across a harbor
speckled with shipping from all the Seven Seas to her berth at the dock.
So Hazel came again to a city--a city that roared and bellowed all its
manifold noises in her ears, long grown accustomed to a vast and
brooding silence. Mindful of Bill's parting word, she took a hack to
the Ladysmith. And even though the hotel was removed from the business
heart of the city, the rumble of the city's herculean labors reached
her far into the night. She lay wakefully, staring through her open
window at the arc lights winking in parallel rows, listening to the
ceaseless hum of man's activities. But at last she fell asleep, and
dawn of a clear spring day awakened her.
She ate her breakfast, and set forth on a shopping tour. To such
advantage did she put two of the hundred-dollar bills that by noon she
was arrayed in a semi-tailored suit of gray, spring hat, shoes, and
gloves to match. She felt once more at ease, less conscious that
people stared at her frayed and curious habiliments. With a complete
outfit of lingerie purchased, and a trunk in which to store it
forwarded to her hotel, her immediate activity was at an end, and she
had time to think of her next move.
And, brought face to face with that, she found herself at something of
a loss. She had no desire to go back to Cariboo Meadows, even to get
what few personal treasures she had left behind. Cariboo Meadows was
wiped off the slate as far as she was concerned. Nevertheless, she
must make her way. Somehow she must find a means to return the unused
portion of the--to her--enormous sum Roaring Bill had placed in her
hands. She must make her own living. The question that troubled her
was: How, and where? She had her trade at her finger ends, and the
storied office buildings of Vancouver assured her that any efficient
stenographer could find work. But she looked up as she walked the
streets at the high, ugly walls of brick and steel and stone, and her
heart misgave her.
So for the time being she promised herself a holiday. In the afternoon
she walked the length of Hastings Street, where the earth trembled with
the roaring traffic of street cars, wagons, motors, and where folk
scuttled back and forth across the way in peril of their lives. She
had seen all the like before, but now she looked upon it with different
eyes; it possessed somehow a different significance, this bustle and
confusion which had seemingly neither beginning nor end, only sporadic
periods of cessation.
She sat in a candy parlor and watched people go by, swarming like bees
along the walk. She remembered having heard or read somewhere the
simile of a human hive. The shuffle of their feet, the hum of their
voices droned in her cars, confusing her, irritating her, and she
presently found herself hurrying away from it, walking rapidly eastward
toward a thin fringe of trees which showed against a distant sky-line
over a sea of roofs. She walked fast, and before long the jar of solid
heels on the concrete pavement bred an ache in her knees. Then she
caught a car passing in that direction, and rode to the end of the
line, where the rails ran out in a wilderness of stumps.
Crossing through these, she found a rudely graded highway, which in
turn dwindled to a mere path. It led her through a pleasant area of
second-growth fir, slender offspring of the slaughtered forest
monarchs, whose great stumps dotted the roll of the land, and up on a
little rise whence she could overlook the city and the inlet where rode
the tall-masted ships and sea-scarred tramps from deep salt water. And
for the time being she was content.
But a spirit of restlessness drove her back into the city. And at
nightfall she went up to her room and threw herself wearily on the bed.
She was tired, body and spirit, and lonely. Nor was this lightened by
the surety that she would be lonelier still before she found a niche to
fit herself in and gather the threads of her life once more into some
orderly pattern.
In the morning she felt better, even to the point of going over the
newspapers and jotting down several advertisements calling for office
help. Her brief experience in Cariboo Meadows had not led her to look
kindly on teaching as a means of livelihood. And stenographers seemed
to be in demand. Wherefore, she reasoned that wages would be high.
With the list in her purse, she went down on Hastings--which runs like
a huge artery through the heart of the city, with lesser streets
crossing and diverging.
But she made no application for employment. For on the corner of
Hastings and Seymour, as she gathered her skirt in her hand to cross
the street, some one caught her by the arm, and cried:
"Well, forevermore, if it isn't Hazel Weir!"
And she turned to find herself facing Loraine Marsh--a Granville school
chum--and Loraine's mother. Back of them, with wide and startled eyes,
loomed Jack Barrow.
He pressed forward while the two women overwhelmed Hazel with a flood
of exclamations and questions, and extended his hand. Hazel accepted
the overture. She had long since gotten over her resentment against
him. She was furthermore amazed to find that she could meet his eye
and take his hand without a single flutter of her pulse. It seemed
strange, but she was glad of it. And, indeed, she was too much taken
up with Loraine Marsh's chatter, and too genuinely glad to hear a
friendly voice again, to dwell much on ghosts of the past.
They stood a few minutes on the corner; then Mrs. Marsh proposed that
they go to the hotel, where they could talk at their leisure and in
comfort. Loraine and her mother took the lead. Barrow naturally fell
into step with Hazel.
"I've been wearing sackcloth and ashes, Hazel," he said humbly. "And I
guess you've got about a million apologies coming from everybody in
Granville for the shabby way they treated you. Shortly after you left,
somebody on one of the papers ferreted out the truth of that Bush
affair, and the vindictive old hound's reasons for that compromising
legacy were set forth. It seems this newspaper fellow connected up
with Bush's secretary and the nurse. Also, Bush appears to have kept a
diary--and kept it posted up to the day of his death--poured out all
his feelings on paper, and repeatedly asserted that he would win you or
ruin you. And it seems that that night after you refused to come to
him when he was hurt, he called in his lawyer and made that
codicil--and spent the rest of the time till he died gloating over the
chances of it besmirching your character."
"I've grown rather indifferent about it," Hazel replied impersonally.
"But he succeeded rather easily. Even you, who should have known me
better, were ready to believe the very worst."
"I've paid for it," Barrow pleaded. "You don't know how I've hated
myself for being such a cad. But it taught me a lesson--if you'll not
hold a grudge against me. I've wondered and worried about you,
disappearing the way you did. Where have you been, and how have you
been getting on? You surely look well." He bent an admiring glance on
her.
"Oh, I've been every place, and I can't complain about not getting on,"
she answered carelessly.
For the life of her, she could not help making comparisons between the
man beside her and another who she guessed would by now be bearing up
to the crest of the divide that overlooked the green and peaceful vista
of forest and lake, with the Babine Range lying purple beyond. She
wondered if Roaring Bill Wagstaff would ever, under any circumstances,
have looked on her with the scornful, angry distrust that Barrow had
once betrayed. And she could not conceive of Bill Wagstaff ever being
humble or penitent for anything he had done. Barrow's attitude was
that of a little boy who had broken some plaything in a fit of anger
and was now woefully trying to put the pieces together again. It
amused her. Indeed, it afforded her a distinctly un-Christian
satisfaction, since she was not by nature of a meek or forgiving
spirit. He had made her suffer; it was but fitting that he should know
a pang or two himself.
Hazel visited with the three of them in the hotel parlor for a matter
of two hours, went to luncheon with them, and at luncheon Loraine Marsh
brought up the subject of her coming home to Granville with them. The
Bush incident was discussed and dismissed. On the question of
returning, Hazel was noncommittal. The idea appealed strongly to her.
Granville was home. She had grown up there. There were a multitude of
old ties, associations, friends to draw her back. But whether her home
town would seem the same, whether she would feel the same toward the
friends who had held aloof in the time when she needed a friend the
most, even if they came flocking back to her, was a question that she
thought of if she did not put it in so many words. On the other hand,
she knew too well the drear loneliness that would close upon her in
Vancouver when the Marshes left.
"Of course you'll come! We won't hear of leaving you behind. So you
can consider that settled." Loraine Marsh declared at last. "We're
going day after to-morrow. So is Mr. Barrow."
Jack walked with her out to the Ladysmith, and, among other things,
told her how he happened to be in the coast city.
"I've been doing pretty well lately," he said. "I came out here on a
deal that involved about fifty thousand dollars. I closed it up just
this morning--and the commission would just about buy us that little
house we had planned once. Won't you let bygones be bygones, Hazie?"
"It might be possible, Jack," she answered slowly, "if it were not for
the fact that you took the most effective means a man could have taken
to kill every atom of affection I had for you. I don't feel bitter any
more--I simply don't feel at all."
"But you will," he said eagerly. "Just give me a chance. I was a
hot-headed, jealous fool, but I never will be again. Give me a chance,
Hazel."
"You'll have to make your own chances," she said deliberately. "I
refuse to bind myself in any way. Why should I put myself out to make
you happy when you destroyed all the faith I had in you? You simply
didn't trust me. You wouldn't trust me again. If slander could turn
you against me once it might a second time. Besides, I don't care for
you as a man wants a woman to care for him. And I don't think I'm
going to care--except, perhaps, in a friendly way."
And with that Barrow had to be content.
He called for her the next day, and took her, with the Marshes, out for
a launch ride, and otherwise devoted himself to being an agreeable
cavalier. On the launch excursion it was settled definitely that Hazel
should accompany them East. She had no preparations to make. The only
thing she would like to have done--return Roaring Bill's surplus
money--she could not do. She did not know how or where to reach him
with a letter. So far as Granville was concerned, she could always
leave it if she desired, and she was a trifle curious to know how all
her friends would greet her now that the Bush mystery was cleared up
and the legacy explained.
So that at dusk of the following day she and Loraine Marsh sat in a
Pullman, flattening their noses against the car window, taking a last
look at the environs of Vancouver as the train rolled through the
outskirts of the city. Hazel told herself that she was going home.
Barrow smiled friendly assurance over the seat.
Even so, she was restless, far from content. There was something
lacking. She grew distrait, monosyllabic, sat for long intervals
staring absently into the gloom beyond the windowpane. The Limited was
ripping through forested land. She could see now and then tall
treetops limned against the starlit sky. The ceaseless roar of the
trucks and the buzz of conversation in the car irritated her. At half
after eight she called the porter and had him arrange her section for
the night. And she got into bed, thankful to be by herself, depressed
without reason.
She slept for a time, her sleep broken into by morbid dreams, and
eventually she wakened to find her eyes full of tears. She did not
know why she should cry, but cry she did till her pillow grew
moist--and the heavy feeling in her breast grew, if anything, more
intense.
She raised on one elbow and looked out the window. The train slowed
with a squealing of brakes and the hiss of escaping air to a station.
On the signboard over the office window she read the name of the place
and the notation: "Vancouver, 180 miles."
Her eyes were still wet. When the Limited drove east again she
switched on the tiny electric bulb over her head, and fumbled in her
purse for another handkerchief. Her fingers drew forth, with the bit
of linen, a folded sheet of paper, which seemed to hypnotize her, so
fixedly did she remain looking at it. A sheet of plain white paper,
marked with dots and names and crooked lines that stood for rivers,
with shaded patches that meant mountain ranges she had seen--Bill
Wagstaff's map.
She stared at it a long time. Then she found her time-table, and ran
along the interminable string of station names till she found Ashcroft,
from whence northward ran the Appian Way of British Columbia, the
Cariboo Road, over which she had journeyed by stage. She noted the
distance, and the Limited's hour of arrival, and looked at her watch.
Then a feverish activity took hold of her. She dressed, got her suit
case from under the berth, and stuffed articles into it, regardless of
order. Her hat was in a paper bag suspended from a hook above the
upper berth. Wherefore, she tied a silk scarf over her head.
That done, she set her suit case in the aisle, and curled herself in
the berth, with her face pressed close against the window. A whimsical
smile played about her mouth, and her fingers tap-tapped steadily on
the purse, wherein was folded Bill Wagstaff's map.
And then out of the dark ahead a cluster of lights winked briefly, the
shriek of the Limited's whistle echoed up and down the wide reaches of
the North Thompson, and the coaches came to a stop. Hazel took one
look to make sure. Then she got softly into the aisle, took up her
suit case, and left the car. At the steps she turned to give the car
porter a message.
"Tell Mrs. Marsh--the lady in lower five," she said, with a dollar to
quicken his faculties, "that Miss Weir had to go back. Say that I will
write soon and explain."
She stood back in the shadow of the station for a few seconds. The
Limited's stop was brief. When the red lights went drumming down the
track, she took up her suit case and walked uptown to the hotel where
she had tarried overnight once before.
The clerk showed her to a room. She threw her suit case on the bed and
turned the key in the lock. Then she went over, and, throwing up the
window to its greatest height, sat down and looked steadily toward the
north, smiling to herself.
"I can find him," she suddenly said aloud. "Of course I can find him!"
And with that she blew a kiss from her finger-tips out toward the dark
and silent North, pulled down the shade, and went quietly to bed.