GORDON SPEAKS HIS MIND
It was a nipping morning, and the clearing outside the ranch was
flecked with patches of frozen snow, when Waynefleet sat shivering in
a hide chair beside the stove. The broken viands upon the table in
front of him suggested that he had just made a tolerable breakfast,
but his pose was expressive of limp resignation, and one could have
fancied from the look in his thin face that he was feeling very sorry
for himself. Self-pity, in fact, was rather a habit of his, and,
perhaps, because of it, he had usually very little pity to spare for
anybody else. He looked up when, flushed and gasping, his daughter
came in with two heavy pails of water. She shivered visibly.
"It would be a favour if you would shut that door as soon as you can,"
said Waynefleet. "As I fancy I have mentioned, this cold goes right
through me. It occurred to me that you might have come in a little
earlier to see if I was getting my breakfast properly."
Laura, who glanced at the table, thought that he had acquitted himself
reasonably well, but she refrained from pointing out the fact, and,
after shutting the door, crossed the room to her store-cupboard, and
took out a can of fruit which she had set aside for another purpose.
Waynefleet watched her open it and made a little sign of impatience.
"You are very clumsy this morning," he said.
The girl's hands were wet and stiff with cold, but she quietly laid
another plate upon the table before she answered him.
"Charly is busy in the slashing, and I don't want to take him away,
but there are those logs in the wet patch that ought to be hauled out
now the ground is hard," she said. "I suppose you don't feel equal to
doing it to-day?"
"No," said Waynefleet with querulous incisiveness, "it is quite out of
the question. Do I look like a man who could reasonably be expected to
undertake anything of that kind just now?"
It occurred to Laura that he did not look as if there was very much
the matter with him, and she stood still a minute considering. As
Gordon had said, it was she who managed the ranch, and she recognized
that it was desirable that the trees in question should be dragged out
of the soft ground while the frost lasted. Still, there was the baking
and washing, and it would be late at night before she could accomplish
half she wished to do, if she undertook the task in question. While
she thought over it her father spoke again.
"I wish you would sit down," he said. "I feel I must have quietness,
and your restless habits jar upon me horribly."
That decided her, and slipping into her own room, she put on an old
blanket coat, and went out quietly. She walked through the orchard to
the little log stable where the working oxen stood, and, after patting
the patient beasts, shackled a heavy chain to the yoke she laid upon
their brawny necks. Then, picking up a handspike, she led them out,
and for an hour walked beside them, tapping them with a long pointed
stick, while they dragged the big logs out of the swamp. Now and then
it taxed all her strength to lift the thinner end of a log on the
chain-sling with a handspike, but she contrived to do it until at
length one heavier than the others proved too much for her. She could
hear the ringing of the hired man's axe across the clearing, but there
was a great deal for him to do, and, taking up the handspike again,
she strained at it.
She heard footsteps behind her, and she straightened herself suddenly.
She turned and saw Gordon watching her with a curious smile. Tall and
straight and supple, with a ruddy, half-guilty glow on her face, she
stood near the middle of the little gap in the Bush, the big dappled
oxen close at her side. The wintry sunlight, which struck upon her,
tinted the old blanket dress a shining ochre, and the loose tress of
red-gold hair, which had escaped from beneath her little fur cap,
struck a dominant tone of glowing colour among the pale reds and
russets of the fir-trunks and withered fern.
Gordon shook his head reproachfully. "Sit down a minute or two, and
I'll heave that log on to the sling," he said. "This is not the kind
of thing you ought to be doing."
Laura, who was glad of the excuse, sat down on one of the logs, while
the man leaned against a fir and gravely regarded her.
"The work must be done by somebody, and my father is apparently not
very well again," she explained. "Charly has his hands full in the
slashing. We must get it cleaned up, if it is to be ploughed this
spring."
"Nasmyth contrived to look after all these things. Why didn't you keep
him? The man didn't want to go away."
The colour deepened in Laura's face, and Gordon, who saw it, made a
sign of comprehension. "Well," he added, "I suppose that wasn't a
thing one could expect you to tell me, though I don't quite see why
you shouldn't think of yourself now and then. You know it wasn't on
your own account you sent him away."
"How does this concern you?" she asked.
Gordon flung one hand out. "Ah," he said, "how does it concern me?"
Then he seemed to lay a restraint upon himself. "Well, it does in one
sense, anyway. After all, I am a doctor, and a friend of yours, and
I'm going to warn you against attempting things women weren't meant
to do. If that doesn't prove efficacious, I'll say a word or two to
Nasmyth, and you'll have him back here again. It's a sure thing your
father would be glad to get him."
"If you do, I shall never forgive you," warned Laura, with a flash in
her eyes.
She was sorry she had spoken so plainly when she saw that Gordon
winced. She had guessed more or less correctly what the man felt for
her, and she had no wish to pain him. Except for that, however, the
admission she had made did not greatly matter, since she fancied that
he was quite aware why she had sent Nasmyth away. Gordon changed the
subject abruptly.
"There are very few of those blanket dresses this side of the
Rockies," he said. "You probably got it back East."
The girl's eyes had a wistful look as she answered: "We spent our
first winter in Montreal, and we had some friends who were very kind
to us. I like to look back upon those first few months in Canada."
Gordon nodded. "Oh, yes," he replied. "I know--sleigh-rides, snowshoe
meets, skating-rinks, toboggan-slides. Quite as lively as a London
season, and considerably more invigorating; I guess you've been
through that, too. In one way it's a pity you didn't stay in
Montreal."
He saw her sudden embarrassment, and fancied that she could have
stayed there, if she had wished to do so, but he felt that he must
speak frankly, and he shook his head severely.
"Do you never think of your own advantage at all?" he inquired. "Have
you none of the ambitions that most women seem to have?"
"Aren't you forgetting?" Laura asked with sudden quietness. "My father
found it would not be advisable for him to settle in Montreal--for the
same reason that afterwards led us to leave Victoria--and we went
West. Perhaps he could have faced the trouble and lived it down, but I
could not leave him alone."
Gordon sat silent a moment or two. He knew, though she very rarely
mentioned it, how heavy was the burden that had been laid upon her,
and he was divided between a great pity for her and anger against her
father. Then he rose slowly to his feet.
"Miss Waynefleet," he said, "if I have said anything that hurt you,
I'm sorry, but there are times when I must talk. I feel I have to. In
the meanwhile I'll heave those logs up on a skid so that you can slip
the chain round them."
For the next half-hour he exerted himself savagely, and when at last
he dropped the handspike, his face was damp with perspiration. He
smiled grimly when Laura, who had hauled one or two of the logs away,
came back tapping the plodding oxen.
"Now," he said, "I'm going in to see your father. Custer happened to
tell me he was feeling low again, and it's going to afford me a good
deal of pleasure to prescribe for him."
He swung off his wide hat, and, when he turned away, Laura wondered
with a few misgivings what had brought the little snap into his eyes.
Three or four minutes later he entered the house, where Waynefleet lay
beside the stove with a cigar in his hand.
"I ran across Custer at the settlement, and I came along to see how
you were keeping," said Gordon.
Waynefleet held out a cigar-box. "Make yourself comfortable," he
answered hospitably. "We'll have dinner a little earlier than usual."
The sight of the label on the box came near rousing Gordon to an
outbreak of indignation. "I'm not going to stay," he declared. "It
seems to me Miss Waynefleet has about enough to do already."
He saw Waynefleet raise his eyebrows, and he added: "I guess it's not
worth while troubling to point out that it's not my affair. Now, if
you'll get ahead with your symptoms."
Waynefleet looked hard at him for a moment. The older man was not
accustomed to being addressed in that brusque fashion, and it jarred
upon him, but, as a matter of fact, he was not feeling well, and, as
he not infrequently pointed out, he had discovered that one had to put
up with many unpleasant things in that barbarous country. He described
his symptoms feelingly, and was rather indignant when Gordon expressed
neither astonishment nor sympathy.
"That's all right," said Gordon. "The thing's quite plain--especially
the general lassitude you complain of. The trouble is that if you
don't make an effort it's going to become chronic."
Again Waynefleet looked at him in astonishment, for Gordon's tone was
very suggestive.
"Yes," added the medical adviser, "it's a complaint a good many men,
who haven't been raised to work, are afflicted with. Well, I'll mix
you up a tonic, and you'll drive down for it yourself. The thing won't
be half as efficacious if you send the hired man. Then you'll set to
every morning soon as breakfast's over, and do a couple of hours'
smart chopping for a week. By that time you'll find it easy, and you
can go on an hour or two in the afternoon. Nobody round here will
recognize you, if you keep it up for the next three months."
Waynefleet's thin face grew red, but Gordon's imperturbable demeanour
restrained him from betraying his indignation.
"You don't understand that I couldn't swing an axe for five minutes
together," he objected.
"The trouble," answered Gordon, "is that you don't want to."
Waynefleet made an attempt to rise, but his companion laid a hand
upon his arm and pressed him down again.
"You were anxious for my advice, and now I'm going to prescribe,"
Gordon continued. "Two hours' steady chopping every day, to be raised
by degrees to six. Then I'd let up on smoking cigars of that kind, and
practise a little more self-denial in one or two other respects. You
could make things easier for Miss Waynefleet with the money you
save."
He rose with a laugh. "Well, I'm going. All you have to do is to carry
out my suggestions, and you may still make yourself and your ranch a
credit to the district. In the meanwhile, this place would be
considerably improved by a little ventilation."
He went out, and left Waynefleet gazing in indignant astonishment at
the door he carefully fixed open. It seemed to Waynefleet almost
incredible that such words should have been spoken to him, and the
suggestion that at the cost of a painful effort he should endeavour to
make himself a credit to that barbarous neighbourhood rankled most of
all. He had felt, hitherto, that he had conferred a favour on the
community by settling there. He lay still until his daughter came in
and glanced at him inquiringly.
"You have seen Mr. Gordon?" she queried.
"I have," answered Waynefleet with fine disdain. "You will understand
that if he comes back here, he must be kept away from me. The man is
utterly devoid of refinement or consideration."
In the meanwhile Gordon was riding, circumspectly, down the rutted
trail, and it was an hour later when he dismounted at the shanty of
Nasmyth's workmen, and shared a meal with the gang employed on the
dam. After that he sat with Nasmyth, who still limped a little, in the
hut, from which, as the door stood open, they could see the men stream
up into the Bush and out along the dam. The dam now stood high above
the water-level, for the frost had bound fast the feeding snow upon
the peaks above, though the stream roared and frothed through the two
big sluice-gates. By-and-by, the ringing of axes and the clink of
drills broke through the sound of the rushing waters. Gordon, who
stretched himself out on a deer-hide lounge, smiled at Nasmyth as he
lighted his pipe.
"I've been talking a little sense to Waynefleet this morning. I felt I
had to, though I'm afraid it's not going to be any use," he
announced.
"Whether you were warranted or not is, of course, another matter,"
said Nasmyth. "Perhaps you were, if you did it on Miss Waynefleet's
account. Anyway, I don't altogether understand why you should be sure
it will have no effect."
Gordon looked at him with a grin. "Well," he remarked oracularly,
"it's easy to acquire an inflated notion of one's own importance,
though it's quite often a little difficult to keep it. Something's
very apt to come along and prick you, and you collapse flat when it
lets the inflation out. In some cases one never quite gets one's
self-sufficiency back. The scar the prick made is always there, but
it's different with Waynefleet. He is made of self-closing jelly, and
when you take the knife out the gap shuts up again. It's quite hard to
fancy it was ever there."
Nasmyth nodded gravely, for there was an elusive something in his
comrade's tone that roused his sympathy.
"Gordon," he said, "is it quite impossible for you to go back East
again?"
Gordon leaned back in his chair, and glanced out across the toiling
men upon the dam, at the frothing river and rugged hillside, with a
look of longing in his eyes.
"In one way it is, but I want you to understand," he replied. "I might
begin again in some desolate little town--but I aimed higher--and was
once very nearly getting there. As it is, if I made my mark, the thing
I did would be remembered against me. We'll let it go. As a surgeon of
any account I'm done for."
"Still, it's a tolerably big country, and folks forget. You might, at
least, go so far, and that would, after all, give you a good deal--a
competence, the right to marry."
Gordon laughed, but his voice was harsh.
"This is one of the days on which I must talk. I feel like that, now
and then," he said. Then he looked at Nasmyth hard. "Well, I've seen
the one woman I could marry, and it's certain that, if I dare make her
the offer, she would never marry me."
"Ah," said Nasmyth, "you seem quite sure of that?"
"Quite," declared Gordon, and there was, for a moment or two, an
almost uncomfortable silence in the shanty.
Then he made a little forceful gesture as he turned to his companion
again.
"Well," he said, "after all, what does it count for? Is it man's one
and only business to marry somebody? Of course, we have folks back
East, who seem to act on that belief, and in your country half of them
appear to spend their time and energies philandering."
"I don't think it's half," said Nasmyth dryly.
"It's not a point of any importance, and we'll let it go. Anyway, it
seems perilously easy for a man who gets the woman he sets his mind
upon to sink into a fireside hog in the civilized world. Now and then,
when things go wrong with folks of that kind, they come out here, and
nobody has any use for them. What can you do with the man who gets
sick the first time he sleeps in the rain, and can't do without his
dinner? Oh, I know all about the preservation of the species, but
west of the Great Lakes we've no room for any species that isn't tough
and fit."
He broke off for a moment. "After all, this is the single man's
country, and--we--know that it demands from him the best that he was
given, from the grimmest toil of his body to the keenest effort of his
brain. Marriage is a detail--an incident; we're here to fight, to
grapple with the wilderness, and to break it in, and that burden
wasn't laid upon us only for the good of ourselves. When we've flung
our trestles over the rivers, and blown room for the steel track out
of the canyon's side, the oat-fields and the orchards creep up the
valleys, and the men from the cities set up their mills. Prospector,
track-layer, chopper, follow in sequence here, and then we're ready to
hold out our hands to the thousands you've no use or food for back
yonder. I'm not sure it matters that the men who do the work don't
often share the results of it. We bury them beside our bridge trestles
and under tons of shattered rock, and, perhaps, when their time comes,
some of them aren't sorry to have done with it. Anyway, they've stood
up to man's primeval task."
He rose with another half-deprecatory laugh, but his eyes snapped.
"You don't talk like that in your country--it would hurt some of
you--but if we spread ourselves now and then, you can look round and
see the things we do." Then he touched Nasmyth's shoulder. "Oh, yes,
you understand--for somebody has taught you--and by-and-by, you're
going to feel the thing getting hold of you."
He moved towards the doorway, but turned as he reached it. "Talking's
cheap, and I have several dozen blamed big firs to saw up, as well as
Waynefleet's tonic to mix. He'll come along for it when that prick I
gave him commences to heal."