A BOLD SCHEME
The sense of security which Millicent experienced on announcing her
engagement was not permanent and in a few days the doubts that had
troubled her crept back into her mind. She had never entertained any
marked illusions about Clarence and although, now that she was
irrevocably pledged to him, she endeavored to fix her thoughts on his
most likable qualities, even these appeared in a less favorable light
than they had formerly done. The growth of the warmer attachment she had
expected to feel was strangely slow, and though it was early to indulge
in regrets her heart sometimes grew heavy as she looked forward to the
future. Clarence was considerate, attentive and deferential in a polished
way, but he lacked something one looked for in a lover. Besides, she was
anxious about him; he looked worn, his manner suggested that he was
bearing a strain, but this was in his favor, for it roused her
compassion. She fancied that the cause of it was financial, and this in a
sense was encouraging, because this was a trouble from which she could
purchase him immunity.
In the meanwhile she was stirred by mournful memories as she followed the
last stages of her brother's journey and visited the lonely spot where he
had met his end. Somehow the thought of him encouraged her--George had
quietly done his duty, regardless of the cost, and even if her burden
proved heavy, which it was premature to admit, she must bear it
cheerfully.
At length they stopped one evening at a portage, and Lisle examined the
stores.
"The food's getting short," he announced. "One or two of you had better
take out your rifles the first thing to-morrow, while the rest go
fishing. I'll tackle the portage with two packers."
He began his work at sunrise the next morning and it was toward evening
when Crestwick came back exultant with a blacktail buck. Nasmyth was
fishing near the camp and Lisle was busy with a canoe near by.
"Where are the rest? How have they got on?" Lisle asked.
"I think Batley went back to the last reach with Carew's rod," Crestwick
answered. "I met Gladwyne and one of the packers on the low range back
yonder; they'd only got a blue grouse."
"I could have done with the man here," said Lisle. "Which way were they
heading?"
"Back up-river, the way we came."
Lisle made no comment, but Crestwick thought he found the information
reassuring, and thrusting out the canoe he was swept away down the
easiest part of the rapid, while Crestwick assisted Nasmyth to land a
trout. Lisle had returned to the camp when the packer who had accompanied
Clarence came in alone, bringing a couple of grouse.
"What's become of Mr. Gladwyne?" Lisle asked him.
"Hasn't he got back?" replied the other, glancing about. "I lost him on
the far slope of the bluff about noon, but as he could see the river most
anywhere from the top I went right on. There was a deer trail I was
trying to follow."
Lisle said nothing more to the packer but walked rapidly toward where the
cook was getting supper ready. Nasmyth followed him.
"Did you give Mr. Gladwyne any lunch to carry with him when he left
camp?" Lisle asked the man.
"I was busy when he came along and I told him to look around for himself.
I think he took some canned stuff and there was quite a big loaf
missing."
"Bring the box you keep the canned goods in!"
The cook produced it.
"There's two meat cans gone, anyway," he remarked. "Looks as if Mr.
Gladwyne figured on getting mighty hungry."
Lisle nodded.
"Put me up enough bread and fish for two of us for two days."
He moved away with Nasmyth, and they had left the fire behind when he
spoke, his voice hoarse with anger.
"Gladwyne's gone to the cache! He's got half a day's clear start of us
and he knows the country. It's pretty open and he'll make quite a good
pace on a straight trail, while the river bends. Get the stuff I asked
for while I give the others a few instructions."
"You mean to start after him at once?"
"As soon as you're ready," Lisle said shortly.
He turned back toward where the others were sitting waiting for supper.
"As Gladwyne hasn't turned up, Nasmyth and I are going to look for him,"
he announced. "There's nothing to be alarmed about, but it's quite likely
we may not be back in the morning. If we don't turn up by noon, you had
better start down-river and we'll pick you up farther on. I don't want to
waste another day."
"Do you think he has got lost altogether?" Millicent asked anxiously.
"No," answered Lisle, in a reassuring manner. "Still, some of these
ridges are bad to climb and quite a lot of things may happen to delay
him."
He called to a packer and gave him definite orders to take the party
down-river and wait at a spot agreed upon; and a few minutes later he and
Nasmyth left the camp.
Shortly afterward Batley came in.
"Where are the others?" he asked.
They told him and he looked thoughtful.
"So Lisle started at once! Which way did he and Nasmyth go?"
"Up the ridge behind us, but they turned down-stream when they reached
the top," Carew replied.
Batley scented a mystery.
"Well," he said, "I think I'll go after them; I might be useful. Of
course, you'll start to-morrow as Lisle told you, and if I'm not back by
then, I'll follow the river to the rendezvous he mentioned."
He disappeared, as did Crestwick, who came in for supper later on, and as
the packers had pitched their tent lower down, there was now only Carew
left with the women in camp. They were all a little uneasy as dusk grew
near; the haste with which the men had set out one after another struck
them as ominous. Bella's mind was unusually active, for she had promptly
decided that there was something behind all this, and when at last
Millicent strolled away from the others she followed her to the edge of
the water. A ridge of rock cut them off from view of the camp and though
she fancied that Millicent was not pleased to see her, Bella sat down
upon a stone.
"In a way, the anxiety that Lisle and the rest have shown to find
Clarence is flattering," she began, expressing part of her thoughts. "I
wonder if they'd all have gone off in such a hurry if Jim had got lost."
"Your brother knows the bush," returned Millicent, hiding her fears.
Bella did not respond to this. She had decided that Millicent must not be
allowed to marry Gladwyne, but she could not bring herself to denounce
the man. If that must be done, somebody else would have to undertake the
task. At the same time, she felt it incumbent on her to give the girl
some warning, or at least to find out how far her confidence in her lover
went, in order to determine how advice could best be offered.
"I wonder if you feel quite sure you will be happy with Clarence?" she
ventured.
"You have provoked the retort--were you convinced that you would be happy
with Arthur Carew, when you made up your mind to marry him so suddenly?"
Bella's smile expressed forbearance. It was getting dark, but she could
see the hot flush in her companion's cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes.
Neither was encouraging, but Bella was not easily, daunted, and she felt
that her persistence was really meritorious, considering that until
lately Millicent had never been cordial to her.
"Perhaps I'd better answer," she said sweetly. "I was sure of Arthur, and
that means a good deal more than that I knew he was in love with me--I
don't suppose you heard that he'd proposed to me once before?"
"Why didn't you take him then?" Millicent asked coldly. "Remember you
have justified my being personal."
Bella grew rather hot--when Carew had made his first offer she had been
in eager pursuit of Gladwyne--but she sternly suppressed a desire to
retaliate.
"I don't think we need go into that," she replied. "As I said, I was sure
of Arthur--I knew his character, knew he was better than I am, that he
could be depended on. He's the kind of man one is safe with; I felt that
the more I saw of him, the more I could trust him. Perhaps the feeling's
a safer guide than passion--it stands longer wear--and now I'm getting to
like him better every day."
Her voice dropped to a tender note and Millicent felt a little
astonished, and ashamed of her harshness. This was a new Bella, one in
whose existence she could hardly have believed.
"I haven't quite finished, though I don't often talk like this," Bella
went on. "I feel that without the confidence I've tried to describe
marriage must be a terrible risk--one might find such ugly qualities in
the man; even defects you could forgive beforehand would become so much
worse when you had to suffer because of them. Of course, one can't expect
perfection, but there ought to be something--honor, a good heart, a
generous mind--that one can rely on as a sure foundation. When you have
that, you can build, and even then the building may be difficult." She
paused before she concluded: "My dear, I'm happier than I deserve to be;
I have chosen wisely."
Nothing more was said for a few minutes, but Bella, studying her
companion's face, was more or less content. Millicent's faith in Clarence
was weak, she was forcing herself to believe in him; it might be possible
to make her see her lover in his true character, though Bella had not yet
determined on the exact course she would adopt. Then Carew called from the
camp and she went back, while Millicent sat still with grave doubts in her
heart. Bella's faith in her husband was warranted, and Millicent was
enough of an optimist to believe that such men were not uncommon--there
was Lisle, for example, and Nasmyth. With them one would undoubtedly have
something to build a happy and profitable life upon--but what could be
done with one in whom there was no foundation, only the shifting sands of
impulses, or, perhaps, unsounded depths of weakness into which the
painfully-raised edifice might crumble? She stove to convince herself that
she was becoming wickedly hypercritical, thinking treasonably of her
lover, particularly in contrasting him with her guide. There must be no
more of that, and she rose and walked back to her tent with a resolution
that cost her an effort.
In the meanwhile Lisle and Nasmyth were pushing on as fast as possible
along the stony summit of the ridge. There was moonlight, which made it a
little easier, but they stumbled every now and then. Here and there they
were forced to scramble down the sides of a gully and on reaching the
bottom to plunge into water, and once they had to scramble some distance
shut in by the rocks before they could find a means of ascending. Still,
they were hard and inured to fatigue, and they never slackened the pace.
When striding along a stretch of smoother ground Nasmyth gathered breath
to speak.
"We were easily taken in," he declared; "though the thing was cunningly
planned. Gladwyne took the packer with him and headed back at first, to
divert suspicion. It would be easy enough to lose the man and turn
down-stream again; and that he intended something of the kind is proved
by his taking so much food with him. No doubt, he'd rather have avoided
that, in case it looked suspicious, but he's had one hungry march over
the same ground, and I dare say it was quite enough. Besides, he could
defy us once he'd emptied and obliterated the caches."
"You understand the way your people's minds work better than I do," Lisle
returned dryly.
"That's natural, isn't it? The idea that I'm most impressed with just now
is that Millicent might believe it her duty to stick to Clarence more
closely because of a tale that was merely damaging. She would never allow
herself or anybody else to credit it, unless she had absolutely
convincing proof."
"Yes," agreed Lisle; "I guess you're right. That's precisely why we have
got to get there first."
A thicket of thorny vines and canes barred his way, but he went straight
at the midst of it and struggled through, savagely smashing and rending
down the brush. The clothes he had borrowed from Carew looked
considerably the worse for wear when he came out; and then he recklessly
leaped across a dark cleft the bottom of which he could not see.
Presently they left the ridge and headed away from the river, which
flowed round a wide curve, and toward dawn they were brought up by a
ravine. The roar of water rose hoarsely from its depths. The moon was
getting low and the silvery light did not reach far down the opposite
side, but they could see a sheer, smooth wall of rock, and the width of
the chasm rendered any attempt to jump it out of the question.
"No way of getting across here," decided Lisle. "At the same time, it
looks as if Gladwyne must be held up on the same side that we are. We'll
follow the canon; down-stream, I think."
The moonlight was getting dimmer, but, at some risk of falling into the
rift, they pushed on along the brink, looking down as they went. They
could see no means of descending, but at length, when rocks and trees
were getting blacker and a little more distinct in the chilly dawn, they
made out a fallen trunk with broken white branches lying upon a tall mass
of rock below.
"I've an idea that the top of that tree reached across to this side when
it first came down," Lisle said. "Have you got a match?"
Nasmyth had brought a few carefully-treasured wax matches with him, and
he lighted one. It was very still, except for the roar of the hidden
torrent, and the pale flame burned steadily in the motionless cold air.
It showed a couple of hollows, where something had rested, close to the
edge of the rift, and one or two fresh scratches on a strip of rock.
Lisle stooped down beside them.
"Hold the thing lower!" he exclaimed sharply. "It's as I suspected--this
is where Gladwyne got across; though he has better nerves than I thought
he had. The broken end of a branch or two rested right here, and he was
smart enough to heave the butt off the other bank, after he'd crawled
over. Looks to me as if it had broken off yonder stump. Guess there'll be
light enough to look for a way across in half an hour."
Sitting down he filled his pipe, and shortly afterward he raised one hand
as if listening. For a while, Nasmyth could hear nothing except the roar
of water; there was not a sound that he could catch in the thin
straggling bush behind them where few trails of mist were stretched
athwart the trees. Then he started as a faint crackling and snapping
began in the distance.
"Can it be a bear?" he asked.
"No; it's a man!"
Nasmyth was somewhat astonished. They had not seen a human being except
those of their party for a long while, and it seemed strange that they
should come across one now in the early dawn in those remote wilds.
"He's wearing boots," he said diffidently, as the crackling drew nearer.
"Yes," Lisle responded; "he's making a good deal more noise than a
bushman would."
The sound steadily approached them. Nasmyth found something mysterious
and rather eerie in it, and he was on the whole relieved when a dark
figure materialized among the trees near by. He could barely see it, but
Lisle called out sharply:
"What has brought you on our trail, Batley?"
The man came toward them with a breathless laugh and sat down.
"It isn't your trail but Gladwyne's I'm interested in, and I can't say
that I've succeeded in following that. I merely pushed on, until I struck
this canon and as I couldn't get across, I followed it up."
"You're not easily scared," Lisle commented. "You might have got lost.
Guess you had some motive that made you take the risk."
"I felt pretty safe. You see, I knew I could strike the river, if
necessary. At the same time you were right about the motive--in fact,
there's no use in trying to hide it. I may as well confess that I'd
sooner keep Gladwyne in sight."
"Out of regard for his welfare?" Nasmyth asked.
Batley laughed.
"Not altogether. The fact is, he's carrying a good deal of my money."
"One should have imagined that you'd have had him well insured."
"That's quite correct. If he came to grief in England, I shouldn't
anticipate any trouble, but it would be different out here and,
everything considered, I'd rather avoid complications with the insurance
companies. Now that I've been candid, do you feel inclined to
reciprocate?"
"Not in the least," Lisle replied shortly. "I'm not sure I even
sympathize. But since you've turned up you'll have to stick to us; I
don't want to waste time in leading another search party. As soon as
there's a little more light, we'll try to get across the canon."
"Thanks for the permission," smiled Batley, lighting a cigar.