The days passed on. Philip in the comfortable hotel at Lake Louise was
recovering steadily, though not rapidly, from the general shock of
immersion. Elizabeth, while nursing him tenderly, could yet find time to
walk and climb, plunging spirit and sense in the beauty of the Rockies.
On these excursions Delaine generally accompanied her; and she bore it
well. Secretly she cherished some astonishment and chagrin that Anderson
could be with them so little on these bright afternoons among the forest
trails and upper lakes, although she generally found that the plans of
the day had been suggested and organised by him, by telephone from
Laggan, to the kind and competent Scotch lady who was the manager of the
hotel. It seemed to her that he had promised his company; whereas, as a
rule, now he withheld it; and her pride was put to it, on her own part,
not to betray any sign of discontent. He spoke vaguely of "business,"
and on one occasion, apparently had gone off for three days to
Saskatchewan on matters connected with the coming general election.
From the newspaper, or the talk of visitors in the hotel, or the railway
officials who occasionally found their way to Lake Louise to make
courteous inquiries after the English party, Elizabeth became, indeed,
more and more fully aware of the estimation in which Anderson was
beginning to be held. He was already a personage in the Northwest; was
said to be sure of success in his contest at Donaldminster, and of an
immediate Parliamentary career at Ottawa. These prophecies seemed to
depend more upon the man's character than his actual achievements;
though, indeed, the story of the great strike, as she had gathered it
once or twice from the lips of eye-witnesses, was a fine one. For weeks
he had carried his life in his hand among thousands of infuriated
navvies and miners--since the miners had made common cause with the
railwaymen--with a cheerfulness, daring, and resource which in the end
had wrung success from an apparently hopeless situation; a success
attended, when all was over, by an amazing effusion of good will among
both masters and men, especially towards Anderson himself, and a general
improvement in the industrial temper and atmosphere of the Northwest.
The recital of these things stirred Elizabeth's pulses. But why did she
never hear them from himself? Surely he had offered her friendship, and
the rights of friendship. How else could he justify the scene at Field,
when he had so brusquely probed her secret anxieties for Philip? Her
pride rebelled when she thought of it, when she recalled her wet eyes,
her outstretched hand. Mere humiliation!--in the case of a casual or
indifferent acquaintance. No; on that day, certainly, he had claimed the
utmost privileges, had even strained the rights, of a friend, a real
friend. But his behaviour since had almost revived her first natural
resentment.
Thoughts like these ran in her mind, and occasionally affected her
manner when they did meet. Anderson found her more reserved, and noticed
that she did not so often ask him for small services as of old. He
suffered under the change; but it was, he knew, his own doing, and he
did not alter his course.
Whenever he did come, he sat mostly with Philip, over whom he had
gradually established a remarkable influence, not by any definite acts
or speeches, but rather by the stoicism of his own mode of life, coupled
with a proud or laughing contempt for certain vices and self-indulgences
to which it was evident that he himself felt no temptation. As soon as
Philip felt himself sufficiently at home with the Canadian to begin to
jibe at his teetotalism, Anderson seldom took the trouble to defend
himself; yet the passion of moral independence in his nature, of
loathing for any habit that weakens and enslaves the will, infected the
English lad whether he would or no. "There's lots of things he's
stick-stock mad on," Philip would say impatiently to his sister. But the
madness told. And the madman was all the while consolingly rich in
other, and, to Philip, more attractive kinds of madness--the follies of
the hunter and climber, of the man who holds his neck as dross in
comparison with the satisfaction of certain wild instincts that the
Rockies excite in him. Anderson had enjoyed his full share of adventures
with goat and bear. Such things are the customary amusements, it seemed,
of a young engineer in the Rockies. Beside them, English covert-shooting
is a sport for babes; and Philip ceased to boast of his own prowess in
that direction. He would listen, indeed, open-mouthed, to Anderson's
yarns, lying on his long chair on the verandah--a graceful languid
figure--with a coyote rug heaped about him. It was clear to Elizabeth
that Anderson on his side had become very fond of the boy. There was no
trouble he would not take for him. And gradually, silently, proudly,
she allowed him to take less and less for herself.
Once or twice Arthur Delaine's clumsy hints occurred to her. Was there,
indeed, some private matter weighing on the young man's mind? She would
not allow herself to speculate upon it; though she could not help
watching the relation between the two men with some curiosity. It was
polite enough; but there was certainly no cordiality in it; and once or
twice she suspected a hidden understanding.
Delaine meanwhile felt a kind of dull satisfaction in the turn of
events. The intimacy between Anderson and Lady Merton had clearly been
checked, or was at least not advancing. Whether it was due to his own
hints to Elizabeth, or to Anderson's chivalrous feeling, he did not
know. But he wrote every mail to Mrs. Gaddesden, discreetly, yet not
without giving her some significant information; he did whatever small
services were possible in the case of a man who went about Canada as a
Johnny Head-in-air, with his mind in another hemisphere; and it was
understood that he was to leave them at Vancouver. In the forced
association of their walks and rides, Elizabeth showed herself gay,
kind, companionable; although often, and generally for no reason that he
could discover, something sharp and icy in her would momentarily make
itself felt, and he would find himself driven back within bounds that he
had perhaps been tempted to transgress. And the result of it all was
that he fell day by day more tormentingly in love with her. Those placid
matrimonial ambitions with which he had left England had been all swept
away; and as he followed her--she on pony-back, he on foot--along the
mountain trails, watching the lightness of her small figure against the
splendid background of peak and pine, he became a troubled,
introspective person; concentrating upon himself and his disagreeable
plight the attention he had hitherto given to a delightful outer world,
sown with the _caches_ of antiquity, in order to amuse him.
Meanwhile the situation in the cabin at Laggan appeared to be steadily
improving. McEwen had abruptly ceased to be a rebellious and difficult
patient. The doctor's orders had been obeyed; the leg had healed
rapidly; and he no longer threatened or cajoled Mrs. Ginnell on the
subject of liquor. As far as Anderson was concerned, he was generally
sulky and uncommunicative. But Anderson got enough out of him by degrees
to be able to form a fairly complete idea of his father's course of life
since the false report of his death in the Yukon. He realised an
existence on the fringe of civilisation, with its strokes of luck
neutralised by drink, and its desperate, and probably criminal, moments.
And as soon as his father got well enough to limp along the trails of
the Laggan valley, the son noticed incidents which appeared to show that
the old man, while playing the part of the helpless stranger, was by no
means without acquaintance among the motley host of workmen that were
constantly passing through. The links of international trades unionism
no doubt accounted for it. But in McEwen's case, the fraternity to which
he belonged seemed to apply only to the looser and more disreputable
elements among the emigrant throng.
But at the same time he had shown surprising docility in the matter of
Anderson's counsels. All talk of the Idaho mine had dropped between
them, as though by common consent. Anderson had laid hands upon a young
man, a Salvation Army officer in Vancouver, with whom his father
consented to lodge for the next six weeks; and further arrangements were
to be postponed till the end of that period. Anderson hoped, indeed, to
get his father settled there before Lady Merton moved from Lake Louise.
For in a few days now, the private car was to return from the coast, in
order to take up the English party.
McEwen's unexpected complaisance led to a great softening in Anderson's
feeling towards his father. All those inner compunctions that haunt a
just and scrupulous nature came freely into play. And his evangelical
religion--for he was a devout though liberal-minded Presbyterian--also
entered in. Was it possible that he might be the agent of his father's
redemption? The idea, the hope, produced in him occasional hidden
exaltations--flights of prayer--mystical memories of his mother--which
lightened what was otherwise a time of bitter renunciation, and
determined wrestling with himself.
During the latter days of this fortnight, indeed, he could not do enough
for his father. He had made all the Vancouver arrangements; he had
supplied him amply with clothes and other personal necessaries; and he
came home early at night in order to sit and smoke with him. Mrs.
Ginnell, looking in of an evening, beheld what seemed to her a touching
sight, though one far beyond the deserts of such creatures as
McEwen--the son reading the newspaper aloud, or playing dominoes with
his father, or just smoking and chatting. Her hard common sense as a
working-woman suggested to her that Anderson was nursing illusions; and
she scornfully though silently hoped that the "old rip" would soon, one
way or another, be off his shoulders.
But the illusions, for the moment, were Anderson's sustenance. His
imagination, denied a more personal and passionate food, gave itself
with fire to the redeeming of an outlaw, and the paying of a
spiritual debt.
It was Wednesday. After a couple of drizzling days the weather was again
fair. The trains rolling through the pass began with these early days of
July to bring a first crop of holiday-makers from Eastern Canada and the
States; the hotels were filling up. On the morrow McEwen was to start
for Vancouver. And a letter from Philip Gaddesden, delivered at Laggan
in the morning, had bitterly reproached Anderson for neglecting them,
and leaving him, in particular, to be bored to death by glaciers
and tourists.
Early in the afternoon Anderson took his way up the mountain road to
Lake Louise. He found the English travellers established among the pines
by the lake-side, Philip half asleep in a hammock strung between two
pines, while Delaine was reading to Elizabeth from an article in an
archæological review on "Some Fresh Light on the Cippus of Palestrina."
Lady Merton was embroidering; it seemed to Anderson that she was tired
or depressed. Delaine's booming voice, and the frequent Latin passages
interspersed with stammering translations of his own, in which he
appeared to be interminably tangled, would be enough--the Canadian
thought--to account for a subdued demeanour; and there was, moreover, a
sudden thunderous heat in the afternoon.
Elizabeth received him a little stiffly, and Philip roused himself from
sleep only to complain: "You've been four mortal days without
coming near us!"
"I had to go away. I have been to Regina."
"On politics?" asked Delaine.
"Yes. We had a couple of meetings and a row."
"Jolly for you!" grumbled Philip. "But we've had a beastly time. Ask
Elizabeth."
"Nothing but the weather!" said Elizabeth carelessly. "We couldn't even
see the mountains."
But why, as she spoke, should the delicate cheek change colour, suddenly
and brightly? The answering blood leapt in Anderson. She _had_ missed
him, though she would not show it.
Delaine began to question him about Saskatchewan. The Englishman's forms
of conversation were apt to be tediously inquisitive, and Anderson had
often resented them. To-day, however, he let himself be catechised
patiently enough, while all the time conscious, from head to foot, of
one person only--one near and yet distant person.
Elizabeth wore a dress of white linen, and a broad hat of soft blue. The
combination of the white and blue with her brown hair, and the pale
refinement of her face, seemed to him ravishing, enchanting. So were the
movements of her hands at work, and all the devices of her light
self-command; more attractive, infinitely, to his mature sense than the
involuntary tremor of girlhood.
"Hallo! What does Stewart want?" said Philip, raising himself in his
hammock. The hunter who had been the companion of his first unlucky
attempt at fishing was coming towards them. The boy sprang to the
ground, and, vowing that he would fish the following morning whatever
Elizabeth might say, went off to consult.
She looked after him with a smile and a sigh.
"Better give him his head!" laughed Anderson. Then, from where he stood,
he studied her a moment, unseen, except by Delaine, who was sitting
among the moss a few yards away, and had temporarily forgotten the
Cippus of Palestrina.
Suddenly the Canadian came forward.
"Have you explored that path yet, over the shoulder?" he said to Lady
Merton, pointing to the fine promontory of purple piny rock which jutted
out in front of the glacier on the southern side of the lake.
She shook her head; but was it not still too early and too hot to walk?
Anderson persisted. The path was in shade, and would repay climbing. She
hesitated--and yielded; making a show of asking Delaine to come with
them. Delaine also hesitated, and refrained; making a show of preferring
the "Archaeological Review." He was left to watch them mount the first
stretches of the trail; while Philip strolled along the lake with his
companion in the slouch hat and leggings, deep in tales of bass
and trout.
Elizabeth and Anderson climbed a long sloping ascent through the pines.
The air was warm and scented; the heat of the sun on the moistened earth
was releasing all its virtues and fragrances, overpowering in the open
places, and stealing even through the shadows. When the trees broke or
receded, the full splendour of the glacier was upon them to their left;
and then for a space they must divine it as a presence behind the
actual, faintly gleaming and flashing through the serried ranks of the
forest. There were heaths and mosses under the pines; but otherwise for
a while the path was flowerless; and Elizabeth discontentedly remarked
it. Anderson smiled.
"Wait a little--or you'll have to apologise to the Rockies."
He looked down upon her, and saw that her small face had bloomed into a
vivacity and charm that startled him. Was it only the physical effort
and pleasure of the climb? As for himself, it took all the power of a
strong will to check the happy tumult in his heart.
Elizabeth asked him of his Saskatchewan journey. He described to her the
growing town he hoped to represent--the rush of its new life.
"On one Sunday morning there was nothing--the bare prairie; by the
next--so to speak--there was a town all complete, with a hotel, an
elevator, a bank, and a church. That was ten years ago. Then the railway
came; I saw the first train come in, garlanded and wreathed with
flowers. Now there are eight thousand people. They have reserved land
for a park along the river, and sent for a landscape gardener from
England to lay it out; they have made trees grow on the prairie; they
have built a high school and a concert hall; the municipality is full of
ambitions; and all round the town, settlers are pouring in. On market
day you find yourself in a crowd of men, talking cattle and crops, the
last thing in binders and threshers, as farmers do all over the world.
But yet you couldn't match that crowd in the old world."
"Which you don't know," put in Elizabeth, with her sly smile.
"Which I don't know," repeated Anderson meekly. "But I guess. And I am
thinking of sayings of yours. Where in Europe can you match the sense of
_boundlessness_ we have here--boundless space, boundless opportunity? It
often makes fools of us: it intoxicates, turns our heads. There is a
germ of madness in this Northwest. I have seen men destroyed by it. But
it is Nature who is the witch. She brews the cup."
"All very well for the men," Elizabeth said, musing--"and the strong
men. About the women in this country I can't make up my mind."
"You think of the drudgery, the domestic hardships?"
"There are some ladies in the hotel, from British Columbia. They are in
easy circumstances--and the daughter is dying of overwork! The husband
has a large fruit farm, but they can get no service; the fruit rots on
the ground; and the two women are worn to death."
"Aye," said Anderson gravely. "This country breeds life, but it also
devours it."
"I asked these two women--Englishwomen--if they wanted to go home, and
give it up. They fell upon me with scorn."
"And you?"
Elizabeth sighed.
"I admired them. But could I imitate them? I thought of the house at
home; of the old servants; how it runs on wheels; how pretty and--and
dignified it all is; everybody at their post; no drudgery, no disorder."
"It is a dignity that costs you dear," said Anderson almost roughly, and
with a change of countenance. "You sacrifice to it things a thousand
times more real, more human."
"Do we?" said Elizabeth; and then, with a drop in her voice: "Dear, dear
England!" She paused to take breath, and as she leant resting against a
tree he saw her expression change, as though a struggle passed
through her.
The trees had opened behind them, and they looked back over the lake,
the hotel, and the wide Laggan valley beyond. In all that valley, not a
sign of human life, but the line of the railway. Not a house, not a
village to be seen; and at this distance the forest appeared continuous,
till it died against the rock and snow of the higher peaks.
For the first time, Elizabeth was home-sick; for the first time she
shrank from a raw, untamed land where the House of Life is only now
rearing its walls and its roof-timbers, and all its warm furnishings,
its ornaments and hangings are still to add. She thought of the English
landscapes, of the woods and uplands round her Cumberland home; of the
old church, the embowered cottages, the lichened farms; the generations
of lives that have died into the soil, like the summer leaves of the
trees; of the ghosts to be felt in the air--ghosts of squire and
labourer and farmer, alive still in men and women of the present, as
they too will live in the unborn. Her heart went out to England; fled
back to it over the seas, as though renewing, in penitence, an
allegiance that had wavered. And Anderson divined it, in the yearning of
her just-parted lips, in the quivering, restrained sweetness of
her look.
His own heart sank. They resumed their walk, and presently the path grew
steeper. Some of it was rough-hewn in the rock, and encumbered by roots
of trees. Anderson held out a helping hand; her fingers slipped
willingly into it; her light weight hung upon him, and every step was to
him a mingled delight and bitterness.
"Hard work!" he said presently, with his encouraging smile; "but you'll
be paid."
The pines grew closer, and then suddenly lightened. A few more steps,
and Elizabeth gave a cry of pleasure. They were on the edge of an
alpine meadow, encircled by dense forest, and sloping down beneath their
feet to a lake that lay half in black shadow, half blazing in the
afternoon sun. Beyond was a tossed wilderness of peaks to west and
south. Light masses of cumulus cloud were rushing over the sky, and
driving waves of blue and purple colour across the mountain masses and
the forest slopes. Golden was the sinking light and the sunlit half of
the lake; golden the western faces and edges of the mountain world;
while beyond the valley, where ran the white smoke of a train, there
hung in the northern sky a dream-world of undiscovered snows, range, it
seemed, beyond range, remote, ethereal; a Valhalla of the old gods of
this vast land, where one might guess them still throned at bay,
majestic, inviolate.
But it was the flowers that held Elizabeth mute. Anderson had brought
her to a wild garden of incredible beauty. Scarlet and blue, purple and
pearl and opal, rose-pink and lavender-grey the flower-field ran about
her, as though Persephone herself had just risen from the shadow of this
nameless northern lake, and the new earth had broken into eager flame at
her feet. Painter's brush, harebell, speedwell, golden-brown
gaillardias, silvery hawkweed, columbines yellow and blue, heaths, and
lush grasses--Elizabeth sank down among them in speechless joy. Anderson
gathered handfuls of columbine and vetch, of harebell and heath, and
filled her lap with them, till she gently stopped him.
"No! Let me only look!"
And with her hands around her knees she sat motionless and still.
Anderson threw himself down beside her. Fragrance, colour, warmth; the
stir of an endless self-sufficient life; the fruitfulness and bounty of
the earth; these things wove their ancient spells about them. Every
little rush of the breeze seemed an invitation and a caress.
Presently she thanked him for having brought her there, and said
something of remembering it in England.
"As one who will never see it again?" He turned and faced her smiling.
But behind his frank, pleasant look there was something from which
she shrank.
"I shall hardly see it, again," she said hesitating. "Perhaps that makes
it the more--the more touching. One clings to it the more--the
impression--because it is so fugitive--will be so soon gone."
He was silent a moment, then said abruptly:
"And the upshot of all this is, that you could not imagine living in
Canada?"
She started.
"I never said so. Of course I could imagine living in Canada!"
"But you think, for women, the life up here--in the Northwest--is too
hard."
She looked at him timidly.
"That's because I look at it from my English point of view. I am afraid
English life makes weaklings of us."
"No--not of you!" he said, almost scornfully. "Any life that seemed to
you worth while would find you strong enough for it. I am sure of that."
Elizabeth smiled and shrugged her shoulders. He went on--almost as
though pleading with her.
"And as to our Western life--which you will soon have left so far
behind--it strains and tests the women--true--but it rewards them. They
have a great place among us. It is like the women of the early races. We
listen to them in the house, and on the land; we depend on them indoors
and out; their husbands and their sons worship them!"
Elizabeth flushed involuntarily; but she met him gaily.
"In England too! Come and see!"
"I shall probably be in England next spring."
Elizabeth made a sudden movement.
"I thought you would be in political life here!"
"I have had an offer--an exciting and flattering offer. May I tell you?"
He turned to her eagerly; and she smiled her sympathy, her curiosity.
Whereupon he took a letter from his pocket--a letter from the Dominion
Prime Minister, offering him a mission of inquiry to England, on some
important matters connected with labour and emigration. The letter was
remarkable, addressed to a man so young, and on the threshold of his
political career.
Elizabeth congratulated him warmly.
"Of course you will come to stay with us!"
It was his turn to redden.
"You are very kind," he said formally. "As you know, I shall have
everything to learn."
"I will show you _our_ farms!" cried Elizabeth, "and all our dear
decrepit life--our little chessboard of an England."
"How proud you are, you Englishwomen!" he said, half frowning. "You run
yourselves down--and at bottom there is a pride like Lucifer's."
"But it is not my pride," she said, hurt, "any more than yours. We are
yours--and you are ours. One state--one country."
"No, don't let us sentimentalise. We have our own future. It is not
yours."
"But you are loyal!" The note was one of pain.
"Are we? Foolish word! Yes, we are loyal, as you are--loyal to a common
ideal, a common mission in the world."
"To blood also--and to history?" Her voice was almost entreating. What
he had said seemed to jar with other and earlier sayings of his, which
had stirred in her a patriotic pleasure.
He smiled at her emotion--her implied reproach.
"Yes, we stand together. We march together. But Canada will have her own
history; and you must not try to make it for her."
Their eyes met; in hers exaltion, in his a touch of sternness, a
moment's revelation of the Covenanter in his soul.
Then as the delightful vision of her among the flowers, in her white
dress, the mountains behind and around her, imprinted itself on his
senses, he was conscious of a moment of intolerable pain. Between her
and him--as it were--the abyss opened. The trembling waves of colour in
the grass, the noble procession of the clouds, the gleaming of the
snows, the shadow of the valleys--they were all wiped out. He saw
instead a small unsavoury room--the cunning eyes and coarse mouth of his
father. He saw his own future as it must now be; weighted with this
burden, this secret; if indeed it were still to be a secret; if it were
not rather the wiser and the manlier plan to have done with secrecy.
Elizabeth rose with a little shiver. The wind had begun to blow cold
from the northwest.
"How soon can we run down? I hope Mr. Arthur will have sent Philip
indoors."
Anderson left Lake Louise about eight o'clock, and hurried down the
Laggan road. His mind was divided between the bitter-sweet of these last
hours with Elizabeth Merton, and anxieties, small practical anxieties,
about his father. There were arrangements still to make. He was not
himself going to Vancouver. McEwen had lately shown a strong and
petulant wish to preserve his incognito, or what was left of it. He
would not have his son's escort. George might come and see him at
Vancouver; and that would be time enough to settle up for the winter.
So Ginnell, owner of the boarding house, a stalwart Irishman of six foot
three, had been appointed to see him through his journey, settle him
with his new protectors, and pay all necessary expenses.
Anderson knocked at his father's door and was allowed to enter. He found
McEwen walking up and down his room, with the aid of a stick, irritably
pushing chairs and clothes out of his way. The room was in squalid
disorder, and its inmate had a flushed, exasperated look that did not
escape Anderson's notice. He thought it probable that his father was
already repenting his consent to go to Vancouver, and he avoided general
conversation as much as possible.
McEwen complained of having been left alone; abused Mrs. Ginnell; vowed
she had starved and ill-treated him; and then, to Anderson's surprise,
broke out against his son for having refused to provide him with the
money he wanted for the mine, and so ruined his last chance. Anderson
hardly replied; but what he did say was as soothing as possible; and at
last the old man flung himself on his bed, excitement dying away in a
sulky taciturnity.
Before Anderson left his room, Ginnell came in, bringing his accounts
for certain small expenses. Anderson, standing with his back to his
father, took out a pocketbook full of bills. At Calgary the day before a
friend had repaid him a loan of a thousand dollars. He gave Ginnell a
certain sum; talked to him in a low voice for a time, thinking his
father had dropped asleep; and then dismissed him, putting the money in
his pocket.
"Good night, father," he said, standing beside the bed.
McEwen opened his eyes.
"Eh?"
The eyes into which Anderson looked had no sleep in them. They were wild
and bloodshot, and again Anderson felt a pang of helpless pity for a
dishonoured and miserable old age.
"I'm sure you'll get on at Vancouver, father," he said gently. "And I
shall be there next week."
His father growled some unintelligible answer. As Anderson went to the
door he again called after him angrily: "You were a d---- fool, George,
not to find those dibs."
"What, for the mine?" Anderson laughed. "Oh, we'll go into that again at
Vancouver."
McEwen made no reply, and Anderson left him.
Anderson woke before seven. The long evening had passed into the dawn
with scarcely any darkness, and the sun was now high. He sprang up, and
dressed hastily. Going into the passage he saw to his astonishment that
while the door of the Ginnells' room was still closed, his father's was
wide open. He walked in. The room and the bed were empty. The contents
of a box carefully packed by Ginnell--mostly with new clothes--the night
before, were lying strewn about the room. But McEwen's old clothes were
gone, his gun and revolver, also his pipes and tobacco.
Anderson roused Ginnell, and they searched the house and its
neighbourhood in vain. On going back into his own room, Anderson noticed
an open drawer. He had placed his pocketbook there the night before, but
without locking the drawer. It was gone, and in its place was a dirty
scrap of paper.
"Don't you try chivvying me, George, for you won't get any good of it.
You let me alone, and I'll let you. You were a stingy fellow about that
money, so I've took some of it. Good-bye."
Sick at heart, Anderson resumed the search, further afield. He sent
Ginnell along the line to make confidential inquiries. He telegraphed to
persons known to him at Golden, Revelstoke, Kamloops, Ashcroft, all to
no purpose. Twenty-four--thirty-six hours passed and nothing had been
heard of the fugitive.
He felt himself baffled and tricked, with certain deep instincts and
yearnings wounded to the death. The brutal manner of his father's
escape--the robbery--the letter--had struck him hard.
When Friday night came, and still no news, Anderson found himself at the
C.P.R. Hotel at Field. He was stupid with fatigue and depression. But
he had been in telephonic communication all the afternoon with Delaine
and Lady Merton at Lake Louise, as to their departure for the Pacific.
They knew nothing and should know nothing of his own catastrophe; their
plans should not suffer.
He went out into the summer night to take breath, and commune with
himself. The night was balmy; the stars glorious. On a siding near the
hotel stood the private car which had arrived that evening from
Vancouver, and was to go to Laggan the following morning to fetch the
English party. They were to pick him up, on the return, at Field.
He had failed to save his father, and his honest effort had been made in
vain. Humiliation and disappointment overshadowed him. Passionately, his
whole soul turned to Elizabeth. He did not yet grasp all the bearings of
what had happened. But he began to count the hours to the time when he
should see her.