From the time of their ride together, Jean’s thoughts were much more
occupied with Loring than they had been before. The consciousness of
her father’s opposition was an added stimulus, partly by reason of
her inherited obstinacy, and partly because she felt that Loring was
misunderstood, and all her loyalty was engaged in his behalf. She felt a
pride in having discovered what she thought were his possibilities, and
she was determined that the world should acknowledge them too. In the
face of Mr. Cameron’s disapproval she did not venture to ask Loring to
the house; but whenever they met in the camp or on the road she made a
point of stopping to talk with him and inquiring how things were going at
the hoist.
It must be set down to Loring’s credit that none of these meetings were
of his planning, for as his love for her deepened, as it did day by
day, he felt more and more keenly the barriers which he himself had
raised between them. He felt how far wrong he had been in assuming that
his life had been wholly his own and that his failures could touch no
one but himself. He did not dare to construct the future, but clung to
the present with realization of its blessings. He felt a glow of pride
in Jean’s friendship for him, and a steady reliance on her faith in
him. Week after week went by and the fiber within him strengthened. The
belief in the worthwhileness of life came to him with a splendid rush of
conviction that was not to be denied.
The depth of happiness is, unfortunately, however, no criterion of its
duration. One evening the stage, after depositing at the office its
load of mail and newcomers, lurched jerkily up the incline that led to
Mr. Cameron’s house, instead of being driven to the corral as usual.
Loring watched it and his spirits dropped like a barometer. An incident
may easily depress high spirits, though it takes an event to raise low
ones. The event which had raised his spirits to-day was a meeting with
Jean Cameron while Mr. Cameron was inspecting Number Three shaft. Jean
had accompanied her father to the hoist and Loring had been able to talk
with her for a longer time than usual. The incident that had depressed
was merely a slight break in the routine. He did not usually notice the
stage. Why should he do so now? What was more natural than that Mr.
Cameron should have some visitor?
“Probably one of the directors of the company, or some official,” Stephen
reflected. “Perhaps that was why that new saddle was sent down to the
corral.”
Loring shortened his day by dividing it into periods. A period consisted
of the time required to raise ten buckets of ore. At the end of each
period he permitted himself to glance over his shoulder, where just
beyond the corner of the ore cribs he could see the porch of Mr.
Cameron’s house. Now and then he was rewarded by a glimpse of Jean
reading or talking to her father. Loring was very honest with himself and
never before the requisite amount of work was accomplished did he give
himself his reward. This morning he had gone through the usual routine,
lowered the day’s shift and patiently waited to hoist the first result
of their labor. It had been a severe strain on his subjective integrity,
when, after he had raised nine buckets of ore, the expected tenth
turned out to be merely a load of dulled drills sent up to be sharpened.
Exasperated, he watched while the “nipper” boys unloaded the drills
and put in the newly sharpened sets which they had brought from the
blacksmith’s. One little fellow either unduly conscientious, or with a
wholesome dread of the wrath of the mine foreman, laboriously counted the
new drills from the short “starters” to the six- and seven-foot drills
that complete the set.
“Oh, they’re all right, Ignacio,” called Stephen. “Chuck them in! _’Sta
’ueno._”
The next time his hopes were fulfilled, and bucket number ten appeared
on the surface. As soon as it was clear of the shaft and swung onto
the waiting ore car, Stephen turned for his long-desired glance. Tied
to the fence in front of Mr. Cameron’s house was another horse beside
Jean’s pony, which he knew so well. As he looked, the door opened and
Jean appeared. She was too far away for him to distinguish her features
and yet she seemed to him to have an air of buoyancy which he had not
before remarked. A man stepped out of the doorway behind her. His tan
riding-boots were brilliant with a gloss that is unknown in a world
where men shine their own shoes. The sunlight positively quivered upon
them. Jean and the stranger mounted, and as they rode nearer to the hoist
Stephen observed that the man was singularly good-looking, but “too sleek
by half,” he growled vindictively, as he turned to his work again.
The stranger turned out to be a young cousin of Mr. Cameron’s, ostensibly
in camp to see “western life”; but Stephen had his own opinion as to
that. In a week Loring disliked the cousin, in a fortnight he loathed
him, and all without ever having exchanged a word with the dapper youth.
A man who by necessity is compelled to wear a flannel shirt and trousers
frayed by tucking within high boots, is always prone to consider a better
dressed man as dapper. For a week Stephen had not had a chance to speak
with Miss Cameron. The cousin, “Archibald Iverach,” as the letters which
Loring saw at the post-office indicated to be his name, may not have been
intentionally responsible; but to his shadow-like attendance on Jean,
Loring attributed the result and accordingly prayed for his departure.
“To be sure he is her guest; but that is no reason why he should have
too good a time,” he reflected gloomily. “She must be enjoying his visit
or she would not keep him so long.”
Had Loring overheard a conversation which took place at Mr. Cameron’s
table the day before Iverach’s return to the East, he would have felt
his affection for that gentleman still more increased. The conversation
had turned upon the types of men in camp. Iverach’s estimate of them had
been as disparaging as theirs of him. The only men with whom he had come
in contact had annoyed him as having no place in his neatly constructed
world. “Cheap independence” was the phrase that he had used to describe
their manner. He had good cause to know this independence for one day he
had addressed McKay in a rather lofty fashion, and what McKay had said in
return could only be constructed from a careful and diligent reading of
the unexpurgated parts of all the most lurid books in the world combined.
The retort had been worthy of a territory where the championship swearing
belt is held by one who can swear between syllables. His remarks had
reflected on Iverach’s parentage on the male and female sides, it had
enlarged on his past, expatiated on his probable future, dilated upon
his present. The pleasantest of the places that awaited him, according
to McKay, was hotter than Tombstone in August. His looks and character
had been described in a way that had surpassed even McKay’s fertile
imagination. Iverach had always imagined that he would fight a man for
using such language to him; yet for some reason he had not hastened
to express offense. He was not a coward; but he was not adventurous
nor easily aroused to anger when it might have unpleasant results.
Consequently to-day, when he finished his remarks about the men whom he
had seen by observing that they were “the scum of the earth,” he was
guilty of no conscious exaggeration.
Mr. Cameron paid no attention to his cousin’s remarks. He had rarely
found them rewarding and therefore with his usual Scotch economy he
declined to waste interest upon them. Jean, however, for some reason took
the trouble to continue the discussion.
“Have you met a man named Loring, one of the hoist engineers?” she asked
quietly.
Iverach looked up suddenly. “Loring? What is his first name?”
“Stephen.”
“I have not met him here; but if he is the man I think he is, I happen to
have heard something of him in the East. A friend of his asked me to keep
an eye out for him if I came to any of the camps in Arizona. In fact,
he told me to keep two eyes open for him, one to find him with, and the
other to look out for him after I had found him. He intimated that Loring
was not a reliable character, to say the least.”
“A friend of his, did you say?”
“I judged that he had been at one time, but from the trend of his
conversation his friendship must have been a thing of the dim past. Among
other pleasant things about Loring he told me that—”
“Did he say anything about his ability as a hoist engineer? That, I
think, is the only thing with which we are concerned here,” interrupted
Jean. “You know, Archie, there is a proverb to the effect that ‘a man’s
past is his own.’”
“Then all I can say is that Loring is not to be envied his ownership,”
Iverach went on, ignoring the danger signal of Jean’s slightly
contemptuous manner. “And as for discussing his past, I cannot see any
harm in repeating what every one knows about a man.”
Ordinarily Mr. Cameron was the most fair-minded of men, and judged people
by what he knew of them, not by what he heard; but he had a particular
antipathy to Loring, caused by dislike of his type, and also he was not
sorry to have Jean hear a few truths about the man whose companionship he
dreaded for her as much as he resented her championship of him.
“What was it you were going to say about Loring?” he asked of Iverach, as
he handed him a cigar.
Iverach paused to clip it carefully with a gold cigar-cutter that hung
from his watch-chain. “Of course it is only hearsay that I am repeating—”
Archibald began hesitatingly.
“Then why repeat it?” asked Jean ironically.
“Oh, the most interesting things in the world are those that you accept
on hearsay,” he laughed. “I forget the details of Loring’s history,
but this friend intimated that Loring, when engaged to his guardian’s
daughter, borrowed large sums of money from the guardian, and—well,
neither the engagement nor the money ever materialized and Stephen
Loring is not much sought after in that neighborhood. I met the girl
once,” he went on, “and I don’t blame Loring. She was the kind of young
woman whose eyes light up only over causes; but the money part of the
story, if true, is rather an ugly fact. Dexterity with other people’s
money is not an agreeable form of deftness.”
“Utterly contemptible,” snapped Mr. Cameron, flicking the ashes from his
cigar onto the table with a prodigal gesture, only to brush them onto an
envelope with the afterthought of an exact nature.
Jean rose and walked toward the door.
“At what time do you ride this afternoon?” her cousin called after her.
“Thanks,” replied Jean, without turning, “but I shall not be able to ride
this afternoon, I am intending to spend the time in making a pair of
curtains for this window. I do not like the view of the hoist.”
Iverach’s face fell, for he was leaving Quentin the next day, and he had
counted much upon this last interview. “Can’t the curtains wait until
to-morrow?” he remonstrated.
“No, they must be finished at once,” replied Jean with decision.
“Why this burst of domestic energy?” queried Mr. Cameron. “You know that
you have not taken a needle in your hand since you have been in the camp.”
“I intend to change my habits in many ways,” Jean responded, pressing her
lips together firmly.
“I beg of you not to change at all,” said Iverach. “It is impossible to
improve a perfect person. However, since you are in the domestic mood, I
wonder if you would take pity on a helpless bachelor and take a stitch in
my riding-gloves for me?”
“Riding-gloves are a luxury, while curtains are a necessity,” replied
Jean firmly. “However, if you will give the gloves to me, I will see that
our Chinaman mends them. There is nothing that he cannot do.”
For some minutes after Jean had left the room, her cousin contemplated
the end of his cigar. It was hard for him to twist her expressions into
denoting a mood favorable to his complacency, so he spent an unpleasant
half hour. At last, giving up all hope of her reappearance, he moodily
set forth alone on his ride. He realized that in the Western setting he
did not appeal to Jean Cameron, and only hoped that when she should
return to the East, his deficiencies would be less apparent, while his
advantages would show more clearly. He therefore concluded to defer
putting his fate to the touch until circumstances should prove more
propitious.
The curtains took some time in the making. Jean sewed them with a
preoccupied elaboration such as she was not accustomed to bestow upon
such tasks. She had been startled by the effect of her cousin’s words
upon her, and now stared at the hem of the curtains with a slight frown.
She had thought her interest in Stephen to be purely abstract and
impersonal, and yet it was not pleasant to think of the person in whom
she was even abstractly interested as having been concerned in a dubious
financial transaction. It certainly added interest to the problem of
his regeneration; but nevertheless it abated the zeal for solving that
problem, by making it seem not worth while.
Stephen rejoiced when the day came for Iverach to leave Quentin. He
hoped that now his relations with Miss Cameron would be resumed. He was
amazed to see how much he had come to rely on his glimpses of her as the
inspiration of his existence. The first time that he saw her, however,
she passed him with a cool nod in which it would have been hard for any
one to find encouragement or inspiration. When this coolness was repeated
on several occasions he was puzzled. Then he made up his mind that the
underlying reason was the cousin, and in this he was certainly correct,
though not in the way he supposed. For the first time he began to realize
that the work at the hoist was monotonous.
The Devil has three great allies, natural depravity, aimless activity,
and ennui, and this last is his most trusted, subtle, and reliable agent,
especially when coupled with depression.