A Damaged Reputation Part 44

"Yes," she said, quietly. "I heard. When did Mr. Brooke buy that stock?"

Devine understood the question, and once more the twinkle crept into his eyes.

"Well," he said, "it was quite a while before they found the silver. I don't know what he did it for. Now, I guess I've been here longer than I meant to stay. You'll excuse me, Katty."

He seemed in haste to get away, and when the door closed behind him the two who were left looked at one another curiously. Mrs. Devine was evidently embarra.s.sed.

"I suppose," she said, drily, "you don't know why Brooke bought those shares, either?"

"I think I do," said Barbara, with unusual quietness, though the color was very visible in her cheeks. "He had a reason----"

She stopped abruptly, and there was once more an awkward silence, until she made a little impulsive gesture.

"Oh!" she said, sharply now, "I feel horribly mean. He stayed there through the winter when they had scarcely anything to eat, and bought that stock when n.o.body else would have it or believed in the Dayspring.

Then he risked his life to save the Canopus, and when he came down, worn out and ill, I had only hard words for him."

"Well," said Mrs. Devine, drily, "the sensation is probably good for you. You don't seem to remember that he also tried to jump the mine."

Barbara turned towards her with a little sparkle in her eyes. "Have you--never--done anything that was wrong?"

Mrs. Devine naturally saw the point of this, but while she considered her answer, Barbara, who had a good deal to think of, and scarcely felt equal to any further conversation just then, abruptly turned away.

Glancing at her watch, she went straight to a room, from the window of which she could see the road to the depot, for she knew the Atlantic express would shortly start, and she had not been told that Brooke was not coming back. Exactly what she meant to say to him she did not know, but she felt she could not let him go without, at least, a slight expression of her appreciation of what he had done. She knew that he would value it, and that it would go far to blot out the memory of past unkindness. He had certainly meant to jump the Canopus, and deceived her shamefully, which was far harder to forgive, for the realization of the fact that she had bestowed rather more than friendliness upon a man who was unworthy of it had its sting, but she scarcely remembered that now.

He had, it appeared, since then, sacrificed his fortune and broken down his strength, and that, considering the purpose which she fancied had impelled him, went a long way to condone his offences.

He, however, did not appear on the road, as she had expected; and she grew a trifle anxious when the tolling of a bell came up from the depot by the wharf as the big locomotive backed the long cars in. It was also significant that she did not notice that the room, which had no stove in it, was very cold. Then looking down she saw men with valises pa.s.s across an opening between the roofs and express wagons lurching along the uneven road. The train would start very soon, and there was at least one admission she must make, but the minutes were slipping by and still Brooke did not come. The man, it almost appeared, was content to go away without seeing her, though she felt compelled to admit that in view of what had pa.s.sed at their last meeting this was not altogether astonis.h.i.+ng. Still, the fact that he could do so hurt her, and she waited in a state of painful tension. A very few minutes would suffice for him to climb the hill, and even if there was no opportunity for an explanation, which now appeared very probable, a smile or even a glance might go a long way to set matters right.

The few minutes, however, slipped by as the rest had done, until at last the locomotive bell slowly clanged again, and the hoot of a whistle came up the hillside and was flung back by the pines. Then a puff of white smoke rolled up from the wharf, and Barbara turned away from the window with the crimson in her face as the cars swept through an opening between the cl.u.s.tering roofs. The train had gone, and the man would not know how far she had relented towards him. She could settle to nothing during the rest of the evening, and scarcely slept that night, though she naturally did not mention the fact when she and Mrs. Devine met at breakfast next morning. Instead, she took out a letter she had received a week earlier.

"It's from Hetty Hume, and the English mail goes out to-day," she said.

"She suggests that I should come over and spend a few months with her. I really think we did what we could for her when she was here with the Major."

Mrs. Devine took the letter. "I fancy she wants you to go," she said.

"She mentions that she has asked you several times already."

Barbara appeared reflective. "So she has," she said. "In fact, I think I'll go. The change will do me good."

"Well," said Mrs. Devine, "I suppose you can afford it, but if you indulge in many changes of that kind you're not going to have very much of a dowry."

"Do you think I need one?"

Mrs. Devine laughed as she glanced at her, but her face grew thoughtful again. "Perhaps in your case it wouldn't be necessary, and though it is a very long way, I fancy that you might do worse than go to England and stay there while Hetty is willing to keep you."

A little flush crept into Barbara's cheek, but she said quietly, "I think I'll start on Sat.u.r.day."

She did so, and it came about one night while the big train she travelled by swept across the rolling levels of the a.s.siniboian prairie that Brooke sat in his shanty at the Dayspring with Jimmy, who had just come down from the range, standing in front of him. The freighter had still now and then a difficulty in bringing them provisions in, and whenever Jimmy found the persistent plying of drill and hammer pall upon him he would go out and look out for a deer, though it was not always that he came back with one. On this occasion he brought a somewhat alarming tale instead.

"A big snow-slide must have come along since I was up on that slope before, and gouged out quite a canon for itself," he said. "Anyway, if it wasn't a snow-slide it was a cloudburst or a waterspout. They happen around when folks don't want them now and then."

"Come to the point," said Brooke. "I'm sufficiently acquainted with the meteorological perversities of the country."

"Slinging names at them isn't much use. I've tried it, and any one raised here could give you points at the thing. Now before I came to Quatomac I was staying up at the Tillic.u.m ranch, and I'd just taken a new twelve-dollar pair of gum-boots off one night when there was a waterspout up the valley that washed me and Jardine out of the house. We sailed along until we struck a convenient pine, and sat in it most of the night while the flood went down. Then I hadn't any gum-boots, and Jardine couldn't find his house."

"I believe you told me you went down the river on a door on the last occasion," Brooke said, wearily. "Still, it doesn't greatly matter. What has all this to do with the hollow the snow-slide made in the range?"

"Well," said Jimmy, "I guess you know the way the big rock outcrop runs across the foot of the valley. Now, before the snow-slide or the waterspout came along the melting snow went down into the next hollow, and the one where the outcrop is got just enough to keep the outlet of the creek that comes through it open."

"I do. Will it be an hour or more before you make it clear how that concerns anybody?"

"No, sir. I'm getting right there. The snow's melting tolerably fast, and the drainage from the big peak isn't going the way it used to now.

The foot of the valley's quite a nice-sized lake, and the stream has washed most of the broke-up pines the snow brought down into the outlet gully. I guess you have seen a bad lumber jam?"

Brooke had, and he started as he recognized the significance of what was happening, for once a drifting log strikes fast in a narrow pa.s.sage the stream is very apt to pile up and wedge fast those that come behind into a tolerably efficient subst.i.tute for a dam, while when log still follows log the result is usually an inextricable confusion of interlocked timber.

"When the jam up broke we'd have the water and the wreckage down on the mine," he said.

"All there is of it," said Jimmy. "It would cost quite a pile of dollars to dry the workings out."

Brooke strode to the door and flung it open, but there was black darkness outside and a persistent patter of thick warm rain. Then he swung round with an objurgation and Jimmy grinned.

"I guess it's no use. You couldn't see a pine ten foot off, and there isn't a man in the country who would go down that gully with a lantern in his hand," he said. "Go off to sleep. You'll see quite as much as you want to, anyway, to-morrow."

Brooke stood still and listened a moment or two while the hoa.r.s.e roar of a river which he knew was swirling in fierce flood among the boulders far down in the hollow came up in deep reverberations across the pines.

It was a significant hint of what was likely to happen when the pent-up water poured down upon the mine. Still, there was nothing he could do in that thick darkness.

"Sleep!" he said. "When almost every dollar I have--and a good deal more than that--is sunk in the mine."

"Well," said Jimmy, reflectively, "in your place, if I could make sure of the dollars, I'd take my chances on the rest. Now and then I'm quite thankful I haven't any. It saves a mighty lot of worry."

He swung out of the shanty, and Brooke, who flung himself down on his couch of spruce twigs, endeavored to sleep, though he had no great expectation of succeeding. As it happened, he lay tossing or holding himself still by an effort the long night through, for he had set his whole mind on the prosperity of the Dayspring. A good deal of his small fortune was also sunk in it, though that was not of the greatest moment to him. He had a vague hope that when the mine was, through his efforts, pouring out high-grade ore, he might reinstate himself in Barbara's estimation. In that case, at least, she might believe in his contrition, for he felt that where protests were evidently useless deeds might avail. Then the dollars in question would be valuable to him.

It was two hours before the dawn, and still apparently raining hard, when he rose and lighted the stove. He felt a trifle dizzy and very s.h.i.+very as he did it, but the frugal breakfast put a little warmth into him, and he went out into the thick haze of falling water and up the hillside, walking somewhat wearily and with considerably more effort than he had found it necessary to make a few months ago.

XXIX.

A FINAL EFFORT.

A dim, grey light was creeping through the rain when Brooke stopped on a ridge of hillside that broke off from the parent range above the mine.

The pines were slowly growing into shape, though as yet they showed as mere spires of blackness in the sliding haze, and there was a faint glimmer in the hollow beneath him, while the sound of running water drowned the splas.h.i.+ng of the rain. The snow upon the lower slopes had mostly melted now, though that on the great hill shoulders would swell the frothing rivers for months to come, and, sinking ankle-deep in quaggy mould, he went down through the dripping undergrowth until he stopped again on the verge of what had become in the last few days a muddy lake.

The wreckage of the higher forests was strewn upon it, but Brooke noticed that it drifted steadily in one direction, and floundering along the water's edge, he reached a narrow gully, which had served as outlet for the stream through the ridge that hemmed in the valley. The pa.s.sage was, however, now choked by a ma.s.s of groaning timber, which was apparently growing every hour, and it already seemed scarcely possible to cut through that pile of wreckage by any means at his command. Once the pent-up water, which seemed rising rapidly, burst the jam, it would come down in an overwhelming torrent upon the mine, and he sat down on a fallen redwood to consider how the difficulty could be grappled with.

He, however, found it no easy matter to keep his mind upon the question at all. His head was aching, he felt unpleasantly limp, as well as wet and cold, and the distressful stiffness of his back suggested that he had by no means recovered from the effects of his fall. The long months of strenuous physical toil, the scanty, and, when the freighter could not get in, often wholly insufficient food, and exposure to bitter frost and snow, had left their mark on him, while now, worn out in mind and body as he was, he realized that a last grim effort was demanded from him. How it was to be made he did not know, and he was sitting still, s.h.i.+vering, with the rain running from him, when Jimmy and another man from the mine appeared. It was almost light now, and the miner glanced at the gathering water with evident concern.

"I guess something has got to be done," he said.