The Protector Part 33

Vane reflected hastily. Jessie, as she had told him, had opportunities of picking up valuable information about the business done in that city, and he had confidence in her.

"Thank you," he said. "It will be the second service you have done me, and I appreciate it. Anyway, I promised Nairn I'd call at Nanaimo, in there was a wire from him."

"It's a bargain, and now we'll talk of something else," said Jessie, and she drew him into an exchange of badinage, until noticing that Evelyn once or twice glanced at her with some astonishment she presently got rid of him. She could understand Evelyn's att.i.tude and did not wish her friendliness with the offender to appear unnatural after what she had said about him.

At length the guests began to leave, but most of them had gone when Vane rose to take his departure. His host and hostess went with him to the door, but though he once or twice glanced round eagerly, there was no sign of Evelyn. He lingered a few moments on the threshold after Mrs.

Nairn had given him a kindly send-off; but n.o.body appeared in the lighted hall, and after another word with Nairn he went moodily down the steps to join Jessie and Carroll, who were waiting for him below. As the group walked down the garden path, Mrs. Nairn looked at her husband.

"I do not know what has come over Evelyn this night," she remarked.

Nairn followed Jessie's retreating figure with distrustful eyes. "Weel,"

he said, "I'm thinking yon besom may have had a hand in the thing."

Then he turned, and they went in.

A few minutes later, Jessie, standing where the light of a big lamp streamed down upon her through the boughs of a leafless maple, bade Vane farewell at her brother's gate.

"If my good wishes can bring you success, it will most certainly be yours," she said; and there was something in her voice which faintly stirred the man, who was feeling very sore.

"Thank you," he said, and she did not immediately withdraw the hand she had given him. He was grateful to her, and thought she looked unusually pretty with the sympathy s.h.i.+ning in her eyes.

"You will not forget to wait at Nanaimo and Comox?" she went on.

"No," said Vane. "If you recall me, I'll come back at once; if not, I'll go on with a lighter heart, knowing that I can safely stay away."

Jessie said nothing further, and he moved on. She felt that she had scored, and she knew when to stop. The man had given her his full confidence.

CHAPTER XXV

THE INTERCEPTED LETTER.

The wind was fresh from the north-west when Vane drove the sloop out through the Narrows in the early dawn and saw a dim stretch of white-flecked sea in front of him. Landlocked as they are by Vancouver Island, the long roll of the Pacific cannot enter those waters; but they are now and then lashed into short, tumbling seas, sufficient to make their pa.s.sage difficult for a craft no larger than the sloop. Carroll frowned when a comber struck the weather bow and a shower of stinging spray whipped his face.

"Right ahead again," he remarked. "But as I suppose you're going on, we'd better stretch straight across on the starboard tack; we'll get smoother water along the island sh.o.r.e."

They let her go, and Vane sat at the helm, hour after hour, drenched with spray, hammering her mercilessly into the frothy seas. They could have done with a second reef down, for the deck was swept and sluicing, and most of the time the lee rail was buried deep in rus.h.i.+ng foam; but Vane showed no intention of shortening sail. Nor did Carroll, who saw that his comrade was disturbed in temper, suggest it: resolute action had, he knew, a soothing effect on Vane. As a matter of fact, the latter needed soothing. Of late, he had felt that he was making steady progress in Evelyn's favour, and now she had most unexplainably turned against him; but, rack his brain as he would, he could not discover the reason.

That he was conscious of no offence only made the position more galling.

In the meanwhile, the boat engrossed more and more of his attention. It was a relief to drive her hard at some white-topped sea, and watch her bows disappear in it with a thud, while it somehow eased his mind to see the smashed-up brine fly half the height of her drenched mainsail. There was also satisfaction in feeling the strain on the tiller when, swayed down by a fiercer gust, she plunged through the combers with the froth swirling, perilously close to the coaming, along her half-submerged deck.

The day was cold; the man, who was compelled to sit almost still in a nipping wind, was soon wet through, but this in some curious way further tended to restore his accustomed optimism and good-humour. He had partly recovered both, when, as the sloop drove through the whiter turmoil whipped up by a vicious squall, there was a crash forward.

"Down helm!" shouted Carroll. "The bobstay's gone."

He scrambled towards the bowsprit, which, having lost its princ.i.p.al support, swayed upward, in peril of being torn away by the sagging jib.

Vane, who first rounded up the boat into the wind, followed him; and for several minutes they had a struggle with the madly-flapping sail, before they flung it, bundled up, into the well. Then they ran in the bowsprit, and Vane felt glad that, although the craft had been rigged in the usual Western fas.h.i.+on, he had changed that by giving her a couple of headsails in place of one.

"She'll trim with the staysail, if we haul another reef down," he said.

It cost them some labour, but they were warmer afterwards, and when they went on again Vane glanced at the bowsprit.

"We'll try to get a bit of galvanised steel in Nanaimo," he said. "I can't risk another smash."

"You had better be prepared for one, if you mean to drive her as you have been doing." Carroll flung back the saloon scuttle. "You'd have swamped her in another hour or two; the cabin floorings are all awash."

"Then hadn't you better pump her out?" retorted Vane. "After that, you can light the stove. It's beginning to dawn on me that it's a long while since I had anything to eat."

By and by they made a bountiful if somewhat primitive meal, in turn, sitting in the dripping saloon, which was partly filled with smoke, and Carroll sighed for the comforts he had abandoned. He did not, however, mention his regrets, because he did not expect his comrade's sympathy.

The craft, being under reduced sail, drove along more easily during the rest of the afternoon, and they ran into a little colliery town on the following day. There Vane replaced the broken bobstay with a solid piece of steel, and then sat down to write a letter, while Carroll stretched his cramped limbs ash.o.r.e.

The letter was addressed to Evelyn, and he found it difficult to express himself as he desired. The spoken word, as he had discovered, is now and then awkward to use, but the written one is more evasive still, and he shook his head ruefully over the production when he laid down his pen.

This was, perhaps, unnecessary, for, having grown calm, he had framed a terse and forcible appeal to the girl's sense of justice, which would in all probability have had its effect on her had she received it. Though he hardly realised it, the few simple words were convincing.

Having received no news from Nairn or Jessie, they sailed again in a day or two, bound for Comox, farther along the coast, where there was a possibility of communications overtaking them; but in the meanwhile matters which concerned them were moving forward in Vancouver.

It was rather early one afternoon when Jessie called upon a friend of hers and found her alone. Mrs. Bendle was a young and impulsive woman from one of the eastern cities, and she had not made many friends in Vancouver yet, though her husband, whom she had lately married, was a man of some importance there.

"I'm glad to see you," she said, greeting Jessie eagerly. "It's a week since anybody has been in to talk to me and Tom's away again."

Jessie made herself comfortable in an easy-chair, before she referred to one of her companion's remarks.

"Where has Mr. Bendle gone now?" she asked.

"Into the bush to look at a mine. He left this morning, and it will be a week before he's back. Then he's going across the Selkirks with that Clavering man about some irrigation scheme."

This suggested one or two questions, which Jessie desired to ask, but she did not frame them immediately. "It must be dull for you," she said sympathetically.

"I don't mean to complain," her companion informed her. "Tom's reasonable; the last time I said anything about being left alone he bought me the pair of ponies."

"You're fortunate in several ways; there are not a great many people who can make such presents. But while everybody knows how your husband has been successful lately, I'm a little surprised that he's able to go into Clavering's irrigation scheme. It's an expensive one; but I understand, they intend to confine it to a few, which means that those interested will have to subscribe handsomely."

"Tom," said her companion, "likes to have a number of different things in hand. He told me it was wiser when I said I couldn't tell my friends back East what he really is, because he seemed to be everything at once.

But your brother's interested in a good many things too, isn't he?"

"I believe so," answered Jessie. "Still, I'm pretty sure he couldn't afford to join Clavering and at the same time take up a big block of shares in Mr. Vane's mine."

"But Tom isn't going to do the latter now."

Jessie was almost startled; this was valuable information which she could scarcely have expected to obtain so easily. There was more she desired to ascertain, but she had no intention of making any obvious inquiries.

"It's generally understood that Mr. Vane and your husband are on good terms," she said. "You know him, don't you?"

"I've met him at one or two places, and I like him, but when I mention him, Tom smiles. He says it's unfortunate Mr. Vane can only see one thing at once, and that the one which lies right in front of his eyes.

For all that I've heard him own that the man is likeable."