A Damaged Reputation

Barbara said nothing, though she was sensible of a curious little thrill. She had not seen Brooke since the evening he had behaved in what was an apparently inexplicable fashion at the ranch, and had heard very little about him. She, however, watched the wharf intently, until she saw Devine accost a man with a bronzed face who was quietly threading his way through the hurrying groups, and her heart beat a trifle faster than usual as they moved together towards the steamer. Then almost unconsciously she turned to see if the woman they had been discussing was also watching for him, but she had by this time disappeared. Barbara, for no very apparent reason, felt a trifle pleased at this.

In the meanwhile Devine was talking rapidly to Brooke.

"Here is a letter for you that came in with yesterday's mail," he said. "Struck anything more encouraging at the mine since you wrote me?"

"No," said Brooke. "I'm afraid we haven't. Still, Allonby seems as sure as ever and is most anxious to get the new plant in."

Devine appeared thoughtful. "You'll have to knock off the big boring machine anyway. The mine's just swallowing dollars, and we'll have to go a trifle slower until some more come in. English directors didn't seem quite pleased last mail. Somebody in their papers has been slating the Dayspring properties, and there's a good deal of stock they couldn't work off. In fact, they seemed inclined to kick at my last draft, and we'll want two or three more thousand dollars before the month is up."

Brooke would have liked to ask several questions, but between the clanging of the locomotive bell and the roar of steam conversation was difficult, and when they stopped a moment at the foot of the gangway Devine's voice only reached him in broken snatches.

"Got to keep your hand down – spin every dollar out. I'm writing straight about another draft. Use the wires the moment you strike anything that would give the stock a lift."

"If you're going I guess it's 'bout time you got aboard," said a seaman, who stood ready to launch the gangway in; and Brooke, making a sign of comprehension to Devine, went up with a run.

Then the ropes were cast off, and he sat down to open his letter under the deckhouse, as with a sonorous blast of her whistle the big white steamer swung out from the wharf. It was from the English kinsman who had previously written him, and confirmed what Devine had said.

"I'm sorry you are holding so much of the Canadian mining stock," he read. "You are, perhaps, better posted about the mine than I am, but though the shares were largely underwritten, I understand the promoters found it difficult to place a proportion of the rest, and my broker told me that several holders would be quite willing to get out at well under par already."

It was not exactly good news from any point of view, and Brooke was pondering over it somewhat moodily when he heard a voice he recognized, and looking up saw a woman with pale blue eyes smiling at him.

"Lucy!" he said, with evident astonishment, but no great show of pleasure.

"You looked so occupied that I was really afraid to disturb you," said the woman. "Shafton is talking Canadian politics with somebody, and I wonder if you are too busy to find a chair for me."

Brooke got one, and his companion, who was the woman Barbara had alluded to as Mrs. Coulson, sat down, and said nothing for a while as she gazed back across the blue inlet with evident appreciation. This was, in one respect, not astonishing, though so far as Brooke could remember she had never been remarkably fond of scenery, for the new stone city that rose with its towering telegraph poles roof beyond roof up the hillside, gleaming land-locked waterway, and engirdling pines with the white blink of ethereal snow high above them all, made a very fair picture that afternoon.

"This," she said at last, "would really be a beautiful country if everything wasn't quite so crude."

"It is certainly not exactly adapted to landscape-gardening," said Brooke. "A two-thousand foot precipice and a hundred-league forest is a trifle big. Still, I'm not sure its inhabitants would appreciate such praise."

Lucy Coulson laughed. "They are like it in one respect – I don't mean in size – and delightfully touchy on the subject. Now, there was a girl I met not long ago who appeared quite displeased with me when I said that with a little improving one might compare it to Switzerland. I told her I scarcely felt warranted in dragging paradise in, if only because of some of its characteristic customs. I think her name was Devane, or something equally unusual, though it might have been her married sister's. Perhaps it's Canadian."

She fancied a trace of indignation crept into the man's bronzed face, but it vanished swiftly.

"One could scarcely call Miss Heathcote crude," he said.

Lucy Coulson did not inquire whether he was acquainted with the lady in question, but made a mental note of the fact.

"It, of course, depends upon one's standard of comparison," she said. "No doubt she comes up to the one adopted in this country. Still, though the latter is certainly pretty, what is keeping – you – in it now?"

"Then you have heard of my good fortune?"

"Of course! Shafton and I were delighted. Your executors wrote for your address to me."

Brooke started visibly as he recognized that she must in that case have learned the news a month before he did, for a good deal had happened in the meanwhile.

"Then it is a little curious that you did not mention it in the note you sent inviting me to meet you at the Glacier Lake," he said.

Lucy Coulson lifted her eyes to his a moment, and then glanced aside, while there was a significant softness in her voice as she said, "The news seemed so good that I wanted to be the one who told it you."

Again Brooke felt a disconcerting sense of embarrassment, and because he had no wish that she should recognize this looked at her steadily.

"It apparently became of less importance when I did not come," he said with a trace of dryness. "There is a reliable postal service in this country. Do you remember exactly what day you went to the Lake on?"

Mrs. Coulson laughed, and made a little half-petulant gesture. "I fancied you did not deserve to hear it when you could not contrive to come forty miles to see me. Still, I think I can remember the day. Shafton had to be in Vancouver on the Wednesday – "

She told him in another moment, and Brooke was sensible of a sudden thrill of anger that was for the most part a futile protest against the fact that his destiny should lie at the mercy of a vain woman's idle fancy, for had he known on the day she mentioned he would never have made the attempt upon Devine's papers. Barbara Heathcote, he decided, doubtless knew by this time what had brought him to the ranch on the eventful night, and even if she did not the imposition he had been guilty of then remained as a barrier between him and her. After permitting her to give him credit for courage and a desire to watch over her safety he dare not tell her he had come as a thief. Still, he recognized that it was, after all, illogical to blame his companion for his own folly.

"Harford," she said, gently, "are you very vexed with me?"

Brooke smiled in a somewhat strained fashion. "No," he said, "I scarcely think I am, and I have, at least, no right to be. I don't know whether you will consider it a sufficient excuse, but I was very busy on the day in question. I was, you see, under the unfortunate necessity of earning my living."

"I think there was a time when you would not have let that stand in the way, but men are seldom very constant, are they?"

Brooke made no attempt to controvert the assertion. It seemed distinctly wiser to ignore it, since his companion apparently did not remember that she had now a husband who could hardly be expected to appreciate any unwavering devotion offered her, which was a fact that had its importance in Brooke's eyes, at least. Then she turned towards him with disconcerting suddenness.

"Why don't you go home now you have enough to live, with a little economy, as you were meant to do?" she said. "This country is no place for you."

Brooke, who did not remember that she previously endeavored to lead up to the question, started, for it was one which he had not infrequently asked himself of late, and the answer that the opportunity of proving his capabilities as a dam-builder and mining engineer had its attractions was, he knew, not quite sufficient in itself. Then, as it happened, Barbara Heathcote and Mrs. Devine, who appeared in the companion, came towards them along the deck, and Lucy Coulson noticed the glow in his eyes that was followed by a sudden hardening of his face. Perhaps she guessed a little, or it was done out of wantonness, for she laid her white-gloved hand upon his arm and leaned forward a trifle.

"Harford," she said, looking up at him, "once upon a time you gave me your whole confidence."

Brooke hoped his face was expressionless, for he was most unpleasantly sensible of that almost caressing touch upon his arm, as well as of the fact that his attitude, or, at least, that of his companion, was distinctly liable to misconception by any one aware that she was another man's wife. He had no longer any tenderness for her, and she had in any case married Shafton Coulson, who, so far as he had heard, made her a very patient as well as considerate husband.

"That was several years ago," he said.

Lucy Coulson laughed, and, though it is probable that she had seen them approach, turned with a little start that seemed unnecessarily apparent as Barbara and Mrs. Devine came up, while Brooke hoped his face did not suggest what he was thinking. As a matter of fact, it was distinctly flushed, which Barbara naturally noticed. She would have passed, but that Mrs. Coulson stopped her with a gesture.

"So glad to see you!" she said. "Can't you stay a little and talk to us? One is out of the breeze under the deck-house here. Harford, there are two unoccupied chairs yonder."

Brooke wished she would not persist in addressing him as Harford, but he brought the chairs, and Mrs. Devine, who had her own reasons for falling in with the suggestion, sat down. Barbara had no resource but to take the place beside her, and Lucy Coulson smiled at both of them.

"I believe Mrs. Devine mentioned that you had met Mr. Brooke," she said to the girl. "He is, of course, a very old friend of mine."

She contrived to give the words a significance which Brooke winced at, but he sat watching Barbara covertly while the others talked, or rather listened while Lucy Coulson did. Barbara scarcely glanced at him, but he fancied that Devine had not told her yet, or she would not have joined a group which included him at all. The position was not exactly a pleasant one, but he could think of no excuse for going away, and listened vacantly. Lucy Coulson, as it happened, was discoursing upon Canada, which when she did not desire to please a Canadian was a favorite topic of hers. Barbara, however, on this occasion only watched her with a little reposeful smile, and so half an hour slipped by while, with mastheads swinging lazily athwart the blue, the white-painted steamer rolled along, past rocky islets shrouded in dusky pines, across a shining sea above which white lines of snow gleamed ethereally.

Mrs. Coulson, however, had no eyes to spare for any of it, for when they were not fixed upon the girl she was watching Brooke.

"Some of the men we met in the mountains were delightfully inconsequent," she said at length. "There was one called Saxton at a mine, who spent a good deal of one afternoon telling us about the reforms that ought to be made in the administration of this province, and which I fancy he intended to effect. It was, of course, not a subject I was greatly interested in, but the man was so much in earnest that one had to listen to him, and Shafton told me afterwards that he was, where business was concerned, evidently a great rascal. Shafton, you know, enjoys listening quietly and afterwards turning people inside out for inspection. Still, perhaps, it was a little unwise to single the man out individually. There is always a risk of somebody who hears you being a friend of the person when you do that kind of thing – and now I remember he mentioned Mr. Brooke."

Brooke noticed that Barbara cast a swift glance at him, and wondered with sudden anger if Lucy Coulson had not already done him harm enough. Then Barbara turned towards the latter.

"Saxton," she said quietly, "is an utterly unprincipled man. I really do not think we have many like him in this country. You probably mistook his reference to Mr. Brooke."

Mrs. Coulson laughed. "Of course, I may have done, though I almost think he said Harford was a partner of his. Perhaps, however, he had a purpose in telling us that, for he had been trying to sell Shafton some land company's shares, though if it hadn't been true he would scarcely have ventured to mention it."

There was a sudden silence, and Brooke, who felt Barbara's eyes upon him, heard the splash of water along the steamer's plates and the throbbing of the screw. He also saw that Mrs. Devine was rather more intent than usual, and that Lucy Coulson was wondering at the effect of what she had said. He could, he fancied, acquit her of any ill intent, but that was no great consolation, for he could not controvert her assertion, and he felt that now she had mentioned the condemning fact his one faint chance was to let Barbara have the explanation from his own lips instead of asking it from Devine. Still, he could scarcely do so when the rest were there, and Lucy Coulson, at least, showed no intention of leaving him and the girl alone. It was, in fact, almost an hour later when her husband crossed the deck and she rose.

"Shafton has nobody to talk to, and one has to remember their duty now and then," she said.

Then as the steamer swung round a nest of reefs that rose out of a white swirl of tide the sea breeze swept that side of the deckhouse and Mrs. Devine departed for another wrap or shawl. Lifting her head Barbara looked at the man steadily.

"Was that woman's story true?" she said.

Brooke made a little gesture which implied that he attempted no defence.

"It was," he said.

A faint spark crept into Barbara's eyes, and a tinge of color into her cheek. "You know what you are admitting?"

"I am afraid I do."

Barbara Heathcote had a temper, and though she usually held it in check it swept her away just then.

"Then, though we only discovered it afterwards, you knew that Saxton was scheming against my brother-in-law, and bought up the timber-rights to extort money from him?"

Again Brooke made a little gesture, and the girl, who seemed stirred as he had scarcely believed her capable of being, straightened herself rigidly.

"And yet you crept into his house, and permitted us – it is very hard to say it – to make friends with you! Had you no sense of fitness? Can't you even speak?"

Brooke was too confused, and the girl too furious, for either of them to realize the significance of her anger, since the fact that she had merely permitted him to meet her as an acquaintance at the ranch scarcely seemed to warrant that almost passionate outbreak.

"I'm afraid there is nothing I can plead in extenuation except that Grant Devine's agent swindled me," he said.

Barbara laughed scornfully. "And you felt that would warrant you playing the part you did. Was it a spy's part only, or were you to be a traitor, too?"

Then Brooke, who lost his head, did what was at the moment, at least, a most unwise thing.

"I expect I deserve all you can say or think of me," he said. "Still, I can't help a fancy that you are not quite free from responsibility."

"I?" said Barbara, incredulously.

Brooke nodded. "Yes," he said, desperately, "you heard me correctly. Under the circumstances it isn't exactly complimentary or particularly easy to explain. Still, you see, you showed me that the content with my surroundings I was sinking into was dangerous when you came to the Quatomac ranch; and afterwards the more I saw of you the more I realized what the six thousand dollars I hoped to secure from Devine would give me a chance of attaining."

He broke off abruptly, as though afraid to venture further, and Barbara watched him a moment, breathless with anger, with lips set. There was nobody on that part of the deck just then, and the steady pounding of the engines broke through what the man felt to be an especially disconcerting silence. Then she laughed in a fashion that stung him like a whip.

"And you fancied there were girls in this country with anything worth offering who would be content with such a man as you are?" she said. "One has, however, to bear with a good deal that is said about Canada, and perhaps you would have been able to keep the deception that gained the appreciation of one of them up. You are proficient at that kind of thing."

"I am quite aware that the excuse is a very poor one."

The girl felt that whether it was dignified or not the relief speech afforded was imperative.

"Haven't you even the wit to urge the one creditable thing you did?"

Brooke contrived to meet her eyes. "You mean when I came into the ranch one night. You don't know that was merely a part of the rest?"

The blood rushed to Barbara's face. "The man was your confederate, and you fell out over the booty – or perhaps you heard me coming and arranged the little scene for my benefit?"

"No," said Brooke, with a harsh laugh. "In that case the climax of it would have been unnecessarily realistic. You may remember that he shot me. Still, since you may as well know the worst of me, it happened that we both came there with the same purpose, which is somewhat naturally accounted for by the fact that your brother-in-law was away that night."

"And you allowed me to sympathize with you for your injury and to fancy – "

Barbara broke off abruptly, for it appeared inadvisable under the circumstances to let him know what motive she had accredited him with.

"My brother-in-law is naturally not aware of this?" she said.

"I, at least, considered it necessary to acquaint him with most of it before I went to the Dayspring. No doubt you will find it difficult to credit that, but if it appears worth while you can of course confirm it. You would evidently have been less tolerant than he has shown himself!"

Barbara stood up, and Brooke became sensible of intense relief as he saw Mrs. Devine was approaching with a bundle of wraps.

"I would sooner have sacrificed the mine than continue to have any dealings with you," she said.

Then she turned away, and left him sitting somewhat limply in his chair and staring vacantly at the sea. He saw no more of her during the rest of the voyage, but when two hours later the steamer reached Victoria he went straight to the cable company's office and sent his kinsman in England a message which somewhat astonished him.

"Buy Dayspring on my account as far as funds will go," it read.

XXIV.

ALLONBY STRIKES SILVER

Winter had closed in early, with Arctic severity, and the pines were swathed in white and gleaming with the frost when Brooke stood one morning beside the crackling stove in the shanty he and Allonby occupied at the Dayspring mine. A very small piece of rancid pork was frizzling in the frying-pan, and he was busy whipping up two handfuls of flour with water, to make flapjacks of. He could readily have consumed twice as much alone, for it was twelve hours since his insufficient six o'clock supper, but he realized that it was advisable to curb his appetite. Supplies had run very low, and the lonely passes over which the trail to civilization led were blocked with snow, while it was a matter of uncertainty when the freighter and his packhorse train could force his way in.

When the flour was ready he stirred the stove to a brisker glow, and, crossing the room, flung open the outer door. It was still an hour or two before sunrise, and the big stars scintillated with an intensity of frosty radiance, though the deep indigo of the cloudless vault was paling in color, and the pines were growing into definite form. Here and there a sombre spire or ragged branch rose harshly from the rest, but, for the most part, they were smeared with white, and his eyes were dazzled by the endless vista of dimly-gleaming snow. Towering peak and serrated rampart rose hard and sharp against a background of coldest blue. There was no sound, for the glaciers' slushy feet that fed the streams had hardened into adamant, and a deathlike silence pervaded the frozen wilderness.

Brooke felt the cold strike through him with the keenness of steel, and was about to cross the space between the shanty and the men's log shelter, when a dusky figure, beating its arms across its chest, came out of the latter.

"Are the rest of the boys stirring yet?" he said.

The man laughed, and his voice rang with a curious distinctness through the nipping air.

"I guess we've had the stove lit 'most an hour ago," he said. "They've no use for being frozen, and that's what's going to happen to some of us unless we can make Truscott's before it's dark. Say, hadn't you better change your mind, and come along with us?"

Brooke made a little sign of negation, though it would have pleased him to fall in with the suggestion. Work is seldom continued through the winter at the remoter mines, and he had most unwillingly decided to pay off the men, owing to the difficulty of transporting provisions and supplies. There was, however, a faint probability of somebody attempting to jump the unoccupied claim, and he had of late become infected by Allonby's impatience, while he felt that he could not sit idle in the cities until the thaw came round again. Still, he was quite aware that he ran no slight risk by remaining.

"I'm not sure that it wouldn't be wiser, but I've got to stay," he said. "Anyway, Allonby wouldn't come."

The other man dropped his voice a little. "That don't count. If you'll stand in, we'll take him along on the jumper sled. The old tank's 'most played out, and it's only the whisky that's keeping the life in him. He'll go out on the long trail sudden when there's no more of it, and it's going to be quite a long while before the freighter gets a load over the big divide."

Brooke knew that this was very likely, but he shook his head. "I'm half afraid it would kill him to leave the mine," he said. "It's the hope of striking silver that's holding him together as much as the whisky."

"Well," said the man, who laughed softly, "I've been mining and prospecting most of twenty years, and it's my opinion that, except the little you're getting on the upper level, there's not a dollar's worth of silver here. Now I guess Harry will have breakfast ready."

He moved away, and when Brooke went back into the shanty, Allonby came out of an inner room shivering. His face showed grey in the lamplight, and he looked unusually haggard and frail.

"It's bitter cold, and I seem to feel it more than I did last year," he said. "We will, however, be beyond the necessity of putting up with any more unpleasantness of the kind long before another one is over. I shall probably feel adrift then – it will be difficult, in my case, to pick up the thread of the old life again."

"If you stay here, I'm not sure you'll have an opportunity of doing it at all," said Brooke. "It's a risk a stronger man than you are might shrink from."

"Still, I intend to take it. We have gone into this before. If I leave Dayspring before I find the silver, I leave it dead."

Brooke made a little gesture of resignation. "Well," he said, "I have done all I could, and now, if you will pour that flour into the pan, we'll have breakfast."

Both men were silent during the frugal meal, for they knew what they had to look forward to, and the cold silence of the lonely land already weighed upon their spirits. Long weeks of solitude must be dragged through before the men who were going south that morning came back again, while there might very well be interludes of scarcity, and hunger is singularly hard to bear with the temperature at forty degrees below. Allonby only trifled with his food, and smiled drily when at last he thrust his plate aside.

"Dollars are not to be picked up easily anywhere, and you and I are going to find out the full value of them before the thaw begins again," he said. "We shall, no doubt, also discover how thoroughly nauseated one can become with his companion's company. I have heard of men wintering in the mountains who tried to kill one another."