Chapter 32

SEAFORTH'S REINSTATEMENT

There is on the road between Vancouver and New Westminster a strip of primeval bush. Beyond it the Fraser meadows stretch, open to wind and sun, westwards to the sea, but beneath the great black pines it is dim and shadowy, and Seaforth was glad of that as he stood leaning against a hemlock one sunny afternoon. He would have found the task he had undertaken almost impossible in the glare of the white road that ran straight under the open sky, but the stillness of that green realm of shadow where all things were softened in the faint half-light had made it a trifle easier. Also, the essence of the spring, which had come suddenly, was in the scent of pine and cedar, and it had given him courage, and set his pulses throbbing faster. It is possible that the man did not realize all the influences that upheld him then, but something that sprang from the steaming earth and the life that was stirring in every towering pine reacted upon him, and he gathered hope when he saw the reflex of it in the eyes of his companion.

She sat a pace or two apart from him on a cedar-trunk, and a dusty bicycle rested against the farther end of it. The dust was also thick upon her simple dress and the cotton gloves that lay in her hands. Her fingers had tightened upon them, and there was a flush in her cheeks when for a moment she glanced at the man. His face was a trifle colourless, but the girl looked aside again as she saw the tense anxiety in his eyes.

"And that is all," he said, with a little tremble in his voice. "You will think it is horribly too much?"

Nellie Townshead glanced away into the shadows of the bush, and there was pain and a trace of shrinking in her face, but it had vanished when she turned again, and her voice had a little imperious ring.

"And what made you tell me now?"

Seaforth spread his hands out with a little deprecatory gesture. "I expected this. The story I have told you should have shown you what I am--and while I wanted to tell it earlier I was afraid."

The colour was a trifle plainer in the cheeks of the girl, and her voice slightly more imperious still.

"That leaves the question unanswered. I still want to know what gave you the courage now?"

Seaforth understood her, and knew her pride. "I think Harry gave me some of it. You see, I never had a great deal."

"Harry?" said Miss Townshead, with a trace of astonishment that was not quite free from disdain.

Seaforth moved his head. "Yes," he said. "What I have told you I told him, and he seemed to think that one could live--even that kind of thing--down. He is, you see, a somewhat exacting man, and that gave me the hope that you would be as merciful."

"Still, you have not answered me."

Seaforth flushed a little. "I know what you mean--but would even what I have told you warrant you thinking that of me?"

"I must know," said the girl.

Seaforth was silent a moment. "There is a distinction--but it is difficult to draw," he said. "Well, I could not bear to think of you struggling on down here alone with everything against you. There were times when it almost maddened me, and at last, though I knew it might cost me all I hoped for, I had to speak."

The girl's face softened. "And there was nothing else. You did not think that--because of anything which had happened--I should be more apt to listen?"

Seaforth was usually undemonstrative in bearing and speech, but he stood up stiffly, and his voice was a trifle strained. "That is what I have been trying to make clear, and I can only give you my word that I did not," he said. "If I had had more courage I would have told you that story long ago."

Nellie Townshead's eyes were very gentle now. "I felt I must make quite sure, because had it been otherwise I should never have forgiven you."

"And," said Seaforth slowly, "you can forgive the rest. I can make no protestations, but if I have gone straight in this country it was you who helped me, and I should never have gone down into the mire if I had known you in the other one. And now I have nothing, not even moderate prosperity to offer you."

"You think that would have counted?" said the girl.

"No," said Seaforth quietly, "not with you. It is because I have so little to offer I venture to ask so much. All the giving must be done by you."

Seaforth had, though not an eloquent man, pleaded his cause efficaciously, for although his words might have been better chosen, the inference behind them was plain; and while parts of his story had brought the colour to the cheeks of his companion, his blameless life in Canada was a very acceptable offering since he owed it to her. It is pleasant to feel oneself a refining influence, but it was not gratified vanity which stirred the girl. She had a wide charity, and was one of those whose mission is to give without looking for a return. She rose up slowly, and stood before him with eyes that had grown a trifle hazy.

"All that counts the most is yours still," she said. "And as to the rest--I think it is done with, Charley. You have lived it down."

Seaforth stretched out his hands and drew her to him. "God bless you, my dear, but you are wrong," he said, "All I had was yours two years ago."

It was some little time later when a creaking wagon swung round a bend of the road, and the bronzed rancher on the driving-seat laughed softly to himself as he saw Miss Townshead sitting demurely but with downcast face on one end of the cedar, and Seaforth, who appeared suspiciously unconcerned, at least six feet away. That was not just how he had seen them when with the soft dust muffling the rattle of wheels he and his team came out of the shadows which hung athwart the bend. The wagon was old and weather-scarred, the harness rudely patched with hide, but it is possible there was room in the life of strenuous toil the bushman lived for the romance that brightens everything, and he shouted a mirthful greeting to them as he whipped his team. Then as the wagon jolted on out under the sombre archway into the brightness of the sun there came drifting back to them the refrain of a song. It was one sung often in the bush of that country at the time, and the two who sat listening in the green stillness that sunny afternoon grasped the verity that underlay its crude sentimentality. Shorn of its harshness, by the distance the voice rang bravely through the thud of hoofs and rattle, of wheels, and there was in the half-heard words and jingling rhythm what there was in the sunshine and scent of steaming earth, the life and hope of the eternal spring.

Seaforth laughed a little as he stretched his hand out to the girl, but the light which shone back at him from her eyes was softer than that of mirth.

"I think that man knows what we know," he said. "Come out into the sunlight. The world is not what it was an hour ago."

They were plodding down the dazzling road, one on either side of the dusty bicycle under the open sky when he spoke again.

"All this makes me sorry for Harry."

"Yes," said the girl reflectively, for she saw there was more to follow.

Seaforth bent his head. "He has so little now. Hallam has beaten us all round, and Harry's face takes my sleep away. Everything he hoped for has been taken from him, and he is lame, you see."

Nellie Townshead glanced at him swiftly. "One would scarcely notice it. You have something in your mind, Charley."

Seaforth's face was troubled as he answered her. "It is a little difficult to put into words, and if it was anybody else than Harry I would not try. Still, Alice Deringham is almost as much to him as you are to me--and I don't think she knows the truth, you see."

Nellie Townshead flushed a little, and there was a trace of anger in her eyes. "If Miss Deringham is punished for her wicked pride what is that to you?"

"Nothing," said Seaforth quietly. "Still--because of what I saw at the ranch--I am sorry for her, and Harry, who has been a very good friend to me, is being punished too. We have so much, you and I, and he has nothing now."

The girl did not answer him for at least a minute, and appeared concerned about something that rattled in the bicycle. Then she stopped and looked up at the man with a great tenderness in her eyes.

"You want to tell her? Well, it will be very difficult, but I will do it for you."

Seaforth stooped and kissed the little ungloved hand on the bicycle reverentially. "I don't know how I asked you, and knowing how much has been given me I am almost afraid," he said.

Nellie Townshead smiled at him, but she said nothing further until they parted, and Seaforth turned back towards Vancouver city. He was brimming over with good-will to everybody when he reached it, and as it happened found storekeeper Horton, who came down there occasionally, waiting for him. Horton was by no means a genius or well versed in legal procedure, but he had a ready wit, and Seaforth felt prompted to tell him the story of their first disastrous march, which Alton had hitherto but partially narrated, though he suppressed its final incident. Horton listened gravely with his most magisterial air.

"Harry's no fool, but he don't know everything," he said. "Now I see where you and me can take a hand in."

"Yes?" said Seaforth thoughtfully.

Horton nodded. "It was Damer who recorded your claim."

"Damer?" said Seaforth. "That was the man Harry pitched into the river at Somasco."

Horton chuckled. "You're right. Harry's just a trifle too handy at slinging folks into rivers and down stairways. Well, the fellow was hanging round my store, and I thought I knew him and wasn't sure, but when I saw his name down on the Crown mining record that fixed me. Now you're quite ready, you and Tom, to swear to the story you told me?"

"Of course, but still I don't see----"

Horton's eyes twinkled. "You will presently. That's where being a magistrate comes in. I'm going to take hold of Damer for horse-stealing."

A thought came swiftly into Seaforth's mind, and he smote the table. "But I can't swear it was Damer. You would never convict him."

Horton laughed the bushman's almost silent laugh. "I don't know that I want to. Anyway, I can keep on remanding him, and when I sent him up for trial it would be a rancher's jury. That's going to give us a pull on Mr. Hallam, who is standing in somewhere behind the whole thing--and I kind of fancy there's another man with him."

Seaforth's face grew grave. "Then, as Harry wouldn't like it and there's nothing in it, I'd get rid of that fancy. Now, of course, you know what you can do, but isn't it playing a little too much into your own hand? And you see folks might get talking about the thing."

Horton put on his most impressive air. "There's justice by statute, and there's equity, as well as a lot more you never heard about," said he.

Seaforth could not check his smile. "And which of them is what we're going to do?"

"This," said Horton solemnly, "is--all of them. It's the square thing. Is there any reason why a man shouldn't do what is right because it suits him? Anyway, it needn't worry you, because you can just sit up and watch the circus begin."

"Just one question. Was Damer the man who rode out for the railroad one snowy night, shortly before I started after Harry?"

Horton nodded, and wondered a little at the change in his companion, for there was a little flash in Seaforth's eyes and his voice had a ring. "Then," he said grimly, "I'm going to take a hand in, but there are several good reasons why we should not tell Harry."

It was a week later when Forel came home one night looking somewhat anxious and depressed. He said little during the evening meal, but after it spoke to his wife alone, and Mrs. Forel came upon Alice Deringham soon after she left him.

"I'm not going to get the new ponies after all," she said. "Poor Tom has been unfortunate again."

"I am sorry," said Alice Deringham. "You mean in the city?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Forel with a little sigh. "He is always a trifle sanguine, and he put a good many dollars into a venture Mr. Alton recommended. Tom expected a good deal from it--but the dollars have all gone."

Alice Deringham did not look at the speaker. "They have lost the money?"

"Well," said Mrs. Forel, "I believe they will do. I don't understand all of it, but Tom tells me that he can't see any hope for Alton unless a new railroad's built, or the Government does something for the Somasco country, and that does not seem likely."

"Please tell me all you know."

Mrs. Forel looked thoughtful. "It isn't a great deal. The land and ranches up at Somasco are not worth very much just now, but Alton persuaded Tom they would be presently, and he helped Alton to borrow more dollars from everybody who would lend them. Then they built mills and things which will not be much use to anybody unless a railroad comes in. The people would only lend him the money for a little while, and Alton had hoped to pay them out of a silver mine, but Hallam, it seems, has been working against him and got somebody to relocate the mine because Alton did not get there in time. Now unless Alton and his company can pay those dollars back the other people will take all he has away from him, and if the railroad is ever built it is they or Hallam, who has been trying to buy the mortgages from them, who will benefit."

"But," said Alice Deringham, "how was it that Mr. Alton did not make sure of the mine?"

"That is just what puzzles Tom. He stayed down here too long, and then there was a flood or something that delayed him. Still, if he had gone when he intended he would have been in time."

Mrs. Forel glanced at her companion curiously, but the girl sat very still with her face turned aside. It was almost a minute before she spoke again.

"And Mr. Alton takes it hardly?"

"Tom doesn't seem to know. Alton, he thinks, must be beaten, but he told him he meant holding on until the last dollar had gone. After all, I can't help feeling sorry for him. It must be hard to get oneself crippled and then lose everything, while Tom declares there was nothing in that other affair about the girl."

Alice Deringham said nothing, but Mrs. Forel saw the blood creep into the polished whiteness of her neck, and wished that she would look up. The girl's rigid stillness was, she fancied, a trifle unnatural, and suggested that there was a good deal behind it.

"Well," she said presently, "that is all I know, and I think Tom is waiting for me."

Mrs. Forel went away, and Alice Deringham sat where she had left her, white in face now, with something that was not wholly unlike horror in her eyes.

"And," she said, "I kept him."

Half an hour passed, and she did not move. Anger against her father and horror of herself were held in check as yet by a tense anxiety as to the end of the struggle she had plunged the man who loved her in. She could picture him standing with his grave quietness face to face with ruin, and holding on until the last faint hope had gone. Still, it seemed almost impossible that he should be beaten, and the curious confidence she had had in him reasserted itself and crept as a ray of brightness into the darkness of her humiliation. That might be borne or grappled with afterwards if Alton came out triumphant, but in the meanwhile she dare not think of herself or what she had done. Presently there was a tapping at the door, and a maid came in.

"There's a lady--Miss Townshead--waiting to see you, miss," she said.

Now Alice Deringham was the reverse of a timid woman, but for a few moments she felt her courage fail. Every instinct in her shrank from that meeting, but the maid had no cause to suspect it when she rose languidly and followed her. The interview was not of long duration, and nobody ever heard all that passed between the two, but when Seaforth, who had been waiting anxiously, handed Miss Townshead into the cars her eyes were misty.

"Was it very hard?" he said.

"No," the girl said slowly; "not after the beginning. I was angry when I went in, and I came away only sorry for her. There is a great deal more that is lovable in Miss Deringham than I ever fancied there could be."

"Yes," said Seaforth sapiently. "But it's much better when there's nothing else, which is the case with somebody I know. I like my gold free from alloy."

It was the next day when Deringham found his daughter alone in the sunny corner of the verandah. He carried a handful of papers, and the girl noticed that while he looked ill and haggard there was relief in his face. It was, however, with a vacant curiosity she waited for him to speak, for she had risen heavy-eyed and listless after a sleepless night. Deringham leaned against the balustrade in front of her, and appeared to find it somewhat difficult to begin.

"I have just spent an hour with Mr. Alton and a lawyer, and have something of importance to tell you," he said.

"I am listening," said the girl languidly, though Deringham fancied there were signs of a sudden intentness in her face.

"We will commence at the beginning. Alton appears to have been doubtful respecting his right to Carnaby, and seems to have felt in the first place that it would not be fitting for him to receive as a favour what was his father's by right. I do not know that many men would have regarded it in that light."

"I think," said the girl with a little quickening of her pulses, "that Mr. Alton's view was right!"

"Well," said Deringham, with a little smile that seemed to indicate that the point was not important, "that brings us to his other motive, which displays a very creditable feeling. Tristan Alton, as you know, only relented upon his deathbed, when, as I pointed out to our kinsman, his senses were, in the opinion even of those who signed his will, a trifle clouded, and Alton was reluctant to profit by a half-delirious fancy which deprived us, or to be more literal, you, of what was virtually your own. As I told him no man in the possession of all his wits would have made such a will, and there was a probability that it could he successfully contested."

"Then I think you blundered, father," said the girl.

Deringham raised his hand as though to indicate that he did not purpose to discuss the question. "I have been trying to show you that Alton never regarded Carnaby as his. You follow me?"

"No. I go farther," said the girl with a curious smile. "All that you have told me was quite clear to me some while ago."

"Now we come to the present. Alton has proved to myself and the lawyer that he is solvent. That is if he sold everything he could just pay his debts, but because he does not intend to sell, he stands figuratively speaking with his back to the wall, and appears to consider that financial ruin may overtake him. That being so he has while he has the power made over all his rights in Carnaby to you."

Alice Deringham rose up with a little gasp, quivering. "Father," she said in a strained voice, "I don't think I can forgive you."

Deringham smiled deprecatingly. "I think that is beside the point," he said. "It seems to me that Alton has acted most becomingly, and if he survives his difficulties we could, of course, come to some amicable understanding with him respecting the partition of the property."

The girl's face grew a trifle plainer, for one word had an ominous ring.

"There is more than you have told me," and once more it struck her that Deringham was curiously haggard.

"Well," he said, "life is always a trifle uncertain, and Alton has twice met with disaster in the ranges."

The girl stood still looking at him steadily with a vague terror in her eyes. Then she said slowly, "And I am the mistress of all the Carnaby property. It is mine to do what I like with. I could borrow money upon it, or sell it?"

"Under conditions," said Deringham with a little smile of relief, though his face grew clouded again. "Alton has made it yours, almost too absolutely."

Alice Deringham did not remember what next passed between them or how she dismissed her father, but presently she sat alone staring down across the blue inlet with eyes that saw nothing. She was numbly sensible of a horrible humiliation, but that troubled her the least. Alton was standing with his back to the wall and in some vague peril of his life, and it was she who had helped to betray him. She almost hated her father, and she loathed herself, and yet a ray of hope shone through her fears. Carnaby was wholly hers, and with it she held the power to help him. That something which would test her courage to the uttermost must be done before he would accept help from her she knew, but the pride which had been a curse to her was in the dust, and when the vague project slowly grew into shape she rose and sought Forel. She was very composed in speech and bearing, but when the merchant heard what she asked him he gasped with astonishment.

"I want it done as soon as possible," she said.