CHAPTER XIII

On the List

BUT for the secret care she carried, the weeks which followed Nell’s coming to Bratley would have been the pleasantest she had ever known.

After the isolation of Blue Bird Ridge, Bratley Junction was quite a gay and bustling place. It was true there were only about half a score of houses, scattered about in the vicinity of the depot, and the trains which went through were chiefly freight wagons or cars laden with miners, on their way to or from the mines at Camp’s Gulch and Roseneath.

But there were life and movement; she saw faces and heard voices; moreover, she was learning new things, and becoming every day more conscious of the strength that was in her—the power to work, to think, and to act as she had never done before.

At first the strangeness of having no hard drudging toil was very great, but it soon wore off, the sooner perhaps because she worked so very hard at the new duties which had come to fill her days, while her energy in the acquirement of all sorts of knowledge appeared to increase with her opportunities for learning.

By the time she had been at Bratley a month she had raised her time qualification to twenty-two words a minute, and had been put on the list of candidates for permanent posts by the inspector when he came his round.

It was a nervous moment for Nell when the inspector walked into her office one morning, accompanied by his assistant, for he was a big man with a dictatorial manner, and her courage oozed out at her finger-tips when he began to question her about her work, and to find fault with some irregularity in transmission between her office and Roseneath, concerning which complaints had been made at headquarters.

“The train men say that the trouble is owing to snow-laden branches of some spruce trees, that grow near the track, resting on the wires. It is only when there is fresh snow that we find irregularity,” Nell said quietly, though inwardly she quaked from fear lest this much-dreaded official should lay the blame on her, which would re-act upon Gertrude, whose deputy she was.

“How far is this place?” asked the inspector.

“About two miles up the valley,” replied Nell, promptly.

The big man opened his notebook, consulted it carefully, then spoke in a pleasanter tone.

“Yes; according to the reading of the galvanometer at Lytton, that would be about the distance. Now, how am I to get there?”

“Some freight cars go up in about two hours,” suggested Nell.

He shook his head. “Too long to wait; anything else to suggest?”

“Snow-shoes, if you can use them; the snow is fairly firm to-day,” she answered, with a look at the pair in the corner which the baggage-clerk had hunted out for her recreation.

“The very thing. Do you know anything about snow-shoes?” asked the inspector, turning to his assistant, a sickly-looking youth, who, like Nell, was a deputy.

“I have seen them,” replied the lad, with a nervous look at the pair in the corner.

“That is no answer. Can you use them?” asked the inspector, brusquely.

“I have never tried,” said the lad, in a tone of deprecating apology. Then he coughed so long and badly, that all Nell’s pity was stirred on his behalf.

“If your assistant could operate for me, I would go with you, sir; and I can ask the baggage-clerk to find you a pair of snow-shoes,” she said eagerly, for the prospect of a few miles’ run on snow-shoes was alluring to her, after her long days of imprisonment in the warm, stuffy little office.

The inspector’s face, which had been gathering a frown of portentous blackness, instantly relaxed into a more genial expression.

“That will do very well. Robertson is quite capable of looking after your office, but it is plain that he would be of no use at all on snow-shoes. Can you be ready soon?”

“At once,” replied Nell, slipping on her coat and cap. Then, running out, she found the baggage-clerk, and asked him to bring a pair of snow-shoes for the inspector’s use.

In less than ten minutes they were off, speeding up the narrow valley by the side of the Roseneath track, and before they had gone a quarter of a mile, Nell found that she was by far the more expert on snow-shoes, and exulted accordingly.

“I suppose you are a country girl, Miss Hamblyn?” remarked the inspector, in a tone of query, as he succeeded in overhauling her again, after she had stood still to permit him to overtake her.

“Yes, or I might not have known how to use snow-shoes at all,” she replied, with a laugh. She was a little breathless from the sharp exercise in the keen air, and her cheeks were flushed to a bright red from the same cause.

“I would always rather have to do with young people brought up in the country. It is not merely that physically they are more vigorous, but mentally they have more grasp and capacity,” he said, as they went side by side up a long slope, in a part of the valley which ran like a deep crease between the wooded heights on either side.

“Town children have more advantages,” replied Nell, thinking of those empty years on Blue Bird Ridge, when no part of her seemed to grow except her body.

“Advantages, so called, are not everything, and sometimes one is better off without them. Look at that assistant of mine, brought up in a town, and coddled mentally and physically ever since he was born, the consequence of which is that he has not a scrap of originality or even initiative in his composition,” said the inspector, who had lost his official majesty of bearing under the influence of vigorous exercise, and was just simply genial and friendly.

“To me his great lack appeared to be in bodily strength, poor boy,” Nell said, in a tone of pity.

“He certainly isn’t very fit,” remarked the inspector.

Then for a few minutes no conversation was possible, for, with Nell going in front, they were speeding down a slope to a corner where the track wound with a sharp curve round a great cliff of ironstone. Tremendously valuable that cliff would be some day, for here and there on the bare precipitous sides, the ore showed in great red stains and patches.

The cutting running through this part of the valley was so narrow that the telegraph wires had been carried over the cliff, and it was upon this height that the interruption to proper transmission must have occurred.

“It will be a stiff climb,” remarked the inspector, in a dubious tone.

“We had better go up that way; the trees are thinner, and we shall not have to take off our snow-shoes so soon,” said Nell, pointing to an opening which promised a long round.

The inspector followed her without a word, and presently, after ten minutes of pretty stiff exertion, they found themselves on the top of the cliff, with the railway track far below.

But the telegraph wires were high above them, carried here on some dead spruce trees of which the branches had been lopped clean away, leaving only naked stems standing.

There were young trees growing beside these old dead stems, and their snow-laden branches sagging downward had wrought the mischief on the wires.

The inspector had brought a small handsaw with his other tools, and, mounting the post, he speedily cut away the encumbrance, while Nell watched him from below, dodging the debris as it came down.

“Another day of this kind of thing, and the wire would have been broken,” said the inspector.

“Then no messages could have gone through, which would have been awkward,” Nell remarked. She had been busy tying various articles to the string which had been lowered by her companion for the purpose, thus saving him the trouble and loss of time of a descent from his lofty perch.

“No message could have been sent unless the two ends were held in contact so that the current could pass. But if the wire were broken or cut here, I could send without an instrument,” he replied. Being by nature a teacher, and only by training an inspector, he instinctively sowed information wherever the soil seemed fertile.

“Could you? How?” Nell’s face, as she stood looking up, was tense and eager, so that, despite his official brusqueness, the inspector smiled as he glanced downward.

“I should tap the two ends together, so opening and closing the circuit; that, in reality, is all that a telegraph key does. An inexperienced person might have some difficulty in reading such a message, but it would be easy enough to a good operator,” explained the inspector; and then, from the top of his pole, he launched into a lecture on telegraphy, whilst he finished clearing away the spruce branches, so leaving the wires free from any danger of contact.

“It is such wonderful work, and so interesting!” cried Nell, as, the work ended, the inspector buckled on his snow-shoes again, and the two set off towards Bratley once more.

“Properly speaking, all science is interesting—to a real student, that is; but electricity and all connected with it is positively enthralling,” replied the inspector. Then he launched into descriptions of the mystery and wonder of the science, which lasted, with few interruptions, for the whole way back to the depot.

So the dreaded visit of the inspector had gone off like a festival day, and the letter Nell wrote to Gertrude that night was rose-coloured all through, which was a fortunate thing, for the reply which came back in the course of a week was tinged with deep depression.

“Home will never be the same again I fear” (wrote Gertrude). “Father and mother are both so bowed and broken with trouble, that I tremble to look at them. Father can’t get strong either, and he has such a terrible cough. Dr. Shaw is worried about him, I know, and is always talking to mother about the need for feeding him up. But poor mother is so absorbed in grieving about Percy and Arthur, that she seems to have no attention to spare for anything else, so Flossie and I have to coddle father as best we can. I would resign Bratley altogether and stay at home now to help father and mother, only they won’t hear of it—at least mother won’t, though I think father would like to have me here with him. So by-and-by when the spring comes and I am a little stronger, I shall have to turn you out, my poor brave Nell; you know how I shall hate to do it, and yet there seems no other way. I have been trying to persuade mother that the best thing she can do is to ask you to come back and stay the summer at Lorimer’s Clearing, but she says she is quite equal to the work herself, and as Dr. Shaw says that work is her best medicine, there seems nothing else to be done but to leave her to herself. Oh dear! life is such a grievous tangle just now, and I have not your courage for the hard places. This is a dismal letter, but it is such a comfort to tell you my troubles. Your loving

“GERTRUDE.”

Nell sighed a little as she read the letter. Just in her heart of hearts, it did seem hard that she could not keep the Bratley post, now that she could fill it so well; and Gertrude was needed at home, in spite of all Mrs. Lorimer might say about it, for Abe Lorimer clung to his eldest daughter more than to any of his children, and if he were weak and ill he must need her all the more.

Mrs. Nichols said the same thing, when the letter was read to her.

“Miss Lorimer ought not to come back, that’s plain, and if she sent in her resignation now, they’d be sure to give the berth to you; then we could settle down as cosy as you please. But there is always a contrary person somewhere, and it is mostly a woman. That is how I have found it,” she remarked, shaking her head with a dissatisfied air.

“Mr. Lorimer was very ill when I was at Lorimer’s Clearing. For days the doctor did not think that he could get better,” Nell said, with a troubled look on her face, for she was wondering what would become of all that helpless little family, if the breadwinner were to be taken away.

“He hadn’t got the look of old bones, that time when he brought his daughter here, when she first came to take the post. A nice, kind sort of man he seemed, and I didn’t wonder at Miss Lorimer setting such store by him,” said Mrs. Nichols.

Nell’s eyes filled with tears; she was thinking of what Gertrude had told her about Abe Lorimer putting her in his prayers during those days of his sickness. No one to her knowledge had prayed for her since her father had died, and it thrilled her heart to feel that one good man felt sufficient interest in her to remember her when he knelt to pray.

“Perhaps I shall be able to get deputy work somewhere else by the time Gertrude is able to come back. If not I must take to housework, or nursing, or anything else that comes handy,” she said, with forced cheerfulness. “Only I won’t go into a big city, if I can get work anywhere else, for it would nearly choke me, I think, to be where there were acres and acres all covered with tall houses stretching right up to the sky nearly.”

“Big cities are all very well to them that like that sort of thing; but no one, not in this country anyhow, need go to live in them if they’d rather stay out in the open. Mind you, I won’t say but wages are better in the big cities, and the work is mostly more lively and cleaner; but the pushing and the struggling, and the dreadful competition, are enough to frighten any one into grey hairs before they’ve years enough to make them middle-aged,” said Mrs. Nichols, with a reflective sigh. Then she put her hand up to smooth her own hair, which showed only here and there a thread of silver; but life had been kind to her.

“Oh, I shall stay in the country, and be satisfied with a small salary,” laughed Nell. Then she added in a graver tone, “It has been delightful living here with you, just like one long holiday; but I shall not be sorry when I have work of my very own to do. I’m nothing but a stop-gap now, you see. Indeed, that is what I seem fated to be. When I was nursing Mrs. Munson, I was doing the work of some one else. It was about the same when I was at Lorimer’s Clearing; I was just filling up their places until they were all well enough to take their own work again, then I just had to move on and stop the next gap.”

“Well, it is honourable work, anyhow, even if the pay isn’t very great. Besides, if you do other people’s work the very best you know, you are morally certain to do your own work all the better when you come to it. But what puzzles me is where all your mother’s money went to, Nell, for Parson Hamblyn wasn’t the sort of man to make ducks and drakes of it,” Mrs. Nichols said, reverting to a subject already well thrashed out between them.

“I don’t think she could have had very much,” the girl said, a little wearily, “for we were always poor when I was a child; we weren’t really pinched, you know, but there was only just enough.”

“No, it might not have been very much, but even a little would make a difference to you, my dear, and if your father supposed you would be able to go on boarding at Mrs. Chapman’s after his death, it is a sure sign that he had not spent all the money. I’m afraid you’ve been tricked out of it somehow by that crafty old Doss Umpey.”

“Never mind, I’d just as soon be without it, for there is no money so sweet as what I earn for myself,” Nell answered cheerfully; but her cheeks paled, for just then she always shivered and felt bad when Mrs. Nichols spoke of the old man.