CHAPTER V

Summoned Home

BRATLEY JUNCTION was a small depot on a branch line, and it was rather a stretch of the imagination to call it a junction at all, since it ended fifteen miles farther on at Camp’s Gulch, while the one little branch was the bit of line running up five miles into the mountains to the Roseneath Mines.

There were mines everywhere in that district. Down on the plains, up in the hoary sides of the towering hills, and tucked away in gloomy cañons the human family dug, delved, and toiled, wresting coal, iron, copper, and even silver, from the covering earth.

Then, when man had done his best, or worst, in upheaving and making desolate what Nature had intended should be wild and beautiful, another sort of man—only sometimes it was a woman—set to work at bringing order out of chaos, and levelling the heaps flung up by the human moles, laid out little fields and fruitful gardens in the sunny hollows of the western hills.

A very different class of settlers these from the dwellers in the middle west, who till their ground, harvest their crops, and thresh their corn by machinery. It was mostly hand work here, and, in many cases, very hard work. No great fortunes were possible, but a living could be wrested from the soil, and a race of boys and girls, self-reliant and clever, were growing up to carve careers for themselves, and to win honourable names among the powerful of the earth.

The Bratley depot was a long wooden shed divided into offices and storerooms, while half a dozen houses, also of wood, clustered near.

The work of the girl telegraph clerk was not heavy, nor yet tremendously important, so it was usually a beginner who was stationed there, and very dull work most of the beginners found it.

Gertrude Lorimer was no exception, and she had groaned fully as much as her predecessors in office over the boredom of life at Bratley.

But she was in her second year now, and hoping for speedy promotion, more especially as her duty had been so thoroughly done, that she had never been reprimanded for any sort of neglect.

She was leaning over the slab where her instrument was fixed, tidying books and papers on the shelf above. The September morning was warm and sunny, while Gertrude’s mood was of the happiest, for a holiday of a very special sort was in prospect, and she was putting the office in nice order for the deputy, who was to arrive by the noon train to supply her place for a fortnight.

Her holiday was to be spent in New Westminster, and the thought of two weeks in a real city with business blocks, river steamboats, trams, and all the other luxuries of civilization compensated Gertrude for not going home this fall.

Lorimer’s Clearing, where her people lived, was a lonely farmstead lying almost close to the American frontier, a difficult journey from Bratley, which took a whole day to perform.

Gertrude had suffered many a fit of home sickness since she had been at Bratley, for she was one of those girls to whom home is everything, and neither by nature nor training was she fitted to stand alone.

But one could not see the world at Lorimer’s Clearing, so the summer holiday this year was to be spent in the city, with a view to enlarging her understanding, and as she was to stay with a sister of her father’s who lived at New Westminster, she would still be among her own kinsfolk.

Presently, in through the open door of the telegraph office came a stout, bustling woman, with a cast in her eye, who held up her hands in amazement at Gertrude’s activity.

“Well, Miss Lorimer, if you don’t just beat everything; turning the place inside out, as if it was regular spring-cleaning time instead of a fall holiday!”

“Oh, I’m only having a dust down, Mrs. Nichols. I could not leave the place in a muddle for my deputy, or I should deserve that she, in her turn, would leave it so for me,” Gertrude said, as she flourished her duster along the high shelf, raising a great dust.

“Don’t flick your duster so, child; just pass it gently along, sort of wrapping the dust into it as you go. What you are doing now is to set all them atoms in active circulation for a few minutes, then back they settles again thicker than ever,” expostulated Mrs. Nichols, who was a notable housewife, and hated to see work done in an improper fashion.

“That is what my mother always says, but I’m afraid that I am not a domestic genius; my ambitions don’t lie that way,” laughed Gertrude.

“It is of little use having ambitions, for you’ll never realize them if you don’t set out to do everything first class as you go along,” retorted Mrs. Nichols, with a wag of her head.

Gertrude was beginning a laughing reply when a call clicked out from her instrument, and she dropped her duster to take down the message which was arriving.

Mrs. Nichols waited until this was done, filling in the pause with an active raid on the next shelf. As she stood with her back to Gertrude, she did not know that anything was wrong, until she was startled by a faint moaning cry, and turned quickly to find the girl’s face had turned ghastly white.

“Law, child, whatever is the matter? Has bad news come over the wire? Sure it ain’t another big fire in the city?” cried the good woman, in alarm.

Her husband had lost his life in the great conflagration which had swept over the city some years previously, and since then her main idea of trouble had been some similar disaster.

“No, no, it is a message from home; there is great trouble, and I must go. Oh, what a mercy it is that my deputy is coming to-day, because now I can get away this evening!” Gertrude said, with panting breath.

“What sort of trouble?” demanded the widow.

“My eldest brother Percy, the one next to me, is not expected to live; Arthur is very ill too. My poor mother must be nearly distracted, for she just dotes on those two.”

“It won’t be any use your going to-night; you will just be dumped out at Blakeson’s somewhere about midnight, and there you’ll have to stay till morning. No, the only thing you can do is to send a message that you’ll be home to-morrow afternoon; then they’ll send the wagon to meet you at the depot, for you won’t want to walk seven miles when you get out of the cars,” said Mrs. Nichols.

“Oh, I can’t wait; it will be dreadful! Think of the torture of lying awake all night, and wondering what is going to happen to those poor boys,” wailed Gertrude.

“You will be very foolish to lie awake. It is some one to help that your mother will want, not a poor worn-out creature, only fit to be put to bed and nursed like a baby. I only hope it ain’t nothing infectious, for I’d just hate for you to go home and get sick.”

There was anxiety in the tone of Mrs. Nichols now, for she had grown really attached to her young lodger in the months that Gertrude had boarded with her.

“I don’t care if I do get sick; I don’t care what happens to me at all, if only the boys get better!” wailed Gertrude. “Why, they are just the life of the home—and so clever, too.”

“They will get better, don’t you fear. Boys can pull through anything; it is girls that want most taking care of. Well, well, but this is a damper for you, and you just starting off to the city for your holiday, too!” sighed the stout woman, in kindly concern.

“I’m thankful I hadn’t started. Oh dear, how shall I get through the hours until to-morrow morning?” And Gertrude’s sobs broke forth afresh at the thought of the long wait in front of her.

“You’ll get through right enough; and, after all, it is only a minute at a time, you know. But you had better send a message to your aunt to say that you are not coming. Then, when your deputy comes, and you are off duty, just you come right home and go to bed.”

“What, in the middle of the afternoon?” cried Gertrude, aghast.

“Why not? You have nothing else to do, and the more rest you get before you start the more help you will be when you get home.”

The sound wisdom of this suggestion commended itself to Gertrude, who knew her own limitations pretty thoroughly, and was perfectly well aware that she would be of no use at home if she were worn out with worrying and want of sleep.

The deputy arrived in due course. This time the operator was no raw hand, but one who had somehow failed to get on, and was, in consequence, thankful to get chance work for a time. This was a great comfort to Gertrude, as probably the deputy would be willing to do duty longer than the fortnight if required, and so the post would be kept open for her.

She had to leave Bratley by the first train, which was very early. Several changes of cars were necessary, and there was a long wait of two hours at Blakeson’s, where she had to change from main-line cars on to a branch line again. It was the middle of the afternoon when she stepped out of the cars at the depot nearest to her own home, and saw her father waiting for her with the wagon.

Abe Lorimer, a meek, quiet-looking man of fifty years, had a bowed, broken look that Gertrude had never noticed before. Her heart gave a sudden throb of pain as she saw him, and when they stood face to face it was her eyes, and not her tongue, which asked the question she could not, from very fear, put into speech.

“He’s gone, poor lad; died this morning at the dawning,” jerked out the stricken father.

“Dead—Percy?” gasped Gertrude, turning white to the lips, and reeling as if she were about to faint.

“Get into the wagon, and let’s be off sharp; seems as if I can’t bear the neighbours coming to tell me how sorry they are,” said Abe, with an apprehensive look at a group of loungers, who had strolled up to see the cars come in.

Gertrude gathered her various belongings up in blind haste, her father lifted her trunk into the wagon, and the two were driving away from the depot before the loungers had time to make any further comment to each other than that Abe Lorimer looked pretty sick. But as he mostly had a melancholy appearance, no one paid special heed to it on this occasion.

Gertrude, struggling with her sobs, was trying to steady her voice enough to ask how it had all happened, yet she lacked the courage for her question, because there was something in her father’s face which warned her there might be still more ill news to follow.

They were out of sight of the railway track, and the two horses were going at a steady trot up the long two mile rise to the village, where the store and the saw-mills were, and then Abe broke into speech again—

“Arthur is very low down; the doctor doesn’t think there is much chance of his pulling through, but if both the boys are taken, it will be my death-blow. I’ve got a sort o’ feeling inside me, that I can’t stand up against it nohows.”

Gertrude slid her arm through her father’s, and laid her cheek against the rough sleeve of his jacket. There was no word of comfort that she could say to him, but for the time her pity for his suffering was so keen, that she had no opportunity of giving way to her own sorrow.

Mounting the rise, the horses broke into a quicker pace, went down the hill through the village—the town, some people called it—tore round the corner, and, dashing past the saw-mills, took the next rise at a gallop.

“Father, how did the boys get sick?” Gertrude asked, after a long silence. She was growing desperate now, for the line of trees right in front of them marked the boundary-line of Lorimer’s Clearing, and she must know about the trouble before she reached home and met her mother.

“There’s a sort o’ malarial fever going about; it don’t amount to much if you stay in bed and keep warm when it’s on you. The boys took it, but there was no keeping ’em in bed, and one day they went bathing in the Black Cauldron—you know how cold the water is there—and that’s what did the mischief. Patsey looks poorly this morning, and your mother is keeping him in bed. It is a good thing harvest is over; if the sickness had come two weeks ago, it would have been pretty near ruin.”

Gertrude nodded. Having been brought up on a farm, she understood very well what a frightful disaster sickness in harvest time would be.

“Lots of folks are ill round about here,” Abe went on, as if he found it a relief to talk, now that the ice was broken. “The doctor said this morning that Giles Bailey’s aunt was very bad, so sick he didn’t think she’d pull through, and there ain’t a woman to be got for love or money to sit up with her o’ nights.”

“Giles Bailey’s aunt?” echoed Gertrude. “I don’t think I know them, either nephew or aunt.”

“Very likely not. The aunt, Mrs. Munson, has got a farm about five miles the other side of the boundary, and Giles works it for her. A good sort of lad, but slow. He used to come over to singing-school last winter at Pratt’s Corner, but the boys said school was mostly half over before Giles turned up, and that he’d no more notion of singing than a raven.”

Gertrude smiled, but a sob came up in her throat, and had to be battled with. Percy and Arthur sang so beautifully themselves, and had always been regarded as the stars of the winter singing-school.

“Father, there’s Flossie coming to open the gate; poor little girl, how lame she is!” Gertrude said, five minutes later, as the horses trotted swiftly down the last stretch of cleared cornland toward the house, which stood with its back to a forest-clad hill. Her eyes had caught sight of a diminutive figure coming, with a series of bobbing jerks, over the ground to open the field gate.

“She is lame, but she is uncommon useful, poor little maid, and has taken baby off your mother’s hands entirely, ever since the boys got sick,” Abe answered, with a sigh.

Flossie was nine, and suffered from some kind of hip trouble, which prevented her from going to school, or sharing the sports and pleasures of the other children, yet she was a very happy little maiden usually, despite these drawbacks, and home owed more of its brightness to her than any one would have suspected. But Flossie was under a shadow this morning, and, seeing the mute distress on the little sister’s face, Gertrude braced herself to a great effort of self-forgetfulness, and determined to be as brave as she could, for the sake of the others.