Chapter 9

On the morning following his conversation with Anderson on the Laggan road, Delaine impatiently awaited the arrival of the morning mail from Laggan. When it came, he recognised Anderson's handwriting on one of the envelopes put into his hand. Elizabeth, having kept him company at breakfast, had gone up to sit with Philip. Nevertheless, he took the precaution of carrying the letter out of doors to read it.

It ran as follows:

"DEAR MR. DELAINE--You were rightly informed, and the man you saw is my father. I was intentionally deceived ten years ago by a false report of his death. Into that, however, I need not enter. If you talked with him, as I understand you did, for half an hour, you will, I think, have gathered that his life has been unfortunately of little advantage either to himself or others. But that also is my personal affair--and his. And although in a moment of caprice, and for reasons not yet plain to me, he revealed himself to you, he appears still to wish to preserve the assumed name and identity that he set up shortly after leaving Manitoba, seventeen years ago. As far as I am concerned, I am inclined to indulge him. But you will, of course, take your own line, and will no doubt communicate it to me. I do not imagine that my private affairs or my father's can be of any interest to you, but perhaps I may say that he is at present for a few days in the doctor's hands and that I propose as soon as his health is re-established to arrange for his return to the States, where his home has been for so long. I am, of course, ready to make any arrangements for his benefit that seem wise, and that he will accept. I hope to come up to Lake Louise to-morrow, and shall bring with me one or two things that Lady Merton asked me to get for her. Next week I hope she may be able and inclined to take one or two of the usual excursions from the hotel, if Mr. Gaddesden goes on as well as we all expect. I could easily make the necessary arrangements for ponies, guides, &c.

"Yours faithfully,

"GEORGE ANDERSON."

"Upon my word, a cool hand! a very cool hand!" muttered Delaine in some perplexity, as he thrust the letter into his pocket, and strolled on toward the lake. His mind went back to the strange nocturnal encounter which had led to the development of this most annoying relation between himself and Anderson. He recalled the repulsive old man, his uneducated speech, the signs about him of low cunning and drunken living, his rambling embittered charges against his son, who, according to him, had turned his father out of the Manitoba farm in consequence of a family quarrel, and had never cared since to find out whether he was alive or dead. "Sorry to trouble you, sir, I'm sure--a genelman like you"--obsequious old ruffian!--"but my sons were always kittle-cattle, and George the worst of 'em all. If you would be so kind, sir, as to gie 'im a word o' preparation--"

Delaine could hear his own impatient reply: "I have nothing whatever, sir, to do with your business! Approach Mr. Anderson yourself if you have any claim to make." Whereupon a half-sly, half-threatening hint from the old fellow that he might be disagreeable unless well handled; that perhaps "the lady" would listen to him and plead for him with his son.

Lady Merton! Good heavens! Delaine had been immediately ready to promise anything in order to protect her.

Yet even now the situation was extremely annoying and improper. Here was this man, Anderson, still coming up to the hotel, on the most friendly terms with Lady Merton and her brother, managing for them, laying them under obligations, and all the time, unknown to Elizabeth, with this drunken old scamp of a father in the background, who had already half-threatened to molest her, and would be quite capable, if thwarted, of blackmailing his son through his English friends!

"What can I do?" he said to himself, in disgust. "I have no right whatever to betray this man's private affairs; at the same time I should never forgive myself--Mrs. Gaddesden would never forgive me--if I were to allow Lady Merton to run any risk of some sordid scandal which might get into the papers. Of course this young man ought to take himself off! If he had any proper feeling whatever he would see how altogether unfitting it is that he, with his antecedents, should be associating in this very friendly way with such persons as Elizabeth Merton and her brother!"

Unfortunately the "association" had included the rescue of Philip from the water of Lake Louise, and the provision of help to Elizabeth, in a strange country, which she could have ill done without. Philip's unlucky tumble had been, certainly, doubly unlucky, if it was to be the means of entangling his sister further in an intimacy which ought never to have been begun.

And yet how to break through this spider's web? Delaine racked his brain, and could think of nothing better than delay and a pusillanimous waiting on Providence. Who knew what mad view Elizabeth might take of the whole thing, in this overstrained sentimental mood which had possessed her throughout this Canadian journey? The young man's troubles might positively recommend him in her eyes!

No! there was nothing for it but to stay on as an old friend and watchdog, responsible, at least--if Elizabeth would have none of his counsels--to her mother and kinsfolk at home, who had so clearly approved his advances in the winter, and would certainly blame Elizabeth, on her return, for the fact that his long journey had been fruitless. He magnanimously resolved that Lady Merton should not be blamed if he could help it, by anyone except himself. And he had no intention at all of playing the rejected lover. The proud, well-born, fastidious Englishman stiffened as he walked. It was wounding to his self-love to stay where he was; since it was quite plain that Elizabeth could do without him, and would not regret his departure; but it was no less wounding to be dismissed, as it were, by Anderson. He would not be dismissed; he would hold his own. He too would go with them to Vancouver; and not till they were safely in charge of the Lieutenant-Governor at Victoria, would he desert his post.

As to any further communication to Elizabeth, he realised that the hints into which he had been so far betrayed had profited neither himself nor her. She had resented them, and it was most unlikely that she would ask him for any further explanations; and that being so he had better henceforward hold his peace. Unless of course any further annoyance were threatened.

* * * * *

The hotel cart going down to Laggan for supplies at midday brought Anderson his answer:

"DEAR MR. ANDERSON--Your letter gave me great concern. I deeply sympathise with your situation. As far as I am concerned, I must necessarily look at the matter entirely from the point of view of my fellow-travellers. Lady Merton must not be distressed or molested. So long, however, as this is secured, I shall not feel myself at liberty to reveal a private matter which has accidentally come to my knowledge. I understand, of course, that your father will not attempt any further communication with me, and I propose to treat the interview as though it had not happened.

"I will give Lady Merton your message. It seems to me doubtful whether she will be ready for excursions next week. But you are no doubt aware that the hotel makes what are apparently very excellent and complete arrangements for such things. I am sure Lady Merton would be sorry to give you avoidable trouble. However, we shall see you to-morrow, and shall of course be very glad of your counsels.

"Yours faithfully,

"ARTHUR MANDEVILLE DELAINE."

Anderson's fair skin flushed scarlet as he read this letter. He thrust it into his pocket and continued to pace up and down in the patch of half-cleared ground at the back of the Ginnells' house. He perfectly understood that Delaine's letter was meant to warn him not to be too officious in Lady Merton's service. "Don't suppose yourself indispensable--and don't at any time forget your undesirable antecedents, and compromising situation. On those conditions, I hold my tongue."

"Pompous ass!" Anderson found it a hard task to keep his own pride in check. It was of a different variety from Delaine's, but not a whit less clamorous. Yet for Lady Merton's sake it was desirable, perhaps imperative, that he should keep on civil terms with this member of her party. A hot impulse swept through him to tell her everything, to have done with secrecy. But he stifled it. What right had he to intrude his personal history upon her?--least of all this ugly and unsavoury development of it? Pride spoke again, and self-respect. If it humiliated him to feel himself in Delaine's power, he must bear it. The only other alternatives were either to cut himself off at once from his English friends--that, of course, was what Delaine wished--or to appeal to Lady Merton's sympathy and pity. Well, he would do neither--and Delaine might go hang!

Mrs. Ginnell, with her apron over her head to shield her from a blazing sun, appeared at the corner of the house.

"You're wanted, sir!" Her tone was sulky.

"Anything wrong?" Anderson turned apprehensively.

"Nothing more than 'is temper, sir. He won't let yer rest, do what you will for 'im."

Anderson went into the house. His father was sitting up in bed. Mrs. Ginnell had been endeavouring during the past hour to make her patient clean and comfortable, and to tidy his room; but had been at last obliged to desist, owing to the mixture of ill-humour and bad language with which he assailed her.

"Can I do anything for you?" Anderson inquired, standing beside him.

"Get me out of this blasted hole as soon as possible! That's about all you can do! I've told that woman to get me my things, and help me into the other room--but she's in your pay, I suppose. She won't do anything I tell her, drat her!"

"The doctor left orders you were to keep quiet to-day."

McEwen vowed he would do nothing of the kind. He had no time to be lolling in bed like a fine lady. He had business to do, and must get home.

"If you get up, with this fever on you, and the leg in that state, you will have blood-poisoning," said Anderson quietly, "which will either kill you or detain you here for weeks. You say you want to talk business with me. Well, here I am. In an hour's time I must go to Calgary for an appointment. Suppose you take this opportunity."

McEwen stared at his son. His blue eyes, frowning in their wrinkled sockets, gave little or no index, however, to the mind behind them. The straggling white locks falling round his blotched and feverish face caught Anderson's attention. Looking back thirty years he could remember his father vividly--a handsome man, solidly built, with a shock of fair hair. As a little lad he had been proud to sit high-perched beside him on the wagon which in summer drove them, every other Sunday, to a meeting-house fifteen miles away. He could see his mother at the back of the wagon with the little girls, her grey alpaca dress and cotton gloves, her patient look. His throat swelled. Nor was the pang of intolerable pity for his mother only. Deep in the melancholy of his nature and strengthened by that hateful tie of blood from which he could not escape, was a bitter, silent compassion for this outcast also. All the machinery of life set in motion and maintaining itself in the clash of circumstance for seventy years to produce _this_, at the end! Dismal questionings ran through his mind. Ought he to have acted as he had done seventeen years before? How would his mother have judged him? Was he not in some small degree responsible?

Meanwhile his father began to talk fast and querulously, with plentiful oaths from time to time, and using a local miner's slang which was not always intelligible to Anderson. It seemed it was a question of an old silver mine on a mountainside in Idaho, deserted some ten years before when the river gravels had been exhausted, and now to be reopened, like many others in the same neighbourhood, with improved methods and machinery, tunnelling instead of washing. Silver enough to pave Montreal! Ten thousand dollars for plant, five thousand for the claim, and the thing was done.

He became incoherently eloquent, spoke of the ease and rapidity with which the thing could be resold to a syndicate at an enormous profit, should his "pardners" and he not care to develop it themselves. If George would find the money--why, George should make his fortune, like the rest, though he had behaved so scurvily all these years.

Anderson watched the speaker intently. Presently he began to put questions--close, technical questions. His father's eyes--till then eager and greedy--began to flicker. Anderson perceived an unwelcome surprise--annoyance--

"You knew, of course, that I was a mining engineer?" he said at last, pulling up in his examination.

"Well, I heard of you that onst at Dawson City," was the slow reply. "I supposed you were nosin' round like the rest."

"Why, I didn't go as a mere prospector! I'd had my training at Montreal." And Anderson resumed his questions.

But McEwen presently took no pains to answer them. He grew indeed less and less communicative. The exact locality of the mine, the names of the partners, the precise machinery required--Anderson, in the end, could get at neither the one nor the other. And before many more minutes had passed he had convinced himself that he was wasting his time. That there was some swindling plot in his father's mind he was certain; he was probably the tool of some shrewder confederates, who had no doubt sent him to Montreal after his legacy, and would fleece him on his return.

"By the way, Aunt Sykes's money, how much was it?" Anderson asked him suddenly. "I suppose you could draw on that?"

McEwen could not be got to give a plain answer. It wasn't near enough, anyhow; not near. The evasion seemed to Anderson purposeless; the mere shifting and doubling that comes of long years of dishonest living. And again the question stabbed his consciousness--were his children justified in casting him so inexorably adrift?

"Well, I'd better run down and have a look," he said at last. "If it's a good thing I dare say I can find you the dollars."

"Run down--where?" asked McEwen sharply.

"To the mine, of course. I might spare the time next week."

"No need to trouble yourself. My pardners wouldn't thank me for betraying their secrets."

"Well, you couldn't expect me to provide the money without knowing a bit more about the property, could you?--without a regular survey?" said Anderson, with a laugh.

"You trust me with three or four thousand dollars," said McEwen doggedly--"because I'm your father and I give you my word. And if not, you can let it alone. I don't want any prying into my affairs."

Anderson was silent a moment.

Then he raised his eyes.

"Are you sure it's all square?" The tone had sharpened.

"Square? Of course it is. What are you aiming at? You'll believe any villainy of your old father, I suppose, just the same as you always used to. I've not had your opportunities, George. I'm not a fine gentleman--on the trail with a parcel of English swells. I'm a poor old broken-down miner, who wants to hole-up somewhere, and get comfortable for his old age; and if you had a heart in your body, you'd lend a helping hand. When I saw you at Winnipeg"--the tone became a trifle plaintive and slippery--"I ses to myself, George used to be a nice chap, with a good heart. If there's anyone ought to help me it's my own son. And so I boarded that train. But I'm a broken man, George, and you've used me hard."

"Better not talk like that," interrupted Anderson in a clear, resolute voice. "It won't do any good. Look here, father! Suppose you give up this kind of life, and settle down. I'm ready to give you an allowance, and look after you. Your health is bad. To speak the truth, this mine business sounds to me pretty shady. Cut it all! I'll put you with decent people, who'll look after you."

The eyes of the two men met; Anderson's insistently bright, McEwen's wavering and frowning. The June sunshine came into the small room through a striped and battered blind, illuminating the rough planks of which it was built, the "cuts" from illustrated papers that were pinned upon them, the scanty furniture, and the untidy bed. Anderson's head and shoulders were in a full mellowed light; he held himself with an unconscious energy, answering to a certain force of feeling within; a proud strength and sincerity expressed itself through every detail of attitude and gesture; yet perhaps the delicacy, or rather sensibility, mingling with the pride, would have been no less evident to a seeing eye. There was Highland blood in him, and a touch therefore of the Celtic responsiveness, the Celtic magnetism. The old man opposite to him in shadow, with his back to the light, had a crouching dangerous look. It was as though he recognised something in his son for ever lost to himself; and repulsed it, half enviously, half malignantly.

But he did not apparently resent Anderson's proposal. He said sulkily: "Oh, I dessay you'd like to put me away. But I'm not doddering yet."

All the same he listened in silence to the plan that Anderson developed, puffing the while at the pipe which he had made Mrs. Ginnell give him.

"I shan't stay on this side," he said, at last, decidedly. "There's a thing or two that might turn up agin me--and fellows as 'ud do me a bad turn if they come across me--dudes, as I used to know in Dawson City. I shan't stay in Canada. You can make up your mind to that. Besides, the winter'ud kill me!"

Anderson accordingly proposed San Francisco, or Los Angeles. Would his father go for a time to a Salvation Army colony near Los Angeles? Anderson knew the chief officials--capital men, with no cant about them. Fruit farming--a beautiful climate--care in sickness--no drink--as much work or as little as he liked--and all expenses paid.

McEwen laughed out--a short sharp laugh--at the mention of the Salvation Army. But he listened patiently, and at the end even professed to think there might be something in it. As to his own scheme, he dropped all mention of it. Yet Anderson was under no illusion; there it lay sparkling, as it were, at the back of his sly wolfish eyes.

"How in blazes could you take me down?" muttered McEwen--"Thought you was took up with these English swells."

"I'm not taken up with anything that would prevent my looking after you," said Anderson rising. "You let Mrs. Ginnell attend to you--get the leg well--and we'll see."

McEwen eyed him--his good looks and his dress, his gentleman's refinement; and the shaggy white brows of the old miner drew closer together.

"What did you cast me off like that for, George?" he asked.

Anderson turned away.

"Don't rake up the past. Better not."

"Where are my other sons, George?"

"In Montreal, doing well." Anderson gave the details of their appointments and salaries.

"And never a thought of their old father, I'll be bound!" said McEwen, at the end, with slow vindictiveness.

"You forget that it was your own doing; we believed you dead."

"Aye!--you hadn't left a man much to come home for!--and all for an accident!--a thing as might ha' happened to any man."

The speaker's voice had grown louder. He stared sombrely, defiantly at his companion.

Anderson stood with his hands on his sides, looking through the further window. Then slowly he put his hand into his pocket and withdrew from it a large pocket-book. Out of the pocket-book he took a delicately made leather case, holding it in his hand a moment, and glancing uncertainly at the figure in the bed.

"What ha' you got there?" growled McEwen.

Anderson crossed the room. His own face had lost its colour. As he reached his father, he touched a spring, and held out his hand with the case lying open within it.

It contained a miniature--of a young woman in the midst of a group of children.

"Do you remember that photograph that was done of them--in a tent--when you took us all into Winnipeg for the first agricultural show?" he said hoarsely. "I had a copy--that wasn't burnt. At Montreal, there was a French artist one year, that did these things. I got him to do this."

McEwen stared at the miniature--the sweet-faced Scotch woman, the bunch of children. Then with a brusque movement he turned his face to the wall, and closed his eyes.

Anderson's lips opened once or twice as though to speak. Some imperious emotion seemed to be trying to force its way. But he could not find words; and at last he returned the miniature to his pocket, walked quietly to the door, and went out of the room.

The sound of the closing door brought immense relief to McEwen. He turned again in bed, and relit his pipe, shaking off the impression left by the miniature as quickly as possible. What business had George to upset him like that? He was down enough on his luck as it was.

He smoked away, gloomily thinking over the conversation. It didn't look like getting any money out of this close-fisted Puritanical son of his. Survey indeed! McEwen found himself shaken by a kind of internal convulsion as he thought of the revelations that would come out. George was a fool.

In his feverish reverie, many lines of thought crossed and danced in his brain; and every now and then he was tormented by the craving for alcohol. The Salvation Army proposal half amused, half infuriated him. He knew all about their colonies. Trust him! Your own master for seventeen years--mixed up in a lot of jobs it wouldn't do to go blabbing to the Mounted Police--and then to finish up with those hymn-singing fellows!--George was most certainly a fool! Yet dollars ought to be screwed out of him--somehow.

Presently, to get rid of some unpleasant reflections, the old man stretched out his hand for a copy of the _Vancouver Sentinel_ that was lying on the bed, and began to read it idly. As he did so, a paragraph drew his attention. He gripped the paper, and, springing up in bed, read it twice, peering into it, his features quivering with eagerness. The passage described the "hold up" of a Northern Pacific train, at a point between Seattle and the Canadian border. By the help of masks, and a few sticks of dynamite, the thing had been very smartly done--a whole train terrorised, the mail van broken open and a large "swag" captured. Billy Symonds, the notorious train robber from Montana, was suspected, and there was a hue and cry through the whole border after him and his accomplices, amongst whom, so it was said, was a band from the Canadian side--foreign miners mixed up in some of the acts of violence which had marked the strike of the year before.

Bill Symonds!--McEwen threw himself excitedly from side to side, unable to keep still. _He_ knew Symonds--a chap and a half! Why didn't he come and try it on this side of the line? Heaps of money going backwards and forwards over the railway! All these thousands of dollars paid out in wages week by week to these construction camps--must come from somewhere in cash--Winnipeg or Montreal. He began to play with the notion, elaborating and refining it; till presently a whole epic of attack and capture was rushing through his half-crazy brain.

He had dropped the paper, and was staring abstractedly through the foot of open window close beside him, which the torn blind did not cover. Outside, through the clearing with its stumps of jack-pine, ran a path, a short cut, connecting the station at Laggan with a section-house further up the line.

As McEwen's eyes followed it, he began to be aware of a group of men emerging from the trees on the Laggan side, and walking in single file along the path. Navvies apparently--carrying bundles and picks. The path came within a few yards of the window, and of the little stream that supplied the house with water.

Suddenly, McEwen sprang up in bed. The two foremost men paused beside the water, mopped their hot faces, and taking drinking cups out of their pockets stooped down to the stream. The old man in the cabin bed watched them with fierce intentness; and as they straightened themselves and were about to follow their companions who were already out of sight, he gave a low call.

The two started and looked round them. Their hands went to their pockets. McEwen swung himself round so as to reach the window better, and repeated his call--this time with a different inflection. The men exchanged a few hurried words. Carefully scrutinising the house, they noticed a newspaper waving cautiously in an open window. One of them came forward, the other remained by the stream bathing his feet and ankles in the water.

No one else was in sight. Mrs. Ginnell was cooking on the other side of the house. Anderson had gone off to catch his train. For twenty minutes, the man outside leant against the window-sash apparently lounging and smoking. Nothing could be seen from the path, but a battered blind flapping in the June breeze, and a dark space of room beyond.