Part 18

“I’ll try, auntie, yes: I could be very, very happy with him—if he asked me: but I don’t think I could—it’s so hard——”

Lady Silthirsk kissed her. “I don’t ask anything, you little goose, except that you should be just humanly kind to poor Bobby—I think he’ll do the rest!”

“I’ll _try_,” said Elfrida dubiously.

Her aunt, she reflected, was not of a nature to see how terrible it would be if people should believe her to be “angling” for Lord Bancourt. Better that he should choose some one else than that he should marry her on such a rumour!

“Oh, here they are!” cried Lady Silthirsk, as her husband brought his flock into the room, shouting:

“I’ve collected every one, gamblers and all, for the _séance_—except Bobby. Can’t find him.”

“Oh, I wish he were here—the Lady will surely walk on Christmas Eve,” said the hostess. “If she doesn’t, I mean to demand my money back! Oh, there’s the hour! Sit quiet, every one.... Blue Lady forward, please! There, look!—there!”

She pointed excitedly at the old gallery, once for minstrels, now arrogated by a pianola organ. Behind its oaken pillars passed a vague female figure, dressed in blue, moaning horribly, and waving distraught arms above her flowing hair.

Immediately cries of every sort rose from the watchers.

“I can’t see her.” “It’s a cinematograph!” “What ho, Lord Bobby!” “Gad, she’s gone slick through the music-stool.” “I still can’t see her.” “No, there’s nothing there.” “Do a cakewalk, now!” “Encore!”

As she vanished some one clapped his hands, and with a laugh the whole party joined in the applause.

The scene had not been very impressive. From a theatrical point of view the ghost’s entrance had been ruined by the number and the temper of its audience. Those who had not seen it scoffed; those who had, till reminded of the music-stool seen dimly through the figure, half-believed the Blue Lady to be an _alias_ of Lord Bancourt. Then, as one by one they realised that what had passed was in very truth a ghost, the guests hushed their laughter, until the babel sank almost into silence.

It was in such a lull that Bobby entered. “Why, what a stony _séance_!” he exclaimed. “Missing me? or seen a ghost?”

“Yes—so delightful! The Blue Lady actually came,” said Lady Silthirsk, who alone seemed totally unruffled.

Bobby laughed—the unforced laugh of healthy youth. “Oh-ho! I see why you were silent. But you can’t green me, thanks: I’m not quite so verdant—oh no, not at all!”

“We have seen it—really,” one or two guests hastened to assure him.

Lord Bancourt laughed more heartily than ever. “Why, I believe you’ve honestly deceived yourselves! This is glorious! You really think you saw the ghost!”

“Who could doubt?” asked a plump dowager, who intended henceforth to adopt a pose intensely spiritual. “What doubt exists, when the great After lifts its veil? Have _you_ ever seen a ghost, Lord Bancourt?”

Bobby tried to hide his smiles. “I’m afraid—and glad—I haven’t. If I did, I should go off my nut, I think. But I don’t think I ever shall!”

With these words he moved towards the circle of ghost-seers, and chose, with unerring aim, of all the vacant chairs, that next Elfrida.

Lady Silthirsk beamed contentedly.

“I seem to have missed a lot,” said the irrepressible Bobby, as he sat down, and added impudently, “but I hope that I’ve been missed a lot?”

Elfrida remembered her aunt’s warning, but she also fancied (as the self-conscious will) that all the gathering, still somewhat silent, had heard the question, and would hear the answer. She could fancy their scorn at her “scheming tactics.”

Bobby looked expectantly towards her.

“It was certainly a unique experience,” she said stiffly.

Bobby’s face fell.

Lady Silthirsk shrugged her shoulders.

* * * * *

“There!” exclaimed the Blue Lady, safe within the Panelled Room, “I knew how your mad scheme would work. You heard: they catcalled, they encored me, asked for some new dance. They gave me a round of applause when I went off. I can stay here no longer, to be insulted.”

“Always impetuous!” said the Gaunt Baron quietly. “You rushed off after the applause: I waited, and heard what alters the whole question.”

“Namely——?” asked the Lady, in ill temper.

“Lord Bancourt did not see you—has never seen a ghost—doesn’t believe in them. He said distinctly, ‘If I saw one, I should go off my nut,’—this being schoolboy and smart for going mad.”

“I begin to see.” The Blue Lady brightened visibly.

“Exactly. You must catch him alone—no more of these convivial audiences—and then drive him mad. He is an old friend of Lady Silthirsk, rich and titled; she would not stay here after that. You must wreak your worst on him.”

“I can only wail,” she answered gloomily; “I have no chains, or blood, or severed head——”

The words inspired the headless Baron.

“Ah,” he cried, “I will come and help—to-night. I ought not to show myself out of my own house, but——”

“Oh, what is etiquette in such a crisis? Baron, dear Baron, you have saved me. I am an old-fashioned woman, and at such a time I need a man....”

* * * * *

It was night. It had, to be precise, been night for several hours, and the whole household was at length tucked up in bed. Sleep had come none too easily to at least three members,—to Elfrida worrying about the real sentiments of Bobby, to Bobby worrying about the real sentiments of Elfrida, and to Lady Silthirsk worrying about the real sentiments of both. The last named, in particular, tossed long upon her sleepless bed. She was puzzled. She could half understand Elfrida’s foolish diffidence: she could not understand Bobby’s idiotic silence. Why did he not speak? He was not of a sort to be lightly daunted by the fear of a rebuff. Or had she made a false diagnosis? Was he not in love at all?

And at length even she turned over on her side with a contented groan. Sleep reigned over Yewcroft Hall.

But in Bobby’s room, far off along the west wing, dark deeds were decidedly afoot. For more than half an hour a headless Knight, clanking horribly in every joint of his dim-gleaming armour, had chased to and fro a blue-clad Lady, who wailed in awful wise and tossed arms of agony to the wall-papered ceiling.

Through all this Lord Bancourt slept smilingly upon his noble bed.

Then the Gaunt Baron consulted with the Blue Lady, and a change of tactics was the result. The armoured figure now rattled round the room, rousing more noise than any antiquated motor, the while a frantic dame pursued him with blood-curdling wails.

Bobby stirred a little, murmured sleepily, turned over, and showed every symptom of having relapsed into even deeper slumber.

The ghosts were in despair.

“Dawn draws on,” said the Gaunt Baron suddenly. “I always knew when I was beaten. Come, sweet dame. A man who can sleep like that will make his mark some day in the House of Lords.”

He vanished, and, after one despairing glance, the Blue Lady flung herself angrily through the oaken door.

It was at this moment, by a subtle irony of fate, that Lord Bancourt awoke. The sense of some presence lingered with him, and he sat upright in bed. His sleepy eyes were caught by a blue skirt which vanished from the doorway; his sleepy mind failed to perceive that the door had not been open.

“Whew!” he said, and lay thinking, thinking deeply—for Lord Bancourt.

He was very young, and, like most young nobles, not inclined to underestimate his own importance. After the first moment of surprise, he felt no doubt as to the wearer of the blue skirt. It was Elfrida. He was rather unobservant as to women’s dresses “and all that, you know”: but he felt fairly certain that she had worn a blue costume at dinner. Yes, it could be no one else. It was almost certainly Elfrida.

Elfrida’s iciness was but a cloak. When she had snubbed him by day, she would creep in by night and gaze upon his sleeping, moonlit face! How beautiful!

His heart thrilled at the revelation. He had hesitated, so far, to speak. It would never do for him—Lord Bancourt—to risk refusal by a nobody. His mother, in her long course of tuition, had taught him proper pride. But now....

Now, at the first chance, he would throw himself, his rank, his wealth, his everything before the nobody, and feel no fear as to the verdict. To-morrow—to-morrow!

And when to-morrow came, as it does sometimes come despite the proverb, he rose early and went out in the garden. As he had shaved each morning, he had seen Elfrida walking in the grounds below. He had never dared to join her. Everything, to-day, was different, though the weather was certainly absurdly cold for early rising.

She was there before him, in among the white, hoar-laden, yew walks. She turned at his coming. “You are early this morning, Lord Bancourt.”

“Ah,” he responded meaningly, “the early bird catches the first worm.” It struck him, for the moment, as a compliment, and rather neat. But he pined for something less indefinite. “Elfrida,” he said, going close to her, “I may call you Elfrida?—I could not wait. You encouraged me last night, you gave me hope, and now—I want more. You won’t take even that away? I want far more. I want you—I want you to be my wife. Will you, Elfrida? Don’t be cruel. I want you to say ‘yes’!”

Elfrida’s head was in a whirl. She did not know how she had encouraged him. She could remember nothing of last night, except that she had lost a chance—that he had seemed offended. She could not guess at what had changed his attitude. She only knew that what her aunt wanted—above all, what she herself longed for—had somehow come to pass; only knew that her loved one’s arms were round her. She said “Yes.”

* * * * *

“Sweet dame,” said the Gaunt Baron, later, in the Panelled Room, “I have been scouting, and, alas! bring evil news. Lord Bancourt took you last night for Elfrida, was encouraged to propose, and is accepted. Lady Silthirsk is delighted, says the wedding shall be here, and she must turn this dear chamber into a dressing-room. She says she will clear out the musty panelling. It is all unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate!” wailed the Blue Lady. “It all comes of listening to a man. See what your mad scheme has done!... Baron, forgive my bitterness,—I am defeated. I told you these mortals had vanquished us. I set out to do a little evil, in the good old way, and see what I have done! I have made everybody happy! Farewell. Yewcroft must know me no more. Farewell, farewell for ever!”

With an abysmal groan she vanished through the panelling. Unless she has found an ancient, empty house, she is perhaps sleeping underneath the hedges.

The Miracle

A Tale of the Canadian Prairie

_By_ Ralph Stock

_Artists’ Rifles_

The old man slowly shook his head and looked out through the ranch-house window to where the sea of yellow grass merged into the purple haze of the horizon.

“I’m sorry, Dode,” he said in his gruff drawl, “blamed sorry.”

The young man stood before him choking back words he longed to utter and twisting his hat out of recognition in the effort. Words! Of what use had they ever been with Joe Gilchrist? All his life he had used as few as possible himself and shown little patience with those who did otherwise—why should it be different now?

“Blamed sorry,” the colourless voice repeated. “I had no notion things were going this way or I’d have put ’em straight right away. It’ll hurt all the more now, I guess, but I can’t help it, Dode—you’re not the man, that’s all.”

“Why?” The other’s voice carried resentment. “What’s the matter with me, anyway?”

The grizzled head turned slowly, the keen, deep-set eyes, surrounded by a tracery of minute wrinkles from looking into long distances, rested on the young man’s troubled face in a level, emotionless scrutiny.

“Nothing,” said Joe Gilchrist. “As a man—nothing, or you wouldn’t have been my foreman the last ten years; but as a husband for Joyce——” He smiled faintly and shook his head.

At that moment Dode Sinclair could have killed this man whose life he had saved more than once. He knew the iron resolve behind that smile and shake of the head.

“I’m the man she chose,” he jerked out.

“At seventeen,” was the quiet rejoinder.

“She’s a woman.”

Joe Gilchrist tilted his head to one side and scratched his cheek. It was a habit of his when anything puzzled him.

“She chose you, did she? Who’s she had to choose from?”

Dode Sinclair opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and fell to twisting his hat with renewed vigour.

“Well,” he began awkwardly, “there was Dave Willet and that dude schoolmaster on Battle Creek and——”

“And you want to tell me Dave Willet and a dude schoolmaster on Battle Creek’s a fair show for a girl?” The old man paused. “You can’t, Dode—not me.”

Dode looked down at a pair of work-worn riding-boots, then up into the other’s face.

“What’s the matter with Dave Willet?” he demanded hotly, “or a dozen others who’d give their ears for her? I know we’re not fit to lick her boots; what man would be? but we’re as good as most round these parts.”

“Ah, these parts,” muttered the old man, “these parts. But they ain’t the world, Dode. You’ve got to get that into your head, though maybe it’ll be a job.”

“They’re good enough for me.”

“And me, and the rest of us; but they’re not good enough for my daughter.”

“She doesn’t say that.”

“No, because she’s never seen anything else——” Joe Gilchrist broke off with a gesture of uneasiness. “Shut that door; I want to ask you something.”

The young man obeyed mechanically, and when he turned, the other was leaning forward in the pine pole-rocker, whittling flakes from a plug of tobacco.

“I want to ask you what you think I’ve been doing the last fifteen years,” he drawled. “You ought to know, but if you don’t, I’ll put you wise. I’ve been tryin’ to make money out of breeding horses. It ain’t daisy-pickin’, but after hopin’ a bit, despairin’ a bit, and workin’ a bit, I’ve made it—there it is on four legs in a pretty middlin’ bunch of horses, and what’s it for? Me? You know my wants, Dode Sinclair. No, it’s for Joyce. _Joyce’s got to have her chance._”

He stopped abruptly, with an indrawing of his thin lips that the other knew well, and commenced to rub the tobacco between his horny palms.

Dode Sinclair still stared at his boots.

“You’re going to take her East,” he muttered. “You’re going back on the prairie.”

Joe Gilchrist rose slowly from his chair and pointed through the window with the stem of his pipe.

“You see Tin Kettle buttie,” he said evenly, “there to the east of Hungerford Lake: when they read my will they’ll find they’ve got to pack me up there someway—in the democrat, I guess—but that’s where I’m goin’ to be, and I’m tellin’ you now so’s you’ll remember when you feel like sayin’ I’ve gone back on the prairie. But—Joyce’s got to have her chance.”

He stood looking out of the window for a space, then turned with the air of one disposing of an unpleasant topic.

“You can round up. The boy’ll be here any day after a week. I’m sellin’ half the bunch. You’re to run the place when—we go.”

Dode Sinclair turned on his heel. At the door he hesitated, then looked back at the thin bent figure by the window.

“Maybe the prairie won’t let you,” he said.

When he had gone Joe Gilchrist stood motionless, staring at the door.

“What the dickens does he mean by that?” he growled, and frowned as he lit his pipe.

Joyce Gilchrist was perched on the corral-poles when Dode came out to her.

“He won’t listen to me,” he said, tracing dejected patterns in the dust with his spur. “Says you’ve got to have your chance.”

“Chance?—what chance?” Joyce looked down at him wonderingly.

“Chance of getting a better man than me.”

The girl was at his side in a flash, looking into his face with anxious interrogation.

“Dode, Dode, what do you mean?—what does he mean?”

“He means he’s going to take you away, Joyce—East, where the guys come from. He’s been working for that the last fifteen years—and, God help me!—so have I, without knowin’ it. The horses is a pretty considerable bunch now, and——”

“But I won’t go,” flashed the girl; “I won’t go, Dode.” Her hand was on his arm. “I’ll talk him over.”

“You’ll never do that,” said Dode. “Never. I know Joe better’n you, though he _is_ your dad. He’s got that queer set look;—besides, he’s right.”

“Right?”

“Yes, he always is. You’ve made good—you ought to go East and live swell. This is no country for a woman.”

“_You_ say that?”

“_He_ says it, and he’s always right.”

“But you don’t say it—_you_ don’t say it, Dode!”

Her hands were on his shoulders now, he could feel her warm breath on his face.

“My God!” he burst out, “you know I love every inch and atom of you.” His hands were trembling at his sides. “You know that I’d do anything—anything—but we can’t go against him. Someway I couldn’t do it—I’d feel I’d stolen you—that I wasn’t giving you what was your due. He’s right; he’s always right.”

The girl stamped a small work-worn riding-boot in the dust. “I wish—I wish all the horses were dead! I wish we had to start all over again. I won’t go, so there! I’ll talk to him; he’ll say yes; you see——”

She left him and hurried towards the house, a slim figure of health and lightness in a short, dun-coloured riding-skirt and dilapidated soft felt hat.

Dode Sinclair watched her go.

“Nothing short of a miracle will make him say that,” he mused.

And he was right.

For the next week the grass flats below the Gilchrist ranch echoed with the thunder of galloping hoofs and the shrill whinnying of mare and foal. From every point of the compass horses flowed into the valley, with distended nostrils and untrimmed manes and tails streaming in the wind. Some had never yet seen a house, and at sight of the low line of pine-log stables and corrals turned tail and fled in terror, until overtaken and headed back by tireless riders on steaming mounts.

On the final day Joyce Gilchrist helped her father to mount the old piebald cayune that he loved, and rode down with him to inspect the herd. Dode Sinclair saw them coming and turned swiftly on his companion, a lean wire of a man in the unpretentious, workmanlike uniform of the North-West Mounted Police.

“Here they come,” he said in a voice harsh with apprehension. “If you don’t want to see an old man drop dead—an old man that’s done more for you fellers than any one on the range—take your men and horses into that stable.”

The policeman followed his glance and saw two black dots moving slowly down the trail.

“He’s got to know,” he said sternly.

“Yes, he’s got to know—ain’t that enough? Curse it, man, can’t you see there’s ways of doin’ these things? Sudden like that—it’d break him up.”

“Joe Gilchrist knows how to take his medicine.”

“No man better; but I know him, I tell you—the horses are his life. There’s time enough for him to know.”

“Three days,” replied the policeman shortly. “The regulations allow three days for glanders. He’s bound to know then—why not now?”

Dode Sinclair laid his hands on the other’s shoulders and looked into his stern-set face.

“Because I’m asking you, Jim,” he said. “Maybe your memory’s short; maybe you forget the early days now you’re a corporal. Try back a bit—try back to the spring of 1900, when the chinook came and thawed out the Warlodge mushy a bit previous, and you thought it’d bear and it didn’t; and the elegant fix I found you in——”

“You don’t need to tell me, Dode,” said the other, looking away up the trail. “But you know what Fenton’s like, and——” Suddenly he threw back his head. “Well!—open the door, then!”

Joe Gilchrist rode slowly through the herd. Some of the brood mares he knew by name—had known them for fifteen years.

“See that pot-bellied grey with the roan foal?” he said to Dode. “Got her for fifteen dollars off the Indians at Red Deer. We’ve had her fifteen years, and she’s had twelve foals. Seems to me she’s about done now, though. Got that peaked look.”

“Hasn’t lost her winter coat yet,” Dode answered shortly, and moved on towards the edge of the herd. “Ragged, that’s all.”

“Pretty middlin’ bunch,” mused the old man. He had never been known to say more about his horses. “Pretty middlin’.”

“Sure,” said Dode, and watched the pinto ambling up the trail. Then he dismounted and opened the stable door.

“I’m leaving two men,” said the policeman. “You can corral them to-night, and the vet’ll be along to-morrow.”

Dode leant against the stable and watched him mount.

“How many d’you think——” he began.

“The vet’ll be along to-morrow,” the other repeated shortly, and set spurs to his horse.

The next day and the next the grass-flat corrals creaked and strained and rattled while an endless procession of horses fought and worked its way along the narrow chutes, halted a brief moment while one of its number was subjected to the “squeeze” and a minute examination by a sweating police vet. and passed on, some to another corral and some—pitiably few—to the open prairie and freedom.

Dode Sinclair watched the work like a man in a trance.

When it was done the corral gate was flung open and the horses it had held were headed up the valley and still up to where it ended in a deep gully of gumbo and yellow gravel. On three sides the animals were hemmed in by almost sheer cliff a hundred feet high; on the fourth by ten N.W. Mounted Policemen with levelled rifles and set faces.

There is only one cure for glanders.

* * * * *

“Queer that buyer don’t come,” said Joe Gilchrist.

Three days before Dode Sinclair had ridden out to meet a florid little man in a livery buggy on the town trail, and after five minutes’ conversation the latter had turned his horses and driven off in a cloud of dust.

“Blamed queer. They’ll be losing flesh if they’re herded much longer.”

Towards evening the old man became restless—both Joyce and Dode noticed it, but neither was quite prepared when returning from the west field to find the homestead empty, except for the Chinese cook, and the pinto cayune gone from the stables.

“He’s gone to have a look at the herd,” Dode said.

“But alone, and on pinto!” exclaimed the girl. “You know how she stumbles. I must go and find him.”

“She stumbles, but she don’t fall,” said Dode. “Let him be—this once. Alone—that’s the best way for him to find out.”

He told her all, while Joyce sat like one turned to stone. When he had done, she looked up into his face.

“Then—then we _have_ got to start all over again,” she whispered.

“Pretty near.”

Dode looked out through the window. The setting sun was dyeing the sea of yellow grass a rich auburn, and Joyce was at his side, but his thoughts were with the lone rider down on the grass flats. He would find the corrals empty, the gates open. He would follow the tracks up the coolie, and still up, until he came to the deep gully of gumbo and yellow gravel. Dode remembered that the “ewe-necked” grey with the roan foal lay at the outside of the ghastly circle, her mild eyes staring glassily down the valley. Beyond that his thoughts refused to travel.

It was eight o’clock before Joe Gilchrist returned. He stabled the pinto himself and came into the sitting-room, where Joyce and Dode sat pretending to read, with his usual slow, heavy step. The pine-pole rocker creaked, and they could hear him whittling at his plug of tobacco, but they could not bring themselves to look up.

“Bit dull to-night, ain’t you?” he queried suddenly. His voice was so natural that for a fleeting moment Dode thought it impossible that he could know. But when he looked up, there was no longer any doubt in his mind. The strong old face was drawn and haggard, in spite of the smile he had summoned to his lips. His keen eyes were levelled on the younger man in a penetrating but not unkindly look.

“I guess you were right, Dode,” he drawled. “The prairie knows how to cure swelled head.”