Читать книгу: «The Impostor», страница 16
CHAPTER XXI – COLONEL BARRINGTON IS CONVINCED
It was not until early morning that Courthorne awakened from the stupor he sank into, soon after Witham conveyed him into his homestead. First, however, he asked for a little food, and ate it with apparent difficulty. When Witham came in, he looked up from the bed where he lay, with the dust still white upon his clothing, and his face showed grey and haggard in the creeping light.
“I’m feeling a trifle better now,” he said; “still, I scarcely fancy I could get up just yet. I gave you a little surprise last night?”
Witham nodded. “You did. Of course, I knew how much your promise was worth, but in view of the risks you ran, I had not expected you to turn up at the Grange.”
“The risks!” said Courthorne with an unpleasant smile.
“Yes,” said Witham wearily; “I have a good deal on hand I would like to finish here, and it will not take me long, but I am quite prepared to give myself up now, if it is necessary.”
Courthorne laughed. “I don’t think you need, and it wouldn’t be wise. You see, even if you made out your innocence, which you couldn’t do, you rendered yourself an accessory by not denouncing me long ago. I fancy we can come to an understanding which would be pleasanter to both of us.”
“The difficulty,” said Witham, “is that an understanding is useless when made with a man who never keeps his word.”
“Well,” said Courthorne dryly, “we shall gain nothing by paying each other compliments, and whether you believe it or otherwise, it was not by intention I turned up at the Grange. I was coming here from a place west of the settlement and you can see that I have been ill if you look at me. I counted too much on my strength, couldn’t find a homestead where I could get anything to eat, and the rest may be accounted for by the execrable brandy I had with me. Anyway, the horse threw me and made off, and after lying under some willows a good deal of the day, I dragged myself along until I saw a house.”
“That,” said Witham, “is beside the question. What do you want of me? Dollars, in all probability. Well, you will not get them.”
“I’m afraid I’m scarcely fit for a discussion now,” said Courthorne. “The fact is, it hurts me to talk, and there’s an aggressiveness about you which isn’t pleasant to a badly-shaken man. Wait until this evening, but there is no necessity for you to ride to the outpost before you have heard me.”
“I’m not sure it would be advisable to leave you here,” said Witham dryly.
Courthorne smiled ironically. “Use your eyes. Would any one expect me to get up and indulge in a fresh folly? Leave me a little brandy – I need it – and go about your work. You’ll certainly find me here when you want me.”
Witham, glancing at the man’s face, considered this very probable, and went out. He found his cook, who could be trusted, and said to him, “The man yonder is tolerably sick, and you’ll let him have a little brandy, and something to eat when he asks for it. Still, you’ll bring the decanter away with you, and lock him in whenever you go out.”
The man nodded, and making a hasty breakfast, Witham, who had business at several outlying farms, mounted and rode away. It was evening before he returned, and found Courthorne lying in a big chair with a cigar in his hand, languidly debonair but apparently ill. His face was curiously pallid, and his eyes dimmer than they had been, but there was a sardonic twinkle in them.
“You take a look at the decanter,” said the man, who went up with Witham, carrying a lamp. “He’s been wanting brandy all the time, but it doesn’t seem to have muddled him.”
Witham dismissed the man and sat down in front of Courthorne.
“Well?” he said.
Courthorne laughed. “You ought to be a witty man, though one would scarcely charge you with that. You surmised correctly this morning. It is dollars I want.”
“You had my answer.”
“Of course. Still, I don’t want very many in the meanwhile, and you haven’t heard what led up to the demand, or why I came back to you. You are evidently not curious, but I’m going to tell you. Soon after I left you, I fell very sick, and lay in the saloon of a little desolate settlement for days. The place was suffocating, and the wind blew the alkali dust in. They had only horrible brandy, and bitter water to drink it with, and I lay there on my back, panting, with the flies crawling over me. I knew if I stayed any longer it would finish me, and when there came a merciful cool day I got myself into the saddle and started off to find you. I don’t quite know how I made the journey, and during a good deal of it I couldn’t see the prairie, but I knew you would feel there was an obligation on you to do something for me. Of course, I could put it differently.”
Witham had as little liking for Courthorne as he had ever had, but he remembered the time when he had lain very sick in his lonely log hut. He also remembered that everything he now held belonged to this man.
“You made the bargain,” he said, less decisively.
Courthorne nodded. “Still, I fancy one of the conditions could be modified. Now, if I wait for another three months I may be dead before the reckoning comes, and while that probably wouldn’t grieve you, I could, when it appeared advisable, send for a magistrate and make a deposition.”
“You could,” said Witham. “I have, however, something of the same kind in contemplation.”
Courthorne smiled curiously. “I don’t know that it will be necessary. Carry me on until you have sold your crop, and then make a reasonable offer, and it’s probable you may still keep what you have at Silverdale. To be quite frank, I’ve a notion that my time in this world is tolerably limited, and I want a last taste of all it has to offer a man of my capacities before I leave it. One is a long while dead, you know.”
Witham nodded, for he understood. He had also during the grim cares of the lean years known the fierce longing for one deep draught of the wine of pleasure, whatever it afterwards cost him.
“It was that which induced you to look for a little relaxation at the settlement at my expense,” he said. “A trifle paltry, wasn’t it?”
Courthorne laughed. “It seems you don’t know me yet. That was a frolic, indulged in out of humour, for your benefit. You see, your rôle demanded a good deal more ability than you ever displayed in it, and it did not seem fitting that a very puritanical and priggish person should pose as me at Silverdale. The little affair was the one touch of verisimilitude about the thing. No doubt my worthy connexions are grieving over your lapse.”
“My sense of humour had never much chance of developing,” said Witham grimly. “What is the matter with you?”
“Pulmonary haemorrhage!” said Courthorne. “Perhaps it was born in me, but I never had much trouble until after that night in the snow at the river. Would you care to hear about it? We’re not fond of each other, but after the steer-drivers I’ve been herding with, it’s a relief to talk to a man of moderate intelligence.”
“Go on,” said Witham.
“Well,” said Courthorne, “when the trooper was close behind me, my horse went through the ice, but somehow I crawled out. We were almost across the river, and it was snowing fast, while I had a fancy that I might have saved the horse but, as the trooper would probably have seen a mounted man, I let him go. The stream sucked him under, and, though you may not believe it, I felt very mean when I saw nothing but the hole in the ice. Then, as the troopers didn’t seem inclined to cross, I went on through the snow, and, as it happened, blundered across Jardine’s old shanty. There was still a little prairie hay in the place, and I lay in it until morning, dragging fresh armfuls around me as I burnt it in the stove. Did you ever spend a night, wet through, in a place that was ten to twenty under freezing?”
“Yes,” said Witham dryly. “I have done it twice.”
“Well,” said Courthorne, “I fancy that night narrowed in my life for me, but I made out across the prairie in the morning, and as we had a good many friends up and down the country, one of them took care of me.”
Witham sat silent a while. The story had held his attention, and the frankness of the man who lay panting a little in his chair had its effect on him. There was no sound from the prairie, and the house was very still.
“Why did you kill Shannon?” he asked at length.
“Is any one quite sure of his motives?” said Courthorne. “The lad had done something which was difficult to forgive him, but I think I would have let him go if he hadn’t recognized me. The world is tolerably good to the man who has no scruples, you see, and I took all it offered me, while it did not seem fitting that a clod of a trooper without capacity for enjoyment, or much more sensibility than the beast he rode, should put an end to all my opportunities. Still, it was only when he tried to warn his comrades he threw his last chance away.”
Witham shivered a little at the dispassionate brutality of the speech, and then checked the anger that came upon him.
“Fate, or my own folly, has put it out of my power to denounce you without abandoning what I have set my heart upon, and after all it is not my business,” he said. “I will give you five hundred dollars and you can go to Chicago or Montreal, and consult a specialist. If the money is exhausted before I send for you, I will pay your hotel bills, but every dollar will be deducted when we come to the reckoning.”
Courthorne laughed a little. “You had better make it seven-fifty. Five hundred dollars will not go very far with me.”
“Then you will have to husband them,” said Witham dryly. “I am paying you at a rate agreed upon for the use of your land and small bank balance handed me, and want all of it. The rent is a fair one in face of the fact that a good deal of the farm consisted of virgin prairie, which can be had from the Government for nothing.”
He said nothing further, and soon after he went out Courthorne went to sleep, but Witham sat by an open window with a burned-out cigar in his hand, staring at the prairie while the night wore through, until he rose with a shiver in the chill of early morning to commence his task again.
A few days later he saw Courthorne safely into a sleeping car with a ticket for Chicago in his pocket, and felt that a load had been lifted off his shoulders when the train rolled out of the little prairie station. Another week had passed, when, riding home one evening, he stopped at the Grange, and, as it happened, found Maud Barrington alone. She received him without any visible restraint, but he realized that all that had passed at their last meeting was to be tacitly ignored.
“Has your visitor recovered yet?” she asked.
“So far as to leave my place, and I was not anxious to keep him,” said Witham with a little laugh. “I am sorry he disturbed you.”
Maud Barrington seemed thoughtful. “I can scarcely think the man was to blame.”
“No?” said Witham.
The girl looked at him curiously, and shook her head. “No,” she said. “I heard my uncle’s explanation, but it was not convincing. I saw the man’s face.”
It was several seconds before Witham answered, and then he took the bold course.
“Well?” he said.
Maud Barrington made a curious little gesture. “I knew I had seen it before at the bridge, but that was not all. It was vaguely familiar, and I felt I ought to know it. It reminded me of somebody.”
“Of me?” and Witham laughed.
“No. There was a resemblance, but it was very superficial. That man’s face had little in common with yours.”
“These faint likenesses are not unusual,” said Witham, and once more Maud Barrington looked at him steadily.
“No,” she said. “Of course not. Well, we will conclude that my fancies ran away with me, and be practical. What is wheat doing just now?”
“Rising still,” said Witham, and regretted the alacrity with which he had seized the opportunity of changing the topic when he saw that it had not escaped the notice of his companion. “You and I and a few others will be rich this year.”
“Yes, but I am afraid some of the rest will find it has only further anxieties for them.”
“I fancy,” said Witham, “you are thinking of one.”
Maud Barrington nodded. “Yes; I am sorry for him.”
“Then it would please you if I tried to straighten out things for him? It would be difficult, but I believe it could be accomplished.”
Maud Barrington’s eyes were grateful, but there was something that Witham could not fathom behind her smile.
“If you undertook it. One could almost believe you had the wonderful lamp,” she said.
Witham smiled somewhat dryly. “Then all its virtues will be tested to-night, and I had better make a commencement while I have the courage. Colonel Barrington is in?”
Maud Barrington went with him to the door, and then laid her hand a moment on his arm. “Lance,” she said, with a little tremor in her voice, “if there was a time when our distrust hurt you, it has recoiled upon our heads. You have returned it with a splendid generosity.”
Witham did not trust himself to answer, but walked straight to Barrington’s room, and finding the door open went quietly in. The head of the Silverdale settlement was sitting at a littered table in front of a shaded lamp, and the light that fell upon it showed the care in his face. It grew a trifle grimmer when he saw the younger man.
“Will you sit down?” he said. “I have been looking for a visit from you for some little time. It would have been more fitting had you made it earlier.”
Witham nodded as he took a chair. “I fancy I understand you, but I have nothing that you expect to hear to tell you, sir.”
“That,” said Barrington, “is unfortunate. Now, it is not my business to pose as a censor on the conduct of any man here, except when it affects the community, but their friends have sent out a good many young English lads, some of whom have not been too discreet in the old country, to me. They did not do so solely that I might teach them farming. A charge of that kind is no light responsibility, and I look for assistance from the men who have almost as large a stake as I have in the prosperity of Silverdale.”
“Have you ever seen me do anything you could consider prejudicial to it?” asked Witham.
“I have not,” said Colonel Barrington.
“And it was by her own wish Miss Barrington, who, I fancy, is seldom mistaken, asked me to the Grange?”
“Is is a good plea,” said Barrington. “I cannot question anything my sister does.”
“Then we will let it pass, though I am afraid you will consider what I am going to ask a further presumption. You have forward wheat to deliver, and find it difficult to obtain it?”
Barrington’s smile was somewhat grim. “In both cases you have surmised correctly.”
Witham nodded. “Still, it is not mere inquisitiveness, sir. I fancy I am the only man at Silverdale who can understand your difficulties, and, what is more to the point, suggest a means of obviating them. You still expect to buy at lower prices before the time to make delivery comes?”
Again the care crept into Barrington’s face, and he sat silent for almost a minute. Then he said, very slowly, “I feel that I should resent the question, but I will answer. It is what I hope to do.”
“Well,” said Witham, “I am afraid you will find prices higher still. There is very little wheat in Minnesota this year, and what there was in Dakota was cut down by hail. Millers in St. Paul and Minneapolis are anxious already, and there is talk of a big corner in Chicago. Nobody is offering again, while you know what land lies fallow in Manitoba, and the activity of their brokers shows the fears of Winnipeg millers with contracts on hand. This is not my opinion alone. I can convince you from the papers and market reports I see before you.”
Barrington could not controvert the unpleasant truth he was still endeavouring to shut his eyes to. “The demand from the East may slacken,” he said.
Witham shook his head. “Russia can give them nothing. There was a failure in the Indian monsoon, and South American crops were small. Now, I am going to take a further liberty. How much are you short?”
Barrington was never sure why he told him, but he was hard pressed then, and there was a quiet forcefulness about the younger man that had its effect on him. “That,” he said, holding out a document, “is the one contract I have not covered.”
Witham glanced at it. “The quantity is small. Still, money is very scarce, and bank interest almost extortionate just now.”
Barrington flushed a trifle, and there was anger in his face. He knew the fact that his loss on this sale should cause him anxiety was significant, and that Witham had surmised the condition of his finances tolerably correctly.
“Have you not gone quite far enough?” he said.
Witham nodded. “I fancy I need ask no more, sir. You can scarcely buy the wheat, and the banks will advance nothing further on what you have to offer at Silverdale. It would be perilous to put yourself in the hands of a mortgage-broker.”
Barrington stood up very grim and straight, and there were not many men at Silverdale who would have met his gaze.
“Your content is a little too apparent, but I can still resent an impertinence,” he said. “Are my affairs your business?”
“Sit down, sir,” said Witham. “I fancy they are, and had it not been necessary, I would not have ventured so far. You have done much for Silverdale, and it had cost you a good deal, while it seems to me that every man here has a duty to the head of the settlement. I am, however, not going to urge that point, but have, as you know, a propensity for taking risks. I can’t help it. It was probably born in me. Now, I will take that contract up for you.”
Barrington gazed at him in bewildered astonishment. “But you would lose on it heavily. How could you overcome a difficulty that is too great for me?”
“Well,” said Witham with a little smile, “it seems I have some ability in dealing with these affairs.”
Barrington did not answer for a while, and when he spoke it was slowly. “You have a wonderful capacity for making any one believe in you.”
“That is not the point,” said Witham. “If you will let me have the contract, or, and it comes to the same thing, buy the wheat it calls for, and if advisable sell as much again, exactly as I tell you, at my risk and expense, I shall get what I want out of it. My affairs are a trifle complicated, and it would take some little time to make you understand how this would suit me. In the meanwhile you can give me a mere I O U for the difference between what you sold at, and the price to-day, to be paid without interest and whenever it suits you. It isn’t very formal, but you will have to trust me.”
Barrington moved twice up and down the room before he turned to the younger man. “Lance,” he said, “when you first came here, any deal of this kind between us would have been out of the question. Now, it is only your due to tell you that I have been wrong from the beginning, and you have a good deal to forgive.”
“I think we need not go into that,” said Witham, with a little smile. “This is a business deal, and if it hadn’t suited me I would not have made it.”
He went out in another few minutes with a little strip of paper, and just before he left the Grange placed it in Maud Barrington’s hand.
“You will not ask any questions, but if ever Colonel Barrington is not kind to you, you can show him that,” he said.
He had gone in another moment, but the girl, comprehending dimly what he had done, stood still, staring at the paper with a warmth in her cheeks and a mistiness in her eyes.
CHAPTER XXII – SERGEANT STIMSON CONFIRMS HIS SUSPICIONS
It was late in the afternoon when Colonel Barrington drove up to Witham’s homestead. He had his niece and sister with him, and when he pulled up his team, all three were glad of the little breeze that came down from the blueness of the north and rippled the whitened grass. It had blown over leagues of sun-bleached prairie, and the great desolation beyond the pines of the Saskatchewan, but had not wholly lost the faint wholesome chill it brought from the Pole.
There was no cloud in the vault of ether, and slanting sunrays beat fiercely down upon the prairie, until the fibrous dust grew fiery, and the eyes ached from the glare of the vast stretch of silvery grey. The latter was, however, relieved by stronger colour in front of the party, for, blazing gold on the dazzling stubble, the oat sheaves rolled away in long rows that diminished and melted into each other, until they cut the blue of the sky in a delicate filigree. Oats had moved up in value in sympathy with wheat, and the good soil had most abundantly redeemed its promise that year. Colonel Barrington, however, sighed a little as he looked at them, and remembered that such a harvest might have been his.
“We will get down and walk towards the wheat,” he said. “It is a good crop, and Lance is to be envied.”
“Still,” said Miss Barrington, “he deserved it, and those sheaves stand for more than the toil that brought them there.”
“Of course!” said the Colonel with a curious little smile. “For rashness, I fancied, when they showed the first blade above the clod, but I am less sure of it now. Well, the wheat is even finer.”
A man who came up took charge of the horses, and the party walked in silence towards the wheat. It stretched before them in a vast parallelogram, and while the oats were the pale gold of the austral, there was the tint of the ruddier metal of their own North-West in this. It stood tall and stately, murmuring as the sea does, until it rolled before a stronger puff of breeze in waves of ochre, through which the warm bronze gleamed when its rhythmic patter swelled into deeper-toned harmonies. There was that in the elfin music and blaze of colour which appealed to sensual ear and eye, and something which struck deeper still, as it did in the days men poured libations on the fruitful soil, and white-robed priest blessed it, when the world was young.
Maud Barrington felt it vaguely, but she recognized more clearly, as her aunt had done, the faith and daring of the sower. The earth was very bountiful, but that wheat had not come there of itself; and she knew the man who had called it up had done more than bear his share of the primeval curse which, however, was apparently more or less evaded at Silverdale. Even when the issue appeared hopeless, the courage that held him resolute in face of other’s fears, and the greatness of his projects, had appealed to her, and it almost counted for less that he had achieved success. Then, glancing further across the billowing grain she saw him – still, as it seemed it had always been with him, amidst the stress and dust of strenuous endeavour.
Once more, as she had seen them when the furrows were bare at seed time, and there was apparently only ruin in store for those who raised the Eastern people’s bread, lines of dusty teams came plodding down the rise. They advanced in echelon, keeping their time and distance with a military precision; but in place of the harrows the tossing arms of the binders flashed and swung. The wheat went down before them, their wake was strewn with gleaming sheaves, and one man came foremost, swaying in the driving-seat of a rattling machine. His face was the colour of a Blackfoot’s, and she could see the darkness of his neck above the loose-fronted shirt and a bare blackened arm that was raised to hold the tired beasts to their task. Their trampling and the crash and rattle that swelled in slow crescendo drowned the murmur of the wheat, until one of the machines stood still, and the leader, turning a moment in his saddle, held up a hand. Then those that came behind swung into changed formation, passed, and fell into indented line again, while Colonel Barrington nodded with grim approval.
“It is very well done,” he said. “The best of harvesters! No newcomers yonder. They’re capable Manitoba men. I don’t know where he got them, and, in any other year, one would have wondered where he would find the means of paying them. We have never seen farming of this kind at Silverdale.”
He seemed to sigh a little, while his hand closed on the bridle; and Maud Barrington fancied she understood his thoughts just then.
“Nobody can be always right, and the good years do not come alone,” she said. “You will plough every acre next one.”
Barrington smiled dryly. “I’m afraid that will be a little late, my dear. Any one can follow, but since, when everybody’s crop is good, the price comes down, the man who gets the prize is the one who shows the way.”
“He was content to face the risk,” said Miss Barrington.
“Of course,” said the Colonel quietly. “I should be the last to make light of his foresight and courage. Indeed, I am glad I can acknowledge it, in more ways than one, for I have felt lately that I am getting an old man. Still, there is one with greater capacities ready to step into my shoes; and though it was long before I could overcome my prejudice against him, I think I should now be content to let him have them. Whatever Lance may have been, he was born a gentleman, and blood is bound to tell.”
Maud Barrington, who was of a patrician parentage, and would not at one time have questioned this assertion, wondered why she felt less sure of it just then.
“But if he had not been, would not what he has done be sufficient to vouch for him?” she said.
Barrington smiled a little, and the girl felt that her question was useless as she glanced at him. He sat very straight in his saddle, immaculate in dress, with a gloved hand on his hip and a stamp which he had inherited, with the thinly-covered pride that usually accompanies it, from generations of a similar type, on his clean-cut face. It was evidently needless to look for any sympathy with that view from him.
“My dear,” he said, “there are things at which the others can beat us; but, after all, I do not think they are worth the most; and while Lance has occasionally exhibited a few undesirable characteristics, no doubt acquired in this country, and has not been always blameless, the fact that he is a Courthorne at once covers and accounts for a good deal.”
Then Witham recognized them, and made a sign to one of the men behind him as he hauled his binder clear of the wheat. He had dismounted in another minute and came towards them, with the jacket he had not wholly succeeded in struggling into loose about his shoulders.
“It is almost time I gave my team a rest,” he said. “Will you come with me to the house?”
“No,” said Colonel Barrington. “We only stopped in passing. The crop will harvest well.”
“Yes,” said Witham, turning with a little smile to Miss Barrington. “Better than I expected, and prices are still moving up. You will remember, madam, who it was wished me good fortune. It has undeniably come!”
“Then,” said the white-haired lady, “next year I will do as much again, though it will be a little unnecessary, because you have my good wishes all the time. Still, you are too prosaic to fancy they can have anything to do with – this.”
She pointed to the wheat, but though Witham smiled again, there was a curious expression in his face as he glanced at her niece.
“I certainly do, and your good-will has made a greater difference than you realize to me,” he said.
Miss Barrington looked at him steadily. “Lance,” she said, “there is something about you and your speeches that occasionally puzzles me. Now, of course, that was the only rejoinder you could make, but I fancied you meant it.”
“I did,” said Witham, with a trace of grimness in his smile. “Still, isn’t it better to tell any one too little rather than too much?”
“Well,” said Miss Barrington, “you are going to be franker with me by and by. Now, my brother has been endeavouring to convince us that you owe your success to qualities inherited from bygone Courthornes.”
Witham did not answer for a moment and then he laughed. “I fancy Colonel Barrington is wrong,” he said. “Don’t you think there are latent capabilities in every man, though only one here and there gets an opportunity of using them? In any case, wouldn’t it be pleasanter for any one to feel that his virtues were his own and not those of his family?”
Miss Barrington’s eyes twinkled but she shook her head. “That,” she said, “would be distinctly wrong of him, but I fancy it is time we were getting on.”
In another few minutes Colonel Barrington took up the reins, and as they drove slowly past the wheat his niece had another view of the toiling teams. They were moving on tirelessly with their leader in front of them, and the rasp of the knives, trample of hoofs, and clash of the binders’ wooden arms once more stirred her. She had heard those sounds often before, and attached no significance to them; but now she knew a little of the stress and effort that preceded them; she could hear through the turmoil the exultant note of victory.
Then the wagon rolled more slowly up the rise and had passed from view behind it when a mounted man rode up to Witham with an envelope in his hand.
“Mr. Macdonald was in at the settlement, and the telegraph clerk gave it him,” he said. “He told me to come along with it.”
Witham opened the message, and his face grew grim as he read, “Send me five hundred dollars. Urgent.”
Then he thrust it into his pocket and went on with his harvesting, when he had thanked the man. He also worked until dusk was creeping up across the prairie before he concerned himself further about the affair; and then the note he wrote was laconic.
“Enclosed you will find fifty dollars, sent only because you may be ill. In case of necessity, you can forward your doctor’s or hotel bills,” it ran.
It was with a wry smile he watched the man ride off towards the settlement with it. “I shall not be sorry when the climax comes,” he said. “The strain is telling.”
In the meanwhile, Sergeant Stimson had been quietly renewing his acquaintance with certain ranchers and herders of sheep scattered across the Albertan prairie some six hundred miles away. They found him more communicative and cordial than he used to be, and with one or two he unbent so far as, in the face of regulations, to refresh himself with whisky which had contributed nothing to the Canadian revenue. Now, the lonely ranchers have, as a rule, few opportunities of friendly talk with anybody, and as they responded to the sergeant’s geniality, he became acquainted with a good many facts, some of which confirmed certain vague suspicions of his, though others astonished him. In consequence of this, he rode out one night with two or three troopers of a Western squadron.
