Arthur Stringer

“ Yet, through all that harking back to the past, there was one question which Cuthbertson shunned most jealously. Just how free her hand and her heart might be, he had never dared to ask. Just what that lost hope had been, he had not the courage to fathom.
Nor was he the only one half-willing to let such riddles remain unanswered, pleading with fate that the awakening might not come until the end. Margaret forlornly argued with her rebellious soul that he and she were no longer of the world where such things counted. ”

“ She had just told him that people in Banff always faced the east—always looked longingly out from those barrier mountains to where, half a world away, lay cities and the fullness of life, movement and tumult and laughter, memories and regrets.
The woman sighed. The man's eyes were still turned out over the great mountains, where the broken valley of the Bow River dashed and fought and twined eastward to the foothills and the world beyond. To Cuthbertson, it was like a first glimpse out through his prison bars. ”

“ She had taught him to love flowers, to see beauty in trifling things, to wonder at sunsets and rain and snow, to catch the spirit of the quieter and littler things of life, the things which the old-time man of action in him, crushing feverishly on to his ends, had missed.
He beheld his old East, and all that it stood for, growing more and more insubstantial. He even caught himself, at times, weaving fancies about the future, and, all along, found himself battling more desperately than ever for his lost health, and gazing less often eastward over the mountains. ”

“ One declaration of faith from the lips of that gentle Dutch philosopher, with whom they had so much in common, refused for all time to be driven from Cuthbertson's mind.
"Joy is but the name of a passion, in which the mind passes to a greater perfection or power of thinking; as grief of the passion, in which it passes to a less."
He struggled manfully to catch at the twilight contentment, the Indian Summer sort of happiness, of his gentler and more fragile companion. ”

“ Beneath them were valleys of dusk and silence, and twining green ribbons of rivers, and slopes of peaceful pine, through which they could see little, home-like clusters of châlets, where, they knew, men and women were fighting their desperate final battle of life and death. ”

“ For the first time, he realized that, with all her protests of happiness, with all her resignation, she was homesick, through fleeting moments at least, for that world of men and women and color and movement and light.
"Wouldn't you like to have a bridesmaid or two come out?" he asked her; "just for the wedding, and for the sake of old times?"
"No, no, dear!" she cried. "They are not of our world now. They are not of us, and they would only—only make us unhappy, perhaps!" ”

“ She had a piano sent up to her own châlet, and, in bad weather, when the mood for reading before the cheery little fire passed, she played for him; and sometimes sang—tenderly and beautifully, he thought, though, happily, he never dreamed just how much the effort was costing her.
Often, too, they made little journeys off to the different mountains close about Banff, and sometimes, in fine weather, went fishing for a long, glorious, golden day. ”

“ You see how hard it's going to be, making a philosopher of me! This way of looking at things is all so new to me! The men and women in those big cities of ours are always too busy and hurried to think these things over and work them out for themselves! ”

“ Well, when a man up here comes to me and gets pounded about, and is told that he's sound as a dollar, and is ordered to pack up and go back to his work, he usually goes. We don't need to argue with 'em, as a rule. But, when he hangs around and says he'll try the goat-shooting the other side of Stephen for a month or two, and the trout-fishing down Emerald Lake way for a month or two, and châlet life up in the mountains for a year or two, it looks bad, very bad! ”