Harold Bindloss

“ Beyond the hedge, cornfields blotched with poppies, and cropped meadows, faded into the cold blueness of the east.
Ingleby looked out upon the prospect with a slight hardening of his face, for he loved the quiet, green country in which there was apparently no room for him; but a little thrill of expectancy ran through him as he glanced back across the stile towards the little white village he had left a few minutes earlier. A broad meadow shining with the tender green of the aftermath divided it from the lane, and light laughter and a murmur of voices came faintly across the grass. ”

“ In any case, next moment young Ingleby stooped, and when he straightened himself again he not only held the glove exultantly fast, but the hand she had stretched out for it. Then a patch of vivid crimson showed in Grace Coulthurst's cheek as they stood face to face in the summer twilight—the lad of low degree, with tingling nerves and throbbing heart, and the girl of station rudely shaken out of her accustomed serenity. In those few moments they left their youth behind, and crossed the mystic threshold into the ampler life of man and woman. ”

“ Probyn had the pride which breeds courage and endurance, as well as vigour; but he had not swung the axe and shovel for twenty years, as Tomlinson had done, in the strenuous, unceasing grapple with unsubdued Nature which hardens every muscle and sinew in the men of the Northwest. They have the pride of manhood in place of the pride of birth, and a grim optimism which chiefly finds expression in attempting that which is apparently beyond accomplishment, and in holding on, in spite of frost and snow and icy gale, until achievement comes. ”

“ It was the Monday morning after the flight of Tomlinson when Ingleby stood beside a pile of debris on the claim which was no longer his. The rain had stopped, and there was a wonderful freshness in the mountain air. Overhead the mists were streaming athwart the forest, pierced by arrows of golden light, and the fragrance of redwood and cedar filled the hollow. It is a scent that brings sound rest to the jaded body when night closes down and braces it as an elixir in the coolness of the dawn. ”

“ Turning sharply, he made out two figures among the pines, and an expletive rose to his lips as he recognized them. One was a miner in miry long boots and soil-stained jean, the other a girl in a light dress.
Esmond's eyes grew a trifle vindictive as he watched them, and though he had one foot in the stirrup he did not obey the impulse that prompted him to swing himself to the saddle and ride away. Instead he led the horse behind a wide-girthed cedar and stood still, with a trace of darker colour in his face. ”

“ The night was cool and still, and the hoarse murmur of the river came up in pulsations across the pines.
"After a long journey through the bush this is exceptionally nice, even though it is a little rough on Miss Leger," said Sewell, with a quiet smile. "Her cares are increasing, for another of her boys has come home a trifle the worse for wear to-night, but I scarcely think she minds. It is the women who never do mind that are worth all the rest." ”

“ Ingleby went under, still clinging fiercely to the sodden tunic, and for a second or two it seemed that all of them, the dead and the living, must go down the rapid together, in which case no man could have distinguished between them when they were washed out at the tail of it. Then a man clinging to his comrade with one hand seized Tomlinson; there was a straining of hardened muscles, a wild splashing and floundering, and, while one who leaned across a boulder gasped and wondered if his arm was leaving its socket, the line swung into slack water again. ”

“ The white peaks that gleamed ethereally high up in the blue, crystal lakes, and the endless ranks of climbing pines, scarcely appealed to her as she floundered through tangled undergrowth and ten-foot fern, or stumbled amidst the boulders beside thundering rivers. She had lain awake shivering, with the ill-packed fir twigs galling her weary body, high up on great hill shoulders, and fared Spartanly on a morsel of unsavoury salt pork and a handful of flour, while Ingleby set his lips now and then when he saw the little forced smile in her jaded face. ”

“ Far away on the rim of the prairie there was a stirring of the haze, and a dim smear of pinewoods grew out of the dingy vapour. Then a vista of rolling hills rose to view, and was lost in mist again, until high above them all a great serrated rampart of never-melting snow gleamed ethereally against a strip of blue. It was a brief, bewildering vision, sudden as the shifting of a gorgeous transformation scene, and then the vapours rolled down again; but [Pg 54] they felt that they had looked upon an unearthly glory. Hetty turned to her companion with a little gasp. ”

“ They were waist-deep in snow when they crossed the ridge through the gap of a ravine down which all the winds of heaven apparently rioted, but they fought their way foot by foot, and were floundering down the farther side when Ingleby, who was staggering, grey in face, behind the rearmost of them, lost his footing and rolled down a declivity. He brought up with a crash in a juniper, and rising, half-dazed, recovered his legitimate burden and dragged himself on again. ”

“ In fact, Grace had never until then exactly realized her own capabilities.
Neither Sewell nor she could afterwards remember all that she said, and in fact she said very little, though that little was suggestive; there was no great need for a girl with her patrician beauty to waste words unduly when she had her eyes. In any case, Sewell was as wax beneath her hands, and when she had finished with him she knew that the mountain barrier between the Green River country and Westerhouse was not impassable, and how the one gorge ran that traversed it. ”

“ At last, however, he became sensible that Leger was no longer there and that Hetty was sitting alone on the opposite side of the sinking fire.
"Where's Tom?" he asked.
"I think he's asleep," said Hetty. "It's no wonder. Aren't you very tired, Walter?"
Ingleby laughed drowsily and stretched his aching limbs. "I really believe I am, though I scarcely felt it until this moment. What are you sitting up for, Hetty?"
"I don't quite know. Still, one doesn't come into a fortune every day. I suppose it is a fortune, Walter?"
Ingleby's face grew a trifle grave. ”

“ The Green River country lay far beyond them, and there were leagues of tangled forest, and thundering rivers, to be crossed; but that day the untrodden snow he gazed upon seemed to beckon him, and a sudden longing to set out upon the long trail grew almost irresistible. There was gold in the wilderness, and with enough of it a man might aspire to anything, even the hand of a Crown Commissioner's daughter. ”

“ HETTY BEARS THE COST
It was towards the end of the arduous day, and Ingleby was glad of the respite the breakage of a chain cargo-sling afforded him. The white side of a big Empress liner towered above the open-fronted shed, and a string of box cars stood waiting outside the sliding doors behind him. A swarm of men in blue jean were hurrying across the wharf behind clattering trucks laden with the produce of China and Japan, for the liner had been delayed a trifle by bad weather, and the tea and silk and sugar were wanted in the East. ”

“ Leger smiled. "I'm not sure that the contentment of ignorance is the blessing some people would like us to believe. You see, when one doesn't know what he's entitled to he's apt to be satisfied with a good deal less, while when men like Hall Sewell point out that you don't get half as much as you ought to you are apt to believe them."
Ingleby laughed, though, as Sewell's writings had stirred him to intense appreciation, even in England, he was not altogether pleased with the little twinkle in his comrade's eyes. ”

“ Grace Coulthurst, who had quick perceptions, recognized it, but naturally kept her impressions to herself.
"Mr. Sewell plays chess very well," she said. "In fact, he made what seemed to me a really brilliant opening."
"He is one of the men who do everything that is worth while well," said Ingleby. "That sounds a little comprehensive, but I almost think it's no more than the fact."
Grace asked no very pertinent question that Ingleby could remember; but she nevertheless induced him to speak of his comrade, which, being simple of mind in some respects, he had evident pleasure in doing. ”

“ A man who flung down an armful of fuel stopped and shook two or three of his comrades, who got up and stretched themselves before they set about preparing their morning meal. The pines had grown sharper in outline by the time it was finished, and the snow beneath them had changed in hue and was now a flat, lifeless white; and, though most of the men had risen, the stillness was more impressive than ever. Ingleby had grown accustomed to the roar of the river and could have heard the slightest sound through its pulsations ”

“ In fact, it was not difficult to fancy that he was a trifle embarrassed. It is a little easier to bring down a deer with a bullet that will split up into a torn strip of metal when it meets a bone than with one that has a solid nose and makes a clean, punctured wound.
"Well," he said, "I don't know any reason why I shouldn't, and now and then I get the hack-saw and cut one or two across. When I go shooting it's a deer I want."
Nothing more was said on that point, though Ingleby fancied that the corporal was a little incredulous still. He rose, and looked up the trail as though listening. ”

“ Ingleby's shoulders bled daily and troubled him seriously in the frost at night, a seam of his boot had fretted a raw place across his foot, and in the bitter mornings the cold struck deep and keen. Twelve pounds more count for a good deal when the burden is already all that its bearer is fit to carry, and the effort drained the store of heat in his worn-out body and left nothing for the up-keep of its vitality. That heat is the source of energy everybody knows, but only those who have taxed every muscle in the cold of the Northwest [Pg 290] realize the fact's full significance. ”

“ Ingleby made a little whimsical gesture, which alone sufficed to show that he had, as the girl expressed it to herself, expanded.
"I suppose I have—that is, I have modified them. One has to now and then," he said. "Still, you see, the men I mean don't grind money out of others. They create it. They take hold of the wilderness, bridge the rivers, drive the roads through it, and the ranches and the orchards follow. Every man who makes a new home in the waste owes a little to them." ”

“ She was at home in the saddle, and rightly thought herself secure from any difficulty that might not be occasioned by the weather. The free miner is a somewhat chivalrous person, which is going far enough by way of appreciation, since the epithet which might suggest itself to those acquainted with his characteristics has little meaning in the land to which he belongs, where men have outgrown the need of meretricious titles. Still, when a thin white haze blotted out the dim colonnades and obscured the firs beside the trail she strove to quicken the cayuse's pace a trifle. ”

“ He lay placidly smoking, with no more than an occasional deferential glance at Hetty. Now and then the flickering firelight touched his face and showed the harsh lines of its rugged chiselling and the steadiness of his contemplative eyes. Tomlinson, it was generally admitted, could do more with axe and shovel than most of the men in that valley, but a certain deliberateness of speech and gesture characterized him in repose. He was a man who worked the harder when it was necessary because he seldom wasted an effort. ”

“ Had he been called on to make that journey under such conditions when fresh from England he would probably never have reached the cañon, but strenuous toil with pick and shovel and the simple life of the wilderness had hardened him, and endued him with the strength of will which holds the worn-out body in due subjection. Man's capacity for endurance is, as even the hard-handed bushman knows, moral as well as physical; but Ingleby was making his last effort when he reached the great rift between the hills. ”

“ Ingleby swung around, with head tilted a trifle backwards—she knew that unconscious pose and the little gleam in his eyes which usually accompanied it—and looked across the cool blue-green meadows towards the fading splendours of the West.
"Out there where men are equal, as they were made to be, and the new lands are too wide for the cramped opinions [Pg 9] and prejudices that crush one here!" ”

“ It cost him an effort to hold himself in hand; but Ingleby had been taught restraint in Canada, one sign of which was that he seldom inflicted his opinions on other people. He had decided that it would be time to let his aspirations become apparent when he had found the gold and made himself a position; it never occurred to him that the girl was probably quite aware of them already. It was not an easy thing to hide them, and, though he was growing accustomed to the discipline, the topic she had suggested was a safe one. ”

“ Hetty turned to him impulsively. "Never mind me. I'm an ungrateful little—beast. That's the fact, and you needn't try to say anything nice—I know I am. If it hadn't been for you Tom would have been in prison now."
Ingleby looked out across the endless dusty levels. "I'm sure the country must be a good deal better than it looks—when one gets used to it," he said a trifle dubiously. "Anyway, we are three to one against it, and needn't be afraid of it while we stick together. That is the one thing we must make up our minds to do." ”

“ It appears a blame rough country; but Captain Esmond has a notion that a trail could be made this way, and from Westerhouse one could make the Yukon. It's part of his business to see what can be done to open up communication."
Sewell turned and glanced towards the snow which stretched in a great white rampart across the valley. Beneath it a tremendous wall of rock dropped to the pines below, which crawled round the crests and up the gullies of a desolation of jumbled crags. Dark forest streaked by filmy mist filled the devious hollows at their feet. ”

“ Then they came to the tremendous barrier of the divide, a rampart of ice and snow which even in summer no man new to that country would attempt to climb.
It cost them a day to make the first thousand feet or so, and then they lost count of the rest, during which they dragged themselves upward from dwarf pine to pine or crawled along scarped slopes with the peaks still above them. ”

“ Leger noticed it, but his shrewdness failed him now and then.
"He will make somebody a good husband by and by," he said. "She will have a good deal to thank you for, Hetty."
Ingleby smiled with an absence of embarrassment which had its significance for one of the party.
"There are, after all, a good many advantages attached to being a single man, and I shall probably have to be content with them," he said.
"Of course!" said Hetty softly. "It is no use crying for the moon." ”