Thurston of Orchard Valley

"Oh, no, and I am so grateful," Helen answered assuringly, noticing guiltily that there were oil and red dust, besides many somber smears, upon the operator's face and jacket, while the skin was missing from several of his knuckles.

It was done at last, and Geoffrey sighed, while the rest of the party expressed surprise as well as admiration when the wheels revolved freely without click or groan. Julius Savine nodded, with more than casual approval, and Helen was gracious with her thanks.

"You look quite faint," observed Mrs. Savine. "It was the hot sun on your forehead, and the mental excitement. Such things are often followed by dangerous consequences, and you must take a dose of my elixir. Helen, dear, you know where to find the bottle."

Julius Savine was guilty of a slight gesture of impatience. His brother laughed, while Helen seemed anxious to slip away. Geoffrey answered:

"I hardly think one should get very mentally excited over a bicycle. I feel perfectly well, and only somewhat greasy."

"That is just one of the symptoms. Yes, you have hit it – greasy feeling!" broke in the amateur dispenser, who rarely relaxed her efforts until she had run down her victim. "Helen, why don't you hunt round for that bottle?"

"I mean greasy externally," explained Geoffrey in desperation, and again Thomas Savine chuckled, while Helen, who ground one little boot-heel into the grasses, deliberately turned away. Mrs. Savine, however, cheerfully departed to find the bottle, and soon returned with it and a wine glass. She filled the glass with an inky fluid which smelt unpleasant, and said to Geoffrey:

"You will be distinctly better the moment you have taken this!"

Geoffrey took the goblet, walked apart a few paces, and, making a wry face, heroically swallowed the bitter draught, after which Mrs. Savine, who beamed upon him, said:

"You feel quite differently, don't you?"

"Yes!" asserted Geoffrey, truthfully, longing to add that he had felt perfectly well before and had now to make violent efforts to overcome his nausea.

His heroism had its reward, however, for when Helen returned from her wheel ride, she said: "I was really ashamed when my aunt insisted on doctoring you, but you must take it as a compliment, because she only prescribes for the people she takes a fancy to. I hope the dose was not particularly nasty?"

"Sorry for you, Thurston, from experience!" cried Thomas Savine. "When I see that bottle, I just vacate the locality. The taste isn't the worst of it by a long way."

That night Julius Savine called Geoffrey into his study, and, spreading a roll of plans before him, offered terms, which were gladly accepted, for the construction of portions of several works. Savine said: "I won't worry much about references. Your work speaks for itself, and the Roads and Trails surveyor has been talking about you. I'll take you, as you'll have to take me, on trust. I keep my eye on rising young men, and I have been watching you. Besides, the man who could master an obstinate bicycle the first time he wrestled with one must have some sense of his own, and it isn't everybody who would have swallowed that physic."

"I could not well avoid doing so," said Geoffrey, with a rueful smile.

"I feel I owe you an apology, but it's my sister-in-law's one weakness, and you have won her favor for the rest of your natural life," Savine returned. "You have had several distinguished fellow-sufferers, including provincial representatives and railroad directors, for to my horror she physicked a very famous one the last time he came. He did not suffer with your equanimity. In fact, he was almost uncivil, and said to me, 'If the secretary hadn't sent off your trestle contract, I should urge the board to reconsider it. Did you ask me here that your relatives might poison me, Savine?'"

Geoffrey laughed, and his host added:

"I want to talk over a good many details with you, and dare say you deserve a holiday – I know I do – so I shall retain you here for a week, at least. I take your consent for granted; it's really necessary."

CHAPTER IX

GEOFFREY STANDS FIRM

Geoffrey Thurston possessed a fine constitution, and, in spite of Mrs. Savine's treatment and her husband's predictions, rose refreshed and vigorous on the morning that followed his struggle with the bicycle. It was a glorious morning, and when breakfast was over he enjoyed the unusual luxury of lounging under the shadow of a cedar on the lawn, where he breathed in the cool breeze which rippled the sparkling straits. Hitherto, he had risen with the sun to begin a day of toil and anxiety and this brief glimpse of a life of ease, with the pleasures of congenial companionship, was as an oasis in the desert to him.

"A few days will be as much as is good for me," he told himself with a sigh. "In the meantime hard work and short commons are considerably more appropriate, but I shall win the right to all these things some day, if my strength holds out."

His forehead wrinkled, his eyes contracted, and he stared straight before him, seeing neither the luminous green of the maples nor the whispering cedars, but far off in the misty future a golden possibility, which, if well worth winning, must be painfully earned. His reverie was broken suddenly.

"Are your thoughts very serious this morning, Mr. Thurston?" a clear voice inquired, and the most alluring of the visions he had conjured up stood before him, losing nothing by the translation into material flesh. Helen Savine had halted under the cedar. In soft clinging draperies of white and cream, she was a charming reality.

"I'm afraid they were," Geoffrey answered, and Helen laughed musically.

"One would fancy that you took life too much in earnest," she said. "It is fortunately impossible either to work or to pile up money forever, and a holiday is good for everybody. I am going down to White Rock Cove to see if my marine garden is as beautiful as it used to be. Would you care to inspect it and carry this basket for me?"

Thurston showed his pleasure almost too openly. They chatted lightly on many subjects as they walked together, knee-deep, at times, among scarlet wine-berries, and the delicate green and ebony of maidenhair fern. The scents and essence of summer hung heavy in the air. Shafts of golden sunlight, piercing the somber canopy of the forest isles, touched, and, it seemed to Geoffrey, etherealized, his companion. The completeness of his enjoyment troubled the man, and presently he lapsed into silence. All this appeared too good, too pleasant, he feared, to last.

"Do you know that you have not answered my last question, nor spoken a word for the last ten minutes?" inquired Helen with a smile, at length. "Have these woods no charm for you, or are you regretting the cigarbox beneath the cedar?"

Geoffrey turned towards her, and there was a momentary flash in his eyes as he answered:

"You must forgive me. Keen enjoyment often blunts the edge of speech, and I was wishing that this walk through the cool, green stillness might last forever."

Afraid that he might have said too much, he ceased speaking abruptly, and then, after the fashion of one unskilled in tricks of speech, proceeded to remedy one blunder by committing another.

"It reminds me of the evenings at Graham's ranch. There can surely be no sunsets in the world to equal those that flame along the snows of British Columbia, and you will remember how, together, we watched them burn and fade."

It was an unfortunate reference, for now and then Helen had recalled that period with misgivings. Cut off from all association with persons of congenial tastes, she had not only found the man's society interesting, but she had allowed herself to sink into an indefinite state of companionship with him. In the mountain solitude, such camaraderie had seemed perfectly natural, but it was impossible under different circumstances. It was only on the last occasion that he had ever hinted at a continuance of this intimacy, but she had not forgotten the rash speech. Had the recollections been all upon her own side she might have permitted a partial renewal of the companionship, but she became forbidding at once when Geoffrey ventured to remind her of it.

"Yes," she said reflectively. "The sunsets were often impressive, but we are all of us unstable, and what pleases us at one time may well prove tiresome at another. If that experience were repeated I should very possibly grow sadly discontented at Graham's ranch."

Geoffrey was not only shrewd enough to comprehend that, if Miss Savine unbent during a summer holiday in the wilderness, it did not follow that she would always do so, but he felt that he deserved the rebuke. He had, however, learned patience in Canada, and was content to bide his time, so he answered good-humoredly that such a result might well be possible. They were silent until they halted where the hillside fell sharply to the verge of a cliff. Far down below Thurston could see the white pebbles shine through translucent water, and with professional instincts aroused, he dubiously surveyed the slope to the head of the crag.

Julius Savine, or somebody under his orders, had constructed a zig-zag pathway which wound down between small maples and clusters of wine-berries shimmering like blood-drops among their glossy leaves. In places the pathway was underpinned with timber against the side of an almost sheer descent, and he noticed that one could have dropped a vertical line from the fish-hawk, which hung poised a few feet outside one angle, into the water. They descended cautiously to the first sharp bend, and here Geoffrey turned around in advance of his companion. "Do you mind telling me how long it is since you or anybody else has used this path, Miss Savine?" he inquired.

"I came up this way last autumn, and think hardly any other person has used it since. But why do you ask?" was the reply.

"I fancied so!" Geoffrey lapsed instinctively into his brusque, professional style of comment. "Poor system of underpinning, badly fixed yonder. I am afraid you must find some other way down to the beach this morning."

It was long since Helen had heard anybody apply the word "must" to herself. As Julius Savine's only daughter, most of her wishes had been immediately gratified, while the men she met vied with one another in paying her homage. In addition to this, her father, in whose mechanical abilities she had supreme faith, had constructed that pathway especially for her pleasure. So for several reasons her pride took fire, and she answered coldly: "The path is perfectly safe. My father himself watched the greater portion of its building."

"It was safe once, no doubt," answered Geoffrey, slightly puzzled as to how he had offended her, but still resolute. "The rains of last winter, however, have washed out much of the surface soil, leaving bare parts of the rock beneath, and the next angle yonder is positively dangerous. Can we not go around?"

"Only by the head of the valley, two miles away at least," Helen's tone remained the reverse of cordial. "I have climbed both in the Selkirks and the Coast Range, and to anyone with a clear head, even in the most slippery places, there cannot be any real danger!"

"I regret that I cannot agree with you. I devoutly wish I could," said Geoffrey, uneasily. "No! you must please go no further, Miss Savine."

The girl's eyes glittered resentfully. A flush crept into the center of either cheek as she walked towards him. Though he did not intend it, there was perhaps too strong a suggestion of command in his attitude, and when Helen came abreast of him, he laid a hand restrainingly upon her arm. She shook it off, not with ill-humored petulance, for Helen was never ungraceful nor undignified, but with a disdain that hurt the man far more than anger. Nevertheless, knowing that he was right, he was determined that she should run no risk. Letting his hand swing at his side, he walked a few paces before her, and then turned in a narrow portion of the path where two people could not pass abreast.

"Please listen to me, Miss Savine," he began. "I am an engineer, and I can see that the bend yonder is dangerous. I cannot, therefore, consent to allow you to venture upon it. How should I face your father if anything unfortunate happened?"

"My father saw the path built," repeated Helen. "He also is an engineer, and is said to be one of the most skillful in the Dominion. I am not used to being thwarted for inadequate reasons. Let me pass."

Geoffrey stood erect and immovable. "I am very sorry, Miss Savine, that, in this one instance, I cannot obey you," he said.

There was an awkward silence, and while they looked at each other, Helen felt her breath come faster. Retreating a few paces she seated herself upon a boulder, thus leaving the task of terminating an unpleasant position to Geoffrey, who was puzzled for a time. Finally, an inspiration dawned upon Thurston, who said:

"Perhaps you would feel the disappointment less if I convinced you by ocular demonstration."

Walking cautiously forward to the dangerous angle, he grasped a broken edge of the rock outcrop about which the path twisted, and pressed hard with both feet upon the edge of the narrow causeway. It was a hazardous experiment, and the result of it startling, for there was a crash and a rattle, and Geoffrey remained clinging to the rock, with one foot in a cranny, while a mass of earth and timber slid down the steep-pitched slope and disappeared over the face of the crag. A hollow splashing rose suggestively from far beneath the rock. Helen, who had been too angry to notice the consideration for herself implied in the man's last speech, turned her eyes upon the ground and did not raise them until, after swinging himself carefully onto firmer soil, Geoffrey approached her. "I hope, after what you have seen, you will forgive me for preventing your descent," he said.

"You used considerable violence, and I am still unconvinced," Helen declared, rising as she spoke. "In any case, you have at least made further progress impossible, and we may as well retrace our steps. No; I do not wish to hear any more upon the subject. It is really not worth further discussion."