Bindloss Harold
Thrice Armed

CHAPTER XV
ELEANOR'S BITTERNESS

It was in a state of quiet contentment that Jimmy stood on his bridge, as the Shasta steamed past the Stanley pines into sight of the clustering roofs of Vancouver. His first voyage had been an unqualified success in every respect, and it was clear that the Shasta had done considerably more than cover her working expenses. This was in several ways a great relief to him, since it promised to obviate any difficulty in providing for his father's comfort, and also opened up the prospect of a career for himself. Jordan had assured him before he sailed that they would have no great trouble in raising funds to purchase another boat if the results of the venture warranted it. He had also said that since one thing led to another, there was no reason why the Shasta Company should not run several steamers by and by, in which case Jimmy would naturally become commodore-captain or general superintendent of the fleet.

As it happened, Jordan was the first person Jimmy's eyes rested on when he rang off his engines as the Shasta slid in to the wharf, and he climbed on board while they made her fast. It, however, seemed to Jimmy that his movements were less brisk than usual, and he was also dressed in black, which was a color he had once or twice expressed himself in his comrade's hearing as having no use for. He came up the bridge-ladder quietly, in place of scrambling up it in hot haste, which would have been much more characteristic, and Jimmy noticed that there was a difference in his manner when he shook hands with him. The latter's satisfaction commenced to melt away, and a vague disquietude grew upon him in place of it.

"Everything straight here?" he asked, veiling his anxiety.

"Oh, yes," said Jordan; "that is, in most respects. We have an outward freight – Comox mines – for you. You'll take her up the Straits that way when you go back again. You seem to have her full."

"I had to leave a good many odds and ends behind, and the ranchers expect to have more produce for us in a month or two. One or two of them were talking about baling presses and a small thrashing mill. I've an inquiry for the plant, which you can attend to. Another fellow was contemplating putting on some Tenas Siwash to see whether there was anything to be made out of hand-split shingles, and several more were going to plant every cleared acre with potatoes for Victoria. I'm to take up two of your mechanical stump-grubbers as soon as you can get them. If we can keep them pleased, we'll get all their trade."

Jordan nodded, without, however, any sign of the eagerness Jimmy had expected. "Well," he said, "that's quite satisfactory so far as it goes. Still, there are troubles that even the prospect of piling up money can't lift one over."

"Of course!" said Jimmy, who looked at him with sudden sympathy. "Still, I fancied you told me you had no near relatives. What are you wearing those clothes for?"

His comrade laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's a thing I shouldn't have done on my own account. I did it – steady, Jimmy, you have to face it – to please your sister."

"Ah!" said Jimmy, with a sharp indrawing of his breath, and leaned on the bridge-rails for a moment or two. His lips quivered, and Jordan saw him clench his hard brown hands. Busy wharf and climbing city faded from before his eyes, and he was sensible only of a curious numbing stupor that for the time being banished grief. Then he felt his comrade's grasp grow tighter.

"Brace up!" said Jordan. "It's a thing we have, all of us, to stand up under."

Jimmy straightened himself slowly, while the color paled in his face.

"When did it happen – and how?" he asked.

"Last night. The doctor had been round once or twice since you went away, and I understood from what Prescott said that he was getting along satisfactorily – that is, physically."

Jimmy said nothing, but looked at him with hard, questioning eyes.

"Well, it appears he was worrying himself considerably. Told Prescott it was a pity he couldn't die right away. Nobody had any use for him, and he didn't want to be a burden. Seems he went over it quite often. The doctor had cut him off from the whisky."

He stopped, with evident embarrassment and pain in his face; but Jimmy's eyes never wavered, though a creeping horror came upon him. In spite of the difficulty he had in thinking, he felt that he had not yet heard all.

"Go on," he said in a low, harsh voice.

"I don't think I could have told you, only it would have fallen on Eleanor if I hadn't, and she has as much as she can bear. You'll keep that in mind, won't you, Jimmy? He got some whisky – we don't know how – one of the wharf-hands who used to look in bought it for him, most probably. Prescott had to go out now and then, you see."

He stopped for a moment, and made a little gesture of sympathy before he went on again. "Somehow he fell over the table, and the kerosene lamp went over with it too. When one of the neighbors who heard him call went in nobody could have done anything for him."

The last trace of color ebbed from Jimmy's face, and he stood very still, with set lips and tightly clenched hands. Then he turned aside with a groan of horror.

"Lord!" he said hoarsely. "That, at least, might have been spared him."

In another moment he swung around on his comrade almost savagely, with a bitter laugh. "And you want to marry my sister Eleanor?"

"Yes," said Jordan; "just as soon as it can decently be done. Jimmy, you daren't blame him."

"Blame him!" and Jimmy's voice was strained. "If I had had his load to carry and felt it as he did, I should probably have gone under long ago."

He leaned heavily on the rail for a minute or two, and then, apparently rousing himself with an effort, turned toward his comrade. "As you say, I must stand up to it. How is Eleanor bearing it?"

"Quietly – too quietly. I'm 'most afraid of her. She's here – I went over to Forster's for her. Insists on staying in the house. I'll send somebody around with your papers, and then go along with you."

Five minutes later they went ashore together, and it was falling dusk when they reached a little four-roomed frame-house which stood near a row of others of very much the same kind amidst the tall fir-stumps which straggled up a rise on the outskirts of the town. It was such a one as the few wharf and sawmill hands who were married usually lived in – comfortless, primitive, and rickety. Jimmy remembered how he had determined when he sailed south with the Shasta full to the hatches that his father should not stay another month in it.

He was almost startled when his sister led them into the little general room, for it was evident that there had been a great change in her. That, at least, was how he regarded it then, but afterward he understood that it was only something which had been in her nature all the time making itself apparent. He did not remember whether she kissed him, but she sat down and looked at him with the light of the lamp upon her, while Jimmy, who could find nothing at all to say, gazed at her.

Eleanor had already provided herself with somber garments, and they emphasized the severity of contour of her supple figure. They also forced up the pallor of her face, which was relieved only by a faint blotch of color in either cheek, and, in spite of this, in a curious fashion made her beautiful. Jimmy had hitherto admitted that his sister was pretty, but, as he recognized, that word was not the right one now. She was imperious, dominant, a force embodied in a woman's shape, and her brother was vaguely conscious that he shrank a little from her. Eleanor did not seem to want his sympathy. The coldness of her face repelled him, the fastidious neatness of her gold-bronze hair appeared unnatural, and her pale-blue eyes had a hard glitter like that of a diamond in them. It was evident that in place of being crushed, she was filled with an intense suppressed virility. Indeed, there was something in her appearance and manner that was suggestive of a beautifully tempered spring, one that would fly back the moment the strain slackened, and, perhaps, cut deep into the hand that compressed it. It was the girl who spoke first, and her voice had a certain incisive quality in its evenness.

"Charley has told you," she said; "I can see that by your face. He insisted on doing so to save me. Well, I am grateful, Charley – that is, as grateful as I am capable of being – but I will not keep you."

Jordan looked disconcerted. "Can't you let me stay? There are one or two ways in which I could be of service."

Eleanor made a little imperious sign, and, though Jimmy once more found it difficult to realize that this woman, whose coldness suggested a white-heat of passion, was his sister, he was not altogether astonished when Jordan slowly rose.

"Then I'm going no farther than the first fir-stump that's low enough to make a seat," he said. "If I'm wanted, Jimmy has only to come out and call."

He went out, and Eleanor turned to her brother. "I am afraid Charley is going to be sorry I promised to marry him," she said. "Still, I think I am fond of him, or I might have been, if this horrible thing hadn't come between us. It is horrible, Jimmy – one of the things after which one can never be quite the same. I have a good deal to say to you – but you must see him."

Jimmy made a sign of concurrence, and his sister rose. "First of all, there is something else. It is a hard thing, but it must be done."

She turned to a cupboard, and, taking out a bottle of corn whisky, laid it before him with a composure that jarred on the man. Her portentous quietness troubled him far more than a flood of tears or a wild outbreak would have done. Then she laid her finger on the outside of the bottle, as though to indicate how much had been taken out of it.

"I think that accounts for everything," she said. "Still, he was driven to it. I want you to remember that as long as you and the man who is responsible live. Prescott knows, and Charley – I had to tell him. But nobody else must ever dream of it."

"Of course you had to tell Charley," said Jimmy hoarsely. "Still, the inquest?"

A scornful glitter crept into Eleanor's eyes. "That you will leave to me. I have been drilling Prescott as to what he is to say, and if they question Charley, who got here before the doctor when Prescott sent for him, he will stand by me."

Jimmy looked somewhat startled; but when he strove to frame his thoughts the girl silenced him. "If it were necessary to corrupt everybody who had ever been acquainted with him, and I could do it – at any cost – it would be done. Now" – and she quietly took up the lamp – "you will come with me."

Jimmy shivered a little as he went with her into the adjoining room, and set his lips tight when with a steady hand she drew the coverlet down. Then, while his eyes grew a trifle hazy, he drew in a little breath of relief, for Tom Wheelock lay white and serene at last, with closed eyes and no sign of pain in his quiet face, from which all the weariness had vanished. Only a clean linen bandage, which ran from one temple to behind the other ear, was laid upon it. There was nothing that one could shrink from, and Jimmy made a gesture of protest when Eleanor laid her hand on the bandage.

She met his eyes with something that suggested contempt in hers, and quietly drew back the bandage, and then the soft white sheet from the shoulder of the rigid figure. Jimmy sickened suddenly, and seized her arm in a constraining grasp.

"Put it back!" he said. "That is enough – enough, I tell you!"

Then, while the girl obeyed him, he turned from her with a groan, gasped once or twice, and sat down limply. He could not look around again until her task was concluded, and he would not look at her. It seemed an almost interminable time before she spoke.

"Still," she said, "you must look at him again; I should like you to remember him as he is now. Perhaps you can, Jimmy, but that relief is not for me."

Jimmy rose, and in another few moments turned his head away. He stood still, with a whirl of confused emotions that left him half-dazed rioting within him, while he glanced vacantly round the room. It was scantily furnished, and generally comfortless and mean. Long smears of resinous matter exuded from the rough frame boarding of its walls, and there were shrinkage rents in part of it that let the cool night air in. In one place he could see where a drip from the shingle roof had spread into a wide damp patch on the uncovered floor, and it seemed an almost insufferable thing that his father should have spent his last days in such surroundings. Then he glanced at Eleanor, standing a rigid, somber figure with the lamp in her hand, and it seemed that she guessed what he was thinking.

"It does not matter now – but he was once considered a prosperous man," she said. "The contrast was one of the things he never complained of; but I think he felt it."

Jimmy turned and went out with her, and, sitting down in the adjoining room, she looked at him with the quietness he was commencing to shrink from. She seemed to understand that, too.

"You think I am unnatural," she said. "Perhaps you are right – but even if you are, what does it matter? Still, I believe I was fonder of him than you ever were. If I hadn't been, could I have done all this for you and him?"

She stopped for a moment, and the hard gleam flashed back into her pale-blue eyes. "He was horribly burned, Jimmy, and until the last few minutes crazed with drink and pain. Still, he was driven to his death and degradation."

Jimmy only gazed at her with a tightening of his lips, and the girl went on in the clear, incisive tones that so jarred on him. "I think it was more than murder. Can you remember him as anything but abstemious, and only unwise in his easy kindliness, until the man who crushed him held him in his clutches? Weak! There are people who would tell you that, and perhaps he was. It was the load he had to bear made him so. Try to remember him, Jimmy, as he used to be – brave and gentle, devoted to your mother and mine; the man who, they said, never ran for shelter in the fiercest breeze of wind. Try – I want you to."

Jimmy turned to her abruptly, moistening his dry lips with his tongue. "Eleanor, have done; I can't stand any more."

"You must;" and the girl laughed harshly. "I hold that he was murdered. Is there any real distinction between the man who holds you up with a pistol and kills you for your money, suddenly and, in one way, mercifully, and the one who with cold cunning slowly sucks your blood until he has drained the last drop out of you? Still, that is not all. If he had only died as most men die. You must remember the upset lamp and the whisky, Jimmy."

"Stop!" said Jimmy hoarsely, clenching a brown hand while the perspiration started from him. "I can't stand it! It is horrible, Eleanor! You are a woman – you have promised to marry my comrade."

The girl rose, and, crossing to where he sat, laid a hand on his shoulder as she looked down at him. "I feel all that you feel, with a greater intensity; but I can bear it, and you must bear it too. Charley will not complain, and I would be his slave or mistress as long as he would stand by me until I carry out my purpose. He is only my lover, but you are Tom Wheelock's son. What are you going to do?"

"What can I do?" and Jimmy made a little hopeless gesture. "Perhaps it would be only justice, but I can't waylay Merril with a pistol. The man has no human nature in him. I couldn't even provoke him to strike me."

"No," said Eleanor, with a bitter laugh; "that would be foolishly theatrical, and in one way too easy. It would not satisfy me. You will wait, ever so long if it's necessary, and command the Shasta while you take his trade away. Then we will find other means – business means; it can, I think, be done. He must be slowly drained and ruined, and flung aside, a broken man, as your father was. Then it would not matter whether he dies or not."

Jimmy shrank from her a little, and she smiled as she noticed it. "There is a good deal of our mother's nature in both of us, and you cannot get away from it. It will make you a man, Jimmy, in spite of all your amiable qualities."

"Still," said Jimmy vaguely, "one has to be practical. I'm afraid it isn't easy to ruin a man like Merril just because you would like to – I've met him, you see. The Shasta Company was not started with that purpose either, and it was only because Jordan is a friend of mine that I was put in as skipper."

"Didn't old Leeson say that the Shasta Company would never have been formed if it hadn't been for me? It is a struggling little company, and Merril is a big man, and apparently rich; but there are often chances for the men with nerve enough."

Jimmy rose. "If one ever comes in my way, I shall try to profit by it. That is all I can say. I'm a little dazed, Eleanor. I think I'll go out and try to clear my brain again. You won't mind? I hear Prescott."

He met Prescott in the doorway, and walking past the few frame-houses found Jordan sitting, cigar in hand, upon a big fir-stump. When Jimmy stopped beside him he made a little sign of comprehension and sympathy.

"I guess I know what Eleanor has told you," he said. "In one way, it's not astonishing that she should feel what she does, and I can't blame her, though it's a little rough on me. This is a thing she'll never quite get over – while the other man lives prosperous, anyway – and, of course, I'm standing in with her."

"But it's not your affair."

"It's Eleanor's, and that counts with me. Besides, I'm not fond of Merril either."

Jimmy was touched by the man's devotion, but once more he could find nothing apposite to say, and Jordan went on:

"Sometimes, as I told you, I'm a little afraid of Eleanor, and perhaps that's why I like her. It seems to me you never quite understood your sister. Your mother made the Wheelock fleet, and it's quite likely that Eleanor's going to make the Shasta Shipping Company. I'm no slouch, but she has more brains than you and I and old Leeson rolled together. Now, you want to rouse yourself, and she has Prescott with her. You'll walk down to the steamer with me."

CHAPTER XVI
UNDER RESTRAINT

Austerly, who was essentially English and a servant of the Crown, somewhat naturally lived outside the boundaries of Vancouver. He had the tastes and prejudices of his class, and did not like the life most men lead in the Western cities, which is in some respects communistic and without privacy. Even those of some standing, with a house of their own, not infrequently use it only to sleep in, and take their meals at a hotel, while, should they retire to their own dwelling in the evening, they are scarcely likely to enjoy the quietness the insular Englishman as a rule delights in. People walk in and out casually until late at night, and a certain proportion of them are chronically thirsty. This, in case of a business man, has its advantages as well as its drawbacks, but Austerly only recognized the latter. He said it was like living in the street, and he did not appreciate being called on at eleven o'clock at night by men of doubtful character whom he had met for the first time a few days before.

He accordingly retired to a retreat that one of his predecessors had built outside the city, which shades off on that side from stone and steel through gradations of frame-houses and rickety shanties into a wilderness of blackened fir-stumps. The Western cities lie open, and though the life in them is more suggestive of that of Paris than the staidness of an English town, they have neither gate nor barrier, and are usually ready to welcome all who care to enter: strong-armed men who limp in, red with dust, in dilapidated shoes, as well as purchasers of land and commercial enterprise directors. They have, it frequently happens, need of the one, and a bonus instead of taxes to offer the other, who may purpose to set up mills and workshops within their borders.

Austerly, however, was not altogether a recluse, and it came about one evening that Jimmy, who had arrived there with a few other guests, sat beside Anthea Merril in the garden of his house. The sunlight still shone upon the struggling grass, to which neither money nor labor could impart much resemblance to an English lawn, but great pines and cedars walled it in, and one caught entrancing vistas of shining water and coldly gleaming snow through the openings between their mighty trunks. The evening was hot and still, the air heavy with the ambrosial odors of the forest, and the dying roar of a great freight train that came throbbing out of its dim recesses emphasized the silence. The little house rose, gay with painted scroll-work and relieved by its trellises and wooden pillars, beneath the dark cedar branches across the lawn. Jimmy had seen Valentine and Miss Austerly sitting on the veranda a few minutes earlier. He was, however, just then looking at his companion, and wondering whether in spite of the pleasure it afforded him he had been wise in coming there at all.

Anthea was dressed richly, in a fashion which it seemed to him became her wonderfully well, and he was quite aware that the few minutes he had now spent in her company would be sufficient to render him restless during the remainder of the week. Jimmy had discovered that while it was difficult to resolve that he would think no more of her, it was considerably harder to carry out the prudent decision.

"It is some little time since I saw you last," she said.

"Four weeks," said Jimmy promptly. "That is, it would be if this were to-morrow."

Anthea smiled, though she naturally noticed that there was a certain significance in this accuracy. Jimmy realized it too, for he added a trifle hastily: "The fact that it was just before the Shasta went to sea fixed it in my mind."

"Of course!" and Anthea laughed. "That would, no doubt, account for it. Are your after-thoughts always as happy, Captain Wheelock?"

Jimmy felt a little uncomfortable. Her good-humor, in which there was nothing incisive, was, he felt, in one way a sufficient rebuff, though he could not tell whether she had meant it as such. It was also disconcerting to discover that she had evidently followed the train of reasoning which had led to the remark, though this was a thing she seemed addicted to doing. After all, there are men who fail to understand that in certain circumstances it is not insuperably difficult for a woman to tell their thoughts before they express them.

"I'm afraid I don't excel at that kind of thing," he said. "It's perhaps fortunate my friends realize it."

Anthea turned and looked at him with reposeful eyes. "Well," she said reflectively, "I almost fancied you were not particularly pleased to see me. You had, at least, very little to say at dinner."

Jimmy, to his annoyance, felt the blood rise to his forehead. He had sense enough to see that his companion did not intend this to be what, in similar circumstances, is sometimes called encouraging. He was not a brilliant man; but it is, after all, very seldom that an extra-master's certificate or a naval reserve commission is held by a fool. Anthea had, he felt, merely asked him a question, and he could not tell her that he would have avoided her only because he felt afraid that the delight he found in her company might prove too much for his self-restraint.

"Still," he said, somewhat inanely, "how could I? You were talking to that Englishman all the time."

"Burnell?" said Anthea. "Yes, I suppose I was. He and his wife are rather old friends of mine. They have just come from Honolulu, and talk about taking the yacht up to Alaska. In that case, they want Nellie and me to go with them."

Jimmy remembered the beautiful white steam-yacht which had passed the Shasta on her way to Vancouver a day or two ago, and was sensible of a vague relief that was at the same time not quite free from concern. If Anthea went to Alaska, it was certain that he would have no opportunity for meeting her for a considerable time. That was, in one way, what he desired, but it by no means afforded him the satisfaction he felt it should have done. She did not, however, appear inclined to dwell upon the subject.

"I think I ought to congratulate you on what you did a few weeks ago," she said. "I read the schooner-man's narrative in the paper."

Jimmy laughed. "If I had known he was going to tell that tale, I almost fancy I should have left him where he was; but, after all, I scarcely think he did. Seas of the kind mentioned could exist only in a newspaperman's imagination."

The girl smiled, for, though what she thought did not appear, she saw the shade of darker color in his face, and Jimmy was very likeable in his momentary confusion. Now and then his ingenuous nature revealed itself in spite of his restraint, but nobody ever shrank from a glimpse of it, for he had in him, as Anthea had seen, something of the largeness and openness of the sea.

"Still," she said, "I heard one or two men who understand such things talking about it, and they seemed to agree that it needed nerve and courage to take the schooner skipper off without wrecking your vessel; but you are, perhaps, right about the imagination of the men who serve such papers."

Jimmy noticed the trace of half-contemptuous anger in her face and voice, and fancied he understood it. He had, of course, seen the issue of the paper in question, and had read close beneath the schooner-man's account of his rescue a bitter and plainly worded attack upon his companion's father. Merril was a political as well as a commercial influence, and journalists in that country do not shrink from personalities. He felt, by the way she glanced at him, that she knew he had done so.

"Yes," she said, though he had not spoken, "you understand what I am alluding to. Still, I suppose anybody who does all he can for the Province must expect to be misrepresented."

Jimmy's face grew a trifle hard. He did not know exactly what she expected from him, but even to please her he would not admit that the man who had seized the Tyee could be misrepresented in any way, unless, indeed, somebody held him up as a pattern of virtue.

"I suppose your father denied the statements?" he said. "I have, of course, been away."

"No," replied Anthea; "it was scarcely worth while. After all, very few people would consider the thing seriously."

She turned to him again with an inquiring glance, and there was a certain insistency in her tone. "Of course, that ought to be clear to anybody."

Jimmy met her glance steadily, and set his lips as he usually did when he was stirred, and he was stirred rather deeply then. Still, nothing would have induced him to say a word in Merril's favor. Then it seemed to him that the girl's expression changed. He could almost have fancied there was a suggestion of appeal in her eyes, as though she would have liked him to constitute himself her ally, and, indeed, had half-expected it. It set his heart beating, and sent a little thrill through him, for in that moment it was clear that she wished to believe altogether in her father, and would value any support that he could offer her. In other circumstances it would have been a delight to take up the cause of any of her kin, whatever it might have cost him, but just then he was conscious of a bitter hatred of the man in question, and Jimmy was in all things honest.

"I'm afraid I don't know how people are likely to regard it," he said. "You see, I am almost a stranger in the Province. I have been away so long."

Anthea appeared to assent to this, but Jimmy realized that she felt that he had failed her. Still, the thing was done, and he would not have done it differently had another opportunity been afforded him.

"Well," she said slowly, "there is something I want to mention. I fancy Mr. Burnell has a favor to ask of you this evening, and it might, perhaps, be wise to oblige him. He can be a very good friend, as I have reason to know, and though he may not mention this, he is, one understands, rather a prominent figure in the Directorate of the – Mail Company."

For a few moments Jimmy was troubled by an unpleasant sense of confusion. The man's name was famous in the shipping world, and there were a good many aspiring steamboat officers who sought his good-will, while, since he could not have heard of Jimmy until a day or two ago, it was evident that somebody in Vancouver City had spoken in his favor. Jimmy fancied he knew who this must be, and it was but a minute or two since he had turned a deaf ear to the girl's appeal. Then he roused himself, as he saw her curious smile.

"So that is the famous man?" he said. "I should never have imagined it."

Anthea laughed as she rose; but before she moved away, she turned to him confidentially. "I really think," she said, "you should do what he asks you."

Then she left him, and it was some minutes later when a little, quiet Englishman strolled in that direction, cigar in hand. He sat down by Jimmy.

"I don't know whether I'm presuming, but I believe you are duly qualified to take command of a British steamer and are acquainted with the northwest coast?" he said.

Jimmy said he had not been far north; and Burnell appeared to reflect for a moment or two.

"After all," he said, "I don't suppose that matters so very much. I'm in rather a difficulty, and you may be able to do something for me. We lost our skipper, and my mate and several of the crew have taken leave of me here unceremoniously. I wish to ask if you would take the yacht up to Alaska for me, and afterward home again. I should naturally be prepared to offer whatever salary is obtainable here by a duly qualified skipper, and as several of my friends are also yours, you would, of course, continue to meet them on that footing while you were on board."

"There is one point," said Jimmy. "The arrangement would necessarily be a temporary one."

"I fancied you would raise it. Well, it would perhaps be a little premature to say very much just now; but I did not come to Vancouver entirely on pleasure. In fact, it is likely that we shall shortly attempt to cut into the American South-Sea trade, in which case we should want commanders for a 4000-ton boat or two from this city. If not, I almost think I can promise that you would not suffer from serving me. I may mention that your friends speak of you very favorably."