"Why, Frank!" exclaimed Mrs. Laniston, amazed and offended.
"Oh, he did it in a sort of innocuous way—he's very crafty; said I'd been telling him about the arrangement, and then, as if jocularly reminding me of a disability, said that I was a minor, and the contract invalid. He slicked it over and smoothed it down. I think he could smooth down the Great Smoky Mountains, if he should try his hand on them."
"And what did Mr. Lloyd say?" asked Mrs. Laniston, very seriously annoyed and indignant.
"Really, he seemed the best-bred man of the two. He said he would consider my word as good as my bond—the contract was merely a memorandum, as between us two, determining what exercises should be considered business and be paid for, the rest being merely amusement and voluntary. He passed it off easily, but I felt extremely out of countenance."
"I must say Mr. Jardine takes a good deal on himself," Mrs. Laniston said, holding her head very high, the colour mantling her cheek, "and his standpoint is very unreasonable. That you should not hire the services of an athletic coach, because he took a vacant place beside Miss Laniston, in order to weight the machine and make it safe, there being no one else for the purpose in the party, he being the manager and owner of the apparatus, is more than preposterous. We must take no notice of Mr. Jardine's assumptions that there was anything derogatory in the matter. We will treat the man like any other stranger. And now let us get back to New Helvetia where, thank a merciful providence, there is somebody besides the wearisome Mr. Jardine!"
The approach to New Helvetia ushered Lloyd into a new experience, despite his wide wanderings in many ways. The trails he had followed had not sought seclusion; a full population, showward bent, was the desideratum of his journey's goal hitherto. He had scarcely realised that there was so lonely a region on the face of the earth as the dense and gigantic forests through which the smooth, hard, red clay road led. The scarlet oak, the sumach, and the sourwood on exposed slopes to the north had turned red, and flaunted gorgeously against the blue sky. The foliage of hickory now and again appeared at sudden turns, a clear translucent yellow from trunk to topmost twig. Here and there great grey crags showed through boughs still green and lush, that yet held the summer captive, loath to let it go. There was a stream that kept the road company, as if apart they might be affrighted in the vast unbroken wildernesses, and now it showed a miniature cataract, clear as crystal, fringed with foam, leaping down great broken ledges; and now it brawled, widening into marshy tangles by the wayside; and now it ran over rocks, and flashed and frothed like rapids; and now it showed stretches of smooth golden flow above a bed of gravel, with here and there the sudden silver glinting of a water-break. He watched it with a sort of fascinated revery, unconsciously marking its moods and garnering its spirit. Occasionally a gap in the woods showed the mountains, vast, endless, austere, dominating all the world, and he appreciated that the road was continuously rising by gentle degrees to higher and higher levels. The horses were fleet and strong; the roads only fairly good, for in some localities the rain had converted the red clay into mud of a most tenacious character; elsewhere the downpour had come with such force as to beat the ground hard. Here they bowled swiftly; the driver, evidently, had a monition toward atoning for the interval when they toiled and bogged through the sloughs. There had been a delay at the last moment; a new passenger presented himself who could not be ready to start till one o'clock, and, though Mr. Jardine had protested that he had chartered the hack,—in the phrase of the region,—the driver declared that the orders of the line required him to take up all the custom he could gather before it was necessary to leave town in order to make the run before dark. The episode had greatly irritated Jardine, but he found a certain consolation in the fact that the presence of this representative of the general public, so to speak, exerted a repressive influence on the exuberance of the two young ladies. The incidents that had marked the trip down were not repeated—the pauses to alight and gather wild flowers; the shrieks of delight over some lovely vista of the stream and protestations how dear it would be to wade in the shallow crystal flood, floored with golden gravel and great solid ledges of moss-grown rock; the determination which could not be gainsaid to visit the shaft of a mine, worked for silver, in a primitive way, hard by, where a windlass was in operation. Lucia unexpectedly stepped into the swaying bucket above the abyss of ninety feet, holding her skirts tight about her, and ordered the men to lower her, that she might look into the intersecting tunnel. "I'll bring you luck," she declared. "I'm a mascot!"
"Shure I niver knew till to-day, leddy, that anny o' the fairies had emigrated from Oirland, their native land," said an old Irishman, as she alighted from the bucket, relinquishing, with pretended reluctance, the descent which her aunt with some precipitancy forbade; the compliment in a rich brogue, and the flattering twinkle of the eye had set Jardine wild, but Mrs. Laniston had laughed pleasantly, and had descanted elaborately, after they were in the stage once more, on the national gift of blended blarney and poesy that tips the tongue of an Irishman, of whatever degree, wherever found.
Now all was changed. Strangers were fellow-travellers. Placed with Mrs. Laniston on the back seat of the "hack," the young ladies had relapsed into the inexpressive, sedate demeanour which they assumed so easily when subjected to the gaze of the outside world. It might have been different, thought Jardine, if only Lloyd—who had unluckily acquired a quasi acquaintance—had been added to the family party.
The person who thus reconciled Mr. Jardine to the fact of his creation and appearance on this occasion was himself disposed to take little note of the personnel and conditions of his environment. He was a tall, portly man, with a strong, handsome, rather round, face, a florid complexion, and round, somewhat staring, eyes; middle-aged, soberly dressed, and extremely reticent. Beyond an undeveloped feint of a bow to the assemblage in the hack when he entered the vehicle, he accorded none of them a moment's notice. He had the front seat beside the driver; each of the other two seats held three passengers, Jardine being between Lloyd and Laniston, and controlling the very scanty conversation, taking the word whenever an observation was ventured by either. This line of tactics greatly nettled Frank, who, being unable to appropriately return it in kind, relapsed into a marked silence. Lloyd was apparently not aware of its significance, for he responded pleasantly, though monosyllabically, but indeed Jardine permitted nothing more.
When they reached the foot of the mountain, however, and the driver paused to breathe the horses, the men alighting to lessen the burden for the steep ascent, the stranger, who had presumably been profiting by the platitudes with which Mr. Jardine had beguiled the journey, did not select his company as solace in the long, stiff tramp. On the contrary he attached himself to Lloyd, and together they were soon well in advance of the straining team, while Frank and Jardine walked on either side of the vehicle and talked to the ladies over the high wheels. Here, out of sight and beyond the participation of the mere outsiders, Mr. Jardine was pleased to unbend, and be most affable and entertaining, for he did not include in the scheme of creation such objects as the driver—the mere furniture of life—a stalwart young mountaineer, walking nimbly beside his team, holding the reins in his hand, and calling out admonitions and encouragements. As he could not, afoot, use the brake Frank found occupation and utility in "scotching" the wheels with a big stone, or locking them with the chain, generally used to impede a too rapid descent, whenever the team was halted on the steep acclivity for a few minutes of breathing space.