Grace sighed, and then, though she answered lightly, there was the same puzzled look on her face that I had seen for a moment at Cypress Hollow. It seemed as if her mind reached forward toward something that eluded its grasp, until we both broke into laughter as a willow-grouse disturbed by the horse’s feet rose whirring to a redwood branch and perched there, close within reach, regarding us with an assurance that was ludicrous.
“It thinks it is perfectly safe,” I said. “You might shoot until you hit it, or knock it down with a stick, and yet there is no more timorous creature among the undergrowth, unless it has a brood of chicks, when it will attack any one.”
At noon we rested for luncheon in an open glade, where bright sunlight beat down upon the boulders of a stream which surged among them, stained green by the drainage from a glacier; and there was merry laughter over the viands Calvert produced from his pack.
“I did my best, Miss Carrington,” he said, “but as yet they’re a primitive people among these mountains—and it’s not to be wondered at, with that huge rampart between them and civilization. ‘Something nice for a lady?’ the storekeeper said. ‘Guess I’ve just got it.’ And he planked down a salmon-fed reistit ham and this bottle of ancient candy, with the dead flies thrown in. Still, one can’t help 157 admiring them for the way they’ve held on, growing stuff they cannot sell, building stores where few men come to buy, and piling up low-grade ore that won’t pay its pack-freight to the smelter. Also I’ve seen work that three men spent a year over which a hydraulic monitor would have done in a few days, while the rocks seem bursting with riches and the valleys with fertility; but they can get neither produce out nor mining plant in. Their greatest hero now is a certain enterprising director, and they’d decline an angel’s visit at any time for that of a railroad builder.”
“I sometimes wish I had been born a man, with work of that kind to do,” said Grace, with a fire in her eyes. “We hear of the old romance and lost chivalry, but there was never more than in these modern days, only it has changed its guise. If we haven’t the knight in armor or the roystering swashbuckler, we have the man with the axe and drill; and is it not a task for heroes to drive the level steel road through these tremendous mountains? You are smiling, Mr. Calvert. I read the papers—Colonial and British, all I can come across—and I know that some day England will need all her colonies. You cannot deny that this is a sensible question: Which is the better for an English gentleman, to use all the strength and valor that is entrusted him—we are taught there will be a reckoning when he must account for them—subduing savage Nature, that the hungry may eat cheaper bread, or lounging about a racecourse, shooting driven pheasants—I know it needs high skill—or wasting precious hours in the reeking smoke-room of his club? If I had a brother I should sooner see him working as a C. P. R. track-shoveler.”
“Grace has strong opinions,” said the old lady. “I think she is right, in a measure.”
Calvert bowed. “It’s in the Carrington blood. Miss Grace, I once heard one of your father’s old comrades say 158 that the Colonel could keep no officers because he wore them out, and he might have ended as General but that he reversed the positions and wanted to instruct the War Office. However, you mustn’t be too hard on the poor loungers; they eat the things the other fellows grow, and some of them subscribe the money to make the new railroads go—they don’t always get dividends on it either. Besides,”—and there was a twinkle in his eyes—“you are making my new friend uncomfortable. He is a railroad builder. Are you working for philanthropic notions, Mr. Lorimer?”
“No,” I answered soberly; and the rest of the party laughed as I added: “Only to pay back what I owe; and we are making slow progress in that direction. Still, the work has its fascination, and it will last and be useful after we are gone.”
Then, while Calvert spoke to Miss Carrington, Grace turned toward me with a sudden look of interest.
“You are not exactly prospering, I gather,” she said, “and I am very sorry. Please commence when you left Fairmead and tell me all the story.”