From the time of their ride together, Jean’s thoughts were much more occupied with Loring than they had been before. The consciousness of her father’s opposition was an added stimulus, partly by reason of her inherited obstinacy, and partly because she felt that Loring was misunderstood, and all her loyalty was engaged in his behalf. She felt a pride in having discovered what she thought were his possibilities, and she was determined that the world should acknowledge them too. In the face of Mr. Cameron’s disapproval she did not venture to ask Loring to the house; but whenever they met in the camp or on the road she made a point of stopping to talk with him and inquiring how things were going at the hoist. It must be set down to Loring’s credit that none of these meetings were of his planning, for as his love for her deepened, as it did day by day, he felt more and more keenly the barriers[101] which he himself had raised between them. He felt how far wrong he had been in assuming that his life had been wholly his own and that his failures could touch no one but himself. He did not dare to construct the future, but clung to the present with realization of its blessings. He felt a glow of pride in Jean’s friendship for him, and a steady reliance on her faith in him. Week after week went by and the fiber within him strengthened. The belief in the worthwhileness of life came to him with a splendid rush of conviction that was not to be denied.
The depth of happiness is, unfortunately, however, no criterion of its duration. One evening the stage, after depositing at the office its load of mail and newcomers, lurched jerkily up the incline that led to Mr. Cameron’s house, instead of being driven to the corral as usual. Loring watched it and his spirits dropped like a barometer. An incident may easily depress high spirits, though it takes an event to raise low ones. The event which had raised his spirits to-day was a meeting with Jean Cameron while Mr. Cameron was inspecting Number Three shaft. Jean had accompanied her father to the hoist and Loring had been able to talk with her[102] for a longer time than usual. The incident that had depressed was merely a slight break in the routine. He did not usually notice the stage. Why should he do so now? What was more natural than that Mr. Cameron should have some visitor?
“Probably one of the directors of the company, or some official,” Stephen reflected. “Perhaps that was why that new saddle was sent down to the corral.”
Loring shortened his day by dividing it into periods. A period consisted of the time required to raise ten buckets of ore. At the end of each period he permitted himself to glance over his shoulder, where just beyond the corner of the ore cribs he could see the porch of Mr. Cameron’s house. Now and then he was rewarded by a glimpse of Jean reading or talking to her father. Loring was very honest with himself and never before the requisite amount of work was accomplished did he give himself his reward. This morning he had gone through the usual routine, lowered the day’s shift and patiently waited to hoist the first result of their labor. It had been a severe strain on his subjective integrity, when, after he had raised nine buckets of ore, the expected[103] tenth turned out to be merely a load of dulled drills sent up to be sharpened. Exasperated, he watched while the “nipper” boys unloaded the drills and put in the newly sharpened sets which they had brought from the blacksmith’s. One little fellow either unduly conscientious, or with a wholesome dread of the wrath of the mine foreman, laboriously counted the new drills from the short “starters” to the six- and seven-foot drills that complete the set.
“Oh, they’re all right, Ignacio,” called Stephen. “Chuck them in! ’Sta ’ueno.”
The next time his hopes were fulfilled, and bucket number ten appeared on the surface. As soon as it was clear of the shaft and swung onto the waiting ore car, Stephen turned for his long-desired glance. Tied to the fence in front of Mr. Cameron’s house was another horse beside Jean’s pony, which he knew so well. As he looked, the door opened and Jean appeared. She was too far away for him to distinguish her features and yet she seemed to him to have an air of buoyancy which he had not before remarked. A man stepped out of the doorway behind her. His tan riding-boots were brilliant with a gloss that is unknown in[104] a world where men shine their own shoes. The sunlight positively quivered upon them. Jean and the stranger mounted, and as they rode nearer to the hoist Stephen observed that the man was singularly good-looking, but “too sleek by half,” he growled vindictively, as he turned to his work again.
The stranger turned out to be a young cousin of Mr. Cameron’s, ostensibly in camp to see “western life”; but Stephen had his own opinion as to that. In a week Loring disliked the cousin, in a fortnight he loathed him, and all without ever having exchanged a word with the dapper youth. A man who by necessity is compelled to wear a flannel shirt and trousers frayed by tucking within high boots, is always prone to consider a better dressed man as dapper. For a week Stephen had not had a chance to speak with Miss Cameron. The cousin, “Archibald Iverach,” as the letters which Loring saw at the post-office indicated to be his name, may not have been intentionally responsible; but to his shadow-like attendance on Jean, Loring attributed the result and accordingly prayed for his departure. “To be sure he is her guest; but that is no reason why he should have too[105] good a time,” he reflected gloomily. “She must be enjoying his visit or she would not keep him so long.”
Had Loring overheard a conversation which took place at Mr. Cameron’s table the day before Iverach’s return to the East, he would have felt his affection for that gentleman still more increased. The conversation had turned upon the types of men in camp. Iverach’s estimate of them had been as disparaging as theirs of him. The only men with whom he had come in contact had annoyed him as having no place in his neatly constructed world. “Cheap independence” was the phrase that he had used to describe their manner. He had good cause to know this independence for one day he had addressed McKay in a rather lofty fashion, and what McKay had said in return could only be constructed from a careful and diligent reading of the unexpurgated parts of all the most lurid books in the world combined. The retort had been worthy of a territory where the championship swearing belt is held by one who can swear between syllables. His remarks had reflected on Iverach’s parentage on the male and female sides, it had enlarged on his past,[106] expatiated on his probable future, dilated upon his present. The pleasantest of the places that awaited him, according to McKay, was hotter than Tombstone in August. His looks and character had been described in a way that had surpassed even McKay’s fertile imagination. Iverach had always imagined that he would fight a man for using such language to him; yet for some reason he had not hastened to express offense. He was not a coward; but he was not adventurous nor easily aroused to anger when it might have unpleasant results. Consequently to-day, when he finished his remarks about the men whom he had seen by observing that they were “the scum of the earth,” he was guilty of no conscious exaggeration.
Mr. Cameron paid no attention to his cousin’s remarks. He had rarely found them rewarding and therefore with his usual Scotch economy he declined to waste interest upon them. Jean, however, for some reason took the trouble to continue the discussion.
“Have you met a man named Loring, one of the hoist engineers?” she asked quietly.
Iverach looked up suddenly. “Loring? What is his first name?”
[107]
“Stephen.”
“I have not met him here; but if he is the man I think he is, I happen to have heard something of him in the East. A friend of his asked me to keep an eye out for him if I came to any of the camps in Arizona. In fact, he told me to keep two eyes open for him, one to find him with, and the other to look out for him after I had found him. He intimated that Loring was not a reliable character, to say the least.”
“A friend of his, did you say?”
“I judged that he had been at one time, but from the trend of his conversation his friendship must have been a thing of the dim past. Among other pleasant things about Loring he told me that—”
“Did he say anything about his ability as a hoist engineer? That, I think, is the only thing with which we are concerned here,” interrupted Jean. “You know, Archie, there is a proverb to the effect that ‘a man’s past is his own.’”
“Then all I can say is that Loring is not to be envied his ownership,” Iverach went on, ignoring the danger signal of Jean’s slightly contemptuous manner. “And as for discussing[108] his past, I cannot see any harm in repeating what every one knows about a man.”
Ordinarily Mr. Cameron was the most fair-minded of men, and judged people by what he knew of them, not by what he heard; but he had a particular antipathy to Loring, caused by dislike of his type, and also he was not sorry to have Jean hear a few truths about the man whose companionship he dreaded for her as much as he resented her championship of him.
“What was it you were going to say about Loring?” he asked of Iverach, as he handed him a cigar.
Iverach paused to clip it carefully with a gold cigar-cutter that hung from his watch-chain. “Of course it is only hearsay that I am repeating—” Archibald began hesitatingly.
“Then why repeat it?” asked Jean ironically.
“Oh, the most interesting things in the world are those that you accept on hearsay,” he laughed. “I forget the details of Loring’s history, but this friend intimated that Loring, when engaged to his guardian’s daughter, borrowed large sums of money from the guardian, and—well, neither the engagement nor the money ever materialized and Stephen Loring[109] is not much sought after in that neighborhood. I met the girl once,” he went on, “and I don’t blame Loring. She was the kind of young woman whose eyes light up only over causes; but the money part of the story, if true, is rather an ugly fact. Dexterity with other people’s money is not an agreeable form of deftness.”
“Utterly contemptible,” snapped Mr. Cameron, flicking the ashes from his cigar onto the table with a prodigal gesture, only to brush them onto an envelope with the afterthought of an exact nature.
Jean rose and walked toward the door.
“At what time do you ride this afternoon?” her cousin called after her.
“Thanks,” replied Jean, without turning, “but I shall not be able to ride this afternoon, I am intending to spend the time in making a pair of curtains for this window. I do not like the view of the hoist.”
Iverach’s face fell, for he was leaving Quentin the next day, and he had counted much upon this last interview. “Can’t the curtains wait until to-morrow?” he remonstrated.
“No, they must be finished at once,” replied Jean with decision.
[110]
“Why this burst of domestic energy?” queried Mr. Cameron. “You know that you have not taken a needle in your hand since you have been in the camp.”
“I intend to change my habits in many ways,” Jean responded, pressing her lips together firmly.
“I beg of you not to change at all,” said Iverach. “It is impossible to improve a perfect person. However, since you are in the domestic mood, I wonder if you would take pity on a helpless bachelor and take a stitch in my riding-gloves for me?”
“Riding-gloves are a luxury, while curtains are a necessity,” replied Jean firmly. “However, if you will give the gloves to me, I will see that our Chinaman mends them. There is nothing that he cannot do.”
For some minutes after Jean had left the room, her cousin contemplated the end of his cigar. It was hard for him to twist her expressions into denoting a mood favorable to his complacency, so he spent an unpleasant half hour. At last, giving up all hope of her reappearance, he moodily set forth alone on his ride. He realized that in the Western setting he did[111] not appeal to Jean Cameron, and only hoped that when she should return to the East, his deficiencies would be less apparent, while his advantages would show more clearly. He therefore concluded to defer putting his fate to the touch until circumstances should prove more propitious.
The curtains took some time in the making. Jean sewed them with a preoccupied elaboration such as she was not accustomed to bestow upon such tasks. She had been startled by the effect of her cousin’s words upon her, and now stared at the hem of the curtains with a slight frown. She had thought her interest in Stephen to be purely abstract and impersonal, and yet it was not pleasant to think of the person in whom she was even abstractly interested as having been concerned in a dubious financial transaction. It certainly added interest to the problem of his regeneration; but nevertheless it abated the zeal for solving that problem, by making it seem not worth while.
Stephen rejoiced when the day came for Iverach to leave Quentin. He hoped that now his relations with Miss Cameron would be resumed. He was amazed to see how much he[112] had come to rely on his glimpses of her as the inspiration of his existence. The first time that he saw her, however, she passed him with a cool nod in which it would have been hard for any one to find encouragement or inspiration. When this coolness was repeated on several occasions he was puzzled. Then he made up his mind that the underlying reason was the cousin, and in this he was certainly correct, though not in the way he supposed. For the first time he began to realize that the work at the hoist was monotonous.
The Devil has three great allies, natural depravity, aimless activity, and ennui, and this last is his most trusted, subtle, and reliable agent, especially when coupled with depression.