"Thanks," said Denham, as if he meant it. "You were not very extravagant, Jimmy, as young men go, and we have hitherto, at least, always stood by each other. Still, I'm not sure that it's my son I can count on now."

"Ah," and Jimmy's voice was a trifle sharper. "I'm afraid I never liked that notion, sir. I think I've mentioned it. There's a good deal of the beast in Aylmer. Has he said anything?"

A curious look crept into Denham's face, and it suggested repugnance as well as anxiety. "He came to me yesterday, and his ideas of a settlement were liberal. I pointed out a few of my difficulties to him, and he mentioned rather tastefully that he fancied they could be got over if he had my good will in the other matter. In fact, he left me with the impression that the mortgage bonds would be handed Carrie after the wedding."

Jimmy Denham's face appeared a trifle flushed, though he was considered a rather hard case by a certain officers' mess.

"I don't like it, sir," he said again. "I can't claim to be very particular, but that man is rather too much for me."

"Then have you any proposition to make?"

Jimmy sat still for at least a minute, apparently lost in thought, which was in his case a very unusual thing.

"The whole affair is a little unpleasant, and I think you won't mind my saying that much. Still, it's evident that we have to face the circ.u.mstances, and I scarcely think Carrie will flinch when she understands the necessity. There might, however, be a more suitable man than Aylmer. In fact, I almost think I know of one."

"The Canadian?"

"Exactly. Anyway, the man is wholesome, which is more than anybody could say of Aylmer, and I rather fancy he will be a person of considerable importance by-and-bye, in his own country. If, as I suppose, you haven't given Aylmer a definite answer yet, I might suggest that you tell him he must make his own running, and leave the rest to me. Though she's not fond of any of us but Carrie, I've no doubt that Eveline Annersly would stand by me."

There was silence again for almost a minute, and then Denham sighed.

"Well," he said, with a little gesture, "you will remember that there is not very much time left. In the meanwhile aren't you keeping the rest of them waiting?"

Jimmy went out, and none of the three men he drove to the Garberry moor could have suspected that he had a single care. They would certainly not have believed, had he told them, that he was, for once, sincerely disgusted with himself as well as his father, and troubled with a very unusual sense of shame. There was courage of a kind in the Denhams, and they could, at least, hide their feelings very well. He inspired the rest with good-humour and shot rather better than he generally did, but he had grown grave again when he had an interview with Mrs. Annersly shortly before dinner that evening. She listened to him with a little frown.

"Jimmy," she said, "you are almost as deficient in estimable qualities as your father is."

"Well," said Jimmy humbly, "I know I am, but you might leave the governor out. I think he is a little older than you are--and he is my father. Anyway, though you mightn't believe it, I feel a trifle sick when I think of Aylmer."

"What do you expect from me?"

Jimmy smiled. "Not a great deal. Only a persistence in your original policy. I have rather a fancy that you and I have had the same thing in our minds."

Mrs. Annersly looked thoughtful. "If it must be one or the other, I'll do what I can. In fact, I don't mind admitting that, seeing what it would probably come to, I have, as you surmise, had the affair in hand already. Still, it was not to make things easier for either you or your father."

CHAPTER IV

LELAND MAKES THE PLUNGE

There was for the first time a chill of frost in the air, so none of the guests at Barrock-holme thought of lounging on the terrace after dinner.

Some were in Denham's gun-room, some were playing cards, and only a few were left in the big drawing-room where Carrie sat at the piano. Leland stood beside her to turn the music over, a duty which was new to him and indifferently fulfilled. He had no very clear notion then or afterwards what she was singing. Still, her voice, which was indubitably good, awakened a little thrill in him. Her proximity had also an exhilarating effect, and he was lost in a whir of sensations he could not a.n.a.lyse as he looked down on the cold face with its crown of dusky hair and saw the gleam of ivory shoulders. This was a man who had usually so much to do that it left him little time to dissect and cla.s.sify his emotions.

He did not think he was in love with Carrie Denham, so far as his ideas on that subject went; but, until he had come to England, the society of a woman of her description was an unknown thing to him. Her physical beauty appealed to him, her cold, reposeful sincerity and pride of station had made an even stronger impression, and now he was sensible of a vague admiration and compa.s.sion for her. He felt, too, a feeling of awkwardness in her presence, realising at the same time that there was nothing to warrant it.

He did not look awkward in the least. His bronze face was quiet, his grave, brown eyes were steady, and, though he was quite unconscious of it, the pose he had fallen into effectively displayed the spare symmetry of his muscular figure. There was also upon him the stamp of the silent strength and vigour that comes of a clean life spent in wide s.p.a.ces out in the wind and sun. He did not know that several pairs of eyes were watching him with approval, and that the owner of one of them smiled in a fashion which suggested satisfaction as she glanced towards Aylmer.

The fleshy gentleman sat not very far away, and Leland fancied that his own presence at the piano was justified when he looked in that direction. There was that in his nature which prompted him to offer protection to any one who needed it, and he felt it was not fitting that such a man as Aylmer should stand at Carrie Denham's side. He had been sensible of this before, but the feeling was unusually strong that night. At last the music stopped, and she looked up at him with her curious little smile.

"Thank you," she said; and the man felt his blood stir, for he fancied she understood what had brought him there. Still, shrewd in his own way as he was, he was strangely deceived in supposing that n.o.body except the girl and himself had grasped his purpose, or that he would have been able to carry it out at all without the concurrence of one, at least, of those who watched him. Leland had grappled with adverse seasons, and held his own against hard and clever men, but he had not as yet had cultured Englishwomen for his enemies or partisans.

He turned away when Carrie Denham rose, and, moving about the room, found himself presently near Mrs. Annersly, who was sitting alone just then on a divan with a big, partly-folded screen on one hand of her. It cut that nook off from the observation of most of the rest, as she was probably aware when she settled herself there; but, when she indicated the vacant place at her side, it never occurred to Leland that she had been lying in wait for him.

"You did that very cleverly. I mean when you opened the piano first,"

she said. "I never suspected you of being a diplomatist. One could almost fancy that Carrie was grateful, too."

Leland was in no way flattered, since all he had done was to reach the piano in advance of Aylmer, who was a trifle heavy on his feet. In fact, he was slightly disconcerted, though he did not show it.

"Well," he said frankly, "it was either Aylmer or I."

His companion looked at him in a rather strange fashion. "Exactly!" she said. "It was either you or Aylmer, and, perhaps, it was natural that Carrie should prefer you."

Leland glanced across the big room, towards where Aylmer was sitting, and was once more sensible of dislike and repulsion. The man did not look well in evening dress. It made his flabby heaviness of flesh too apparent, and the sharply contrasted black and white emphasised the florid colouring of his broad, sensual face. He was just then regarding Carrie Denham out of narrow slits of eyes, priggish eyes, Leland called them to himself, and there was the easily recognisable stamp of grossness and indulgence upon him. The Westerner himself was hard and somewhat spare, a man whose body had been toughened by strenuous labour and held in due subjection by an unbending will. Mrs. Annersly noticed the clearness of his steady eyes and the clean transparency of his bronzed skin. As a man, he was, she decided, certainly to be preferred to Aylmer, and perhaps the more so because there was a side of his nature which as yet, it was evident, had scarcely been awakened. She was glad that the drawing-room was large and the place where they sat secluded, because there was a notion with which she desired to inspire him. She had already gone a certain distance in that direction, and now it was time to go a little further. She could see that her last speech had had some effect.

"Madam," he said, with his usual directness, "I wonder what you mean by that."

"It ought to be evident," said the lady, with a little smile. "If everybody's suppositions are correct, I really think Carrie will have enough of Aylmer by-and-bye. There is no reason why she should commence the surfeit now."

"Then if she feels as you suggest she does, why in the name of wonder should she marry him?"

"There are family reasons. Jimmy and his family are, I fear, in difficulties again, and it will be the privilege of Carrie's husband to extricate them. I believe I told you as much before, though you do not seem to have remembered it."

A slightly darker tinge of colour crept into Leland's cheek. "As a matter of fact, madam, the thing has been worrying me ever since you did. A marriage of that kind is rather more than any one with a sense of the fitness of things could quietly contemplate."

"Still"--and Mrs. Annersly looked at him steadily--"the difficulty is that I am afraid there is nothing you or I could do to prevent it."

Leland was a trifle startled. He could almost fancy that she expected a disclaimer from him, and meant to suggest that, if he wished it, he might find a way where she had failed. He did not know how she had conveyed this impression, and, as he could not be sure that she had desired to do so, he sat in silence until she abruptly changed the subject. With a man of this description there was no necessity for being unduly artistic; the one thing was to get the notion into his mind.

"When are you going back?" she said.

"I don't quite know. In a month or so. Of course, I ought to be there now; but it is the first time I have been away since I came home from Montreal, and it will probably be a long while before I take a rest again. As it is, my being away this harvest will probably cost me a good deal."

"It must be lonely on the prairie, especially in the winter."

Leland smiled. "It is. Once we haul the grain in, there is very little one can do, with a foot of snow upon the ground and the thermometer at forty below. There's just Prospect and its birch bluff in the midst of the big white circle with the sledge-trails running out from it straight to the horizon. Not a house, not a beast, or any sign of life about."

He stopped, and made a little gesture. "Of course, there are big hotels where one could meet pleasant people, as well as operas and theatres, at Winnipeg, and one could get there in two days on the cars. I dare say I could manage a trip to Montreal or New York occasionally too, and we have a few well-educated people from the East on the prairie not more than twenty miles away; but, since I have n.o.body to go with, going away from home doesn't appeal to me, so I spend the long night sitting beside the stove with the cedar shingles crackling over me in the cold. Now and then I read, and when I don't there is plenty to think about in planning out the next year's campaign."

"Has it never occurred to you that it would be a good deal more pleasant if you were married?"

"As a matter of fact it has, but I put the notion away from me. For one thing, I remember my mother, and, if ever I married, it would have to be somebody grave and sweet and dainty like her. She was a well brought-up Englishwoman, and, perhaps, she lived long enough to spoil me. She showed me what a wife could be, and it's scarcely likely there are many women of her kind who would ever care for a prairie farmer who knows very little about anything but wheat and cattle."

"You seem almost unreasonably sure of that," said Mrs. Annersly.

Leland laughed. "Madam," he said, "would you go out there to the prairie and trust yourself alone to such a man as I am?"