AN OLD MAN’S CAPRICE

Jim went to Dryholm, although when he opened Mordaunt’s note he meant to refuse.  A line added in a shaky hand persuaded him, for Bernard had written, “I am lame and cannot come to you.”  Besides, the invitation was extended to his party and Jim wanted Bernard to see the Winters.  They were his friends and he rather hoped Mrs. Winter would talk about the store.

The evening was calm and the sun setting when the car rolled past a lodge half hidden by tall evergreens.  A screen of ironwork cut in fine black tracery against the light, and Jake remarked:  “That’s a noble gate.”

“Hand-forged in Belgium, I believe,” Jim replied, and they rolled on down an avenue where sunshine and shadow checkered the smooth grass.

The avenue had been planted before the new house at Dryholm was built.  The spreading oaks were darkly green, but the beeches had begun to turn and their pale trunks glimmered among splashes of orange and red.  On the hillside above the hollow, the birches hung sprays of shining yellow against a background of somber firs.  All was very quiet and Carrie sensed a calm she had not remarked in the forests of Canada.  There one heard the Chinook in the pine-tops and the rapids brawl.

They sped past a tarn where swans floated among the colored reflections of ancient trees, and then Dryholm broke upon their view across its wide lawn.  For a moment, Carrie was vaguely disturbed.  She had seen Montreal and London, but the buildings there were crowded with occupants and this was one man’s home.  Jim, whose clothes she had mended, belonged to people who built such houses.  She glanced at him, but his face was inscrutable until he seemed to feel her gaze and gave her a smile.  Carrie felt braced.  In some ways, Jim had got strangely English, but he was, for all that, the Jim she knew; and she studied the house with a pleasant thrill, as if she were embarking on a new adventure.

Dryholm was very large and modern, but it had dignity and glimmered in the sunset between shadowy woods.  The stone was creamy white, with touches of soft pink and gray.  Cornices and pillars broke the long, straight front, and there were towers at the ends.  Carrie knew nothing about architecture, but she got a hint of strength and solidity.  Somehow, she felt relieved; Mordaunt and Mrs. Halliday would not have built such a house.  On the whole, she distrusted them, but it looked as if the head of the family was different.

“It’s very fine, Jim,” she said.  “There’s something of Langrigg about it; something you don’t feel at Whitelees.  The stone is curious.”

“I believe it was brought from a distance, but, in a sense, Bernard Dearham built Dryholm of iron.”

“Somehow it looks like that,” Carrie remarked.

The car stopped in front of a plain arch and Bernard received the party in the hall, where they found Mrs. Halliday, Evelyn, Mordaunt, and some others.  Bernard gave Jim his hand and for a minute or two kept Mrs. Winter and Carrie by him.  When they went to dinner Mrs. Winter was put next to Bernard, and Carrie, sitting near, looked about with frank curiosity.  The room was lofty and spacious.  She had not seen such a room except when she dined at a big Montreal hotel, but it had not the lavish decoration she had noted there.  At Dryholm, one got a sense of space and calm; nothing glittered and forced itself on one’s glance.  Carrie thought it was somehow like a church, but rather the big quiet cathedral than the ornate Notre Dame.  She had only seen big churches in Montreal.

The west window commanded distant hills that rose, colored dark-blue, against the yellow sky.  Shining water touched their feet and one could hear the sea.  It was getting dark, however, and soon electric lights began to glow on the paneled ceiling and along the deep cornice.  The lamps were placed among the moldings and one scarcely noticed them until the soft light they threw on the table got stronger.

Then Carrie remarked that Mrs. Winter was talking, and Bernard laughed.  She had wondered whether she ought to give her mother a hint, and might have done so, for Jim’s sake, although it would have hurt her pride; but she was glad she had not.  Bernard Dearham did not smile politely, as Mrs. Mordaunt smiled; he laughed because he was amused.  Carrie did not know much about English people, but the dinner was obviously a formal acknowledgment of the new owner of Langrigg; and she studied her host.  She had at first remarked a puzzling likeness to somebody she knew, and now she saw it was Jim.  The likeness was rather in Bernard’s voice and manner than his face, although she found it there.  Then he looked up and asked: 

“Do you like Dryholm?”

“Oh, yes,” said Carrie.  “Almost as much as I like Langrigg.”

Bernard smiled and nodded.  “Langrigg has a touch that only time can give.  A house matures slowly.”

“I think that is so,” Carrie agreed.  “One feels it in England.  A house matures by being used; the people who live there give it a stamp, and perhaps when they go they leave an influence.  It’s different in Canada.  When our houses get out of date, we pull them down.”

Bernard looked at her rather keenly.  He was a shrewd judge of men and women and saw that she could think.

“You are something of a sentimentalist; I don’t know if you are right or not.  When I built Dryholm we tried to get the feeling Langrigg gives one, as far as it could be expressed by line.  But do you like Whitelees?”

“Whitelees is pretty,” Carrie replied with caution.

Bernard’s eyes twinkled.  “Very pretty.  Something new, in fact, after Canada?”

“Yes,” said Carrie, who saw he wanted her to talk.  She knew he was studying her, but he was not antagonistic like Mordaunt and Mrs. Halliday.  “This is why I’d sooner have Langrigg, because I don’t find Langrigg new in the way you mean,” she resumed.  “One gets the feeling you talk about in Canada; not in our houses but in the woods.  They’re different from the woods you have planted and trimmed.  The big black pines grow as they want; sometimes they’re charred by fire and smashed by gales.  When it’s quiet you hear the rivers and now and then a snowslide rolling down the hills.”

“Rugged and stern?  Well, I imagine the men who built Langrigg long since were rather like your pioneers.”

Carrie thought Bernard had something of the spirit of the pioneers; this was why he was like Jim.  She felt his strength and tenacity, but he did not daunt her.

“Why did you make Dryholm so big?” she asked.

“You don’t think an old man needs so large a house?” he said.  “Well, I built for others whom I thought might come after me, but that is done with.”  He paused and looked down the table at Mordaunt and Evelyn; and then Carrie imagined his eyes rested on Jim, as he added:  “Sometimes I am lonely.”

He began to talk to Mrs. Winter, who presently remarked:  “Oh, yes, I like it in England.  I knew it would be fierce in the jolting cars and on the steamer, but Jim insisted, and now I’m glad I let him persuade me.”

“Then Jim insisted on your coming?”

“Why, yes.  I meant to stay at home.”

“Ah,” said Bernard, “I think Jim took the proper line.”

“Anyhow, I needed a holiday,” Mrs. Winter resumed.  “It’s quiet and calm at Langrigg and I’ve worked hard.  You folks don’t get busy all the time, like us in Canada.”

Bernard laughed.  “There are a large number of busy people in this country, and for a long time I, myself, worked rather hard.”  He paused and looked down the table with ironical humor.  “I was thought eccentric and my relations did not altogether forgive me until I got my reward.  All approved then.”

Mordaunt’s face was inscrutable, but Mrs. Halliday smiled and Evelyn looked at Jim with faint amusement.

“I imagine he meant mother; they sometimes clash,” she said.  “You don’t know Bernard yet.  When you do, you will try to make allowances, like the rest of us.”

“In the meantime, it does not seem needful.  He is kind ­”

“Remarkably kind,” Evelyn agreed.  “In fact, his kindness is puzzling.  How far would you go to keep his favor?”

“It would depend,” said Jim.  “Upon how much I liked him, for one thing.  Of course, I would go no distance if he tried to drive.”

Evelyn smiled.  “Well, I suppose you can take a bold line.  If one has pluck, it sometimes pays.  At all events, it’s flattering to feel one can be oneself.  No doubt, you all develop your individuality in Canada.”

“We are rather an independent, obstinate lot,” Jim owned.  “I expect this comes from living in a new country.  When you leave the cities, you have nobody to fall back on.  You have got to make good by your own powers and trust yourself.”

“Ah,” said Evelyn, “one would like to trust oneself!  To follow one’s bent, or perhaps, one’s heart, and not bother about the consequences.”  She was silent a moment and then resumed with a soft laugh:  “But unless one is very brave, it’s not often possible; there are so many rules.”

Jim felt sympathetic.  She had laughed, but he thought the laugh hid some feeling.  She was generous and strangely refined; Mrs. Halliday was conventional and calculating, and the girl rebelled.

“I expect our host broke a number of the rules,” he remarked.

“He did and he paid.  Bernard was not rich and when he opened the Brunstock mines nobody would help him.  When he sold his farms to buy pumps and engines there was a quarrel with your grandfather and perhaps Bernard has some grounds for bitterness.  I don’t know if it’s strange, but while Joseph Dearham was a plain country gentleman, Bernard, after getting rich in business, wears the stamp of the old school.”

Jim agreed.  Bernard was obviously not fastidious, like his relatives, but he had the grand manner.  This was not altogether what Jim meant, but perhaps it got nearest.

“I think it’s because he’s fearless ­one sees that,” he said.  “Shabbiness and awkwardness come when one’s afraid.”

“It’s possible,” Evelyn answered, with a curious smile.  “One hates to be shabby but sometimes one is forced.  Pluck costs much.”

Then Mrs. Halliday got up, and some of the party went to the drawing-room and some to the terrace.  Jim stayed in the hall and mused while he smoked a cigarette.  Evelyn had stirred his imagination by a hint that she was dissatisfied and struggled for free development.  Well, he had seen Whitelees and was getting to know Mrs. Halliday.  To some extent, he liked her, but he could understand the girl’s rebellion.  However, it was strange she had given him a hint, unless, of course, she had done so unconsciously.  When the cigarette was finished he went to the terrace.

The evening was warm and a faint glow lingered in the west.  All was very quiet except when a herd of cattle moved about a pasture across the lawn.  The party had broken up into small groups and Jim joined Evelyn.  Bernard got up stiffly when Carrie came near his bench.

“Tell me about wild Canada.  I understand you were in the woods,” he said.

“Yes,” said Carrie, sitting down.  “I went North with Jim and my brother and the boys, when the ice broke up.”

“The boys?”

“The rock-cutters and choppers,” Carrie explained.

“I see,” said Bernard.  “Was there no other woman?  What did you do?”

“The nearest woman was a hundred miles off.  I cooked and looked after the stores.  Sometimes I mended the clothes.”

“And how were the others occupied?”

Carrie hesitated.  Although Bernard had asked her to tell him about Canada, she imagined he wanted to hear about Jim, but after a few moments she began to relate the story of their cutting the telegraph line.  She could not have told it to Mrs. Halliday, but she felt Bernard would understand, and he helped her by tactful questions.  She wanted him to know what kind of man Jim was and she made something of an epic of the simple tale; man’s struggle against Nature and his victory.  Indeed, for Bernard was very shrewd, she told him more than she thought.

“But, when you were nearly beaten, you could have sold the copper vein you talked about and used the money,” he remarked.

“In a way, we couldn’t sell.  Baumstein was putting the screw to us; he meant to buy for very much less than the claim was worth.  We would have starved before we let him, and for a time we hadn’t as much food as we liked.”

“After all, you might have been beaten but for the contractor.  Why did he help?  No doubt, he knew it was a rash speculation.”

“Oh, well,” said Carrie, “I think he liked Jim.  But we wouldn’t have been beaten.  We’d have made good somehow.”

“Still it looks as if the contractor was a useful friend.  Did he stop at Vancouver?  Does he write to you?”

Carrie hesitated, because she imagined she saw where Bernard’s questions led.

“We won’t forget him, but he doesn’t write and I don’t know where he is,” she said; and added with a touch of dignity:  “I don’t see what this has to do with the rest.”

“Perhaps it has nothing to do with it,” Bernard replied.  “Thank you for telling me a rather moving tale.”

He let her go and when she passed a bench where Mrs. Halliday and Mordaunt sat the former looked at her companion.

“I suppose you have remarked that Bernard has been unusually gracious to the girl and her mother.  Is it his notion of a host’s duty?  Or is it something else?”

“I imagine it’s something else,” Mordaunt replied.

“But what?  Does he want to annoy us?”

“It’s possible he thought he might do so.  Are you annoyed?”

“I am certainly surprised.”

“Oh, well,” said Mordaunt; “perhaps he had another object.  I don’t know.  He’s rather inscrutable.”

Mrs. Halliday got up.  “I thought we could be frank, Lance.  After all, our habit is to take Bernard’s cleverness for granted.  He has a bitter humor and the thing may only be an old man’s caprice.”

She went off and when soon afterwards the party began to break up Bernard gave Jim a cigar in the hall.

“I note that you and your young relations are already friends,” he said.  “Dick’s a fine lad; he’s generous and honest, although I doubt if he will go far.  Evelyn, of course, has no rival in this neighborhood.”

“That hardly needs stating,” Jim replied.

Bernard twinkled and his glance rested on a beautiful painted vase.  “Your taste is artistic; it looks as if you had an eye for color and line.  In a sense, Evelyn is like this ornament.  She’s made of choice stuff; costly but fragile.  Common clay stands rude jars best.”

Jim was puzzled and half-annoyed, because he could not tell what Bernard meant; but the latter began to talk about something else.

“You were a miner for a time, I think,” he presently remarked.  “One would expect you to know gold when you see it.”

“It’s sometimes difficult,” said Jim.  “As a rule, gold is pure.  It doesn’t form chemical alloys, but it’s often mixed with other substances.”

“So that the uninstructed pass it by!” Bernard rejoined.  “One might make an epigram of that, but perhaps it would be cheap.  Well, I must wish the others good night.  I hope you’ll come back soon and bring your friends.”

Jim put his party in the car and drove off, feeling strangely satisfied.  Evelyn had been gracious and although he did not altogether understand Bernard he liked him better than he had thought.