The Protector

It was all he could think of; but he spoke without obtrusive assurance or pronounced embarrassment, and the girl, who shook out her crumpled skirt over one little foot with a swift movement, choked back a sob, and favoured him with a glance of keen scrutiny as she rose to a sitting posture. She was quick at reading character – the life she led had made that necessary – and his manner and appearance were reassuring. She, however, said nothing, and sitting down on a neighbouring boulder, he took out his pipe from force of habit.

“Well,” he added, in much the same tone as he would have used to a distressed child, “what’s the trouble?”

She told him, speaking on impulse. “They’ve gone off and left me. The takings didn’t meet expenses.”

“That’s bad,” said Vane gravely. “Do you mean they’ve left you alone?”

“No,” replied the girl; “in a way it’s worse than that. I suppose I could go – somewhere – but there’s Mrs. Marvin and Elsie.”

“The child who danced?”

The girl assented, and Vane looked thoughtful.

“The three of you stick together,” he suggested.

“Of course. Mrs. Marvin’s the only friend I have.”

“Then I suppose you’ve no idea what to do?”

His companion confessed it, and explained that it was the cause of her distress and that they had had bad luck of late. Vane could understand that as he looked at her; her dress was shabby, and he fancied she had not been bountifully fed.

“If you stayed here a few days, you could go out with the next stage, and get on to Victoria with the cars,” he said. He paused and continued diffidently: “It could be arranged with the hotel-keeper.”

She laughed in a half-hysterical manner, and he remembered that fares were high in the country.

“I suppose you have no money,” he added, with blunt directness. “I want you to tell Mrs. Marvin that I’ll lend her enough to take you all to Victoria.”

Her face crimsoned, which was not quite what he had expected, and he suddenly felt embarrassed.

“No,” she replied; “I can’t do that. For one thing, it would be too late when we got to Victoria. I think we could get an engagement if we reached Vancouver in time to get to Kamloops by – ”

Vane knitted his brows when he heard the date, and it was a moment or two before he spoke.

“Then,” he said, “there’s only one way you can do so. There’s a little steamboat coming down the coast to-night, and I had half thought of intercepting her and handing the skipper some letters to post in Victoria. He knows me. That’s my sloop yonder, and if I put you on board the steamer, you’d reach Vancouver in good time. We would have sailed at sun-up anyway.”

The girl hesitated, which struck Vane as natural, and turned partly from him. He surmised that she did not know what to make of his offer, though her need was urgent. In the meanwhile he stood up.

“Come along and talk it over with Mrs. Marvin,” he went on. “I’d better tell you I’m Wallace Vane of the Clermont mine. Of course, I know your name from the programme.”

She rose and they walked back to the hotel. Once more it struck him that the girl was pretty and graceful. On reaching the hotel, he sat down on the verandah while she went in, and a few minutes later the elder woman came out and looked at him much as the girl had done. He grew hot under her gaze and repeated his offer in the curtest terms.

“If this breeze holds, we’ll put you on board the steamer soon after daybreak,” he explained.

The woman’s face softened, and he recognised now that there had been suspicion in it. “Thank you,” she added, “we’ll come.” Then she added with an eloquent gesture: “You don’t know what it means to us.”

Vane merely took off his hat and turned away, but a minute or two afterwards he met the hotel-keeper.

“Do these people owe you anything?” he asked.

“Five dollars,” answered the man.

Vane handed him a bill. “Take it out of this, and make any excuse you like. I’m going to put them on board the steamboat.”

The man made no comment, and Vane, striding down to the beach, sent a hail ringing across the water. Carroll appeared on the sloop’s deck and answered him.

“Hallo!” he cried. “What’s the trouble?”

“Get ready the best supper you can manage for three people as quick as you can.”

Then he turned away in a hurry, wondering rather uneasily what Carroll would say when he grasped the situation.

CHAPTER II – A BREEZE OF WIND

There were signs of a change in the weather when Vane walked down to the wharf with his passengers, for a cold wind which had sprung up struck an eerie sighing from the sombre firs and sent the white mists streaming along the hillside. There was a watery moon in the sky, and on reaching the end of the wharf Vane fancied that the singer hesitated; but the elder woman laid her hand upon the girl’s arm reassuringly and she got into the canoe. In a few minutes Vane ran the craft alongside the sloop and saw the amazement in Carroll’s face by the glow from the cabin skylight. He, however, fancied that his comrade would rise to the occasion and he handed his guests up.

“My partner, Carroll. Mrs. Marvin and her daughter; Miss Kitty Blake. You have seen them already,” he said. “They’re coming down with us to catch the steamer.”

Carroll bowed, and Vane, who thrust back the cabin slide, motioned the others below. The place was brightly lighted by a nickelled lamp, though it was scarcely four feet high and the centreboard trunk occupied the middle of it. A wide, cushioned locker ran along each side a foot above the floor, and a swing table, fixed above the trunk, filled up most of the space between. There was no cloth upon the table, but it was invitingly laid out with canned fruit, coffee, hot flapjacks, and a big lake trout.

“You must help yourselves while we get sail upon the boat,” said Vane. “The saloon’s at your disposal, my partner and I have the fo’c’sle. You will notice there are blankets yonder, and as we’ll have smooth water most of the way you should get some sleep.”

He withdrew, closing the slide, and went forward with Carroll to shorten in the cable; but when they stopped beside the bitts his companion broke into a soft laugh.

“Is there anything to amuse you?” Vane asked curtly.

“Well,” said Carroll with an air of reflection, “it strikes me you’re making a rather unconventional use of your new prosperity, and it might be prudent to consider how your friends in Vancouver may regard the adventure.”

Vane sat down upon the bitts and took out his pipe. “One trouble in talking to you is that I never know whether you’re in earnest or not. You trot out your cold-blooded worldly wisdom, and then you grin at it.”

“I think that’s the only philosophic attitude,” replied Carroll. “It’s possible to grow furiously indignant with the restraints stereotyped people lay on one; but on the whole it’s wiser to bow to them and chuckle. After all, they’ve some foundation.”

Vane looked up at him sharply.

“You’ve been right in the advice you have given me more than once: you seem to know how prosperous and what you call stereotyped folks look at things. But you’ve never explained where you got the knowledge.”

“That,” said Carroll, “is quite another matter.”

“Anyway,” continued Vane, “there’s one remark of yours I’d like to answer. You would, no doubt, consider I made a legitimate use of my money when I entertained that crowd of city people – some of whom would have plundered me if they could have managed it – in Vancouver. I didn’t grudge it, but I was a little astonished when I saw the wine and cigar bill. It struck me that the best of them scarcely noticed what they got – I think they’d been up against it at one time, as we have; and it would have done the rest of the guzzlers good if they’d had to work all day with the shovel on pork and flapjacks. But we’ll let that go. What have you and I done that we should swill in champagne, while a girl with a face like that one below and a child who dances like a fairy haven’t enough to eat? You know what I paid for the last cigars. What confounded hogs we are!”

Carroll laughed outright. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh upon his comrade, who was hardened and toughened by determined labour, and the term hog appeared singularly inappropriate.

“Well,” said Carroll, “you’ll no doubt get used to the new conditions by and by, and in regard to your latest exploit there’s a motto on your insignia of the Garter which might meet the case. But hadn’t we better heave her over her anchor?”

They seized the chain and as it ran below a sharp, musical rattle rang out, for the hollow hull flung back the metallic clinking like a sounding board. When the cable was short-up, they grasped the halyards and the big gaff mainsail rose flapping up the mast. They set it and turned to the headsails, for though, strictly speaking, a sloop only carries one, the term is loosely applied in places, and as Vane had changed her rig there were two of them.

“It’s a fair wind, and I expect we’ll find more weight in it lower down,” said Carroll. “We’ll let the staysail lie and run her with the jib.”

They set the jib and broke out the anchor. Vane took the helm, and the sloop, slanting over until her deck on one side dipped close to the frothing brine, drove away into, the darkness. The lights of the settlement faded among the trees, and when Carroll coming aft flung a strip of canvas over the skylight, his comrade could see the black hills and climbing firs on both sides slip by. Sliding vapours streaked them, a crisp splashing sound made by the curling ripples followed the vessel; the canoe surged along noisily astern, and the frothing and gurgling grew louder at the bows. They were running down one of the deep, forest-shrouded inlets which, resembling the Norwegian fiords, pierce the Pacific littoral of Canada.