To Him That Hath: A Tale of the West of Today. Ralph Connor

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Looks like it.”

      “And why can't you?”

      “Well, you see, I am not Rupert,” said Captain Jack, grinning at her.

      “Now you are horrible. Why don't you do as you used to do? You know you could if you wanted to.”

      “Yes, I suppose, if I wanted to,” said Captain Jack, suddenly grave.

      “You don't want to,” said the girl, quick to catch his mood.

      “Well, you know, Patsy dear, things are different, and I suppose I am too. I don't care much for a lot of things.”

      “You just look as if you didn't care for anything or anybody sometimes, Captain Jack,” said Patricia quietly. Then after a few moments she burst forth: “Oh, don't you remember your hockey team? Oh! oh! oh! I used to sit and just hold my heart from jumping. It nearly used to choke me when you would tear down the ice with the puck.”

      “That was long ago, Pat dear. I guess I was—ah—very young then, eh?”

      “Yes, I know,” nodded the girl. “I feel the same way—I was just a kid then.”

      “Ah, yes,” said Captain Jack, with never a smile. “You were just—let's see—twelve, was it?”

      “Yes, twelve. And I felt just a kid.”

      “And now?” Captain Jack's voice was quite grave.

      “Now? Well, I am not exactly a kid. At least, not the same kind of kid. And, as you say, a lot of things are different. I think I know how you feel. I was like that, too—after—after—Herbert—” The girl paused, with her lips quivering. “It was all different—so different. Everything we used to do, I didn't feel like doing. And I suppose that's the way with you, Captain Jack, with Andy—and then your Mother, too.” She leaned close to him and put her hand timidly on his arm.

      Captain Jack, sitting up very straight and looking very grave, felt the thrill of the timid touch run through his very heart. A rush of warm, tender emotion such as he had not allowed himself for many months suddenly surprised him, filling his eyes and choking his throat. Since his return from the war he had without knowledge been yearning for just such an understanding touch as this child with her womanly instinct had given him. He withdrew one hand from the wheel and took the warm clinging fingers tight in his and waited in silence till he was sure of himself. He drove some blocks before he was quite master of his voice. Then, releasing the fingers, he turned his face toward the girl.

      “You are a real pal, aren't you, Patsy old girl?” he said with a very bright smile at her.

      “I want to be! Oh, I would love to be!” she said, with a swift intake of breath. “And after a while you will be just as you were before you went away.”

      “Hardly, I fear, Patsy.”

      “Well, not the same, but different from what you are now. No, I don't mean that a bit, Captain Jack. But perhaps you know—I do want to see you on the ice again. Oh, it would be wonderful! Of course, the old team wouldn't be there—Herbert and Phil and Andy. Why! You are the only one left! And Rupert.” She added the name doubtfully. “It WOULD be different! oh, so different! Oh! I don't wonder you don't care, Captain Jack. I won't wonder—” There was a little choke in the young voice. “I see it now—”

      “I think you understand, Patsy, and you are a little brick,” said Captain Jack in a low, hurried tone. “And I am going to try. Anyway, whatever happens, we will be pals.”

      The girl caught his arm tight in her clasped hands and in a low voice she said, “Always and always, Captain Jack, and evermore.” And till they drew up at the Rectory door no more was said.

      Maitland drove homeward through the mellow autumn evening with a warmer, kindlier glow in his heart than he had known through all the dreary weeks that had followed his return from the war. For the war had wrought desolation for him in a home once rich in the things that make life worth while, by taking from it his mother, whose rare soul qualities had won and held through her life the love, the passionate, adoring love of her sons, and his twin brother, the comrade, chum, friend of all his days, with whose life his own had grown into a complete and ideal unity, deprived of whom his life was left like a body from whose raw and quivering flesh one-half had been torn away.

      The war had left his life otherwise bruised and maimed in ways known only to himself.

      Returning thus from his soul-devastating experience of war to find his life desolate and maimed in all that gave it value, he made the appalling discovery that he was left almost alone of all whom he had known and loved in past days. For of his close friends none were left as before. For the most part they were lying on one or other of the five battle fronts of the war. Others had found service in other spheres. Only one was still in his home town, poor old Phil Amory, Frances' brother, half-blind in his darkened room, but to bring anything of his own heart burden to that brave soul seemed sacrilege or worse. True enough, he was passing through the new and thrilling experience of making acquaintance with his father. But old Grant Maitland was a hard man to know, and they were too much alike in their reserve and in their poverty of self-expression to make mutual acquaintance anything but a slow and in some ways a painful process.

      Hence in Maitland's heart there was an almost extravagant gratitude toward this young generous-hearted girl whose touch had thrilled his heart and whose voice with its passionate note of loyal and understanding comradeship still sang like music in his soul, “Always and always, Captain Jack, and evermore.”

      “By Jove, I have got to find some way of playing up to that,” he said aloud, as he turned from the gravelled driveway into the street. And in the months that followed he was to find that the search to which he then committed himself was to call for the utmost of the powers of soul which were his.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

THE COST OF SACRIFICE

       Table of Contents

      Perrotte was by all odds the best all-round man in the planing mill, and for the simple reason that for fifteen years he had followed the lumber from the raw wood through the various machines till he knew woods and machines and their ways as no other in the mill unless it was old Grant Maitland himself. Fifteen years ago Perrotte had drifted down from the woods, beating his way on a lumber train, having left his winter's pay behind him at the verge of civilisation, with old Joe Barbeau and Joe's “chucker out.” It was the “chucker out” that dragged him out of the “snake room” and, all unwitting, had given him a flying start toward a better life. Perrotte came to Maitland when the season's work was at its height and every saw and planer were roaring night and day.

      “Want a job?” Maitland had shouted over the tearing saw at him. “What can you do?”

      “(H)axe-man me,” growled Perrotte, looking up at him, half wistful, half sullen.

      “See that slab? Grab it, pile it yonder. The boards, slide over the shoot.” СКАЧАТЬ