A Damaged Reputation

by Harold Bindloss

  XXI.

  DEVINE'S OFFER.

  Evening had come round again when Brooke called at the ranch, inresponse to a brief note from Devine, and found the latter sitting,cigar in hand, at his office table.

  "Take a cigar, if you feel like it, Mr. Brooke. We have got to have atalk," he said.

  Brooke did as he suggested, and when he sat down, Devine passed a stripof paper across to him.

  "There's your cheque for the tramway. I'll ask you for a receipt," hesaid. "Make up an account of what the dam has cost you to-morrow, andwe'll try to arrange the thing so's to suit both of us."

  Brooke appeared a trifle astonished. "It is by no means finished, sir."

  "Well," said Devine, drily, "I'm not quite sure it ever will be. Themine no longer belongs to me. It's part of the Dayspring ConsolidatedMineral Properties. I've been working the thing up quietly for quite awhile now, and I've a cable from London that the deal's put through."

  Brooke, remembering what he had heard from Saxton, looked hard at him."You have sold it out to English company promoters?"

  "Not exactly! I'm taking so many thousand dollars down, and acontrolling share of the stock. I'm also the boss director, with fullpower to run operations as appears advisable at the mines. How does thedeal strike you?"

  "Since you ask for my opinion, I fancy I should have preferred a goodmany dollars, and very little stock."

  Devine glanced at him with a curious smile.

  "You believe Allonby's a crank?"

  "Other people do. On my part, I'm not quite sure of it. Still, it seemsto me that the men who spend their money to prove him right will run atolerably heavy risk, especially as, so far, at least, there appears tobe no ore that's worth reduction in the mine, so far as it has beenopened up."

  "How do you know what is in the Dayspring?" and Devine looked at himsteadily.

  Brooke made a little gesture. "I don't think that point's important," hesaid. "You, no doubt, had a purpose in telling me as much as you havedone?"

  Devine did not answer for a moment or two, and Brooke was sensible of aslight bewilderment as he watched him. This was, he knew, a hard, shrewdman, and yet he had apparently permitted Saxton to beguile him intobuying a mine in which nobody but a man whose faculties had beendestroyed by alcohol believed. He was also, it seemed, willing to riska moderate competence in another one which was liable to be jumped atany moment. The thing was almost incomprehensible.

  Then Devine made a sign that he desired attention. "When I told youthis, I had a purpose," he said. "We are going to spend a pile ofdollars on the Dayspring, and my part of the business lies in the city.Wilkins stays right at the Canopus, and while Allonby goes along withthe mine it's too big a contract to reform him. That brings me to thepoint. I want a man to take charge at the Dayspring under him, andthough you were not exactly civil when I made you an offer once before,we might make it worth your while."

  Brooke gasped, and felt his face becoming warm.

  "I have very little practical experience of mining, sir," he said.

  Devine nodded tranquilly. "Allonby has enough for two, but he lets upand loses his grip when the whisky comes along," he said. "Still, Iguess you have got something that's worth rather more to me. Youcouldn't help having it. It was born in you."

  Brooke sat silent for a space, with an unpleasant realization of thefact that Devine's keen eyes were watching him. He had come there withthe intention of severing his connection with the man, and now thatastonishing offer had been made him in the very room he had not long agocrept into with the purpose of plundering him. Every detail of what hadhappened on that eventful night came back to him, and he remembered,with a sickening sense of degradation, how he had leaned upon the tablewhere Devine was sitting then and permitted the startled girl to forceher thanks on him. Then he raised his head, as Devine, turning a little,looked at him with disconcerting steadiness.

  "You have more reasons than the one you gave me for not taking hold?" hesaid.

  Suddenly, Brooke made up his mind. He was sick of the career ofdeception, and had already meant to put an end to it, while he nowseized upon the opportunity of placing a continuance in it out of thequestion.

  "I have, and can't help fancying that one of them is a tolerably goodone," he said. "You see, you really know very little about me."

  "Go on," said Devine, drily. "I'm generally quite willing to back myopinion of a mine or man. Besides, I have picked up one or two pointersabout you."

  "Still," said Brooke, very slowly, while his face grew set, "you don'tknow why I came here to build that flume for you."

  Then he gasped with astonishment, for Devine laughed.

  "Well," he said, drily, "I guess I do."

  Brooke, who lost command of himself, rose abruptly, and stood lookingdown on him, with one quivering hand clenched on the edge of the table.

  "You know I meant to jump the claim?" he said.

  "I had a notion that you meant to try."

  Then there was a curious silence, and the two men remained motionless,looking at one another for a space, the younger one leaning somewhatheavily upon the table, with the crimson showing through the bronze inhis face, the elder one watching him with a little grim smile. There wasalso a suggestion of sardonic amusement in it at which the other winced,as he would scarcely have done had Devine struck him.

  "And you let me stay on?" he said at length.

  "I did. It was plain you couldn't hurt me, and there was a kind of humorin the thing. I had just to put my hand down and squelch you when I feltlike it."

  Brooke recognized that he had deserved this, but he had never felt thesame utter sense of insignificance that he did just then. His companionevidently did not even consider it worth while to be angry with him, andhe wondered vacantly at his folly in even fancying that he or Saxtoncould prove a match for such a man.

  Then Devine made a little gesture. "Hadn't you better sit down? We'renot quite through yet."

  Brooke did as he suggested.

  "Still----" he said.

  Devine smiled again. "You don't quite understand? Well, I'll try to makeit plain. You make about the poorest kind of claim-jumper I ever ran upagainst, and I've handled quite a few in my time. It's not your fault.You haven't it in you. If you had, you'd have stayed right with it, andnot let the dam-building get hold of you so that you scarcely rememberedwhat you came here for. You couldn't help that either."

  To be turned inside out in this fashion was almost too disconcerting tobe exasperating, and Brooke sat stupidly silent for a moment or two.

  "After all, we need not go into that," he said. "I suppose what I meantto do requires no defence in this country, but while I am by no meansproud of it, I should never have undertaken it had you not sold me aworthless ranch. I purposed doing nothing more than getting my sixthousand dollars back."

  "You figure that would have contented the man behind you?"

  Brooke was once more startled, for Devine's penetration appeared almostuncanny, but he remembered that he, at least, owed a little to hisconfederate.

  "You think there was another man?" he said.

  Devine laughed. "I guess I'm sure. You don't know enough to fix up athing of this kind. Who is he?"

  "That," said Brooke, drily, "is rather more than I feel at liberty totell you. I have, however, broken with him once for all."

  Devine made a little gesture which implied that the point was of nogreat importance. "Well," he said, "I guess I've no great cause to beafraid of him, if he was content to have you for a partner. The questionis--Are you going to take my offer?"

  "You are asking me seriously?"

  "I am. It seems to me I sized you up correctly quite a while ago, andyou have had about enough claim-jumping. Now, I don't know that I blameyou, and, anyway, if you had very little sense, it showed you had somegrit. As the mining laws stand, it's a legitimate occupation, and youtell me you only figured on getting your dollars back. Well, if you wantthem, you can work for them at a reasonable sal
ary."

  Brooke was once more astonished. Sentiment, it appeared, counted for aslittle with Devine as it had done with Saxton, and with both of thembusiness was simply and solely a question of dollars.

  "Then you disclaim all responsibility for your agent's doings?" he said.

  "No," said Devine, drily. "If Slocum had swindled you, it would havebeen different, but you made a foolish deal, and you have got to standup to it. Nobody was going to stop you surveying that land before youbought it, or getting a man who knew its value to do it for you. I'moffering you the option of working for those six thousand dollars. Doyou take it?"

  Brooke scarcely considered. The money was no longer the chiefinducement, for, as Devine had expressed it, the work had got hold ofhim, and he was sensible of a growing belief in his capabilities, whilehe now fancied he saw his opportunity.

  "Yes," he said, simply.

  Devine nodded. "Then we'll go into the thing right now," he said."You'll start for the Dayspring soon as you can to-morrow."

  An hour had passed before they had arranged everything, and it seemed toone of them that it was, under the circumstances, a somewhat astonishingcompact they made. What the other thought about it did not appear, buthe was one who was seldom very much mistaken in his estimate of thecharacter of his fellow-men. Then, as it happened, Brooke came uponBarbara in the log-walled hall as he was leaving the ranch, and stoodstill a moment irresolute. Whether Devine would tell her or his wifewhat had passed between them he did not know, but it appeared veryprobable, and just then he almost shrank from meeting her. It did not,however, occur to him to ask himself how she happened to be there.

  "So you are not going out on the trail that leads to nowhere inparticular, after all?" she said.

  Brooke showed his astonishment. "You knew what Devine meant to offerme?"

  "Of course!" and Barbara smiled. "I don't even mind admitting that Ithink he did wisely."

  "Now, I wonder why?"

  Barbara laughed softly. "Don't you think the question is a littledifficult, or do you expect me to present you with a catalogue of yourvirtues?"

  "I'm afraid the latter is out of the question. You would want, at least,several items."

  "And you imply that I should have a difficulty in finding them?"

  Brooke had spoken lightly, partly because the interview with Devine hadput a strain on him, and he dare scarcely trust himself just then, but atide of feeling swept him away, and his face grew suddenly grim. Thegirl was very alluring, and her little smile showed plainly that she hadreposed her confidence in him.

  "Yes," he said, a trifle hoarsely, "you would have the greatestdifficulty in finding one, and I am almost glad that I am going awayto-morrow. Such a man as I am is scarcely fit to speak to you."

  Barbara was, though she did not show it, distinctly startled. She hadnever heard the man speak in that fashion, and his set face and vibrantvoice were new to her. Indeed, she had now and then wondered whether heever really let himself go. Still, she looked at him quietly, and,noticing the swollen veins on his forehead, and the glow in his eyes,decided it would not be advisable to admit that she attached muchimportance to what he had said. He was, she fancied, fit for anyrashness just then.

  "I suppose we, all of us, have moods of self-depreciation occasionally,"she said. "Still, one would not have fancied that you were undulymorbid, and one part of that little speech was a trifle inexplicable."

  Brooke laughed curiously, but the girl noticed that one of his lean,hard hands was closed as he looked down on her.

  "There are times when one has to be one's self, and civilities don'tseem to count," he said. "I am glad that I am going away, because if Istayed here I should lose the last shred of my self-respect. As a matterof fact, I have very little left, but that little is valuable, if onlybecause it was you who gave it me."

  "Still, one would signally fail to see how you could lose it here."

  Brooke stood still, looking at her with signs of struggle, and, shecould almost fancy, passion, in his set face; and then made a littlegesture, which seemed to imply that he had borne enough.

  "You will probably understand it all by and by," he said. "I can onlyask you not to think too hardly of me when that happens."

  Then, as one making a strenuous effort, he turned abruptly away, andBarbara, who let him go, went back to the room where her sister sat,very thoughtfully.

  Brooke in the meanwhile swung savagely along the trail, beneath theshadowy pines, for he recognized, with a painful distinctness, thatBarbara Heathcote's view of his conduct was by no means likely tocoincide with Devine's, and he could picture her disgust and anger whenthe revelation came, while it was only now, when he would in allprobability never meet her on the same terms again, he realized theintensity of his longing for the girl. He had also, he felt, succeededin making himself ridiculous by a display of sentimentality that musthave been incomprehensible to her, and though that appeared of no greatimportance relatively, it naturally did not tend to console him. When hereached his tent Jimmy stared at him.

  "I guess you look kind of raised," he said. "Where's your hat?"

  Brooke laughed hoarsely. "I believe I must have left it at the ranch.Still, that's not so very astonishing, because, even if I didn't do italtogether, I came very near losing my head."

  Jimmy again surveyed him, with a grin. "Devine," he said, suggestively,"has been giving you whisky, and it mixed you up a little? That's whatcomes of drinking tea."

  Brooke made no answer, though a swift flush rose to his face, as heremembered his half-coherent speeches at the ranch, and the astonishmentin the girl's eyes, for it seemed probable that the explanation thathad occurred to Jimmy had also suggested itself to her. Then he smiledgrimly, as he decided that it did not greatly matter, after all, sinceshe could not think more hardly of him than she would do when the truthcame out presently.