Janet: Her Winter in Quebec/Chapter 1

FTER all, you know," Ronald Leslie observed thoughtfully; "it's the very same lesson I was trying to beat into another chap, all last summer."

Day unclasped her hands and, resting her elbow on her knees, buried her chin in her cupped palms.

"Sauce for the goose, I suppose," she said trenchantly; "and sauce for the gander." But there was no levity in her tone.

Unthinkingly, Ronald copied her pose. He was an abnormally tall young Canadian. She was a thin slip of an American girl, just fifteen years old and devoid of much beauty, save for a pair of brown eyes that danced and dreamed by turns.

"It's not just the same thing, though," Ronald pursued, as he sat with his eyes fixed on the bit of blue river which rested against the background of bluer hills. "That fellow—he was an American, too—was knocked out by his health. Mine—" He fell silent, while the scarlet colour rolled up across his cheeks and dyed the roots of his hair.

The girl glanced swiftly at the band of black which barred the sleeve of his gray coat.

"No," she said. "It's not the same thing at all."

Stooping, Ronald picked up a bit of stone and sent it flying through the air towards a distant boulder. When the click of rock striking against rock had cut across the silence,—

"No," he echoed; "it's not the same thing, and yet it comes to it in the end. We both of us are kicking in harness. I was half through McGill. I was sure of a place in the pater's business, and—"

Day's eyes were all dreamy now. She spoke with the earnestness which came to her at times.

"And you were just ready to win your spurs, when you were thrown to the ground."

He nodded. Then he adopted her metaphor.

"And it's not too easy to get another mount."

Undauntedly she faced him.

"Not easy; but you'll do it."

"I wish I were sure of it."

"What difference, as long as I am?" she retorted. "When you do succeed, not one of your friends will be gladder than I."

"If you know it."

"But I shall. It may be before we go away; there's no telling how long we may have to stay here." Then silently she watched the cloud come back into the eyes of her companion. "I am quite rested," she said, as she rose. "Shall we go on?"

"Yes. It is time we were moving." He rose and stood towering above her in all his boyish strength. "You must think I am a good deal of a coward, Day. Still, I don't often flunk like this."

Impulsively she held out her hand. Not in vain had she watched him, during the past two weeks. In this foreign country, her girlish intuitions were bound to fail her in many ways; but not, she felt assured, in regard to Ronald Leslie.

"No matter," she said briefly. "It is part of my creed never to tell tales."

And Ronald, as he followed her up the hill, trusted her implicitly.

By the time they had scrambled to the top of the steep, grassy slope, even Day's agility was on the wane. Her step broke from Ronald's, lagged a little and came to a halt. Then she faced about sharply.

"You are so endlessly tall," she said, laughing. "Your elbow is just on a level with my shoulder, and your step matches your height. Do stop and inspect the view, while I get my breath."

Obediently he too faced about. Nevertheless, he mutinied.

"I have seen it all before."

Day had dropped to the turf at his feet, and was fanning her scarlet face with her hat.

"No matter. I haven't, and you can look for two. It is worth it, even if it's not new to you."

With a sudden sweep of her arm, she pointed out across the foreground of low white buildings which bound the camp of Saint Joseph, to the distant purple gash where the Montmorency takes its leap to the river below. In the midst of the picture, the Isle of Orleans lay flaming in its October colours, bordered on either hand by the broad blue stripe of river. In the far background, the mountains rose in a wide semi-circle, their sides changing back and forth from dusky purple to vivid red, as the shadows of the moving clouds gave place to dazzling sun. And ever and anon on the strong north wind, there came creeping up the slope to them a faint echo of the mighty din and clangour of the hammers which were beating ceaselessly in the graving dock, so far below.

When Day spoke again, it was abruptly and out of her own thoughts.

"Did you know that my brother was coming, next week?"

Ronald's eyes widened to show their whites. Then he curbed his wonder, if not his curiosity.

"I didn't know that—"

Still abruptly, Day capped his sentence for him.

"That I had a brother. Well, I have."

To Ronald's mind, it was not wholly obvious from the girl's tone what answer it was incumbent upon him to make. He took refuge in a monosyllable.

"Oh," he said. However, even as he spoke, he had an uncomfortable feeling that he had not risen to the emergency.

Day's hands dropped from her hair, and she looked up at her companion with merry eyes.

"Yes," she said, with a brevity which matched his own. Then once more she fell to smoothing her ruffled hair.

For a moment, Ronald eyed her despairingly. This was by no means the first time that Day had baffled his understanding.

"Well, what of it?" he demanded, after a pause.

Once more her hands dropped into her lap. She clasped them with a demureness which was only half genuine.

"Nothing; only I thought you would be interested."

Regardless of the fact that Day's tailor was such an artist as he could never aspire to employ, Ronald huddled her jacket into the curve of his left arm, and held out his right hand to the girl at his feet.

"Come," he said. "That is, if you're rested."

Without troubling herself to rise, Day looked up into his face, took swift note of the spark in the brown eyes, of the quiver of the short upper lip. Then she smiled straight at his frowning brows.

"Don't be cross, there's a good boy," she admonished him, with an accent half-teasing, half-maternal.

In spite of himself, he laughed. "Then don't torment the life out of a chap," he responded, a little too fervently for her complete comfort.

Her glance dropped back to the river.

"Do I torment you, Ronald?" she asked quietly.

"Rather!"

"How?"

He was of English ancestry, and he cast about in his mind for a fitting answer to her nonchalant question.

"Oh, because— Why, by being chums one minute, and turning thorny the next."

She shook her head slowly.

"I suspect that's the American of me," she answered, and a little sincere note crept into the levity of her tone. "You'll get used to it n time."

"I'm not so sure." Ronald's tone was still grave.

The laughter came back into her voice, the light into her eyes.

"Then you'd rather I stayed thorny, all the time?" she said interrogatively, as she scrambled to her feet and shook her skirt free from the blossoms she had been pulling to pieces.

For a moment, he looked down at her steadily. Then he asked,—

"But why not stay the other thing?"

She shook her head, in wayward opposition to his mood.

"It wouldn't be me," she answered him. And Ronald was too busy in weighing and admitting the truth of her words to pay due heed to her calm regardlessness of grammar.

Had the truth been told, Day's occasional regardlessness of all things, from grammar to his boyish feelings, had been one of the most interesting facts of his recent experience. Unknown to himself, Day Argyle was proving the best tonic that Ronald Leslie could have had just then, and Ronald Leslie's need of a tonic was greater than anyone but himself had been able to realize.

For nineteen years, Ronald Leslie had strolled along through life, his hands in his pockets, his chin in the air. Quite as a matter of course, he expected events to make way before him; and, as a rule, events justified his expectation. Then, of a sudden, the change came.

Only the second night after his return from the country and from the jolliest summer he had ever spent, only two nights before he was to return to Montreal for what he expected to be his gayest year of college life, Ronald Leslie had been called to the telephone. Two hours later, he had left his mother and his sister Janet sobbing in each other's arms and, going down to the library, he had seated himself in his father's chair and faced the future with dazed, but steady eyes. Four days later, as he came out from under the trees of Mount Hermon, the daze had left his eyes, but the steadiness remained. Under the yellow leaves that loitered as they fell, under the aged trees that had seen so many dropping tears, Ronald Leslie had left his father, resting from the professional strain that had snapped a life in two. And already Ronald had been told that his own time for passive grieving was ended. It was for him to stir himself and take active thought for the morrow. From comparative luxury, he was dropped into something dangerously akin to poverty.

Two weeks later, Day had appeared. Even now, he had scarcely come to realize the nature of the chance which had brought this wide-awake, tempestuous American girl into his Canadian home and life. The Argyles were to spend the winter in Quebec. Mrs. Argyle's cousin had married Mrs. Leslie's sister-in-law. The rest of the chain of circumstance had forged its links quite naturally, down to the clasping of the two ends: Mrs. Argyle's need for a boarding-place for her family and Mrs. Leslie's equally imperative need for an enlargement of her income. There had been three Argyles, Day, her mother and her father, a well-known railway magnate whose winter in Canada was one of strenuous business which took him much from his temporary home. In her own city, Mrs. Argyle was accounted a woman of rare poise and charm, but, for Ronald, the situation had summed itself up in Day.

And yet, not even the fondest imagination could stretch itself to the point of calling Day Argyle charming. In person, she was not especially pretty; in character, her innate sweetness was often buried beneath a barrier of teasing thorns. She liked Ronald absolutely; from the hour of their meeting, she showed a marked enjoyment of his society, completely ignoring his sister, when Ronald himself was in the room. Nevertheless, she treated his young ideals and his young dignity without one whit of reverence, mocked at him and teased him without cease, and only showed him her gentler side when it was plain to her that her mockery had gone too far, or when his downcast face, bearing witness to the anxiety he could not always down, touched her girlish pity and bade her hold out to him a helpful hand.

And Ronald accepted them all: mockery, teasing and gentleness, in all their swift alternations, accepted them without seeking to analyze his own enjoyment. Truth to tell, this irresponsible, merry girlhood was the best thing in the world for the young fellow, heartsick as he was with worry, and deadly weary with the routine of the office where a place had been made for him. The offer of the place had come to him on the day following his father's burial. The gratitude of his acceptance had been in no wise tempered by misgivings. In his eager, boylike optimism, he had not paused to realize how little his idle, happy-go-lucky youth had fitted him for the long, tedious hours of business life. Even if he had realized it, however, Ronald Leslie was not the one to flinch. In future, his life was not for himself alone. It concerned itself with his mother and with Janet who was only fourteen and had her education all before her. Ronald Leslie was wholly loyal to his kin. Nevertheless, he was conscious that, coming home after a long day in the office, it was good to find his mother's tired face and Janet's black frock relieved by the bright, blithe carelessness of Day Argyle.

And now, two weeks after her coming into the home, he had bespoken Day's company for his Saturday half-holiday. He had asked Janet, too; but Janet had shaken her head. She had plans of her own; and as yet she and Day had not come upon any firm ground of sympathy. Day dismissed Janet without a thought. Janet thought much about Day, and the summing up of her thoughts had led to the belief that Day was rather arrogant and wholly critical. And Janet, albeit outwardly gentle, was not the girl to submit herself patiently to arrogant criticism. Rather than that, she would keep out of the way of this American stranger who had invaded her home and assailed her brother with no trace of the admiring respect with which Janet had been always wont to treat him.

And, meanwhile, Day and Ronald had crossed a wide strip of open pasture, skirted the edge of a little lake and plunged into a belt of woodland where the shadows rested heavily over the rough, uneven turf. Less than half an hour later, they were sitting in the shade of Fort Number One, Ronald in an embrasure of the old gray wall, Day mounted upon an insecure flight of steps by which her companion had clambered to his present position.

"You'd much better come up," Ronald urged hospitably, as he swung his heels to and fro against the masonry of his lofty perch.

"What's the use? You just said you couldn't get inside the fort, and I don't care to stop half-way," Day made disdainful answer.

"But you can see these two guns. You've only to crawl in through this hole. It's quite easy," he urged again.

Day sniffed in disapproval.

"Also quite dirty," she retorted.

Ronald made a vain endeavour to view the small of his own back.

"Am I so dusty as all that?"

"Not you. Dust doesn't stick to you. If I were to go inside, though, I should be unfit for mortal eyes. Besides, as I say, what's the use? I heard you clattering at a door close by, so you didn't go far. As for guns, I can see those on the Ramparts at any time."

Ronald surveyed her in mock meditation.

"I didn't suppose an American—"

Long since, he had learned Day's trick of capping his sentences for him. She did it now.

"Stopped at anything. Well, they do."

"At?" he observed suggestively.

"At making geese of themselves," she replied, with sudden tartness. "I don't see the sense of wasting my efforts by crawling into a hole that goes nowhere. Nevertheless, I mean to see the inside of this fort."

Laughing, he held out his hand.

"No," she said, while, with a scramble and a leap, she landed on the ground beside the tottering old ladder which Ronald had dragged to the foot of the wall below the embrasure. "I intend to go inside. Meanwhile, I think I'll upset the ladder, so you can't run away while I am exploring."

With a swift gesture, she suited the action to the word. With another swift gesture, Ronald turned about, hung for an instant by his hands, then dropped into the ditch at her side.

"Whither now?" he queried calmly, as he patted his hands together to free them from the dust of his descent. "To find a breach in the fortress," she answered briefly; but her eyes showed her appreciation of his prompt reply to her challenge.

Twice they made circuit of the great stone fort, once in the ditch where they paused again and again to look down the muzzles of the old black guns that faced them from the depths of the embrasures, once on the crest of the where they halted often to look out upon the noble view of mountain and river which spread itself before their eyes. As they ended their second circuit, Day gave a little laugh.

"Stratagem failing, I mean to try force," she said gayly, and, the next minute, she was running along the bridge that crossed the narrow ditch.

Day had had many a surprise in the course of her short life; none greater, however, than the one which met her when she laid her hand on the knob of a little door let into one of the panels of the great gate which faced the end of the bridge. The knob yielded to her touch, turned, the door swung open and, a moment later, American Day, camera in hand and Ronald at her heels, stood inside the sacred British precincts of Port Number One.

For a second, a mysterious fear fell upon the girl; the place was so big, so warlike, so deserted. A dozen khaki coats would have broken the spell. The absolute desolation awed her and made her afraid, and she turned to cast an appealing glance up at Ronald. The laugh on his lips partially reassured her.

"You have wrecked the local tradition," he said jovially. "It's the first time an American ever broke into one of our forts."

At his voice, her buoyancy came back to her.

"The first; but not the last," she made crisp response.

"Mayhap. In the meantime, how do you like your new possession?"

She glanced a little dubiously about the great enclosure which lay between the earth-capped wooden barracks and the gray stone wall.

"It looks rather lonely," she answered.

"All the better; else we might not be here. Come, shall we explore?"

Again her nervous fear came back upon her.

"Do—do you think we'd better?"

"Surely. I was never here before; I'm not likely to be here again. I certainly mean to make the most of my chance."

"But if we were caught trespassing?"

"I'll slay the guard, while you make a dash for the gate."

Her face fell.

"Then there is a guard?"

"Somewhere. Not here, though." Then he looked down at her a little intently. "Afraid?" he queried.

The colour came into her checks, and her shoulders straightened.

"No," she fibbed. "Come on." And, chin in air, she walked resolutely forward.

For a long half-hour, they wandered to and fro and up and down, now climbing up the smooth turf of the earthworks, now picking their way along the loose boards and over the crumbling plaster that littered the barrack floor, now creeping carefully along dark passages which led to a nowhere peopled only with slow-falling drops of water that clicked against sunken rocks in the heart of the thick blackness. Time-worn signs pointed to distant magazines numbered in great black letters. Tunnels led into the heart of the fort, branched and lost themselves in other tunnels which slowly led back to a faint gray reflection of the outer day. And everywhere was the same heavy stillness, broken only by the sound of their own voices, by the echo of their footfall on the ground.

And then, of a sudden, Day started hack in alarm, as Ronald threw open a little door in the wall beside them. "A man!" she cried. "It's a man!"

And it was long before Ronald could coax her to look in at the reflection of his own face, mirrored in the reflector of a lantern sunk in the wall. She laughed at last; but the laugh was unsteady, for the solitude of the place was fast destroying her level nerve.

She looked and laughed; then she led the way back to the sunshine outside.

"I think I've had enough," she said, when once more she stood under the blue October sky.

But the spirit of adventure had come upon Ronald in his turn.

"Come," he begged her. "We've not been to this end yet. It looks jolly, and we've plenty of time."

She opened her lips to demur. Then, without a word, she turned and crossed the grass at his side. It was she who had started on the exploration. It was not for her to beg off, leaving the exploration half complete. Nevertheless, she looked longingly backward at the sky, as Ronald led the way into the great, arched vault of another passage.

It was the darkest tunnel they had found as yet, the darkest and the most mysterious. For fifty feet, it ran downward at a sharp angle; then it turned to the left, completely shutting out every beam of the pale gray light which came faintly down from the opening. Slowly, carefully, Ronald crept forward, his fingers sliding along the wall, his feet feeling every inch of the floor-way. Slowly and with infinite, but unspoken terrors, the girl crept after him, afraid to advance, still more afraid to be left behind. Then abruptly she halted and stood as if rooted to the ground.

"Listen!" she said faintly. "I hear voices."

Ronald halted in his turn.

"Ours?" he said jovially.

"No. Others. Men talking."

Ronald laughed, wholly unconscious of her fears.

"If they're here, we'll meet them. I fancy we have them bottled up in this hole."

"But it's not here," she urged. "It came from the side, through the earth."

"The guard, most likely. Well, you've been complaining of its being too lonesome. We'll hunt him up, when we get out of this. Are you ready?"

For some reason for which she was wholly unable to account, the distant sound of voices had multiplied Day's terrors tenfold. It seemed to her to add vastly to the strange mystery of her surroundings. The girl was no coward; yet now she longed acutely for the fresh air and sunshine, longed even for the touch of Ronald's strong, warm hand on her fingers. Then she pulled herself together. This was the first time that Ronald had favoured her with an invitation of any sort. She was not by any means minded to have it the last. She steadied her voice with an effort.

"Go on," she said undauntedly. "I'll follow." And she heard Ronald move cautiously forward in the darkness.

Only a moment afterward, she heard the clatter of sliding rock, a short, sharp exclamation and the thud of a falling body. The next instant, she came to a sudden halt, with the tips of her toes resting just over the edge of an unseen gash in the flooring.