The gulf of loneliness into which I fell on the night of Marjorie's marriage was but the shallow waters of an ocean of despair in which I floundered through the dreary days that followed. I now had occasion to realize that loneliness is not a matter of space or distances, of the many or of the few, but a matter of one's adjustment toward his surroundings. In all the months of my life on Fourteen the devils of loneliness had never wormed into my vitals; my hours had been as full of companionship as though I had shared them with the throngs of some great city. I had not found the prairies lonely; I had wasted no sighs on the horizon that met the sky as far as the eye could bridge; I had been filled and content with the life that lay about me.
Now, all was changed. I had given Jean up, under protest, as the only thing to do. But having made my protest I meant to accept my fate with dignity; I would take my sentence like a man, and serve it without whining. In my fortitude I would, perhaps, present to Jean a more heroic picture than in the days of my seeming success; my bearing as a rejected suitor would have in it a touch of nobility—stern nobility, if you like—for which there was little place in the character of an accepted and happy lover. And because women love the heroic my demeanor might reveal to Jean golden threads spun through my temperament which otherwise she would not have perceived, until at last she would turn to me with "Frank, I did not realize how much a man you are! Let us start over again—at the beginning."
I flattered myself with all this nonsense about the fine figure I would cut, but that was before Marjorie had crossed to Twenty-two and my house had been left to me desolate; utterly desolate. As the grey light of the late morning of that first day after Christmas filtered through the frosted window-panes, slowly revealing the outlines of the table and the stove and the other pieces of my rude furniture, I began to realize how utterly empty and barren the wretched place was. While Marjorie had been there she had given it a soul, and Jean, dropping in every day, had added a quality that was even more than soul; it had in it something that was spiritual, that was celestial, that was divine. But now soul and spirit were gone and I was left amid the damp, drab clay.
I had been long in going to sleep, and as a consequence had awakened late. The shack was bitterly cold; the only comfort lay under my heavy blankets. As the light increased I counted the knobs of frost that had formed on the ends of the nails that came through the roof. I had never noticed that so many nails had missed the rafters. We were rather bad carpenters. My mind leapt back to the time when we built the shack, clearing all the events crowded between, as the vision leaps from height to height across great valleys in the prairies. How unreal and far away it all seemed! But another leap carried me to the bank of a river, and little children playing in the sand, and a slow-pacing water wheel that sprayed its mist of diamonds in the sunshine. I saw her little calico dress, her little brown bare feet, the ringlets of yellow hair hung about her cheeks. That was Jean. . . .
The clock had stopped! It was with terrific suddenness that I realized the clock had stopped and in my barren shanty was the silence of the tomb. Its round, glassy face grinned an imbecile grin at me from its place on a shelf on the wall. Its hands showed a quarter to four. . . . Well, there was nothing very mysterious about that. In the excitement of the wedding party I had merely forgotten to wind the clock. Only an overwrought nervous system could discern anything uncanny in that. I reasoned all this out, with absurd deliberation, as I rubbed my eyes and wondered why the clock had stopped. Or perhaps the frost had stopped it.
My watch had fared better, and when I drew it from my pocket on the corner of the bed the friendly bustle of its ticking was reassuring to my ear. I could hear the companionable canter of its balance wheel galloping down the road of life by my side. "Next to a dog," I said to myself, "a watch is the best friend a man can have."
That set me thinking about dogs, and I wondered why in all these months I had neglected to provide myself with a dog. As a sort of insurance, I grimly reflected. One always can fall back on a dog.
The hands of the watch said half-past eight, and I suddenly remembered there were cattle to feed. It would be a decent thing to get up and do all the chores that morning, if they were not already done. So I drew my underwear from beneath my pillow, where I had learned to tuck it in cold weather, and sprang from the friendly shelter of the blankets. One needs no incentive to quick dressing in a temperature only a few points above zero. I was fully clothed in less time than a city man, in his steam-heated flat, takes to decide whether his collar really demands changing.
I hurriedly started a fire; watched it until it had a proper draft; turned the damper in the pipe to guard against its getting beyond control after I left it. Then, after drawing on my pea-jacket, cap and mitts, I set out for the stables. The morning was grey, with a scattered sifting of small snowflakes, but the nip to the air was not nearly so uncomfortable as it seemed when contemplated from under the warm blankets. I reflected that comfort and happiness are largely a matter of the point of view. But that doesn't help much when the bottom has fallen out of your particular universe.
Buck and Bright were bawling before they heard my hand on the stable door. An ox with an empty stomach has an uncanny ear for the food purveyor. A half-inch fuzz of new untrodden snow was good evidence that Jack was keeping hours even worse than mine. As I opened the door the oxen turned their big, reproving eyes upon me, while even the cow tossed her head from side to side in peevish protest.
"It's all right, old chaps," I assured them. "Blessed is he whose wants are few and easily satisfied," as I threw them each a forkful of hay. They made a great attack upon it, tossing it with their noses and their horns in an atavistic appreciation of the good old days when their ancestors roamed the range and were never tied by the neck to a manger and left to starve while their masters married. Our cow was at present enjoying her annual holidays, so there was no milking to be done, and my morning chores were soon finished. Our pigs—we had two pigs now—saluted me after the manner of their kind until I choked their squeals with a dole of barley chop. Not even a pig can squeal through a mouthful of dry barley chop.
While I was engaged in these operations the hens ran about my feet until one happened to get tramped on. Her squawking reminded me that there might be eggs, and search discovered two, fresh laid that morning. That was a glint of sunshine through the gloom. I gathered them up and turned it over in my mind for a moment whether I should take them to Jack and Marjorie. But then that would leave Jean without. There would be noses out of joint on Twenty-two soon enough, without provoking an issue. In the interests of peace I decided to eat them myself.
I resisted a desire to go to Jack's door and announce that the morning chores were done because I knew that at the bottom of that desire was a hope that I should see and speak with Jean. One may be tied to a stake but that is no reason why he should poke his feet needlessly in the fire.
The stove lids were red hot and the kettle was belching forth a small geyser of steam when I got back to the shack. My search for remnants from the feast of the night before was astonishingly fruitless, until I remembered that the young Hansens had been turned loose upon the left-overs. So I cooked a mixture of oatmeal and water, which I called porridge, boiled the two fresh eggs, thawed out part of a loaf of bread, melted a piece of butter, and sat down to a meal that was hardly calculated to make me rejoice in my single blessedness.
After breakfast I washed my few dishes, swept the floor, made my bed, and generally set the house in order. Even then it was only ten o 'clock, with nothing more to do until noon. At noon there would be a repetition of the routine, and then nothing to do until night. At night there would be supper and the evening chores, and nothing more to do until morning. And the next day the same, and the same, and the same.
Nature may be a wise designer, but she has an uncanny way of overdoing a good thing. I thought of the thousand miles of timber we had passed through on our way west, timber without end! All the world seemed filled with trees, standing, fallen, piled in heaps in jagged water-courses; dead and dying through leagues of swamp and muskeg; towering over the highlands in an evergreen silhouette against the sky. What a wonderful place for a few miles of prairie; say for every second section of prairie, like the railway lands in the West! Then came the prairies—a hundred treeless miles at a stretch; sky and grass without limit, a horizon broken only by a settler's shack at great intervals, into the farther West where even the settler's shack failed from view, and one was alone with God and the world. Here was a land where the very posts to mark our checker-board survey had to be shipped in from untold distances. What a wonderful place for a few square miles of forest! And yet they tell us Nature is wise.
And so it was in our labor; from spring till freeze-up we had scarcely time to shave. Every hour of sunshine—and no country gives its sunshine more lavishly—was money to the settler, and the settler's life from April to November was a torrent of high-geared energy. I had been too busy even to make love properly to Jean, and when it has been said that a young man is too busy for that all other figures of speech fail. Perhaps that was why my love-making, indifferently done, taking second place to plowing and sowing, reaping and threshing, had ended so disasterously. And now, only a month or two later, the one thing in the world of which I had too much was time. Now I could afford to make love like an artist—but I had no canvas to splash on!
It is wonderful how much philosophizing one can accomplish between washing the porridge pot and peeling the potatoes when there is nothing else to be done. Just as the long summer evenings of this great West are already giving the world a race of athletes, so must the long, sombre winter days and nights, with their limitless opportunities for reflection and introspection, breed for the world a new brand of thinking, uncramped by convention and untamed by precedent. That is, if the "advantages" of city life do not crowd in so rapidly that they relieve us of the necessity of thinking.
It was mid-afternoon when Jack burst in upon me. "Well, old Robinson Crusoe, how goes solitude?" he demanded.
"Rotten," said I, "but I can always change my mind if I want to."
"Aha!" he exclaimed, in return, clasping himself about the middle. "A blow in the fifth rib! A subtle blow under the fifth rib!"
Jack was obviously in great spirits, but with a sudden soberness he sat down beside me, and I felt his hand on my knee. "It's not quite the thing, old chap," he said, "to cut us dead, just because we're married—that is, some of us."
"I haven't cut you," I retorted. "Give me time."
"I know it's a raw deal for you," he went on, disregarding my interruption, "and I'd give—I'd give—half of my happiness, if you like, if I could put it right. It's a little embarrassing for us all. But don't you think Jean is worth a fight—a little more fight than you have made?"
"I understand English," I said, "particularly Jean's English. If she wants me now she'll have to say so."
"Oh, get off your high horse. He's a lame nag, anyway! Jean thinks she loves Spoof, but she doesn't. She's just infatuated with him. She'll grow out of that. But you might help her along a little."
"I'm not so sure. Spoof's a pretty decent chap," I said, inwardly giving myself credit for amazing magnanimity.
"Of course he is," Jack agreed, somewhat too readily, as it seemed to me. "But that has nothing to do with it. Jean isn't putting you and Spoof under the magnifying glass, so to speak, and studying out which is the more decent chap. It isn't done that way. And to save her life she couldn't tell you why, to-day, she thinks she loves Spoof, and why, to-morrow, she will know she loves you. Reason doesn't enter into these things at all."
"That doesn't make it any easier for me."
"Maybe not," Jack admitted. "And, as I have argued that reason doesn't enter into the consideration, I suppose it is of no use to reason about it. Then let us get on to ground you can understand. Come on over for supper."
I accepted with more alacrity than might be expected of a young man who was resolved that although tied to the stake he would not thrust his feet in the fire. Marjorie kissed me when I went in,—a kiss for her dear old bachelor brother, she said, obviously in fun, but I think there was a pang of deep sisterly sympathy underneath. Jean was calm, poised, self-controlled; her eyes seemed larger than usual, and the white of them showed that clear blue tinge that is found in some kinds of delicate china. Either the lamp light was peculiarly yellow or Jean's complexion was below the mark. She chatted freely, almost too freely, and laughed upon occasion, but there was no ring in her laughter.
Altogether, it was rather a difficult evening. We played cards after supper, and tried, as so many others have done, to forget our troubles in the chance of a lucky hand. Even the cards were against me. Jean and I had always played together, but to-night Jack insisted that it was not meet that a man should have his wife for a partner at cards, so our combination was broken. I may have had a subconscious and disturbing feeling that Jean's hand, to my left, would have made better holding than anything I could hope to draw from the deck. At any rate I played abominably and went home early.
And so the days dragged on. I kept a corner of my south window rubbed clear of frost so that I might maintain a look-out for a visit from Spoof, for although he was my rival, or because he was my rival, I felt that I had with Spoof something very much in common. But Spoof seemed suddenly to have discontinued his visits to Fourteen and Twenty-two, and for the first time in that winter the trail to his shack was entirely over-blown and obliterated in a waste of snow.
Jack came over every day, and Marjorie and Jean came two or three times a week and gave my shack the womanly touches of which it was beginning to stand in need, but Jean never came alone. I began to understand that the prairies give solitude without privacy; if one seeks privacy he goes to the city for it.
In this way a couple of weeks had passed when one evening it occurred to me that I could kill a dull hour or two, and discharge a somewhat neglected filial duty, by writing a letter to my father. Investigation proved, what I greatly suspected, that I had no writing paper, so I went over to Jack's to borrow some. They had none either, but Jack produced an old account book with some blank sheets in it, which we decided would do quite well. In those days we weren't particular about stationery.
Jean was in her room while I was there, and did not come out, so in a few minutes I returned to Fourteen. There I set the lamp on the table and spread the old account book out before me. It once had been owned by Jack's father; the first pages were filled with items which apparently had to do with the purchase of the Lane farm, and with Mr. Lane's services in the woolen mill. I glanced over them with casual interest and as I did so a loose slip fell from the pages. I picked it up from the floor and found a number of lines in Jean's handwriting:
When through the livelong day I sighAnd ponder on my sad estate,I would my Nemesis defyAnd burst the bounding cords of Fate.Now would I tear each bond away;Now would I risk your sad reproof;Come, let us live and love who may:Come to me . . . Spoof.
When through the livelong day I sighAnd ponder on my sad estate,I would my Nemesis defyAnd burst the bounding cords of Fate.Now would I tear each bond away;Now would I risk your sad reproof;Come, let us live and love who may:Come to me . . . Spoof.
"So it has come to that," I said to myself. "Love-sick doggerel!" I crushed the sheet of paper in my hand in a rage, even while a hot flush of color ran up my face at the realization of the fact that I had read something never intended for my eyes—formyeyes least of all. So she could tear the bonds away; she could risk his "sad reproof"; she could do anything but find words to fill out the feet of the last line. "Come to me . . . Spoof!" With a sudden stabbing at my heart the question interrogated me, Could Jean be ingenious enough to use those dots, after the manner of our modern writers, to suggest something which she shrank from saying in plain English? Here will I use some of them myself . . .
Iresolved to have it out with Jean. There was no sense in letting things go on like this. Jean had happiness within her grasp, for the taking, but she persisted in writing moon-struck doggerel to a man who apparently cared no more for her than for the post that marked the corner of his section. Spoof's continued and deliberate neglect—I called it neglect now——admitted no other explanation.
I spent a wakeful night thinking about this, and toward morning I got up and retrieved the crumpled bit of paper which I had thrown into a corner of the kitchen. I spread it out and read the lines again. A night of reflexion had worn the edge from my indignation, and I admitted that, from an artistic point of view, the verses were perhaps not so hopeless as I had thought them. Indeed, they suggested a certain germ of poetic ability. A little devil of conscience began an insurrection in my sense of fair play, demanding to know if I could write as well myself. But I am no poet. I took a pencil and put down the word Jean, and then set about hunting for rhymes for it, but I could think of only two—"lean" and "bean." Neither of these seemed to lend itself to poetic treatment.
Suddenly a whiff of memory rushing in from somewhere sent me scuttling among old school books at the bottom of my trunk. It was a whim of mine to keep my old school books, if only that in after years I might read and appreciate the little gems of literature which, with the assistance of a phlegmatic teacher, I cordially hated when a child. Here it was—an old Ontario Reader with a sensational story about an Indian woman who killed a bear with a butcher knife, or some such weapon. My sympathy, I remember, had always been with the bear, doubtless because of the picture which was made to represent the Indian woman. I had read this story again and again, when all other passages in the book had failed to interest me, and some little long-forgotten cell of memory said I would find a fragment of paper tucked between these pages. Sure enough, there it was! I drew it out eagerly, but tenderly and almost reverently, and held it under the lamp. How that strange, childish scrawl seemed to run all over my heart and pucker it into little gasping pockets! I could feel a thumping between my lungs and the hard beating of my pulse went throbbing through the paper in my fingers.
When I am oldAnd very tallI hope my nameWill be Mrs. Hall.
When I am oldAnd very tallI hope my nameWill be Mrs. Hall.
A mist came up out of the past and blurred the scrawly letters until they swam before my eyes and faded out of sight. They had carried me back to the dear dead days of childhood—that Eden of life which comes before the disillusionment which is the Fall. The years between had gone out with a gulp that filled my throat, and again we were little children playing together, solemnly mating ourselves for the future under the witnessing murmur of the great pine. That had been one of the great days in my life, and I had not known it then. I wonder how often we know the great day when it is actually upon us! But in that day I had drunk in something which had become part of my system; part of my flesh and bone and brain; part of my hope, my aspiration, my life. And now would I give it up? Never—never! I pressed the previous missive to my lips and suddenly the dam of my overwrought nerves gave way, and tears rushed down upon me. With a man's shame I would have checked them if I could, but the flood would not be stopped—and there was none to see. I fell on my bed and let the storm sweep over me.
After a while came calmness, and with that calmness the resolution which I recorded in the opening lines of this chapter. I would have it out with Jean. I would put up another fight for all that made life worth the living. I wouldnotaccept my fate; at least, I would not accept the fate to which Jean had resigned me. She would see! . . .
But this was a battle which could not be fought in public, and I racked my wits for some way in which I might lay siege to Jean—alone. I hardly could ask Jack and Marjorie to get out of their own house while I subjected Jean to the main drive which was to break down her resistance; much less could I invite Jean to Fourteen for the same purpose. The prairies, with all their vast spaces, refused me just that one little niche of privacy I needed. As I turned the matter over in my mind a clever plan unfolded itself before me. I would make a sled and invite Jean to go coasting somewhere along the banks of the gully. Then we would wander on and on, the farther the better.
Fortunately some boards remained of the table which had supported the wedding feast, and I went to work with a will. The reaction from inactivity was in itself a tonic to my spirits, and I found myself whistling an improvised tune which I fitted to the words, "When I am old and very tall, etc." Hope rebounded, as hope will, from its dip into despair, and I began to picture the shack on Fourteen as it would be under the loving care of "Mrs. Hall," and the joy that we would find in its seclusion. The winter months, which had been dragging so unutterably, suddenly threatened to be all too short.
I completed my sleigh and presented myself at the door of Twenty-two. Jack looked upon the vehicle with evident misgiving. I may have built it rather stoutly, but that was no reason why he should suggest that I hitch an ox to it.
"An ox!" I retorted." This is built for speed. I am going to ask Jean to go coasting."
"Aha!" said Jack, significantly. "I wish you all possible—speed."
Jean showed no reluctance about going. She drew on a woolen sweater and a short, cloth winter coat, with a collar of some fluffy kind of fur which had originally grown on a cat. She had a little fur cap of the same material, which she pulled down snugly on her head, and we were off.
We followed the crest of the gully for some distance in the direction of Sneezit's farm, ostensibly in search of a good coasting spot, but actually much engaged with our thoughts and the real purpose of our outing. That Jean understood it perfectly I was convinced, and under such circumstances the fact that she had so readily accepted my invitation was at least a hopeful omen.
Walking on the untracked snow in midwinter is an uncertain business, and the prairie people rarely make use of snowshoes. For the most part there was a frozen crust that bore our weight, but this crust has an unfortunate habit of giving way at unexpected moments, particularly when one has just taken a big stride forward. There is an effect very much like coming upon the head of the stairs in the darkness when you think you are still safely walking along the hall. It precipitates one forward with great suddenness, but fortunately snow is a good thing to fall in. We scrambled to our feet, laughing and in high spirits. It was a wonderful thing to laugh again, and mean it.
At last we found a place where the snow had curved in a great white plume over the bank of the gully. For fifty or sixty feet it dropped away in an absolutely smooth descent; then came a sudden pitch, as though a great ladle had scooped out the drift; then a succession of little billows whipped up by the cross currents at the foot of the hill.
"How's that?" I demanded.
"It looks good," said Jean. "Let me see if it is firm."
With that she ran out upon the drift, her dainty feet tripping down it like a bird. But the descent was steeper than she thought; her momentum over-balanced her, and in an instant I saw her careering wildly down the slope, her arms outstretched, her hair flying loose from under the rim of her cap. Near the foot she disappeared entirely.
Perhaps I should have rushed after her, but I didn't. I sat down leisurely at the top of the hill and waited for her to reappear. Presently a mittened hand came up over the crest which hid her from view; then something round and furry, like a sleeping kitten; then a forehead, two eyes, and a glimpse of cheeks.
"Aren't you coming down—to help me?" she called.
Now I had meant to stand on my rights; to tell Jean that she had gone down the hill on her own accord, and might come back in the same way; perhaps to poke some quiet mirth at her efforts to scramble up the slippery drift. When a man contemplates matrimony he may as well settle at once who's who, and why. Now was my time to be firm.
"No, I'm not coming," I said.
Jean looked at me for a moment, in surprise; then uttered not another word. But from her hand she drew her woolen mitten, and raised her fine, firm fingers in the air. One of those fingers crooked, with the knuckle bent toward me, and the finger pointing to her face; then, with a little seductive flicker, she beckoned me to her. . . . . . It was too much. I sprang on my sled and shot like an arrow to its target.
When we climbed the hill together she was radiant. "Isn't it wonderful, wonderful!" she exclaimed. "All this white wilderness to play in, to shout in—Listen!" And she helloed at the top of her voice. Only an echo, beating back from the banks of the gully, answered. "See, we are all alone—alone in all the world. "Why didn't you bring me out here before?"
"Are you glad to be alone with me, Jean?" I asked, drawing the unmittened hand into mine. "Are you glad to be here, alone, with me?"
"Why, yes. You are my friend."
"Only your friend?"
"Oh, see, there's a place where perhaps we can slide right over the pitch! Let's!"
She was on the sled in an instant, and I behind her. I kicked it loose. With a gentle crunching sound the runners started scraping through the snow; then, as the speed increased, the sound rose to a whine which mingled with the rush of air in our ears and the spray of snow in our faces. Jean's heels were just above the snow surface, and when, as happened once or twice, they dropped too low, they showered us with flying icy crystals. Then, just at the dip, one heel drove in much too deep—too deep to be accidental—the sled trembled, turned sideways, and went over.
We disentangled ourselves, laughing, but we did not immediately reclimb the hill. I found a sheltered spot in the pitch where we might sit on the sled with our backs to the great drift while our faces caught the slanting warmth of the sun and our eyes could range the field of tiny rainbow signals thrown up from the ripple at our feet.
Jean broke up the crusted snow with the heel of her overshoe; then buried her feet in the powdery mound. Presently a toe came wiggling up through it. . . . . . . .
"Jean, don't!" I cried. "You take me back to those old days! We understood everything then; then everything was supposed to be settled."
The toe settled to stillness in its burrowing; Jean's sensitive lips, too, settled to a stillness firm and sad.
"Tell me, Jean," I pressed at length; "why can't we go back; why can't we start over again—like that?"
"We have always been good friends," she murmured.
"Good friends—yes. Must it stop at that?"
"And neighbours," she continued. "We have always been good neighbours. Perhaps that is the trouble."
"How—the trouble?"
"Well, it's like this," she said, and again the toe began to gyrate in the snow. "We've known each other so well, and so long, there isn't anything—much—left to know, is there? Could you stand the boredom of a person who has no new thoughts, no strange ideas, no whims—nothing that you haven't already seen and known a hundred times?"
"There never could be boredom with you, dear. Just to have you with me, to feast on you, to know you were mine, would be enough for me."
"For about a week. You'd soon tire of a feast with no flavor to it.Iwould, at any rate. . . . Oh, I see it working out already. I don't want to gossip, and Jack and Marjorie have been everything they could to me, but already I can see them settling down to the routine—the deadly routine. Bad enough anywhere, but on these prairies, with their isolation, their immensity—unbearable. I couldn't stand it."
I studied her for a moment in silence. Jean might know all about me; I might have no new thoughts, new ideas, new whims, but it was quite plain I didn't know all about her.
"Still, there are many couples on these prairies living happily, I suppose," I ventured.
"You suppose," she repeated. "That's right. It is just supposition. Nobody knows; that is, the public doesn't know. But what is their happiness? An ox-like acceptance of the routine. Breakfast, work; dinner, work; supper, work; sleep; breakfast—the whole circle over again. I couldn't stand it, Frank; there's no use pretending I could. I'd—I'd run away with some one!"
"Jean!"
"Yes, I know what you're thinking. But it would break the routine, anyway; it wouldn't be that way I would lose my soul; perhaps that way I might save it."
"You're a strange girl, Jean."
"Yes? After all these years? I am so glad. As long as I am strange you will be interested in me. That's the trouble with you; you're not strange. I know all about you. And I wouldn't be your housekeeper for life for the sake of being your lover for a week."
"Jean!"
"Shocking, isn't it? But true. Don't you know that's what happens, nearly always? It must happen, unless there are new points of interest always arising. I have the misfortune to think, and so I see these things in advance, and try to shield you from them."
"The misfortune to think?"
"Of course. Otherwise I could accept the ox-routine and grind out my soul in the treadmill of three meals a day. I suppose that's what people call morality—ideal wife and mother, etc. I'd run away from it all."
I, too, punched the snow with my heel. "I never heard you talk like that, Jean," I said at length. "I didn't think you thought—along those lines. You wouldn't excuse people who run—who disregard their marriage vows?"
"The first of which is to love," she shot back. "When that fails, all fails. Why make a mockery of it?"
"But I would love you, always—always. You would be to me the only—the onlypossiblegirl in the world!"
Slowly she turned her face toward me; she had been giving me an opportunity for profile study during this dialogue. Her eyes found mine; her lips—in them again I saw the rose-leaf beauty of her childhood. When she spoke her voice was low and tremulous and musical.
"You dear boy! You think so. I only wish it were true!"
The last words came with a catch in her breath, I thrust forward and clasped her hands in mine.
"You mean that? Oh, Jean, if you do. . . . ."
"Yes, I mean it. That is the great difficulty. It isn't true. You wouldn't love me always. I wouldn't always be the only girl."
"Jean, you would. I swear it!"
"Then I must reverse it. I wouldn't love you always. You wouldn't always be the only man in the world."
My spirit, which had gone pounding upward, fell like a burst balloon.
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because your vision is too small. Because it is bounded by the corner posts of Fourteen. Because I couldn't live penned up in such a—a pasture."
"You'd be breaking out—toward section Two."
"Frank!" It was her turn to exclaim.
"Yes, toward section Two. You've done some plain talking, Jean; now it's my turn. It is Spoof that has upset your mind—put all these wild notions in your head. It is Spoof that you are thinking about, not me. I suppose you think you could marry him and not drop into the routine; you would be less an ox, as you put it, on Two than on Fourteen. Perhaps that would be best, after all. Perhaps if you were fenced in on Two, you might break out toward Fourteen!"
"Frank! Please don't be unkind—and unfair. . . . . . . . Iamthinking about Spoof, and it is just because he isnotbounded by section Two. You and Jack and Jake think he's a greenhorn, and you play your silly little tricks on him, but his world is the world, and yours is Fourteen, and Jack's is Twenty-two, and Jake's is—whatever his section is. He's so big, so big!"
"I see. Spoof has travelled more than we have. He has seen more of the world. He has met more people. And so he is big! I bet I grow more oats to the acre than he does—you should see his plowing; looks like—'be guess and be damned,' as Jake says."
"Quite an elegant remark; suitable to Jake, hardly to be expected from you. And your argument would be irresistible—if I were an ox."
"You're sharp, aren't you? Well, something to eat is not to be despised, even by BIG people, like you and Spoof. Even the soul, which you are afraid of losing on Fourteen, will pick up and leave you on Two, unless you feed that body in which it lives. That's what the soul itself thinks about people who don't hustle for a living; it gets up and leaves them."
"Good for you!" cried Jean, "You are actually thinking. I have goaded you into it. Now—where are we?"
"We're at Spoof. You say you could love me for a week, and him forever."
"I didn't say that."
"You as much as said it. Spoof may have advantages—I admit his travel, and all that—but will those things keep him big? Won't section Two bound him in a year or so, just as you say Fourteen bounds me now? Is he different clay; less ox, more soul?"
"Section Two can never hold Spoof, because he—because he isbig, don't you see? He reads, he thinks, he sings, he dreams. No section can hold one who does those things."
"Does he write poetry?" I inquired, innocently.
"I—I don't think so," said she, not scenting my trap, "but he is very fond of it. You should hear him read——"
"Hear him read 'Come to me. . . . . Spoof!'"
She turned to me fairly again. She had withdrawn her hands from mine and was crushing little crusts of snow between her mittens. Now she dropped the snow, shook her hands free of its powdery residue, then linked them about her knee. For a long moment she held me under her eyes without blinking.
"So you saw that, did you?"
"Jean—I'm sorry. I apologize. I saw it by accident—I couldn't help that. I could have helped speaking about it. I apologize."
Then her eyes dropped. "It was very foolish," she murmured. "You have a right to be amused."
"But I'm not amused," I protested. "And I'm not sure it is really foolish. At any rate, I'll confess something, Jean; when I found it I tried to write a poem—to you—but I couldn't. The only rhymes I could think of were Jean and bean."
"Splendid! Oh. Frank, I'm beginning to be afraid—to hope—that I didn't quite know you after all. Fancy you trying to write poetry—and about me! Let's write a verse now. I'll help you."
She whipped a mitten from her hand and sat with her fingers lightly drumming on her lips, summoning the muse.
"You'll have to write it," I said. "I'll sign it."
"All right!" she exclaimed at length, and turning to the huge drift behind us she traced on its hard surface with her forefinger this inscription:
If you will only be my wife,No matter what the past has beenI'll take a broader view of lifeAnd try to keep you guessing, Jean.
If you will only be my wife,No matter what the past has beenI'll take a broader view of lifeAnd try to keep you guessing, Jean.
"Oh, you used my rhymes!" I exclaimed. "But isn't that last line slangy?" I said, when we had it well laughed over and I had added at the side an idealistic sketch of Jean's face under a bridal veil. My drawing rather lost its point in the fact that I had to explain what it was.
"No, not slang—poetic license. That's a great advantage poets have; anything that isn't quite good English can always be called poetic license. Now sign it."
I signed it in bold, printed letters, and then we fell into silence.
"What's the answer, Jean?" I said at length.
"Oh, Frank, I can't give you an answer—not now. That may have been slang, about keeping me guessing, but it goes a long way down in one's nature. If you would only read, and study, and think, and learn to appreciate beautiful things—"
"Oh, Jean, I do! I appreciate you."
"Rather clever, Frank, but that isn't just what I mean. I mean like Spoof; we might as well be frank about it. I've seen him watch the sunset in the pond; watch the colors change and blend and run in little ripples with a touch of breeze as though the water had been stirred with a feather; I've seen him sit for hours watching the ambers and saffrons and champagnes of the prairie sunset, and——"
"And that's why he got so little plowing done."
"Stop it! And he knows every flower on the prairies, and all you know is pigweed and——"
"And tiger lilies."
"Stop it again! And he takes note of little things, like when I worked a new strip of lace into the yoke of my dress, and when I put a dash of scarlet ribbon in my hat he said it gave me just the touch of color that one needed on the prairies, and it was no wonder that the Red Indians loved color, and how much wiser, in some things, they were than we, and——"
"He was spoofing you, Jean."
"He wasn't."
"Then he was making love to you."
"Perhaps. But it was very nice. You never noticed my lace or my ribbon. You didn't even notice this new cap I have on to-day; I made it out of an old muff, all myself, and I just said to myself, 'I wonder if Frank will notice it,' but you didn't——"
"I did, too. I saw it first thing, and I thought how nice it looked on you."
"Spoof would have said how nice I looked under it."
"Oh, damn Spoof!"
"Spoof's an artist, Frank. You're not."
"Nor yet a poet. But I reckon I'll make a good farmer."
"We threshed out the ox question a while ago. Let's keep on new ground."
"Very well. Here's some new ground. When did Spoof tell you all these things? I understood he hadn't come into the house all the time we were away."
"He didn't either—hardly. But he used to come over regularly to see that everything was all right about the place and to have his 'bawth', and he had the handsomest bathing suit—white and yellow trimmings—and Marjorie and I fixed up bathing suits too, and we used to go in——"
"Together?"
"Of course. Only Marjorie only went in once or twice; she said she was afraid of the frogs. . . . . Marjorie is a knowing girl."
"My own sister! And she would conspire . . . . . ." I crunched a clump of crust viciously under my heel.
"Well, seeing that you have confessed, I suppose I should own up, too," I said, after a silence. "I never told you that there was a girl out where I worked this summer."
"No? What was she like?" Jean's voice was steady, but I caught a new note in it. It augured well for my first attempt at romancing.
"Oh, she was a nice girl, all right. Her folks thought she would make a good ox, but she didn't quite fall in line. She had that broader vision you set so much on. Sort o' hinted that she and I might do well running a rooming house at Moose Jaw; they say things are humming at the Jaw. Rather suggested——"
"Oh, Frank, she never did! . . . . . Wanted you to marry her, I suppose?"
"No, she didn't just say that. But she's BIG, you know; takes a big view of things. Of course, it might have come to that in time. I remember one afternoon it rained and we couldn't work in the fields and that night she and I went to a dance——"
"Does she dance well?"
"Oh, quite well. And free. You know—nothing standoffish, or anything like that. Well, the storm came up again during the night, and we couldn't get home, and it was only a small farm house so some of us had to sleep in the hayloft, and Nellie said she'd be a dead game sport——"
"Now Frank, don't tell me any more. I don't believe it. . . . . . . . What happened next?"
"Oh, nothing much. It was about noon when we got home, and the old man was pretty sore, but I told him I thought a good deal of Nellie and wouldn't mind marrying her if it came to that, and I asked her to come over here and visit us next summer——"
"You're lying, Frank. Let's go home."
As we walked home in silence, trailing our sleigh, the nip of the late afternoon stung our cheeks to roses and our breaths trailed behind like the gaseous tail of a very young and leisurely comet. Jean complained that one of her hands was growing cold so I took the mitten off it and drew the hand down into my deep, warm over-coat pocket, where we took all precautions against frost-bite. The other hand had to take a chance.
We walked along the bottom of the gully for shelter from the wind which was rising with sunset. As we neared Twenty-two Jean stopped.
"Frank, I want to ask you a question," she said. "There was no truth in that story you told me?"
"You care?"
"Of course I care. Tremendously."
"Don't you want me to be big?"
"Not that way. I've been talking about intellectual things—spiritual things."
"I suppose Spoof's bathing suit, with the white and yellow, is quite spiritual?"
"That isn't fair."
"Oh yes it is. It is merely the other ox getting gored."
"Anyway, your story wasn't true? You made it up to tease me?"
"If I answer your question will you answer mine?"
"I can't Frank, I can't—not now. I haven't seen Spoof since Christmas. Perhaps he's sick. Perhaps he's dead. Something awful may have happened."
"His smoke goes up every morning just the same."
"Oh, you've been watching it, too. But something has happened. I—I can't answer you now."
At the door of Jack's house we paused again. We were in the shadow there, and as she turned on the step her form swung close to mine. For a moment I seized her, no longer able to play the semi-Platonic. . . . . .
"But there was no truth in it, was there?" she whispered.
"There was some truth in it," I confessed, as I turned toward the empty shack on Fourteen.