That gaunt phantom of doubt gradually closed in upon me. I resolved to fight it, but its very intangibility baffled my efforts to throw it off. When I struck, it was not there. When I gripped it, my fingers closed on space. When I challenged Jean's whole-heartedness she burst into tears and asked what proof she could give that she had not given. And it was because she burst into tears that the phantom stalked me all the closer. Had she laughed and called me a silly boy I would have believed her.
Nothing came of it, however, and the days wore on until one forenoon we saw Spoof's tall figure looming up across the snow-waste that lay between Fourteen and Two. As he came up he threw off a miniature cloud of steam in the cold air, reminding me strikingly of Thomson's speech about the steam engine.
"A steam engine," Thomson had declared, "is the most human of all inventions. In fact, it's a mechanical man, or, if you put it the other way, man is a human steam engine. Each of them consumes food and converts it into energy. You feed a man beef, and he gives you power. You feed this engine straw, and it gives you power; the same thing, by a slightly different process."
"Slightly!" exclaimed the farmer for whom we were working at the time. "Slightly! Do you know the difference between the price of beef and the price of straw?"
"Then the engine wins," said Thomson, who would never grant a point in his defense of steam.
For some reason this flitted through my mind as Spoof drew up, trailing behind him a cloud of steam like a comet's tail. Spoof was healthy and strong and his engines were functioning properly.
We made him welcome, but he would not sit down. "Sorry, but I can't stay," he explained. "Jake is in a bit of a mess. Just came over to Two to tell me about it. It seems the cogitation nut on his base burner—you know the big coal stove Jake puts on so many airs about—bless me if I know what a cogitation nut is; rummy old name, don't you think?—but at any rate it has come loose so Jake posted over to borrow a left-hand monkey wrench with which to tighten it. It seems he can't get at it with an ordinary monkey wrench; must have a left-hand one. I hadn't such a thing about the place, and of course I told him so.
"'Danged unfortunate,' says Jake—excuse the adjective, ladies—and he stuck out his chin and massaged it in a way that showed he was worried more than he admitted.
"'It will be all right, won't it?' said I, trying to buck him up, and really knowing nothing about it.
"'Well, it may be, and it may not be,' said he. 'If we're lucky nothing will come of it.'
"'And in case you're unlucky?' I queried.
"'Then the bottom will fall out of the stove and the shack will burn down—maybe before I get back. We can't leave it without a fire in this weather, you know.'
"So seeing that old Jake was in a bit of a mess I volunteered to come over and borrow the necessary tools from you. It took quite a weight off his mind, I assure you, for he started off whistling, and shouted to me to give his regards to Sitting Crow."
Jack and Jean, as usual, were with us at the time and from a corner where he was out of the range of Spoof's vision Jack was semaphoring me an improvised hush signal.
"Too bad the day is so dull," Jack said, looking out of our window in the direction of Jake's homestead. "Can't see a thing. His shack may be burned by this time. Perhaps Jake and Bella Donna are already on their way here for shelter."
"Oh, surely not!" exclaimed Jean. "Surely that would not happen!"
"Quite possible," her brother insisted, with the firmness of one who is prepared for the worst. "When the cogitation nut works loose you never know what may happen. And the worst of it is we haven't a left-hand wrench on the place."
"You haven't!" said Spoof, plainly concerned, "I say, that's rather rotten."
"Isn't it? Your best chance is Burke. Burke has quite a lay-out of tools, and, besides, he's an ingenious beggar. No doubt he will be able to fix you up."
Marjorie had already drawn a cup of hot tea, and Spoof drank it while he stood.
"Ah, that's better," said he, as she took the empty cup from his hand. "Wonderful how a cup of tea bucks a fellow up, isn't it? Now I must get along. Fancy old Jake on his back under the stove holding that nut in place with his fingers!"
"Or with Bella Donna's curling tongs," Jack suggested. "Burke will fix you all right," and we waved him away.
It was one of those grey winter days, and he faded out of sight in a few moments. I noticed that Jean's eyes followed Spoof until the mist had engulfed him. Then she turned quickly to Jack and me.
"If there is any danger, don't you think you should go over to Jake's at once?" she said.
"Not a chance," her brother assured her. "But I'd give a dollar to be at Burke's."
"At Burke's? Why?"
"Because, little Miss Innocence, of two facts. First, there is no such thing as a cogitation nut, and second, there is no such thing as a left-hand monkey wrench."
"But Jake came for it—he told Spoof——"
"Exactly. That's why he told him."
For a moment Jean's face was a puzzle as her mind unravelled the mixed threads of Jake's little comedy. But suddenly her eyes blazed with a light such as I had seen in them only once before, and then, as now, it was for Spoof that light had burned.
"So you sent him out on a day like this," she said, speaking slowly and through teeth that were almost closed—"you sent him out on a day like this, across the untracked snow, hunting for something that doesn't exist. He may find something he wasn't sent for."
"Oh, come now, Sister, don't take it too seriously. It is just a joke."
"It will he no joke if Spoof is lost on the prairie," she returned; "no joke for any of us. For example, there will be no marriage in this house, so far as I am concerned, if anything happens to Spoof."
"Isn't that rather mixing the issue?" I said, perhaps a little testily. "Spoof has nothing to do with our marriage."
"No, butIhave," she answered, with a pointedness that could not be escaped.
"You make a mountain out of a mole-hill," Jack told her, sharply. "One would think it was Spoof you were in love with, instead of Frank."
"If I discuss that at all I will discuss it with Frank, alone," she retorted, with some heat. The color which had fled her face for a moment had come back in a flood, filling her cheeks and forehead, overflowing down her neck and into her hair. If Jean the placid, Jean the mild-mannered, Jean the amiable was lovely, Jean the aroused, Jean the defiant, was adorable. I made that appraisal even while in her eyes I read something akin to my death warrant.
"I was quite serious in what I said, Frank," she continued, after a moment. "If it makes any difference to you perhaps you will follow Spoof. He hasn't the prairie sense that you have; he may be lost by this time. Fortunately there is no ground-drift, and his tracks will show."
"Of course, if you think there is any danger, I'll go," I agreed, eager for a way out of an awkward position, and lacerated at heart by a sense of the breach that had occurred between us. So Jack and I set out to follow Spoof's tracks. We traced him without difficulty to Burke's.
"Has Spoof been here?" we asked our American neighbour when he came to the door.
"Spoof? I should say he has. By this time he's half way to Andy Smith's. Unfortunately I didn't have a left-hand monkey wrench," said Burke, with a chuckle, "but I reckoned likely Andy Smith would have one, having been a ship builder. Spoof wouldn't stay to eat, but he drank a cup of tea and steamed away."
We explained that we were tracking Spoof in case he became lost, but avoided any reference to the ultimatum that had sent us after him. Declining the invitation of Burke and his wife to stay and eat, we pushed on.
About half way to Andy Smith's we met Spoof coming back. Andy had not seen the joke when it was first presented, and in his analysis of it had revealed it to Spoof as soon as he recognized it himself. This was fortunate for Spoof, as otherwise he would doubtless have been sent to Ole Hansen's in continuation of his quest. As Spoof came up to us his face twisted in a broad grin.
"Did you get a left-hand wrench?" we asked.
"No, but I found out what a cogitation nut is. This is it," and he tapped his head with his knuckles, "only it doesn't cogitate very well."
The three of us linked arms, Spoof in the middle, and trudged back toward Burke's.
"Mighty decent of you to come after me," said Spoof, at length.
"Yes, wasn't it?" we agreed.
Lucy Burke would take no refusal this time, so Spoof and Jack and I stayed for dinner. I had a feeling that this was bad generalship, and that we should be hurrying home, where Jean was doubtless waiting with growing concern. I managed to mention my forebodings to Jack.
"Don't you believe it," he whispered back. "When a woman reads you the Riot Act go out and have a riot. Nothing makes her so unhappy as to suspect that her husband is having a good time when she thinks he should be doing penance over her displeasure."
I had no opportunity to mention that I wasn't Jean's husband, and that the furthest thing from my wish was to make her unhappy, and that I wondered where Jack got all his information, for Lucy Burke was plying us with fried pork and baked beans and browned potatoes and home-made bread and butter and coffee that would float an egg. After dinner Burke, with the loneliness of a homesteader to whom the visit of a neighbour is something of an event, detained us as long as possible, on one pretext or another, and finally, when we insisted upon going, hitched up the mules and drove us back to Fourteen.
It was dark by this time and the lamps were lighted. I noticed that lamps were set so that their yellow wedges of light thrust out into the darkness from each of our windows. Jean was at the door with the sound of our sleigh bells, and as I passed close by her I scrutinized her face for some hopeful sign. It was a blank wall.
We made Spoof and Burke stay for supper, and no one had more fun over the day's events than had Spoof. Jean kept her indignation well bridled, and we were a happy party, outwardly, at any rate. Spoof and Burke made it up that they would drive to Jake's late that night, when he would be sure to be in bed, and stuff his stove-pipe with a sack as a slight exchange of compliments. During the evening Jean's eyes avoided mine but I had an uncomfortable feeling that three of us were on a precipice which afforded room for only two, and that I was the third.
As the evening wore on Spoof insisted that Jean get out the banjo. I could see that she was in no mood for music, but she played her part well, and as their voices joined in "Old Black Joe" and "Silver Threads Among the Gold" I could not help wondering if she were as unhappy as I was.
After they had sung for a while Spoof took the banjo from Jean and swept his lean, long hand with quick, delicate master-strokes across its strings. Under his spell our little homestead shack faded out in the blur of Spoof's tobacco smoke, and presently I saw a little boy and girl sitting on the bank of a river, digging their toes in the warm sand and watching the spray of misty diamonds from the water-wheel across the stream.
"Spooky old machine, a banjo, isn't it?" I heard Spoof say at length, and of a sudden I was back on Fourteen, and in the midst of a world which had its share of troubles. "Has an uncanny way of ripping up the past; tombstones, skeletons, everything." Then, to an improvised accompaniment, he began reciting Kipling's poem to the banjo.
"It was this poem," he explained, in the midst of his recital, "that caused me to bring a banjo to Canada. Otherwise I should probably have shipped a piano, to the enrichment of the transportation people and my own further financial undoing. I must drop R. K. a line of appreciation."
"Still, the piano case would have come handy," Jack suggested. "You might have put your house in it in bad weather."
"Almost," said Spoof. But he was back to his theme again, and the wooden wall against which I leaned trembled in sympathy with his strings.
". . . I have told the naked stars the Grief of Man.Let the trumpet snare the foeman to the proof—I have known defeat and mocked it as we ran.My bray ye may not alter or mistakeWhen I stand to jeer the fatted Soul of Things,But the song of Lost Endeavor that I makeIs it hidden in the twangings of the strings?"
". . . I have told the naked stars the Grief of Man.Let the trumpet snare the foeman to the proof—I have known defeat and mocked it as we ran.My bray ye may not alter or mistakeWhen I stand to jeer the fatted Soul of Things,But the song of Lost Endeavor that I makeIs it hidden in the twangings of the strings?"
After that silence fell upon us, and before long Spoof and Burke left on their errand of reprisal. Jean elected to go home soon afterwards, and I accompanied her to Twenty-two. She stood a moment with the door latch in her hand, as though debating with herself whether she should send me home.
"You had better come in," she said at length. "There are some things we should talk about."
I closed the door behind me and Jean lighted a lamp and removed her wraps. "Come and sit down," she said, making room for me beside her on a bench.
I sat down beside her, and would have kissed her, but she drew gently away. "Please don't, Frank," she said, and when her eyes met mine I saw a look in them as of some wild thing wounded to the death.
"Jean!" I exclaimed. "Have I hurt you so?"
"No, Frank, not you. But I am hurt—hurt," and she pressed her hands about her bosom as though in physical pain. "It is so hard to know—to be sure—what is right!"
"How what is right?"
"In books—you will understand, Frank—it is always so clear. One is a hero; the other is a villain; it is so easy to know. But in life—I don't suppose there are so many villains after all. That doesn't make it any easier to decide."
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Jean."
"I suppose you don't, and I shrink from making it more clear to you. Do you know what "The Song of Lost Endeavor" means? Have you sung it—in your heart?"
Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and her arm, apparently of its own volition, had found its way to my neck.
"I don't know that I do," I admitted, "except in a vague way. I suppose it has to do with failure, with knowing one's self to be a failure——"
"That's it—and I know. . . . I have tried, and failed."
"Jean!"
"I thought our promise—my promise—would bind me. . . . It didn't. It won't. It can't." She withdrew her arm, then quickly seized both my hands in hers.
"Oh, my boy, my friend, my chum!" she exclaimed, and little crystal wells gathered between her eyelids as she spoke. "How can I hurt you so! But nothing else would be honest. I have tried and failed. I lost my temper with you to-day, and once before, over Spoof. You were playing jokes on him—making him the butt of your humor—your idea of humor——"
"I promise you nothing of that kind will ever happen again, dear; I promise it, I swear it!"
"But that doesn't help, any. Don't you see, it's not that I care—so much—about the joke—on anybody—but becauseI love Spoof."
I hope I took the blow like a gentleman. I had the advantage of being somewhat prepared for it.
"I suspected that," I said at length. "I don't want to stand in the way of your happiness."
Then I fell from the heroic with a thud. "Oh, Jean, Jean," I pleaded, "why do you turn to Spoof, whom you hardly know, and away from me? Have I fallen so far short—an I so little to be desired—that you should love a stranger in preference?"
She pressed her hand against my lips. "Don't, please. . . . I can't explain. Ask me why the wind blows—why the flowers turn to the sunlight—I can't explain. I would ever so much rather it had been you."
"Then make it me! It is in your hands——"
"No, it is not. I can't change it. I have tried—and failed. Of course, I could marry you still, but you would not want me with a reservation in my heart. You would despise me if I married you like that."
Beneath the numbing shock of the fact that Jean was slipping—had slipped—out of my life, I was conscious that her words were true. I should not have wanted her—with a reservation. And so we sat in silence and in suffering, with no sound about us except the ticking of the clock and the thumping of our own hearts, until at length Jean arose to rebuild the fire. I took it as my cue to leave.
"Well, what is to be done about it?" I said, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way, although I could not keep the tremble out of my voice. "We must clear up the situation some way."
"Yes. We will explain, so far as it can be explained, to Jack and Marjorie. We must not interfere with their marriage or their happiness. And Spoof must not know."
"Spoof not know! How shall we prevent——"
"I mean he must not know why—why our marriage is post—is off. Don't you see, Frank; Spoof must not know—I love him." She whispered the last words and turned her head away, as though ashamed of her confession.
"Not know you love him! Do you mean that Spoof doesn't know you love him?"
"No, he doesn't, Frank."
"And he has not made love to you?"
"Not a word."
I stood pondering that fact. If Spoof, without trying, could win Jean in competition with me, who had been trying my hardest, and who had the advantage of all the intimacies of childhood, what would happen when he set himself to the business of wooing? That he would do so as soon as he knew the coast was clear I did not doubt for a moment.
"I think I understand, Jean," I said, as I turned toward the door. "This happiness is not for me—it was too much to be expected. I had dreams—dreams that are not going to be realized, ever. I had pictures, but they must be torn out of my life. . . I hope you will be happy. Goodbye."
"Oh, Frank, don't go like that!" she cried, her arms outstretched toward me. But I had no heart to prolong my torture in her presence. I closed the door behind me and went stumbling through the drifts toward Fourteen.
Breaking the news to Jack and Marjorie was no easy task, but we got through it some way. Jack and his sister had an unhappy hour over it, but Jean was adamant in her decision. There was to be no marriage, so far as she was concerned. It was out of the question.
"You are passing up as decent a chap as ever lived," Jack told her, "on a chance of Spoof, and you don't know that he even cares for you. Perhaps Spoof's affections are already fixed. Have you thought of that?"
"Thought of it! I've lain awake nights, with burning eyes, and thought of it. But what can I do? I can't ask him."
"You could marry Frank, like a sensible girl."
"I only wish I could. But it is out of the question."
And with that the matter had to stand. Jean doubled her energies in helping Marjorie prepare for the great event, and while she tried always to greet me with a smile I more than once surprised a tear stealing unbidden down her cheek. I reflected that if I was suffering, Jean was suffering, too, but there was no comfort in that. I didn't want Jean to suffer. And why she should wring her heart over me, and yet refuse to marry me, was a twist in her nature beyond my power of comprehension.
Spoof took the news with genuine or well-feigned surprise. We merely explained that the wedding was not to be a double one after all; that Jean and I had reconsidered matters, but Jack and Marjorie would be married as arranged.
"I say, I'm sorry to hear that—I mean about you and Jean. I presume it is only a postponement?" But we gave him no answer to that question, and Spoof, of course, did not press it.
Christmas day dawned bright and cold, with a whip of north-west wind and a skiff of loose snow sifting across the frozen prairies. I found myself lying awake in the morning, thinking of Jean, and of all I had hoped that day would mean to me. This was the dream that was gone; the picture I had had to tear out of my heart, only it would not stay gone; it plagued me in my sleep, it haunted me in every silent moment of the day. That Jean should be so strong, so set, so immovable, and, as it seemed to me, so unreasonable, in spite of all her delicate wistfulness and strange uncommonness of spirit—that was a side of Jean's character which all the years of our childhood and youth had not revealed to me. . . I had not re-opened my suit. I had accepted her decision. But the old picture would come back, and this Christmas morning as it swam before my eyes it stirred within me an immeasurable poignancy of spirit.
"Merry Christmas!" shouted Marjorie, poking her head into my room. Marjorie was going through a time of strangely mixed emotions. Her heart was light on her own account and heavy on mine, and in these days she found the bridge between laughter and tears an extremely narrow one. Perhaps it was for that reason that her shout of "Merry Christmas!" ended in something like a sob, and, with a little rush, she plunged on to my bed and threw her arms about me; she wrapped them around my neck and shoulders and drew my face to hers. And as her cheek lay against mine a little warm trickle of moisture wended its way down, upon, and across my lips, and I felt her frame tremble as it rested near me.
"Not crying, Marjorie; not crying, on this of all mornings!" I exclaimed, although my own throat was full. "Not crying, dear—on my account?"
To that question she snuggled closer, and after a little I heard her whispering in my ear. "It will come all right in time, Brother mine," she said; "all right in time. I can't think—I can't believe—anything else. Don't you feel—don't youknow—that it will?" And so to soothe her, and that her greatest day might not be spoiled, I said I knew it would come all right in time, but there was a stone between my lungs and a band of iron about my chest.
Marjorie kissed me on the lips, then raised her face and dried her eyes. Suddenly she sprang to her feet, and I could not but admit how very good she was to look upon. Her dark hair hung loose about her shoulders; she allowed herself no curl-paper nonsense, and indeed no device could have added to the beauty of her waving locks. She was still in her night dress, although she had drawn on something warm about her feet, and, like the good wife she was always to be, she had started the fire—a duty which I admitted properly fell to the man of the house. Perhaps it is because a manshouldstart the fire that he so greatly enjoys having his wife do it. I could hear the poplar sticks crackling as I lay watching her through moist and dreamy eyes. She was good to look upon; so different from Jean, but still so good!
"Hustle up, Frank," she cried, with a sudden return to her normal manner. "We have a lot to do to-day."
It was not until after our midday meal that I went over to Twenty-two. Jean was in her room, but I mustered the spirit to chaff Jack with such a mingling of good wishes and humorous sallies as my brain could command, and we finished the whole with an impromptu sparring match in the middle of the kitchen floor.
"Watch your beak, old Sitting Crow!" I commanded, "or I'll send you to the minister with a busted mug," and I swung on him with enthusiasm. But Jack was handy with his fists, and something thumped in my eye like a piledriver.
"Aha!" said he. "The first of the wedding decorations. Let's make it a pair."
But at that moment Jean came out, looking so radiantly sorrowful, if one can look that way, that the glory of Marjorie seemed as the glory of one of the lesser planets against the sun. She came to me with an outstretched hand.
"Merry Christmas, Frank," she said, looking me squarely in the face. "Why, what has happened to your eye?"
"I was just practising," said Jack, "and I want to exhibit this specimen of my handiwork to Marjorie before we are married. It is as well that she should understand——"
But Jean was gone in quest of butter, with which she rubbed my swelling eye, and the caress of her fingers was worth the punch it had cost.
It was now time to hitch the oxen to the rough sleigh or jumper which Jack and I had built. Into this the four of us could with some difficulty be packed, and as we reckoned it would take at least an hour for Buck and Bright to break trail to Spoof's, we loaded up and started on our journey at a little before two. Spoof had insisted that the ceremony should take place at his house, if for no other reason that there might be a honeymoon trip as far as from Two to Fourteen, and the minister was expected at three.
As the snow-clad prairie crept by to the leisurely plodding of Buck and Bright the mound which marked Spoof's house and stable gradually defined itself against the bright grey background of the December afternoon. Spoof had been on the look-out, and while our oxen were still puffing and blowing at a considerable distance from the shack we saw him coming over the drifts with his great, rapid, English stride. He was beside us in a few minutes, his wind-tanned face wreathed in smiles, his white teeth gleaming under a short, sandy mustache to which of late he had been giving some encouragement.
"Merry Christmas!" he cried. "The merriest ever—ever!" He held out both arms, and we all shook hands at once, and I suspect that the bride-elect pressed a chaste kiss upon his cheek. But Jack, as lawful owner, could afford to be generous. Jean took no such liberty. That would have been different.
The inside of Spoof's shack was always an example of orderly overcrowding. It was full of useless furniture, inappropriate clothing, fire-arms, saddles and bridles, cartridge belts, smoker's equipment, tobacco tins, photographs, magazines, and an endless assortment of miscellaneous knicknacks, all carefully placed and tended. Even when Spoof occupied it alone it was something of a mystery where he found space for himself in the midst of his possessions. But now Jean and Marjorie and Jack and I were crowded in as well, only to find a number of others already there.
Our eyes had not yet become accustomed to the semi-twilight of the interior when a familiar voice saluted us. "Merry Christmas, Sittin' Crow, an' ev'rybody," it said. "Didn't I warn you'se what 'ud happen?"
It was Jake. He was sitting perched like a toad on the wood-box where he could expectorate with convenience into the ashpan of the stove. "We dragged him into the centre of the floor and in the melee that followed Jake lost his footing and at least three of us were precipitated with him.
"Oh, save my husband, save my husband!" cried Bella Donna, in mock alarm, while Spoof gravely remarked that perhaps the cogitation nut had come loose.
"I am the minister," said a straight, clean-looking young man, when the uproar over Jake had subsided. "My name is Locke. This is our good friend Reddy; pardon me, by the way, Reddy, what—what is your real name? I should know it for introduction purposes."
"I left it down East," said the individual addressed as Reddy, a slight, boyish looking figure with a shock of carroty hair.
"Well, Reddy it is, then," said the minister, and we shook hands all around. "Reddy is an important personage in our town," Mr. Locke continued. "In a sense he is my chief competitor. He runs the village pool room, and, I am afraid, draws bigger crowds that I do Wednesday nights, and perhaps on Sundays, too—behind the blinds."
"Not guilty," pleaded Reddy. "There are no blinds on the shop."
You may not know that the chief social institution in the young prairie town is the pool room. It is the club house of the village and the community. It is usually a long, crude building of plain boards, unpainted inside or out, and equipped in its central part with a huge coal stove and three or four pool tables. The main entrance is in the centre of one end, and on one side of the entrance is a barber's chair, a tall mirror, and a shelf of razors, mugs, and clippers; on the opposite side of the entrance is a show case filled with tobacco in its various forms, with perhaps some boxes of candy and a slot machine where those of a sporting temperament may endeavor to "beat the house" for cigars. The fact that these attempts almost invariably end in failure does not seem to diminish their popularity. Into these pool rooms come the farmers to have their hair cut, or to enjoy the luxury of a bought shave, or to while away an hour while the horses rest in the livery barn, or because it is not late enough or too late to start for home. Here come the townspeople; the blacksmith and the bank manager, the storekeeper and the grain buyer, the cattle dealer and the machine agent, to spend a lazy evening or a stormy afternoon and perhaps make the acquaintance of a possible customer. Here the commercial and social affairs of the community are discussed, and, to a large extent, settled. Here, too, such tit-bits of scandal as even the smallest village can afford are told and re-told, and lose nothing in the telling.
"I believe," said the minister, generously, "that Reddy's competition is of a very honorable kind, and his presence here to-day is proof of his bigness of heart. As it was not convenient for his customers to come to him, he has come to his customers. He brings with him, I believe, a small tray of plain gold bands and a blank marriage license or two. I prevailed upon him to bring two or three extra licenses; it is always well to be prepared for emergencies." . . . .
I looked at Spoof and found him looking at me, and then I looked at Jean and found her looking at the floor, and a faint flush of color slowly spread about her face. The flat reception of the minister's pleasantry was relieved by Jake, who declared in favor of a total embargo on the marriage license business.
"At least it should take as long to get married as to prove up on a homestead," Jake remarked, "an' most fellows have a lucid interval once in three years."
"Humph!" said Bella Donna. "I bet you haven't had one in thirty."
"Looks like it, I admit," her husband retorted slyly.
When the formalities about the license were completed the minister had Jack and Marjorie stand together in the centre of the shack, and spoke the few simple words that made them man and wife under the law. We paid them the usual hackneyed compliments, and then stood around looking rather sheepish and wondering what to do next, until Reddy produced a box of chocolates and presented it to the bride. It was a simple thing, but in some way it loosed our tongues, and presently we were all laughing and wishing each other Merry Christmas.
By this time the sun had set on the short December day, and night was drawing her grey curtains across the plains. I paid for the license on Jack's behalf and gave the change to the minister, and we were about to thank Spoof and say good-bye to the little company when they announced in concert that they were coming over to Fourteen. In vain we protested that the roads were bad, that the night was settling down, that the sky looked like a storm. All these perfectly good reasons why they should stay at home were converted into arguments why they should come. Spoof, as host, yoked up the oxen and insisted that he would drive the bridal party; our jumper would carry five as well as four. "It was built for two," he argued, "so one more will make no difference."
Finding that there was nothing else for it we accepted the inevitable and crowded in. Spoof provided rice, with which we all were liberally pelted; Jake fired two shots from a gun, and with much shouting at Buck and Bright and the world in general away we went at a pace of almost three miles an hour, dragging behind a chain of Spoof's discarded boots and overshoes.
When we were well under way our attention was suddenly arrested by a commotion in the rear. It was Jake with the "flying ants", and with Bella Donna and the minister and Reddy in his cutter. He was standing up, waving the loose ends of the reins about his head, and imprecating his horses into a gallop. In a moment he was upon us.
"Out o' the way, you old married people," he shouted. "I don' blame you fer goin' slow, but don' hold up the percession."
But Spoof had no intention that the bride and groom should surrender the place of honor. With many strange adjectives he goaded the oxen, and presently noted a slight acceleration in their movements. "We're making nearly four knots an hour," he shouted.
"That's nothing," the minister shouted back. "I made a knot in less than ten minutes."
But for all of Spoof's urging our oxen plodded stolidly along the wintry trail, now barely distinguishable from the grey whiteness of the plains. Flakes of snow were falling, and on every side the pall of night surrounded us, drawing its circle closer and closer. The trail was firm, but the surrounding snow was loose and deep, and to pass us Jake would have to plunge his horses through it, at considerable risk of upsetting his cutter. The old land guide, however, hesitated not a moment for such a consideration as that. Swinging his horses from the trail he cut out at them with his whip, and they rushed by us, throwing a snowy spray like a torpedo boat passing a liner.
But as it is so often the occasion that makes the man, so now was it the occasion that proved Spoof's resourcefulness. Climbing over the dashboard of the jumper he ran along the tongue and threw himself upon Buck's ample back, which immediately began to heave and gyrate with an entirely new motion. Whether it was as a protest against the liberty which Spoof had taken, or whether it was that the legs about his sides brought back memories of youthful days when some bare-legged urchin on a Manitoba farm rode him in wild triumph through the pasture field of the parental herd, matters not; the fact is that Buck presently broke into a most unprecedented gallop, and his mate, willy-nilly, followed suit. They were just in time to prevent Jake's party getting on the trail ahead of us, and in great glee we careered by them.
"Forced draught!" shouted Spoof. "Fourteen knots!"
But our triumph was short lived. Unaccustomed to such speed, the oxen presently began to wobble in their course and suddenly floundered off the trail.
"Hard a-port, hard a-port!" Spoof shouted. But he was too late, or his directions were misunderstood. Over went the jumper, flinging its freshly married and other contents into the snow. The speed of the oxen wrenched the tongue from the wreck, and they continued homeward in greater haste than before.
Spoof jumped free and barely escaped a defiant flourish of Buck's heels as they flipped by him. Ruefully he gazed upon the wreckage.
"I told the bally bullocks to swing hard a-port," he explained, "and instead of that they slithered off to starboard."
By this time Jake and his party were again beside us. "I hope no one is hurt," said the minister, as he took Jean's free arm to help her out of a drift. It seems that in some way I had become entangled in the other. "A rather rough start on the sea of matrimony, Mrs. Lane, I am afraid," he added to Marjorie, who was shaking the snow out of her hair.
No one was hurt, as snow is very useful for falling into, but Jake had to give up his cutter. We piled into it, taking Mrs. Jake along, with me driving and Spoof and Jake and Reddy and the minister following on foot as a sort of bodyguard, albeit a most undisciplined one if we could judge by the recriminations that were hurled about the unfortunate Englishman's head. On various occasions, looking back, I could see a flourish of arms and blows exchanged and someone down in the snow, and roars of laughter rolled up after us through the wintry night.
At last the shack on Fourteen came into view, and, to our great surprise, a light shone from the window. When we came up close we saw a number of jumpers and bob-sleighs about, and the tracks of many feet in the snow.
The scene inside was an animated and amazing one. In the principal room a table had been built and now groaned beneath a load such as I had not thought the country-side could supply. It was covered with snowy linen, and an assortment of chinaware of several varieties of pattern threw back the yellow glint of two great oil lamps, one of which I recognized as having recently decorated a shelf in a corner of Spoof's shack on section Two. I had just time to catch a glimpse of a frosted wedding-cake in the centre of the table and a steaming turkey at one end when Jean brought me out of my trance.
"Isn't it wonderful, Frank—wonderful!—to think of it, and all of them so poor! Why, even, there's Mr. Sneezit!"
It was true. The whole community was present. They had swarmed to our premises in our absence, bringing the necessaries of the wedding dinner with them, and now they were lined up around the walls, guilty-faced but delighted. There was Brown, whom we had first found wrestling with the architecture of a sod stable; there was Mrs. Brown, dimpled and smiling, dreaming of far-off English Yule-log and mistletoe, and making her dreams come true on the wind-swept plains of Canada; there were the three little Browns, washed and on their good behavior. There was Andy Smith, the ship builder from Glasgow, now learning the drift of stone-boats and prairie schooners, and puffing on his short clay pipe the while. There was Ole Hansen and Olga, his wife, and tucked into the recesses of my room I discerned the outlines of fair-haired, tow-headed children—doubtless six in all. And there, sure enough, was our good friend Sneezit, and beside him Sneezit's wife, both trying to look very proper and at ease, and failing rather sadly, except when a broad Russian grin sent their more forbidding aspects scampering for cover.
Mrs. Sneezit's bright yellow shawl lent a dash of color to the company. The Sneezit juniors had been left at home, where, snuggled in their warm dug-out, they doubtless speculated proudly and somewhat wonderingly upon their parents'debutinto English-speaking society. And there, too, across the table was the American, Burke, tall, lean and lantern-jawed, his weather-beaten cheeks still revealing a suggestion of the olive hues of a more southern latitude, his thin lips parted over well-set teeth in a smile of friendly amusement. Nearby was his busy wife, Lucy, short and active and with possibilities of plumpness to compensate her for the ravages of time. They were a wonderful company, typical foundation stones of a nation; foundation work the quality of which shall be tested through all the years to come.
I said the whole community was present, but I was wrong. Mrs. Alton and the little boy, Jerry, were not there. I mentioned their absence to Spoof when I had an opportunity.
"They must not have known about it," was his explanation. But Spoof had evidently been at pains to make sure that all the others in the district should know. Why had he omitted Mrs. Alton? It was one more tangle in the puzzle of Spoof's peculiar attitude toward the widow on Eighteen.
As you may believe, our little house, with its groaning table and all these husky neighbours, was very, very full; when Jean and Marjorie and Jack and I and the minister and Reddy and Jake and Bella Donna and Spoof were added we were packed like city people in a six-o'clock street car. It was with difficulty we found elbow room to get out of our wraps, and then there were laughing and hand-shaking and congratulations all round.
"What happened the oxen?" Burke asked, when the general buzz permitted the question. "They came a-roarin' round here like a range stampede a few minutes ago, trailin' a sleigh-tongue all unravelled like a Christmas tree. I put 'em in the barn."
"You shouldn't have done that," I protested. "Their place is outside when company comes."
"Couldn't make 'em believe it," said Burke. "They were set on goin' in, and most obstrep'rous about bein' unyoked. I turned Ole's bucks out for the sake o' peace."
"Yaw, dat was right," Ole assented. "Ay tank by Yimminy when folks get married nothing's too good for nobody." Ole's references were somewhat obscure but his good intentions could have been read a mile away.
"But whatdidhappen?" Burke persisted. "We were just goin' to organize a search party."
"It was all the fault of the bally bullocks," Spoof explained. "I told them to hard a-port and they slithered to starboard, and over we went."
"Ah'm affeared the skipper should lose his papers," said Andy Smith, dryly. "He's no a safe mon on sich a sea."
"That sea is nothing to the one our friends here have just shipped on," Spoof rejoined. "As for losing my papers; that's a fact, I did. My cigarette papers. Who's got a helping?"
So the banter continued until Mrs. Burke reminded us that "the turk" was cooling off and began seating us about the table,—as far as it went. Someone had thoughtfully brought boards to build a table and seats, and as many as could sat down. The others were served standing.
When we were settled Mr. Locke arose and asked a blessing. I don't exactly remember his words, but I do remember the reverent hush that swept over our little throng, and the wonderful dynamic quality of the man which lifted us in an instant from the commonplace into the infinite. He gave thanks for the food before us; then asked a blessing upon the principals in the day's events. Might their lives be prosperous and fruitful; might they be useful and glad in all their days; might they enter the crimson glow of life's Indian Summer with the same high purpose and romantic love as crowned them in the yellow dawning at the thresholds of their career. And might the little community now gathered in neighbourly kindness about our table thrive and prosper and bring forth food for the sustenance of the world and souls for the Kingdom.
The serious words sobered us for a minute, but it was only a minute. The stimulus of turkey with cranberry sauce and scalloped potatoes and boiled turnips and creamed carrots would have stirred to gaiety hearts much heavier than ours, and it soon developed into a noisy and frolicsome meal. The turkey was an enormous bird; the attack of all our hungry party left the skeleton not entirely stripped. I remember that one of the little Hansens, venturing up like Oliver Twist with a demand for more, was soundly rapped on his yellow head by a drumstick in the heavy hand of Ole, but the children as a whole were well behaved, allowing for the example set them by their elders. Then we had plum pudding and sauce and apple pie and cheese, and nuts and candy for everybody. Jean and I mentally ricocheted between amazement at the generosity of the meal and speculation as to whence it had come. No one ever told us the secret, but we did learn that Spoof had a fat cheque from England just before Christmas, and that Mrs. Burke's cooking of turkey and apple pie was the talk of Humboldt county in Iowa, and that Mrs. Brown positively refused first place to anyone when it came to making plum pudding, and so we formed our own conclusions.
After the meal the table was knocked to pieces and carried out so that there might be more room, and as the bridal couple stood about wondering what was to happen next they suddenly found themselves the objects of a number of presentations. Mrs. Brown made hers first; six wonderful pieces of Limoges china, hand painted by the squire's daughter herself, and presented to Mrs. B. on her departure for Canada.
"The dear miss—she were a good soul, if I say it—said as 'ow she 'ad read in a book that they drank tea in Canada, just likerealpeople and may be these would be useful as well as hornamental, but love me, dearies, I need the room more. I suppose I should 'ardly give 'em away, but if the squire's daughter hever comes a-visiting me I'll 'ave to borrow 'em back." Her lips were smiling as she made this little speech, but a tell-tale splash fell on one of the pieces as she handed it over.
"Our present is outside, and I'm a-goin' to bring it in," said Burke, putting on his cap and coat.
"Oh, I wouldn't bring it in, Tom," his wife suggested. "Let them see it out there."
But Burke was bound to do it in style. "In it comes," he insisted, and plunged into the night. In a few minutes he returned with a heavy sack of his back, which he set in the middle of the floor. Again and again he made the trip until five sacks were in the pile.
"Ten bushels of seed wheat," he exclaimed proudly, "and may every kernel yield a hundred-fold!"
"Pretty good speech, Tom," said his wife. "I was sure you'd forget it."
"Forget nothin'!" Tom retorted. "I made that up, right off the bat."
"You'll be Member of Parliament some day, with a gift like that," Jack prophesied.
"Fer the constitooency of Sittin' Crow," Jake added, maliciously, but the point of his shaft was lost on the audience.
"Weel, Ah'm thinkin' Ah'll be next," remarked the placid Andy Smith, tapping his clay pipe and returning it to his pocket. From somewhere he produced a kit of steel-worker's tools; wonderful pieces of British workmanship, they were. I believe Jack still carries some of them in the back seat of his automobile.
"No as much as Ah could o' wisht," said Andy, modestly, "but richt guid in the makin', and they'll come gey handy when you buy that threshing-mill for the neighbourhood."
Just then we observed the color mantling to the tawny hair of Ole Hansen.
"Ay tank by Yimminy Ay mak myself maybe a yoke (joke)," the tall Swede confessed. "Ay say to Olga, 'By dam, Olga, what you tank, Ay tak a load o' hay?' She say, 'Ole, you get more fool all the time. Hay for a marriaging! What you tank dey are, oxes?' Den Ay say, 'Well, den, w'at else?' an' she say, 'Dere ain't nodding else,' an' den Ay say 'Dah hay gets it', an' so it does."
"I hope you're not going to bring it in, too," said Lucy Burke.
"Yah!" said Ole, opening his mouth in a great circular orifice and laughing silently while his head rocked in inward appreciation of Mrs. Burke's joke. "Ay tank she make good bedding, but not to-night. Ay pitch 'im off beside dah barn."
We found it was true. Ole, having nothing to bring but a load of hay, in the fullness of his heart brought that.
But an even more striking token of that community spirit which was the salvation of those early days was now to be presented. Sneezit had slipped out while the hay was under discussion and now came thundering in, his broad back bearing a whole dressed carcass of pig. Sneezit did not trust his English to make any remarks, but he smiled broadly under his bristly mustache. . . . . But what I saw was a dug-out full of children, with eyes peering through the gloom, and little, wistful, silent mouths.
"Now it's my turn," said Spoof, but Jake interrupted.
"As it happened, I was down in Regina on business connected with my estate when news o' this approachin' tie-up on Fourteen reached me, by means of a note from Spoof," Jake explained. "At first I couldn't make head or hinder of it, it was so bad wrote. So I took it to a young fellow I know with lots o' learnin'; got to know him on account o' the int'rest he usta take in the people on Twenty-two; he found out I located youse boys an' girls and usta come roun' pretty reg'lar askin' questions casual-like, an' I says to him, 'How many shirts does a fellow get on this laundry ticket?' Well, he read it over slow to himself, an' then he jus' sits lookin' at nothin' till I begun to think maybe there was some bad langwidge such as he couldn't repeat in my presence. An' after awhile he says, 'Jake, jus' another mirage; you know, those phenom'na'—that's what he called it—'on the prairie that makes you think things is what they ain't. Let's go down town,' he says, an' on the way he tells me what's in the ticket. Well, I thought he was leadin' for a bar, which is the best place I know of to raise a new mirage when your old one goes bust, but danged if he don' head me into a jewelry store. And there he buys this."
Jake delved into a pocket and brought out a little gold pendant, a chaste and delicate example of the goldsmith's art. He held it for a moment to the admiring gaze of all present before resuming his narrative.
"'Give that,' my friend says, 'with my good wishes an' a touch o' my regrets, to the young lady on Twenty-two, with the compliments o' Sergeant Brook,' he-says," and so Jake placed the little golden trinket in Jean's hands. . . . . It was a difficult situation. Jean's first impulse was to hand it back.
"Better accept it," I whispered to her. "The fewer explanations the better."
"But it—it's a wedding present," she remonstrated. "How can I . . . ?"
"Keep it until you need it," I suggested. Jean was very lovely in the heightened color of her embarrassment, and as her hand fell by my side I seized it surreptitiously in my own.
"Oh, Jean, why not make it to-night?" I whispered, mad with her beauty and her nearness.
"It's quite impossible," she answered, but she did not immediately withdraw her hand. She left me marvelling more and more over the tantalizing complexity of her attitude toward me.
Fortunately, the interest of those about us had been quickly rearrested by Jake. "Havin' a little weakness o' my own," Jake was continuing, "although I never said nothin' about it, not wishing to take advantage o' my young friend, Sittin' Crow, or to start a scene with Bella Donna, I bought its mate fer the lady on Fourteen." And with this little speech he placed another pendant in the hands of Marjorie.
"When I came to Canada to farm," said Spoof, after the excitement over Jake's gift had died down, "I came equipped for everything but farming. I could have started a second-hand store, a curiosity shop, an arsenal, or a music hall much better than I could start a farm. In fact, I feel like all of these things, except, perhaps, the music hall, when I look around my shack. Particularly well was I equipped against savages, grizzly bears, and mountain lions. I remember the days I spent in picking out my rifles, weighing the qualities of this arm and that, and the penetrating power of the different bullets. My biggest game so far has been a badger,aliasa chinook, whose hide now adorns the den of my immediate and admiring ancestor. Out of the abundance of my defences I now bring to you, John Lane, this piece of artillery, with the injunction that it must never be pointed toward section Two, and, preferably, not at anything else. Hang it over your portal, as evidence that you can be a desperate man upon occasion, and let it go at that. I have been thoughtful enough not to bring any ammunition." Spoof then produced, out of the bedroom where Brown, acting as his agent, had secretly cached it, a repeating rifle, which Jack handled with as much admiration as Marjorie spent on her pendant, and then placed it lovingly away.
"Now, I believe that's all," said Spoof.
"Not yet," Reddy interrupted. "I want to be in on this, although I didn't come prepared." He had written something in a note-book, which he now tore out and handed to Jack. It was a receipt for the price of his wedding ring. Jack protested, but Reddy would have it no other way.
The only one not represented by a presentation was the minister, but he proved equal to the occasion.
"My children," he said,—he was not much older than Jack or I, perhaps about the age of Spoof—"I am not a man of the world, and consequently cannot give you of the good things which the world provides. The theory that a minister should lay up his treasure in Heaven is taken rather literally in these times. I am not quarreling with that. Materialism is the murderous outlaw of the age, an enemy that goes bullying through the land, outraging our finer natures, overturning our ideals, polluting our ambitions. I hope I am not envious of his followers. And to you, and all of you, I give something that money could not buy—my blessing, with a promise of my ministrations, without charge, on those future occasions upon which it may be assumed you will be in need of them."
The minister had escaped from a somewhat embarrassing position with the dignity that became his calling, and with a gentle joke that showed how very human he was at heart.
"Clear out the pork and the seed wheat," Spoof ordered, as there seemed likely to be a lull in the night's enjoyment. "Ole, it is fortunate that Mrs. Burke persuaded you not to bring in your load of hay."
So the floor was cleared. The door, when opened, revealed a wedge of snow-storm whistling by, but inside the wintry weather was forgotten and the tremor of our shanty's timbers passed unnoticed. Reddy had mounted himself on our own table—the big one had been taken out, in pieces—and was twisting the strings of a violin to tune. Presently his bow cut loose a drone of dancing rhythm, and feet began to tap the plain pine boards of the floor.
"Pardners all!" Jake commanded. It was evident he was to be master of ceremonies; he had just taken a great chew of tobacco to promote the flow of language. The insistent note of the violin brought Jack and me, with Marjorie and Jean, Mr. and Mrs. Burke, and Mr. and Mrs. Brown, to the centre of the room. The dancing would be of the "square-dance" variety which was no novelty to us or to the Burkes, and which the others would soon pick up under the guidance of Professer Jake.
"S'lute yer pardner! . . . Pass 'er by. . . Balance to the next." And we were off. Jake and the fiddler warmed up with the dancers, and presently the shanty was rocking with the stamp and the swing of it. Those were not the days of dancing that is little more than a walk; one danced with all his heart and body, and was not afraid to shake the floors and ceilings.
The end of the set found us perspiring and happy.
And so the evening wore on. Ole and Olga joined the dancers in the third set, and thereafter never left the floor; Andy Smith ventured into Marjorie's arms, and in five minutes was feeling younger than in the days of his apprenticeship on the Clyde; Spoof danced with Jean as much as seemed necessary. When Spoof was not monopolizing her, Burke or Brown or Smith was. But at length she spurned us all in order that she might win Mr. Sneezit to the floor. The Russian hesitated, fearing to appear foolish, but he would have been more or less than human if he could have resisted Jean's enticements, and presently she was leading him through the simple movements of a cotillion.
Then it was that the minister distinguished himself. He had kept aloof from the dancing, but now, seeing Mrs. Sneezit being left somewhat out of the party, his Christianity overcame his creed and, sweeping down upon her, he seized her in his strong arms and had her upon her feet before she knew it. Her protestations were of no avail; she must dance with him and dance she did. The music and the kindness and the humanity of it all seemed to penetrate her stolid heart, and Mrs. Sneezit—she of the brood with the peering eyes and the wistful, hungry mouths—was won by the magic of fiddle and foot back into the gay days of girlhood and danced as though the world were hers.
At length they went. The flurries of snow had driven by; the moon poured its silver radiance on a world of downy ivory, and the bigger stars blinked stolidly from a steel-blue heaven as our guests bundled themselves into jumpers and sleighs and took their departure. Their cries of good wishes and good luck were wafted back to us above the crunching of the snow. We watched them until they faded out of sight in the white moonlight.
Soon after Jack and Marjorie and Jean crossed the snow-filled valley to their over-crowded house, and left me to one that was over-empty. For a long time I stood looking into the stove, with lid and lifter in my hand, in the act of putting on more wood. The glow of the coals went grey as I watched, and, for the first time in my life, I measured the depth to which the plummet of loneliness can plunge. . . .