Next morning I was stirring my oatmeal and water when the door opened and in burst Jack. His attire gave evidence of haste; he had thrown a pea-jacket about a somewhat incomplete toilet. I was about to summon up a jocular remark when something in his face silenced me.
"Have you seen Jean?" he demanded.
"No. Why——"
"She's not in her room. Gone. Was there last night—part of the night——"
"Sure she's not in the house?"
"Hard to lose her in our two-by-four, Frank. Not at the stables—I've hunted. It's snowing, and the wind is rising; there's no trail."
This was serious. Jack sat down, and, as though oppressed with heat, threw open his pea-jacket and exposed his undershirt.
Jean gone!
In a moment he sprang to his feet again and seized me by the arm. His grip was stronger than he knew. "She's not here, Frank? Straight now, Frank, she's not here?"
I turned my open palms toward him. "If only she were!" I exclaimed. . . . . . . "When did you miss her?"
"Ten—fifteen minutes ago, when I got up. I found my lamp out of oil, and I went to her room to borrow hers. She didn't answer, and I went in. She wasn't there. Her coat and cap are gone. How she got out without waking us!"
He turned to a window, peering through a little bare spot in the pane close to the sash. "Looks like a rough day," he said, quietly, as though trying to disguise the import of his words . . . . . . . . "She's been melancholy of late; trying to hide it, but I could tell . . . . . . . My God, she may have been gone for hours!"
"Then it's time we were after her!" I exclaimed, a sudden impulse for action bringing me out of my stupor. I shoved my burning porridge to the back of the stove and rushed to my room to complete dressing. And in my head was pounding one word, Spoof—Spoof—Spoof!
"Where?" Jack demanded, from the door of my room. "What's your guess?"
But I was already becoming an artist, that artist that Jean so eagerly sought in me.
"Just two places," I said. "She's gone to Mrs. Alton's or to Mrs. Brown's. I don't think she would go to Lucy Burke's—didn't know them so well."
Jack's look of relief was pathetic. I had always thought of Jack as being in some way my superior, born to rule while I was born to obey. Suddenly I found him a child in my hands.
"You think so?" he grasped at my words. "You think—that's—where she's gone?"
"Nothing surer. We talked a good deal about Mrs. Alton yesterday." I added, out of the fulness of my invention, "and she said how lonely Mrs. Alton must be, and that we ought to go over and see her. She's started worrying over that in the night and it's got on her mind—upset her a bit. Still, it might be Brown's. The danger is that she may be lost in this storm. Hustle back and finish dressing, and then strike for Mrs. Alton's. I'll try Brown's first, then Jake's, then Burke's. Hustle!"
It was new business for me to order Jack, but he needed ordering to keep him from utter futility at that moment. I gave his hand a squeeze and thrust him out of the door.
"Now, Mr. Spoof—now for you!" I snapped to myself. I had a revolver, an old rusty weapon which I never used, but which I kept lying around in case of something which I called an emergency. Clearly this was it. I found it and some cartridges and thrust them into my overcoat pocket; then drew it out and studied it with a peculiar sort of fascination.
"Don't be a fool," I enjoined myself, as I threw it on the bed. But in a moment I picked it up again and put it in my pocket.
Outside the snow was flying in a sifting wind from the north-west. It was not a blizzard; it was not even a storm, but it had the threat of both. The sun was not up, and the grey light of dawn penetrated the snow waste not more than a dozen yards. I studied the wind for a moment, to make sure that it was blowing steadily in one direction; having satisfied myself as to this, my problem—one of my problems—was much simplified. Carrying the wind over my right shoulder I bore off toward the south and section Two.
The trail to Spoof's had been entirely obliterated in its weeks of non-usage, and I could do nothing better than follow my sense of direction. It became apparent that the sky was too overcast to give me any benefit from the sun, although the grey circle of dawn gradually grew until the vision would carry a hundred yards or so. For the most part the crust bore me, but here and there it gave away, and once or twice sent me floundering on my face. On such occasions I was careful to test my direction by the wind before continuing. If the wind should veer I had a good chance of wandering off into the wilderness—and the unknown.
That, too, was the chance which Jean had taken. It bore more and more heavily upon me as I plodded through that measureless waste of snow. I had no doubt that she had started for Spoof's; whether she ever had reached there was another question. She was able to stand his neglect no longer—she was bound to have it out with him, just as, yesterday, I had been bound to have it out with her. . . . . . . . At moments I wished that she might not find Spoof's. At moments it seemed that almost anything was better than that. There was the possibility that she might strike a circle and wander about on these vacant sections. It was not very cold; she would not freeze until exhaustion overcame her. Possibly even now she was wandering in these milky mists, even within earshot of me.
"Jean! Jean!" I cried, raising my voice against the buffeting of the wind, but it died unechoed in the void of space.
There was the possibility that she had been overcome; that even now she was lying somewhere on the white snow, her white, cold face turned to a white, cold sky, her lithe little body, no longer lithe, forming the occasion for a drift which the sifting wind had already seized as convenient to its purpose. . . . . . . The sweat trickled down from under my cap and I pulled it off and let the comforting snow fall on my forehead. And now I used my eyes more than ever before, to detect, if I might, any object lying on the snow. Dark specks loomed up through the mist, and many a detour I made with pounding heart, to find only a prairie boulder or a lump of tumbleweed blown into a wolf willow.
Again, Jean might have reached Spoof's. That was going to be the most difficult possibility of all. What should I do? I fingered the weapon in my pocket, but I knew that that was nonsense. If Jean had gone to Spoof she had done so of her own free will; she need not account for herself to me; she might even resent my interference. Spoof might order me out as a meddling busybody; he might subject me to the torture of taking Jean from me before my very eyes. I was even less than Jack; had I been her brother I could have held him to accountability. But I would not be ordered out; I would not be abased——Surely I had a right. I was her friend, her neighbour. . . .
Her neighbour. "Perhaps that is the trouble," she had said.
I fingered my revolver affectionately. I was glad I had brought it.
I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes after nine. I had been fool enough to start without noting the time, and had no idea how far I had travelled. Surely I should be near Spoof's now.
But our engagement had never been quite cancelled. Or had it? I tried to recall, but my mind blurred. Once we were engaged; we were to have been married before this time; Jean and I were to have been married at Christmas. Then Spoof. I was not clever enough for her . . . . . . Perhaps Spoof would be, I thought, and hated myself for thinking it.
Perhaps she was right. Iwasa good bit of a dub. Never read much, never thought much. Bounded by the corner stakes of Fourteen. An ox. Jean had as much as called me an ox. Thinking more about oats than sunsets.
Didn't even mention her new cap. When I did I turned my compliment upside down; pinned it to the cap, instead of to her. Spoof would not have done that.
Our poem. The snow would be deep on it now. Or perhaps not. It might have whipped clear. If—if anything happened to Jean I would go to that poem, I would yearn over it, I would caress it, I would lean upon it——It was snow, and would be gone in the spring. Something about keeping her guessing. I was to keep her guessing. Well, she was keeping me guessing just now, with a vengeance!
I tried to call Jean up in my memory, to visualize her profile, her eyes, her hair, her lips, the tilting lift of her ankle, the joyous stride of her young, free limbs. It was all a mist; a picture out of focus. It was a nebulous thing, vague, indistinct, unformed. Through and beyond it I saw the grey snow falling eternally. Then about this central figure—if one may call a thing so ethereal a figure—gathered a circle of light, an irradiance glowing on a million crystals of frost; it grew and glowed and brightened until it haloed about her head. It was Jean!
"Oh! my God" I cried. "Not yet! Not yet!"
I fell in the snow. I floundered aimlessly in the broken crust. . . .
When I came back to realization the vision was gone. Only the snow, shot through with its thin mists of light, fell on forever.
Was I freezing? The thought prodded me to consciousness. I drew a hand from my mitt and thrust it against my face. The fingers were warm. The skin of my forehead would wrinkle. I was able to wriggle my toes in my boots. No, I was not freezing. My troubles were of the mind; my bodily engines were functioning properly. . . . . . . . I got the wind over my right shoulder and pressed on.
Jean wanted me to keep her guessing. That was the easy, slangy way of putting it. Poetic license, she had called it. What she meant was that I must always have something in reserve; some mysterious corner of myself into which she had not explored. Something to keep up the sense of mystery, the spirit of adventure, in which romance is born, without which romance must die. No doubt she was right. After all, whyshouldshe marry me? What was I more than a biped beast of burden, an animal designed to eat, sleep, labor, and reproduce itself? . . . Spoof was something more than that. Was I wise to interrupt them at all? Why not leave them alone?
It was while I wrestled with the thought of a great renunciation that the light broke about me. I was sure that animal for animal—ox for ox—Jean preferred me to Spoof. It was in those qualities that were not animal that she preferred him. It was for me, therefore, by all means, to delay her decision, and then to set about deliberately to develop the qualities in which I was at a disadvantage. I must read. These idle winter months gave me the very opportunity to read, and I cursed myself that so many weeks had slipped by unimproved. What to read? I had my old school books and a bible—little else. Still, if one knew his bible—if I were to read up some book in it, develop a simple philosophy out of it, enveigle Jean into an argument, and best her, that would be keeping her guessing, wouldn't it? . . . . . . . I could borrow books from Spoof. It was a strange sidelight on my feelings toward Spoof that even at this moment and for this purpose there seemed nothing unnatural in the thought that I should borrow books from him. Other neighbours might have books; one never can tell. Most people remain unread, not from lack of books, but from lack of application. There was the Reverend Locke. I would make an excuse to town, and would borrow books from him. I would even spend a few of my hard earned dollars on magazines, or on membership in a mail order library. Of all this Jean was to know nothing. I would keep her guessing.
I trudged on in a mood akin to cheerfulness. I had made my decision. I had stepped out of an old world into a new one. Something which must have lain dormant all these years awoke and thrilled me with the possibilities of what I might become. Life for me was no longer a thing of the body, which is death, but a thing of the mind and spirit, which are eternal. And yet . . . In imagination I allowed myself to feel Jean's hair brushing my cheek.
Presently something waved to me out of the mist. I stopped, with eyes intent. Undoubtedly something was waving to me out of the mist. "Jean! Jean!" I called, but there was no answer. I moved toward it eagerly, and suddenly the mystery was made clear. It was a great sunflower, clothed in hoary frost, nodding in the wind. I smiled to myself at its almost spectral appearance; then glancing ahead I saw another and another and another; a whole row of them. This was Spoof's! These were the sunflowers which he had planted in accordance with Jake's grotesque advice. Spoof's shack must be nearby. Surely, there to the left, was duller darkness through the snow.
I hurried toward it. The angular outline of Spoof's shack emerged gradually out of the mist, like a sunken boat rising slowly to the surface of the water. Half of it was concealed at best by the great drifts that bordered it. I found my way to the shack, around the corner, to the door. Should I knock? Prairie manners, particularly among bachelor neighbours, are free and easy. It would be no great breach of etiquette for me casually to enter Spoof's house without knocking. I believed I had done that before. And there would be a purpose in it, now of all times . . . I knocked.
There was no answer. That was subject to different explanations. A knock on a bachelor's door, miles from a neighbour, in midwinter, is a thing so unexpected that sometimes the ear does not register it; it merely cocks itself to make sure if the sound should be repeated.
I knocked again. In a moment the door opened, and I saw Spoof, in a flannel shirt and smoking jacket, corduroy trousers, moccasins—I think I took in every detail of his attire. His tie was drawn neatly up to the throat; his hair was well brushed; he had not shaved. His moustache was heavier, his face paler, thinner——
"Why, Frank!" he exclaimed. I seemed to hear both welcome and embarrassment in his voice. "Come in, old man! This is quite a day at section Two."
On account of the dull weather and the frosted windows Spoof had a lamp burning; it was a brass lamp, with a twisted, ornamental bowl and a cloth shade of some old gold color. It stood on a shelf which he had built in a corner of his only room; its subdued but cheerful light touched the objects in the little shack with a glint of color which was in sharp contrast to the drab day outside. Spoof's couch had been made up; his steamer rug lay tucked about it. The walls were a maze of firearms, prints, curios. There was the warmth of a fire and the odor of something cooking.
In the corner opposite to the lamp, on the floor, on a mat, sat Jean. Her knees were propped up in front of her and her long, supple fingers were linked about them. It was as she had sat that day—what, only yesterday?—with me under the great drift on the bank of the gully. A tapestry affair of some kind, hung on the wall, sheltered her from direct contact with the cold boards, and a cushion with a yellow dragon further protected her. She looked up at me as I entered and her face was a riddle too enigmatic to analyse. Annoyance, defiance, pleasure, humor, indifference, were strangely and inextricably interwoven.
"Hello, Frank," she said, quietly.
"You see, Je——Miss Lane is an early caller," Spoof explained. "Although not a frequent one," he added, "any more than you are. If she had known you were coming no doubt you would have come together."
"Yes, that might have been better," I said, pointedly.
"The trail is gone," Spoof continued, ignoring the jab in my remark. "It must have taken some skill to find the direction."
"Particularly before daylight," I said, more pointedly than before.
"Oh, don't quizz, Frank," Jean protested. "I'll tell you all about it presently. I was just saying to Spoof, when your knock interrupted me, how much the wiser the Japanese are than we. They sit on the floor, as nature intended them to do, and how graceful they are! I am playing the part."
"But not for that reason, I am afraid," said Spoof. "You see, I rejoice in only one chair, called 'easy' by way of courtesy. Miss Lane refused to sit in it while I stood, and I, of course, could not sit in it while she stood. So she solved a deadlock by sitting on the floor."
Nothing very incriminating about all this. They were just chatting naturally; surely they couldn't be such actors as to stage this dialogue without a moment's notice. Still—I had had to knock the second time. . . . . . .
"You have breakfasted?" Spoof inquired.
"Why, I am afraid I must confess I haven't. I left home rather unexpectedly." I was not disposed to beat about the bush, and the commonplaceness of their talk irritated me. Surely here was a situation bad enough without making it worse by pretending there was nothing bad about it.
Spoof glanced at a clock which chuckled away amiably on his wall. "We can have lunch within an hour," he said. With a fork he prodded something stewing on the stove. "Yes, the rabbit is almost done. By Jove, a good fat one! Fancy how they pick so lordly a living! Will you wait, or would you rather have a bite now? I can only give you bread and marmalade at once. You must be hungry."
"No, I'm not hungry," I said, truthfully enough. The fact is, I couldn't keep my eyes off Jean. Now and again, when she didn't know I watched, her face seemed to take on something of melancholy; but mostly it was bright, responsive, vivacious. She seemed to fit so wonderfully—physically and mentally she fitted so wonderfully into Spoof's shack. She had laid her overshoes aside and as she sat the brown ribs of her homeknit stockings peeped over the top of a neatly laced boot. This was before the days of the frank revelations of our modern fashions. Her intertwined fingers shuttled slowly back and forth against each other; her lips were ruddy in the glow from the little brass lamp; her hair, parted in the middle and drawn into a wavy roll at the back of her head gave her a peculiarly girlish appearance. She was so young, so small, and withal so wise, so venturesome, so defiant. The place where my breakfast should have been contracted with a great yearning; a huge emptiness filled me.
So we waited for the rabbit to stew, and Spoof and Jean chatted on. I was more the audience than one of the players. They were away into some dispute about atmospheric colorings; something that had to do with rainbows, sun-dogs, ice prisms, light radiation. It was beyond me; so obviously beyond me that Spoof had mercy and brought Jean back to earth.
"What do you think of the scheme to form a new Province here—two new Provinces," he shot at me, "instead of our present Districts? More autonomy and more taxes as I see it."
"Yes, I suppose," I groped. The fact is I knew nothing about it.
"Would seem more natural to follow the old district boundaries, though," Spoof commented. "They say they are going to run the Provinces from south to north—as far as the sixtieth parallel. There'll be an election next year. You ought to think about that, Frank. It would be some honor to sit in the first parliament of Saskatchewan."
The idea struck me as grotesque. I said so.
"Why not?" Jean demanded, and there was fire in her voice. "Perhaps not the first parliament, but some parliament," she qualified.
"Some parliament," I said to myself. "Perhaps. If I had Jean to goad me on I might do—anything."
Spoof scraped a corner clear on the window pane, and said some lines about "Snow cold—in snow." It was something about a soldier dying in the trenches; not wounded, or fighting, but just dying in the snow. I saw Jean's wrapt attention; the glisten of her eyes; the gulp of her white throat. What power was this the man had over her? Was this all a thing of mind, or was it body, too? I had told myself that, animal for animal, Jean would prefer me. As I looked at Spoof's strong figure, well knit, well clad, I wondered.
In some way we put in the hour. I did not press the subject, the question, the suspicion which was turmoiling my mind. It was Jean's move. I waited for her.
Spoof set his little table with a linen cloth and napkins and amazingly good dishes. The meal was to consist of stewed rabbit, with potatoes and carrots; bread and cheese and tea. Jean sprang up to cut the bread and make the tea. There was something poignantly domestic in their two figures, shoulder to shoulder—although his shoulder came high over hers—studying the inside of the teapot as though they were crystal gazing (and perhaps they were) while they disputed as to the exact amount of tea for three. It was a new problem for Spoof, but a common one for Jean, and she had her way.
It was not until we had finished lunch, and Spoof had rolled me a cigarette, and the dishes were cleared away and some sort of tapestry cover substituted on the table, that Jean saw fit to refer to her behavior.
"I promised you that if you didn't quizz I would tell you all about it, Frank," she said, suddenly. "You have been a good boy, and I will keep my word."
"By Jove, I haven't fed the bullocks," Spoof exclaimed. "That's what comes of having company. I really should have a man. If the Governor saw me leave my guests to feed a pair of ungracious old bulls he would be permanently humiliated. You won't mind, will you?"
We wouldn't, and in a moment Spoof was plowing toward his stables.
"You think I'm a wild woman, and pretty much of a fool," said Jean. "Come, this bench is a sad invention. Let's sit on the floor."
She went back to her station in the corner, and made me sit down beside her. "There, that's better," she said. "You think I'm a wild woman, and pretty much of a fool. Let's pass the first count. On the second we agree. Now I'll give you the whole story without frills.
"You know, of course, why I cancelled our engagement. We've covered that ground; no use plowing it again. I believed I loved Spoof; I hoped he loved me. But since Jack's wedding he had avoided us. I have been in a torture of uncertainty. After our talk yesterday I couldn't stand it any longer.
"I woke up this morning, about five o'clock, thinking of him, and as I thought a vague, wild plan which had been haunting me took form. If Mohammed wouldn't come to the mountain, the mountain would go to Mohammed. You see, I have reversed the figure, as is right in this case. It was a wild idea, but once I got it clearly in my head there was nothing to do but go through with it. I knew I would be found out; I knew all that you and Jack and Marjorie would think, even if you didn't say it. But there comes a time when none of these things matter—do you understand? . . .
"So I dressed as quietly as I could, and slipped out. It wasn't snowing then; the stars were bright and numberless; I got my bearings and struck out. As I passed your shanty I stopped at your window. All was dark and still. 'Dear old boy,' I whispered against your window pane, 'I wish things were different—but they're not.'"
She had laced her fingers again about her knees, but now she dropped the hand next to me, and it fell on mine. There was nothing surreptitious about it; it was deliberate, designed, aggressive.
"I had covered most of the distance before it began to snow. Then I was in danger for a while, but I made it all right. Unfortunately, Spoof is not an early riser. He was surprised to see me."
She stopped, and for a long while gazed into space, as though studying what she would say next.
"Well, I proposed to him. He refused me," she said quietly.
"Refused you? . . . Do you mean that's the whole story?"
"That's the substance; I told you I would leave out the frills. You can decorate it to your liking. One of the secrets of art is to not over-state yourself—leave something to the imagination. The more intelligent the audience, the more may be left to the imagination. You are an intelligent audience, Frank."
Through my absurd concern for, I hardly knew what, her adorable tantalization seethed in me like an electric current. And so selfish am I—and all men—that it was some minutes before I realized that Jean had received a knock-out blow; that she had humiliated herself to this man Spoof; that she had placed her womanhood at his feet, and he had spurned it. Just what it was for me to lose Jean, just that same must it be for Jean to lose Spoof.
"And he refused you—refused you," I repeated, when this thought had settled clearly in my mind. "Jean, I don't see how—any man—could do that."
"He was kind—considerate," she said, quietly. "Said he was sorry; appreciated the compliment; any man might be flattered, he said, but it was quite impossible. So I am left dangling in space."
"Well, what next?" I asked, after a long silence in which, consciously or unconsciously, she was drawing her finger tips slowly up and down between the backs of mine. "What next?"
"Go home," she said, decisively. "Jack and Marjorie will be uneasy. You will see me home, won't you?"
Spoof took an inordinately long time to feed the oxen, but when he returned, with great blowing and stamping before opening the door, we were ready for the road. We took leave without much in the way of explanations, but with his promise to come and see us at least once a week.
Our long walk home was taken in almost complete silence. Once I suggested to Jean that we should let it be understood that she had gone to Brown's, not Spoof's.
"Just as you like," she said. "I don't care."
I took her arm in places where the crust broke easily; where it was solid we walked separately, swinging out into easy strides. I was studying the new situation; trying to analyze the new atmosphere; seeking to locate myself in a chart of the universe in which the two objects were Jean and me. But some fine instinct kept me from any word of love.
As we neared Twenty-two Jean took my arm, although here the path was good.
"Thank you so much," she said. "I thought you would, perhaps,—that you would go back to what we talked of yesterday. I couldn't stand that, just now. Do you understand? You are considerate; you are—an artist," and her face smiled wanly into mine.
Jack had just returned from Mrs. Alton's. He had found her in a rather bad way, much in need of a man to do up rough work about the place, and even in his anxiety over Jean he had stayed to lend a hand. Something about the widow's loneliness had touched him almost as deeply as our own shadow of tragedy.
I lied glibly about having found Jean at Mrs. Brown's; Mrs. Brown was well, but one of the children had a sore throat; Brown had slipped on the ice and hurt his hip, not badly; they were longing for English mail. I knew all this duplicity must be found out, but I was content to delay the evil day. By some sort of telegraphic understanding we did not discuss Jean's behavior. We were glad enough to have her back safe and sound; we were willing to agree that the stress of winter had perhaps been too much for her. She would be all right presently.
The days that followed were busy times for me. I immediately began to glean the neighbourhood for books, and the harvest was much more liberal than I expected. Spoof lent me Byron and the Decline and Fall; Brown supplied a complete Shakespeare, in one volume; Bella Donna contributed a Life of Lincoln; Burke, much to my surprise, had a copy of Whitman, from which he quoted copiously, gesticulating to me in an empty stall,—he was a deep pool where I had looked for shallow water; Andy Smith was equally insistent upon rehearsing Burns, and particularly to the effect that the rank is but the guinea's stamp, etc. I did not call upon Mrs. Alton, nor venture into the unguessed possibilities of Hansen's and Sneezit's, although after my experiences I was almost prepared to find Ole Hansen buried in The Wealth of Nations, and Sneezit poring over Carlyle. Neither did I, at the time, enlist the good offices of the Reverend Locke. In a community that I had supposed destitute of anything of the sort I had unearthed more books than I could read.
At first I had to drive myself to it, but presently I began to be carried away in the spirit in the new world which was opening before me. With joy I noted, suddenly, that I had forced my boundaries far beyond the corner stakes of Fourteen, beyond even the prairies, the continent, the times in which we live. My mind, from sluggishly hibernating for the winter, became a dynamo of activity. As soon as the morning chores were done I was at my books, and I felt it almost a hardship when Jack would drop in for a game of checkers or a chat about nothing. Late into the night I followed my heroes and heroines, my theories and philosophies, until at last I drew off grudgingly to bed. I had made a resolve that I would not read in bed; there must be a limit somewhere. It was hard to realize that these flying hours were the same as those which had dragged so leadenly only a few short days ago.
Tremendously I wanted someone to whom I might talk. I was so filled with thoughts that I threatened to burst. I began to be primed for unbounded arguments. Jean was the one with whom I wanted most to talk, but I was keeping my explorations a strict secret from the neighbours on Twenty-two. I had contrived to damage my door lock in such a way that I had to bar the door from the inside to keep it shut; this gave me an opportunity to hide my book when Jack came bumping in, or when Jean and Marjorie called on their frequent visits. To all of them I had become something of an enigma; Jean particularly regarded me with a strange questioning.
My pressure of ideas became so threatening that at last I burst out into the neighbourhood to relieve it. I found my safety valve in the most unexpected place—Andy Smith. The little Scotsman was amazingly read and belligerently eager for argument. It seemed that I was as much a surprise and Godsend to him as he to me. He would carry me continually beyond my depth, but it is in deep water that one learns to swim. And occasionally my irregular reading enabled me to punch him into a hole from which he came up spluttering.
"Man, man!" he would exclaim, "I never thoct ye would ha' kened aboot that. I must be brushin' up. . . . Hall, ye're a lad o' pairts. Why do ye no take a hand in the makin' o' this new Province we're tae ha' oot here, all tae oorsel's? I'll be nominatin' ye yet, ye'll see."
I laughed, but the plump of his suggestion left a pleasant ripple in my mind. After all, hadn't Jean and Spoof said something about that? Of course it was out of the question, but——
One day Jean came over to Fourteen, alone. I buried my Shakespeare under a pair of old overalls and opened the door. Perhaps she saw me glancing about, as though looking for Marjorie.
"Unchaperoned, to-day," she said. "You don't mind?" She began to draw off her gloves; new knitted gloves which I had not seen before.
"New gloves, Jean?" I queried.
"Yes, just finished knitting them, from yarn mother sent. Feel them. Aren't they soft?"
"I envy them very much," I said, and was much pleased with my subtlety.
"Envy them—why? . . . Oh, you mean because they're—they're always holding my hands," and a happy wave of color flushed into her cheeks. "You are very clever."
"Thanks, Jean. Now take off that pretty little cap of yours, which is not half as beautiful as the hair it hides, and let me draw off your overshoes—I have a grievance against them, as well—and we'll just sit down and settle the affairs of the universe."
"I wish we could," she said, with a note that had lost most of its joyousness; "I rather wish we could. But where have you been hiding? And why? And did that afternoon we spent coasting bore you so that you have never asked me out since?"
"Oh, I've been busy," I said. "Very busy."
"Busy? At what?"
Then I could forbear no longer. My secret was about to burst from me. I took Jean's coat and cap; I seated her; I drew off her overshoes; I stirred the fire.
"Busy? Yes, I'm very busy. I have a big world to think about. In the words of the poet:
"I love not man the less, but Nature more,From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the Universe, and feelWhat I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."
"I love not man the less, but Nature more,From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the Universe, and feelWhat I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."
"Lovely!" she exclaimed. "Why, Frank! . . . That's from—from——"
"I have you guessing, Jean," I remarked, dryly.
"You memorized that on purpose; you dug a pit for me," she protested. "Still, better that than none. Come, 'fess up. Where is it?"
I drew my Byron from its place of concealment.
"Ah, if you had started at the beginning of the stanza with, 'There is a pleasure in the pathless wood,' I would have known," she said. "Still——"
We turned the pages together, lingering through a new land of delight that was delicious and wonderful. I read "She walks in Beauty," and we sat in silence after the lines,
"A mind at peace with all below,A heart whose love is innocent."
"A mind at peace with all below,A heart whose love is innocent."
"I'm not so sure, Frank," she said at length. "My mind is not so much at peace as I could wish; my love is perhaps not so——"
She left the sentence unfinished.
"I know it is," I said, "I know it is."
The book lay open before us. Her hands had fallen on its printed pages. I drew them slowly into mine; drew them up and about my neck. "Jean," I whispered, "You know there is only, ultimately, one answer. Why not give it now!"
"Not yet, Frank. We shall see. Don't you understand? I must wait and see whether you have really—outgrown yourself—or are just memorizing verses with me for a prize."
"All right," I said. "I'll wait and prove it. But I warn you—I can't foresee where this thing is going to lead. It may not be content with books, only; already I'm rather sure it will want more than books. It may lead me out into the world. There are other women, there, Jean," I added, significantly.
"I know. I understand. I must take my chance. It is worth even that to be sure—in the end."
After a while I made tea, and just as we were sitting down to it came a knock at the door. It was a sharp, dignified knock; not the boisterous thump which either Jack or Marjorie would have given it.
"Who's that?" we asked each other.
"Alas, we are discovered!" Jean rippled. "It is a real adventure."
I opened the door to find Spoof's tall figure outside, and in his arms a large and pudgy and uncertain bundle. It was a moment before I saw the second figure—that of a woman. She wore a heavy fur coat, and her face was veiled for the inclement day.
"Why, Spoof! . . . . Come in!" I commanded. "Jean and I are just having tea. Let me put your oxen in."
"They are all right for the moment; they're in the shelter. I must make some introductions, first."
We welcomed them in, and Spoof set his bundle down on end in the middle of the floor, and began to unwind it. The woman removed her coat and cap and veil. It was Mrs. Alton. The bundle resolved itself into Mrs. Alton's boy.
"Miss Hall, let me present my wife," said Spoof. "My wife. And my son Gerald."
After the first blank moment of surprise I turned, not to Spoof or "Mrs. Alton" or the boy, but to Jean. There was a momentary tremulousness, but almost instantly Jean had herself under control; she was more the artist than I knew. I began to realize how far her artistry carried.
"Thisisnews!" she cried. "When did——" She stopped short. A wave of color flushed her face. Gerald did not admit of casual explanation.
The child, now relieved of cumbersome clothing, was standing on sturdy feet in the middle of the room getting his bearings. His big, intelligent eyes were losing no time in making an appraisal of me and mine.
Jean swooped upon him; clasped him up in her arms. Perhaps it was because at that moment she must have action. Her face was pressed into his little white neck. "Big Boy, Big Boy," she whispered, "why didn't you tell me this before?"
Spoof and his wife and I still stood as though rooted to the floor. The woman seemed to avoid my gaze, but when at times I caught a glimpse of her face there was something finer than embarrassment in it; there was embarrassment, it is true, but something almost seraphic as well.
Suddenly, "I think we women should go over to Twenty-two," Jean exclaimed. "Marjorie must know the great news. Come, Jerry!"
At the door the collie joined them, capering uneasily in the snow. Spoof and I watched them as they took their way along the well-trodden trail across the gully; then we stabled his oxen in silence.
Back in the house, Spoof drank a cup of tea and rolled me a cigarette—I never smoked cigarettes except under Spoof's malign influence—before he showed a disposition to talk. Then, seated on one of my rough benches, behind the blue haze of his own tobacco smoke, he spoke.
"It's a long story, Hall, if one covered all the details," he said. "Fortunately, between friends, that isn't necessary."
"I married this woman that you know as Mrs. Alton five years ago Christmas Day. You will understand why Jack's wedding was something of an anniversary to me. In course of time Gerald was born. Up until then, and for some time afterwards, everything was all right.
"Then—something happened. In what I chose to call righteous indignation I turned her out. Perhaps it was more mortified pride, or just blind, beast jealousy. Never mind. Through it all I gave myself credit for being just, even generous. I gave her half of my ready money, which wasn't much; I've never been much of a money-grabber, Hall; it has always seemed such an inconsequential business. But I gave her half of what I had, and settled on Gerald the small income I could command, and let her keep the boy. That was the biggest thing. I see a good deal of it through different light to-day, but for letting her keep the boy I demand some credit still. I've done one or two hard things, Hall. Yon know. That was one of them."
He finished his cigarette and lit another.
"Then I came out here," he continued. "It seemed the wisest thing to do. I was settling into the hope of forgetting it all and making a new start when she followed me." He held up his hand as if to silence me, although I had made no move to speak. "I don't blame her—now," he said. "But then—last summer, you know—it rather interfered. I may as well be frank with you. I had an idea that Jean would just about complete section Two. She's a wonderful girl, Jean.
"Then came Alice, and I knewthatwouldn't do. It would make blackmail too easy. I was base enough to think of that.
"After Jack's wedding I gave the whole thing some serious thought. I surmised how the land lay between you and Jean, and what had interrupted your plans. I concluded that the only decent thing to do was to drop out of your lives, for the time being. Well, Jean wouldn't have it. You know—the other day. . . . That was one of the hard things I was thinking about when I spoke of them a moment ago.
"Frank, she lit a thousand old fires of memory that morning. Moving about in my room; sitting at my table; pouring my tea—God, man, do you understand? It was too much for anybody. . . . I don't know what would have happened. At any rate, I ask you to believe that I was making my fight. . . . . Then you came."
He threw away half of an unsmoked cigarette and rolled another.
"Then I spent some sleepless nights, Frank, old boy. I was glad you had come, and even in my gladness for that sometimes I wished you—We humans are such queer mixtures; beyond analysis. But the more I admitted these things to myself the more I had also to admit that something might be said for Alice. Alice had once been to me all that it now seemed that Jean might be. I wondered if, by some miracle, that might not come again. Wasn't the obstacle, all the obstacle, the only obstacle, right in my own mind? What if I should root it out? What if I should say, 'I'm too big a man to submit to this; I refuse to be tyrannized by a little jealous demon in one corner of my mind?' . . .
"I began to think that perhaps after all Alice's purpose in following me here was quite different from what I had suspected. Women are strange creatures. They keep you guessing, as you say in this country."
"Better that than boredom," I heard my own voice saying.
"Shake!" said Spoof, springing suddenly to his feet and seizing me by the hand. "Shake! By Jove, I didn't know it was in you. If I were a moralist, setting light houses on the reefs about the sea of matrimony, I would set the biggest, blazingest light on Boredom. But nobody set a light on it for me . . .
"Besides, I wanted tremendously to see the boy.
"So yesterday I hitched the oxen and broke trail over to 'Widow Alton's.' My afflictions had brought me to a sufficiently humble frame of mind to let Alice say her say. For awhile she couldn't say anything; just wept, you know, and cried my name over and over, and sometimes Gerald's. Mighty uncomfortable for a man standing around and feeling that in some way he's to blame for it all.
"Well, when we got down to facts she had come in the hope of raising money by means of homesteading so that she could educate the boy. Fancy that, and me associating her with blackmail! But when she found, through old Jake, that I had located here, she wasn't above following. And yet she was afraid of me; afraid she'd meet me somewhere; afraid I'd come over to her homestead; and all the time hoping I would! Women are strange creatures.
"Well, we talked it all over, and"—and for the first time in his narrative Spoof's face lighted with a gentle smile—"I didn't go back to Two last night at all. We're planning a sort of quinquennial honeymoon progress about the district, and, properly enough, our first call is at Fourteen. And now that that's off my chest, behold a man happy once more. I am amazed at the folly that denied me all these years—— Men, too, are strange creatures.
"There's just one thing—a very insignificant thing compared with Alice's happiness, and mine, and Gerald's, but it's this: In taking up her homestead she had to declare herself a widow. She did it for the boy's sake, and she knows she will have to give up the claim, but will she get into further trouble? Will they let it go at that?"
That was a poser, and I turned it over in my mind for some minutes. "Better see Jake about that," I suggested. "He'll find a way."
"That's right!" said Spoof. "Jake's the boy. And he owes me something yet on that cogitation nut transaction.
"Just one more thing," Spoof resumed, after a little. "I've told you a great deal more than I propose to tell anyone else. It seemed to me that you—and Jean—had a peculiar right to know."
Almost before we knew it the springtime was upon us. It came suddenly, out of a March sky and a south-west wind, and the hard, illimitable distances of winter softened and mellowed before our eyes. The drifts fell away; brown spots came out on the edge of the gully; little streamlets cataracted over its banks; blue snow-water gathered in its depressions; adventurous early gophers sent their challenge from bank to bank. The waters in the gully gathered and grew; presently they were forcing ahead, into and under and over the drifts that barred their way; their pleasant gurglings came up through the clear, calm, lengthening twilights.
The bare fields came forth; the dark brown clodded earth looked up in a million mimic mountain peaks through a wrinkled blanket of snow; the grass stirred on the prairies; a flush of green ran down the long shadows of the evening. Once more was the world alive!
They were busy times for us. Every hour of springtime, like the seed sown in the spring, multiplies many fold by autumn; the tale of slothfulness in spring is written big in harvest—or rather, in lack of harvest. As soon as the snow was gone from the plowed fields and the frost was out an inch or two we were at work with our harrows; then, in a few days more, sowing our crops. There was a pleasant neighbourliness, a satisfying community of interest, in casting the eye across our level prairies and noting the slow-moving seeder-shuttles plying up and down across the cool, moist warp of earth.
The skies and clouds of springtime were almost as wonderful as the prairie dawns and sunsets. I suppose it is because of the vast sameness of the prairies themselves that we learned to turn our eyes so often to the heavens. When one's vision is hemmed about by woods and hills he is in danger of missing the greater majesty of the skies. Many a breathing spell had Buck and Bright while I turned in my plow-handles to watch the gentle drift of cloud shadows gliding over the fields, or to plunge my eyes into the blue vacuum of eternal space.
When Jean would bring my lunch at four in the afternoon we would sit on the grass in the shade of the wagon at the end of the field and daydream for a moment or two with feathery, fleecy, high-flying clouds of heaven as a background for our fancies. Sometimes great, billowy, boisterous, low-lying masses loomed up in our horizon, level along the bottom like islands floating in a sea of space; heaped and puffed and pinnacled in their upper parts. If these gathered and grew we might expect a dash of rain with a bright sun afterwards and a rainbow in the east.
Jean would throw the remaining crumbs to the gophers and massage Buck's forehead between the horns before she left. This was always a popular proceeding for Buck. He acknowledged it by circling his prodigious tongue about his nose, and sometimes embracing Jean's apron in its orbit.
It had been arranged that during the busy season I should take my meals at Jack's, and Jean had volunteered the duty of carrying my afternoon lunches to the field. There was little time now for either poetry or prose, and yet we lived amazingly in the spirit. Between the plow-handles one must think of something, and I recalled and re-recalled those things I had read during the winter. At lunch time, or in the evenings, I would talk of them with Jean, always trying to approach her from some new and unsuspected angle. As, for instance, when a summer shower threatened us, I quoted (I had borrowed a Shelley from Spoof):