He was sitting on one of the stools, pipe in mouth, reading a newspaper he had already read in the train.
"Well, what do you think of the shack?"
"I don't know."
"I built it with my own hands. Every one of them logs was a tree I cut down myself. You wait till morning and I'll show you how they're joined together, at the corners. There's some neat work there, my girl, I guess."
"Yes? Oh, I was forgetting; here's the kettle." She brought it over to him from the shelf. He filled the kettle carefully from the pail while she stood and watched him. She took it from his hand and set it on the stove to boil.
"You'll find some tea in one of them cans on the shelf; leastways, there was some there when I come away. I reckon you're hungry."
"I don't think I am, very. I ate a very good supper on the train, you know."
"I'm glad you call that a good supper. I guess I could wrap up the amount you ate in a postage stamp."
"Well," she said with a smile, "you maybe glad to learn that I haven't a very large appetite."
"I have, then. Where's the loaf we got in Winnipeg this afternoon?"
"I'll get it."
"And the butter. You'll bake to-morrow, I reckon."
"You're a brave man—unless you've forgotten my first attempt at Eddie's," she said with a laugh as she took the loaf and butter from the bag.
For some reason her mood had completely changed. All her confidence in being perfectly able to take care of herself had returned. She had been frightened, badly frightened a moment ago at nothing. Nerves, nothing more. Nerves were queer things. It was because she hadn't slept last night. She was such a good sleeper naturally that a wakeful night affected her more than it did most people. The cool night air had completely restored her.
She hunted about until she found a knife, and with the loaf in one hand and the knife poised in the air asked:
"Shall I cut you some?"
"Yep."
"Please."
"Please what?"
"Yep, please," she said with a gay smile.
"Oh!" he growled.
Still smiling, she cut several slices of bread and buttered them. Going to the shelf, she found the teapot and shook some tea into it from one of the cans, measuring it carefully with her eye. His momentary ill humor, caused by her correcting him, vanished as he watched her.
"I guess it's about time you took your hat and coat off," he said with a chuckle.
As a matter of fact, she was not conscious that they were still on. Without a word, she took them off and, having given her coat a little shake and a pat, looked about her for a place to put them. She ended finally by putting them both on the kitchen chair.
"You ain't terribly talkative for a woman, are you, my girl?"
"I haven't anything to say for the moment," said Nora.
"Well, I guess it's better to have a wife as talks too little than a wife as talks too much."
"I suppose absolute perfection is rare—in women, poor wretches," she said in the old ironic tone she had always used toward him while he was her brother's hired man.
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"I was only amusing myself with a reflection."
He checked an angry retort, and striding over to a nail in the wall, took off his coat and hung it up. Somehow, he looked larger than ever in his gray sweater. A sense of comfort and unaccustomed well-being restored him to good humor. Throwing himself into the rocker, he stretched out his long legs luxuriantly.
"I guess there's no place like home. You get a bit fed up with hiring out. Ed was O. K., I reckon, but it ain't like being your own boss."
"I should think it wouldn't be," said Nora quietly.
"Where does that door go?" she asked presently.
"That? Oh, into the bedroom. Like to have a look?"
"No."
"No what?" he said quickly.
Nora turned from the shelf where she had been contriving a place to put the things they had brought from the town, and looked at him inquiringly. His face was grave, but a twinkle in his eye betrayed him. She blushed charmingly to the roots of her hair, but her laugh was perfectly frank and good-humored. "I beg your pardon. I was so occupied with arranging my pantry that I forgot my manners. No,thank you."
"One can't be too careful about these important things," he said with rather heavy humor. "When I built this shack," he went on proudly—but the pride was the pride of possession, not of achievement—"I fixed it up so as it would do when I got married. Sid Sharp asked me what in hell I wanted to divide it up in half for, but I guess women like little luxuries like that."
"Like what?"
"Like having a room to sleep in and a room to live in."
"Here's the bread and butter," said Nora abruptly. "Will you have some syrup?"
"S-u-r-e." He got up out of the rocking chair and pulling one of the stools up to the table, sat down.
"The water ought to be boiling by now; what about milk?"
"That's one of the things you'll have to learn to do without till I can afford to buy a cow."
"I can't drink tea without milk."
"You try. Say, can you milk a cow?"
"I? No."
"Then it's just as well I ain't got one."
Nora laughed. "Youarea philosopher."
Having filled the teapot with boiling water and set it on the table, she returned to the shelf and began moving the things about in search of something.
"What you looking for?"
"Is there a candle? I'll just get one or two things out of my box and bring in here."
"Ain't you going to sit down and have a cup of tea?"
"I don't want any, thanks."
"Sit down, my girl."
"Why?"
"Because I tell you to." The command was smilingly given.
"I don't think you'd better tell me to do things." Nora could smile, too.
"Then I ask you. You ain't going to refuse the first favor I've asked you?"
"Certainly not," she said in her most charming manner. Pulling another of the stools up to the table, she sat facing him.
"There."
"Now, pour out my tea for me, will you? I tell you," he said, watching her slim hands moving among the tea things, "it's rum seeingmywife sitting down atmytable and pouring out tea for me."
"Is it pleasant?"
"Sure. Now have some tea yourself, my girl. You'll soon get used to drinking it without milk. And I guess you'll be able to get some to-morrow from Mrs. Sharp."
Nora noticed that he did not taste his tea until she had poured herself a cup.
"Just take a bit of the bread and butter."
He passed her the plate and she, still smiling brightly, broke off a small half of one of the slices.
"I had a sort of feeling I wanted you and me to have the first meal together in your new home," he said gently.
Then, with a sudden change of manner, he laughed aloud.
"We ain't lost much time, I guess. Why, it's only yesterday you told me not to call you Nora. You didflareout at me!"
"That was very silly of me, but I was in a temper."
"And now we're man and wife."
"Yes: married in haste with a vengeance."
"Ain't you a bit scared?"
"I? What of? You?"
Her voice was steady, but the hands in her lap were clenched.
"With Ed miles away, t'other side of Winnipeg, he might just as well be in the old country for all the good he can be to you. You might naturally be a bit scared to find yourself alone with a man you don't know."
"I'm not the nervous sort."
"Good for you!"
"Youdidgive me a fright, though," said Nora, with a laugh, "when I asked you if you'd take me. I suppose it was only about fifteen seconds before you answered, but it seemed like ten minutes. I thought you were going to refuse. How Gertie would have gloated!"
"I was thinking."
"I see. Counting up my good points and balancing them against my bad ones."
"N-o-o-o: I was thinking you wouldn't have asked me like that if you hadn't of despised me."
Nora caught her breath sharply, but her manner lost none of its lightness.
"I don't know what made you think that."
"Well, I don't know how you could have put it more plainly that my name was mud."
"Why didn't you refuse, then?"
"I guess I'm not the nervous sort, either," he remarked dryly over his teacup.
"And," Nora reminded him, "women are scarce in Manitoba."
"I've always fancied an English woman," he went on, ignoring her little thrust. "They make the best wives going when they've been licked into shape."
Nora showed her amusement frankly.
"Are you purposing to attempt that operation on me?"
"Well, you're clever. I guess a hint or two is about all you'll want."
"You embarrass me when you pay me compliments."
"I'll take you round and show you the land to-morrow," he said, tilting back on his stool, to the imminent peril of his equilibrium. "I ain't done all the clearing yet, so there'll be plenty of work for the winter. I want to have a hundred acres to sow next year. And then, if I get a good crop, I've a mind to take another quarter. You can't make it pay really without you've got half a section. And it's a tough proposition when you ain't got capital."
"I had no idea I was marrying a millionaire."
"Never you mind, my girl, you shan't live in a shack long, I promise you. It's the greatest country in the world. We only want three good crops and you shall have a brick house same as you lived in back home."
"I wonder what they're doing in England now."
"Well, I guess they're asleep."
"When I think of England I always think of it at tea time," began Nora, and then stopped short.
A wave of regret caught her throat. In spite of herself, the tears filled her eyes. She lookedmiserably at the cheap, ugly tea things on the makeshift table before her. Her husband watched her gravely. Presently she went on, more to herself than to him:
"Miss Wickham had a beautiful old silver teapot, a George Second. She was awfully proud of it. And she was proud of her tea-set; it was old Worcester. And she wouldn't let anyone wash the tea things but——" Again, her voice failed her. "And two or three times a week an old Indian judge came in to tea. And he used to talk to me about the East, the wonderful, beautiful East. He made me long to see it all—I who had never been anywhere. I've always loved history and books of travel more than anything else. There are a lot of them there in my box—that's what makes it so heavy—all about the beautiful places I was going to see later on with the money Miss Wickham promised me——" her glance took in the mean little room in all its unrelieved ugliness. "Oh, why did you make me think of it all?"
She bowed her head on the table for a moment. Taylor laid his hand gently on her arm.
"The past is dead and gone, my girl. We've got the future; it's ours."
She gently disengaged herself from his detaining hand and went over to the little window,looking out with eyes that saw other pictures than the window had to show.
"One never knows when one's well off, does one? It's madness to think of what's gone forever."
For several minutes there was silence, during which Nora recovered her self-control. Having wiped away her tears, she turned hack to him, smiling bravely. "I beg your pardon. You'll think me more foolish than I really am. I'm not the crying sort, I assure you. But I don't know, it all——"
"That's all right, I know you're not," he said roughly. "I wish we'd got a good drop of liquor here," he went on with the evident intention of changing the current of her thoughts, "so as we could drink one another's health. But as weain't, you'd better give me a kiss instead."
"I'm not at all fond of kissing," said Nora coolly.
Frank grinned at her, his pipe stuck between his white teeth.
"It ain't, generally speaking, an acquired taste. I guess you must be peculiar."
"It looks like it," she said lightly.
"Come, my girl," he said, getting slowly up from his stool, "you didn't even kiss me after we was married."
"Isn't a hint enough for you?"—her tone was perfectly friendly. "Why do you insist on my saying everything in so many words? Why make me dot my i's and cross my t's, so to speak?"
"It seems to me it wants a few words to make it plain when a woman refuses to give her husband a kiss."
"Do sit down, there's a good fellow, and I'll tell you one or two things."
"That's terribly kind of you," he said, sinking into the rocker. "Have you any choice of seats?"
"Not now, since you've taken the only one that's tolerably comfortable. I think there's nothing to choose between the others."
"Nothing, I should say."
"I think we'd better fix things up before we go any further," she said, resuming her stool.
"Sure."
"You gave me to understand very plainly that you wanted a wife in order to get a general servant without having to pay her wages. Wages are high, here in Canada."
"That was the wayyouput it."
"Batching isn't very comfortable, you'll confess that?"
"I'll confess that, all right."
"You wanted someone to cook and bake foryou, wash, sweep and mend. I offered to come and do all that for you. It never entered my head for an instant that there was any possibility of your expecting anything else of me."
"Then you're a damned fool, my girl."
He was perfectly good-natured. She would have preferred him to be a little angry. She would know how to cope with that, she thought. But she flared up a little herself.
"D'you mind not saying things like that to me?"
His smile widened. "I guess I'll have to say a good many things like that—or worse—before we've done."
"I asked you to marry me only because I couldn't stay in the shack otherwise."
"You asked me to marry you because you was in the hell of a temper," he retorted. "You were mad clean through. You wanted to get away from Ed's farm right then and there and you didn't care what you did so long as you quit. But you was darned sorry for what you'd done by the time you'd got your trunk packed."
"I don't know that you have any reason for thinking that," she said stiffly.
"I've got sense. Besides, when you opened the door when I went up and knocked, you was as white as a sheet. You'd have given anything you had to say you'd changed your mind, but your damned pride wouldn't let you."
"I wouldn't have stayed longer in that house for anything in the world," said Nora with passion.
"There you are; that's just what I have been telling you," he said, nodding his head. "And this morning, when I came for you at the Y. W. C. A., you wanted bad to say you wouldn't marry me. When you shook hands with me your hand was like ice. You tried to speak the words, but they wouldn't come."
"After all, one isn't married every day of one's life, is one? I admit I was nervous for the moment."
"If I hadn't shown you the license and the ring, I guess you wouldn't have done it. You hadn't the nerve to back out of it then."
"I hadn't slept a wink all night. I kept on turning it over in my mind. Iwasfrightened at what I'd done. I didn't know a soul in Winnipeg. I hadn't anywhere to go. I had four dollars in my pocket. Ihadto go on with it."
"Well, you took pretty good stock of me in the train on the way here, I guess," he laughed, pacing up and down the room.
"What makes you think so?" asked Nora, who had recovered her coolness.
"Well, I felt you was looking at me a gooddeal while I was asleep," he jeered. "It wasn't hard to see that you was turning me over in your mind. What conclusion did you come to?"
Nora evaded the question for the moment.
"You see, I lived all these years with an old lady. I know very little about men."
"I guessed that."
"I came to the conclusion that you were a decent fellow and I thought you would be kind to me."
"Bouquets are just flying round! Have you got anything more to say to me?" he asked, seating himself once more in his chair.
"No, I think not."
"Then just get me my tobacco pouch, will you? I guess you'll find it in the pocket of my coat."
With narrowed eyes, he watched her first hesitate, and then bring it to him.
"Here you are." Her tone was crisp.
"I thought you was going to tell me I could darned well get it myself," he laughed.
"I don't very much like to be ordered about," she said smoothly; "I didn't realize it was one of your bad habits."
"You never paid much attention to me or my habits till to-day, I reckon."
"I was always polite to you."
"Oh, very! But I was the hired man, and you'd never let me forget it. You thought yourself a darned sight better than me, because you could play the piano and speak French. But we ain't got a piano and there ain't anyone as speaks French nearer than Winnipeg."
"I don't just see what you're driving at."
"Parlor tricks ain't much good on the prairie. They're like dollar bills up in Hudson Bay country. Tobacco's the only thing you can trade with an Esquimaux. You can't cook very well, you don't know how to milk a cow; why, you can't even harness a horse."
"Are you regretting your bargain already?"
"No," he said, going over to the shelf in search of the matches, "I guess I can teach you. But if I was you"—he paused, the lighted match in his fingers, to look at her—"I wouldn't put on any airs. We'll get on O. K., I guess, when we've shaken down."
"You'll find I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself," she said with emphasis, speaking each word slowly. She returned his steady gaze and felt a thrill of victory when he looked away.
"When two people live in a shack," he went on as if she had not spoken, "there's got to be a deal of give and take on both sides. As long as you do what I tell you you'll be all right."
A sort of an angry smile crossed Nora's face.
"It's unfortunate that when anyonetellsme to do a thing, I have an irresistible desire not to do it."
"I guess I tumbled to that. You must get over it."
"You've spoken to me once or twice in a way I don't like. I think we shall get on better if youaskme to do things."
"Don't forget that I canmakeyou do them," he said brutally.
"How?" Really, he was amusing!
"Well, I'm stronger than you are."
"A man can hardly use force in his dealings with a woman," she reminded him.
"O-o-o-oh?"
"You seem surprised."
"What's going to prevent him?"
"Don't be so silly," she retorted as she turned to look once more out of the window. But her hands were clammy and, somehow, even though her back was turned toward him, she knew that he was smiling.
How much time elapsed before he spoke she had no means of knowing; probably, at most, two or three minutes. But to the woman gazing out blindly through the cobweb-covered window into the night, it might well have been hours. For some illogical reason, which she could not have explained to herself, she had the feeling that the victory in the coming struggle would lie with the one who kept silent the longer. To break the nerve-wrecking spell would be a betrayal of weakness.
None the less, she had arrived at the point when, the tension on her own nerves becoming too great, she felt she must scream, drive her clenched hand through the glass of the window, or perform some other act of hysterical violence; then he spoke, and in the ordinary tone of daily life.
"Well, I'm going to unpack my grip."
The tone, together with the commonplace words, had the effect of a cold douche. She drew a sharp breath of relief, her hands unclenched. She was herself once more. She'd won.
She turned slowly, as if reluctant to abandon the starry prospect without, to find him bending over a clutter of things scattered about his half-emptied case. She had been about to say that she must see to unpacking some of her own things.
"Wash up them things." He jerked his bowed head toward the littered table.
For the first time, his tone was curt.
But she was too much mistress of herself and the situation now to be more than faintly annoyed by it.
"I'll wash them up in the morning," she said casually. She started toward the door behind which her box had been carried.
"Wash 'em up now, my girl. You'll find the only way to keep things clean is to wash 'em the moment you've done with 'em."
She smiled at him over her shoulder, her hand on the knob of the door. But she did not move.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"I did."
"Then why don't you do as I tell you?"
"Because I don't choose to."
"You ain't taking long to try it out, are you?" His face wore an ugly sneer.
"They say there's no time like the present."
"Are you going to wash up them things?"
"No."
There was a moment's silence while he held her eyes with his. Then, very slowly and deliberately he got up, poured some boiling water into a pan and placed it, together with a ragged dishcloth, on the table.
"Are you going to wash up them things?"
"No."
She was still cool and smiling: only, her grip on the knob of the door had tightened until the nails of her fingers were white.
"Do you want me to make you?"
"How can you do that?"
"I'll soon show you."
She waited the fraction of a moment.
"I'll just get out those rugs, shall I? I think the holdall was put in here. I expect it gets very cold toward morning."
She had opened the door now and stepped across the threshold. Her face was still turned toward his, but her smile was a little fixed.
"Nora."
"Yes."
"Come here."
"Why?"
"Because I tell you to."
Still, she did not move. In two strides he was over at her side. He stretched out his hand to seize her by the wrist.
"You daren't touch me!"
She pulled the door to sharply and stood with her back against it, facing him. Her face was as white as a linen mask, and about as expressionless. Only her eyes lived. Anger and fear had enlarged the pupils until they seemed black in the dead white of her face.
"You daren't!" she repeated.
"I daren't: who told you that?"
"Have you forgotten that I'm a woman?"
"No, I haven't. That's why I'm going to make you do as I tell you. If you were a man, I mightn't be able to. Come, now."
He made a movement to take her by the arm, but she was too quick for him. With the quickness of a cat, she slipped aside. The next moment, to his astonishment, he felt a stinging blow on the ear. He stared at her dumbfounded. It is safe to hazard that never in his life had he been so utterly taken aback.
She met his stare without lowering her glance. But she was panting now as if she had been running, one clenched hand pressed against her heaving breast.
He gave a short laugh, half of amused admiration at her daring, and half of anger.
"That was a darned silly thing to do!"
"What did you expect?"
"I expected that you were cleverer than tohit me. You ought to know that when it comes to—to muscle, I guess I've got the bulge on you."
"I'm not frightened of you."
It was a stupid thing to say. Nora realized it too late. If she had only been able to hold her tongue, he might have relented, she thought. But at her words, his face hardened once more and the same steely glitter came into his eyes. "Now come and wash up these things."
"I won't, I tell you!"
"Come on."
Quickly grasping her by the wrists, he began to drag her slowly but steadily to the table. Earlier in the evening she had boasted that she was as strong as a horse. As a matter of fact, she had unusual strength for a woman. But she was quickly made to realize that her strength, even intensified as it was by her anger was, of course, nothing compared with his. Strain and resist as she might, she could neither release herself from his grasp nor prevent him from forcing her nearer and nearer to the table which was his goal. In the struggle one of the large shell hair pins which she wore fell to the floor. In another second she heard it ground to pieces under his heel. A long strand of hair came billowing down below her waist.
Another moment, and by making a long arm, he could reach the table. With a quick movement for which she was unprepared, he brought her two hands sharply together so that he could hold both of her wrists with one hand, leaving the other free.
"Let me go, let me go!"
She kicked him, first on one shin and then on the other. But their bodies were too close together for the blows to have any force.
"Come on now, my girl. What's the good of making a darned fuss about it." His laugh was boyish in its exultant good-nature.
"You brute, how dare you touch me! You'll never force me to do anything. Let go! Let go! Let go!"
And now, his free hand held fast the edge of the table. With a quick movement she bent down and fastened her teeth in the skin of the back of his hand. With an exclamation of pain, he released her, carrying his wounded hand instinctively to his mouth.
"Gee, what sharp teeth you've got!"
"You cad! you cad!" she panted.
"I never thought you'd bite," he said, looking at his bleeding hand ruefully. "That ain't much like a lady, according tomyidea."
"You filthy cad! To hit a woman!"
"Gee, I didn't hit you. You smacked myface and kicked my shins, and you bit my hand. And now you say I hityou."
He picked up his pipe from the table and mechanically rammed the tobacco down with his thumb and looked about for a match.
"You beast! I hate you!"
In the height of her passion she unconsciously began twisting up the loosened strand of her hair.
"I don't care about that, so long as you wash them cups."
With a furious gesture she swept the table clean.
"Look!" she screamed, as cups, saucers, plates and teapot broke into a thousand pieces at his feet.
There came another little sound of something breaking, like a faint echo far away. It was his pipe which had fallen among the wreckage. In his astonishment at her sudden action, he had bitten through the mouthpiece.
"That's a pity; we're terribly short of crockery. We shall have to drink our tea out of cans now," was all he said.
"I said I wouldn't wash them, and I haven't washed them," Nora exulted.
"They don't need it now, I guess," he said humorously.
"I think I've won!"
"Sure," he said without the slightest trace of rancor. "Now take the broom and sweep up all the darned mess you've made."
"I won't!"
"Look here, my girl," he said threateningly, "I guess I've had about enough of your nonsense: you do as you're told and look sharp about it."
"You can kill me, if you like!"
"What would be the good of that? Women, as you reminded me a little while back, are scarce in Manitoba."
He gave a searching look around the room and spying the broom in the corner, went over and fetched it.
"Here's the broom."
"If you want that mess swept up, you can sweep it up yourself."
"Look here, you make me tired!"
His tone suggested that he was becoming more irritated. But Nora was beyond caring. As he put the broom in her hand, she flung it from her as far as she could. "Look here," he said again, and this time there was no mistaking the menace in his voice, "if you don't clean up that mess at once, I'll give you the biggest hiding you ever had in your life, I promise you that."
"You?" she jeered.
"Yours truly," he said, nodding his head. "I've done with larking now." He began rolling up the sleeves of his sweater. For some obscure reason—possibly because his deliberation seemed to connote implacability—this simple action filled her with a terror that she had not known before even in the midst of their physical struggle.
"Help! Help! Help!" she screamed.
She rushed across the room and threw open the door, sending her agonized appeal out into the night.
"Help! Help! Help!"
She strained her ears for any sign of response.
"What's the good of that? There's no one within a mile of us. Listen."
It is doubtful if she heard his words. If she had, it would have mattered but little. The answering silence which engulfed her like a wave told her that she was lost. She bowed her head in her hands. Her whole slender body was wrecked with hard, dry sobs. When she lifted her head, he read in her eyes the anguish of the conquered. Nevertheless, she made one last stand.
"If you so much as touch me, I'll have you up for cruelty. There are laws to protect me."
"I don't care a curse for the laws," helaughed. "I know I'm going to be master here. And if I tell you to do a thing, you've darned well got to do it, because I can make you. Now stop this fooling. Pick up that crockery and get the broom."
"I won't!"
He made one stride toward her.
"No, don't. Don't hurt me!" she shrieked.
"I guess there's only one law here," he said. "And that's the law of the strongest. I don't know nothing about cities; perhaps men and women are equal there. But on the prairie, a man's the master because he's bigger and stronger than a woman."
"Frank!"
"Damn you, don't talk."
She did not move. Her eyes were on the ground. Pride and Fear were having their last struggle, and Fear conquered. Without looking at her husband she could feel that his patience was nearing an end. Very slowly she stooped down and picked up the teapot and the broken cups and saucers and laid them on the table. Blindly she tottered over to the rocking-chair and burst into a passion of tears.
"And I thought I knew what it was to be unhappy!"
He watched her with a slight, but not unkindly, smile on his face.
"Come on, my girl," he said, without any trace of anger, "don't shirk the rest of it."
Through her laced fingers, she looked at the mess of spilled tea on the floor. Keeping her tear-marred face turned away from him, she slowly got up, and slowly found the broom and swept it all into a little heap on the newspaper that lay where he had left it.
Suddenly she threw back her head. Her eyes shone with a new resolution. He watched her, wondering. With a quick, firm step, she carried the rolled-up paper to the stove and shoved it far into the glowing embers. Gathering up the crockery, after a glance around the room in search of some receptacle which her eye did not find, she carried it over to the wood-pile, laying it upon the logs. The broom was restored to its corner. She took up her hat and coat and began to put them on.
"What are you doing?"
"I've done what youmademe do, now I'm going."
"Where, if I might ask?"
"What do I care, as long as I get away."
"You ain't under the impression that there's a first-class hotel round the corner, are you? There ain't."
"I can go to the Sharps."
"I guess they're in bed and asleep by now."
"I'll wake them."
"You'd never find your way. It's pitch dark. Look."
He threw open the door. It was true. The sky had clouded over. The feeling of the air had changed. It smelt of storm.
"I'll sleep out of doors, then."
"On the prairie? Why, you'd freeze to death before morning."
"What does it matter to you whether I live or die?"
"It matters a great deal. Once more, let me remind you that women are scarce in Manitoba."
"Are you going to keep me from going?"
"Sure."
He closed the door and placed his back against it.
"You can't keep me here against my will. If I don't go to-night, I can go to-morrow."
"To-morrow's a long, long way off."
Her hand flew to her throat.
"Frank! What do you mean?"
"I don't know what silly fancies you've had in your head; but when I married you I intended that you should be a proper wife to me."
"But—but—but you understood."
It was all she could do to force the words from her dry throat. With a desperate effort she pulled herself together and tried to talk calmly and reasonably.
"I'm sorry for the way I've behaved, Frank. It was silly and childish of me to struggle with you. You irritated me, you see, by the way you spoke and the tone you took."
"Oh, I don't mind. I don't know much about women and I guess they're queer. We had to fix things up sometime and I guess there's no harm in getting it over right now."
"You've beaten me all along the line and I'm in your power. Have mercy on me!"
"I guess you won't have much cause to complain."
"I married you in a fit of temper. It was very stupid of me. I'm very sorry that I—that I've been all this trouble to you. Won't you let me go?"
"No, I can't do that."
"I'm no good to you. You've told me that I'm useless. I can't do any of the things that you want a wife to do. Oh," she ended passionately, "you can't be so hard-hearted as to make me pay with all my whole life for one moment's madness!"
"What good will it do you if I let you go? Will you go to Gertie and beg her to take youback again? You've got too much pride for that."
She made a gesture of abnegation: "I don't think I've got much pride left."
"Don't you think you'd better give it a try?"
Once more hope wakened in Nora's heart. His tone was so reasonable. If she kept her self-control, she might yet win. She sat down on one of the stools and spoke in a tone that was almost conversational.
"All this life is so strange to me. Back in England, they think it's so different from what it really is. I thought I should have a horse to ride, that there would be dances and parties. And when I came out, I was so out of it all. I felt in the way. And yesterday Gertie drove me frantic so that I felt I couldn't stay a moment longer in that house. I acted on impulse. I didn't know what I was doing. I made a mistake. You can't have theheartto take advantage of it."
"I knew you was making a mistake, but that was your lookout. When I sell a man a horse, he can look it over for himself. I ain't obliged to tell him its faults."
"Do you mean to say that after I've begged you almost on my knees to let me go, you'll force me to stay?"
FRANK GLIMPSES THE APPROACHING STORM THAT MEANS HIS RUIN.FRANK GLIMPSES THE APPROACHING STORM THAT MEANS HIS RUIN.
"That's what I mean."
"Oh, why did I ever trap myself so!"
"Come, my girl, let's let bygones be bygones," he said good-humoredly. "Come, give me a kiss."
She tried a new tack.
"I'm not in love with you," she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
"I guessed that."
"And you're not in love with me."
"You're a woman and I'm a man."
"Do you want me to tell you in so many words that you're physically repellent to me? That the thought of letting you kiss me horrifies and disgusts me?" In spite of her resolution, her voice was rising.
"Thank you." He was still good-humored.
"Look at your hands; it gives me goose-flesh when you touch me."
"Cuttin' down trees, diggin', lookin' after horses don't leave them very white and smooth."
"Let me go! Let me go!"
He took a step away from the door. His whole manner changed.
"See here, my girl. You was educated like a lady and spent your life doin' nothing. Oh, I forgot: you was a lady's companion, wasn't you? And you look on yourself as a darnedsight better than me. I never had no schooling. It's a hell of a job for me to write a letter. But since I was so high"—his hand measured a distance of about three feet from the floor—"I've earned my living. I guess I've been all over this country. I've been a trapper, I've worked on the railroad and for two years I've been a freighter. I guess I've done pretty nearly everything but clerk in a store. Now you just get busy and forget all the nonsense you've got in your head. You're nothing but an ignorant woman and I'm your master. I'm goin' to do what I like with you. And if you don't submit willingly, by God I'll take you as the trappers, in the old days, used to take the squaws."
For the last moment Nora could hardly have been said to have listened. In a delirium of terror her eyes swept the little cabin, searching desperately for some means of escape. As he made a step toward her, her roving eye suddenly fell on her husband's gun, standing where Sharp had left it when he brought it in. With a bound, she was across the room, the gun at her shoulder. With an oath, Frank started forward.
"If you move, I'll kill you!"
"You daren't!"
"Unless you open that door and let me go, I'll shoot you—I'll shoot you!"
"Shoot, then!" He held his arms wide, exposing his broad chest.
With a sobbing cry, she pulled the trigger. The click of the falling hammer was heard, nothing more.
"Gee whiz!" shouted Taylor in admiration. "Why, you meant it!"
The gun fell clattering to the floor.
"It wasn't loaded?"
"Of course it wasn't loaded. D'you think I'd have stood there and told you to shoot if it had been? I guess I ain't thinking of committin' suicide."
"And I almost admired you!"
"You hadn't got no reason to. There's nothing to admire about a man who stands five feet off a loaded gun that's being aimed at him. He'd be a darned fool, that's all."
"You were laughing at me all the time."
"You'd have had me dead as mutton if that gun 'ud been loaded. You're a sport, all right, all right. I never thought you had it in you. You're the girl for me, I guess!"
As she stood there, dazed, perfectly unprepared, he threw his arms around her and attempted to kiss her.
"Let me alone! I'll kill myself if you touch me!"
"I guess you won't." He kissed her full on the mouth, then let her go.
Sinking into a chair, she sobbed in helpless, angry despair.
"Oh, how shameful, how shameful!"
He let her alone for a little; then, when the violence of her sobbing had died away, came over and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.
"Hadn't you better cave in, my girl? You've tried your strength against mine and it hasn't amounted to much. You even tried to shoot me and I only made you look like a darned fool. I guess you're beat, my girl. There's only one law here. That's the law of the strongest. You've got to do what I want because I can make you."
"Haven't you any generosity?"
"Not the kind you want, I guess."
She gave a little moan of anguish.
"Hark!" He held up his hand as if to call her attention to something. For a moment, hope flamed from its embers. But stealing a glance at his face from beneath her drooping lashes, she saw that she was mistaken. The last spark died, to be rekindled no more.
"Listen! Listen to the silence. Can't you hear it, the silence of the prairie? Why, wemight be the only two people in the world, you and me, here in this little shack, right outinthe prairie. Are you listening? There ain't a sound. It might be the garden of Eden. What's that about male and female, created He them? I guess you're my wife, my girl. And I want you."
Nora gave him a sidelong look of terror and remained dumb. What would have been the use of words even if she could have found voice to utter them?
Taking up the lamp, he went to the door of the bedroom and threw it wide. She saw without looking that he remained standing, like a statue of Fate, on the threshold.
To gain time, she picked up the dishcloth and began to scrub at an imaginary spot on the table.
"I guess it's getting late. You'll be able to have a good clean-out to-morrow."
"To-morrow!" A violent shudder, similar to the convulsion of the day before, shook her from head to foot. But she kept on with her scrubbing.
"Come!"
The word smote her ear with all the impact of a cannon shot. The walls caught it, and gave it back. Therewasno other sound in heaven or earth than the echo of that word!
Shame, anguish and fear, in turn, passed over her face. Then, with her hands before her eyes, she passed beyond him, through the door which he still held open.
The storm which the night had foreshadowed broke with violence before dawn. At times during the night, the wind had howled about the little building in a way which recalled to Nora one of the best-remembered holidays of her childhood. She and her mother had gone to Eastborne for a fortnight with some money Eddie had sent them shortly after his arrival in Canada. The autumnal equinox had caught them during the last days of their stay, and the strong impression which the wind had made upon her childish mind had remained with her ever since.
Lying, wakeful through the long hours, staring wide-eyed out of the little curtainless window into the thick darkness, thick enough to seem palpable; the memory of how, on that far-off day she had passed long hours with her nose flattened against the window of the dingy little lodging-house drawing-room watching the wonder of the wind-lashed sea, came back to her with extraordinary vividness.
The spectacle had filled her with a sort of terrified exultation. She had longed to go outand stand on the wind-buffeted pier and take her part in this saturnalia of the elements. She had something of the same feeling now; a longing to leave her bed and go out onto the windswept prairie.
Strangely enough, she had no sensation of fatigue or weariness either bodily or mentally. Her mind, indeed, seemed extraordinarily active. Little petty details of her childhood and of her life with Miss Wickham, long forgotten, such as the day the gardener had cut his thumb, trooped through her mind in an endless procession. She had a strange feeling that she would never sleep again.
But just as the blackness without seemed turning into heavy grayness, lulled possibly by the wind which had moderated its violence and had now sunk to a moan not unpleasant, and by the rythmic breathing of the sleeping man at her side, she fell asleep.
For several hours she must have slept heavily, indeed. For when she awoke, it was to find the place at her side empty. Hurriedly dressing herself, she went out into the living-room. That was empty, too. But the lamp was lighted, the kettle was singing merrily on the stove and the fire was burning brightly. And outside was a whirling veil of snow which made it impossible to see beyond the length of one's arm.
Had she been marooned on an island in the ultimate ocean of theAntarctic, she could not have felt more cut off from the world she knew. Well, it was better so.
She wondered what had become of Frank. Surely on a day like this there could be nothing to do outside; and even if there were, nothing so imperative as to take him away before he had had his breakfast. She felt a little hurt at his leaving without a word.
Evidently, he expected to return soon, however. The table was laid for two. She felt her face crimson as she saw that there was but one cup left. One of them must drink from one of those horrible tin cans. She did not ask herself which one it would be.
Partly to occupy herself and to take her thoughts away from the recollection of the events of the evening before, and partly prompted by a desire to have everything in readiness against her husband's return, she busied herself with the preparations for breakfast.
There were some eggs and a filch of bacon which they had brought from Winnipeg. She would make some toast, too. Very likely he didn't care for it, they certainly never had itat Gertie's, but inher house—— She smiled to think how quickly, in her mind, she had taken possession.
She was just beginning to think that she had been foolish to start her cooking without knowing at all when he was going to return, when she heard a great stamping and scraping of feet outside, and in another moment Frank's snow-covered figure darkened the doorway.
"Getting on with the breakfast? That's fine!" he called.
"It's quite ready: wherever have you been? I wouldn't have imagined that anyone could find a thing to do outside on a day like this."
"Oh, there's always something to do. But I just ran up to the Sharps' for a minute. I knew old mother Sharp wouldn't keep her promise about coming down to-day. She's all right, but she does hate to walk."
"Well, I'm sure I wouldn't blame anyone for choosing to stay indoors a day like this. But what did you want to see her in such a hurry for?"
"Oh, nothin' particular; I sort of thought maybe you wouldn't mind having a little milk with your tea on a gloomy morning like this," he said shamefacedly.
"That was awfully good of you; thank you very much," she said with real gratitude, as shethought of him tramping those two miles in the blinding storm.
"Do you think we are in for a blizzard?" she asked when they were at the table. To her unspeakable relief, she found that the one cup was intended for her; he had waved her toward the one chair, apparently the place of honor, contenting himself with one of the stools.
"N-o-o," he said, "I don't think so. It's beginning to lighten up a little already. And besides, don't you remember that I foretold a mildish winter?"
"I was forgetting that I had married a prophet," she smiled.
But all through the day the snow continued to fall steadily, although the wind had died away and, at intervals, the sun shone palely. At nightfall, it was still snowing.
The day passed quickly, as Nora found plenty to occupy herself with. By supper time she felt healthfully tired, with the added comfortable feeling that, for a novice, she had really accomplished a good deal.
The whole room certainly looked cleaner and the pots and pans, although not shining, were as near to it as hot water and scrubbing could make them. Fortunately, she had a quantity of fresh white paper in her trunk which greatly improved the appearance of the shelves.
During the day Frank left the house for longer or shorter intervals on various pretexts which she felt must be largely imaginary, trumped up for the occasion. She was agreeably surprised to find that he was sufficiently tactful to divine that she wanted to be alone.
While he was in the house he smoked his pipe incessantly and read some magazines which she had unpacked with some of her books. But she never glanced suddenly in his direction without finding that he was watching her.
"I tellyou, this is fine," he said heartily as he was lighting his after-supper pipe. "Mrs. Sharp won't hardly know the place when she comes over. She's never seen it except when I was housekeeper. She doesn't think I'm much good at it. Leastways, she's always tellin' Sid that if she dies, he must marry again right away as soon as he can find anyone to have him, for fear the house gets to looking like this."
"That doesn't look like a very strong indorsement," Nora admitted.
The next day Nora woke to a world of such dazzling whiteness that she was blinded every time she attempted to look out on it.
"You want to be careful," her husband cautioned her; "getting snow-blinded isn't as much fun as you'd think. Even I get bad sometimes;and I'm used to it. Looks like one of them Christmas cards, don't it? Somebody sent Gertie one once and she showed it to us."
That afternoon, Mr. Sharp drove his wife down for the promised visit. As in his judgment the two women would want to be alone, he proposed to Frank to drive back home with him to give him the benefit of his opinion on some improvements he was contemplating.
"You're only wasting your time," Mrs. Sharp had remarked grimly. "There ain't going to be anything done to any of them barns before I get a lean-to on the house. You'd think even a man would know that a house that's all right for two gets a little small for seven," she added, scornfully, to Nora.
"Are there seven of you?"
"Me and Sid and five little ones. If that don't make seven, I've forgotten all the 'rithmetic I ever learned," said Mrs. Sharp briefly. "And let me tell you, you who're just starting in, that having children out here on the prairie half the time with no proper care, and particularly in winter, when maybe you're snowed up and the doctor can't get to you, ain't my idea of a bank holiday."
"I shouldn't think it would be," said Nora, sincerely shocked, although she found it difficult to hide a smile at her visitor's comparison;bank holidays being among her most horrid recollections.
Mrs. Sharp, despite a rather emphatic manner which softened noticeably as her visit progressed, turned out to be a stout, red-faced woman of middle age who seemed to be troubled with a chronic form of asthma. She was as unmistakably English as her husband. But like him, she had lost much of her native accent, although occasionally one caught a faint trace of the Cockney. She had two rather keen brown eyes which, as she talked, took in the room to its smallest detail.
"Well, I declare, I think you've done wonders considering you've only had a day and not used to work like this," she said heartily. "When Sid told me that Frank was bringing home a wife I said to myself: 'Well, I don't envy herherjob; comin' to a shack that ain't been lived in for nigh unto six months and when it was, with only a man runnin' it.'"
"You don't seem to have a very high opinion of men's ability in the domestic line," said Nora with a smile.
"I can tell you just how high it is," said Mrs. Sharp with decision. "I would just as soon think of consultin' little Sid—an' he's goin' on three—about the housekeepin' as Iwould his father. It ain't a man's work. Why should he know anything about it?"
"Still," demurred Nora, "lots of men look after themselves somehow."
"Somehow's just the word; they never get beyond that. Of course I knew Frank would be sure to marry some day. And with his good looks it's a wonder he didn't do so long ago. Most girls is so crazy about a good-lookin' fellow that they never stop to think if he has anything else to him. Not that he hasn't lots of good traits, I don't mean that. But," she added shrewdly, "you don't look like the silly sort that would be taken in by good looks alone."
"No," said Nora dryly, "I don't think I am."
After that, until the two men returned, they talked of household matters, and Nora found that her new neighbor had a store of useful and practical suggestions to make, and, what was even better, seemed glad to place all her experience at her disposal in the kindliest and most friendly manner possible, entirely free from any trace of that patronage which had so maddened her in her sister-in-law.
"Now mind you," called Mrs. Sharp, as she laboriously climbed up to the seat beside her husband as they were driving away, "if Frank, here, gets at all upish—and he's pretty certainto, all newly married men do—you come to me. I'll settle him, never fear."
Frank laughed a little over-loudly at this parting shot, and Nora noticed that for some time after their guests had gone, he seemed unusually silent.
As for the Sharps, they also maintained an unwonted silence—which for Mrs. Sharp, at least, was something unusual—until they had arrived at their own door.
"Well?" queried Sharp, as they were about to turn in.
"It beats me," replied his wife. "Why, she's a lady. But she'll come out all right," she finished enigmatically, "she's got the right stuff in her, poor dear!"
In after years, when Nora was able to look back on this portion of her life and see things in just perspective, she always felt that she could never be too thankful that her days had been crowded with occupation. Without that, she must either have gone actually insane, or, in a frenzy of helplessness, done some rash thing which would have marred her whole life beyond repair.
After she found herself growing more accustomed to her new life—and, after all, the growing accustomed to it was the hardest part—she realized that she was only following the universal law of life in paying for her own rash act. The thought that she was paying with interest, being overcharged as it were, was but faint consolation: it only meant that she had been a fool. That conviction is rarely soothing.
Then, too, she gradually began to look at the situation from Frank's point of view. He had certainly acted within his rights, if with little generosity. But she had to acknowledge to herself that the obligation to be generous on his part was small. She could hardly be said to have treated him with much liberality in the past.
She had used him without scruple as a means to an end. She had made him the instrument for escaping from a predicament which she found unbearably irksome. That she had done so in the heat of passion was small palliation. For the present, at least, she wisely resolved to make the best of things. It could not last forever. The day must come when she could free herself from the bonds that now held her.
It was characteristic of her unyielding pride, of her reluctance to confess to defeat, that the thought of appealing to her brother never once entered her head.
For this reason, it was long before she could bring herself to write the promised letter toEddie. What was there to say? The things that would have relieved her, in a sense, to tell, must remain forever locked in her own heart. In the end, she compromised by sending a letter confined entirely to describing her new home. As she read it over, she thanked the Fates that Eddie's was not a subtile or analytical mind. He would read nothing between the lines. But Gertie? Well, it couldn't be helped!
It was some two months after her marriage that she received a letter from Miss Pringle in answer to the one she had written while she was still an inmate of her brother's house.
Miss Pringle confined herself largely to an account of her Continental wanderings and her bloodless encounters with various foreigners and their ridiculous un-English customs from which she had emerged triumphant and victorious. Mrs. Hubbard's precarious state of health had led her into being unusually captious, it seemed. Miss Pringle was more than ever content to be back in Tunbridge Wells, where all the world was, by comparison, sane and reasonable in behavior.
When it came to touching upon her friend's amazing environment and unconventional experiences, Miss Pringle was discretion itself. But if her paragraphs had bristled with exclamation points, they could not, to one whounderstood her mental processes, have more clearly betrayed her utter disapproval and amazement that English people, and descendants of English people, could so far forget themselves as to live in any such manner.
Replying to this letter was only a degree less hard than writing to Eddie. Nora's ready pen faltered more than once, and many pages were destroyed before an answer was sent. She confined herself entirely to describing the new experience of a Canadian winter. Of her departure from her brother's roof and of her marriage, she said nothing whatever.
In accordance with her resolution to make the best of things, she set about making the shack more comfortable and homelike. There were many of those things which, small in themselves, count for much, that her busy brain planned to do during the time taken up in the necessary overhauling. This cleaning-up process had taken several days, interrupted as it was by the ordinary daily routine.
To her unaccustomed hand, the task of preparing three hearty meals a day was a matter that consumed a large amount of time, but gradually, day by day, she found herself systematizing her task and becoming less inexpert. To be sure she made many mistakes; once, indeed, in a fit of preoccupation, while occupied in rearranging the bedroom, burning up the entire dinner.
Upon his return, her husband had found her red-eyed and apologetic.
"Oh, well!" he said. "It ain't worth crying over. What is the saying? 'Hell wasn't built in a day'?"
Nora screamed with laughter. "I think you're mixing two old saws. Rome wasn't built in a day and Hell is paved with good intentions."
"Well," he laughed good-naturedly, "they both seem to hit the case."
He certainly was unfailingly good-tempered. Not that there were not times when Nora did not have to remind herself of her new resolution and he, for his part, exercise all his forbearance. But in the main, things went more smoothly than either had dared to hope from their inauspicious beginning.
The thing that Nora found hardest to bear was that he never lost a certain masterful manner. It was a continual reminder that she had been defeated. Then, too, he had a maddening way of rewarding her for good conduct which was equally hard to bear, until she realized that it was perfectly unconscious on his part.
For example: after she had struggled for aweek with her makeshift kitchen outfit, small in the beginning but greatly reduced by her destructive outburst on the night of their arrival, he had, without saying a word to her of his intentions, driven over to Prentice and laid in an entire new stock of crockery and several badly needed pots and pans.
Nora had found it hard to thank him. If they had been labeled "For a Good Child" she could not have felt more humiliated. And what was equally trying, he seemed to have divined her thoughts, for his smile, upon receiving her halting thanks, had not been without a touch of malicious amusement.
On the other hand, all her little efforts to beautify the little house and make it more livable met with his enthusiastic approval and support. He was as delighted as a child with everything she did, and often, when baffled for the moment by some lack of material for carrying out some proposed scheme, he came to the rescue with an ingenious suggestion which solved the vexed problem at once.