And so, gradually, to the no small wonder of her neighbor, Mrs. Sharp, the shack began to take on an air of homely brightness and comfort which that lady's more pretentious place lacked, even after a residence of thirteen years.
Curtains tied back with gay ribands, takenfrom an old hat and refurbished, appeared at the windows; the old tin syrup cans, pasted over with dark green paper, were made to disgorge their mouldy stores and transform themselves into flower-pots holding scarlet geraniums; even the disreputable, rakish old rocking chair assumed a belated air of youth and respectability, wearing as it did a cushion of discreetly patterned chintz; and the packing-box table hid its deficiencies under a simple cloth. All these magic transformations Nora had achieved with various odds and ends which she found in her trunk.
Not to be outdone, Frank had contributed a well-made shelf to hold Nora's precious books and a sort of cupboard for her sewing basket and, for the crowning touch, had with much labor contrived some rough chairs to take the place of the packing-box affairs of unpleasant memory.
As has been said, Mrs. Sharp came, saw and wondered; but she had her own theory, all the same, which she confided to her husband.
All these little but significant changes, the result of their co-operative effort, had not been the work of days, but of weeks. By the time they had all been accomplished, the winter was practically over and spring was at hand. Looking back on it, it seemed impossibly short, although there had been times, in spite of her manifold occupations, when it had seemed to Nora that it was longer than any winter she had ever known. She looked forward to the coming spring with both pleasure and dread.
Through many a dark winter day she had pictured to herself how beautiful the prairie must be, clad in all the verdant livery of the most wonderful of the seasons. And yet it would mean a new solitude and loneliness to her, her husband, of necessity, being away through all the long daylight hours. She began to understand Gertie's dread of having no one to speak to. She avoided asking herself the question as to whether it was loneliness in general or the particular loneliness of missing her husband that she dreaded.
But she was obliged to admit to herself that the winter had wrought more transformations than were to be seen in the little shack.
It had all come about so subtilely and gradually that she was almost unaware of it herself, this inward changeinherself. Nora had by nature a quick and active mind, but she had also many inherited prejudices. It is a truism that it is much harder to unlearn than to learn, and for her it was harder, in the circumstances, than for the average person. Not that she was more set in her ways than other people, but that she had accepted from her childhood a definite set of ideas as to the proper conduct of life; a code, in other words, from which she had never conceived it possible to depart. People did certain things, or they did not; you played the game according to certain prescribed rules, or you didn't play it with decent people, that was all there was to it. One might as well argue that there was no difference between right and wrong as to say that this was not so.
Of course there were plenty of people on the face of the earth who thought otherwise, such as Chinese, Aborigines, Turks, and all sorts of unpleasant natives of uncivilized countries—Nora lumped them together without discrimination or remorse—but no one planned to pass their lives among them. And as for the sentiment that Trotter had enunciated one day at her brother's, that Canada was a country where everybody was as good as everybody else, that was, of course, utter nonsense. It was because the country was raw and new that such silly notions prevailed. No society could exist an hour founded upon any such theory.
And yet, here she was living with a man on terms of equality whom, when measured up with the standards she was accustomed to, failed impossibly. And yet, did he? That is, did he, in the larger sense? That he was woefully deficient in all the little niceties of life, that he was illiterate and ignorant could not be denied. But he was no man's fool, and, as far as his light shone, he certainly lived up to it. That was just it. He had a standard of his own.
She compared him with her brother, and with other men she had known and respected. Was he less honest? less brave? less independent? less scrupulous in his dealings with his fellowmen? To all these questions she was obliged to answer "No." And he was proud, too, and ambitious; ambitious to carve out a fortune with his own hands, beholden to neither man norcircumstances for the achievement. Certainly there was much that was fine about him.
And, as far as his treatment of herself was concerned, after that first terrible struggle for mastery, she had had nothing to complain of. He had been patient with her ignorance and her lack of capabilities in all the things that the women in this new life were so proficient in. Did she not, perhaps, fall as far belowhisstandard as he did before hers? There was certainly something to be said on both sides.
There was one quality which he possessed to which she paid ungrudging tribute; never had she met a man so free from all petty pretense. He regretted his lack of opportunities for educating himself, but it apparently never entered his head to pretend a knowledge of even the simplest subject which he did not possess. The questions that he asked her from time to time about matters which almost any schoolboy in England could have answered, both touched and embarrassed her.
At first she had found the evenings the most trying part of the day. When not taken up with her household cares, she found herself becoming absurdly self-conscious in his society. They were neither of them naturally silent people, and it was difficult not to have the air of "talking down" to him, of palpably making conversation. Beyond the people at her brother's and the Sharps, they had not a single acquaintance in common. Her horizon, hitherto, had been, bounded by England, his by Canada.
Finally, acting on the suggestion he had made, but never again referred to, the unforgettable day when they were leaving for Winnipeg, she began reading aloud evenings while he worked on his new chairs. The experiment was a great success. Her little library was limited in range; a few standard works and a number of books on travel and some of history. She soon found that history was what he most enjoyed. Things that were a commonplace to her were revealed to him for the first time. And his comments were keen and intelligent, although his point of view was strikingly novel and at the opposite pole from hers. To be sure, she had been accustomed to accepting history merely as a more or less accurate record of bygone events without philosophizing upon it. But to him it was one long chronicle of wrong and oppression. He pronounced the dead and gone sovereigns of England a bad lot and cowardly almost without exception; not apparently objecting to them on the ground that they were kings, as she had at first thought, but because they attained their ends, mostly selfish, throughcruelty and oppression, without any regard for humane rights.
It was the same way with books of travel. The chateaus and castles, with all their atmosphere of story and romance which she had always longed to visit, interested him not a jot. In his opinion they were, one and all, bloody monuments of greed and selfishness; the sooner they were razed to the ground and forgotten, the better for the world.
It was useless to make an appeal for them on artistic grounds; art to him was a doubly sealed book, and yet he frequently disclosed an innate love of beauty in his appreciation of the changing panorama of the winter landscape which stretched on every side before their eyes.
It was a picture which had an inexhaustible fascination for Nora herself, although there were times when the isolation, and above all the unbroken stillness got badly on her nerves. But she could not rid herself of an almost superstitious feeling that the prairie had a lesson to teach her. Twice they went in to Prentice. With these exceptions, she saw no one but her husband and Mr. and Mrs. Sharp.
But it was, strangely enough, from Mrs. Sharp that she drew the most illumination as to the real meaning of this strange new life. Not that Mrs. Sharp was in the least subtle, quite the contrary. She was as hard-headed, practical a person as one could well imagine. But her natural powers of adaptability must have been unusually great. From a small shop in one of the outlying suburbs of London, with its circumscribed outlook, moral as well as physical, to the limitless horizon of the prairie was indeed a far cry. How much inward readjustment such a violent transplanting must require, Nora had sufficient imagination to fully appreciate. But if Mrs. Sharp, herself, were conscious of having not only survived her uprooting but of having triumphantly grown and thrived in this alien soil, she gave no sign of it. Everything, to employ her own favorite phrase with which she breached over inexplicable chasms, "was all in a lifetime."
As she had a deeply rooted distaste for any form of exercise beyond that which was required in the day's work, most of the visiting between them devolved upon Nora. To her the distance that separated the two houses was nothing, and as she had from the first taken a genuine liking to her neighbor she found herself going over to the Sharps' several times a week.
When, as was natural at first, she felt discouraged over her little domestic failures, she found these neighborly visits a great tonic.Mrs. Sharp was always ready to give advice when appealed to. And unlike Gertie, she never expressed astonishment at her visitor's ignorance, or impatience with her shortcomings. These became more and more infrequent. Nora made up for her total lack of experience by an intelligent willingness to be taught. There was a certain stimulation in the thought that she was learning to manage her own house, that would have been lacking while at her brother's even if Gertie had displayed a more agreeable willingness to impart her own knowledge.
Nora had always been fond of children, and she found the Sharp children unusually interesting. It was curious to see how widely the ideas of this, the first generation born in the new country, differed, not only from those of their parents, but from what they must have inevitably been if they had remained in the environment that would have been theirs had they been born and brought up back in England.
All of their dreams as to what they were going to do when they grew to manhood were colored and shaped by the outdoor life they had been accustomed to. They were to be farmers and cattle raisers on a large scale. Mrs. Sharp used to shake her head sometimes as she heard these grandiloquent plans, but Noracould see that she was secretly both proud and pleased. After all, why should not these dreams be realized? Everything was possible to the children of this new and wonderful country, if they were only industrious and ambitious.
"I don't know, I'm sure, what their poor dear grandfather would have said if he had lived to hear them," she used to say sometimes to Nora. "Heused to think that there was nothing so genteel as having a good shop. He quite looked down on farming folk. Still, everything is different out here, ideas as well as everything else, and I'm not at all sure they won't be better off in the end."
In which notion Nora secretly agreed with her. To picture these healthy, sturdy, outdoor youngsters confined to a little dingy shop such as their mother had been used to in her own childhood was impossible, as she recalled to her mind the pale, anemic-looking little souls she had occasionally seen during her stay in London. Was not any personal sacrifice worth seeing one's children grow up so strong and healthy, so manly and independent?
This, then, was the true inwardness of it all; the thing that dignified and ennobled this life of toil and hardship, deprived of almost all the things which she had always regarded asnecessary, that the welfare, prosperity and happiness of generations yet to come might be reared on this foundation laid by self-denial and deprivation.
She felt almost humbled in the presence of this simple, unpretentious, kindly woman who had borne so much without complaint that her children might have wider opportunities for usefulness and happiness than she had ever known.
Not that Mrs. Sharp, herself, seemed to think that she was doing anything remarkable. She took it all as a matter of course. It was only when something brought up the subject of the difficulties of learning to do without this or that, that she alluded to the days when she also was inexperienced and had had to learn for herself without anyone to advise or help her.
Miles away from any help other than her husband could give her, she had borne six children and buried one. And although the days of their worst poverty seemed safely behind them, they had been able to save but little, so that they still felt themselves at the mercies of the changing seasons. Given one or two good years to harvest their crops, they might indeed consider themselves almost beyond the danger point. But with seven mouths to feed, one could not afford to lose a single crop.
With her head teeming with all the new ideas that Mrs. Sharp's experiences furnished, Nora felt that the time was by no means as wasted as she had once thought it would be. There was no reason, after all, that she should sink to the level of a mere domestic drudge. And if this part of her life was not to endure forever, it would not have been entirely barren, since it furnished her with much new material to ponder over. After all, was it really more narrow than her life at Tunbridge Wells? In her heart, she acknowledged that it was not.
To Frank, also, the winter brought a broader outlook. He had looked upon Nora's little refinements of speech and delicate point of view, when he had first known her at her brother's, as finicky, to say the least. All women had fool notions about most things; this one seemed to have more than the average share, that was all. He secretly shared Gertie's opinion that women the world over were all alike in the essentials. He had always been of the opinion that Nora had good stuff in her which would come out once she had been licked into shape. Yet he found himself not only learning to admire her for those same niceties but found himself unconsciously imitating her mannerisms of speech.
Then, too, after they began the habit of reading in the evenings, he found that she had nointention of ridiculing his ignorance and lack of knowledge in matters on which she seemed to him to be wonderfully informed. That they did not by any means always agree in the conclusions they arrived at, in place of irritating him, as he would have thought, he found only stimulating to his imagination. To attack and try to undermine her position, as long as their arguments were conducted with perfect good nature on either side, as they always were, diverted him greatly. And he was secretly pleased when she defended herself with a skill and address that defeated his purpose.
All the little improvements in the shack were a source of never-ending pride and pleasure to him. Often when at work he found himself proudly comparing his place with its newly added prettiness with the more gaudy ornaments of Mrs. Sharp's or even with Gertie's more pretentious abode. And it was not altogether the pride of ownership that made them suffer in the comparison.
Looking back on the days before Nora's advent seemed like a horrible nightmare from which he was thankful to have awakened. Once in a while he indulged himself in speculating as to how it would feel to go back to the old shiftless, untidy days of his bachelorhood. But he rarely allowed himself to entertain the ideaof her leaving, seriously. He was like a child, snuggly tucked in his warm bed who, listening to the howling of the wind outside, pictures himself exposed to its harshness in order to luxuriate the more in its warmth and comfort.
But when, as sometimes happened, he could not close the door of his mind to the thought of how he should ever learn to live without her again, it brought an anguish that was physical as well as mental. Once, looking up from her book, Nora had surprised him sitting with closed eye, his face white and drawn with pain.
Her fright, and above all her pretty solicitude even after he had assuaged her fears by explaining that he occasionally suffered from an old strain which he had sustained a few years before while working in the lumber camps, tried his composure to the utmost.
For days, the memory of the look in her eyes as she bent over him remained in his mind. But he was careful not to betray himself again.
It was to prevent any repetition that he first resorted to working over something while she was reading. While doubly occupied with listening and working with his hands, he found that his mind was less apt to go off on a tangent and indulge in painful and profitless speculations.
For, after all, as she had said, how could heprevent her going if her heart was set on it? That she had given no outward sign of being unhappy or discontented argued nothing. She was far too shrewd to spend her strength in unavailing effort. Pride and ordinary prudence would counsel waiting for a more favorable opportunity than had yet been afforded her. She would not soon forget the lesson of the night he had beaten down her opposition and dragged her pride in the dust.
And would she ever forgive it? That was a question that he asked himself almost daily without finding any answer. There was nothing in her manner to show that she harbored resentment or that she was brooding over plans for escaping from the bondage of her life. But women, in his experience, were deep, even cunning. Once given a strong purpose, women like Nora, pursued it to the end. Women of this type were not easily diverted by side issues as men so often were.
For weeks he lived in daily apprehension of Ed's arrival. There was no one else she could turn to, and evoking his aid did not necessarily argue that she must submit again to Gertie's grudging hospitality. Ed might easily, unknown to his masterful better-half, furnish the funds to return to England. She had not written him that he knew of. As a matter offact, she had not, but she might have given the letter to Sid Sharp to post on one of his not infrequent trips into Prentice. It would only have been by chance that Sid would speak of so trifling a matter. He was much too proud to question him.
But as time went on and no Ed appeared, he began, if not exactly to hope that, after all she was finding the life not unbearable, at least her leaving was a thing of the more or less remote future. He summoned all his philosophy to his aid. Perhaps by the time she did make up her mind to quit him he would have acquired some little degree of resignation, or at least would not be caught as unprepared as he frankly confessed himself to be at the moment.
The spring, which brought many new occupations, mostly out of doors, had passed, and summer was past its zenith. Frank had worked untiringly from dawn to dark, so wearied that he frequently found it difficult to keep his eyes open until supper was over. But his enthusiasm never flagged. If everything went as well as he hoped, the additional quarter-section was assured. For some reason or other, possibly because he was beginning to feel a reaction after the hard work of the summer, Nora fancied that his spirits were less high thanusual. He talked less of the coveted land than was his custom. She, herself, had never, in all her healthy life, felt so glowing with health and strength. She, too, had worked hard, finding almost every day some new task to perform. But aside from the natural fatigue at night, which long hours of dreamless sleep entirely dissipated, she felt all the better for her new experiences. For one thing, her steady improvement in all the arts of the good housewife made her daily routine much easier as well as giving her much secret satisfaction. Never in her life had she looked so well. The summer sun had given her a color which was most becoming.
One afternoon, shortly after dinner, she had gone out to gather a nosegay of wild flowers to brighten her little living-room. She was busily engaged in arranging them in a pudding bowl, smiling to think that her hand had lost none of the cunning to which Miss Wickham had always paid grudging tribute, even if her improvised vase was of homely ware, when she heard her husband's step at the door. It was so unusual for him to return at this hour that for a moment she was almost startled.
"Ididn't know you were about."
"Oh," he said easily, "I ain't got much to do to-day. I've been out with Sid Sharp and a man come over from Prentice."
"From Prentice?"
Having arranged her flowers to her satisfaction, she stepped back to view the effect. At that moment her husband's eye fell on them.
"Say, what you got there?"
"Aren't they pretty? I picked them just now. They're so gay and cheerful."
"Very." But his tone had none of the enthusiasm with which he usually greeted her efforts to beautify the house.
"A few flowers make the shack look more bright and cozy."
He took in the room with a glance that approved of everything.
"You've made it a real home, Nora. Mrs. Sharp never stops talking of how you've done it. She was saying only the other day it was because you was a lady. It does make a difference, I guess, although I didn't use to thinkso."
Nora gave him a smile full of indulgence.
"I'm glad you haven't found me quite a hopeless failure."
"I guess I've never been so comfortable in all my life. It's what I always said: once English girlsdotake to the life, they make a better job of it than anybody."
"What's the man come over from Prentice for?" asked Nora. They were approaching a subject she always avoided.
"I guess you ain't been terribly happy here, my girl," he said gravely, unmindful of her question.
"What on earth makes you say that?"
"You've got too good a memory, I guess, and you ain't ever forgiven me for that first night."
It was the first time he had alluded to thesubject for months. Would he never understand that she wanted to forget it! He might know that it always irritated her.
"I made up my mind very soon that I must accept the consequences of what I'd done. I've tried to fall in with your ways," she said coldly.
"You was clever enough to see that I meant to be the master in my own house and that I had the strength to make myself so."
How unlike his latter self this boastful speech was. But then he had been utterly unlike himself for several days. What did he mean? She knew him well enough by now to know that he never acted without meaning. But directness was one of his most admirable characteristics. It was unlike him to be devious, as he was being now. But if the winter had taught her anything, it had taught her patience.
"I've cooked for you, mended your clothes, and I've kept the shack clean. I've tried to be obliging and—and obedient." The last word was not yet an easy one to pronounce.
"I guess you hated me, though, sometimes." He gave a little chuckle.
"No one likes being humiliated; and you humiliated me."
"Ed's coming here presently, my girl."
"Ed who?"
"Your brother Ed."
"Eddie! When?"
"Why, right away, I guess. He was in Prentice this morning."
"How do you know?"
"He 'phoned over to Sharp to say he was riding out."
"Oh, how splendid! Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I didn't know about it."
"Is that why you asked me if I was happy? I couldn't make out what was the matter with you."
"Well, I guess I thought if you still wanted to quit, Ed's coming would be kind of useful."
Nora sat down in one of the chairs and gave him a long level look.
"What makes you think that I want to?" she said quietly.
"You ain't been so very talkative these last months, but I guess it wasn't so hard to see sometimes that you'd have given pretty near anything in the world to quit."
"I've no intention of going back to Eddie's farm, if that's what you mean."
To this he made no reply. Still with the same grave air, he went over to the door and started out again, pausing a moment after he had crossed the threshold.
"If Ed comes before I get back, tell him Iwon't be long. I guess you won't be sorry to do a bit of yarning with him all by yourself."
"You are not going away with the idea that I'm going to say beastly things to him about you, are you?"
"No, I guess not. That ain't your sort. Perhaps we don't know the best of one another yet, but I reckon we know the worst by this time."
"Frank!" she said sharply. "There's something the matter. What is it?"
"Why, no; there's nothing. Why?"
"You've not been yourself the last few days."
"I guess that's only your imagination. Well, I'd better be getting along. Sid and the other fellow'll be waiting for me."
Without another look in her direction, he was gone, closing the door after him.
Nora remained quite still for several minutes, biting her lips and frowning in deep thought. It was all very well to say that there was nothing the matter, but there was. Did he think she could live with him day after day all these months and not notice his change of mood, even if she could not translate it? He had still a great deal to learn about women!
On the way over to the shelf to get her work, she paused a moment beside her flowers to cheerherself once more with their brightness. Sitting down by the table, she began to darn one of her husband's thick woolen socks. An instant later she was startled by a loud knock on the door.
With a little cry of pleasure she flung it open, to find Eddie standing outside. She gave a cry of delight. Somehow, the interval since she had seen him last, significant as it was in bringing to her the greatest change her life had known, seemed for the second longer than all the years she had spent in England without seeing him.
"Eddie! Oh, my dear, I'm so glad to see you!" she cried, flinging her arms around his neck.
"Hulloa there," he said awkwardly.
"But how did you come? I didn't hear any wheels."
"Look." He pointed over to the shed; she looked over his shoulder to see Reggie Hornby grinning at her from the seat of a wagon.
"Why, it's Reggie Hornby. Reggie!" she called.
Reggie took off his broad hat with a flourish.
"Tell him he can put the horse in the lean-to."
"All right. Reg," called Marsh, "give the old lady a feed and put her in the lean-to."
"Right-o!"
"Didn't you meet Frank? He's only just this moment gone out."
"No."
"He'll be back presently. Now, come in. Oh, my dear,it issplendid to see you!"
"You're looking fine, Nora."
"Have you had your dinner?"
"Sure. We got something to eat before we left Prentice."
"Well, you'll have a cup of tea?"
"No, I won't have any, thanks."
"Ah," laughed Nora happily, "you're not a real Canadian yet, if you refuse a cup of tea when it's offered you. But do sit down and make yourself comfortable," she said, fairly pushing him into a chair.
"How are you getting along, Nora?" His manner was still a little constrained. They were both thinking of their last parting. But she, being a woman, could carry it off better.
"Oh, never mind about me," she said gayly. "Tell me all about yourself. How's Gertie? And what has brought you to this part of the world? And what's Reggie Hornby doing here? And is Thingamajig still with you; you know, the hired man?"—The word "other" almost slipped out.—"Whatwashis name, Trotter, wasn't it? Oh, my dear, don't sit there like astuffed pig, but answer my questions, or I'll shake you."
"My dear child, I can't answer fifteen questions all at once!"
"Oh, Eddie, I'm so glad to see you! You are a perfect duck to come and see me."
"Now let me get a word in edgeways."
"I won't utter another syllable. But, for goodness' sake, hurry up. I want to know all sorts of things."
"Well, the most important thing is that I'm expecting to be a happy father in three or four months."
"Oh, Eddie, I'm so glad! How happy Gertie must be."
"She doesn't know what to make of it. But I guess she's pleased right enough. She sends you her love and says she hopes you'll follow her example very soon."
"I?" said Nora sharply. "But," she added with a return to her gay tone, "you've not told me what you're doing in this part of the world, anyway."
"Anyway?"
Nora blushed. "I've practically spoken to no one but Frank for months; it's natural that I should fall into his way of speaking."
"Well, when I got Frank's letter about the clearing-machine——"
"Frank has written to you?"
"Why, yes; didn't you know? He said there was a clearing-machine going cheap at Prentice. I've always thought I could make money down our way if I had one. They say you can clear from three to four acres a day with one. Frank thought it was worth my while to come and have a look at it and he said he guessed you'd be glad to see me."
"How funny of him not to say anything to me about it," said Nora, frowning once more.
"I suppose he wanted to surprise you. And now for yourself; how do you like being a married woman?"
"Oh, all right. But you haven't answered half my questions yet. Why has Reggie Hornby come with you?"
"Do you realize I've not seen you since before you were married?"
"That's so; you haven't, have you?"
"I've been a bit anxious about you. That's why, when Frank wrote about the clearing-machine, I didn't stop to think about it, but just came."
"It was awfully nice of you. But why has Reggie Hornby come?"
"Oh, he's going back to England."
"Is he?"
"Yes, he got them to send his passage moneyat last. His ship doesn't sail till next week, and he said he might just as well stop over here and say good-by to you."
"How has he been getting on?"
"How do you expect? He looks upon work as something that only damned fools do. Where's Frank?"
"Oh, he's out with Sid Sharp. Sid's our neighbor. He has the farm you passed on your way here."
"Getting on all right with him, Nora?"
"Why, of course," said Nora with just a suggestion of irritation in her voice.
"What's that boy doing all this time?" she asked, going over to the window and looking out. "Heisslow, isn't he?"
But Marsh was not a man whom it was easy to side-track.
"It's a great change for you, this, after the sort of life you've been used to."
"I was rather hoping you'd have some letters for me," said Nora from the window. "I haven't had a letter for a long time."
As a matter of fact she had no reason to expect any, not having answered Miss Pringle's last and having practically no other correspondent. But the speech was a happy one, in that it created the desired diversion.
"There now!" said her brother with an airof comical consternation. "I've got a head like a sieve. Two came by the last mail. I didn't forward them, because I was coming myself."
"You don't mean to tell me you've forgotten them!"
"No; here they are."
Nora took them with a show of eagerness. "They don't look very exciting," she said, glancing at them. "One's from Agnes Pringle, the lady's companion that I used to know at Tunbridge Wells, you remember. And the other's from Mr. Wynne."
"Who's he?"
"Oh, he was Miss Wickham's solicitor. He wrote to me once before to say he hoped I was getting on all right. I don't think I want to hear from people in England any more," she said in a low voice, more to herself than to him, tossing the letters on the table.
"My dear, why do you say that?"
"It's no good thinking of the past, is it?"
"Aren't you going to read your letters?"
"Not now; I'll read them when I'm alone."
"Don't mind me."
"It's silly of me; but letters from England always make me cry."
"Nora! Then you aren't happy here."
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"Then why haven't you written to me but once since you were married?"
"I hadn't anything to say. And then," carrying the war into the enemy's quarter, "I'd been practically turned out of your house."
"I don't know what to make of you. Frank Taylor's kind to you and all that sort of thing, isn't he?"
"Very. But don't cross-examine me, there's a dear."
"When I asked you to come and make your home with me, I thought it mightn't be long before you married. But I didn't expect you to marry one of the hired men."
"Oh, my dear, please don't worry about me." Nora was about at the end of her endurance.
"It's all very fine to say that; but you've got no one in the world belonging to you except me."
"Don't, I tell you."
"Nora!"
"Now listen. We've never quarreled once since the first day I came here. Now are you satisfied?"
She said it bravely, but it was with a feeling of unspeakable relief that she saw Reggie Hornby at the door.
She certainly had never before been so genuinely glad to see him. As she smilingly held outher hand, her eye took in his changed appearance. Gone were the overalls and the flannel shirt, the heavy boots and broad belt. Before her stood the Reggie of former days in a well-cut suit of blue serge and spotless linen. She was surprised to find herself thinking, after all, men looked better in flannels.
"I was wondering what on earth you were doing with yourself," she said gayly.
"I say," he said, his eye taking in the bright little room, "this is a swell shack you've got."
"I've tried to make it look pretty and homelike."
"Helloa, what's this!" said Marsh, whose eye had fallen for the first time on the bowl of flowers.
"Aren't they pretty? I've only just picked them. They're mustard flowers."
"We call them weeds. Have you much of it?"
"Oh, yes; lots. Why?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Eddie tells me you're going home."
"Yes," said Reggie, seating himself and carefully pulling up his trousers. "I'm fed up for my part with God's own country. Nature never intended me to be an agricultural laborer."
"No? And what are you going to do now?"
"Loaf!" Mr. Hornby's tone expressed profound conviction.
"Won't you get bored?" smiled Nora.
"I'm never bored. It amuses me to watch other people do things. I should hate my fellow-creatures to be idle."
"I should think one could do more with life than lounge around clubs and play cards with people who don't play as well as oneself."
Hornby gave her a quick ironic look. "I quite agree with you," he said with his most serious air. "I've been thinking things over very seriously this winter. I'm going to look out for a middle-aged widow with money who'll adopt me."
"I recall that you have decided views about the White Man's Burden."
"All I want is to get through life comfortably. I don't mean to do a stroke more work than I'm obliged to, and I'm going to have the very best time I can."
"I'm sure you will," said Nora, smiling.
But her smile was a little mechanical. Somehow she could no longer be genuinely amused at such sentiments which, in spite of his airy manner, she knew to be real. And yet, it was not so very long ago that she would have thought them perfectly natural in a man of hisposition. Somehow, her old standards were not as fixed as she had thought them.
"The moment I get back to London," continued Hornby imperturbably, "I'm going to stand myself a bang-up dinner at the Ritz. Then I shall go and see some musical comedy at the Gaiety, and after that, I'll have a slap-up supper at Romano's. England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!" he finished piously.
"I suppose it's being alone with the prairie all these months," said Nora, more to herself than him; "but things that used to seem clever and funny—well, I see them altogether differently now."
"I'm afraid you don't altogether approve of me," he said, quite unabashed.
"I don't think you have much pluck," said Nora, not unkindly.
"Oh, I don't know about that. I've as much as anyone else, I expect, only I don't make a fuss about it."
"Oh, pluck to stand up and let yourself be shot at."—She flushed slightly at the remembrance of Frank standing in this very room in front of the gun in her hand. Would she ever forget his laugh!—"But pluck to do the same monotonous thing day after day, plain, honest, hard work—you haven't got that sort of pluck. You're a failure and the worst of it is, you'renot ashamed of it. It seems to fill you with self-satisfaction. Oh, you're incorrigible," she ended with a laugh.
"I am; let's let it go at that. I suppose there's nothing you want me to take home; I shall be going down to Tunbridge Wells to see mother. Got any messages?"
"I don't know that I have. Eddie has just brought me a couple of letters. I'll have a look at them first."
She went over to the table and picked up Miss Pringle's letter and opened it.
After reading a few lines, she gave a little cry.
"Oh!"
"What's the matter?" asked Marsh.
"Whatcanshe mean? Listen! 'I've just heard from Mr. Wynne about your good luck and I'm glad to say I have another piece of good news for you.'"
Dropping the letter, she tore open the other. It contained a check. She gave it a quick glance.
"A check for five hundred pounds! Oh, Eddie, listen." She read from Mr. Wynne's letter: "'Dear Miss Marsh—I have had several interviews with Mr. Wickham in relation to the late Miss Wickham's estate, and I ventured to represent to him that you had been very badly treated. Now that everything is settled, hewishes me to send you the enclosed check as some recognition of your devoted services to his late aunt—five hundred pounds."
"That's a very respectable sum," said Marsh, nodding his head sagely.
"I could do with that myself," remarked Hornby.
"I've never had so much money in all my life!"
"But what's the other piece of good news that Miss Stick-in-the-mud has for you?"
"Oh, I quite forgot. Where is it?" Her brother stooped and picked the fallen letter from the floor.
"Thank you. Um-um-um-um-um. Oh, yes, 'Piece of good news for you. I write at once so that you may make your plans accordingly. I told you in my last letter, did I not, of my sister-in-law's sudden death? Now my brother is very anxious that I should make my home with him. So I am leaving Mrs. Hubbard. She wishes me to say that if you care to have my place as her companion, she will be very pleased to have you. I have been with her for thirteen years and she has always treated me like an equal. She is very considerate and there is practically nothing to do but to exercise the dear little dogs. The salary is thirty-five pounds a year.'"
"But," said Marsh, looking at the envelope in his hand, "the letter is addressed to Miss Marsh. I'd intended to ask you about that; don't they know you're married?"
"No. I haven't told them."
"What a lark!" said Reggie, slapping his knee. "You could go back to Tunbridge Wells, and none of the old frumps would ever know you'd been married at all."
"Why, so I could!" said Nora in a breathless tone. She gave Hornby a strange look and turned toward the window to hide the fact that she had flushed to the roots of her hair.
Her brother gave her a long look.
"Just clear out for a minute, Reg. I want to talk with Nora."
"Right-o!" He disappeared in the direction of the shed.
"Nora, do youwantto clear out?"
"What on earth makes you think that I do?"
"You gave Reg such a look when he mentioned it."
"I'm only bewildered. Tell me, did Frank know anything about this?"
"My dear, how could he?"
"It's most extraordinary; he was talking about my going away only a moment before you came."
"About your going away? But why?"
She realized that she had betrayed herself and kept silent.
"Nora, for goodness' sake tell me if there's anything the matter. Can't you see it's now or never? You're keeping something back from me. I could see it all along, ever since I came. Aren't you two getting on well together?"
"Not very," she said in a low, shamed tone.
"Why in heaven's name didn't you let me know."
"I was ashamed."
"But you just now said he was kind to you."
"I have nothing to reproach him with."
"I tell you I felt there was something wrong. I knew you couldn't be happy with him. A girl like you, with your education and refinement, and a man like him—a hired man! Oh, the whole thing would have been ridiculous if it weren't horrible. Not that he's not a good fellow and as straight as they make them, but—— Well, thank God, I'm here and you've got this chance."
"Eddie, what do you mean?"
"You're not fit for this life. I mean you've got your chance to go back home to England. For God's sake, take it! In six months' time, all you've gone through here will seem nothing but a hideous dream."
The expression of her face was so extraordinary, such a combination of fear, bewilderment, and something that was far deeper than dismay, that he stared at her for a moment without speaking.
"Nora, what's the matter!"
"I don't know," she said hoarsely.
But she did, she did.
At his words, the picture of the little shack—her home now—as it had looked the first time she saw it in all its comfortlessness, its untidy squalor, rose before her eyes. And she saw a lonely man clumsily busying himself about the preparation of an illy-cooked meal, and later sitting smoking in the desolate silence. She saw him go forth to his daily toil with all the lightness gone from his step, to return at nightfall, with a heaviness born of more than mere physical fatigue, to the same bleak bareness.
And she saw herself, back at Tunbridge Wells. No longer the mistress, but the underpaid underling. Eating once more off fine old china, at a table sparkling with silver and glass. But the bread was bitter, the bread of the dependent. And she came and went at another's bidding, and the yoke was not easy. She trod once more, round and round, in that little circle which she knew so well. She used to think thatthe walls would stifle her. How much more would they not stifle her now that she had known this larger freedom?
"I say," said Reggie's voice from the doorway, "here's someone coming to see you."
It was Mrs. Sharp, making her laborious way slowly up the path.
"Why," said Nora, in a low voice, "it's Mrs. Sharp, the wife of our neighbor. Whatever brings her here on foot! She never walks a step if she can help it."
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Sharp," she called.
Mrs. Sharp had apparently come on some sudden impulse. Usually, well as they knew each other by this time, she always made more or less of a toilet before having her husband drive her over. But to-day she had evidently come directly from her work. She wore a battered old skirt and a faded shirt-waist, none too clean. On her head was an old sunbonnet, the strings of which were tied in a hard knot under her fat chin.
"Come right in," said Nora cordially. "Youdolook warm."
"Good afternoon to you, Mrs. Taylor. Yes, I'm all in a perspiration. I've not walked so far—well, goodness alone knows when!"
"This is my brother," said Nora, presenting Eddie.
"Your brother? Isthatwho it is!"
"Why, you seem surprised."
Mrs. Sharp forbore any explanation for the moment. Sinking heavily into the rocking chair, she accepted with a grateful nod the fan that Nora offered her. There was nothing to do but to give her time to recover her breath. Nora and Eddie sat down and waited.
"I was so anxious," Mrs. Sharp at length managed to say, still panting—whether with exhaustion or emotion, Nora could not tell—between her sentences, "I simply couldn't stay indoors—another minute. I went out to see if I—could catch a sight of Sid. And I walked on, and on. And then I saw the rig what's—outside. And it gave me such aturn! I thought it was the inspector. I just had to come—I was that nervous——!"
"But why? Is anything the matter?" asked Nora, completely puzzled.
"You're not going to tell me you don'tknowabout it? When Sid and Frank haven't been talking about anything else since Frank found it?"
"Found it? Found what?"
"The weed," said Mrs. Sharp simply.
"You've got it then," said Marsh, with a slight gesture of his head toward the tablewhere Nora's flowers made a bright spot of color.
"It's worse here, at Taylor's. But we've got it, too."
"What does she mean?" Nora addressed herself to Eddie, abandoning all hope of getting anything out of her friend.
"We can't make out who reported us. It isn't as if we had any enemies," went on Mrs. Sharp gloomily, as if Nora wasn't present, or at least hadn't spoken. "It isn't as if we had any enemies," she repeated. "Goodness knows we've never done anything to anybody."
"Oh, there's always someone to report you. After all, it's not to be wondered at. No one's going to run the risk of letting it get on his own land."
"And she has them in the house as if they were flowers!" exclaimed Mrs. Sharp, addressing the ceiling.
"Eddie, I insist that you tell me what you two are talking about," demanded Nora hotly.
"My dear," said her brother, "these pretty little flowers which you've picked to make your shack look bright and—and homelike, may mean ruin."
"Eddie!"
"You must have heard—why, I remember telling you about it myself—about this mustard,this weed. We farmers in Canada have three enemies to fight: frost, hail and weed."
Mrs. Sharp confirmed his words with a despairing nod of her head.
"We was hailed out last year," she said. "Lost our whole crop. Never got a dollar for it. And now! If we lose it this year, too—why, we might just as well quit and be done with it."
"When it gets into your crop," Marsh explain for Nora's benefit, "you've got to report it. If you don't, one of the neighbors is sure to. And then they send an inspector along, and ifhecondemns it, why you just have to destroy the whole crop, and all your year's work goes for nothing. You're lucky, in that case, if you've got a bit of money laid by in the bank and can go on till next year when the next crop comes along."
"We've only got a quarter-section and we've got five children. It's not much money you can save then."
"But——" began Nora.
"Are they out with the inspector now?" asked Marsh.
"Yes. He came out from Prentice this morning early."
"This will be a bad job for Frank."
"Yes, but he hasn't got the mouths to feedthat we have. I can't think what's to become of us. He can hire out again."
Nora's face flushed.
"I—I wonder why he hasn't told me anything about it. I asked him, only this morning, what was troubling him. I was sure there was something, but he said not," she said sadly.
"Oh, I guess he's always been in the habit of keeping his troubles to himself, and you haven't taught him different yet."
Nora was about to make a sharp retort, but realizing that her good neighbor was half beside herself with anxiety and nervousness, she said nothing. A fact which the unobservant Eddie noted with approval.
"Well," he said as cheerfully as he could, "you must hope for the best, Mrs. Sharp."
"Sid says we've only got it in one place. But perhaps he's only saying it, so as I shouldn't worry. But you know what them inspectors are; they don't lose nothin' by it. It don't matter tothemif you starve all winter!"
Suddenly she began to cry. Great sobs wracked her heavy frame. The big tears rolled down her cheeks. Nora had never seen her give way before, even when she talked of the early hardships she had endured, or of the little one she had lost. She was greatly moved, forthis good, brave woman who had already suffered so much.
"Oh, don't—don't cry, dear Mrs. Sharp. After all, it may all turn out right."
"They won't condemn the whole crop unless it's very bad, you know," Marsh reminded her. "Too many people have got their eyes on it; the machine agent and the loan company."
Mrs. Sharp had regained her self-control in sufficient measure to permit of her speaking. She still kept making little dabs at her eyes with a red bandanna handkerchief, and her voice broke occasionally.
"What with the hail that comes and hails you out, and the frost that kills your crop just when you're beginning to count on it, and now the weed!" She had to stop again for a moment. "I can't bear any more. If we lose this crop, I won't go on. I'll make Sid sell out, and we'll go back home. We'll take a little shop somewhere. That's what I wanted to do from the beginning. But Sid—Sid always had his heart set on farming."
"But you couldn't go back now," said Nora, her face aglow, "you couldn't. You never could be happy or contented in a little shop after the life you've had out here. And think; if you'd stayed back in England, you'd have always been at the beck and call of somebodyelse. And you own your land. You couldn't do that back in England. Every time you come out of your door and look at the growing wheat, aren't you proud to think that it's all yours? I know you are. I've seen it in your face."
"You don't know all that I've had to put up with. When the children came, only once did I have a doctor. All the rest of the times, Sid was all the help I had. I might as well have been an animal! I wish I'd never left home and come to this country, that I do!"
"How can you say that? Look at your children, how strong and healthy they are. And think what a future they will have. Why, they'll be able to help you both in your work soon. You've given them a chance; they'd never have had a chance back home. You know that."
"Oh, it's all very well for them. They'll have it easy, I know that. Easier than their poor father and mother ever had. But we've had to pay for it all in advance, Sid and me. They'll never know what we paid."
"Ah, but don't you see that it is because you were the first?" said Nora, going over to her and laying a friendly hand upon her arm. Mrs. Sharp was, of course, too preoccupied with her own troubles to realize, even if she had known that the question of Nora's return to England had come up, that her friend was doing some special pleading for herself, against herself. But to her brother, who years before had in a lesser degree gone through the same searching experience, the cause of her warmth was clear. He nodded his approval.
"It's bitter work, opening up a new country, I realize that," Nora went on, her eyes dark with earnestness.
Unknown to herself, she had a larger audience, for Hornby and Frank stood silently in the open door. Marsh saw them, and shook his head slightly. He wanted Nora to finish.
"What if it is the others who reap the harvest? Don't you really believe that those who break the ground are rewarded in a way that the later comers never dream of? I do."
"She's right there," broke in Marsh. "I shall never forget, Mrs. Sharp, what I felt when I saw my first crop spring up—the thought that never since the world began had wheat grown on that little bit of ground before. Oh, it was wonderful! I wouldn't go back to England now, to live, for anything in the world. I couldn't breathe."
"You're a man. You have the best of it, and all the credit."
"Not with everyone," said Nora. She fell on her knees beside the elder woman's chair and stroked her work-roughened old hand.
"The outsiders don't know. You mustn't blame them, how could they? It's only those who've lived on the prairie whocouldknow that the chief burden of the hardships of opening up a new country falls upon the women. But the men who are the husbands, they know, and in their hearts they give us all credit."
"I guess they do, Mrs. Sharp," said Marsh earnestly.
Mrs. Sharp smiled gratefully on Nora through her tears.
"Thank you for speaking so kindly to me, my dear. I know that you are right in every blessed thing you've said. You must excuse me for being a bit downhearted for the moment. The fact is, I'm that nervous that I hardly knowwhatI'm saying. But you've done me no end of good."
"That's right." Nora got slowly to her feet. "Sid and Frank will be here in a minute or two, I am sure."
"And you're perfectly right, both of you," Mrs. Sharp repeated. "I couldn't go back and live in England again. If we lose our crop, well, we must hang on some way till next year. We shan't starve, exactly. A person's got to take the rough with the smooth; and take it by and large, it's a good country."
"Ah, now you're talking more like yourself, the self that used to cheer me up when——"
Turning, she saw her husband standing in the doorway.
"Frank!"
He was looking at her with quite a new expression. How long had he been there? Had he heard all she had been saying to Mrs. Sharp, carried away by the emotion aroused by the secret conflict within her own heart? She both hoped and feared that he had.
"Where's Sid?" said Mrs. Sharp, starting to her feet.
"Why, he's up at your place. Hulloa, Ed. Saw you coming along in the rig earlier in the morning. But I was surprised to find Reg here. Didn't recognize him so far away in his store clothes."
"Must have been a pleasant surprise for you," said Hornby with conviction.
"What's happened? Tell me what's happened."
"Mrs. Sharp came on here because she was too anxious to stay at home," Nora explained.
"Oh, you're all right."
"We are?" Mrs. Sharp gave a sobbing gasp of relief.
"Only a few acres got to go. That won't hurt you."
"Thank God for that! And it's goin' to be the best crop we ever had. It's the finest country in the world!" Her face was beaming.
"You'd better be getting back," warned Taylor. "Sid's taken the inspector up to give him some dinner."
"He hasn't!" said Mrs. Sharp indignantly. "If that isn't just like a man." She made a gesture condemning the sex. "It's a mercy there's plenty in the house. But I must be getting along right away," she bustled.
"But you mustn't think of walking all that way back in the hot sun," expostulated Nora. "There's Eddie's rig. Reggie, here, will drive you over."
"Oh, thank you, kindly. I'm not used to walking very much, you know, and I'd be all tuckered out by the time I got back home. Good-by, all. Good afternoon, Mrs. Taylor."
"Good afternoon. Reggie, you won't mind driving Mrs. Sharp back. It's only just a little over a mile."
"Not a bit of it," said Hornby good-naturedly.
"I'll come and help you put the mare in," said Marsh, starting to follow Hornby and Mrs. Sharp down the path.
"I guess it's a relief to you, now you know," he called back to his brother-in-law.
"Terrible. I want to have a talk with you presently, Ed. I'll go on out with him, I guess," he said, turning to his wife.
She nodded silently. She was grateful to him for leaving her alone for a time. They would have much to say to each other a little later.
"Hold on, Ed, I'm coming."
"Right you are!"
He ran lightly down the path where his brother-in-law stood waiting for him.
She stood for a long moment looking down at the innocent-looking little blossoms on her table. And they could cause such heartbreak and desolation, ranking, as engines of destruction, with the frost and the hail! Could make such seasoned and tried women as Mrs. Sharp weep and bring the gray look of apprehension into the eyes of a man like her husband. Those innocent-looking little flowers!
What must he have felt as he saw her arranging them so light-heartedly in her pudding-dish that morning. And yet, rather than mar her pleasure, he had choked back the impulse to speak. Yes, that was like him. For a moment they blurred as she looked at them. She checked her inclination to throw them into the stove, to burn them to ashes so that they could work their evil spells no more. Later on, she woulddo so. But she wanted them there until he returned.
She looked about the little room. Yes, itwaspretty and homelike, deserving all the nice things people said about it. And what a real pleasure she had had in transforming it, from the dreadful little place it was when she first saw it, into what it was now. Not that she could ever have worked the miracle alone.
She smiled sadly to herself. How all her thoughts, like homing pigeons, had the one goal!
And how proud he was of it all. With what delighted, almost childlike interest, he had watched each little change. And how he had acquiesced in every suggestion and helped her to plan and carry out the things she could not have done alone.
She lived again those long winter evenings when, snug and warm, the grim cruelty of the storms shut out, she had read aloud to him while he worked on making the chairs.
How long would it keep its prettiness with no woman's eye to keep its jealous watch on it? The process of reversion to its old desolation would be gradual. The curtains, the bright ribands, the cushions would slowly become soiled and faded. And there would be no one here to renew them. For a moment, the thought of asking Mrs. Sharp to look after them cameinto her mind. But, no. She certainly had enough to do. And, besides—the thought thrilled her with delight—hewould not like having anyone else to touch them!
And she? She would be back in that old life where such simple little things were a commonplace, a matter of course. And what interest would they be to her? She could see herself ripping the ribands from an old hat to tie back curtains for Mrs. Hubbard! Certainly that excellent lady would be astonished if she suggested doing anything of the sort, and small wonder. She hired the proper people to keep her house in order just as she was going to hire her.
She found it in her heart to be sorry for Mrs. Hubbard. She had always had her money. The joy of these little miracles of contrivance had never been hers. She had bought her home. She had never, in all her pampered life, made one.
Home! What a desolating word it could be to the homeless. She knew. Since her far-off childhood, she had never called a place 'home' till now. And just as the word began to take on a new meaning, she was going to leave it! Had anyone told her a few short months ago, on the night that she had first seen what she had inwardly called a hovel, that she wouldever leave it with any faintest feeling of regret, she would have called him mad. Regret! why the thought of leaving tore her very heartstrings.
What if it had been only a few short months that had passed since then? One's life is not measured by the ticking of a clock, but by emotion and feeling. She had crowded more emotion into these few short months than in all the rest of her dull, uneventful life put together.
Fear, terror, hatred, murderous rage, bitter humiliation, she had felt them all within the small compass of these four walls. And greatest of all—why try to deceive her own heart any longer—here she had known love. She had fought off the acknowledgment of this the crowning experience and humiliation as long as she could. She had called on her pride, that pride which had never before failed her. And now, to herself, she had to acknowledge that she was beaten.
They were all against her. Her own brother had spoken, only a few moments ago, of her marriage as horrible. "A girl like you and a hired man!" She could hear him now. Andhehad spoken of her leaving as a matter of course. He couldn't have done it if he had cared. He liked the comforts that a woman brings to a house, the little touches that noman's hand can give, that a woman, even as unskillful as she, brings about instinctively, that was all. Almost any other woman could do as well. He did not prize her for herself.
And she would go back to England and, as Hornby had gleefully said, no one need ever know. She would have a place, on sufferance, in other people's homes. The only change that the year would have made in her life would be that the check in her pocket, safely invested, might save her eventually, when she was too old to serve as a companion, from being dependant on actual charity. And to all outward intents and purposes, the year would be as if it had never been.