Notwithstanding Harris's late hours the household was early astir the following morning. At five o'clock Jim was at work in the stables, feeding, rubbing down, and harnessing his horses, while Allan and his father walked to the engine, where they built a fresh fire and made some minor repairs. Even at this early hour the sun shone brightly, its rays mellowing in a sheen of ground-mist that enveloped the prairie, but there is a tang in the Manitoba morning air even in midsummer, and the men walked briskly through the crisp stubble. A little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and calves voiced insistent demands from their quarters. The Harris farm, like fifty thousand others, rose from its brief hush of rest and quiet to the sounds and energies of another day.
Breakfast, like the meal of the night before, was eaten hurriedly, and at first without conversation, but at length Harris paused long enough to remark, "Riles is talkin' o' goin' West."
"The news might be worse," said Beulah. Riles, although a successful farmer, had the reputation of being grasping and hard to a degree, even in a community where such qualities, in moderation, were by no means considered vices.
Harris paid no attention to his daughter's interruption. It was evident, however, that his mention of Riles had a purpose behind it, and presently he continued:
"Riles has been writin' to the Department of the Interior, and it seems they're openin' a lot of land for homesteadin' away West, not far from the Rocky Mountains. Seems they have a good climate there, and good soil, too."
"I should think Mr. Riles would be content with what he has," said Mary Harris. "He has a fine farm here, and I'm sure both him and his wife have worked hard enough to take it easier now."
"Hard work never killed nobody," pursued the farmer. "Riles is good for many a year yet, and free land ain't what it once was. Those homesteads'll be worth twenty dollars an acre by the time they're proved up."
"I wish I was sure of it—I wouldn't think long," said Allan. "But they say it's awful dry; all right for ranchin', but no good for farmin'."
"Who says that?" demanded his father. "The ranchers. They know which side their bread's buttered on. As long's they can get grazin' land for two cents an acre, or maybe nothin', of course they don't want the homesteader. They tell me the Englishmen and Frenchmen that went out into that country when us Canadians settled in Manitoba have more cattle now than they can count—they measure 'em by acres, Riles says."
Breakfast and Harris's speech came to an end simultaneously, and the subject was dropped for the time. In a few minutes Jim had his team hitched to the tank wagon in the yard. The men jumped aboard, and the wagon rattled down the road to where the engine and ploughs sat in the stubble-field.
"What notion's this father's got about Riles, do you suppose, mother?" asked Beulah, as the two women busied themselves with the morning work in the kitchen.
"Dear knows," said her mother wearily. "I hope he doesn't take it in his head to go out there too."
"Who, Dad? Oh, he wouldn't do that. He's hardly got finished with the building of this house, and you know for years he talked and looked forward to the building of the new house. His heart's quite wrapped up in the farm here. I wish he'd unwrap it a bit and let it peek out at times."
"I'm not so sure. I'm beginning to think it's the money that's in the farm your father's heart is set on. If the money was to be made somewhere else his heart would soon shift."
"Mother!" exclaimed the girl. In twenty years it was the first word approaching disloyalty she had heard from her mother's lips, and she could hardly trust her ears. It was nothing for Beulah to criticize her father; that was her daily custom, and she pursued it with the whole frankness of her nature. But her mother had always defended, sometimes mildly chiding, but never admitting either weakness or injustice on the part of John Harris.
"Well, I just can't stand it much longer," said the mother, the emotions which she had so long held in check overcoming her. "Here I've slaved and saved until I'm an—an old woman, and what better are we for it? We've better things to eat and more things to wear and a bigger house to keep clean, and your father thinks we ought to be satisfied. But he isn't satisfied himself. He's slaving harder than ever, and now he's got this notion about going West. Oh, you'll see it will come to that. He knows our life isn't complete, and he thinks more money will complete it. All the experience of twenty years hasn't taught him any better."
Beulah stood aghast at this outburst, and when her mother paused and looked at her, and she saw the unbidden wells of water gathering in the tender eyes, the girl could no longer restrain herself. With a cry she flung her arms about her mother's neck, and for a few moments the two forgot their habitual restraint and were but naked souls mingling together.
"It's a shame," exclaimed Beulah at length. "We're not living; we're just existing. When I get among people that are really living—like the Grants, over there—you don't know how mortified and mean I feel. And it's not that alone—it's the sense of loss, the sense that life is going by and I'm not making the best of it. You know we are missing thereal thing; we are just living on the husks, and father is so blind he thinks the husks are the grain itself."
"Your father is hungry, too," said the mother. "Hungry—hungry, and he thinks that more land, more money, more success, will fill him. And in the meantime he's forgetting the things that would satisfy—the love that was ours, the little devo—Oh, child, what am I saying? What an unfaithful creature I am! You must forget, Beulah, you must forget these words—words of shame they are!"
"The shame is his," declared the girl, defiantly, "and I won't stand this nonsense about homesteading again—I just won't stand it. If he says anything more about it I'll—I'll fly off, that's what I'll do. And I've a few remarks for him about Riles that won't keep much longer. The old badger—he's at the bottom of all this."
"You mustn't quarrel with your father, dearie, you mustn't do that."
"I'm not going to quarrel with him, but I'm going to say some things that need saying. And if it comes to a show-down, and he must go—well, he must, but you and I will stay with the old farm, won't we, mother?"
But the mother's thought now was for quelling the storm in the turbulent heart of her daughter. Beulah's nature was not one to lend itself to passive submission, nor yet passive resistance. She was the soul of loyalty, but with that loyalty she combined a furious intolerance of things as they should not be. She had not yet reached the philosophic age, but she was old enough to value life, and to know that what she called the real things were escaping here. At night, as she looked up at the myriad stars spangling the heavens, the girl's heart was filled with an unutterable yearning; a sense of restriction, of limitation, of loss—a sense that somewhere lay a Purpose and a Plan, and that only by becoming part of that Plan could life be lived to the fullest. Her mother was of a different nature, not less brave, but more resigned; content to fill, without question, the niche to which fate assigned her; accepting conditions as a matter of course. Yet at times she had inklings of those deeper questions which arose in persistent interrogations before her child, and she guessed that if Beulah once became convinced that she saw the Plan, not all her loyalty could dissuade her from following it. So she strove to control the sudden outburst in her own heart lest the fire lighted in Beulah's should break forth in conflagration.
"There, there now," she said, gently stroking her daughter's hair. "Let us forget this, and remember how much we have to be thankful for. We have our health, and our home, and the bright sunshine, and—I declare," she interrupted, catching a glimpse of something through the window, "if the cows haven't broken from the lower pasture and are all through the oat-field! You'll have to take Collie and get them back, somehow, or bring them up to the corral."
Perhaps it was part of the Plan that the diversion should come at that moment, but the rebellion in Beulah's heart was by no means suppressed. Pulling a sun-bonnet upon her head she called the dog, which came leaping upon her with boisterous affection, and hurried down the path to the field where the cows stood almost lost in a jungle of green oats. She soon located the breach in the fence, and, with the help of the dog, quickly turned the cows toward it. But alack! just as victory seemed assured a rabbit was frightened from its hiding-place in the green oats, and sailed forth in graceful bounds across the pasture. The dog, of course, concluded that the capture of the rabbit was of much more vital importance to the Harris homestead than driving any number of stupid cattle, and darted across the field in pursuit, wasting his breath in sharp, eager yelps as he went. Whereupon the cows turned outward again, not boisterously nor insolently, but with a calm persistence that steadily wore out the girl's strength and patience. They would not move a foot toward the pasture unless she drove them; they would move only one at a time; as she drove one the others pushed farther into the oat-field, and when she turned to pursue them the one she had already driven followed at her heels. The sun was hot, the oats were rank, the wild buckwheat tripped her as she ran; her appeals to the dog, now seated on a knoll looking somewhat foolishly for the rabbit which had given him the slip, and her commands to the cattle alike fell on unheeding ears. She was in no joyous mood at best, and the perverseness of things aggravated her beyond endurance. Her callings to the cattle became more and more tearful, and presently ended in a sob.
"There now, Beulah, don't worry; we will have them in a minute," said a quiet voice, and looking about she found Jim almost at her elbow, his omnipresent smile playing gently about his white teeth. "I was down at the creek filling the tank, when I saw you had a little rebellion on your hands, and I thought reinforcements might be in order."
"You might have hollered farther back," she said, half reproachfully, but there was a light of appreciation in her eye when she dared raise it toward him. "I'm afraid I was beginning to be very—foolish."
She tripped again on the treacherous buckwheat, but he held her arm in a strong grasp against which the weight of her slim figure seemed but as a feather blown against a wall. The life of the plains had bred in Beulah admiration for physical strength, and she acknowledged his firm grip with an admiring glance. Then they set about their task, but the sober-eyed cows had no thought of being easily deprived of their feast, and it was some time before they were all turned back into the pasture and the fence temporarily repaired behind them.
"I can't thank you enough," Beulah was saying. "You just keep piling one kindness on top of another. Say, Jim, honest, what makes you do it?"
But at that moment the keen blast of an engine whistle came cutting through the air—a long clear note, followed by a series of toots in rapid succession.
"I guess they're running short of water," said Jim. "I must hustle." So saying he ran to the ford of the creek where the tank-wagon was still standing, and in a minute his strong frame was swaying back and forth to the rhythmic clanking of the pump. But it was some minutes before the tank was full, and again the clarion call of the whistle came insistently through the air. Hastily dragging up the hose, he uttered a sharp command to the horses; their great shoulders socketed into the collars; the tugs tightened, quivering with the strain; the wheels grated in the gravel, and the heavily-loaded wagon swung its way up the bank of the coulee.
Meanwhile other things were transpiring. Harris had returned from town the night before with the fixed intention of paying an early visit to the Farther West. He and Riles had spent more time than they should breasting the village bar, while the latter drew a picture of rising colour of the possibilities which the new lands afforded. Harris was not a man who abused himself with liquor, and Riles, too, rarely forgot that indulgence was expensive, and had to be paid for in cash. Moreover, Allan occasioned his father some uneasiness. He was young, and had not yet learned the self-control to be expected in later life. More than once of late Allan had crossed the boundary of moderation, and John Harris was by no means indifferent to the welfare of his only son. Indeed, the bond between the two was so real and so intense that Harris had never been able to bring himself to contemplate their separation, and the boy had not even so much as thought of establishing a home of his own. Harris sometimes wondered at this, for Allan was popular in the neighbourhood, where his good appearance, strength, and sincere honesty made him something of a favourite. The idea of homesteading together assured further years of close relationship between father and son, and the younger man fell in whole-heartedly with it.
"We'll hurry up the ploughing, Dad, and run West before the harvest is on us," Allan said as they rode home through the darkness. "We can file on our land and get back for the fall work. Then we will go out for the winter and commence our duties. The only question is, Can they grow anything on that land out there?"
"That's what they used to ask when we came to Manitoba," said his father. "And there were years when I doubted the answer myself. Some parts were froze out year after year, and they're among the best in the country now, and never think of frost. The same thing'll happen out there, and we might as well be in the game."
To do him justice, it was not altogether the desire for more wealth that prompted Harris, It was the call of new land; the call he had heard and answered in the early eighties; the old appetite that had lain dormant for a quarter of a century, but was still in his blood, waiting only a suggestion of the open spaces, a whiff from dry grass on the wind-swept plains, the zigzag of a wagon-trail streaking afar into the horizon, to set it tingling again. The thought of homesteading revived rich old memories—memories from which the kindly years had balmed the soreness and the privation and the hardship, and left only the joy and the courage and the comradeship and the conquering. It was the call of the new land, which has led the race into every clime and flung its flag beneath every sky, and Harris's soul again leaped to the summons.
So this morning father and son were especially anxious that not a moment of their ploughing weather should be lost, and it was particularly aggravating when the hired man's long delay resulted in a bubbling sputter followed by a dry hiss from the injector, warning the engineer that the water-tank was empty. Allan shot an anxious glance down the road to the coulee, but the water team was not in sight. Seizing the whistle cord, he sent its peremptory summons into the air. Harris looked up from the ploughs, and the two exchanged frowns of annoyance. But the water stood high in the glass, and Allan did not reduce the speed, although he cut the link action another notch to get every ounce of advantage from the expansion. Down the field they went, the big iron horse shouldering itself irresistibly along, while the ploughs left their dozen furrows of moist, fresh soil, and the blackbirds hopped gingerly behind. But the water went down, down in the glass, and still there was no sign of a further supply. Allan again cut the air with his whistle, and at length, with a muttered imprecation, he slammed the throttle shut and jumped from the engine.
His father ran up from the ploughs. "What do you think of that?" the younger man exclaimed. "Jim must have had trouble. Bogged, or broke a tongue, or something. Never fell down like that before."
"Keep a keen eye on your fire," said Harris, "and I'll go down and see what's wrong with him." So the farmer strode off across the ploughed field. The delay annoyed him, and he felt unreasonably cross with Travers. As he plodded on through the heavy soil his temper did not improve, and he was talking to himself by the time he came upon Travers, giving his team their wind at the top of the hill leading up from the creek.
"What kept you?" he demanded when he came within a rod of the wagon."Here's the outfit shut down waiting for water, and you—"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Harris—"
"That ain't what I asked you. You can't make steam with sorrow. What have you been foolin' about?"
"I haven't been fooling. As to what delayed me—well, you're delaying me now. Better jump on and ride up with me."
"So you won't tell me, eh? You think you can do what you like with my team and my time, and it's none of my business. We'll see whose business it is."
Harris came threateningly toward the wagon, but was met only by the imperturbable smile of his hired man. He thrust his foot on a spoke of the wheel and prepared to spring on to the tank, but at that moment the horses stirred and his foot slipped. Seeing that the farmer was about to fall Travers seized him by the collar of his shirt, but in so doing he leaned and lost his own balance, when the weight of the falling man came upon him, and the two tumbled on to the grass in each other's arms.
Allan, having satisfied himself that the engine would take no harm, had followed his father, and came over the crest of the ridge above the coulee just in time to see Jim apparently strike his employer and the two struggling on the grass together. In an instant the young man's hot blood was in his head; he rushed forward, and just as Jim had risen to his knees he struck him a stinging blow in the face that measured him again in the grass.
It was only for an instant. Travers sprang to his feet, a red line slowly stretching down his cheek as he did so. Allan came upon him swinging a tremendous blow at the jaw; but Jim guarded skilfully, and answered with a smash from the shoulder straight on the chin, which laid his adversary's six feet prostrate before him.
Allan rose slowly, sober but determined, and for a moment it looked as though a battle royal were to be fought on the spot, both men strong, lean, rigid, hard as iron, and quick as steel; Allan angry, careful, furious; Jim calm, confident, and still smiling. But Harris rushed between them and seized his son by the arms.
"Stop it, Allan; stop, I say. You mustn't fight. Jim didn't hit me—I'll say that for him. Now quit it. As for you" (turning to Jim), "I'm sorry for this, but you have yourself to blame. I'll give you one more chance to answer me—what kept you?"
"I don't choose to answer," was Jim's reply, spoken in the most casual tone. His eye was rapidly closing where Allan's blow had fallen on it, but his white teeth still glistened behind a smile.
"All right," said Harris. "You can go to the house and tell Mrs. Harris to pay you what is coming." And the farmer climbed on to the wagon and took the reins himself.
When Jim entered the kitchen he was received with astonishment byMrs. Harris and Beulah. "Why, whatever has happened?" they exclaimed."Has there been an accident? You're hurt!"
But Jim smiled, and said: "No accident at all. I have merely decided to go homesteading." And he went up the stairs to pack his belongings.
Harris and Allan drove straight to the engine, never looking back to see what became of the hired man. On the way the farmer explained to his son what had taken place; that words had passed between them, but no blows had been struck, until Allan appeared on the scene.
"Well, if that's the way of it, I'm sorry I hit him," said the young man, frankly, "and when I see him I'll tell him so. I plugged him a good one, didn't I?—though, to be honest, he was hardly on his feet. But he sure landed me a stem-winder on the chin," he continued, ruefully rubbing that member, "so I guess we're about even."
"He might 've broke your neck," said Harris. "You're too hot-headed, both of you…I can't make out what got into Jim, that he wouldn't answer a civil question. Jim was a good man, too." Perhaps the disturbing suggestion entered Harris's mind that the question had been none too civil, and he was really beginning to feel that after all Jim might be the aggrieved party. But he crushed down such mental sedition promptly. "It don't matter how good a man he was," he declared, "as long as I pay the piper I'm goin' to call the tune."
"It puts us up against it for a water-man, though," said Allan, thoughtfully.
"So it does," admitted Harris, who up to that moment had not reflected that his hasty action in dismissing Travers would result in much more delay than anything else that had occurred. "Well, we'll have to get somebody else. We'll manage till noon, and then you better ride over to Grant's or Mormon's. They'll be able to lend a man or one of the boys for a day or two." It was significant that although Harris was planning a considerable venture with Riles, when he wanted a favour his thought instinctively turned to his other neighbours, Grant and Morrison.
At noon Jim's chair was vacant, and the family sat down to dinner amid a depressing silence. No mention was made of the morning's incident until the meal was well advanced, when Harris, feeling that he ought in some way to introduce the subject, said: "Is Jim gone?"
"Yes, he's gone," blazed Beulah. "You didn't expect he'd wait to kiss you good-bye, did you?"
"One in the family is enough for that treatment," put in Allan, whose swollen chin and stiff neck still biassed him against Travers.
"He didn't, either. And if he did it's none of your business, you big—"; she looked her brother straight in the face, her swollen eyes telling their own story, and repeated deliberately, "you big coward."
Allan bit his lip. "You're about the only person, Beulah, that could say that and get off with whole skin. I suppose he told you I hit him before he was on his feet."
"Well, he didn't. He didn't say you hit him at all, but he couldn't deny it, so we knew the truth. And we knew you must have taken some mean advantage, or you'd never have got near enough to leave a mark on him."
"Jim's quite a hero, all right. It's too bad he's gone."
"It's a good job he's gone," said Harris. "By the way Beulah talks things have gone far enough. I don't want my daughter marrying a farmer."
"Her grandmother's daughter did," said Mary Harris.
"Yes, I know, but things are different now. I look for something better for Beulah."
It was characteristic of Harris, as of thousands of others, that, although a farmer himself, he looked for "something better" for his daughter. He was resigned to Allan being a farmer; his intimate, daily relationship with his son shrank from, any possibility of separation. But for his daughter—no. He had mapped out no career for her; she might marry a doctor, lawyer, merchant, tradesman, even a minister, but not a farmer. It is a peculiarity of the agriculturist that, among all professions, he holds his own in the worst repute. As a class he has educated himself to believe that everybody else makes an easy living off the farmer, and, much as he may revile the present generation for doing so, he is anxious that his children should join in the good picking. In later years has come a gradually broadening conception that farming, after all, calls for brain as well as muscle, and that the man who can wrestle a successful living from Nature has as much right to hold up his head in the world as the experimenter in medicine or the lawyer playing hide-and-seek with Justice through the cracks in the Criminal Code. Herein is a germ of the cityward migration: the farmer himself is looking for "something better" for his children.
"Jim was a good man," persisted his wife. "Don't you think you were—well, perhaps, a little hasty with him?"
Harris sat back. It was his wife's business to agree. For twenty years and more she had been faithful in the discharge of that duty. That she should suggest an opinion out of harmony with his indicated a lack of discipline, not very serious, perhaps, but a seed which, if permitted to flourish, might develop to dangerous proportions.
"So you're goin' to take his part, too? It's a strange thing if I can't handle my hired help without advice from the house."
Mary flushed at the remark. Any open quarrel with her husband, especially before the children—for she still thought of the man and woman to her left and right as "the children"—was more painful to her than, any submission could have been. It would be so much easier to change the subject, to follow the line of least resistance, and forget the incident as quickly as possible. That had been her constant policy after the first few years of their married life. At first there had been troubles and difficulties, but she had gradually adjusted herself to her niche, and their lives had run smoothly together because she never interrupted the current of his. But of late the conviction had been coming home to her that some time, somewhere, she must make a stand. It was all very well meekly to fall in line as long as only her own happiness was concerned, but if the future of her children should be at stake, or if the justice of their dealings with others should be the issue, then she would have to fight, and fight it out to a finish. And, quite unbidden, a strange surge of defiance welled in her when her husband so frankly told her to mind her own business.
"I was under the impression we were managing this farm together, you and I, John," she said, very calmly, but with a strange ring in her voice. "When we came West I understood it was to buildourhome. I didn't know it was just to beyourhome."
The look of surprise with which Harris greeter her words was absolutely genuine. A hot, stinging retort sprang to his lips, but by a sudden effort he suppressed it. His wife's challenge, quiet, unruffled, but with evidence of unbending character behind it, in some way conjured something out of the past, and he saw her again, the greying locks restored to their youthful glory and the careworn cheek abloom with the colour of young maidenhood as they had been in the gathering shadows that night when they swore to build their own home, and live their own lives, and love each other, always, only, for ever and ever…And yet, to let her defiance go unchecked, to have his authority challenged before his own children—it would be the beginning of dissolution, the first crumblings of collapse.
"We will talk about that some other time, Mary," he said. "If Jim had answered my question fairly, as he had a right to, instead of beatin' around the bush, I might 've let him off. But when I wanted to know what kept him he simply parried me, makin' a fool of me and rubbin' it in with that infernal smile of his."
"So that's what started it!" exclaimed Beulah. "Well, I'll tell you what kept him, if he wouldn't. The cattle got into the oats through a break in the fence, and I couldn't get them out, and the dog went ki-yi-ing over the prairie after a rabbit, and just as I was beginning to—to—condense over it Jim came up and saved the situation. What if he did keep your old engine waiting? There are more important things than ploughing."
"Aha!" said Harris, knowingly. "Well, I guess it's just as well it happened as it did. Jim was gettin' altogether too good at runnin' at your heels."
"That's all the thanks he gets for working late and early, like no other hired man in the district. All right. You and Allan can milk the cows to-night, for I won't—see?"
Harris was accustomed to his daughter's frankness, and as a rule paid little regard to it. He was willing enough to be flayed, in moderation, by her keen tongue; in fact, he look a secret delight in her unrestrained sallies, but that was different from defiance. He could, and did, submit to any amount of cutting repartee, and felt a sort of pride in her vigour and recklessness, but he had no notion of countenancing open mutiny, even from Beulah.
"We'll talk about that some other time, too," he said. "And you'll milk the cows tonight as usual."
Beulah opened her lips as though to answer, but closed them again, arose, and walked out of the kitchen. For her the controversy was over; the die was cast. Her nature admitted of any amount of disputation up to a certain point, but when the irresistible force crashed into the immovable object she wasted no wind on words. With her war was war.
Harris finished his meal with little relish. His daughter was very, very much to him, and an open rupture with her was among the last things to be imagined…Still, she must learn that the liberty of speech he allowed her did not imply equal liberty of action…His wife, too, had behaved most incredibly. After all, perhaps he had been hasty with Jim. No doubt he would meet the boy in Plainville or somewhere in the district before long, and he would then have a frank little talk with him. And he would say nothing more of the incident to his wife. He was beginning to feel almost amiable again when recollection of Beulah, and the regard which she was evidently cultivating toward Travers, engulfed his returning spirits like a cold douche. It must not come to that, whatever happened.
"You better get over to Grant's, Allan, if you're goin'," he said as he left the table. "I've some shears to change that'll keep me busy until you get back."
An hour later Allan returned, accompanied by George Grant, and operations in the field were resumed. Father and son were both anxious to make up for lost time, and they worked that night long after their usual hour for quitting. Just as the sun was setting George Grant left a last tank of water at the end of the field and started for home. As he passed the buildings he saw Beulah in the garden, and leaned over the fence for a short talk with her. The girl was thankful the gathering dusk hid the colour of her cheeks. George continued on his way, but still the steady panting of the engine, louder now, it seemed, than during the day, came pulsing down on the calm night air. The long twilight dragged on; the light faded out of the east and south, and at last shone like the spread of a crimson fan only in the north-west. It was quite dark when the two men, tired and dusty, came in at the close of their long day's labour.
The table was set for two. "We have had our supper," Mary explained."We thought we wouldn't wait any longer."
"That's all right," said Harris, trying to be genial. But he found it harder than he had supposed. He was very tired, and somewhat embarrassed following the unpleasantness at noon. He had no thought of apologizing, either to wife or daughter; on the contrary, he intended to make it quite clear to them that they had been at fault in the matter, but he would take his time about reopening the subject. By waiting a day or two before reproving them he would show that he was acting in a judicial spirit, and without any influence of temper. Still…it was provoking that there should be nothing to talk about.
When supper was finished Allan went to the stables to give final attention to the horses—a duty that had always fallen to Jim—and Harris, after a few minutes' quiet rest in his chair, began to remove his boots.
"The cows are not milked, John," said his wife. She tried to speak in a matter-of-fact way, but the tremor in her voice betrayed the import of the simple statement.
Harris paused with a boot half unlaced. While his recollection of Beulah's defiance was clear enough, it had not occurred to him that the girl actually would stand by her guns. He had told her that she would milk the cows tonight as usual, and he had assumed, as a matter of course, that she would do so. He was not accustomed to being disobeyed.
"Where's Beulah?" he demanded.
"I guess she's in her room."
Harris laced up his boot. Then he started upstairs.
"Don't be too hard on her, John," urged his wife, with a little catch in her voice.
"I won't be too hard on anybody," he replied curtly. "It's a strange thing you wouldn't see that she did as she was told. I suppose I have to plug away in the field until dark and then come in and do another half-day's work because my women folk are too lazy or stubborn to do it themselves."
If this outburst was intended to crush Mary Harris it had a very different effect. She seemed to straighten up under the attack; the colour came back to her cheeks, and her eyes were bright and defiant.
"John Harris," she said. "You know better than to say that your women folk are either lazy or stubborn, but there's a point where imposition, even the imposition of a husband, has to stop, and you've reached that point. You didn't have to stay in the field until dark. There's another day coming, and the ploughing'll keep. It isn't like the harvest. It was just your own contrariness that kept you there. You fired the best man you ever had to-day, in a fit of temper, and now you're trying to take it out on us."
Harris looked at her for a moment; then, without speaking, he continued up the stairs. The difficulties of his position were increasing; it was something new to be assailed from the bosom of his own family. He felt that he was being very unfairly used, but he had no intention of shrinking from his duty as a husband and father, even if its discharge should bring pain to all of them.
He found Beulah in her room, ostensibly reading.
"Why are the cows not milked?" he demanded.
"I thought I made it clear to you at noon that they wouldn't be milked by me," she answered, "and there didn't seem to be anybody else hankering for the job."
"Beulah," he said, trying to speak calmly, "don't you think this nonsense has gone far enough?"
"Too far," she agreed. "But you started it—let's see you stop it."
"Beulah," he said, with rising anger, "I won't allow you to talk to me like that. Remember I'm your father, and you've a right to do as you're told. Haven't I given you everything—given you a home, and all that, and are you goin' to defy me in my own house?"
"I don't want to defy you," she answered, "but if you're going to let your temper run away with you, you can put on the brakes yourself. And as for all you've done for me—maybe I'm ungrateful, but it doesn't look half so big from my side of the fence."
"Well, what more do you want?" he demanded.
"For one thing, I wouldn't mind having a father."
"What do you mean? Ain't I your father?"
"No!" she cried. "No! No! There's no father here. You're just the boss—the foreman on the farm. You board with mother and me. We see you at meal-times. We wouldn't see you then if you didn't have to make use of us in that way. If you have a spare hour you go to town. You're always so busy, busy, with your little things, that you have no time for big things."
"I didn't know it was an offence to be busy," he answered. "It's work that makes money, and I notice you can spend your share. You're never so haughty about me workin' when you want a ten-dollar bill for somethin'. Work may be a disgrace all right from your point of view, but money isn't, and in this country you don't get much of one without the other."
"Now, Dad," she protested. "You're taking me up wrong. I don't think work is a disgrace, and I'm willing to work as hard as anyone, but I do think it's a shame that you should be thinking only of work, work, work, when you don't need to. I'd like to see you think about living instead of working. And we're not living—not really living, you know—we're just existing. Just making little twenty-four hour cycles that don't get us anywhere, except older. Don't you see what I mean? We're living all in the flesh, like an animal. When you feed the horses and put them under shelter you can't do anything more for them. But when you feed and shelter your daughter you have only half provided for her, and it's the other half, the starving half, that refuses to starve any longer."
"I'm not kickin' on religion, if that's what you mean, Beulah," he said. "You get goin' to church as often as you like, and—"
"Oh, it's not religion," she protested. "At least, it's not just going to church, and things like that, although I guess it is a more real religion, if we just understood. What are we here for, anyway? Come now, you're a man of sense and experience, and you must have settled that question in your own mind long ago. What's the answer?"
"Well, I'm here just now to tell you those cows are to be milked before—"
"Yes, dodge it! You've dodged that question so long you daren't face it. But there must be an answer somewhere, or there wouldn't be the question. There's Riles, now; he doesn't know there is such a question. He takes it for granted we're here to grab money. And then, there's Grants. They know there is such a question, and I'm sure that to some extent they've answered it. You know, I like them, but I never go into their house that I don't feel out of place. I feel like they have something that I haven't—something that makes them very rich and shows me how very poor I am. And it's embarrassing to feel poor among rich folks. Why, to-night George Grant stopped on his way home to say a word to me, and what do you suppose he said? Nothing about the weather, or the neighbours, or the crops. He asked me what I thought of the Venezuelan treaty. Of course I'd never heard of such a thing, but I said I hoped it would be for the best, or something like that, but I was ashamed—so ashamed he might have seen it in the dusk. You see, they're living—and we're existing."
If Beulah hoped by such argument to persuade her father, or even to influence him, she was doomed to disappointment. Harris listened to her patiently enough at first, but the conviction dawned upon him that she had been reading some silly nonsense that had temporarily distorted her young mind. Such foolishness, if allowed to take root, might have disastrous results. His daughter must learn to centre her mind on her work, and not be led away by whimsical notions that had no place in a busy life.
"You're talking a good deal of nonsense, Beulah," he said. "When you get older these questions won't worry you. In the meantime, your duty is to do as you're told. Right now that means milk the cows. I'll give you five minutes to get started."
Harris went to his room. A little later Beulah, with a light cloak about her shoulders and a suitcase in her hand, slipped quietly down the front stairs and out into the night.
At the foot of the garden Beulah paused irresolute, the suit-case swinging gently in her hand. She had made no plans for the decisive step events of the day had forced upon her, but the step itself she felt to be inevitable. She was not in love with Jim Travers; she had turned the whole question over in her mind that afternoon, weighing it with judicial impartiality, supposing all manner of situations to try out her own emotions, and she had come to the conclusion that Travers was merely an incident in her life, a somewhat inspiring incident, perhaps, but an incident none the less. The real thing—the vital matter which demanded some exceptional protest—was the narrow and ever narrowing horizon of her father, a horizon bounded only by material gain. Against this narrowing band of outlook her vigorous spirit, with its dumb, insistent stretchings forth to the infinite, rebelled. It was not a matter of filial duty; it was not a matter of love; to her it was a matter of existence. She saw her ideals dimly enough at best, and she would burst every cord of affection and convention rather than allow them to be submerged in the grey, surrounding murk of materialism.
Perhaps it was custom and the subtle pullings of association that drew her feet down the path across the bench to the edge of the stream that gurgled gently in the still night. She stood on the gravel by the water's edge, packed firm by the wagon-wheels of twenty-five years, and watched her image as it swayed gently in the smoothly running current. There was no moon, but the stars shone down in their midnight brilliance, and the water lay white and glistening against the black vagueness of the bushy banks. She stooped and let it fondle her fingers. It was warm and smooth…But it was shallow at the ford…Farther up it was quite deep… The stars blinked a strange challenge from the sky, as though to say, "Here is the tree of knowledge, if you dare to drink thereof."
At length she turned her back on the stream and retraced her steps up the path. The house loomed very sombre and still in the quiet night. A light shone dimly from her father's window. At intervals a deep, contented sighing came from the cows in the barnyard. She took the path past the house and down to the corral, where she paused, her ear arrested by the steady drone of milking. A lantern sitting on the black earth, cast a little circle of light, and threw a docile cow in dreadful silhouette against the barn. And by that dim light Beulah discerned the bent form of her mother, milking.
"Mother, this is too much!" the girl exclaimed.
Her mother started and looked up. "You're leaving us, Beulah?" she asked. There was no reproach in her voice, nor even surprise, but a kind of quiet sorrow. "I couldn't let the poor brutes suffer," she explained.
"Yes, I'm leaving," said Beulah. "I can't stand it any longer."
The mother sighed. "I've seen it coming for some time," she said, at length. "I suppose it can't be helped."
"You're so passive," returned the girl, with a touch of impatience. "You make me want to fight. Of course it can be helped, but it can't be helped by always giving in."
"Your father has met one of his own mettle at last," said the mother, and the girl fancied she detected a note of pride, but whether of father, or daughter, or both, she could only guess. "Well, it's all very sad. Your father is a good man, Beulah…I should send you back to your bed, but somehow I can't. I—I don't blame you, Beulah."
She had finished the last cow. Beulah helped with the pails of milk, and the two women went back to the house together. When Mary had washed her hands she took her daughter's face between her palms and kissed her on the cheeks. Slowly Beulah's arms stole about her neck, and it took all the steel in her nature to prevent surrender.
"It's not you I'm going from," she managed to say. "You understand that, don't you? I'll write to you often, and we'll surely meet before long…But I've just got to. There's no other way out."
"Stay till morning, Beulah. Your father may be disposed to give and take a little then, and you'll do the same, won't you?…Oh, my girl, don't break up our home like this!"
"You can't break up what you haven't got. Aside from you, why should I call this place home? I work here, and get my board and clothes. Well, I can work other places, and get my board and clothes. If I've got to be a cog in a money-making machine, I will at least choose the machine."
"What plans have you made? Where are you going?"
"Haven't made any plans, and don't know where I'm going. But I'm going. At present that's enough. The plans will come along as they're needed."
"Have you any money?" asked the mother, with a brisk effort at cheerfulness. She was already planning for her daughter in the new world she was about to enter.
"Enough to start me. That's all I need. I can earn more. It's not work I'm afraid of, although I suppose father won't be able to see it that way. He'll put all this down to laziness and obstinacy. It's neither. It's just a plain human craving tolive."
"I sometimes wonder whether I'll be able to stand it through to the end," her mother whispered, somewhat fearfully, as though frightened by the admission. "I've—I've seen it coming with you, and I can't help feeling that perhaps this is only the beginning."
"Oh, mother, if you should!" cried the girl. "That would do it—that would open his eyes. He'd see then that there is something in the world besides wheat and cows, after all. You know, I think he's in a kind of trance. He's mesmerized by wheat. It was so necessary in those first years, when he was fighting against actual starvation, that it has become a kind of mania. Nothing short of some great shock will bring him out of it. If you would come—if you would only come too, things would be different."
"But I couldn't do that," said the mother, after a silence, and as though speaking with herself. "He's my husband, Beulah. You don't understand."
They talked then, in secret, sorrowful confidence, of many things, things for their ears only, and the grey was returning in the northern sky when the girl again left the house, and this time swung resolutely down the road that led to Plainville. Her heart was now at rest, even at peace. In the sacred communion of that last hour she had come to see something of her mother's problem and sacrifice; and although she was going out into the world alone, she felt that somewhere, some time, was a solution that would reunite the broken family and tune their varying chords in harmony. The North star shone very brightly amid the myriad finer points of light that filled the heavens. She raised her face to the cold rays. The stars had always a strange fascination for her. Their illimitable distances, their infinite number, their ordered procession—all spelled to her a Purpose—a Purpose that was bigger than wheat and land and money, a Purpose that was life, the life for which she groped vaguely but bravely in the darkness.
From an unhappy sleep in his room upstairs John Harris was awakened by the whine of the cream separator. A quiet smile stole across his strong, still handsome face. "Beulah has decided to be sensible," he whispered to himself.
***
In the morning the Harris household was early as usual. The farmer and his son gave their attention to the horses while Mary prepared breakfast, and it was not until they were seated at the table that Harris noticed his daughter's absence.
"Where's Beulah?" he demanded.
"I don't know," his wife replied.
"Ain't she up yet?"
"I don't know."
Harris rose from the table and went upstairs. He entered his daughter's room without knocking. The bed had not been slept in, and a strange apprehension suddenly tightened about his chest. He returned quickly to the kitchen.
"Mary," he said, "I want to know where Beulah is."
"I can't tell you where she is, John. She left here last night."
"Left here? Do you mean that she has run away?"
"Not just that, perhaps, but she has gone, and I'm not looking for her back for a while." The mother's voice was dry, and she talked in the restraint of subdued emotion.
"And you knew she was going?"
"I knew before she left. I didn't—"
"No. You didn't think it was worth mentioning to me. Just a matter we could talk about any time. I suppose you thought I wouldn't care."
"Well, you didn't seem to care very much, John. You gave your orders and went to bed. Beulah could obey or get out. You might have known she had enough of your own spirit to soon settle that question. She settled it just as you would have settled it if you had been in her place."
"Oh, of course, I'm to blame for the whole thing," said Harris, and his throat was thick as he spoke. His daughter was very dear to him, and that she would leave home had never entered his head. Why should she? Wasn't he a good father? Didn't he give her a good home, with plenty to eat and wear, and a little money to spend from time to time, and no questions asked? What more could a man do than that? Already his heart was crying out for his daughter—the cry of broken strings which never knew their strength until they broke. But to show any emotion, or to express regret for anything he had done, meant surrender, and if there was one thing John Harris could not do it was surrender. Not that he felt he had done anything wrong, or even imprudent; he was sincerely sorry for what had happened, but not for his part in it. And, lest gentleness should be mistaken for weakness, he clothed his real feelings in sharp words to his wife.
"Of course, you must take her part. I suppose you advised her to go. It was an awful thing for me to tell her she must do her work, but a small thing for her to run away. Well, I hope she likes it. If she thinks I'm going to hitch up a buggy and go chasing around the neighbourhood, begging her to come back, she's mistaken. She's gone of her own free will, and she can come back of the same, or not at all."
"I wouldn't look for her back too soon," remarked Allan. "Looks to me as though this thing had all been figured out ahead. Jim went yesterday morning; Beulah goes last night. Just a chance if they ain't married by this time."
"So that's it, is it?" exclaimed Harris, jumping up from his untouched breakfast. There was a fierce light in his eye and a determination in his face that boded ill to any who opposed him. He seized his wife roughly by the shoulder. "And you were a party to this, were you? You—you wouldn't even stop at that? Well, I'll stop it. I'll stop him, if I do it with a bullet. I'll show him whether any—any—hired man—can cross me in a matter of my own family."
His wife had risen, and was clinging to his wrists, half for protection, half in suppliance. "Now, John," she pleaded, "don't be rash. You don't know that Beulah's gone with Jim, and you haven't a word of proof of it."
"Proof! What more proof do I want? When did ever Beulah carry on like this before? Didn't she always do as she was told? And haven't they been thick as molasses this while back? Wasn't it over wasting time with her that Jim got fired, and not a word of admission of the real facts from him? What more do you want than that? And on top of it all you help her away, and keep it a secret from me as long as you can. I daresay you knew their plans from the first. You thought I wouldn't be interested in that, either."
"I didn't know it," she protested, "and I don't believe it. I don't believe either Beulah or Jim had any such thought in their head. But even if they did, Jim Travers is as decent a young man as there is in Plainville district, and you've nothing to be ashamed of except your own temper, that drove them away in the way they went."
"I won't listen to that kind of talk from you any longer," said Harris sternly. "I'll chase the young reprobates to earth, if it takes all summer. And unless you can clear yourself of being mixed up in this—well, there'll be something to settle on that score, too. Hitch up the drivers, Allan, and be quick about it."
"You're not going to leave your ploughing, are you?" asked his wife. The words sprang to her lips without any misintent. It was such an unusual thing for her husband, on any account, to leave the farm work unfinished. The practice on the Harris homestead was work first, all other considerations second.
"That's enough of your sarcasm," he snapped. "I would think when our name is threatened with a disgrace like this you would be as anxious to defend it as I am. How is it you go back on me in a moment like this? You're not the woman you once were, Mary."
"And you're not the man you once were, John," she answered. "Oh, can't you see that we're just reaping what has been sown—the crop we're been raising through ail these years? Beulah's very life has been crying out for action, for scope, for room, for something that would give her a reason for existence, that would put a purpose into her life, and we've not tried to answer that cry. I blame myself as much as you, John, perhaps more, because I should have—read her heart—I should have seen the danger signals long ago. But I was so busy, I didn't think. That's the trouble, John, we've been so busy, both of us, we haven't taken time to keep up with her. The present generation is not the past; what was enough for you and me isn't enough for our children. It doesn't do any good to scold—scolding doesn't change conditions; but if we'd stopped and thought and studied over them we might have changed them—or cured them. We didn't, John; you were too busy with your wheat and your cattle, and I was too busy with my house-work, and what have we made of it? We've gathered some property together, and our cares have grown in proportion, but that which was more to us than all the property in the world we have lost—because we valued it less." The tears were slowly coursing down her cheeks, and her thin, work-worn arms were stealing about his neck. "Don't think, dear," she whispered, "that I'm indifferent, or that this hurts me less than you, or that I would shield myself from one iota of my just blame, but let us face the fact that it has been our mistake rather than Beulah's."
He removed her arms, not ungently. "I never thought it would come to this," he said. "I thought I humoured her every way I could. As for our hard work—well, work makes money, and I noticed Beulah could spend her share. There was no protesting about the work that earned the money when she wanted a new hat or a new dress, and she generally got what she wanted."
"You don't understand, John. It wasn't the work, it was the making a god of work, and giving it so much of our lives that there was none left for her. That's why she looked somewhere else—if she has looked somewhere else."
"Allan works as hard and harder than ever Beulah did, and Allan doesn't feel that way about it."
"That's true," she admitted, "but Allan's ambition is work. He works and is satisfied, but Beulah thinks, and is not satisfied. It's the difference in their nature, and we didn't take it into consideration." In every phrase she tried to link his blame with hers, that the burden might unite instead of separate them.
"If she'd thought a little more before this mad prank it would have been better for everybody," he said, "Well, she'll have plenty of time to think yet." He stepped to the kitchen door, and from the nail above took down the repeating-rifle.
"You're not going to take that!" she cried. "Don't take that, John.It can't possibly do any good, and it may do a lot of harm."
"I won't do anything foolish," he answered, "but I'll take it along, just the same."
Allan, with the drivers harnessed to the top buggy, was now at the door. Without saying good-bye to his wife Harris joined him, and the two set off on their search. Almost at the gate they met George Grant, who had come over to haul water for another day's ploughing. He stopped in some surprise at the turnout.
"I guess we won't be ploughing to-day," said Harris. He hesitated before George's questioning look, and a certain sense of family shame came upon him. But it was evident that he could hardly search for Beulah without mentioning her departure, and he might as well make a clean breast of the affair.
"Nothing wrong at home, I hope, Mr. Harris?" said the young neighbour, noting his troubled appearance. "Nobody sick, or anything?"
"Yes, there is something wrong," said Harris, trying vainly to conceal the bitterness in his voice. "Beulah's left us."
"Who, Beulah? I can hardly believe that, Mr. Harris. It was only last night I was talking with her."
"Well, she's gone. Left through the night. We—well, I'll tell you, George—we had a little disagreement, but I'd no notion she'd take it so much to heart. Of course you know about the trouble with Jim yesterday. Taking everything together—there won't be no ploughing to-day." Harris had said more than he meant; he could feel the colour mounting into his hair, and the bad English of his last words betrayed a subtle recklessness rather than carelessness of speech.
"Don't you believe a word of it," said George. "I know Jim, and I know Beulah, and if anybody else hinted what you've said you'd want to use that rifle on them. Like enough Beulah's staying somewhere around the neighbourhood, and she'll be back when she has time to think it over."
"That proves youdon'tknow Beulah," said Allan. "As for Jim, I was never able to get below that smile, and I saw more of him than you did, George."
"Well, I hope you find a way out," said George, sincerely. "It would have been like her to come over to our place, but she isn't there. Maybe you'll find her at Morrison's."
"That's possible," said Harris. "We'll go over there, anyway."
But Morrisons knew no more of Beulah's whereabouts than did George, and inquiry at other homes in the neighbourhood was equally futile. Harris shrank from carrying his search into the town, as he dreaded the publicity that would be attached to it. He was a subscriber, somewhat in arrears, to the local paper, and by calling on the editor and squaring up for a year in advance he could probably make himself solid in that quarter, but the gossip of the villagers could not be silenced by any such simple method. But as the day wore on and the search continued fruitless he finally found himself in Plainville. If Beulah and Jim were really married the Presbyterian minister would be likely to know something of the matter, and the Rev. Andrew Guthrie was a man of sense and discernment. Harris had frequently gone to hear him preach before the labours of the farm had grown to their present magnitude, and he even yet contributed five dollars a year to the stipend.
Mr. Guthrie received his guest cordially, albeit with some wonderment as to which member of the family might be sick, but delicacy forbade a direct question. Now, in agricultural communities it is something of an offence to approach any matter of importance by frontal attack. There must be the due amount of verbal skirmishing, reconnoitering, and out-flanking before the main purpose is revealed. Consequently, Harris, for all his torture of suspense, spent some minutes in a discussion of the weather, the crops, and the prospect of a labour shortage in harvest.
"They'll be all well at home, I hope?" said Mr. Guthrie at length, feeling that the custom of the community had been sufficiently honoured.
"Yes, all that's there," said Harris.
"All that's there? I didn't know any of your folks were away. Perhaps Mrs. Harris is down East? I'm sure a summer amid the orchards of her old home would be a delight to her, and, of course, Mr. Harris, you are able to gratify yourself in these little matters now. Things are not what they were in the early days, Jack, when I preached in Tom Morrison's log-house, and you led the bass at the services. I'll warrant that voice of yours could sing yet if you gave it a chance."
Harris received these remarks with a mixture of feelings. The minister's reference to his financial standing carried with it a certain gratification, but it consorted poorly with his recent conversations with his wife and with his present mission.
"And Beulah?" continued the minister, conscious that his first shot had gone wild. "She's a fine young woman now. I see her in church occasionally. In fact, I was speaking with Mrs. Burton, the choir leader, a day or so ago, and Beulah's name was mentioned between us."
"It was about Beulah I came to see you," said Harris, with averted eyes. Then in a few words he gave his version of what he knew and what he suspected.
"I fear I can add nothing to your information," said Mr. Guthrie. "They haven't been here, and, as you say, if Beulah contemplated marriage I think she would have called on me. Travers, too, I knew a little, and thought him a decent chap. But we must find the girl and talk this over quietly with her. Is there any place in town she would be likely to go to? What about Mrs. Goode's boarding-house? I will just call up on the telephone. I can make inquiry without the necessity of any explanations."
Inquiry at the house of Mrs. Goode brought a strong ray of light out of the darkness. Beulah had been there during the morning, and had explained that she was leaving on the west-bound train, which even now was thrumming at the station. On learning this, without a word, Harris sprang into the buggy, while Allan brought a sharp cut of the whip across the spirited horses. They reached the railway station half a minute too late; the train was already pulling out, and as Harris's eyes followed it in anger and vexation they plainly saw Jim Travers swing lithely on to the rear platform.
With an oath the farmer reached for his rifle, but Allan wrenched it from his hands before any onlookers noted the action. "Don't be a fool," he whispered, and started the horses homeward.