A Prairie Courtship

Lucy nodded sympathetically.

"Well," she replied, "I have seen you brighter, but you're anxious and played out. Sit nice and still for half an hour while I talk to you."

"I ought to be stooking those sheaves," Thorne answered dubiously.

"You can do it by and by," Lucy urged. "It won't be dark for quite a while yet."

She adroitly led him on to talk, and presently bade him light his pipe. He had always hated any unnecessary reserve and ceremony, and by degrees his natural gaiety once more asserted itself. At length, when they were both laughing over a narrative of his, he stretched his arm out across the table and it happened by merest accident that their hands met. Lucy did not draw hers away; she looked up at him with a smile.

"Mavy," she teased, "I wonder what Miss Leigh would say if she could see you."

Thorne straightened himself somewhat hastily in his chair. Nothing in the shape of a tactful answer occurred to him, and he grew uneasy under his companion's smile.

"Would you like to see her walk right in just now?" she persisted.

There was no doubt that this would not have afforded the man the slightest pleasure, but he could not admit it.

"It's scarcely likely to happen," he evaded awkwardly.

Then to his relief Lucy laughed.

"Mavy, I've sure got you fixed. The curious thing is they allow at the settlement that you could most talk the head off any of the boys."

"I really don't see what satisfaction you expected it to afford you," Thorne rejoined.

"I guessed it would help to put Nevis out of your mind. I'd an idea you wanted cheering up – and I felt a little like that myself."

The girl's manner changed abruptly as she rose, and there was only concern in her eyes.

"I wonder," she added softly, "where Jake is and what he is doing now."

Thorne felt that he had been favored with a hint.

"You haven't heard from him?"

"He hasn't sent a line; it wouldn't have been safe. It's kind of wearing, Mavy."

"I'm sorry," sympathized Thorne. "But it's most unlikely that the troopers will get him."

Lucy, without answering this, went out, and when they reached the binder Thorne turned to her with a smile.

"Lucy," he said, "I don't quite understand yet what possessed you a little while ago."

"Did you never feel so worried that it was kind of soothing to do something mad?"

"I'm afraid I have once or twice," Thorne confessed. "On the other hand, my experience wouldn't justify me in advising other people to indulge in outbreaks of the kind. Suppose I'd been – we'll say equal to the occasion?"

Lucy laughed, but there was a snap in her eyes.

"Then," she retorted, "it's a sure thing you would never have tried to be equal to it again. Anyway, I didn't feel anxious about you. You looked real amusing, Mavy."

"Perhaps I did. Still, I don't quite think you need have pointed it out."

They set to work after this, Lucy guiding the team along the edge of the grain and Thorne stooping among the sheaves in the wake of the machine. They were thus engaged, oblivious to everything but their task, when Mrs. Farquhar reined in her team close beside them, and Alison gazed with somewhat confused sensations at the pair.

Lucy had obviously made her dress herself, of the cheapest kind of print, but it was light in hue, as was her big hat, and in addition to falling in with the flood of vivid color through which she moved it flowed about her in becoming lines, and when she pulled up her horses and turned partly toward the wagon her pose was expressive of a curious virile grace. Behind her, straight-cut along its paler upper edge, where the feathery tassels of the oats shone with a silvery luster against the cold blue of the sky, the yellow grain glowed in the warm evening light. The glaring vermilion paint on the binder added to the general effect, and it occurred to Alison that the girl, with her brown face and hands and the signs of a splendid vitality plain upon her, was very much in harmony with her surroundings. The lean figure of the man stooping among the sheaves, lightly clad in blue that had lost its harshness by long exposure to the weather, formed a fit and necessary complement of the picture.

They were, Alison recognized, engaged upon humanity's most natural and beneficent task, and as she remembered how she had seen that soil lying waste, covered only with the harsh wild grasses, in the early spring, it was borne in upon her that there could be no greater reward than the bounteous harvest for man's arduous toil. Then she became troubled by a vague perception of the fact that this breaking of the wilderness and rendering the good soil fruitful was one of the sternest and most real tests of man's efficiency. Meretricious graces, paltry accomplishments, and the pretenses of civilization availed one nothing here. The only things that counted were the elemental qualities: slow endurance, faith that held fast through all the vagaries of the weather, and the power of toughened muscle that might ache but must in spite of that yield due obedience to the will. Alison regarded Lucy, who could play her part in the reaping, with a troubled feeling that was not far from envy.

Then Thorne looked up, partly dazzled with the level sunrays in his eyes, and walked toward the wagon. When he stopped beside it Mrs. Farquhar greeted him.

"We have been across to Shafter's place," she explained. "Harry asked me to drive round and see how you were getting on. He'll try to send you over his hired man in a day or two."

Thorne pointed to the rows of stooked sheaves.

"Thanks; I haven't done as much as I should have liked. Hall has gone back for my other team, and if it hadn't been for Lucy I'd have been a good deal farther behind."

"How much has she cut?" Mrs. Farquhar asked.

Thorne was quite aware that an answer would fix the time the girl had spent with him. Before he could speak, however, Lucy had approached the wagon and she broke in.

"I guess Mrs. Shafter would give you supper?"

Mrs. Farquhar said that she had done so, and Lucy smiled.

"That's going to save some trouble. Mavy and I had ours together most an hour ago and the stove's out by now."

Thorne imagined that this intimation, which struck him as a trifle superfluous, was made with a deliberate purpose; but one of the binder horses, tormented by the flies, began to kick just then, and he turned away to quiet it, while Lucy, who stood beside the wagon, smiled provocatively at Alison.

"You'll have to excuse Mavy – he's been hustling round since sunup, and he's played out," she said. "Still, you needn't get anxious. I'll look after him."

Mrs. Farquhar laughed, while Alison's attitude grew distinctly prim. She considered that in taking her anxiety for granted and alluding to it openly Lucy had gone too far. She also felt inclined to resent the girl's last consolatory assurance.

"Can I drive you home?" Mrs. Farquhar inquired. "I suppose you will be going soon, and it won't make a very big round."

"No," replied Lucy decisively, "you needn't trouble. I've a horse here, and I guess Mavy's not going to make love to me. For one thing, he's too busy. Besides, I want to cut round that other side before I go."

"Then I suppose we had better not keep you," said Mrs. Farquhar.

She waved her hand to Thorne and drove away, and when they had left the oats behind she turned to Alison.

"Lucy," she observed, "is now and then a little outspoken, but I'm curious as to what she meant when she said that Thorne was not likely to make love to her. Of course, the thing's improbable, anyway, but she spoke as if he had been offered an opportunity."

Alison's face flushed with anger.

"Leaving the fact that she's to marry Winthrop out of the question, the girl must have some self-respect. She would surely never go so far as you suggest."

"Well," smiled her companion, "she might go far enough to place Thorne in an embarrassing position, purely for the sake of the amusement she might derive from it. In fact, when I remember how she laughed, I'm far from sure that she didn't do something of the kind."

Alison sat silent for a minute or two. There was no doubt that she was very angry with Lucy, but she was also troubled by other sensations, among which was a certain envy of the girl's capacity for work that was held of high account in that country. Thorne's attitude and his weary face as he toiled among the sheaves had been very suggestive. He was, she knew, hard-pressed, engaged in a desperate grapple with a task that was generally admitted to be beyond his strength, and she could only stand aside and watch his efforts with wholly ineffective sympathy.

Then she became conscious that Mrs. Farquhar was glancing at her curiously.

"I feel humiliated to-night!" she broke out. "There's so little that seems of the least use to anybody here that I can do; and my abilities scarcely got me food and shelter in England. Isn't it almost a crime that they teach so many of us only fripperies? Were we only made to be taken care of and petted?"

Her companion smiled.

"If it's any consolation, I may point out that we haven't found you useless at the Farquhar homestead, and I can't see why you shouldn't be just as useful presiding over a place of your own. After all, since you raise the question what you were made for, that seems to be the usual destiny, and I haven't found it an unpleasant or ignoble one."

She broke off, and for a minute or two the jolting of the wagon rendered further conversation out of the question.

"There's another point," she added presently; "it's my opinion that an encouraging word from you would do more to brace Mavy for the work in front of him than the offer of half a dozen binders and teams."

Alison made no answer, and they drove on in silence across the waste, which was beginning to grow dim and shadowy.

CHAPTER XXV

THE ONLY MEANS

Alison sat one afternoon in the shadow of a pile of sheaves in Farquhar's harvest field. She had a little leisure, and it was unpleasantly hot in the wooden house. There was some sewing in her hand, but even in the shade the light was trying and she leaned back languidly among the warm straw with half-closed eyes. Two men were talking some distance behind her as they pitched up the rustling sheaves, and the tramp of horses' feet among the stubble and the rattle of a binder which she knew Farquhar was driving drew steadily nearer. Presently another beat of hoofs broke in, and a minute or two later Hall rode past, looking very hot, apparently without seeing her. Then the rattle of the binder ceased and she heard the newcomer greet Farquhar.

"If you've got one of those bent-end-spanners you could let me have I'd be glad," he said. "I've mislaid mine somehow, and there's a loose nut I can't get at making trouble on my binder."

Farquhar sent his hired man for one and Hall referred to the grain.

"So you have made a start. Looks quite a heavy crop. Good and ripe, too, isn't it?"

"We put the binder in yesterday," answered Farquhar. "I'd have done it earlier only that I sent Pete over to Thorne's place for a few days after you left him."

"I was kind of sorry I had to leave. He's surely going to be beaten. I looked in on him yesterday."

Alison became suddenly intent. She drew her light skirt closer about her, for she did not wish it to catch the men's eyes and betray her, as she thought it probable that they would speak to each other unreservedly and she would hear the actual truth about Thorne. When she had questioned Farquhar he had answered her in general terms, avoiding any very definite particulars, and she now strained her ears to catch his reply to Hall.

"I was afraid of it after what Pete told me," he said. "I would have helped him more if I could have managed it, but I can't let a big crop like this stand over when I've bills to meet."

"That," declared Hall, "is just how I'm fixed, though I stayed with him as long as I could. The trouble is that he hasn't been able to hire a man since I left him. There seem to be mighty few of the Ontario boys coming in this season, and so far they've been snapped up farther back along the line."

"Has he tried any of the men who had their crops hailed out west of the creek?"

"They cleared as soon as they saw they had no harvest left. Most of them are out track-grading on the branch line, and I heard the rest went East. Mavy's surely up against it; he was figuring last evening that even if the weather held he'd be most a month behind."

"Then I'm afraid he'll have to give the place up. Nevis will come down on him the day that payment's due."

"Couldn't he raise the money somehow, for a month?" Hall inquired.

"It's scarcely likely. I can't lend him any, with wheat at present figure, and Hunter, who has already guaranteed him a thousand dollars, is very tightly fixed. Besides Mavy couldn't expect anything more from him. It wouldn't be much use going to a bank, either. With the bottom dropping out of the market they're getting scared of wheat, and he has nothing to offer them but a crop that isn't reaped, with Grantly's note calling for most of it."

"Then I guess he has just got to quit. Hunter would no doubt have lent him a binder and a couple of hired men, but he has them busy trying to straighten up his hailed crop and cut patches of it."

"It's a pity," Farquhar assented in a regretful voice. "It will hurt Mavy to give the place up."

The man arrived with the spanner and Alison heard Hall ride away. When the clash and rattle of the binder began again she lay still for a long time beneath the sheaves. The men's conversation had made it clear that Thorne would shortly be involved in disaster, and that alone was painful news, though by comparison with another aspect of the matter it was of minor importance. The man loved her, and it was for that reason he had undertaken this most unfortunate farming venture. Everybody seemed to know it, though he had never told her what was in his mind, and she had been content to wait. Now, however, she had no doubt that she loved him, and he would, it seemed, shortly go away and vanish altogether beyond her reach – at least, unless something should very promptly be done. She knew he would not claim her while he was an outcast and a ruined man.

She closed one hand tight and a flush crept into her face as she made up her mind on one point, and she was thankful while she did so that she was on the Canadian prairie, where the thing seemed easier than it would have done in England. In that new land time-honored prejudices and hampering traditions did not seem to count. Men and women outgrew them there and obeyed the impulses of human nature, which were, after all, elemental and existent long before the invention of what were, perhaps, in the more complex society of other lands, necessary fetters. Thorne, the pedler, farmer, railroad hand, or whatever he might become, should at least know that she loved him and decide with that knowledge before him whether he would go away.

Then, growing a little more collected, she considered the second point. Though Hall and Farquhar had cast considerable doubt upon his ability to help, there was just a possibility that Hunter might hold out a hand, and she would stoop to beg for any favor that might be shown her lover. This latter decision, however, she prudently determined to keep from Thorne in the meanwhile.

By and by she walked quietly back to the house and busied herself as usual, though late in the afternoon she asked Mrs. Farquhar for a horse and the buggy. Her employer did not trouble her with any questions as to why she wanted them, though she favored her with a glance of unobtrusive but very keen scrutiny, and soon after supper the hired man brought the buggy to the door. Then Alison came out from her room, where she had spent some time carefully comparing the two or three dresses she had clung to when she had parted with the rest in Winnipeg, one after another. She had attired herself in the one that became her best, for she felt that there must be nothing wanting in the gift she meant to offer her lover. She recognized that this was what her intention amounted to. What other women did with more reserve, veiling their advances in disguises which were after all so flimsy that nobody except those who wished could be deceived, she would do with imperious openness.

The days were now rapidly growing shorter, and when she reached Thorne's homestead the sun hung low above the verge of the great white plain. The man was not in sight, which struck her as strange, as there would be light enough to work for some time yet, but she was not astonished that he had evidently not heard her approach, because she had driven slowly for the last mile, almost repenting of her rashness and wondering whether she should not turn and go back again. Once she had set about it, the thing she had undertaken appeared increasingly difficult. Indeed, she knew that had the man been less severely pressed nothing would have driven her into the action she contemplated. It was only the fact that he was face to face with disaster, beaten down, desperate, that warranted the sacrifice of her reserve and pride.

Getting down at length, she left the horse, which was a quiet one, and walked toward the house. The door stood open when she reached it, and looking in she saw the man sitting at a table, on which there lay a strip of paper covered with figures. His face was worn and set, and every line of his slack pose was expressive of dejection. He did not immediately see her, and a deep pity overwhelmed her and helped to sweep away her doubts and hesitation as she glanced round the room. It was growing shadowy, but it looked horribly comfortless, and the few dishes that were still scattered about the table bore the remnants of a singularly uninviting meal. There was a portion of a loaf, blackened outside, sad and damp within; butter that had liquefied and partly congealed again in discolored streaks; a morsel of half-cooked pork reposing in solid fat; and a can of flavored syrup, black with flies. She wondered how any one coming back oppressed with anxiety from a day of exhausting toil could eat such fare. Then she noticed a small heap of tattered garments, which he evidently had no leisure to mend, lying on the floor, and while it brought her no sense of repulsion, the sight of them further troubled her. These were things which jarred on the beneficent, home-making instincts which suddenly awoke within her nature, and they moved her to a compassionate longing to care for and shelter the lonely man.

Then he looked up and saw her, and she flushed at the swift elation in his face, which, however, almost immediately grew hard again. It was as though he had yielded for a moment to some pleasurable impulse, and had then, with an effort, repressed it and resumed his self-control.

"Come in," he invited, rising with outstretched hand, and she suddenly recalled how she had last crossed that threshold in his company. There had been careless laughter in his eyes then, he had moved and spoken with a joyous optimism, and now there was plain upon him the stamp of defeat. Even physically the man looked different.

She sat down when he drew her out a chair, but he remained standing, leaning with one hand on the table.

"Is Mrs. Farquhar outside?"

"No; I drove across alone."

He looked at her with a hint of astonishment and something that suggested a natural curiosity as to the cause for the visit, which she now found it insuperably difficult to explain.

"You haven't been at work this evening?" she asked.

"No," replied Thorne. "I rode in to the railroad early yesterday and I've just got back after calling at two or three farms west of the creek. It seemed possible that I might be able to hire a couple of men I'd wired for back along the line, but I found that somebody else had got hold of them at another station. As a matter of fact, I had expected it."

"Then you must have made the journey almost without a rest!"

"Volador's dead played out," answered Thorne. "I had to do something, though it seemed pretty useless in any case."

"Ah!" Alison exclaimed softly; "then you mean to go on?"

"Until I'm turned out, which will no doubt happen very shortly."

"I suppose that will hurt you?"

He looked at her for a moment with his face awry and signs of a sternly repressed longing in his eyes.

"Yes," he answered, "it will hurt me more than anything I could have had to face. In fact, the thought of it has been almost unbearable; but it's now clear that I shall have to go through with it."

This was satisfactory to Alison in some respects, and she was quick to sympathize.

"It must be very hard to give up the farm on which you have spent so much earnest work."

"Yes," assented Thorne, with something in his tone that suggested half-contemptuous indifference to the sacrifice; "it won't be easy to give up even the farm."

Then for the first time it occurred to him that there was an unusual hint of strain in her manner, and that he had never seen her dressed in the same fashion before. She did not look daintier, for daintiness was not quite the quality he would have ascribed to her, but more highly cultivated, farther beyond the reach of a ruined farmer, though there was a strange softness – it almost seemed tenderness – shining in her eyes. He gripped the table hard and his face grew stern as he gazed at her. He felt that it was almost impossible that he would ever have the strength to let her go.

"What will you do then?" she asked with what seemed a merciless persistency.

"Go away," declared Thorne. "Strike west and vanish out of sight. I've no doubt somebody will hire me to load up railroad ballast or herd cattle." He smiled at her harshly. "After all, it will be a relief to my few friends. They may be a little sorry – but my absence will save their making excuses for me."

Alison looked up at him steadily, though there was a flush of color in her cheeks.

"You must be just to them," she said. "Why should they invent excuses – when you have made such a fight with so much against you? Besides, you are wrong when you say they might be – a little sorry. Can you believe that it would be easy to let you go away?"

Thorne frowned as he met her gaze. He did not know what to make of this, but there was a suggestiveness in her voice that was almost too much for him.

"Is there any one who would have much difficulty in doing that?" he asked with a quietness that cost him a determined effort.

"Yes," murmured Alison, with suddenly lowered eyes; "there is at least one person who would feel it dreadfully."

He gazed at her, straining to cling to the resolution that had almost deserted him, though his face was firmly set.

"It is quite true," she added, with flaming cheeks. "I must say it. I mean myself."

He drew back a pace and stood very still, as though afraid to trust himself.

"Don't make it all unbearable!" he cried at length. "There's only one course open to me. It's hard enough already."

Alison faced him with a new steadiness.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "you can only look at it from your point of view – can't you understand yet that there is another? If you had meant to go away you should have gone – some time ago."

Thorne closed his hands firmly.

"I'm afraid you are right; but I believed that I might make a success of this farming venture."

The girl laughed with open scorn.

"Dare you believe that would have mattered so very much to me? Do you think I didn't know why you turned farmer, and why you have since then done things that none of your neighbors would have been capable of?"

"It seemed necessary," explained Thorne, still with the same expressive quietness. "I did so because I wanted you, and that is exactly what makes defeat so bitter now."

"And you imagined that you had hidden your motive? Can you believe that a man could change his whole mode of life and take up a burden he had carefully avoided, as you have done, without having the woman on whose account he did it understand why? Are we so blind or utterly foolish? Don't you know that our perceptions and intuitions are twice as keen as yours?"

"Then you understood what my object was all along – and it didn't strike you as absurd and impossible?"

Alison smiled at him.

"Why should it seem absurd that I should love you, Mavy?"