"Heard what?"
Jed gazed off and away over the prairies. "No, you won't find her at
Glaves's."
How Molyneux longed to spoil the grin. But a deadly anxiety constrained
him. "Where is she, then?"
"Nowheres around here."
"Do you know?"
"You bet!" The grin gave place to malignant satisfaction. "Yes, I
know--that is, I kin guess, though I wouldn't if I thought it would do
you any good. As it won't--Let me see--she was married a week ago by
the Roman priest. Jedging by averages, I reckon as you orter find her
in Carter's arms."
If he had expected his news to produce a disagreeable impression he was
not disappointed, for its visible manifestation landed full in his face,
and he dropped flat on his shoulders. Not lacking a certain wolf
courage, primitive ferocity of the cornered rat, he sprang up, lunged at
Molyneux, and went down a second time. Then he stayed, watching until
the other had jumped into his buggy and driven away.
"I never saw the devil!" he muttered, shaking his fist, "but your face,
jes' then, came mighty near the preacher's description."
*X*
*FRICTION*
Once upon a time a man wrote a book that proved how easily a cultured
Eastern girl might fall in love with and marry a Western cow-boy. It
was a beautiful story, about people who were beautiful or picturesque
according as they were good or bad, but it ended just where, in real
life, stories begin. After the manner of fairy tales, the author
assured us that the girl and the cow-boy lived happily ever after. Now
I wonder if they did?
A year later a big bull-fly thudded at the screen door of Carter's cabin
in vain efforts to enter and take toll of Helen's white flesh. By the
gentlemen who ordain the calendar, a year is given as a space of time
between points that are fixed, immutable as the stars. Sensible folk
know better. Years vary--are long or short according to the number,
breadth, and depth of the experiences their space covers. This year had
marked Helen. She was fuller lipped, rounder, enveloped by the sensuous
softness of young wifehood. Sitting at table with her white blouse
tucked in at the neck for coolness, she had never looked prettier. But
granting these attributes of her changed condition, a keen observer
would have missed that gentle brooding, ripe fruit of content which
exhales from the perfectly mated woman. As, time and again, her glance
touched Carter, sitting opposite, she would sigh, ever so gently, yet
sigh; the direction of her glance told also that her discontent was
associated in some way with his shirt-sleeves, rolled to the elbow, and
his original methods in the use of his knife and fork. Grasping these
implements within an inch of their points, he certainly secured a mighty
leverage, yet undoubtedly lost in grace what he secured in power,
besides pre-empting more elbow-room than could be accorded to one person
at a dinner-party.
"Tut! tut!" she observed, timidly, after tentative observation.
"Oh, shore! There I go again!" His quick answer and the celerity with
which his hands crawfished back to the handles told of many corrections;
yet five minutes later they had stolen out once more to the old familiar
grip.
She sighed again. It was not that she had wished to hobble her
frontiersman, to harness him to the conventions. Her feeling flowed
from a larger source. Believing him big of brain and soul as of body,
she would have had him perfect in small things as he was great in large,
that her ideal should be so filled and rounded out as to leave no room
for sighs. To this end she had, from the first, attempted small
polishments, which he had received with whimsical good-humor that took
no thought of how vital the matter was with her. Had he realized this he
might have made a determined effort instead of a slack practice which
flows from easy complaisance; but, not realizing it, he made no headway.
In these last months she had gained insight into that philosophical
axiom: It is easier to make over a dozen lovers than one husband.
Unlike the girl in the aforesaid beautiful story, she had begun
reconstruction at the wrong side of the knot.
Not that this unwelcome truth would or could, of itself, have affected
her love in quality or quantity. At times she agonized remorsefully over
her tendency to criticism, tutoring herself to look only for the large
things of character. Again, when, of nights, she would slip to his arms
for a delightful hour before retiring, she would wonder at herself:
every last vestige of discontent evaporated with her murmured sigh of
perfect happiness. These were great moments for both. Lying so, she
would look up in his bronzed face and listen while, in his big way, he
talked and planned, unrolling the scroll of their future--listen
patiently until he became too absorbed, when she would interrupt with
some kittenish trick to draw him back into the delightful present.
Pretty little tricks, loving little tricks, that one would never have
dreamed lay hidden under the exterior of the staid young school-ma'am.
But these, after all, were moods, and there had been other and real
cause of discontent. First, the railway gods had again broken faith
with the settlers; and every cent that Carter could raise or borrow had
been required to meet rents on his timber concessions. Though not in
actual want, they had had to trim expenses, reduce their living to the
settler scale. Having all of a pretty woman's natural love of finery,
Helen could see no way of restoring her depleted wardrobe. Moreover,
there was the choring, washing, milking of cows, feeding of calves,
inseparable from pioneer settler life--a burden that was not a whit the
less toilsome because self-assumed.
Carter would have spared her all that--was, indeed, angry when, coming
in late one night, he caught her toiling at the milking. "I didn't know
it was so hard," she pleaded, holding up her swollen wrists. "But I
couldn't bear to see you come in, tired, at dark, then go on with the
chores while I sat in the house."
He had made her promise not to do it again. But she did, and his
protests, vigorous at first, slackened, until, finally, the choring had
come to be regarded as hers as a matter of course.
Even the climate was against her, conspiring against her peace of body
if not of mind. The previous winter had been the bitterest in a score
of years, temperatures ranging from forty below zero, with a yard of
snow on the level, fifty-foot drifts in the bluffs, and hundred-mile
winds to drive cold and snow through the thickest of log walls. For
days she had sat in her furs by the red-hot stove, while the blizzard
roared about the cabin, walling it in fleecy snows--sat listening to the
agonized shout of wind-blown trees, the squeal of poplar brake, the
smash of rent branches, the thunderous storm voice that was spaced only
by distant crashes as the lords of the forest went down to stiff ends.
North, south, east, west had veered these terrible winds, freighting
always their inexhaustible snows. The trails were blown from earth's
face; solitary blotch, their cabin rose like a reef from an ocean of
whiteness; and they, castaways, were practically divorced for days, and
sometimes weeks, from all communication with their kind. Hardly less
terrible had been the calms, the vast frozen silences as of
interplanetary space that followed the blizzard, ruling the snowy
steppes. They filled her with a terrifying sense of the illimitable,
those silences, vivid as though she, a lonely soul, were travelling
through vast voids of time and space. She shrank under them, afraid.
Followed a mosquito year in a mosquito country. Fattened by the heavy
snows, stagnant sloughs held water till late in the summer and so bred
the pests by myriads of myriads. Of nights the tortured air whined of
them. By day their cattle hung about the corrals, cropping the grass
down to the dust, or if they did wander farther afield, came galloping
madly back to the smudges. For two months any kind of travel had been
impossible; clouds of the pests would settle on hands, face, neck
quicker than one could wipe them off. Milking and choring had to be done
under cover of a thick reek to an accompaniment of lashing tails, with
frequent and irritating catastrophes in the way of overturned pails.
The acrid odor of smoke clung to everything--hair, clothing, flesh; the
cabin was little better than a smoke-house until the heat had mitigated
the pests while adding its own discomforts.
It was a dull life enough for men whose tasks were broken by periodical
trips to market; it was martyrdom for housefast women. Always around
the shanty mourned the eternal winds of the plains. Wind! Wind! Wind
in varying quantity, from a breeze to a blizzard, but always wind. Its
melancholy dirge left a haunting in the eyes of men. Its ceaseless moan
prepared many a plainswoman for the madhouse.
With bright hope at heart to gild the future, she might have endured
both discomfort and drudgery, but the postponement of construction work
on the branch line had killed immediate hope. With dismay she realized
a certain coarsening of body and mind, a thickening of finger-joints,
roughness of skin, an attenuation where milking had turned the plump
flesh of her arms into gaunt muscle. And to her the thought of that
far-off summer day recurred with increasing frequency--would this
equilibration with environment end by leaving her peer to the scrawny,
flat-chested women of the settlements? She who had excelled in the
small arts--music, painting, modelling in wax and clay? Her past, in
such seasons of depression, seemed now as that of some other girl--a
girl who had worn pretty dresses and been admired and petted by father,
brother, and friends. Of all her gifts, her voice, a sweet contralto,
was only left her; and of late it had naturally attuned itself to her
sadder moods. So she had felt her life shrink and grow narrow, until
looking down the vista of frozen winters, baking summers, they seemed,
those weary years, to draw to a dull, hard point, the wind-swept acre
with its solitary grave. Conditions had certainly combined to produce
in her a subconscious discontent that might develop into open revolt
against her lot at the touch of obscure and apparently insignificant
cause; they reinforced and made dangerous the irritation caused by his
little gaucheries.
As aforesaid, her dark moods alternated with spasms of remorse--fits of
melting tenderness in which she condemned herself for her secret
criticism of him. Peeping through their bedroom window only the
preceding night, the moon had caught her bending over his sleep. The
tender light absorbed his tan, softened the strong features without
taking from their mobility; deeply shading the hollows, it gave his
whole face an air of clear-cut refinement. Its wonderful alchemy
foreshadowed the possibilities of this life, lying so quiescent beneath
her eyes. For a long hour she held the vigil, while thought threw
flitting shadows athwart her face; then, stooping, she softly kissed him
under cover of her clouding hair.
It was a momentous caress, registering as it did her acceptance of a
lowered ideal, marking her realization of the friction which follows all
marriages and is inevitable to such as hers. Yet it had not removed the
cause; that remained. It is easier far to overlook a great sin than a
daily gaucherie, to rise to vast calamity than to brook the petty
irritations which mar and make life ugly. The cause remained, surely!
To see her quiet and pensive at table this day, who would have dreamed
that the morrow would see the thin edge of the wedge driven in between
them?
"There's to be a picnic in the grove by Flynn's lake to-morrow, Nell,"
he said, as he rose from dinner. "Let's take a day off?"
"All right!" she agreed; and the kiss with which she rewarded the
prospect of even such a slight break in the dulness of life may easily
be regarded as the first tap on the wedge.
How quickly personality responds to atmosphere! When, next morning,
Helen climbed into the buck-board beside Carter, she was frankly happy
as a woman can be in the knowledge that she is looking fit for the
occasion. Cool, clean, and fresh in a billowy white dress of her own
laundering, excitement and Carter's admiring glances intensified her
naturally delicate color. As they rattled over the yellow miles, doubt
and misgiving vanished under the spell of present happiness. She
returned him eyes that were lovingly shy as those of their honeymoon;
was subdued, sedate, sober, or burst out in small trills of song as the
mood seized her. Not until she was actually upon the picnic-ground did
she realize the real nature of this, her first appearance at a public
function since her marriage.
A clear sky and a breeze that set yellow waves chasing one another over
the far horizon had brought out the settlers in a fifty-mile
circle--even the remittance-men, who had been wont to spell amusement in
the red letters of the London alphabet, were there. Like most country
picnics, it was pseudo-religious in character, with a humorous speech
from the minister figuring as the greatest attraction. Amusements ran
from baseball and children's games for youth to love-making in corners
by shamefaced couples.
Leaving Carter to put up his team, Helen carried their basket over to
where a crowd of officious matrons were arranging tables under the
trees, and so gained first knowledge of what was in store for her. The
latest bride, she was the centre of attraction, target for glances.
Approaching a group of loutish youths, she felt their stares, flushed
under the smothered laugh which greeted her sudden change of direction.
Girls were just as unmannerly. Ceasing their own rough flirtations,
they gathered in giggling groups to observe and comment on one who had
already achieved that which they contemplated.
Nor was she more comfortable among the matrons. While she was teaching
school, the halo of education had set her apart and above them, but now
they wished her to understand that her marriage had brought her down to
their level. They plied her with coarse congratulations, embarrassed
her with jokes and prophecies that were broader than suggestive. Time
and again she looked, for rescue, at Carter, but he was talking railroad
politics in an interested group, did not join her till lunch was served,
and afterwards was hauled away to play in a baseball game--married men
_versus_ single.
So she had but a small respite. With his departure the women renewed
their onslaughts, as though determined to beat down her personal reserve
and reave her nature of its inmost secrets. No subject was too sacred
for their joking--herself, her husband, the intimacies of their lives.
There was no satiating their burning curiosity; her timid cheeks,
monosyllabic answers, served only to whet their sharp tongues. Shocked,
weary, cheeks burning with shame, she sat on, not daring to go in search
of Carter and so brave again the fire of eyes, until, midway of the
afternoon, she looked up to see Molyneux and Mrs. Leslie approaching.
It was the crowning of her humiliation. With the exception of a
duty-call on her return to Silver Creek, and which she had not returned,
it was the first time that Helen had seen Mrs. Leslie for more than a
year. "As you think best," Carter had said, when she had debated the
advisability of renewing the friendship. "You wouldn't care to meet
Molyneux again, would you? He's sure to be there." And, departing from
his usual sane judgment, he made no further explanations, said nothing
of his drive in the dusk with the love-sick woman, knowledge of which
would surely have killed Helen's friendly feeling. Lacking that
knowledge, she had pined for the one woman who could give her the social
and intellectual companionship her nature craved, pined with an
intensity of feeling that was only equalled by her present desire to
avoid a meeting.
If they would _only_ pass without seeing her, she prayed, bowing her
head in shame. But Mrs. Leslie had been watching from afar. "Poor
little thing!" she had exclaimed to Molyneux. "Alone among those
harpies! Come, let's rescue her!" And whatever her motive, the kiss
she bestowed on the blushing girl was warm and natural. "Why, Helen,"
she said, "whatever are you doing here? Come along with us."
"We are going to organize a race for three-year-old tots, Mrs. Carter,"
Molyneux explained. "We really need your assistance."
His deferential air as he stood bareheaded before her, the languid
correctness of his manner, even the aristocratic English drawl, pierced
that atmosphere of vulgarity like a breath of clean air. The easy
insolence with which he ignored the settler women was as balm to her
wounded pride. She recovered her poise; her drooping personality
revived.
"I should like to--very much," she answered, adding, a little timidly,
"But I was waiting for my husband."
"Dutiful child," Mrs. Leslie laughed. "Well, he is so busy running up
the batting average for the Benedicts that he has forgotten you. Come
along!"
"We might go round--" Helen began, tentatively,
She would have finished "his way," but, glancing over at the game, she
saw that in his interest he really had forgotten her. "Very well!" she
substituted; and, rising, she strolled off between the two, passing
within a few yards of Carter. Busy with his game, he did not see her,
nor would have known what company she was keeping but for Shinn, a near
neighbor of Jed Hines and fellow of his kidney.
"Your wife," he remarked, "seems to be enjy-ing herself." His sneer
caused a titter among both players and spectators, but before it
subsided Carter came quickly back. Throwing a careless glance after
Helen, "That's more'n I can say for yourn."
The titter swelled to a roar that caused Helen to look back. Mrs.
Shinn, poor drudge, had not strayed twenty feet from her cook-stove in
as many squalid years, as every one knew well. Grinning evilly, Shinn
subsided, while, after carelessly waving his hand at Helen, Carter
returned to his batting. If he disapproved of her escort, not a lift of
a line betrayed the fact to curious eyes--not even when he drove around
and found her still with Molyneux and Mrs. Leslie.
They were both silent on the homeward drive. In Helen's mind Carter was
associated with the coarse and sickening humiliations of the day. As
never before, she felt the enormous suction from below; she battled
against the feeling with the desperation of the swimmer who feels the
whirlpool clutching at his heels.
Her mood was defiant, and if, just then, he had taken her to task for
her truancy, she would have flamed up in open revolt. But he did not.
"You are tired," he said, very gently, when the ponies had run them far
out from the press of teams and rigs. She appreciated that; yet when he
slipped an arm about her waist she moved restlessly within its circle.
The wedge was well entered.
*XI*
*THE FROST*
One noon, a week after the picnic, Carter stood and looked out over his
hundred-acre field of wheat from his doorway. A golden carpet, sprigged
with the dark green of willow bluffs, it ran back into a black,
environing circle of distant woodland. As a vagrant zephyr touched it
into life, Helen remarked, looking over his shoulder:
"The serrated ears in restless movement give it the exact appearance of
woven gold. Isn't it beautiful!"
The dramatist loves to make great events follow in rapid sequence. It
is the need of his art. But in life the tragic mixes with the
commonplace. Even Lady Macbeth must have, on occasion, joked or talked
scandal with her handmaidens. And as these two looked out over the
wheat, there was naught to indicate the shadow which lay between them.
"Finest stand I ever saw," Carter answered. "Five-foot straw, well
headed, plump in the grain; ought to grade Number One Extra Hard. We'll
make on that wheat, little girl."
"Do you really think so?"
He turned quickly.
"Those women at the picnic---" She explained her dubious tone. "They
said you were foolish to put in so much wheat. 'What kind of a darn
fool is your husband, anyway?' that Mrs. MacCloud asked me. 'He kain't
never draw all that wheat to Lone Tree. Take him a month to make two
trips. 'Tain't no use to raise grain without a railroad. We folks
hain't put in more'n enough for bread an' seed.'"
He laughed, as much at her clever mimicry as at Mrs. MacCloud's
frankness. "If they had put in more I wouldn't have sown any. Could
have bought it cheaper from them. But as they didn't-- Do you know
that every man in this settlement makes at least one trip a month to
Lone Tree during the winter? Well, they do, and they'll be glad to make
expenses freighting in my wheat. With grain at seventy a bushel, a load
will bring thirty dollars at the cars, and I can hire all the teams I
want at three a trip."
"Why"--his foresight caused her a little gasp--"how clever! I should
never have thought of that."
His eyes twinkled his appreciation of her wifely admiration, and, taking
her chin between his hands, he looked down into her eyes. "What's more,
when that wheat money comes in, you an' me 'll jest run down to Winnipeg
an' turn loose on the dry-goods stores."
It was the first hint of his knowledge of the turning, dyeing, the
shifts she had made with her wardrobe, and he made a winning. The
knowledge that he had seen and understood caused the wedge to tremble
and almost fall out.
"Can we--afford it?" she asked, willing now to go without a thing.
"Don't have to afford necessities. Breaks me up to see you going shy of
things."
For the last three days he had bestowed the parting kiss. This morning
he received it--a warm one at that--and as he strode off stableward, her
burst of singing echoed his cheerful whistle. She was quite happy the
next few days planning for their descent on the shops. She sang at her
work--warbling that was natural as that of the little bird which prinks
and plumes for its mate in the morning sunlight. Reflecting her happy
mood, Carter was humorously cheerful--so pleased and satisfied that she
stared when, one evening, he came in, gloomy and depressed.
His black mood had come out of the east with a moaning wind that now
herded leaden clouds over dun prairies. For one day rain pelted down,
then, veering north, the bitter wind blew hard for a second day. That
evening it died, and a pale sun swung down a cloudless sky to a
colorless horizon. Under its cold light the wheat stood erect,
motionless, devoid of its usual sighing life. A hush, portentous of
change, brooded over all.
From their doorway Helen heard Hines, three miles away, rating his dog.
"Hain't no more gumption than an Englishman, durn you! Sick 'em, now!"
followed the maligned animal's bark and the thunder of scurrying hoofs.
"How clear and calm it is!" she commented, as Carter came up from the
stables.
He glanced at the thermometer beside the door. "Too clear. I'm afraid
it is all off with the wheat."
"Why? What do you mean?"