GEORGE MAKES FRIENDS
It was nearing midnight when George walked impatiently up and down the
waiting-room in Winnipeg station, for the western express was very
late, and nobody seemed to know when it would start. George was
nevertheless interested in his surroundings, and with some reason. The
great room was built in palatial style, with domed roof, tessellated
marble floor, and stately pillars: it was brilliantly lighted; and
massively-framed paintings of snow-capped peaks and river gorges
adorned the walls. An excursion-train from Winnipeg Beach had just
come in, and streams of young men and women in summer attire were
passing through the room. They all looked happy and prosperous: he
thought the girls' light dresses were gayer and smarter than those
usually seen among a crowd of English passengers; but there was another
side to the picture.
Rows of artistic seats ran here and there, and each was occupied by
jaded immigrants, worn out by their journey in the sweltering Colonist
cars. Piles of dilapidated baggage surrounded them, and among it
exhausted children lay asleep. Drowsy, dusty women, with careworn
faces, were huddled beside them; men bearing the stamp of ill-paid toil
sat in dejected apathy; and all about each group the floor, which was
wet with drippings from the roof, was strewn with banana skins, crumbs,
and scraps of food. There had been heavy rains, and the atmosphere was
hot and humid. It was, however, the silence of these newcomers that
struck George most. There was no grumbling among them--they scarcely
seemed vigorous enough for that--but as he passed one row he heard a
woman's low sobbing and the wail of a fretful child.
After a while the girl he had met on the train appeared and intimated
by a smile that he might join her. They found an unoccupied seat, and
a smartly-attired young man who was approaching it stopped when he saw
them.
"Well," he said coolly, "I guess I won't intrude."
George felt seriously annoyed with him, but he was reassured when his
companion laughed with candid amusement. Though there was no doubt of
her prettiness, he had already noticed that she did not impress one
most forcibly with the fact that she was an attractive young woman. It
seemed to sink into the background when one spoke to her.
"It was rather tedious waiting in the hotel," she explained. "There
was nobody I could talk to; my father is busy with a grain broker."
"Then he is a farmer?"
"Yes," said the girl, "he has a farm."
"And you live out in the West with him?"
"Of course," she said, smiling. "Still, I have been in Montreal, and
England." Then she turned and glanced at the jaded immigrants. "One
feels sorry for them; they have so much to bear."
George felt that she wished to change the subject, and he followed her
lead.
"I feel inclined to wonder where they all go to and how you employ
them. Your people still seem anxious to bring them in."
"Yes," she replied thoughtfully, "It's rather a difficult question. Of
course, we pay high wages--people who say they must dispense with help
and can't carry out useful projects would like to see them lower--but
there's the long winter when, out West at least, very few men can work.
Then what the others have earned in summer rapidly melts."
"But what do the Canadian farm-hands and mechanics think? It wouldn't
suit them to have wages broken down."
West had come up a few moments earlier.
"It doesn't matter," he laughed; "they won't be consulted. It's the
other people who pull the strings, and they're adopting a forward
policy--rush them all in; it's their lookout when they get here.
That's my opinion; though I'll own that I know remarkably little about
western Canada."
"You won't admit he's right," George said to the girl.
She looked grave.
"Sometimes," she answered, "I wonder."
Then she turned to West.
"You don't seem impressed with the country," she said.
"As a rule, I try to be truthful. The country strikes me as being
pretty mixed, full of contrasts. There's this place, for instance; one
could imagine they had meant to build a Greek temple, and now it looks
more like a swimming-bath. After planning the rest magnificently, why
couldn't they put on a roof that wouldn't leak?"
"It has been an exceptionally heavy rain," the girl reminded him.
"Just so. But couldn't somebody get a broom and sweep the water out?
Our unimaginative English folk could rise as far as that."
She laughed good-humoredly, and her father sauntered up to them.
"Any news of the train yet?" he asked.
"No, sir," said Edgar. "In my opinion, any attempt to extract reliable
information from a Canadian railroad-hand is a waste of time. No
doubt, it's so scarce that it hurts them to part with it."
The Westerner looked at him with a little hard smile. He was tall and
gaunt and dressed in baggy clothes, but there was a hint of power in
his face, which was lined, and deeply bronzed by exposure to the
weather.
"Well," he retorted, "what do you expect, Percy, if you talk to them
like that? But I want to thank you and your partner for taking care of
my girl when she went to see the wreck. Fellow on the cars told
me--said you were a gritty pup!"
Edgar looked confused, but the man drew an old skin bag out of his
pocket.
"It's domestic leaf; take a smoke."
"No, thanks," said Edgar quickly. "I've no doubt it's excellent, but I
really prefer the common Virginia stuff."
"Matter of habit," replied the other. "I don't carry cigars; they're
expensive. Going far West?"
"We get off at Sage Butte."
"It's called Butte. I'm located in that district."
"Then I wonder if you knew an Englishman named Marston?" George
interposed.
"I certainly did; he died last winter. Oughtn't to have come out
farming; he hadn't the grip."
George felt surprised. He had always admired Marston, who had excelled
in whatever he took in hand. It was strange and disconcerting to hear
him disparaged.
"Will you tell me what you mean by that?" he asked.
"Why, yes. I've nothing against the man. I liked him--guess everybody
did--but the contract he was up against was too big for him. Had his
first crop frozen, and lost his nerve and judgment after that--the man
who gets ahead here must have the grit to stand up against a few bad
seasons. Marston acted foolishly; wasted his money buying machines and
teams he could have done without, and then let up when he saw it
wouldn't pay him to use them right off; but that was part his wife's
fault. She drove him pretty hard--though, in some ways, I guess he
needed it."
George frowned. Sylvia, he admitted, was ambitious, and she might have
put a little pressure upon Marston now and then; but that she should
have urged him on toward ruin in her eagerness to get rich was
incredible.
"I think you must be mistaken about his wife," he remarked.
"Well," drawled the Canadian, "I'm not always right."
Then a bell tolled outside, an official shouted the names of towns, and
there was a sudden stir and murmur of voices in the great waiting-room.
Men seized their bags and bundles, women dragged sleepy children to
their feet, and a crowd began to press about the outlet.
"Guess that's our train. She's going to be pretty full," said the
Canadian.
The party joined a stream of hurrying passengers, and regretted their
haste when they were violently driven through the door and into a
railed-off space on the platform, where shouting railroad-hands were
endeavoring to restrain the surging crowd. Nobody heeded them; the
immigrants' patience was exhausted, and they had suddenly changed from
a dully apathetic multitude waiting in various stages of dejection to a
savage mob fired by one determined purpose. Near by stood a long row
of lighted cars, and the immigrants meant to get on board them without
loss of time. There were two gates, guarded by officials who
endeavored to discriminate between the holders of first and second
class tickets, but the crowd was in no mood to submit to the separation.
It raged behind the barrier, and when one gate was rashly pushed back a
little too far, a clamorous, jostling mass of humanity stormed the
opening. Its guardians were flung aside, helpless, and the foremost of
the mob poured out upon the platform, while the pressure about the gap
grew insupportable. Women screamed, children were reft away from their
mothers, panting men trampled over bags and bundles torn from their
owners' hands, and George and the elderly Canadian struggled
determinedly to prevent the girl's being badly crushed. Edgar had
disappeared, though they once heard his voice, raised in angry protest.
They were forced close up to the outlet, when there was a check. More
officials had been summoned; somebody had dropped a heavy box which
obstructed the passage, and a group of passengers began a savage fight
for its recovery. George seized a man who was jostling the girl and
thrust him backward; but the next moment he was struck by somebody, and
he saw nothing of his companions when, after being violently driven to
and fro, he reached the gate. A woman with two screaming children
clinging to her appeared beside him, and he held a man so that she
might pass. He was breathless, and almost exhausted, but he secured
her a little room; and then the pressure suddenly slackened. The crowd
swept out like a flood from a broken dam, and in a few more moments
George stood, gasping, on the platform amid a thinner stream of running
people. There was no sign of the Canadian or his daughter; the cars
were besieged; and George waited until Edgar joined him, flushed and
disheveled.
"I suppose I was lucky in getting through with only my jacket badly
torn," said the lad, "I wondered why the railroad people caged up their
passengers behind iron bars, but now I know."
George laughed.
"I don't think this kind of thing is altogether usual. Owing to the
accident, they've no doubt had two trainloads to handle instead of one.
But the platform's emptying; shall we look for a place?"
They managed to enter a car, though the stream of passengers, pouring
in by the two vestibules, met within in dire confusion, choking up the
passage with their baggage. Order was, however, restored at last; and,
with the tolling of the bell, and a jerk that flung those unprepared
off their feet, the great express got off.
"Nobody left behind," Edgar announced, after a glance through the
window. "I can't imagine where they put them all; though I've never
seen a train like this. But what has become of our Canadian friends?"
George said he did not know, and Edgar resumed:
"I'm rather taken with the girl--strikes me as intelligent as well as
fetching. The man's a grim old savage, but I'm inclined to think he's
prosperous; when a fellow says he can't afford cigars I generally
suspect him of being rich. It's a pity that stinginess is one of the
roads to affluence."
The car, glaringly lighted by huge lamps, was crowded and very hot, and
after a while George went out on to the rear platform for a breath of
air. The train had now left the city, and glancing back as it swung
around a curve, he wondered how one locomotive could haul the long row
of heavy cars. Then he looked out across the wide expanse of grass
that stretched away in the moonlight to the dim blur of woods on the
horizon. Here and there clumps of willows dotted the waste, but it lay
silent and empty, without sign of human life. The air was pleasantly
fresh after heavy rain; and the stillness of the vast prairie was
soothing by contrast with the tumult from which they had recently
escaped.
Lighting his pipe, George leaned contentedly on the rail. Then
remembering what the Canadian had said, he thought of his old friend
Marston, a man of charm and varied talents, whom he had long admired
and often rather humbly referred to. It was hard to understand how
Dick had failed in Canada, and harder still to see why he had made his
plodding comrade his executor; for George, having seldom had occasion
to exert his abilities, had no great belief in them. He had suffered
keenly when Sylvia married Dick, but the homage he had offered her had
always been characterized by diffidence, springing from a doubt that
she could be content with him; and after a sharp struggle he succeeded
in convincing himself that his wound did not matter if she were happier
with the more brilliant man. He had entertained no hard thoughts of
her: Sylvia could do no wrong. His love for her sprang rather from
respect than passion; in his eyes she was all that a woman ought to be.
In the meanwhile his new friends were discussing him in a car farther
back along the train.
"I'm glad I had that Englishman by me in the crowd," the man remarked.
"He's cool and kept his head, did what was needed and nothing else. I
allow you owe him something for bringing you through."
"Yes," said the girl; "he was quick and resolute." Then reserving the
rest of her thoughts, she added: "His friend's amusing."
"Percy? Oh, yes," agreed her father. "Nothing to notice about
him--he's just one of the boys. The other's different. What that
fellow takes in hand he'll go through with."
"You haven't much to form an opinion on."
"That doesn't count. I can tell if a man's to be trusted when I see
him."
"You're generally right," the girl admitted. "You were about Marston.
I was rather impressed by him when he first came out."
Her father smiled.
"Just so. Marston had only one trouble--he was all on top. You saw
all his good points in the first few minutes. It was rough on him that
they weren't the ones that are needed in this country."
"It's a country that demands a great deal," the girl said thoughtfully.
"Sure," was the dry reply. "The prairie breaks the weak and shiftless
pretty quick; we only have room for hard men who'll stand up against
whatever comes along."
"And do you think that description fits the Englishman we met?"
"Well," said her father, "I guess he wouldn't back down if things went
against him."
He went out for a smoke, and the girl considered what he had said. It
was not a matter of much consequence, but she knew he seldom made
mistakes, and in this instance she agreed with him. As it happened,
George's English relatives included one or two clever people, but none
of them held his talents in much esteem. They thought him honest,
rather painstaking, and good-natured, but that was all. It was left
for two strangers to form a juster opinion; which was, perhaps, a not
altogether unusual thing. Besides, the standards are different in
western Canada. There, a man is judged by what he can do.