AGATHA'S DECISION
It was with an expectancy which was toned down by misgivings that
Hawtrey drove over to the homestead where Agatha was staying the next
afternoon. The misgivings were not unnatural, for he had been chilled by
the girl's reception of him on the previous day, and her manner
afterwards had, he felt, left something to be desired. Indeed, when she
drove away with Mrs. Hastings, he had considered himself an injured man.
His efforts to mend the harness, and extricate the wagon in the dark,
which occupied him for an hour, had helped partly to drive the matter
from his mind, and when he reached his homestead rather late that night
he went to sleep, and slept soundly until sunrise. Hawtrey was a man who
never brooded over his troubles beforehand, and this was one reason why
he did not always cope with them successfully when they could no longer
be avoided.
When he had eaten his breakfast, however, he became sensible of a
certain pique against both Mrs. Hastings and Agatha. In planning for the
day he was forced to remember that he had no hired man, and that there
was a good deal to be done. He decided that it might be well to wait
until the afternoon before he called on Agatha, and for several hours he
drove his team through the crackling stubble. His doubts and irritation
grew weaker as he worked, and when, later, he drove into sight of the
Hastings homestead, his buoyant temperament was beginning to reassert
itself. Clear sunshine streamed down upon the prairie out of a vault of
cloudless blue, and he felt that any faint shadow that might have arisen
between him and the girl could be readily swept away. He was a little
less sure of this when he saw Agatha, who sat near an open window, in a
scantily furnished match-boarded room. She had not slept at all. Her
eyes were heavy, but there was a look of resolution in them which seemed
out of place just then, and it struck him that she had lost the
freshness which had been her distinguishing charm in England.
She rose when he came in, and then, to his astonishment, drew back a
pace or two when he moved impulsively towards her.
"No," she said, with a hand raised restrainingly, "you must hear what I
have to say, and try to bear with me. It is a little difficult, Gregory,
but it must be said at once."
Gregory stood still, gazing at her with consternation in his face, and
for a moment she looked steadily at him. It was a painful moment, for
she was gifted with a clearness of vision which she almost longed to be
delivered from. She saw that the impression which had brought her a
vague sense of dismay on the previous afternoon was wrong. The trouble
was that he had not changed at all. He was what he had always been, and
she had merely deceived herself when she had permitted her girlish fancy
to endow him with qualities and graces which he had never possessed.
There was, however, no doubt that she had still a duty toward him.
He spoke first with a trace of hardness in his voice.
"Then," he rejoined, "won't you sit down? This is naturally a
little--embarrassing--but I'll try to listen."
Agatha sank into a seat by the open window, for she felt physically worn
out, and before her there was a task from which she shrank.
"Gregory," she began, "I feel that we have come near making what might
prove to be a horrible mistake."
"We?" repeated Hawtrey, while the blood rose into his weather-darkened
face. "That means both of us."
"Yes," asserted Agatha, with a steadiness that cost her an effort.
Hawtrey went a step nearer to her. "Do you want me to admit that I've
made a mistake."
"Are you quite sure you haven't?"
She flung the question at him sharply with tense apprehension, for,
after all, if Gregory was sure of himself, there was only one course
open to her. He leaned upon the table, gazing at her, and as he studied
her face his indignation melted, and doubts crept into his mind.
She looked weary, and grave, almost haggard, and it was a fresh,
light-hearted girl with whom he had fallen in love in England. The mark
of the last two years of struggle was plain on her. He tried to realize
what he had looked for when he had asked her to marry him, and could not
get a clear conception of his vision. In the back of his mind was a
half-formulated idea that he had dreamed of a cheerful companion,
somebody to amuse him. She scarcely seemed likely to be entertaining
now.
Gregory was not a man who could face a crisis collectedly, and his
thoughts became confused until one idea emerged from them. He had
pledged himself to her, and the fact laid a certain obligation upon him.
It was his part to overrule any fancies she might be disposed to indulge
in.
"Well," he said stoutly, "I'm not going to admit anything of that kind.
The journey has been too much for you. You haven't got over it yet." He
lowered his voice, and his face softened. "Aggy, dear, I've waited four
years for you."
His words stirred her, for they were certainly true, and his gentleness
had also its effect. The situation was becoming more and more difficult,
since it seemed impossible to make him understand that he would in all
probability speedily tire of her. To make it clear that she could never
be satisfied with him was a thing from which she shrank.
"How have you passed those four years?" she asked, to gain time.
For a moment his conscience smote him. He remembered the trips to
Winnipeg, and the dances to which he had escorted Sally Creighton. It
was, however, evident that Agatha could have heard nothing of Sally.
"I spent them in hard work. I wanted to make the place comfortable for
you," he answered. "It is true"--and he added this with a twinge of
uneasiness, as he remembered that his neighbors had done much more with
less incentive--"that it's still very far from what I would like, but
things have been against me."
The speech had a far stronger effect than he could have expected, for
Agatha remembered Wyllard's description of what the prairie farmer had
to face. Those four years of determined effort and patient endurance, as
she pictured them, counted heavily against her in the man's favor. It
flashed upon her that, after all, there might have been some warrant for
the view that she had held of Gregory's character when he had fallen in
love with her. He was younger then. There must have been latent
possibilities in him, but the years of toil had killed them and hardened
him. It was for her sake he had made the struggle, and now it seemed
unthinkable that she should renounce him because he came to her with the
dust and stain of it upon him. For all that, she was possessed with a
feeling that she would involve them both in disaster if she yielded.
Something warned her that she must stand firm.
"Gregory," she said, "I seem to know that we should both be sorry
afterwards if I kept my promise."
Hawtrey straightened himself with a smile that she recognized. She had
liked him for it once, for it had then suggested the joyous courage of
untainted youth. Now, however, it struck her as merely hinting at empty,
complacent assurance. She hated herself for the fancy, but it would not
be driven away.
"Well," he replied, "I'm quite willing to face that hazard. I suppose
this diffidence is only natural, Aggy, but it's a little hard on me."
"No," replied the girl with emphasis, "it's horribly unnatural, and
that's why I'm afraid. I should have come to you gladly, without a
misgiving, feeling that nothing could hurt me if I was with you. I
wanted to do that, Gregory--I meant to--but I can't." Then her voice
fell to a tone that had vibrant regret in it. "You should have made
sure--you should have married me when you last came home."
"But I'd nowhere to take you. The farm was only half-broken prairie, the
homestead almost unhabitable."
Agatha winced at this. It was, no doubt, true, but it seemed horribly
petty and commonplace. His comprehension stopped at such details as
these, and he had given her no credit for the courage which would have
made light of bodily discomfort.
"Do you think that would have mattered? We were both very young then,
and we could have faced our troubles and grown up together. Now we're
not the same. You let me grow up alone."
Hawtrey shrugged his shoulders. "I haven't changed," he told her as she
looked at him with deep-seeing eyes.
He contented himself with that, and Agatha grew more resolute. There was
not a spark of imagination in him, scarcely even a spark of the passion
which, if it had been strong enough, might have swept her away in spite
of her shrinking. He was a man of comely presence, whimsical, and quick,
as she remembered, at light badinage, but when there was a crisis to be
grappled with he somehow failed. His graces were on the surface. There
was no depth in him.
"Aggy," he added humbly, when he should have been dominant and forceful,
"it is only a question of a little time. You will get used to me."
"Then," pleaded the girl, who clutched at the chance of respite, "give
me six months from to-day. It isn't very much to ask, Gregory."
Gregory wrinkled his brows. "It's a great deal," he answered slowly. "I
feel that we shall drift further and further apart if once I let you
go."
"Then you feel that we have drifted a little already?"
"I don't know what has come over you, Aggy, but there has been a change.
I'm what I was, and I want to keep you."
Agatha rose and turned towards him a white face. "If you are wise you
will not urge me now," she said.
Hawtrey met her gaze for a moment, and then made a sign of acquiescence
as he turned his eyes away. He recognized that this was a new Agatha,
one whose will was stronger than his. Yet he was astonished that he had
yielded so readily.
"Well," he agreed, "if it must be, I can only give way to you, but I
must be free to come over here whenever I wish." Suddenly a thought
struck him. "But you may hare to go away," he added, with sudden
concern. "If I am to wait six months, what are you to do in the
meanwhile?"
Agatha smiled wearily. Now that the respite had been granted her, the
question he had raised was not one that caused her any great concern.
"Oh," she answered, "we can think of that later. I have borne enough
to-day. This has been a little hard upon me, Gregory."
"I don't think it has been particularly easy for either of us," returned
Hawtrey, with grimness. "Anyway, it seems that I'm only distressing
you." There was a baffled, puzzled look in his face. "Naturally, this is
so unexpected that I don't know what to say. I'll come back when I feel
I've grasped the situation."
Taking one of her hands, he stooped and kissed her cheek.
"My dear," he said, "I only want to make it as easy as I can. You'll try
to think of me favorably."
He went out and left her sitting beside the open window. A warm breeze
swept into the room; outside a blaze of sunshine rested on the prairie.
The ground about the house was torn up with wheel ruts, for the wooden
building rose abruptly without fence or garden from the waste of
whitened grass. Close to the house stood a birch-log barn or stables,
its sides curiously ridged and furrowed where the trunks were laid on
one another. Further away rose a long building of sod, and a great
shapeless yellow mound with a domed top towered behind it. It was most
unlike a trim English rick, and Agatha wondered what it could be. As a
matter of fact, it was a not uncommon form of granary, the straw from
the last thrashing flung over a birch-pole framing. Behind it ran a
great breadth of knee-high stubble, blazing ocher and cadmium in the
sunlight. It had evidently extended further than it did, for a blackened
space showed where a fire had been lighted to destroy it. In the big
field Hastings was plowing. Clad in blue duck he plodded behind his
horses, which stopped now and then when the share jarred against a patch
of still frozen soil. Further on two other men, silhouetted in blue
against the whitened grass, drove spans of slowly moving oxen that
hauled big breaker plows, and the lines of clods that lengthened behind
them gleamed in the sunlight a rich chocolate-brown. Beyond them the
wilderness ran unbroken to the horizon.
Agatha gazed at it all vacantly, but the newness and strangeness of it
reacted upon her. She felt very desolate and lonely, but she remembered
that she must still grapple with a practical difficulty. She could not
stay with Mrs. Hastings indefinitely, and she had not the least notion
where to go or what she was to do. She was leaning back in her chair
wearily with half-closed eyes when her hostess came in and looked at her
with a smile that suggested comprehension. Mrs. Hastings was thin, and
seemed a trifle worn, but she had shrewd, kindly eyes. She wore a plain
print dress which was dusted here and there with flour.
"So you have sent him away!" she exclaimed.
It was borne in upon Agatha that she could be candid with this woman who
had already guessed the truth.
"Yes," she replied, "for six months. That is, we are not to decide on
anything until they have passed. I felt we must get used to each other.
It seemed best."
"To you. Did it seem best to Gregory?"
A flush crept into Agatha's face. Though his acquiescence had been a
relief to her, she felt that he might have made a more vigorous protest.
"He gave in to me," she answered.
Mrs. Hastings looked thoughtful. "Well," she observed, "I believe you
were wise, but that opens up another question. What are you going to do
in the meanwhile?"
"I don't know," confessed Agatha apathetically. "I suppose I shall have
to go away--to Winnipeg, most probably. I could teach, I think."
"How are you and Gregory to get used to each other if you go away?"
Agatha made a helpless gesture. "I hadn't looked at it in that light."
"Are you very anxious to get used to him?"
Agatha shrank from the question; but there was a constraining kindliness
in the older woman's eyes.
"I daren't quite think about it yet. I mean to try. I must try. I seem
to be playing an utterly contemptible, selfish part, but I could not
marry him--now!"
Mrs. Hastings crossed the room, and sat down by her side.
"My dear," she said, "as I told you, I think you are doing right, and I
believe I know how you feel. Everybody prophesied disaster when I came
out to join Allen from a sheltered home in Montreal, and at the
beginning my life here was not easy to me. It was all so different, and
there were times when I was afraid, and my heart was horribly heavy. If
it hadn't been for Allen I think I should have given in and broken down.
He understood, however. He never failed me."
Agatha's eyes grew misty, and she turned her head away.
"Yes," she replied, "that would make it wonderfully easier."
"You must forgive me," apologized Mrs. Hastings. "I was tactless, but I
didn't mean to hurt you. Well, one difficulty shouldn't give us very
much trouble. Why shouldn't you stay here with me?"
Agatha turned towards her abruptly with a look of relief in her face,
which faded quickly. She liked this woman, and she liked her husband,
but she remembered that she had no claim on them.
"Oh," she declared, "it is out of the question."
"Wait a little. I'm proposing to give you quite as much as you will
probably care to do. There are my two little girls to teach, and I think
they have rather taken to you. I can scarcely find a minute for their
lessons, and, as you have seen, there is a piano which has only a few of
the keys broken. Besides, we have only one Scandinavian maid who smashes
everything that isn't made of indurated fiber, and I'm afraid she'll
marry one of the boys in a month or two. It was only by sending the
kiddies to Brandon and getting Mrs. Creighton, a neighbor of ours, to
look after Allen, who insisted on my going, that I was able to get to
Paris with some Montreal friends. In any case, you'd have no end of
duties."
"You are doing this out of--charity!"
Mrs. Hastings laughed. "A week or two ago, Allen wrote to some friends
of his in Winnipeg asking them to send me anybody."
The girl's eyes shone mistily. "Oh!" she cried, "you have lifted one
weight off my mind."
"I think," observed Mrs. Hastings, "the others will also be removed in
due time."
After that she talked cheerfully of other matters, and Agatha listened
to her with a vague wonder at her own good fortune in falling in with
such a friend.
There are in that country many men and women who are unfettered by
conventions. They stretch out an open hand to the stranger and the
outcast. Toil has brought them charity in place of hardness, and still
retaining, as some of them do, the culture of the cities, they have
outgrown all the petty bonds of caste. The wheat-grower and the
hired-man eat together. Rights are good-humoredly conceded in place of
being fought for, and the sense of grievance and half-veiled suspicion
common elsewhere among employes are exchanged for an efficient
co-operation. It must, however, be admitted that there are also farmers
of another kind, from whom the hired man has occasionally some
difficulty in extracting his covenanted wages by personal violence.
The two women had been talking a long time when a team and a jolting
wagon swept into sight, and Mrs. Hastings rose as the man who drove
pulled up his horses.
"It's Sproatly; I wonder what has brought him here," she remarked.
The man sprang down from the wagon and walked towards the house. She
gazed at him almost incredulously.
"He's quite smart," she added. "I don't see a single patch on that
jacket, and he has positively got his hair cut."
"Is that an unusual thing in Mr. Sproatly's case?" Agatha inquired.
"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings. "It's very unusual indeed. What is stranger
still, he has taken the old grease-spotted band off his hat, after
clinging to it affectionately for the last twelve months."
Agatha thought that the soft hat, which fell shapelessly over part of
Sproatly's face, needed something to replace the discarded band; but in
another moment he entered the room. He shook hands with them both.
"You are looking remarkably fresh, but appearances are not invariably to
be depended on, and it's advisable to keep the system up to par," he
said with a smile. "I suppose you don't want a tonic of any kind?"
"I don't," declared Mrs. Hastings resolutely; "Allen doesn't, either.
Besides, didn't you get into some trouble over that tonic?"
"It was the cough cure," explained Sproatly with a grin. "I sold a man
at Lander's one of the large-sized bottles, and when he had taken some
he felt a good deal better. Then he seems to have argued the thing out
like this: if one dose had relieved the cough, a dozen should drive it
out of him altogether, and he took the lot. He slept for forty-eight
hours afterward, and when I came across him at the settlement he
attacked me with a club. The fault, I may point out, was in his logic.
Perhaps you would like some pictures. I've a rather striking oleograph
of the Kaiser. It must be like him, for two of his subjects recognized
it. One hung it up in his shanty; the other asked me to hold it out, and
then pitched a stove billet through the middle of it. He, however,
produced his dollar; he said he felt so much better after what he'd done
that he didn't grudge it."
"I'm afraid we're not worth powder and shot," said Mrs. Hastings. "Do
you ever remember our buying any tonics or pictures from you?"
"I don't, though I have felt that you ought to have done it." Sproatly,
who paused a moment, turned towards Agatha with a little whimsical bow.
"The professional badinage of an unlicensed dealer in patent medicines
may now and then mercifully cover a good deal of embarrassment. Miss
Ismay has brought something pleasantly characteristic of the Old Country
along with her."
His hostess disregarded the last remark. "Then if you didn't expect to
sell us anything, what did you come for?"
"For supper," answered Sproatly cheerfully. "Besides that, to take Miss
Rawlinson out for a drive. I told her last night it would afford me
considerable pleasure to show her the prairie. We could go round by
Lander's and back."
"Then you will probably come across her somewhere about the straw-pile
with the kiddies."
Sproatly took the hint, and when he went out Mrs. Hastings laughed.
"You would hardly suppose that was a young man of excellent education!"
she exclaimed. "So it's on Winifred's account he has driven over; at
first I fancied it was on yours."
Agatha was astonished, but she smiled. "If Winifred favors him with her
views about young men he will probably be rather sorry for himself. He
lives near you?"
"No," said Mrs. Hastings. "In the summer he lives in his wagon, or under
it, I don't know which. Of course, if he's really taken with Winifred he
will have to alter that."
"But he has only seen her once--you can't mean that he is serious."
"I really can't speak for Sproatly, but it would be quite in keeping
with the customs of the country if he was."
A minute or two later Agatha saw Winifred in the wagon when it
reappeared from behind the straw-pile, and Mrs. Hastings turned toward
the window.
"She has gone with him," she commented significantly. "Unfortunately, he
has taken my kiddies too. If he brings them back with no bones broken it
will be a relief to me."