WANDERERS
Agatha had spent a month with Mrs. Hastings. When they were driving over
to Wyllard's homestead one afternoon, the older woman pulled up her team
while they were still some little distance away from their destination,
and looked about her with evident interest. On the one hand, a vast
breadth of torn-up loam ran back across the prairie, which was now
faintly flecked with green. On the other, plowing teams were scattered
here and there across the tussocky sod, and long lines of clods that
flashed where the sunlight struck their facets trailed out behind them.
The great sweep of grasses that rustled joyously before a glorious warm
wind, gleamed luminously, and overhead hung a vault of blue without a
cloud in it. Trailing out across it, flocks of birds moved up from the
south.
"Harry is sowing a very big crop this year, and most of it on fall
back-set," she observed. "He has, however, horses enough to do that kind
of thing, and, of course, he does it thoroughly." She glanced toward the
place where the teams were hauling unusually heavy plows through the
grassy sod. "This is virgin prairie that he's breaking, and he'll
probably put oats on it. They ripen quicker. He ought to be a rich man
after harvest unless the frost comes, or the market goes against him.
Some of his neighbors, including my husband, would have sown a little
less and held a reserve in hand."
Agatha remembered what Wyllard had told her one night on board the
_Scarrowmania_, and smiled, for she fancied that she understood the man.
He was not one to hedge, as she had heard it called, or cautiously hold
his hand. He staked boldly, but she felt that this was not only for the
sake of the money that he might hope to gain. It was part of his
nature--the result of an optimistic faith or courage that appealed to
her, and sheer love of effort. She also guessed that his was not a
spasmodic, impulsive activity. She could imagine him holding on as
steadfastly with everything against him, exacting all that men and teams
and machines could do. It struck her as curious that she should feel so
sure of this; but she admitted that it was the case.
Sitting in the driving-seat of a big machine that ripped broad furrows
through the crackling sod, he was approaching them. Four horses plodded
wearily in front of the giant plow until he thrust one hand over, and
there was a rattle and clanking as he swung them and the machine around
beside the wagon. Then he got down, and stood smiling up at Agatha with
his soft hat in his hand and the sunlight falling full upon his
weather-darkened face. It was not a particularly striking face, but
there was something in it, a hint of restrained force and steadfastness,
she thought, which Gregory's did not possess, and for a moment or two
she watched him covertly.
He wore an old blue shirt, open at the throat and belted into trousers
of blue duck, and she noticed the fine symmetry of his spare figure. The
absence of any superfluous flesh struck her as in keeping with her view
of his character. The man was well-endowed physically; but apart from
the strong vitality that was expressed in every line of his pose he
looked clean, as she vaguely described it to herself. There was an
indefinable something about him that was apparently born of a simple,
healthful life spent in determined labor in the open air. It became
plainer, as she remembered other men upon whom the mark of the beast was
unmistakably set. Mrs. Hastings broke the silence.
"Well," she said, "we have driven over as we promised. I've no doubt you
will give us supper, but we'll go on and sit with Mrs. Nansen in the
meanwhile. I expect you're too busy to talk to us."
Wyllard laughed, and it occurred to Agatha that his laugh was wholesome
as well as pleasant.
"I generally am busy," he admitted. "These horses have been at it since
sun-up, and they're rather played out now. I'll talk to you as long as
you will let me after supper, which will soon be ready."
Agatha noticed that though the near horse's coat was foul with dust and
sweat he laid his brown hand upon it, and it seemed to her that the
gentleness with which he did it was very suggestive.
Mrs. Hastings, who had been scrutinizing the field, asked, "What's to be
the result of all this plowing if we have harvest frost or the market
goes against you?"
"Quite a big deficit," answered Wyllard cheerfully.
"And that doesn't cause you any anxiety?"
"I'll have had some amusement for my money."
Mrs. Hastings turned to Agatha. "He calls working from sunrise until
it's dark, and afterwards now and then, amusement!" She looked back at
Wyllard. "I believe it isn't quite easy for you to hold your back as
straight as you are doing, and that off-horse certainly looks as if it
wanted to lie down."
Wyllard laughed. "It won't until after supper, anyway. There are two
more rows of furrows still to do."
"I suppose that is a hint!" Mrs. Hastings glanced at Agatha when the
wagon jolted on.
"That man," she said, "is a great favorite of mine. For one thing, he's
fastidious, though he's fortunately very far from perfect in some
respects. He has a red-hot temper, which now and then runs away with
him."
"What do you mean by fastidious?"
"It's a little difficult to define, but I certainly don't mean
pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink
from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to
do them every now and then."
Agatha made no answer. She was uneasily conscious that it might not be
advisable to think too much about this man, and in another minute or two
they reached the homestead. The house was a plain frame building that
had grown out of an older and smaller one of logs, part of which
remained. It was much the same with the barns and stables, for, while
they were stoutly built of framed timber or logs, one end of most of
them was lower than the rest, and in some cases consisted of poles and
sods. Even to her untrained eyes all she saw suggested order, neatness,
and efficiency. The whole was flanked and sheltered by a big birch
bluff, in which trunks and branches showed through a thin green haze of
tiny opening leaves.
A man whom Wyllard had sent after them took the horses.
Agatha commented on what she called the added-to look of the buildings.
"The Range," said Mrs. Hastings, "has grown rapidly since Harry took
hold. The old part represents the high-water mark of his father's
efforts. Of course," she added reflectively, "Harry has had command of
some capital since a relative of his died, but I never thought that
explained everything."
They entered the house, and a gray-haired Swedish woman led them through
several match-boarded rooms into a big, cool hall. She left them there
for a while, and Agatha was absorbed for a minute or two with her
impressions of the house. It was singularly empty by comparison with the
few English homesteads that she had seen. There were no curtains nor
carpets nor hangings of any kind, but it was commodious and comfortable.
"What can a bachelor want with a place like this?" she asked.
"I don't know," answered Mrs. Hastings; "perhaps it's Harry's idea of
having everything proportionate. The Range is quite a big, and generally
a prosperous, farm. Besides, it's likely that he doesn't contemplate
remaining a bachelor forever. Indeed, Allen and I sometimes wonder how
he has escaped marriage for so long."
"Is 'escaped' the right word?" Agatha asked.
"It is," asserted Mrs. Hastings with a laugh. "You see, he's highly
eligible from our point of view, but at the same time he's apparently
invulnerable. I believe," she added dryly, "that's the right word, too."
The Swedish housekeeper appeared again and they talked with her until
she went to bring in the six o'clock supper. Soon after the table was
laid Wyllard and the men came in. Wyllard was attired as when Agatha had
last seen him, except that he had put on a coat. He led his guests to
the head of the long table, but the men--there were a number of
them--sat below, and evidently had no diffidence about addressing
question or comment to their employer.
The men ate with a voracious haste, but that appeared to be the custom
of the country, and Agatha could find no great fault with their manners
or conversation. The talk was, for the most part, quaintly witty, and
some of the men used what struck her as remarkably fitting and original
similes. Indeed, as the meal proceeded, she became curiously interested.
The windows were open wide, and a sweet, warm air swept into the barely
furnished room. The spaciousness of the room impressed her, and she was
pleased with the evident unity of these brown-faced, strong-armed toilers
with their leader. At the head of the table he sat, self-contained, but
courteous and responsive to all alike, and though they were in an
essentially democratic country, she felt that there was something almost
feudal in the relations between him and his men. She could not imagine
them to be confined to the mere exaction of so much labor and the
expectation of payment of wages due. She was pleased that he had not
changed his clothing.
So strong was Agatha's interest that she was surprised when the meal was
finished. Afterward, she and Mrs. Hastings talked with the housekeeper
for a while, and an hour had slipped away when Wyllard suggested that he
should show her the slough beyond the bluff.
"It's the nearest approach to a lake we have until you get to the alkali
tract," he said.
Agatha went with him through the shadow of the wood, and when they came
out among the trees he found her a seat upon a fallen birch. The house
and plowing were hidden now, and they were alone on the slope to a
slight hollow, in which half a mile of gleaming water lay. Its surface
was broken here and there by tussocks of grass and reeds, and beyond it
the prairie ran back unbroken, a dim gray waste, to the horizon. The sun
had dipped behind the bluff, and the sky had become a vast green
transparency. There was no wind now, but a wonderful exhilarating
freshness crept into the cooling air, and the stillness was broken only
by the clamor of startled wildfowl which Agatha could see paddling in
clusters about the gleaming slough.
"Those are ducks--wild ones?" she asked.
"Yes," answered Wyllard; "ducks of various kinds. Most of them the same
as your English ones."
"Do you shoot them?"
Agatha was not greatly interested, but he seemed disposed to silence,
and she felt, for no very clear reason, that it was advisable to talk of
something.
"No," he said, "not often, anyway. If Mrs. Nansen wants a couple I crawl
down to the long grass with the rifle and get them for her."
"The rifle? Doesn't the big bullet destroy them?"
"No," returned Wyllard. "You have to shoot their head off or cut their
neck in two."
"You can do that--when they're right out in the slough?" asked Agatha,
who had learned that it is much more difficult to shoot with a rifle
than a shotgun, which spreads its charge.
Wyllard smiled. "Generally; that is, if I haven't been doing much just
before. It depends upon one's hands. We have our game laws, but as a
rule nobody worries about them, and, anyway, those birds won't nest
until they reach the tundra by the Polar Sea. Still, as I said, we never
shoot them unless Mrs. Nansen wants one or two for the pot."
"Why?"
"I don't quite know. For one thing, they're worn out; they just stop
here to rest."
His answer appealed to the girl. It did not seem strange to her that the
love of the lower creation should be strong in this man, who had no
hesitation in admitting that the game laws were no restraint to him.
When these Lesser Brethren, worn with their journey, sailed down out of
the blue heavens, he believed in giving them right of sanctuary.
"They have come a long way?" she asked.
Wyllard pointed towards the south. "From Florida, Cuba, Yucatan; further
than that, perhaps. In a day or two they'll push on again toward the
Pole, and others will take their places. There's a further detachment
arriving now."
Looking up, Agatha saw a straggling wedge of birds dotted in dusky
specks against the vault of transcendental blue. The wedge coalesced,
drew out again, and dropped swiftly, and the air was filled with the
rush of wings; then there was a harsh crying and splashing, and she
heard the troubled water lap among the reeds until deep silence closed
in upon the slough again.
"The migrating instinct is strangely interesting," she said.
A curious look crept into Wyllard's eyes.
"It gives the poor birds a sad destiny, I think; they're wanderers and
strangers without a habitation; there's unrest in them. After a few
months on the tundra mosses to gather strength and teach the young to
fly, they'll unfold their wings to beat another passage before the icy
gales. Some of us, I think, are like them!"
Agatha could not avoid the personal application.
"You surely don't apply that to yourself," she said. "You certainly have
a habitation--the finest, isn't it, on this part of the prairie?"
"Yes," answered Wyllard slowly; "I suppose it is. I've now had a little
rest and quietness too."
His last remark did not appear to call for an answer, and Agatha sat
silent.
"Still," he went on reflectively, "I have a feeling that some day the
call will come, and I shall have to take the trail again." He paused,
and looked at her before he added, "It would be easier if one hadn't to
go alone, or, since that would be necessary, if one had at least
something to come back to when the journey was done."
"Must you heed the call?" asked Agatha, who was puzzled by his steady
gaze.
"Yes," he said with gravity, "the call will come from the icy North if
it ever comes at all."
There was another brief silence. Agatha wondered what he was thinking
of, but he soon told her.
"I remember how I came back from there last time," he said. "We were
rather late that season, and out of our usual beat when the gale broke
upon us in the gateway of the Pole, between Alaska and Asia. We ran
before it with a strip of the boom-foresail on one vessel and a jib that
blew to ribands every now and then. The schooner was small, ninety tons
or so, and for a week she scudded with the gray seas tumbling after her,
white-topped, out of the snow and spume. The waves ranged high above her
taffrail, curling horribly, but one did not want to look at them. The
one man on deck had a line about him, and he looked ahead, watching the
vessel screwing round with hove-up bows as she climbed the seas. If he'd
let her fall off or claw up, the next wave would have made an end of
her. He was knee-deep half the time in icy brine, and his hands had
split and opened with the frost, but the sweat dripped from him as he
clung to the jarring wheel. The helmsmen had another trouble which
preyed on them. They were thinking of the three men they had left
behind.
"Well," he added, "we ran out of the gale, and I had bitter words to
face when we reached Vancouver. As one result of the trouble I walked
out of the city with four or five dollars in my pocket--though there was
a share due to me. Then in an open car I rode up into the ranges to mend
railroad bridges in the frost and snow. It was not the kind of
home-coming one would care to look forward to."
"Ah!" Agatha cried with a shudder, "it must have been horribly dreary."
The man met her eyes. "Yes," he said, "you--know. You came here from far
away, I think a little weary, too, and something failed you. Then you
felt yourself adrift. There were--it seemed--only strangers around you,
but you were wrong in one respect; you were by no means a stranger to
me."
He had been leaning against a birch trunk, but now he moved a little
nearer, and stood gravely looking down on her.
"You have sent Gregory away?" he questioned.
"Yes," answered Agatha, and, startled, as she was, it did not occur to
her that the mere admission was misleading.
Wyllard stretched out his hands. "Then won't you come to me?"
The blood swept into the girl's face. For the moment she forgot Gregory,
and was conscious only of an unreasoning impulse which prompted her to
take the hands held out to her. She rose and faced Wyllard with burning
cheeks.
"You know nothing of me," she said. "Can you think that I would let you
take me out of charity?"
"Again you're wrong--on both points. As I once told you, I have sat for
hours beside the fire beneath the pines or among the boulders with your
picture for company. When I was worn out and despondent you encouraged
me. You have been with me high up in the snow on the ranges, and through
leagues of shadowy bush. That is not all. There were times when, as we
drove the branch line up the gorge beneath the big divide, all one's
nature shrank from the monotony of brutal labor. The paydays came
around, and opportunities were made for us to forget what we had borne,
and had still to bear. Then you laid a restraining hand on me. I could
not take your picture where you could not go. Is all that to count for
nothing?"
He held out his arms to her. "As to the other question, can you get
beyond the narrow point of view? We're in a big, new country where the
old barriers are down. We're merely flesh and blood--red blood--and we
speak as we feel. Admitting that I was sorry for you--I am--how does
that tell against me--or you? There's one thing only that counts at
all--I want you."
Agatha was stirred with an emotion that made her heart beat wildly. He
had spoken with a force and passion that had nearly swept her away with
it. The vigor of the new land throbbed in his voice, and, flinging aside
all cramping restraints and conventions, he had claimed her as primitive
man claimed primitive woman. Her whole being responded to his love and
Gregory faded out of her mind; but there was, after all, pride in her,
and she could not quite bring herself to look at life from his point of
view. All her prejudices and her traditions were opposed to it. He had
made a mistake when he had admitted that he was sorry for her. She did
not want his compassion, and she shrank from the thought that she would
marry him--for shelter. It brought to her a sudden, shameful confusion
as she remembered the haste with which marriages were arranged on the
prairie. Then, as the first unreasoning impulse which had almost
compelled her to yield to him passed away, she reflected that it was
scarcely two months since she had met him in England. It was intolerable
that he should think that she would be willing to fall into his arms
merely because he had held them out to her.
"It is a little difficult to get beyond one's sense of what is fit," she
said. "You--I must say again--can't know anything about me. You have
woven fancies about that photograph, but you must recognize that I'm not
the girl you have created out of your reveries. In all probability she
is wholly unreal, unnatural, visionary." Agatha contrived to smile, for
she was recovering her composure. "Perhaps it is easy when one has
imagination to endow a person with qualities and graces that could never
belong to them. It must be easy"--though she was unconscious of it,
there was a trace of bitterness in her voice--"because I know I could do
it myself."
Again the man held out his arms. "Then," he said simply, "won't you try?
If you can only feel sure that the person has the qualities you admire
it is possible that he could acquire one or two."
Agatha drew back. "And I've changed ever so much since that photograph
was taken!" she exclaimed with a catch in her voice.
Wyllard admitted it. "Yes," he said, "I recognized that; you were a
little immature then. I know that now--but all the graciousness and
sweetness in you has grown and ripened. What is more, you have grown
just as I seemed to know you would. I saw that clearly the day we met
beside the stepping-stones. I would have asked you to marry me in
England, only Gregory stood in the way."
The color ebbed suddenly out of the girl's face as she remembered.
"Gregory," she declared in a strained voice, "stands in the way still. I
didn't send him away altogether. I'm not sure I made that clear."
Wyllard stood very still for a moment or two.
"I wonder," he said, "if there's anything significant in the fact that
you gave me that reason last. He failed you in some way?"
"I'm not sure that I haven't failed him; but I can't go into that."
Again Wyllard stood silent. Then he turned to her with a strong
restraint in his face.
"Gregory is a friend of mine," he said, "there is, at least, one very
good reason why I should remember it, but it seems that somehow he
hadn't the wit to keep you. Well, I can only wait, but when the time
seems ripe I shall ask you again. Until then you have my promise that I
will not say another word that could distress you. Perhaps I had better
take you back to Mrs. Hastings now."
Agatha turned away, and they walked back together silently.