I resolved to have it out with Jean. There was no sense in letting
things go on like this. Jean had happiness within her grasp, for the
taking, but she persisted in writing moon-struck doggerel to a man who
apparently cared no more for her than for the post that marked the
corner of his section. Spoof's continued and deliberate neglect--I
called it neglect now----admitted no other explanation.
I spent a wakeful night thinking about this, and toward morning I got up
and retrieved the crumpled bit of paper which I had thrown into a corner
of the kitchen. I spread it out and read the lines again. A night of
reflexion had worn the edge from my indignation, and I admitted that,
from an artistic point of view, the verses were perhaps not so hopeless
as I had thought them. Indeed, they suggested a certain germ of poetic
ability. A little devil of conscience began an insurrection in my sense
of fair play, demanding to know if I could write as well myself. But I
am no poet. I took a pencil and put down the word Jean, and then set
about hunting for rhymes for it, but I could think of only two--"lean"
and "bean." Neither of these seemed to lend itself to poetic treatment.
Suddenly a whiff of memory rushing in from somewhere sent me scuttling
among old school books at the bottom of my trunk. It was a whim of mine
to keep my old school books, if only that in after years I might read
and appreciate the little gems of literature which, with the assistance
of a phlegmatic teacher, I cordially hated when a child. Here it was--an
old Ontario Reader with a sensational story about an Indian woman who
killed a bear with a butcher knife, or some such weapon. My sympathy, I
remember, had always been with the bear, doubtless because of the
picture which was made to represent the Indian woman. I had read this
story again and again, when all other passages in the book had failed to
interest me, and some little long-forgotten cell of memory said I would
find a fragment of paper tucked between these pages. Sure enough, there
it was! I drew it out eagerly, but tenderly and almost reverently, and
held it under the lamp. How that strange, childish scrawl seemed to run
all over my heart and pucker it into little gasping pockets! I could
feel a thumping between my lungs and the hard beating of my pulse went
throbbing through the paper in my fingers.
When I am old
And very tall
I hope my name
Will be Mrs. Hall.
A mist came up out of the past and blurred the scrawly letters until
they swam before my eyes and faded out of sight. They had carried me
back to the dear dead days of childhood--that Eden of life which comes
before the disillusionment which is the Fall. The years between had gone
out with a gulp that filled my throat, and again we were little children
playing together, solemnly mating ourselves for the future under the
witnessing murmur of the great pine. That had been one of the great days
in my life, and I had not known it then. I wonder how often we know the
great day when it is actually upon us! But in that day I had drunk in
something which had become part of my system; part of my flesh and bone
and brain; part of my hope, my aspiration, my life. And now would I give
it up? Never--never! I pressed the previous missive to my lips and
suddenly the dam of my overwrought nerves gave way, and tears rushed
down upon me. With a man's shame I would have checked them if I could,
but the flood would not be stopped--and there was none to see. I fell on
my bed and let the storm sweep over me.
After a while came calmness, and with that calmness the resolution which
I recorded in the opening lines of this chapter. I would have it out
with Jean. I would put up another fight for all that made life worth the
living. I would _not_ accept my fate; at least, I would not accept the
fate to which Jean had resigned me. She would see! . . .
But this was a battle which could not be fought in public, and I racked
my wits for some way in which I might lay siege to Jean--alone. I
hardly could ask Jack and Marjorie to get out of their own house while
I subjected Jean to the main drive which was to break down her
resistance; much less could I invite Jean to Fourteen for the same
purpose. The prairies, with all their vast spaces, refused me just that
one little niche of privacy I needed. As I turned the matter over in my
mind a clever plan unfolded itself before me. I would make a sled and
invite Jean to go coasting somewhere along the banks of the gully. Then
we would wander on and on, the farther the better.
Fortunately some boards remained of the table which had supported the
wedding feast, and I went to work with a will. The reaction from
inactivity was in itself a tonic to my spirits, and I found myself
whistling an improvised tune which I fitted to the words, "When I am old
and very tall, etc." Hope rebounded, as hope will, from its dip into
despair, and I began to picture the shack on Fourteen as it would be
under the loving care of "Mrs. Hall," and the joy that we would find in
its seclusion. The winter months, which had been dragging so
unutterably, suddenly threatened to be all too short.
I completed my sleigh and presented myself at the door of Twenty-two.
Jack looked upon the vehicle with evident misgiving. I may have built it
rather stoutly, but that was no reason why he should suggest that I
hitch an ox to it.
"An ox!" I retorted." This is built for speed. I am going to ask Jean to
go coasting."
"Aha!" said Jack, significantly. "I wish you all possible--speed."
Jean showed no reluctance about going. She drew on a woolen sweater and
a short, cloth winter coat, with a collar of some fluffy kind of fur
which had originally grown on a cat. She had a little fur cap of the
same material, which she pulled down snugly on her head, and we were
off.
We followed the crest of the gully for some distance in the direction of
Sneezit's farm, ostensibly in search of a good coasting spot, but
actually much engaged with our thoughts and the real purpose of our
outing. That Jean understood it perfectly I was convinced, and under
such circumstances the fact that she had so readily accepted my
invitation was at least a hopeful omen.
Walking on the untracked snow in midwinter is an uncertain business, and
the prairie people rarely make use of snowshoes. For the most part there
was a frozen crust that bore our weight, but this crust has an
unfortunate habit of giving way at unexpected moments, particularly when
one has just taken a big stride forward. There is an effect very much
like coming upon the head of the stairs in the darkness when you think
you are still safely walking along the hall. It precipitates one forward
with great suddenness, but fortunately snow is a good thing to fall in.
We scrambled to our feet, laughing and in high spirits. It was a
wonderful thing to laugh again, and mean it.
At last we found a place where the snow had curved in a great white
plume over the bank of the gully. For fifty or sixty feet it dropped
away in an absolutely smooth descent; then came a sudden pitch, as
though a great ladle had scooped out the drift; then a succession of
little billows whipped up by the cross currents at the foot of the hill.
"How's that?" I demanded.
"It looks good," said Jean. "Let me see if it is firm."
With that she ran out upon the drift, her dainty feet tripping down it
like a bird. But the descent was steeper than she thought; her momentum
over-balanced her, and in an instant I saw her careering wildly down the
slope, her arms outstretched, her hair flying loose from under the rim
of her cap. Near the foot she disappeared entirely.
Perhaps I should have rushed after her, but I didn't. I sat down
leisurely at the top of the hill and waited for her to reappear.
Presently a mittened hand came up over the crest which hid her from
view; then something round and furry, like a sleeping kitten; then a
forehead, two eyes, and a glimpse of cheeks.
"Aren't you coming down--to help me?" she called.
Now I had meant to stand on my rights; to tell Jean that she had gone
down the hill on her own accord, and might come back in the same way;
perhaps to poke some quiet mirth at her efforts to scramble up the
slippery drift. When a man contemplates matrimony he may as well settle
at once who's who, and why. Now was my time to be firm.
"No, I'm not coming," I said.
Jean looked at me for a moment, in surprise; then uttered not another
word. But from her hand she drew her woolen mitten, and raised her fine,
firm fingers in the air. One of those fingers crooked, with the knuckle
bent toward me, and the finger pointing to her face; then, with a little
seductive flicker, she beckoned me to her. . . . . . It was too much. I
sprang on my sled and shot like an arrow to its target.
When we climbed the hill together she was radiant. "Isn't it wonderful,
wonderful!" she exclaimed. "All this white wilderness to play in, to
shout in--Listen!" And she helloed at the top of her voice. Only an
echo, beating back from the banks of the gully, answered. "See, we are
all alone--alone in all the world. "Why didn't you bring me out here
before?"
"Are you glad to be alone with me, Jean?" I asked, drawing the
unmittened hand into mine. "Are you glad to be here, alone, with me?"
"Why, yes. You are my friend."
"Only your friend?"
"Oh, see, there's a place where perhaps we can slide right over the
pitch! Let's!"
She was on the sled in an instant, and I behind her. I kicked it loose.
With a gentle crunching sound the runners started scraping through the
snow; then, as the speed increased, the sound rose to a whine which
mingled with the rush of air in our ears and the spray of snow in our
faces. Jean's heels were just above the snow surface, and when, as
happened once or twice, they dropped too low, they showered us with
flying icy crystals. Then, just at the dip, one heel drove in much too
deep--too deep to be accidental--the sled trembled, turned sideways, and
went over.
We disentangled ourselves, laughing, but we did not immediately reclimb
the hill. I found a sheltered spot in the pitch where we might sit on
the sled with our backs to the great drift while our faces caught the
slanting warmth of the sun and our eyes could range the field of tiny
rainbow signals thrown up from the ripple at our feet.
Jean broke up the crusted snow with the heel of her overshoe; then
buried her feet in the powdery mound. Presently a toe came wiggling up
through it. . . . . . . .
"Jean, don't!" I cried. "You take me back to those old days! We
understood everything then; then everything was supposed to be settled."
The toe settled to stillness in its burrowing; Jean's sensitive lips,
too, settled to a stillness firm and sad.
"Tell me, Jean," I pressed at length; "why can't we go back; why can't
we start over again--like that?"
"We have always been good friends," she murmured.
"Good friends--yes. Must it stop at that?"
"And neighbours," she continued. "We have always been good neighbours.
Perhaps that is the trouble."
"How--the trouble?"
"Well, it's like this," she said, and again the toe began to gyrate in
the snow. "We've known each other so well, and so long, there isn't
anything--much--left to know, is there? Could you stand the boredom of a
person who has no new thoughts, no strange ideas, no whims--nothing that
you haven't already seen and known a hundred times?"
"There never could be boredom with you, dear. Just to have you with me,
to feast on you, to know you were mine, would be enough for me."
"For about a week. You'd soon tire of a feast with no flavor to it. _I_
would, at any rate. . . . Oh, I see it working out already. I don't want
to gossip, and Jack and Marjorie have been everything they could to me,
but already I can see them settling down to the routine--_the deadly
routine_. Bad enough anywhere, but on these prairies, with their
isolation, their immensity--unbearable. I couldn't stand it."
I studied her for a moment in silence. Jean might know all about me; I
might have no new thoughts, new ideas, new whims, but it was quite plain
I didn't know all about her.
"Still, there are many couples on these prairies living happily, I
suppose," I ventured.
"You suppose," she repeated. "That's right. It is just supposition.
Nobody knows; that is, the public doesn't know. But what is their
happiness? An ox-like acceptance of the routine. Breakfast, work;
dinner, work; supper, work; sleep; breakfast--the whole circle over
again. I couldn't stand it, Frank; there's no use pretending I could.
I'd--I'd run away with some one!"
"Jean!"
"Yes, I know what you're thinking. But it would break the routine,
anyway; it wouldn't be that way I would lose my soul; perhaps that way I
might save it."
"You're a strange girl, Jean."
"Yes? After all these years? I am so glad. As long as I am strange you
will be interested in me. That's the trouble with you; you're not
strange. I know all about you. And I wouldn't be your housekeeper for
life for the sake of being your lover for a week."
"Jean!"
"Shocking, isn't it? But true. Don't you know that's what happens,
nearly always? It must happen, unless there are new points of interest
always arising. I have the misfortune to think, and so I see these
things in advance, and try to shield you from them."
"The misfortune to think?"
"Of course. Otherwise I could accept the ox-routine and grind out my
soul in the treadmill of three meals a day. I suppose that's what people
call morality--ideal wife and mother, etc. I'd run away from it all."
I, too, punched the snow with my heel. "I never heard you talk like
that, Jean," I said at length. "I didn't think you thought--along those
lines. You wouldn't excuse people who run--who disregard their marriage
vows?"
"The first of which is to love," she shot back. "When that fails, all
fails. Why make a mockery of it?"
"But I would love you, always--always. You would be to me the only--the
only _possible_ girl in the world!"
Slowly she turned her face toward me; she had been giving me an
opportunity for profile study during this dialogue. Her eyes found mine;
her lips--in them again I saw the rose-leaf beauty of her childhood.
When she spoke her voice was low and tremulous and musical.
"You dear boy! You think so. I only wish it were true!"
The last words came with a catch in her breath, I thrust forward and
clasped her hands in mine.
"You mean that? Oh, Jean, if you do. . . . ."
"Yes, I mean it. That is the great difficulty. It isn't true. You
wouldn't love me always. I wouldn't always be the only girl."
"Jean, you would. I swear it!"
"Then I must reverse it. I wouldn't love you always. You wouldn't always
be the only man in the world."
My spirit, which had gone pounding upward, fell like a burst balloon.
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because your vision is too small. Because it is bounded by the corner
posts of Fourteen. Because I couldn't live penned up in such a--a
pasture."
"You'd be breaking out--toward section Two."
"Frank!" It was her turn to exclaim.
"Yes, toward section Two. You've done some plain talking, Jean; now it's
my turn. It is Spoof that has upset your mind--put all these wild
notions in your head. It is Spoof that you are thinking about, not me. I
suppose you think you could marry him and not drop into the routine; you
would be less an ox, as you put it, on Two than on Fourteen. Perhaps
that would be best, after all. Perhaps if you were fenced in on Two, you
might break out toward Fourteen!"
"Frank! Please don't be unkind--and unfair. . . . . . . . I _am_
thinking about Spoof, and it is just because he is _not_ bounded by
section Two. You and Jack and Jake think he's a greenhorn, and you play
your silly little tricks on him, but his world is the world, and yours
is Fourteen, and Jack's is Twenty-two, and Jake's is--whatever his
section is. He's so big, so big!"
"I see. Spoof has travelled more than we have. He has seen more of the
world. He has met more people. And so he is big! I bet I grow more oats
to the acre than he does--you should see his plowing; looks like--'be
guess and be damned,' as Jake says."
"Quite an elegant remark; suitable to Jake, hardly to be expected from
you. And your argument would be irresistible--if I were an ox."
"You're sharp, aren't you? Well, something to eat is not to be despised,
even by BIG people, like you and Spoof. Even the soul, which you are
afraid of losing on Fourteen, will pick up and leave you on Two, unless
you feed that body in which it lives. That's what the soul itself thinks
about people who don't hustle for a living; it gets up and leaves them."
"Good for you!" cried Jean, "You are actually thinking. I have goaded
you into it. Now--where are we?"
"We're at Spoof. You say you could love me for a week, and him forever."
"I didn't say that."
"You as much as said it. Spoof may have advantages--I admit his travel,
and all that--but will those things keep him big? Won't section Two
bound him in a year or so, just as you say Fourteen bounds me now? Is he
different clay; less ox, more soul?"
"Section Two can never hold Spoof, because he--because he is _big_,
don't you see? He reads, he thinks, he sings, he dreams. No section can
hold one who does those things."
"Does he write poetry?" I inquired, innocently.
"I--I don't think so," said she, not scenting my trap, "but he is very
fond of it. You should hear him read----"
"Hear him read 'Come to me. . . . . Spoof!'"
She turned to me fairly again. She had withdrawn her hands from mine and
was crushing little crusts of snow between her mittens. Now she dropped
the snow, shook her hands free of its powdery residue, then linked them
about her knee. For a long moment she held me under her eyes without
blinking.
"So you saw that, did you?"
"Jean--I'm sorry. I apologize. I saw it by accident--I couldn't help
that. I could have helped speaking about it. I apologize."
Then her eyes dropped. "It was very foolish," she murmured. "You have a
right to be amused."
"But I'm not amused," I protested. "And I'm not sure it is really
foolish. At any rate, I'll confess something, Jean; when I found it I
tried to write a poem--to you--but I couldn't. The only rhymes I could
think of were Jean and bean."
"Splendid! Oh. Frank, I'm beginning to be afraid--to hope--that I didn't
quite know you after all. Fancy you trying to write poetry--and about
me! Let's write a verse now. I'll help you."
She whipped a mitten from her hand and sat with her fingers lightly
drumming on her lips, summoning the muse.
"You'll have to write it," I said. "I'll sign it."
"All right!" she exclaimed at length, and turning to the huge drift
behind us she traced on its hard surface with her forefinger this
inscription:
If you will only be my wife,
No matter what the past has been
I'll take a broader view of life
And try to keep you guessing, Jean.
"Oh, you used my rhymes!" I exclaimed. "But isn't that last line
slangy?" I said, when we had it well laughed over and I had added at the
side an idealistic sketch of Jean's face under a bridal veil. My drawing
rather lost its point in the fact that I had to explain what it was.
"No, not slang--poetic license. That's a great advantage poets have;
anything that isn't quite good English can always be called poetic
license. Now sign it."
I signed it in bold, printed letters, and then we fell into silence.
"What's the answer, Jean?" I said at length.
"Oh, Frank, I can't give you an answer--not now. That may have been
slang, about keeping me guessing, but it goes a long way down in one's
nature. If you would only read, and study, and think, and learn to
appreciate beautiful things--"
"Oh, Jean, I do! I appreciate you."
"Rather clever, Frank, but that isn't just what I mean. I mean like
Spoof; we might as well be frank about it. I've seen him watch the
sunset in the pond; watch the colors change and blend and run in little
ripples with a touch of breeze as though the water had been stirred with
a feather; I've seen him sit for hours watching the ambers and saffrons
and champagnes of the prairie sunset, and----"
"And that's why he got so little plowing done."
"Stop it! And he knows every flower on the prairies, and all you know is
pigweed and----"
"And tiger lilies."
"Stop it again! And he takes note of little things, like when I worked a
new strip of lace into the yoke of my dress, and when I put a dash of
scarlet ribbon in my hat he said it gave me just the touch of color that
one needed on the prairies, and it was no wonder that the Red Indians
loved color, and how much wiser, in some things, they were than we,
and----"
"He was spoofing you, Jean."
"He wasn't."
"Then he was making love to you."
"Perhaps. But it was very nice. You never noticed my lace or my ribbon.
You didn't even notice this new cap I have on to-day; I made it out of
an old muff, all myself, and I just said to myself, 'I wonder if Frank
will notice it,' but you didn't----"
"I did, too. I saw it first thing, and I thought how nice it looked on
you."
"Spoof would have said how nice I looked under it."
"Oh, damn Spoof!"
"Spoof's an artist, Frank. You're not."
"Nor yet a poet. But I reckon I'll make a good farmer."
"We threshed out the ox question a while ago. Let's keep on new ground."
"Very well. Here's some new ground. When did Spoof tell you all these
things? I understood he hadn't come into the house all the time we were
away."
"He didn't either--hardly. But he used to come over regularly to see
that everything was all right about the place and to have his 'bawth',
and he had the handsomest bathing suit--white and yellow trimmings--and
Marjorie and I fixed up bathing suits too, and we used to go in----"
"Together?"
"Of course. Only Marjorie only went in once or twice; she said she was
afraid of the frogs. . . . . Marjorie is a knowing girl."
"My own sister! And she would conspire . . . . . ." I crunched a clump
of crust viciously under my heel.
"Well, seeing that you have confessed, I suppose I should own up, too,"
I said, after a silence. "I never told you that there was a girl out
where I worked this summer."
"No? What was she like?" Jean's voice was steady, but I caught a new
note in it. It augured well for my first attempt at romancing.
"Oh, she was a nice girl, all right. Her folks thought she would make a
good ox, but she didn't quite fall in line. She had that broader vision
you set so much on. Sort o' hinted that she and I might do well running
a rooming house at Moose Jaw; they say things are humming at the Jaw.
Rather suggested----"
"Oh, Frank, she never did! . . . . . Wanted you to marry her, I
suppose?"
"No, she didn't just say that. But she's BIG, you know; takes a big view
of things. Of course, it might have come to that in time. I remember one
afternoon it rained and we couldn't work in the fields and that night
she and I went to a dance----"
"Does she dance well?"
"Oh, quite well. And free. You know--nothing standoffish, or anything
like that. Well, the storm came up again during the night, and we
couldn't get home, and it was only a small farm house so some of us had
to sleep in the hayloft, and Nellie said she'd be a dead game sport----"
"Now Frank, don't tell me any more. I don't believe it. . . . . . . .
What happened next?"
"Oh, nothing much. It was about noon when we got home, and the old man
was pretty sore, but I told him I thought a good deal of Nellie and
wouldn't mind marrying her if it came to that, and I asked her to come
over here and visit us next summer----"
"You're lying, Frank. Let's go home."
As we walked home in silence, trailing our sleigh, the nip of the late
afternoon stung our cheeks to roses and our breaths trailed behind like
the gaseous tail of a very young and leisurely comet. Jean complained
that one of her hands was growing cold so I took the mitten off it and
drew the hand down into my deep, warm over-coat pocket, where we took
all precautions against frost-bite. The other hand had to take a chance.
We walked along the bottom of the gully for shelter from the wind which
was rising with sunset. As we neared Twenty-two Jean stopped.
"Frank, I want to ask you a question," she said. "There was no truth in
that story you told me?"
"You care?"
"Of course I care. Tremendously."
"Don't you want me to be big?"
"Not that way. I've been talking about intellectual things--spiritual
things."
"I suppose Spoof's bathing suit, with the white and yellow, is quite
spiritual?"
"That isn't fair."
"Oh yes it is. It is merely the other ox getting gored."
"Anyway, your story wasn't true? You made it up to tease me?"
"If I answer your question will you answer mine?"
"I can't Frank, I can't--not now. I haven't seen Spoof since Christmas.
Perhaps he's sick. Perhaps he's dead. Something awful may have
happened."
"His smoke goes up every morning just the same."
"Oh, you've been watching it, too. But something has happened. I--I
can't answer you now."
At the door of Jack's house we paused again. We were in the shadow
there, and as she turned on the step her form swung close to mine. For a
moment I seized her, no longer able to play the semi-Platonic. . . . . .
"But there was no truth in it, was there?" she whispered.
"There was some truth in it," I confessed, as I turned toward the empty
shack on Fourteen.