After the first blank moment of surprise I turned, not to Spoof or "Mrs.
Alton" or the boy, but to Jean. There was a momentary tremulousness, but
almost instantly Jean had herself under control; she was more the artist
than I knew. I began to realize how far her artistry carried.
"This _is_ news!" she cried. "When did----" She stopped short. A wave of
color flushed her face. Gerald did not admit of casual explanation.
The child, now relieved of cumbersome clothing, was standing on sturdy
feet in the middle of the room getting his bearings. His big,
intelligent eyes were losing no time in making an appraisal of me and
mine.
Jean swooped upon him; clasped him up in her arms. Perhaps it was
because at that moment she must have action. Her face was pressed into
his little white neck. "Big Boy, Big Boy," she whispered, "why didn't
you tell me this before?"
Spoof and his wife and I still stood as though rooted to the floor. The
woman seemed to avoid my gaze, but when at times I caught a glimpse of
her face there was something finer than embarrassment in it; there was
embarrassment, it is true, but something almost seraphic as well.
Suddenly, "I think we women should go over to Twenty-two," Jean
exclaimed. "Marjorie must know the great news. Come, Jerry!"
At the door the collie joined them, capering uneasily in the snow. Spoof
and I watched them as they took their way along the well-trodden trail
across the gully; then we stabled his oxen in silence.
Back in the house, Spoof drank a cup of tea and rolled me a cigarette--I
never smoked cigarettes except under Spoof's malign influence--before he
showed a disposition to talk. Then, seated on one of my rough benches,
behind the blue haze of his own tobacco smoke, he spoke.
"It's a long story, Hall, if one covered all the details," he said.
"Fortunately, between friends, that isn't necessary."
"I married this woman that you know as Mrs. Alton five years ago
Christmas Day. You will understand why Jack's wedding was something of
an anniversary to me. In course of time Gerald was born. Up until then,
and for some time afterwards, everything was all right.
"Then--something happened. In what I chose to call righteous indignation
I turned her out. Perhaps it was more mortified pride, or just blind,
beast jealousy. Never mind. Through it all I gave myself credit for
being just, even generous. I gave her half of my ready money, which
wasn't much; I've never been much of a money-grabber, Hall; it has
always seemed such an inconsequential business. But I gave her half of
what I had, and settled on Gerald the small income I could command, and
let her keep the boy. That was the biggest thing. I see a good deal of
it through different light to-day, but for letting her keep the boy I
demand some credit still. I've done one or two hard things, Hall. Yon
know. That was one of them."
He finished his cigarette and lit another.
"Then I came out here," he continued. "It seemed the wisest thing to do.
I was settling into the hope of forgetting it all and making a new start
when she followed me." He held up his hand as if to silence me, although
I had made no move to speak. "I don't blame her--now," he said. "But
then--last summer, you know--it rather interfered. I may as well be
frank with you. I had an idea that Jean would just about complete
section Two. She's a wonderful girl, Jean.
"Then came Alice, and I knew _that_ wouldn't do. It would make blackmail
too easy. I was base enough to think of that.
"After Jack's wedding I gave the whole thing some serious thought. I
surmised how the land lay between you and Jean, and what had interrupted
your plans. I concluded that the only decent thing to do was to drop out
of your lives, for the time being. Well, Jean wouldn't have it. You
know--the other day. . . . That was one of the hard things I was
thinking about when I spoke of them a moment ago.
"Frank, she lit a thousand old fires of memory that morning. Moving
about in my room; sitting at my table; pouring my tea--God, man, do you
understand? It was too much for anybody. . . . I don't know what would
have happened. At any rate, I ask you to believe that I was making my
fight. . . . . Then you came."
He threw away half of an unsmoked cigarette and rolled another.
"Then I spent some sleepless nights, Frank, old boy. I was glad you had
come, and even in my gladness for that sometimes I wished you--We humans
are such queer mixtures; beyond analysis. But the more I admitted these
things to myself the more I had also to admit that something might be
said for Alice. Alice had once been to me all that it now seemed that
Jean might be. I wondered if, by some miracle, that might not come
again. Wasn't the obstacle, all the obstacle, the only obstacle, right
in my own mind? What if I should root it out? What if I should say, 'I'm
too big a man to submit to this; I refuse to be tyrannized by a little
jealous demon in one corner of my mind?' . . .
"I began to think that perhaps after all Alice's purpose in following me
here was quite different from what I had suspected. Women are strange
creatures. They keep you guessing, as you say in this country."
"Better that than boredom," I heard my own voice saying.
"Shake!" said Spoof, springing suddenly to his feet and seizing me by
the hand. "Shake! By Jove, I didn't know it was in you. If I were a
moralist, setting light houses on the reefs about the sea of matrimony,
I would set the biggest, blazingest light on Boredom. But nobody set a
light on it for me . . .
"Besides, I wanted tremendously to see the boy.
"So yesterday I hitched the oxen and broke trail over to 'Widow
Alton's.' My afflictions had brought me to a sufficiently humble frame
of mind to let Alice say her say. For awhile she couldn't say anything;
just wept, you know, and cried my name over and over, and sometimes
Gerald's. Mighty uncomfortable for a man standing around and feeling
that in some way he's to blame for it all.
"Well, when we got down to facts she had come in the hope of raising
money by means of homesteading so that she could educate the boy. Fancy
that, and me associating her with blackmail! But when she found, through
old Jake, that I had located here, she wasn't above following. And yet
she was afraid of me; afraid she'd meet me somewhere; afraid I'd come
over to her homestead; and all the time hoping I would! Women are
strange creatures.
"Well, we talked it all over, and"--and for the first time in his
narrative Spoof's face lighted with a gentle smile--"I didn't go back to
Two last night at all. We're planning a sort of quinquennial honeymoon
progress about the district, and, properly enough, our first call is at
Fourteen. And now that that's off my chest, behold a man happy once
more. I am amazed at the folly that denied me all these years---- Men,
too, are strange creatures.
"There's just one thing--a very insignificant thing compared with
Alice's happiness, and mine, and Gerald's, but it's this: In taking up
her homestead she had to declare herself a widow. She did it for the
boy's sake, and she knows she will have to give up the claim, but will
she get into further trouble? Will they let it go at that?"
That was a poser, and I turned it over in my mind for some minutes.
"Better see Jake about that," I suggested. "He'll find a way."
"That's right!" said Spoof. "Jake's the boy. And he owes me something
yet on that cogitation nut transaction.
"Just one more thing," Spoof resumed, after a little. "I've told you a
great deal more than I propose to tell anyone else. It seemed to me that
you--and Jean--had a peculiar right to know."
* * * * *
Almost before we knew it the springtime was upon us. It came suddenly,
out of a March sky and a south-west wind, and the hard, illimitable
distances of winter softened and mellowed before our eyes. The drifts
fell away; brown spots came out on the edge of the gully; little
streamlets cataracted over its banks; blue snow-water gathered in its
depressions; adventurous early gophers sent their challenge from bank to
bank. The waters in the gully gathered and grew; presently they were
forcing ahead, into and under and over the drifts that barred their way;
their pleasant gurglings came up through the clear, calm, lengthening
twilights.
The bare fields came forth; the dark brown clodded earth looked up in a
million mimic mountain peaks through a wrinkled blanket of snow; the
grass stirred on the prairies; a flush of green ran down the long
shadows of the evening. Once more was the world alive!
They were busy times for us. Every hour of springtime, like the seed
sown in the spring, multiplies many fold by autumn; the tale of
slothfulness in spring is written big in harvest--or rather, in lack of
harvest. As soon as the snow was gone from the plowed fields and the
frost was out an inch or two we were at work with our harrows; then, in
a few days more, sowing our crops. There was a pleasant neighbourliness,
a satisfying community of interest, in casting the eye across our level
prairies and noting the slow-moving seeder-shuttles plying up and down
across the cool, moist warp of earth.
The skies and clouds of springtime were almost as wonderful as the
prairie dawns and sunsets. I suppose it is because of the vast sameness
of the prairies themselves that we learned to turn our eyes so often to
the heavens. When one's vision is hemmed about by woods and hills he is
in danger of missing the greater majesty of the skies. Many a breathing
spell had Buck and Bright while I turned in my plow-handles to watch the
gentle drift of cloud shadows gliding over the fields, or to plunge my
eyes into the blue vacuum of eternal space.
When Jean would bring my lunch at four in the afternoon we would sit on
the grass in the shade of the wagon at the end of the field and daydream
for a moment or two with feathery, fleecy, high-flying clouds of heaven
as a background for our fancies. Sometimes great, billowy, boisterous,
low-lying masses loomed up in our horizon, level along the bottom like
islands floating in a sea of space; heaped and puffed and pinnacled in
their upper parts. If these gathered and grew we might expect a dash of
rain with a bright sun afterwards and a rainbow in the east.
Jean would throw the remaining crumbs to the gophers and massage Buck's
forehead between the horns before she left. This was always a popular
proceeding for Buck. He acknowledged it by circling his prodigious
tongue about his nose, and sometimes embracing Jean's apron in its
orbit.
It had been arranged that during the busy season I should take my meals
at Jack's, and Jean had volunteered the duty of carrying my afternoon
lunches to the field. There was little time now for either poetry or
prose, and yet we lived amazingly in the spirit. Between the
plow-handles one must think of something, and I recalled and re-recalled
those things I had read during the winter. At lunch time, or in the
evenings, I would talk of them with Jean, always trying to approach her
from some new and unsuspected angle. As, for instance, when a summer
shower threatened us, I quoted (I had borrowed a Shelley from Spoof):
"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one----"
Jean turned her face to mine, and something in her eyes was deeper than
the great clouds gathering overhead. "A year ago you would have said,
'Looks like rain,'" was her ample comment.
* * * * *
With springtime came ducks to the pond, and to our table. Jean had so
far overcome her reluctance to killing that she would crawl with me for
what seemed ages, worming along through the grass of the slopes on the
northern side of the pond, for the chance of sharing with me that moment
of ecstasy in which I killed a living thing. The ducks had been much
shot at in their flight northward and were careful to avoid the ambush
afforded by the grove on the southern side of the pond. Eventually Jean
began taking out the gun on her own account, and it was a tremendously
proud day when she brought home her first mallard. Usually we did our
shooting in the evening, when the banks were in the shadow but there was
still light on the water. The sharp whistle of duck wings would be
followed by the flash of my gun and the glow of burnt wadding. . . .
Then there was the walk home through the gleaming night.
We had built a bridge of poles in the gully at the road between Fourteen
and Twenty-two, as a stream a foot deep was now flowing across the path.
One evening, just as I was unharnessing the oxen, Jean came rushing to
me in great excitement.
"Frank, there are fish in the creek! I saw them darting in every
direction! What can we catch them with?"
"Suckers, they'll be," said I, "but even a sucker is good in the
spring." We hurried to the stable, where we got two hay forks.
"You stand on guard on the bridge, and if any go through, jab 'em," I
directed. "I'll go down stream and drive 'em up."
It was not long until I detected half a dozen forms, almost black in the
water, and resting in the most innocent stillness except for the
constant dilation of mouth and gills. I jabbed at the nearest. But a
fish in the water is not exactly where he seems to be, and I missed him.
He and his company dashed at tremendous speed toward the bridge, with me
in wild pursuit. After the first step or two I abandoned the bank and
plunged into the stream, striking and jabbing recklessly. Suddenly I
landed one--pierced through the tail, I must confess--and threw him far
up the bank.
"Oh, they're coming, they're coming! I see them!" Jean shouted. She
teetered for a moment on the plank; then jumped--or fell--into the
stream and was jabbing about, somewhat to the menace of my feet, and her
own. Her skirts trailed wetly down the tide, and clung about her limbs.
But she was thinking not a bit of that. In wild triumph she threw out a
fish bigger than mine, and jabbed where a fish ought to be jabbed.
* * * * *
One evening Spoof came over, carrying his gun.
"There's good crane shooting out at Reed Lake," he said. "Brown and I
were up last night; got four beauties. Jean seems to be shooting rather
well; thought you and she might like to go out on a crane hunt, so I
brought over my gun."
"But you--you'll come, won't you?"
"No, not this time," said Spoof, sagely. "I've got all I can use for
some days."
Jean was enthusiastic, so we quit work early the next afternoon and
drove to Reed Lake, about seven or eight miles to the west. The sun was
setting across an expanse of marshy water surrounded by low, reedy
shores when we unspanned. A single clump of willows offered shelter on
the eastern side of the lake, and we made our camp beside it.
Far out in the water were myriads of ducks but they kept well beyond
range. We couldn't afford to waste cartridges on the snipe and plover
that ran crying along the shore.
Slowly the long northern twilight settled into darkness as we sat in our
camp and watched the colors gently dulling on the glass-like surface of
the lake. Darker it grew, until the brighter stars came out. All was
silent and still. But when one listened intently to the silence it
became alive with noises. The grumbling of wild duck; the cry of a
curlew; the blatant bombast of the bullfrog; the myriad industries of
the little folk of night filled the air.
The light faded out of the west; the afterglow paled and darkened; a
faint arc lay across the northern sky; a million stars winked at two
campers sitting by a wagon and a willow bush, and drew their own
conclusions.
I had fastened a horse blanket to the side of our wagon, dropping one
edge to the ground. In front of it I spread another on the grass, and
here we sat, sheltered from the cool night breezes that came solemnly
whispering over the tops of the reeds that bordered the lake. While the
light held out I had sat with a book in my hand, but we had not read; we
were reading the book of earth and sky, of light and shadow, of wind and
water, and perhaps of love.
"It is so dark," Jean said at length. "How can we see to shoot, even if
they _do_ come?"
Jean seemed to doubt the efficiency of any method of hunting that
consisted in sitting down beside a horse blanket and waiting for the
game to come up and be shot. She could understand crawling for a hundred
yards, head down and heels down, except as a waving foot might serve to
semaphore her signals. But to sit and wait. . . . . She was counting
stars.
"There they come!" I suddenly breathed, scarce daring to whisper, as a
new note came up from the water. "Quietly--quietly."
We rose to our feet and stalked silently to the water's edge. There was
nothing to be seen. We were surrounded entirely by reeds higher than our
heads. We were sinking slowly in the moist mud; water was trickling
through the lace holes in my boots.
"We'll have to go in," I whispered. "Are you game?"
I felt the pressure of her free hand upon my arm.
"Anywhere--with you."
So we stepped quietly but boldly into the water. It came to the ankles,
the calves, the knees. Then we were through the reeds and the lake lay
before us, dim and misty, like a sheet of frosted glass.
"We'll wait here. If we're lucky they'll come our way."
Out of the air came a rushing. Great wings beat almost upon our heads.
But they came and were gone before we knew it.
"Just a couple of strays beating around the lake," I explained. "We'll
wait for the waders."
Presently, and without notice save the soft splashing of water, they
came wading down the shallows close to where we stood, their great
bodies dim and dark against the frosted glass; their long necks
stretched high, or grubbing in the reeds beside them.
One--two--three--four--five--six; on they came.
"Take the first two; I'll take the next."
Our guns came to our shoulders in the darkness; we looked, rather than
sighted, at the great birds scarce a rod away; then--right barrel!--left
barrel!--we woke the echoes of the lake and filled the air with
tempestuous noises. From every side came the splash of water and the
rush of wings. The stillness, the gentleness of the night in a moment
became the wildest babel of confusion.
But we had no thought for that. Splashing right before us were great
forms; flapping, struggling, eddying about. I would have held Jean back
but she rushed ahead of me into the melee. She had one by the neck; the
lust of killing was upon her; it was a fight to a finish. . . .
Afterwards we dragged them out--three of them. Jean declared there had
been another, but he managed to hide himself in the rushes.
Then we built a fire beside the willow and warmed ourselves.
* * * * *
Before the water was warm enough for bathing I sent to Regina for a
bathing suit. "The gaudiest thing you have," I said, and they took me at
my word. It was a great day when I made my appearance in it. In the
evenings, after a day of dust in the fields, we revelled in the cool
waters of our pond. Jean would race me from end to end, but she was much
too good a swimmer for me.
* * * * *
Then came one of those rare summer nights--rare on the prairies--when
the air does not cool off with the approach of evening, and all the heat
of day seems hemmed in by black clouds crowding overhead. I had gone to
bed, but not to sleep. The far away flashing of heat lightning
continuously lit my room with a vague twilight; my blankets had become
unbearable, and I threw them off. The silence was intense; the very
night seemed to brood over me; the perspiration stood out upon me. It
took me back to the hot nights of the East, so little known with us, and
from that starting point my mind went wandering down through old ways,
down to the dam and the mill-wheel and the little boy and girl who were
the starting point of all my recollections. Jean it had been then; Jean
it was, with whom all my thoughts were linked; Jean was still the
innermost hope of my heart. I had waited, patiently as I could, and the
spring and summer months had seen arise between us an affection deeper,
vaster, wider than anything I had known in those days when we had talked
of love together. Our world had grown and we had grown with it. Ours was
continually the spirit of the new adventure; continually a faring forth
into the unknown.
But I had not talked of love. It had been my conception of artistry to
speak no more of love, daring all my hope on the prospect that the fires
which I guessed had been rekindled in Jean's heart would in time burst
all her womanly restraint. Then she would come to me. Jean was big
enough for that.
I had tried to follow her in spirit through the torment of those days
after Spoof's revelation. I had guessed how hard it had been for her,
and I kept silence. I conceived that that was artistry.
But there must be an end sometime--sometime soon. I was not all artist,
like Jean. Artistry was my means to an end. There must be an end. . . .
Which would be the beginning. . . .
Came a tapping on my window. I sat up quickly.
"Frank?"
"Yes?"
"Asleep?"
"Not within miles of it. Whew! Ever see a night like this?" I had thrust
my head through the open window and could see her form dimly outlined
against the night.
"Used to be the usual thing, down East," she answered. "But we get out
of the way of them, here. Get up and let's go for a swim."
A flash of lightning revealed her in her bathing suit. I was soon out of
bed and into mine.
"Beat you to the other end of the pond," she said, as we threaded our
way down the well-worn path.
"You always beat me," I confessed. "But I'm game; I'll try again."
We took the water together; its comforting tide wrapped us about as we
swung through it with long, easy strokes. Jean suited her pace to mine;
her body was a rhythmic machine, lithe, supple, almost serpentine in its
movements. Her hair was down. When a glow of distant lightning fell
about us her face was ivory white, cameo-like, against the black water.
At the far end was a small beach of sand, and we drew ourselves up upon
it. Jean drew her feet up tailor-wise, shook out her hair; traced idly
with her fingers in the sand.
"I had a dream, Frank," she said at length. "I dreamed you were wrecked
on a lonely island, where you seemed doomed to spend all your days. But
one night when you were sleeping a nymph of the wilderness stole up and
whispered something in your ear. And this is what she said: 'Go down to
the beach at midnight and light a fire on the sand, and a beautiful
maiden shall come up out of the sea. Take her; she is yours.'
"And you turned in your sleep and said, 'Mine--forever?' And the nymph
said, 'Forever, if you will obey the law.'
"And you said, 'What law?' And the nymph said, 'The law of romance,
which is the law of imagination, which is the law of beauty, which is
the law of love, which is the law of life. If you are true to that law
she shall be yours not only now, but forever, and this shall no longer
be a lonely island, but a place called Paradise.' And then I woke up.
"That was a very wonderful dream, Jean," I said. "A very wonderful
dream."
"And I have been wondering, Frank," she continued, her liquid voice
dropping very low and soft, "I have been wondering if you were to light
a fire on this beach--what would happen."
"It would be an interesting experiment," I agreed, "but I have no
matches."
"I have provided against that. See, on this stone are matches, and
beside it wood for a fire.''
"Jean!" I exclaimed, a great light breaking about me. I extended my arms
toward her; I would have rushed to her, but she evaded me in the
darkness.
"Suppose you try the experiment, Frank," she said. "Let us see if there
is anything in dreams."
I found the stone with the matches; I struck one; its light glowed
genially in my face. I found the little pile of dry wood which she had
gathered together; I knelt and set my match to it. I think in that
moment I felt somewhat like a god before an altar; a whiff of fragrant
willow smoke filled my nostrils like incense. Then I stood up and looked
around for Jean. She was gone.
My little fire crackled and burned up merrily, sending its shaft of pale
blue smoke heavenward in the night. The distant clouds still
heliographed each other across the sky; their flashlights blinked on the
surface of our pond from time to time.
Then I sat down and tried to recall what Jean had said. "A beautiful
maiden shall come up . . . Take her. . . . She is yours--forever--if you
obey the law."
"I will--I will obey!" I breathed.
Out on the dark water glowed a phosphorescent point. It drew steadily,
straight toward me. It was the ripple of white water as a silent
graceful figure cleft the tide in two. Onward she came, steadily, stroke
by stroke. A flash of distant lightning lit her face cameo-like against
the depths behind. She had touched the sand; she drew up from the water;
she stood before me. I took her in my arms.
"Dreams _do_ come true, if they're properly staged," she said when she
could speak.
THE END.
T. N. BEST PRINTING CO. LIMITED. TORONTO
=Transcriber's Notes:=
original hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in
the original
Page 6, "tweleve" changed to "twelve"
Page 17, "my boy! she said" changed to "my boy!" she said"
Page 17, "rhymic" changed to "rhythmic"
Page 19, "he said,, "You're" changed to "he said, "You're"
Page 54, "populars" changed to "poplars"
Page 55, "beligerent" changed to "belligerent"
Page 60, "couutry" changed to "country"
Page 66, "patroling" changed to "patrolling"
Page 69, "prodings" changed to "proddings"
Page 69, "Se we unhitched" changed to "So we unhitched"
Page 82, "amid the the luxury" changed to "amid the luxury"
Page 96, 'simple precaution.' changed to 'simple precaution."'
Page 102, "Its a wonderful thing" changed to "It's a wonderful thing"
Page 109, "aimiable" changed to "amiable"
Page 118, "reportoire" changed to "repertoire"
Page 124, "'"Madam,' says I" changed to ""'Madam,' says I"
Page 125, "may I ask?" she" changed to "may I ask?' she"
Page 139, "guage" changed to "gauge"
Page 147, "naivette" changed to "naivete"
Page 156, "rosegardens" changed to "rose-gardens" [Ed. for consistency]
Page 157, "it's not not in" changed to "it's not in"
Page 180, "exquisitively" changed to "exquisitely"
Page 186, "Brooks" changed to "Brook" [Ed. for consistency]
Page 201, "CHAPTER XIV." changed to "CHAPTER XVI."
Page 209, "recital, "That caused" changed to "recital, "that caused"
Page 249, "maganimity" changed to "magnanimity"
Page 264, "play you're silly" changed to "play your silly"
Page 264, "And you're argument" changed to "And your argument"
Page 264, "irresistable" changed to "irresistible"
Page 264, "sharp, arn't you?" changed to "sharp, aren't you?"
Page 306, "ecstacy" changed to "ecstasy"
Page 315, "phospherescent" changed to "phosphorescent"